Obituary: Ashok Kumar
Ashok Kumar’s unexpected death has brought a loyal, hard-working political career to a premature end.
The Middlesbrough South and Cleveland MP had already achieved more than many politicians do in their entire lives, having built a solid relationship with his constituents over 25 years in parliament.
He was always reluctant to acknowledge that, just because his seat was located in the heart of Teesside’s manufacturing base, Labour support could be taken for granted.
“I don’t want to say I have parachuted into this place,” he told politics.co.uk earlier this year, before astutely pointing out his 8,000 majority.
Yes, his majority fell by several points in 2005. But his share of the vote remained above 50% – not bad for an MP representing a party seeking its third term.
Kumar spent what turned out to be his final months campaigning hard for the fate of the Corus steelworks at Redcar, which was mothballed last month.
“I worked there for 14 years myself,” he said, recalling his time at the blast furnace. He developed much of the software which ran the operation and did research work on the steelworks. It left him with a “very deep attachment” to it. “It’s a subject that’s very close to my heart.”
The blast furnace’s fate is dominating local politics and Kumar campaigned determinedly to make sure he represented the views of those desperate to see it remain open.
Kumar’s connections with Tata proved vital in this regard. These behind-the-scenes negotiations helped provide a link with the government; meetings in Downing Street, too, could never receive the publicity they deserved. What mattered to Kumar was not column issues, but the issue at stake.
“This isn’t about trying to score points – it’s about trying to save the works,” he pressed.
A politician of his pedigree would never have said otherwise. Throughout his life Kumar enjoyed success, in a political career which steadily advanced from being elected as a councillor in 1987. After a brief by-election victory in 1991 in Langbaurgh, he returned to parliament in 1997. He even advanced to the most junior step on the ministerial ladder, assisting Hilary Benn as parliamentary private secretary from 2003. When Benn moved from Defra to DfID he wanted Kumar to come with him.
Middlesbrough is a world away from Hardwar, India, where Kumar was born on May 28th 1956. He was educated in a state school in Derby before going to university in Birmingham and completing a PhD. After a brief stint at Imperial College London he moved to British Steel, who sent him to Middlesbrough on a six-month contract. He fell in love with the area.
Interests outside politics included jazz, cricket and badminton. He was also a prominent “liberal humanist”, as he put it, praising Charles Darwin and never failing to oppose faith schools’ segregationist policies.
“I am of Hindu and Sikh descent, and I am very happy to be so, although I am a non-believer,” he told the Commons in 2006.
“I was raised in both of those beliefs and went to a state school. I had no problem with learning about all faiths.”
Campaigning to save the blast furnace which had first brought him to the area he would represent for 25 years in parliament might have relied more on faith than he would have liked. It didn’t dent his determination and energy right up until the unexpected end.
