Chairman Bob is the people's champion...

In 1995, retired from his work as a union official but still crackling with energy, Bob Sears looked round for something to do and volunteered his services to local government.

A mere four years later, he has risen from novice councillor to chairman of Basildon Council. Fate promptly gave him a further shove into the stratosphere when it determined that he should be Mr Basildon, the man who welcomed the Queen to the town.

"I just can't believe it. What a fantastic thing to happen," he gasps. It didn't just happen just like that, however.

Bob is one of those people to whom almost everybody warms instantly. A quick canvass of his acquaintances produced a near identical response, beginning almost routinely with: "He's a really nice guy."

Relaxed and relaxing, he chats naturally and easily with anybody who crosses his path. " 'Ere, let me do that for you," he said to the Queen, as she fumbled with the lid of a tin containing a gift from Basildon.

He has made a point of meeting every council employee. "I tell them to make sure to say 'Hello Bob,' if they see me," he says, "and now they do." It took him two full days to complete his personal Christmas greetings to everyone at the Council.

Yet the easy-going demeanour is deceptive. "Being chairman is very enjoyable - but very demanding," he says. There's some job or other for the chairman just about seven days and nights a week, and that's just the start of it.

The Essex mayors and council leaders refer to themselves as 'the Chain Gang.' "It's not unusual to put the chain-of-office on at seven in the morning and not get it off until 11 or 12 at night," Bob says.

Bob is also an Essex County Councillor, and vice-president of the National Pensioners Convention (although it is hard to think of this man as a pensioner).

The list of other organisations and committees with which he is actively involved makes him look, far from being at ease with himself, more like somebody trying to commit hari-kari by paperwork.

Being an amiable guy with a liking for the human race no doubt helps in all this, but the job demands a lot more than a man or woman who is merely a pleasant person.

The fact is, a fervent political heart beats in Bob Sear's chest. As far back as you go there is a clear thread running through Bob's activities. "I try to champion the underdog," he says.

"All my working life I've represented people who otherwise would not have a voice. I'm lucky enough to be financially comfortable, but I never let myself forget that for many people, poverty is still a real fact of life."

At 71, Bob is, as he says, "old enough to remember the Depression. A man could come to work in the morning and in the evening be out of a job, just like that, no notice."

Like most good Basildonians, he started life as a Londoner, son of a car-bodymaker and coachbuilder who later ran a successful slot machine business in Ramsgate.

Young Bob followed his dad into the coachbuilding trade, becoming a skilled craftsman in the most princely trade known to man - building car bodies for Rolls Royce.

The work was, of course, painstaking and dedicated. "It could take a month to finish just one of those great big bodies," Bob says. He retains an eye for venerable but beautiful bodies.

If anything, Bob downplays the skill level of his old craft, but admits: "I must have been reasonably good at the job. You got paid twopence an hour extra for being the lead craftsman and I hadn't been at Mulliner Park Ward long before they made me into a lead."

Yet for all the magnificent vehicles that he turned out, Bob Sears' heart was with people and politics rather than cars. Like his dad before him he became an official of the National Union of Vehicle Builders, subsequently merged into the TGWU.

"I just gradually got involved with representing people," he says. He rose to become a district officer, then the regional officer for south-east England.

Of his politics, Bob says: "There is Old Labour and New Labour, and I think I'm somewhere in the middle." As a union official, his posture was that of a firm moderate.

"I always tried to build up good relations with employers," he says. "They knew I was always straight in negotiation. I didn't try to pull any strokes."

In the rough and tumble world of 1970s industrial relations, Bob Sears remained a focal point of reason, able to see both sides of an argument.

"When I was a negotiator, I always tried to see things from the governor's seat as well, while never taking my eye off the ball or forgetting those I represented.

"Nowadays, as a pensioner's representative, I push for more expenditure on transport. Then I arrive at the Council and I see the other side of the picture, the financial implications of it all.

"In the end, I believe in democracy. You may not always agree with a decision, but if the majority goes against you, you grin and take it. That's what politics is all about."

As a regional officer, Bob got to know and like the Basildon area. He moved here prior to his third marriage, to his present wife Anne. He has five children and nine grandchildren at present.

Basildon itself has joined the family and Bob talks about the place fondly, almost as if it was a sixth child. "It's on a roll," he says. "Basildon has a tremendous future."

Yet the only person who seems even mildly mystified as to how he became Basildon Council chairman is Bob himself. "I think they were just looking around for somebody," he says dismissively.

When they explained how much work was involved, his predecessors were almost apologetic. "You don't have to do all of it, though," they reassured him.

"But I do want to do it all," said Bob. And, as always good as his word, he did.

Part of the chain gang - Bob Sears chairman of Basildon Council

Picture: NICK ANSELL

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.