Bill Dixon: 30 years as Darlington council leader

BILL DIXON looks down at the tattoos on his bare forearms.

“When I was working at the rolling mills, you went in on a Thursday for 1.30pm when they issued the pay, and, being a young lad, I finished up in several of the hostelries and then woke up later that day to go on nightshift to discover I had a tattoo,” he says.

“I know a lot of people are horrified by them, but I’ve never really regretted them. I have no idea why I’ve got an eagle sat on an anchor, I have absolutely no connection with the navy other than I was in the 7th Darlington Sea Scouts, but they have proved particularly useful because one of them has got my name in it.”

He finishes his story with a great chesty laugh. It is typical of Cllr Dixon who retires today after nearly 30 years as either the leader or deputy leader of Darlington council. He talks bluntly, is rough around the edges and is always ready to laugh chestily.

After being “asked to leave” Eastbourne school in Darlington, and after a tattooed beginning in industry, he rediscovered himself as a social worker and gained a degree. He was first elected as a councillor in 1979, aged 26, when the Dolphin Centre was still being built and when Darlington was smarting about being swallowed up by Durham.

“I believe that if you’ve got something to say, say it, and if you think you can do better, stand up and have a go,” he says, bluntly. “That’s what happened to me, but then it becomes addictive – there’s always one more thing to get done. I am conscious even now that there are projects I want to do.”

The 1980s were a fractious time in Darlington politics, with the Labour group declaring the town a nuclear free zone as much to wind up the Conservative group as to save the area from being nuked.

“We weren’t as bad as some authorities, although in retrospect, I wish we had named something after Nelson Mandela because I admire him greatly,” says Cllr Dixon.

Towards the end of the decade, the council slipped into no overall control, and meetings started at 6pm and dragged on till morning had broken and blackbirds were singing.

“I asked the mayor, Beatrice Cuthbertson, if she was aware that the chip shops closed at 10pm and the pubs closed at 10.30pm, so we had a recess just before 10pm and every piled out for a swift pint,” he says. “With hindsight, it was a bad move because everyone just came back ready for another go.”

However, after a bitter infight, Cllr John Williams emerged as Labour leader, with Cllr Dixon as deputy, and they won the council in 1991. One of their earliest battles was Darlexit – to get the town out of Durham where they felt it was being overwhelmed and overlooked. “The county was favouring areas like Seaham, Easington, Consett, and would look at Darlington and say you’re not that badly off, which was true,” he says. “But it didn’t help us.

“I still passionately believe that for all our faults, the governance of Darlington is best left to the people of Darlington.”

With that independence in mind, Cllr Dixon was an architect of the Tees Valley Combined Authority in which the five local authorities joined as equals, pragmatically working together – even when Ben Houchen was surprisingly elected as the first mayor. “To be fair to him, he’s a Conservative, but he hasn’t been a particularly bad mayor,” says Cllr Dixon, with his chesty laugh.

In the 2000s, the council reshaped the centre of Darlington with the £8m Pedestrian Heart scheme. “It needed a refresh,” he says. “The designs of the old High Row were there by default and were not historic.

“Other towns went for pedestrianisation but for us that wouldn’t work because there was no way of getting people into where they wanted to shop – that was people’s view, and so we had to let the buses in.

“If you had had full pedestrianisation, you wouldn’t have had any pedestrians.”

Reshaping that reshape is one of the unfinished projects he is handing on to his successor.

Immediately Pedestrian Heart was complete came the economic crash, the country was plunged into crisis and local councils bore the brunt, with 40 per cent being scythed from their budgets. When Cllr Williams retired in 2011, Cllr Dixon alone wielded the knife.

“It was the unacceptable versus the totally unacceptable, and to me, the totally unacceptable was not to have a plan,” he says. “So as unpopular as the decisions have been, the alternatives were even more unpalatable.

“There were times when we probably saved a bit too much, but rather that than have to slash and burn half way through the year. Now we have a little wriggle room – one of the few authorities with a balanced budget through to 2021, and a little room to manoeuvre for the first time.”

THAT is one of the things that he is most proud of, along with a continued building of council housing, and a growing town in terms of population and jobs – one of his last acts was to turn the first sod at Symmetry Park where an online retailer (Amazon, is the open secret) should employ 3,000 or more.

“There are people who say I have wrought disaster on the town, and they are entitled to their opinion, but a lot of people have come up to me in the street, people who don’t agree with me politically, and said thank-you,” he says. “That’s been quite touching.”

Now 65 and as of tonight, no longer council leader, he will remain a ward councillor until May’s elections.

“I’m not going to lose interest,” he pledges. “I shall follow the news in The Northern Echo. I may even ask ‘what have they done now, the clowns?’.” Still rough around the edges, he finishes with a hearty, chesty laugh.