Lifelong pacifist and nature lover, conscientious objector and former Communist, protest veteran, ten-times Mayor and the UK's longest continuously serving Green councillor, John Marjoram died on May 17 at the age of 86, after a long illness. This article looks at his work and achievements. Growing up in rural Essex in the 1940s gave John Marjoram an enduring love of nature, while dinner-table debates with his staunch Labour father and Conservative-voting mother gave him an early interest in politics. Other formative influences were two uncles, one a conscientious objector during World War 1, and the other who did take part in the fighting but talked to John about the horrors he'd seen. Young John vowed that he would never use a weapon or kill anyone. He retained anti-war and pacifist beliefs throughout his life. These childhood influences were a natural precursor to his subsequent involvement in Green politics - John was to become one of the first Greens in the country to be elected to office and holds a record as the longest continuously serving Green councillor. Born in 1939, an only child, John left school at 15 and worked in factories, offices, farms and building sites. He was briefly a member of the Communist Party and was sacked from a factory job for trying to start a trade union. In 1959 he was called up for national service but declared himself a conscientious objector. "Christ said 'thou shalt not kill'; it was that simple," said John, a practising Quaker, many years later. While the rest of his intake went to Malaysia to fight the Communists, he remained in England working in an administrative role. About that time, he got involved with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Peace Pledge Union, and took part in the second Aldermaston March during leave from national service in 1961. He was twice arrested and jailed for using a plough to break into American military bases. He subsequently attended numerous anti-war rallies and organised hundreds of coaches to go to national protests. After the invasion of Iraq in 2003, John was involved in numerous local actions and vigils. In 1968 John moved to Stroud with his young family, drawn here by his affiliation with the Quakers, who had a strong presence in the town. He helped to set up the Home Farm Trust in 1970, turning 10 acres of agricultural land into a space for local residents to learn gardening and farming skills. He saw this work as a way of balancing his political work with practical caring for the land, animals and people. In 1972 John went back to college to study for a diploma in youth and social work, going on to run a youth club in Stonehouse. In 1975 he co-founded a local branch of the People Party (later to become the Ecology Party and then the Green Party). He was inspired after reading the Club of Rome's report "Limits to Growth", which explained how fast the finite resources of the planet were being consumed. During the mid-1970s, John was a founding member of the successful Stroud Campaign Against the Ringroad (SCAR), and as a member of Stroud District Council planning committee prevented many unsightly developments from happening locally. He was pivotal in preventing the Hill Paul building being demolished, saving Uplands Post Office and enabling the Town Council's purchase of Lansdown Hall. 1985 saw the creation of Stroud Green Party and John was among the six people who turned up to the first meeting. Not long after that, the subject of the 1986 local elections came up and, as John later recalled: "All eyes turned to me." John was the obvious choice to be the Green candidate, as he had been a school governor for several years and had been involved in local campaigns. His campaign was boosted by growing public concern about the environment following the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986. John won the Trinity ward seat on the District Council, becoming the first Green Party councillor to be elected in the UK. He later remembered his young daughter rushing across the room with tears in her eyes and flinging her arms around him shouting 'Dad, you've won!' John was assigned to sit on the planning committee because of his interest in architecture, and he served on it as a member or deputy chair for 31 years. He recently recalled mammoth committee meetings lasting up to 12 hours, during which councillors would deal with every planning application themselves. He was saddened by the fact that most decision-making over planning applications had since shifted to officers. John was one of the first councillors elected to Stroud Town Council when it was formed in 1990. John had lobbied for the creation of a town council so that local people would have more say in hyper-local issues. John served as mayor for 10 civic years, and deputy mayor for seven. He was the UK's first Green Party mayor. He introduced the concept of the 'Mayor's Bench', a particular bench in the town centre where he would sit every Friday so that residents could come and talk to him. He recommended the open-air surgery concept to other councillors, joking: "If you invite people to your house you never get them out again!" In 1993 he co-founded the Association of Green Councillors, which now has hundreds of members. In 2012, while Mayor, John was prosecuted for refusing to fill in his census form because of his beliefs as aQuaker. He said he "couldn't live with myself" if he "collaborated" with a military corporation (the census was run by Lockheed Martin UK). He pleaded not guilty and the Crown Prosecution Service dropped the case. At the time John said: "I am disappointed not to have been given the opportunity to give evidence in my defence and to ask some pertinent questions