Dawe carving out a new era in the hotseat
SQUIRMING in pain, 22-year-old Jenny Dawe tried to concentrate as an elderly African midwife confirmed her fears that she needed an emergency Caesarian section.
In the ramshackle hospital in southern Tanzania, the expectant mum could hear the rain battering against the corrugated iron roof. As she was wheeled through the downpour towards the operating theatre, suddenly the sheet was forced over her head and all became terrifyingly dark.
Mustering up all her strength, an aching Jenny yanked the sheet down and boomed in her most forceful Swahili: “I’m not dead yet, you know.”
Now 62, Edinburgh’s new council leader can smile as she recalls her first experience of childbirth 40 years ago in deepest Africa - though she didn’t find it so funny at the time. She says: “It wasn’t appropriate to put me in a shroud at that point. It was fairly primitive.”
Courage and dogged determination in the face of adversity are qualities that Jenny Dawe evidently has in abundance. She often had to draw on them during her 14 years in Tanzania and Malawi, where she lived off the land with her agronomist ex-husband, making her own bacon and cheese and killing ducks and chickens for her children to pluck for dinner.
These days, the white-haired resident of Edinburgh’s upmarket Grange area is something of a Supergran. Becoming the first woman leader of Edinburgh City Council and taking on its accompanying huge workload when you could be collecting your old age pension is not for the faint-hearted. But Jenny is rigorous in her execution of the job, reading thick files at the desk in her living room late into the night.
“I burn the candle at both ends,” she admits. “I often go to bed when the birds are tweetering. There’s an enormous amount of paperwork. It will calm down but I want to make sure I know every aspect of what the council does.”
Her family, including her four sons, five grandchildren and her partner Mike Falchikov, 70, a retired academic, are justifiably proud. One son, Gavin, 38, came for a visit recently from Singapore with his wife and three children. The eldest, five-year-old Hamish, was keen to discover the limits of his grandmother’s power, having been told by his parents that she ran the city and if he spotted any holes in the road he should complain to her.
Jenny giggles: “We went to the Castle and he saw all the scaffolding and said to me: ‘Is this your fault?’” So determined was he to identify exactly what his grandmother was responsible for that when he didn’t like a restaurant meal, he again looked towards her with a frown, inquiring: “Is this your fault?”
Jenny’s living room holds many clues to her African past, with teak sculptures, a colourful bowl and a hunter’s bow displayed around the walls. Also evident is her passion for reading, with floor-to-ceiling bookcases stacked - in alphabetical order - with heavy tomes including Burns, Joyce and Kipling. Other books such as: “Who’s Who in the Liberal Democrats?”, fourth and fifth editions and “David Steel’s Story” hint at her political leanings.
On arriving back in Edinburgh in the early 1980s, with a failed marriage behind her and three children in tow, Jenny resumed the political interests she had pursued as an idealistic youth. Brought up in Barnton with one younger sister, the teenage Jenny sent off for information from all the main parties before deciding that the Liberals best represented her values. She joined, aged 16, and became an election agent. She continued her involvement when she went to study English at Aberdeen University, where she met her ex-husband, a Briton who was raised in Africa and whom she married there.
Political interests had to be put on hold while she was in Africa but, on her return, Jenny rejoined the Liberals while she finished her degree at Edinburgh University, going on to study a Master’s degree and a PhD in the history of Cotton Growing in East and Central Africa. It was while she was a student for the second time that she met Mike, who shares her passion for politics.
In her limited spare time, she enjoys tending to her garden. “It’s therapeutic,” she says, expertly snipping a dead leaf off a bay tree. “Often on a Friday I come out and cut the grass. I like to get my hands dirty and feel the soil.”
They sound like the words of a deft politician, using a metaphor to show how in touch she is with the grass roots. Yet Jenny shows a refreshing openness about her personal life. While two of her sons are high ranking doctors and one she describes as “an eco-warrior” in France, the other is battling depression and alcohol abuse. At the beginning of the election campaign Kenneth, 34, was in the Royal Edinburgh Hospital and she visited him every day.
She says: “I felt guilty at some stages that I couldn’t devote as much time as I wanted to.”
On a brighter note, her experience has led her to have “huge admiration” for health workers and she believes it has given her greater empathy with parents of troubled offspring. “It’s something in people’s make-up and not necessarily the fault of the parents,” she adds firmly.
Jenny’s late 19th-century house, with its high ceilings and history as a nursing home, is as characterful as you would expect for someone who has lived such a rich life. On the wall above her desk is a painting of penguins, done for her by MP John Barrett’s wife. It was given to her as a thank you present, as was a painting of Newhaven harbour, featuring the lighthouse she used to walk around as a child. She got it from the Lib Dem group to thank her for being leader. “It’s nice being thanked because it is often a very thankless task,” she admits.
Until her election as council leader, Jenny ran the welfare rights team at East Lothian Council. It was a small, busy team, which dealt mainly with social security benefits. It was a full-time job, but Jenny says she made use of the public service duty allowance, flexi-time and annual leave to get on with her demanding work as an Edinburgh councillor.
She didn’t tell her colleagues she was leaving until the last moment. “I’ve seen some leaving dos and, well, no thanks. It was a quiet farewell but a felt one.” It is a typical response from a woman whose appetite for work is accompanied by a dislike of fuss.
Her experience of the hardships of life in Africa, where she ran a local library, taught English and educated her children at home, guided by the World Education Service and the Scottish curriculum, show that Jenny Dawe is not shy about taking on a challenge.
Reforms she wants to bring in include more authentic consultations - she believes they have a “farcical” history in the city - over planning applications and other council matters. She says: “I feel it’s important that people know why decisions are being made. It’s not my style to say this is what we are doing full stop - though that might be in my head. I like to have people on board.”
But in case anyone thinks she is a soft touch, a few words of warning. “A gentle style of leadership doesn’t mean I’ve not got aims.”
