Patrick Kidd

David Amess’s long campaign to make Southend a city

The late Sir David Amess MP was committed to upgrading the civic status of his town

Southend Pier in 1909 (Getty)

The last two contributions that Sir David Amess made in the Commons were to call for a debate on animal welfare and to express disappointment that he had not been asked in the reshuffle to become minister for granting city status to Southend. They were two subjects close to his heart, which he seldom missed an opportunity to raise.

‘I do not think that my honourable friend has asked me a single question in the House that has not mentioned Southend becoming a city,’ remarked Theresa May on the seventh occasion, out of eight in all, when Sir David bounced to his feet in PMQs, gave his usual hopeful smile like a puppy begging for a biscuit and pleaded with her to make his dreams come true.

Perhaps the oddest request came in March 2018, when he rose just before Mrs May was to give a statement on rapidly deteriorating relations with Russia after the poisonings in Salisbury and asked if the prime minister was aware — how could she not be? — that a charity in his constituency had just set a world record for ringing the highest number of triangles. ‘This is yet another reason why Southend should be made a city,’ he observed. As I wrote in my Times sketch that day: ‘This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a tinkle.’

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‘Yet another reason’ was a familiar refrain. A rummage through Hansard finds the claim that ‘Leigh fishermen catch the finest fish in the world’; Southend being a regional winner in the Tiffin Cup for South Asian restaurants; rough sleeping in the borough falling by 85 per cent; schoolchildren making 7,500 ceramic poppies; its record number of centenarians; and Sir Michael Parkinson opening an extension to Southend’s jazz centre all given as yet another reason why its civic status deserved an upgrade.

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Written by
Patrick Kidd
Patrick Kidd is Diary editor of the Times and author of 'The Weak are a Long Time in Politics', an anthology of his Times political sketches from 2014-19.

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