about why the case was brought against me in the first place." In 2018, committed Remainer John seconded a Green/Labour motion at Stroud District Council calling for a People's Vote on the final terms of any Brexit deal. He pointed out that 55% of Stroud District voted to remain in the EU and that Brexit would have a profound effect on the health and wellbeing of local residents and therefore had significant implications for the work of Stroud District Council. In 2020, John supported the Black Lives Matter movement and was concerned that Covid-19 disproportionately affected Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic people. John was among the local Green councillors who demanded an independent public inquiry into this. They said Covid-19 treatments and vaccines should be made available without profit to poor countries, rather than boosting the profits of the big pharmaceutical companies. John said at the time: "We can't go back [after Covid] to the "business as usual" that created such huge safety and health inequalities in our society." In 2023, John received the title of Stroud's first Honorary Freeman in recognition of his services to the community. He stepped down from politics in 2021, having been a district councillor for Trinity ward in Stroud since 1986 and Mayor 10 times. John's beliefs Electoral reform: He was a long-time campaigner for Proportional Representation, a voting system that would lead to fairer distribution of parliamentary seats than the First Past the Post system. He was an active supporter of the Make Votes Matter campaign. War and peace: John maintained that 'defence' should never mean attacking other countries, citing recent military action in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya and Syria as immoral and the First World War as an Imperial power struggle to get control of oil from the Middle East. "We never seem to remember the implications of war. We repeat our pattern time after time. Lacking the capacity to move on we invent ever more lethal weapons, nearing ourselves to world annihilation with nuclear weapons. "It is naïve to believe you can defeat terrorism by bombing: all you do in these situations is create further misery, hatefulness and a desire for revenge. Exactly what terrorist organisations breed on." John believed it was "repulsive" that the UK funded wars rather than helping homeless people, many of whom were ex-soldiers. John distributed white poppies on behalf of the Peace Pledge Union every November and during his terms as Mayor he refused to take part in the mayoral tradition of laying red poppy wreaths on the war memorial on Remembrance Sunday, opting for white poppies instead. Nuclear weapons: John considered these weapons to be "abominable" and that the money spent on them should be used instead to benefit society. He was cynical about the huge cost of keeping weapons of mass destruction controlled by the US while so many people were living in poverty, with mental health services on a knife edge, and while cuts to council funding meant councils couldn't build social housing. A passionate supporter of CND, John was among those involved in the production of a seven-mile-long knitted pink scarf. This was used to connect two nuclear bomb factories in Berkshire and then to wrap around Parliament and the MOD in London, to draw attention to the decision to replace Trident. Racism: John was a supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement but said the movement was "nothing more than words" without an end to the systemic, institutionalised racism that affects people of colour. "No-one in our community should be discriminated against in any way," he said at the time. Environment: John never had a driving licence, believing that the fewer cars there are on the road the better for the planet. He walked or cycled everywhere, and never flew on an aeroplane until he was 50 and had to go to Germany to represent Stroud District in a long-standing twinning arrangement. He was a trustee of Stroud Valleys Project until 1996, and he was a long-term volunteer with SVP's allotment group. Climate change: In 2014 the SNJ published a letter from John, pointing out that UKIP was the only local party that hadn't committed to taking more action on climate change. "Regrettably it is indicative of many far right wing parties right across the world, who are climate change deniers. This is in the face of actual destruction and erratic weather patterns now happening everywhere at an alarming rate." He pointed out that by ignoring climate change the far right would have to face up to millions of environmental immigrants coming here as their own lands would no longer be able to produce food. Brexit: A vocal Remainer, John was active in the campaign to demand a second public referendum about Brexit. John later said that residents of Stroud's German twinning partner, Gottingen, were "distraught" at the outcome of the referendum. "They simply couldn't understand why we'd done it - and neither could I." Technology: John was well known within the local Party for his antipathy to modern technology, believing it was "ruining civilisation" and insisting during his time as a councillor on receiving agenda papers in paper form. He once replied to a request from the party press officer asking for him to email a photo by saying "I can't tell you how I hate computers; my wife says I am a Luddite!" He was opposed to the rollout of 5G technology, criticising the speed and lack of consultation. "In a democratic world, communities should have the freedom to opt out of such a big technological transformation, rather than having it imposed on them. Technology should benefit society, and there is no evidence