Family bond tells a political tale

CATHIE Railton does a nice line in eye-rolling when her dad goes off on one. York's very Tory Lord Mayor Ian Gillies is warming to one of his favourite themes.

"I like to help people that will help themselves," he says.

"People that don't... I'm not saying we should throw them on the scrap-heap – "

Judging from his daughter's expression, it's a good job he's not saying that. "Some people are not in a position where they are able to help themselves," she says.

"If I grew up with a dad who never worked or who drank heavily, that's my role model. It is about engaging with them..."

The Lord Mayor tries another tack. The Conservatives' "right to buy" policy led to a whole generation of families who, for the first time, were able to buy their own homes, he says.

Cathie gives that eye-roll again. "Yes. But we don't now have enough council housing or social housing for people who cannot afford to buy."

And then there's Margaret Thatcher. The Lord Mayor is a big fan. "I always say that the Thatcher years gave me great opportunities," he says.

Cathie tries not to rise to the bait. "I don't have particularly strong views about Thatcher," she says. But then she can't help herself.

"She didn't do an awful lot for a lot of people. In terms of strong women with some responsibility, yes, that was quite a lot. But in terms of her politics... she's not someone I would have voted for."

It must have been fun growing up in the Gillies household. Ian is the "kid from Tang Hall School" who grew up to become first a policeman, then an insurance broker, then boss of a York taxi firm and ultimately an unabashed Thatcherite Conservative councillor.

Cathie is his youngest daughter who was once clearly something of a firebrand. "I was very left wing when I was younger," admits the 41-year-old married mother of two, who lives with her family in Acomb.

It made for some interesting clashes when Cathie was younger and growing up in York.

"Pat (Ian's wife and Cathie's mum) has been peacemaker on many occasions," the Lord Mayor says.

"But it wouldn't do if we were all the same."

Like their political views, the career paths of father and daughter could hardly have been more different. Where Ian became a policeman before going into business for himself, Cathie always wanted to work with vulnerable people.

She went to Queen Anne School and sixth-form college in York, then studied sociology and women's studies at Liverpool John Moores University. She wanted to work in social care, in one form or another.

Cathie Railton
Cathie Railton

"Originally, I wanted to work with women, for example those who'd suffered domestic violence," she says.

She went for a job with Women's Aid, but didn't get it. Then she considered becoming a social worker. "But that would have been another two years at uni."

Instead, she took a 'break', working briefly for McDonald's in Liverpool, before getting a job as an air hostess with Bahrain-based Gulf Air.

It was a job to make any Tory dad proud: even though this dad did worry about what his daughter was getting up to abroad.

With some justification, as it turned out. At one point, Cathie and a friend went aboard a British aircraft carrier moored in the Gulf to see some Royal Navy men they knew. They got drinking in the ship's bar, and Cathie had a bright idea.

"I jumped off the side of the aircraft carrier into the sea," she says.

Getting them out wasn't easy– it's a long way down the side of an aircraft carrier to the water. Her friend, who had followed her in, became hysterical. And the men they were visiting?

"They got into an awful lot of trouble. You don't do that sort of thing in the navy."

She's grown up a lot since then, she admits. She loved the travel and glamour of being an air hostess, but missed home, family and friends.

So she returned to the UK, and got a job with charity Mainliners, working in London with drug users in a homeless centre and then giving sexual health advice to 'working girls'. Some of the girls were very sorted, she says.

"They were businesswomen who paid their own taxes and had families. They were in charge."

It was the women who worked on the streets that were much more vulnerable. "They were drug users as a rule." Main-liners ran an advice and support service for them.

"They could come and speak to us, get condoms, get tested for blood-borne viruses. We did needle exchanges as well."

After five years in London, she made the move back north, working first as a service development manager with the local primary care trust's drugs action team, then joining Public Health England, where she now works as an epidemiologist developing public health policies for the country's prisons.

"The big programme at the moment is introducing blood-borne virus testing for all prisons across the country," she says.

There are three viruses that prisoners will be tested for: hepatitis B, HIV, and hepatitis C. It is Hep C – a disease which can cause severe liver disease – where she expects the biggest health benefits.

Hep B can be prevented by a vaccine: HIV has had a great deal of attention lavished on it over the last generation. Hep C has not – and it is widespread in prison populations, where there tend to be a lot of drug users.

The good news is that there is an effective treatment, which can, in many cases, lead to a cure.

Prisoners can be tested when they come in to prison, Cathie says. "And if they are positive, they will be referred on to specialist care. Hep C can be cured."

It all seems a world away from her father's life of business and local Conservative politics.

But the pair are obviously close: and they make a great double act.

"I do think that since dad became a councillor he has become more liberal in his views," says Cathie.

"He's opened his eyes a little bit, and he's more aware of social issues..."

"I think I have more knowledge about things," he agrees warily.

"I've been learning from being a councillor, and learning from the work Cathie does. I wouldn't say I agree with her, but I understand where people are coming from, without necessarily agreeing with them."

It's about as close a rapprochement between left and right as you're going to get. For a moment, father and daughter are united, talking about how proud they are of each-other's achievements.

Then the conversation shifts to Arc Light, where Cathie is a trustee. The Lord Mayor agrees about the importance of the work the homeless charity does, and talk shifts to a recent breakfast he had there.

He was chatting to one Arc Light resident about beggars. "Beggars give homeless people a bad name," he says. "Some beggars live in their own homes, and they travel to York to beg."

His daughter can barely restrain a snort. "They are few and far between. And anyway, who made a rule that you have to be homeless to be desperate enough to beg..."