My friend John Marjoram, who has died aged 86, was the Green party’s longest serving councillor – in Stroud, Gloucestershire.
First elected to Stroud district council in 1986, he was one of the party’s first two councillors: the other, Richard Lawson, was elected on the same night in Congresbury in Somerset.
During his 35 years as a councillor, the Greens came to a power-sharing agreement with Labour and the Liberal Democrats on Stroud district council, which led John to become vice-chair of the council’s planning committee. He was also mayor of Stroud, the first Green mayor in the country, for 10 years.
In his other life John worked for much of his career at Home Farm Trust in nearby Frocester, teaching gardening to adults with special needs.
John was born in Plaistow, east London, to Albert, a clerk, and Clara (nee Headlen). He went to Great Baddow high school in Chelmsford, Essex, before training to be a youth leader at Fircroft College in Birmingham and then the National College for the Training of Youth Leaders in Leicester.
After a childhood overshadowed by the second world war he became a Quaker and a conscientious objector. All his life he was a peace activist, leading marches and demonstrations in Stroud and organising coaches to London for national peace marches.
His other passions were the environment and architecture, and as a councillor he campaigned to protect some of Stroud’s most precious places and buildings.
John had a brilliant feel for political strategy, always understanding how his party could maximise power and build support. This led him to found the Association of Green Councillors (AGC), which is now more than 800-strong.
I first met John in 2000 at an AGC conference, and as I worked towards becoming a councillor in 2003, he was always a source of inspiration and wisdom, as well as being an incredibly warm and generous person. His stories about how he represented people in Stroud were a joy to hear: when he was mayor, for instance, he instigated a mayor’s bench, situated in the town centre, where he would sit each week encouraging passersby to come and chat to him.
He was a celebrated campaigner and inspired many of the current generation of Green politicians to stand for election.
John retired from his gardening work in 2010 but kept on with active politics until 2021, when illness forced him to step down. After that he was made Stroud’s first honorary freeman in 2023.
His spirit lives on in the beautiful buildings and green spaces around Stroud that he helped to save, as well as the strong power-base of the local Greens, who now run a minority administration with 23 councillors.
John is survived by his second wife, Laura Ridolfi, an art therapist whom he married in 2014, two daughters, Saskia and Cleo, from his first marriage to April Foster, which ended in divorce, his grandchildren Joe, Fred, Lois and Dexter and great-granddaughters Edith and Melissa.
