There are some people whose political lives cannot really be separated from the communities they serve. For Mary Temperton, that community has been Great Hollands and, more widely, Bracknell.

Mary joined the Labour Party at 16 and spent her working life as a science teacher. But long before she became one of Bracknell’s best-known councillors, the pattern of her public life was already taking shape: schools, children and young people, practical community provision, and a belief that public bodies should be made to work for the people who depend on them.

By January 1975, Mary was a manager at Harmans Water Infant School, where around 200 parents were campaigning over a dangerously waterlogged playground. Mary spoke publicly about a problem which had been raised for years without action: children were falling in the mud and part of the playground could not properly be used. Following the campaign, Berkshire County Council set aside £2,000 for remedial work.

It was an early example of something that would become a constant throughout Mary’s political life: take what might sound like a small local problem and ask what it actually means for the person affected.

Great Hollands and the Town Council

By 1978 Mary was already immersed in community life. Alongside teaching science, she was involved in school governance, chaired Harmans Water Primary School managers and served with the East Lodge Play Centre.

When she stood for Bracknell Town Council that April, she set out a view of local government she would return to repeatedly over the decades. A town council, she argued, should not be content with the narrow limits of its own powers: it should “put more pressure on higher authorities on behalf of its residents.”

On 27 April 1978, Mary was elected to Bracknell Town Council in the Great Hollands by-election with a majority of 250.

She immediately became involved in the practical issues affecting the rapidly growing New Town. She joined Great Hollands residents campaigning to protect Bluebell Wood from development; argued for road safety and better play provision; defended public access to South Hill Park; and became involved in disputes over everything from grass cutting to school safety.

Within little more than a year of first being elected, Mary had been chosen as Vice-Chairman of Bracknell Town Council. She was re-elected to that role in 1980, when she was also Vice-Chairman of the Road Safety Committee and represented the Town Council on the South Hill Park Trust.

Those early years also demonstrated Mary’s belief in municipal government as something capable of making a direct difference to people’s lives.

In January 1980, when Berkshire County Council proposed withdrawing free school milk from nursery and infant children, Mary personally moved that Bracknell Town Council should step in, proposing provision of up to £18,000. By October 1981, she could report that the Town Council had indeed taken over the provision of free milk following the County Council’s withdrawal.

The Council also introduced free black-and-white television licences for elderly and disabled residents. Recreation grounds were improved, a public bowling green was provided, and substantial support was given to South Hill Park and its free summer entertainment.

These were not glamorous national political causes. They were the municipal politics of everyday life: milk for young children, support for pensioners, parks, recreation and culture.

Leading Bracknell Town Council

By 1981 Mary had become Chairman of Bracknell Town Council, beginning the first of her periods at the head of the authority.

Her politics were unapologetically local. When larger organisations took decisions affecting Bracknell, Mary believed the Town Council’s job was to speak up.

That applied to proposed bus cuts, social-care charges, development, policing and public services. When Berkshire introduced charges for home help, Mary pointed not to an abstract budget line but to elderly people she personally knew who were struggling to pay their bills. When developers promised hundreds of jobs, she asked whether unemployed people in Bracknell would actually possess the skills needed to obtain them.

And when young unemployed people were struggling in the recession of the early 1980s, Mary argued for somewhere they could receive support while retaining their dignity: somewhere they could “keep their pride, feel they are part of society… and not feel they are just on their own.”

Children and young people became one of the most persistent themes of her public life.

As early as 1978 she was arguing for more facilities for older children. By 1983 she was pressing the case for somewhere teenagers could meet informally without needing to belong to an organised club. Her answer to difficulties involving young people was rarely simply greater control or enforcement; it was to provide opportunities, places to go and reasons to feel part of the community.

Mary’s first period on Bracknell Town Council ended in 1983. But her community work did not.

A Canadian interlude

After leaving Bracknell Town Council in 1983, Mary’s life took an unexpected international turn when Clive’s work in numerical weather prediction took the family to Quebec. Clive joined the Canadian Atmospheric Environment Service’s forecasting research operation at Dorval, outside Montreal, while Mary once again threw herself into education and community life.

Their children were educated in French under Quebec’s language laws. Mary became involved in their schools and, in May 1988, appeared before the Education Commission of Quebec’s National Assembly during its consideration of major education reforms. Speaking as an English-speaking parent of children in French-language schools, she argued that the goal should be genuine bilingualism: children able to speak and write excellent French without losing the ability to do the same in English. She also stressed something familiar from her work in Bracknell — that parents should be actively involved in the life of their schools.

Teacher, community activist – and back to the council

Away from elected office, Mary continued teaching and working with young people. At Easthampstead Park School she eventually became Head of Science, combining her professional career with a remarkable range of extracurricular and community activity.

