Stokey's Baroness
Profile
Stoke Newington is an unlikely place to have lent its name to a member of the House of
Lord. Its history is full of radicals, dissenters like Daniel Defoe, Irish
revolutionaries, religious nonconformists and latterly the Angry Brigade, Class War and
animal rights groups. They were not the sort of people who would have been found inside
the Palace of Westminster dressed in ermine robes.
But we do have a real Baroness and she has has strong local roots. Her full title is
Baroness Blackstone of Stoke Newington in the County of Greater London. She was once
called ‘a dark-eyed evil genius’ by a senior civil servant. Tessa Blackstone had
upset him. She and four other academic colleagues had just produced a report for the 1975
Wilson government. If it had been implemented, it would have given the Foreign Office a
much-needed shake-up. Needless to say, it was shelved. The Civil Service mandarins felt
they had nothing to learn from a former lecturer at the London School of Economics in the
free-form 1960s.
 Nowadays, Baroness
Blackstone, former governor of Grazebrook and Woodberry Down schools, is Minister of State
for Education and Employment and very much part of the New Labour establishment.
She became interested in politics at the age of 17. As part of a sixth-form project at
Ware Grammar School for Girls she was asked to act as a companion to an old woman in
Hertford who lived in ‘total and abject poverty’ and slept on a bale of straw.
Coming from an affluent background, this shocked her deeply. Not surprisingly, her
stint at the LSE in the 60s strengthened her convictions about social and racial
injustice. She became active in the Labour Party.
Her CV is as long as a basketball player’s arm and is packed with Honours Degrees,
scholarships professorships and public appointments She chaired the Ballet Board at the
Royal Opera House and featured briefly in the hilarious TV documentary about its
problems. In 1987 she was made a life peer. It was during the long night of Thatcherism
and Neil Kinnock persuaded her that she could do a good job for Labour in the Lords. She
had turned him down once before.
She and her husband Tom arrived in Stoke Newington in 1969 and bought a house in
Grazebrook Road for £7,500. Tom died in 1985 and Tessa Blackstone stayed on with their
two children until 1988 when she moved to Amwell Street, Islington where she now lives
with her partner James Strachan, Chief Executive at the Royal National Institute for the
Deaf. Her daughter Liesel, a BBC TV documentary maker, still lives in the same house in
Grazebrook Road. Meeting this formidable - sounding woman in her office in the glass and
chrome ministry building in Westminster was really quite an informal occasion. Everybody
seemed to be on first name terms. It’s also easy to understand why contemporaries at
the LSE say that her lectures were popular, particularly with male students. She also
remembers her early days around Church Street which was not the lively place it is today.
Although she was busy with work and kids, she played a lot of tennis in Clissold Park,
went to the Fox wine bar occasionally and ate at the Anglo-Asian restaurant.
She’s also a paid-up Guardian reader and visits Stoke Newington regularly. Yes, on
the 73 bus from Pentonville Road. So she knows that the many teachers who live in the area
probably cracked open the champagne when Chris Woodhead, the unpopular Chief Inspector of
Schools, resigned. As an education minister, how did she feel about that?
Whoops, wrong question, not appropriate; she says she deals with over-sixteen education
only. ‘I have nothing to add to what David Blunkett has said.’ Nothing at all?
‘No.’
Stoke Newington is an easy - going sort of area and she must know that many people here
use soft drugs. As a member of a government committed to tough choices where did she stand
on the question of the legalisation of cannabis? ‘It’s not my
responsibility.’
Well, if you were asked if you had ever had ever had a puff on a joint, what would you
say? ‘I’ll tell you what I’d say - I’m too old! When I went
university, nobody had ever heard of it. Sounds ridiculous now.’ Honestly? ‘Yes,
you don’t know how old I am. I went to university in the very early 60s.’ But
everybody was at it, weren’t they? ‘Nobody. It came in the late 60s, when I was
changing nappies, running a home, trying to finish my Ph.D. and teaching. I went home at 5
o’clock to look after tiny children.’ Enough said.
If you ever see Baroness Tessa around Stoke Newington, she may be carrying a tennis
racket, have a couple of grandchildren in tow or waiting for the g 73 bus. She won’t
be rolling a joint and don’t mention Chris Woodhead but she might listen to your
views on Hackney schools as she says that she is keen to ensure that they get maximum
government assistance.
Tessa Blackstone was talking to Tim Webb
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