My father, John Hipkin, who has died aged 90, was a teacher, councillor and former mayor of Cambridge. He brought intelligence, compassion and moral clarity to his four decades serving in local government, first as a Labour county councillor for Romsey ward in 1977; later, as a founding member of the SDP, he became a Lib Dem city councillor for Castle ward in 1992.
He then served as an independent until his retirement from local politics in 2021. He was chair of the planning committee for a period and was mayor in 2005-06. Choosing “peace” as the focus of his year, he was touched to be invited to the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan to mark the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombings of those cities.