Politics drew her back.

After unsuccessfully contesting a Town Council by-election in 1992, Mary returned to Bracknell Town Council in 1993, winning the Great Hollands North by-election.

Within two years she was again Leader of Bracknell Town Council.

The issues were recognisable. When cuts to local police numbers were proposed in 1995, Mary personally tabled a Town Council motion expressing concern; it won unanimous support. When controversial changes were proposed at Heatherwood Hospital, she challenged whether the body supposedly representing patients was genuinely reflecting local opinion.

But perhaps the clearest expression of Mary’s approach came in 1996.

Announcing funding for youth work, she explained the principle simply:

“This is following our policy of working with young people instead of against them.”

At Jocks Lane that philosophy was put into practice. Young people told the council they wanted better facilities. A five-a-side football pitch was provided and the basketball court resurfaced. Youth work was funded, and Mary wanted the young people themselves involved in improving the area so that they would feel it belonged to them.

It was not merely provision for young people. It was an attempt to work with them.

Green spaces, recreation and community

Mary’s second period of Town Council leadership also saw her repeatedly defend Bracknell’s green spaces.

In 1997 she personally proposed a Town Council motion opposing major development at Peacock Farm, arguing that the land was a “green lung” for Great Hollands and pointing to its wildlife and woodland. Later she warned about the traffic implications of large-scale development and the gradual erosion of the green gap between communities.

The following year, writing as Town Council Leader about proposals affecting Mill Park, Mary was candid about the limits of the authority’s formal powers. The Town Council did not own the building and was not the planning authority. But that did not mean it should remain silent. She raised pedestrian safety, traffic, litter and protection of the park’s green space.

Again, it was the philosophy she had expressed before she was first elected in 1978: where the Town Council could not itself make the decision, it could still make sure local people’s interests were heard.

Mary was unanimously re-elected as Town Council Leader in 1999, the newspaper describing it as her fourth consecutive year in the role. That year she also represented the council at the public inquiry into Bracknell town-centre redevelopment, supporting regeneration while pressing planners to think seriously about traffic, parking and the loss of green space.

“Working with young people”

At the turn of the millennium Mary’s work with young people became still more direct.

In 2000 she was already being described locally as a youth worker on the Great Hollands estate. Great Hollands Community Centre had been trying to establish a youth club but faced difficulties recruiting someone with suitable youth-work experience. Mary was the public contact during that recruitment.

Later reporting credited Mary with establishing the Great Hollands Youth Club in September 2000. Within two years it was attracting more than 100 children every week.

The club continued. A 2004 notice listed separate sessions for different age groups, activities ranging from sport and games to craft, discos and theatre trips, with Mary still the named contact. In 2007 she was still described as helping to run it.

That work formed part of something for which Mary received recognition far beyond Bracknell.

In 2002, she won the South East Teaching Award for School and Community Involvement. Her work included the youth club, after-school and holiday provision and a science club for younger pupils. The award was particularly fitting: teaching and community had never been separate compartments in Mary’s life.

A life beyond the council chamber

By 2007 Mary had retired from a career which had taken her to Head of Science at Easthampstead Park School, but retirement did not mean withdrawal.

She remained a Bracknell Town Councillor and was then Leader of its Labour group. She chaired the group running the Great Hollands Community Centre, helped with the youth club and chaired the governors of Great Hollands Primary School.

The modern description of Mary as someone who helps run the community centre, communicates with Great Hollands residents and holds regular surgeries is therefore not a new chapter disconnected from her earlier politics. It is a continuation of a way of working established decades earlier.

In 2007 she also contested a seat on Bracknell Forest Council, unsuccessfully. Four years later she tried again.

2011 – a new chapter

On 5 May 2011, Mary Temperton was elected to Bracknell Forest Council for Great Hollands North.

She topped the poll with 734 votes, winning one of the ward’s two seats.

For many politicians, election to the borough council after more than three decades of community activity might have represented the culmination of a career.

For Mary, it was the beginning of another one.

By 2011 she had already been a teacher, youth worker, school governor, community activist, Town Councillor, Council Vice-Chairman, Council Chairman and Leader. She had helped preserve services for children and older people, fought for parks and green spaces, pressed larger authorities on behalf of residents and spent years arguing that young people should be worked with, not acted upon.

Above all, the political philosophy she had articulated as a new candidate in 1978 remained recognisable more than thirty years later: local government mattered because it could improve ordinary lives — and, when the power lay elsewhere, it could still make sure that Great Hollands and Bracknell had a voice.

Part Two begins in 2011, when Mary Temperton entered Bracknell Forest Council — and eventually found herself leading it.