Former Mayor dies at 88

Reporter: Janice Barker
Date online: 06 January 2010

Former Mayor of Oldham Alwyn Bywater McConnell has died aged 88.

Mr McConnell, who died in Avonleigh Gardens care home, Watersheddings, on New Year’s Day, was a long-serving Labour councillor on both the Oldham County Borough Council, and the Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council from 1974.

Apart from a defeat in 1961, he was a councillor from 1958 until 1975, mainly in Bardsley Ward, then returned in Alexandra Ward in 1982 for another eight years.

He was Mayor of Oldham in 1985, when he appointed the council’s first female chaplain to lead prayers before council meetings.

Mr McConnell also worked at the Oldham Evening Chronicle for 39 years, starting as a compositor and linotype operator, and finally becoming a proof reader.

He was also the leader of the National Graphical Association union branch at the newspaper.

During the Second World War he served with the RAF as a wireless operator in India and Burma.

He leaves a daughter Kathleen, who was a Kaskenmoor school teacher before travelling the world with her husband, Roland, a Merchant Navy engineer.