THE Three Towns’ longest serving local councillor is retiring after 29 years representing the people of Ardrossan and Saltcoats.

Labour Councillor Peter McNamara will not be seeking re-election for the first time since 1988 and the Ardrossan native spoke to the Herald about his time representing locals, working with youngsters and what lies in store for retirement.

Cllr Pete, as he was known by local schoolchildren during his time as Youth Champion for North Ayrshire Council, was first elected to the ward of South Beach which ran from Quay Street in Saltcoats to Glasgow Street in Ardrossan. He explained the experience and said: “It was predominately Tory and had been since its inception.

“When I got selected to stand I got a team together called ‘Pete’s Platoon’, young people and we chapped every door, we worked really hard and we won it. We won it by 34 votes as I recall. I will never forget that experience.

“I went out in the car with the tannoy to thank people and I went along Quay Street and the windows were open and the people were waving tea towels. It was the first time that South Beach had had Labour representation.”

The role of a councillor has changed a lot in nearly three decades with Peter holding a number of roles within Cunninghame District Council, where he was first elected, within North Ayrshire Council and also on outside bodies including Youthlink Scotland and the South West Scotland Community Justice Authority.

And things have went full circle as the councillor now finds him self back in the role of Youth Champion, a position he first took up back in the mid 1990s.

He spoke about the role and how he got ideas from travelling across the country, he said: “At the end of CDC and inception of NAC, I was invited to be the champion for youth. Young people back then were told speak when you’re spoken to and because I was youth champion I met with a cracking man called Alec Pettigrew who was a youth leader in NAC along with Jim McHarg but I had little to no experience and they wanted me to go and see work that was being done across Scotland and I went to Dingwall and I met the Aberderdonian Youth Executive.

“Whilst I was in Dingwall I was invited to go to a primary school on a Saturday and when I went there I was met by two of the students, seven-year-olds, and they said ‘Welcome to our school’ and they took me in to the school and they introduced me to the headteacher and she said the students would take me round the school, they showed me everything, that they had designed and when I sat down with the headteacher she said ‘Did you enjoy the trip round their school?’ It was always,’ theirs’ not ‘my or ours’.

“She was a big advocate of student councils and that struck me as being an absolutely fantastic way of engaging with young people, so I came back down and advocated it here and as a consequence we ended up having student councils in every school in North Ayrshire and it has been a tremendous success.

“What really installed in me with working with tenants groups and young people was a sense of ‘You can’t do this yourself and don’t think you ever could’, it’s about partnership working and I think getting people to work together is about one of the best skills I have developed.”

Peter enjoyed power for many years as a councillor and believes that these things come in circles and Labour will come back to the top again, he said: “Politics in my lifetime has been swings and pendulums and it will swing back, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind. There is a place for socialism and there is a place for independent thought and there is also a place for community thought, it’s about getting a blend of those and getting it to work. The most important thing is that we take the society forward.

“When I was Leader of the Labour group I worked with Willie Gibson because whatever our differences were, that’s national politics, we worked together to make North Ayrshire a better place and I am proud to have nominated to youngest leader of a council in Scotland with Joe Cullinane, he will be a tremendous asset for North Ayrshire, I have no doubt.”

Peter won’t be involved in the next council set-up but he believes those elected will use their power to tackle poverty as a priority, he added: “Poverty impacts on a whole host of different issues but employment should be and will be the focus I am quite sure, poverty and dealing with the endemic poverty that we have here is something I am almost certain the Labour Party will be pursuing and I’d love to be able to say we could attract inward investment but I doubt very much if we will get back to the days of 34,000 people working at ICI but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.”

He finished by thanking the people he had served over the years and said: “I want to emphasise that it has been a privilege and an honour to be elected to represent the folk in Ardrossan but the opportunities that it has given me to hopefully change some lives has been enormous and I am going to miss it, there’s no doubt about it but I am going to use the few skills I’ve got in other directions.”