JANET Dean represented the Burton constituency in Parliament for 13 years, from the Labour landslide victory of 1997 until she stepped down before the General Election of 2010 — when the seat was lost to the Conservatives
But what is she doing now? And how have the 19 months since she left the House of Commons shaped her view of the time she spent there? Chief reporter ADRIAN JENKINS found out.
JANET Dean is suffering from a cough and cold, a pre-Christmas gift she blames on one of her three grandsons.
But she has a drink of blackcurrant by her side and doesn’t let her ailments interrupt her description of life after the parliamentary hothouse.
“I’m enjoying the freedom that retirement brings,” says Mrs Dean, now weeks away from her 63rd birthday. “I’m able to choose what I do, which is the first time.
“I was elected for 29 years in total, mainly on the council (Staffordshire County) before Parliament. It’s nice to have the freedom of retirement.
“I’ve stayed involved in local organisations, including the company which we formed, limited by guarantee, at the brewing museum.
“I fought alongside the Burton Mail to have the museum because I think it’s important to safeguard the artefacts and archives for the future. I wanted to stay involved in that.
“I’ve also joined the Friends of Homestart of East Staffordshire, which raises money for Homestart itself. It is a very worthwhile charity and I wanted to do my best to help.” She demonstrates her commitment to the group by revealing that she collected money for it by pounding the streets of Shobnall with Santa and members of the Round Table.
Mrs Dean has also helped Homestart by packing bags in Sainsbury’s — but her community-mindedness does not stop there.
“I was a founder member of Uttoxeter Crime Prevention Panel when I was a councillor — it has now joined up with Uttoxeter Neighbourhood Watch and I’m still a member,” she says.
Mrs Dean explains she is also a volunteer at Uttoxeter Railway Station, where she has planted pansies and other bulbs in a bid to brighten it up come spring.
“I’m not just sitting around at home; I’m still doing things,” she says. “That’s besides being a grandma. It’s lovely to have more time with the grandchildren (Alex, 11, Harvey, nine, and Ben, four).
She enjoys watching two of them play football for Rocester FC’s junior teams in the Burton Junior Football League.
If all of this were not enough, she has also taken up a former hobby: sewing.
She has already put her skills to good use by making a Scrooge outfit for Harvey to wear in his school play.
“It was a great privilege to be MP for Burton for 13 years, and before that a councillor, but it’s now nice to have time for myself,” Mrs Dean says.
“I can please myself what I do. Day to day there’s a freedom in retirement which there’s not in your working life.”
It was Mrs Dean’s late husband, Alan, a former East Staffordshire borough councillor, who fired her interest in politics.
Tragically, he died in 1994 of a heart attack suffered after watching his beloved Crewe Alexandra play Rotherham.
Although the pain of his loss never leaves her, Mrs Dean, who has two daughters, Carol and Sandra, has grown accustomed to life without him.
Mrs Dean also takes pride in the knowledge that she has continued his work.
“I wanted a fair society, a more equal society, more help for ordinary folk,” she says. “I would never have dreamed of being a member of any other political party — and nor would Alan.” Mrs Dean represented the Uttoxeter Urban division on Staffordshire County Council from 1981 to 1997; the Uttoxeter Town ward on East Staffordshire Borough Council from 1991 to 1997; and served on Uttoxeter Town Council from 1995 to 1997.
She also represented the Burton and Uttoxeter constituency in Parliament from 1997 to 2010, a 13-year period of unbroken Labour rule under Tony Blair and, latterly, Gordon Brown.
Her highlight is clear.
“In general terms it was the achievements we made in Government,” she says.
“The fact we increased the spending on our schools tenfold after having seen for years a deterioration in the buildings that children were educated in, and also the pension credit introduced for pensioners.
“It was the general achievements we made in that time and seeing the benefits of that on local people.”
And the lowlight? “The hardest thing was around MPs’ expenses,” Mrs Dean says. “Although I was not personally criticised, it was the way that a lot of MPs appeared to have let the electorate down. It undermined democracy.”
She will never forget her arrival in Parliament.
“It was absolutely wonderful,” Mrs Dean says. “It was a tremendous election and one that would be difficult to be repeated.
“There was so much support for us — overwhelming support for the Labour Party. It was just tremendous.”
She believes Labour ‘did far more than we promised’ by, for example, introducing the winter fuel allowance, designed to relieve pensioners’ worries over their heating bills.
One of the hardest decisions the former MP faced was the 2003 vote on whether or not to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussain.
“I didn’t vote with the Government because there was a three-line whip, but because I went to a meeting where there was a woman from Iraq, a refugee, who said ‘don’t let us down again’,”
Mrs Dean says. “She felt they had been let down at the end of the previous Gulf War and people had suffered. That was a very hard decision.
“We did not know he (Saddam Hussain) had not got weapons of mass destruction.”
During her years in Parliament, Mrs Dean says she admired the ‘Beast of Bolsover’, MP Dennis Skinner, who ‘always raised a laugh or two, and still does’.
She also held her first leader in high esteem.
“Tony Blair was a brilliant orator and very good in the House,” Mrs Dean says.
And what about the MPs she had less time for? “There were a few who could speak for England — we won’t go there,” she quips.
Mrs Dean made up her mind to leave Parliament two years before the end finally came.
She was working 70 hours a week and had no wish to continue at that pace until she was 65.
“You reach a point where you’ve done your bit and it’s time for somebody else to come along,” she says.
“I’ve no regrets about that at all. I didn’t want to go on forever.”
That said, she remains an active member of the Labour Party and yearns to see it return to Government, a desire fuelled by her dislike of the Coalition’s policies.
“I’m saddened by the effect the cuts are having on people and families,” she says.
“I was pleased with the things we were able to do and the improvements we were able to make in those 13 years.
“It’s sad to see some of those, such as educational maintenance allowance, have been wiped away by this Government.”
I wonder if Mrs Dean is tempted to document her time in the corridors of power in the style of Tony Blair or Peter Mandelson.
“People would not want to read my diaries,” she says, chuckling. “It’s not something I’ve considered.”
So what does the future hold for her?
“I shall try not to take on too many more things,” she says.
“I would like time for myself.”
“I can’t see you getting much of that, especially with three grandsons to think of,” I say to myself, as I bid her farewell.
