Your archetypic Residents' Association councillor

At the Residents' Association AGM on 31 March 2008 Ruth Lyon was adopted by members as your Residents' candidate for re-election to Elmbridge Borough Council. You may download her manifesto here. For most of you, Ruth will need no introduction. She is very likely to have twisted your arm to do something for Thames Ditton. You very likely agreed! Formerly you could meet her early each morning swimming in the Thames. Latterly you may do likewise in the warmer waters of Colets swimming pool. If you are relatively new to the village, or get up later, here she is:

Ruth leads by example. A long-time resident of Thames Ditton and mother of four children now grown up, she became involved with the Thames Ditton and Weston Green Residents' Association in the late 1960s when local politicians were backing a developer's scheme to demolish the West side of the High Street and replace it with a boxy, sixties-style redbrick 'shopping centre'. Not for the first time, and assuredly not for the last, the residents of Thames Ditton arose and unanimously defeated this scheme that would have destroyed the character of the village. Not long after, the Association decided it must field more candidates of its own to insure against this kind of threat being foisted on us. Ruth, by then Hon Sec of the Association, was elected Councillor in 1973 (the following decade she was made Mayor) and has represented the village ever since, to its great benefit.

Now Ruth's CV is as long as your arm and she has sat on more committees than there are chairs in the Vera Fletcher Hall. Without listing all that, let's highlight some of the many ways she has put this to good use for the community.

Ruth has played a great part in finding constructive outcomes for many large issues in Elmbridge as well as countless smaller issues within our village. She was among those who steered towards an acceptable mix of development and conservation for Ferry Works and AC cars (now Harvest Lane). She was a driving force for fund-raising (of over half a million pounds at 1980s prices) for the restoration of the Vera Fletcher Hall, now widely regarded as excellent: but the local Conservative was told by whip to vote against any Elmbridge grant for it at the time. She's a joint founder of the charity that ensures the Hall's survival, and remains the impresario behind its fantastic range of high-quality productions.

Ruth was again a tower of strength when with unanimous support the Residents' Association led the village to victory over Tesco's attempts in the 1990s to build a monster supermarket and filling station on Giggs Hill Green: a victory all the more remarkable for the size and power of our adversary and the fact that the proposed site, having been occupied by the Milk Marketing Board, was already a permitted site for commercial activities. Not only do we now have some nice houses there: but Ruth and her Residents' Association colleagues were able to get a cut-price chunk of land sold to the Council for a recreation area and the impressive new hospital wing and surgery that were built on Raphael Drive. And fittingly, it fell to Ruth to research and propose Thames Ditton names that were adopted for the new roads in that development.

Hospitals, health, the elderly and the younger community have also benefited from Ruth's substantial involvement. A leader in the fight to perpetuate some form of Thames Ditton Hospital, and lately to preserve it against arbitrary cuts by the County Primary Care Trust, Ruth has been a mainstay of fund-raising for its Friends who have been able to equip the village with ultrasound, ENT and shortly, ECG equipment for the use of NHS patients. Meanwhile, with her seat on the Borough Council Ruth was able to help secure the Ember Centre at the Vera Fletcher Hall - an invaluable facility for the retired, particularly those living alone. For the sporting and the young, she was yet again a significant player in securing, as part of negotiations with the developers, the survival of the Dittons Skiff and Punting Club when Conservative councillors proposed to sell the entire Albany Works site to developers, and of Ajax Sea Scouts when RA councillors negotiated the re-siting and rebuilding of its headquarters when their old site was sold for development. In the past few years she's been one of our Residents' councillors who led the successful campaign to save the Youth and Community Centre (now Thames Ditton Hall) and car park at Giggs Hill Green from Conservative-controlled Surrey County Council's plans to sell the site to developers, heedless of village wishes. There was no help from the local Elmbridge Conservatives or Liberal Democrats.

Ruth has always been a passionate defender of the green belt as well as of common sense. A founder member of Thames Landscape Strategy, which safeguards our stretch of the River down to Kew and whose patron is David Attenborough, Ruth has Chaired that organisation for the past year. Had she been born twenty years later, to a generation when women were fully expected to have their own careers, Ruth would undoubtedly have won her way to the top of some major concern before now being elected Head of Unesco or Unicef or suchlike prestigious international body, and probably managing the Welsh Rugby Football Union as a sideline. Their loss is our gain. We are fortunate to have her extraordinary energy, ability and experience devoted to our community.