Tom Levitt, former Labour MP for High Peak
I asked the staff in my constituency office in Buxton how long David had been volunteering as a helper there. “Oh, before my time,” was the unanimous reply. I think it’s ten or eleven years since he first started to give me a morning a week of his time, sitting at the desk overlooking the street below, making himself useful, thinking and talking politics.
“And what’s your abiding memory of him?” I asked my staff, and again received a unanimous reply: “Doughnuts on Wednesdays!”
Some of us in politics are proud to be called ‘loyalists’. David was one of those. But he was not someone who chose the line of least resistance by just falling in behind Tony Blair – for example – far from it. There have been times when being a loyalist has been difficult, especially over the last 13 years, both because of the nature of some of the decisions that loyalists are expected to respect and because rebelliousness was regarded in some quarters as somehow a better test of virility or independence.
David was loyal to the Labour Party, its leadership, and to me as the local MP: but he was never a sycophant, a bootlicker or without questions.
His loyalty was patient and constructive but full of high expectations and principle. David’s support ought never to be taken for granted yet it was unflinching, profound and genuine.
His rise through the Labour Party ranks could hardly be described as meteoric: that was not his style. His first meeting of Whaley Bridge Labour Party was on 12 December 1995, the minutes inform us, his first time at one of those legendary Whaley Bridge barbecues, a rite of passage in that neck of the woods, was in 1996 and he assumed the role of branch Treasurer in 2005.
He sat through interminable meetings of the General Committee of the Constituency Party at which he said little, though when he did speak it was always worth hearing: informed, rational, articulate, pragmatic and straight to the point.
Within his branch meetings I am told David could be ‘provocative’ – who? David? And I guess he enjoyed being so, particularly relishing the reaction of others to his suggestion that part of their reason for being was that they might just support the Government from time to time. I am sure it was no reflection on David when I overheard, at a Whaley Bridge Labour Party meeting, a newcomer wail, after one comrade’s particularly effervescent rant, that he had ‘never heard such rubbish in his life.’ To which the Chairman promptly replied: ‘You should have been at our last meeting.’
David enjoyed politics: he never let it get on top of him. He regarded debate as its lifeblood, as grit in the oyster, as something friends do together even when they disagree.
Whenever I visited the Whaley Bridge branch I saw that David's views were especially appreciated by the members. It was a comradely gathering and David was a much valued member of that group.
David was very knowledgeable and obviously well read: he could digress on the finer points of the economy or on Afghan tribal rivalry as well as anyone, whilst never forgetting that politics begins at home.
His default position was to be a friend: I know that all of our friends in common were fond of him, without exception. That his final illness should have been tainted by a long drawn out and growing air of inevitability was a matter of great sadness to all who knew him.
David was a lovely man. Whether what we remember of him was a comforting smile and a warm word when you really needed it; a passionate defence of a cherished ideal; or simply “doughnuts on Wednesdays”, he will be sadly missed.
