RIP Jack Hazelgrove: Brighton through and through

Jack Hazelgrove, who has died at the age of 89, was Brighton through and through.

A man of the highest integrity, his 22 years of service as a Labour councillor ended abruptly and without grace in 2007 when the party expelled him for opposing its plans to transfer the city’s council homes to a housing association.

The plans failed. So did the expulsion. Jack had resigned already and joined the Green Party.

Jack’s particular interest in housing was fuelled by the basic conditions he endured during childhood. Raised in the North Laine, he lived his early years over his father’s pub, the Sportsman’s Call, in King Street.

The pub and most of the street disappeared under the bulldozer more than 50 years ago to make way for a car park.

Long before that, the family moved the short distance to the basement of 36 Sydney Street, three doors away from his mother’s parents.

Life was very different in the North Laine in the 1940s and 1950s from today’s raffish inner-city quarter, Jack told the Brighton and Hove Green Party magazine.

Life was very different in the North Laine in the 1940s and 1950s from today’s raffish inner city quarter.

Jack said: “Sydney Street had two doctor’s surgeries, two fishmongers, five butcher’s shops, two bakeries and two greengrocers.

“It was the time of austerity Britain and we all had ration books. Our family was registered with Mrs Warmington, one of the two grocers in Sydney Street, and that’s where we did our shopping.

“Our housing conditions were pretty basic. Like other people living in the street, we had an outside toilet, and my grandparents’ flat was gas-lit. I can still hear the hissing of the mantle.”

Jack’s father worked in the family business supplying fresh fish to the seafront hotels and restaurants.

His grandfather was coxswain of the Brighton lifeboat. His grandmother and other local women took over the lifeboat during the First World War when the men were away.

Jack’s education began in Middle Street at Brighton’s oldest school primary school. His huge appetite for learning was supplemented by many hours spent in the city library and museum just around the corner from his home.

An extremely bright boy, he passed the 11-plus and went to Brighton and Hove Grammar School, now BHASVIC.

A spot on his lung, probably caused by the damp conditions in the Sydney Street basement, prevented him from playing sport. His brother, meanwhile, captained Brighton Boys football team.

Jack channelled his sporting enthusiasm into supporting the Albion, watching from the open terraces at the Goldstone Ground in all weathers.

A member of the Albion Supporters Cub, he was a season ticket holder until health limited his activities. He greatly enjoyed the club’s move to the Amex Stadium and its promotion to the Premier League.

Two years of National Service followed school. Then came a scholarship to Oxford University, a great achievement for a working class Brighton boy, where he read history and counted Peter Jay and Dennis Potter among his contemporaries.

As treasurer of the university Labour Club, he enrolled Margaret Callaghan, later Baroness Jay, into the party that was his political home for more than 50 years.

After university, a professional lifetime in teaching started, at a Hackney comprehensive school, and continued in Kent and Brighton.

In Maidstone, Jack was district secretary of the National Association of Teachers in Further Education and a member of the district council from 1984 to 1992.

Shortly after his return to Brighton, he was elected to East Sussex County Council in 1993 and chaired the special education sub-committee.

He moved on to the newly formed Brighton and Hove Council in 1997 where he was an outstanding chair of housing for several years. Later he stood twice, unsuccessfully, for the Green Party in local elections.

For good measure, Jack was a magistrate and chaired the local branch of the United Nations Association and the local branch of Bus Users UK (he never owned a car).

For good measure, Jack was a magistrate and chaired the local branch of Bus Users UK (he never owned a car). As a member of the Older People’s Council, he focused on transport and the environment.

Chair of the local branch of the United Nations Association, he took a lifelong interest in human rights and refugee welfare and gave shelter in his home to a succession of refugees under the watchful eye of the security services.

Jack had many opponents, but few enemies, in the council chamber. Self-deprecating, he was guilty of immense good manners, honesty and wisdom in all situations. He will be remembered for giving outstanding service to the city he loved and its people.

Jack Hazelgrove, born Brighton 1936, died Brighton 2025.

Bill Randall was the first Green leader of Brighton and Hove City Council and the first Green mayor of Brighton and Hove.