Tributes have been paid to one of Tameside’s longest serving politicians who has died at the age of 80.
Colin Grantham, a former councillor and leader of the borough’s Conservative party, died in hospital on Sunday after suffering heart failure.
He leaves Gladys, his wife of 54 years, children Ruth and James and two grandchildren.
Mr Grantham, who was born and bred in Gee Cross, was first elected to Hyde Borough Council in 1967 and played a key role in the formation of Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council in 1974.
He led the council when Tories took control of the borough from 1976-9 and won a High Court battle to stop local grammar schools from being turned into comprehensives.
His services to local government earned him an OBE.
Apart from a break between 1988-98 to concentrate on his career as a business broker, he remained as a councillor for Hyde Werneth and later Stalybridge South until three years ago when he stepped down due to ill health.
Son James described his dad as a man who stood up for what he believed in.
He was also a keen entrepreneur, setting up several businesses – including an early venture running a vinegar-bottling factory.
James, 46, said: "He was prepared to stand up and be counted. He understood everybody had their own opinion but he would fight for what was right and the people he was acting for.
"He was generous, he had a great desire to serve the local community and gave the very best. He would always do whatever he could for whoever asked him." Manchester Evening News
Rest in Peace Mr Grantham. An honest politician and a gentleman.
Tameside Citizen
19 comments:
Only respectful comments on here please.
A great man. God bless Colin.
Thank you for the post TC. It gives me the opportunity to pay respects to one of the few local political figures I genuinely respected.
I remember being in the studio audience of "Brass Tacks" in about 1986. As I walked in the studio the first person I saw was Colin Grantham. He immeadiately winked and gave me a nod of recognition.
He was strongly in favour of free speech.
Tameside is a poorer place for his passing.
RIP
This is tragic news. Colin was a true Conservative and fought real hard as a councillor and as his short term as leader of the council which made him famous for defending grammar schools. Many people said he was wrong at the time, but look at the state of education in Tameside now.
He never built a single new School when in charge look at it now, exam results were poor ,look at it now record achievements again.
Record achievements? Are you having a laugh? I have a child who has just gone through schooling in Tameside, what an absolute joke! The system is rigged so underachievers can perform well - another legacy of the Labour disaster years when indigenous children were wilfully dumbed down so minorities (soon to be majorities) would not feel left behind because of poor exam results. Send your child to a state school in Tameside and here is a summary of what they learn in history during their final five years:
First year: The Rise of the European Dictators
Second year: Slavery and the American Civil Rights Movement
Third year: The Holocaust
Fourth year: WW1 WW2 and Women’s Suffrage
Fifth year: The Making of Modern Britain
Ask a child who has just been through that five year brain washing exercise about Alfred the Great, Boudicca, The Pilgrim Fathers, Henry VIII, The War of the Roses, Cromwell, The Industrial Revolution, The Boer War or anything else that children were taught before the Labour Bolsheviks took control and they will look at you as if you are daft because they have never been taught them. However, Ask them about the Diary of Anny Frank or the life and times of Martin Luther King and they will give in depth answers.
Colin Grantham loathed PC brainwashing that is why he will always be remembered as a decent politician.
Colin was a fantastic councillor and an effective leader of Tameside Conservatives.
A strong and consistent advocate of selective education - his contribution to Tameside was immense and if any of our national politicians had half the guts and principles Colin had then we might have a very effective government.
Despite our political differences (we are Tories of different generations), I fully respected Colin and hope he rests in peace.
In the last figures available, Tameside's schools ranked a terrible 119 out of the 150 boroughs in England. If you excluded the results of the only surviving Grammar school (Thanks Colin), Tameside would be last.
You lefties who believe that Tameside offers the average student a decent education need to take a rare trip outside the Soviet Republic of Tameside. Ged Cooney needs to stop patting himself on the back everytime we pass an extra GCSE in hairdressing and ask businesses what they need, and what they can get in neighbouring boroughs.
Now we've run out of money to mop-up people into the public sector, our kids need skills to get jobs in the real world, where (sorry to say) competition exists. Colin, as a business man, understood competition, and that drove his political beliefs.
Tameside needs a few more ambitious folks on the Council (and in the executive). Try benchmarking ourselves against Trafford instead of last years results. Successful families leave Tameside to live in places like Trafford because they have good schools. Good schools=good business to employ them= prosperous boroughs which are more resilient to cutbacks in Government spending.
If the GCSE is so valid why are an ever increasing number of schools adopting the international version. The GCSE is an utterly dumbed down joke of an exam, made virtually unfailable, with even the bare minimum of work, by the large coursework component which does not test what you've learnt in properly regulated exam conditions. In this setting there is no fudging, 'help' from schools and teachers with vested interests or BS of any kind.
The O-Level was the standard and on every experiment where 'high performing' modern children have taken these exams they have failed appallingly.
As for 'history' it is now no more than Marxist brainwashing. The fact that we have a semi-literate Deputy Executive Leader shows how far the Borough has sunk.
Why no tribute on the Tameside Council web page? They did one for Roy, another Tameside political stalwart, but not Colin who put the borough on the map.
Surprise F*cking Surprise....
Trying to investigate the performance of Tameside Schools from Tameside Council....
http://www.tameside.gov.uk/education/performance
Click any of the links concerning performance and all you get is "Page not Found"
Cooney / Quinn / Pleasant - Get your fingers out!
All the links for self publicity / patting themselves all the back seem to work fine.
Just shows the priority results have.
Police State Has Labelled 280,000 Children as “Racists”
This page should have been used to pay tributes to Colin the idiots from the right wing of the party have made into a joke.
He warned us all about splits in the party and he told us all why our electoral performance in Tameside was poor.
Just pay your tributes or leave the blog.
Above Colin was a very right-wing nationalist. Old school Tory not the Bell type hand-out Tory.
Comment at Cost Cutting Conservative,
Not even a mention on the Tameside Tories website either.
Colin was old School Tory,very right wing and a grumpy old sod,and he will be missed by Tameside Tories what brains they had have now gone.
"The fact that we have a semi-literate Deputy Executive Leader shows how far the Borough has sunk."
....and let's not forget our bimbo of a borough solicitor, who, by all accounts, is eating herself to death.
Sorry Tameside Spy, that commet is out of order.
A Bimbo is a slang term for someone with no brains. I have found her perceptive and intelligent.
Also rumour is no basis for a posting.
Finaly, it is one thing to attack elected cllrs, but we should have more regard for those paid officials who are bound by their duty to carry out the job they do.
Colin Grantham was a political giant, a man of integrity, principles and a heap full of humour and good manners. He had the ability to bite his nose off to spite his face at times, but you knew where you stood with Colin, and you definitely knew where he stood politically.
He was full of anecdotes, one of his favourites being the time when as leader of Tameside Council he was being interviewed for television about the Dirty Workers' Strike alongside a trade union official. Prior to the interview he agreed with the trade union official that the grave diggers were poorly paid and offered to increase their pay. The official refused the offer, stating that the agreement had to come from a national level. The grave diggers eventually received a nationally approved pay rise lower than that offered by Colin.
They don't make them like Colin Grantham and politics and Tameside is all the worse off for his passing.
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