whatsoever that 5G does benefit society, though it will certainly benefit telecommunications companies." Covid: John courted controversy through his opposition to the Covid vaccination programme and his participation in anti-lockdown demos. "In taking advantage of the pandemic to erode our freedoms, Governments don't have the interests of the people at heart," he said. "Governments and their cronies and big corporations are the ones benefiting. They have to be resisted." John's achievements He wasa founding member of the successful Stroud Campaign Against the Ringroad (aka SCAR 1974-1978), as a member of the SDC planning committee preventing many unsightly developments happening locally. He was pivotal in preventing one of Stroud's most iconic landmarks, a former cloth factory called Hill Paul, from demolition. The town's tallest building, it was due to be demolished in 2001. The wrecking balls were already on site to start work in the morning when John - who was Mayor at the time - phoned the owner at 1am, begging for a reprieve. The owner agreed to meet him at 10am, and by then there were protestors on the roof of the building, stopping the demolition from proceeding. Hill Paul was eventually saved by members of the public, including some of the protesters, buying shares to fund the building's conversion to a residential block. Another iconic building saved from demolition thanks to John was Woodchester Mansion, then an unfinished and crumbling Victorian mansion near Stroud. John won by just two votes a motion calling on the then Tory-run council to purchase the building so that it could be refurbished, transferred to a trust and opened to the public. Also high on his list of achievements was halting county council plans to route an A-road through the town centre. A march from Stroud to Gloucester to protest outside Shire Hall generated a lot of publicity and ultimately the road was diverted and now runs around the outskirts of the town centre. John was also involved with the successful campaign to keep Uplands post office open, and the high-profile Save our Trees demo to stop trees from being cut down to facilitate a road-widening scheme and make way for a new Tesco store. He helped to buy Lansdown Hall for the community and to rescue Stroud maternity hospital, which was facing closure for lack of government funding. Asked a couple of years ago if he was proud of his achievements, John said: "Pleased is a better word; I'm not the sort of person to bang a drum and say 'look what I've done!'; none of these successes were down to me alone." Indeed, he failed to stop the building of the brutalistic-style police station in Stroud. "It's a hideous eyesore; I don't know what the architect was thinking of," he said. "I do wish we could have stopped it." John always wanted to see Stroud continue to live up to its progressive past with new and different ideas in town planning and ways of living. So he was proud of Stroud's nickname of 'the People's Republic'. "I know the phrase was coined as a joke, but there's an element of truth in it," he said. His Green colleagues say it was his passion and determination that directly led to the influence the local party now has. There are now more than 400 paid-up members; Greens are part of the ruling alliance on SDC with 23 councillors; they have also been the majority on Stroud Town Council for many years. What people say about John "It was John who persuaded me to stand as a paper candidate, before I was eventually elected to SDC. He was such an influential and inspirational activist, not just to us here in Stroud District but across the whole Green movement. He will be much missed." - Cllr Catherine Braun, Leader of Stroud District Council "John had a way of persuading people to do things; he's the reason my husband and I joined the Green Party, and he recruited me to work for the Green Group (back when there were just six Green councillors). He was a great man and we will miss him." - Lynn Haanen, former coordinator, Stroud District Green Party "John was inspirational to so many of us in Stroud in the Greens, the peace movement and so many other causes. John was instrumental in getting me to join the Green Party and then to becoming a councillor and then parliamentary candidate. A friend, confidant and inspirational leader. We will miss him." - Martin Whiteside, former leader of the SDC Green group of councillors "John's first election leaflet for Stroud District Council in the 1980s inspired me. I read it, phoned him, and within half an hour he was on my doorstep talking me into joining the Green Party and standing for election to work alongside him." - Cllr Martin Baxendale, district councillor for Slade ward "John was an amazing man who inspired so many people into the Green Party and peace movement. A real maverick, they certainly don't make them like John anymore! He was so passionate about politics but also cared deeply for all people and the planet. Stroud will be a lot quieter without him but he has certainly left a great legacy and it is for all of us to continue his work. RIP Mr Stroud!" - Cllr Jonathan Edmunds, district councillor for Randwick, Whitehill and Ruscombe "John was really supportive when I first stood for election in 2010 and was always there for advice and guidance. Such verve and passionate commitment is rare." - Cllr Richard Dean, county councillor for Dursley "I was John Marjoram's lodger for a while and I liked the green way that he lived, such as cycling to work and cooking organic vegetables that he'd grown. I recall him gently rebuking me for wastefully keeping the tap running. We Greens owe John so much." - Barbara Imrie, Stroud District Green Party coordinating committee chair