General

On the evening Friday 15th January, the Politics Society welcomed the Rt Hon. Mark Todd, Labour MP for South Derbyshire to address the society, bringing ‘real-world’ politics to Repton.

A fantastic meal in the Mitre attended by fourteen students and staff with Mr Todd and his Parliamentary Secretary, Mr Tim Newson, was the perfect platform to welcome our speaker and probe him on a variety of issues on modern British Politics, such as the War in Afghanistan, local government, electoral systems and Gordon Brown’s leadership of the Labour Party as well as of course, learning about his route into Politics.

The group then moved to the Beldam Hall, where the ever-strengthening Politics Society met with fifty people to listen to Mr Todd’s talk. He spoke for twenty-five minutes and answered thirty minutes of questions, only to be ended by time constraints!

The society heard of his political background, the grandson of a Conservative MP and son of a Royal Navy Submarine Commander, Politics was always something he was used to, but fundamentally chose to join the Labour Party during his first year at University, disagreeing with the government’s treatment of miners at the time.

Following University he remained politically active, balancing working in publishing and being Deputy Leader of Cambridge City Council and then its leader at the young age of twenty-seven.  Mr Todd’s primary motive was to be able to sort out people’s problems and provide better jobs for them.  As a result he grew increasingly frustrated with the limitations of local government and took the advice to stand as an MP where he believed he could do more; but informed us this is not a reality all the time. Failing to take Edwina Currie’s seat in the 1992 General Election, Mr Todd persevered and in 1997 won his seat in Parliament for South Derbyshire.

Mr Todd described the role of an MP as service, and that sadly, this is not the full view on the terraces of Westminster. However, the role of the MP has changed significantly over the past seventy years. He compared his role to that of his grandfather, who spent most of his time in London on national issues, did not hold surgeries and had very little correspondence with constituents, whereas today this simply would not be acceptable, suggesting that MPs are being worked harder than ever before, with increasing pressures.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Mr Todd for taking the time to come and speak to the society during his busy programme and I do hope that he enjoyed his visit to Repton.

The visit of Mr Todd represented the start of an exciting avenue we are exploring and we hope to maximise some fantastic opportunities for the Politics Society before the end of this academic year, bringing further ‘real-world’ politics to the Repton School Community – watch this space!