THE new mayor of Torfaen, who once served a prison sentence for robbery, is determined inspire others in the borough that they can turn their lives around.

Neil Mason, ward councillor for St Cadocs and Penygarn was unanimously voted in as the authority’s new mayor at the council’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) last week.

He said that had left him “very proud” given he served a six-month prison sentence for robbery in 1989; was unable to read or write until 2003, and confesses to having a fiery temper which often found him in trouble.

In his candid interview today, Cllr Mason says he hopes those often troubled experiences will help him empathise with people in the borough during his year as mayor, and that his mistakes, and how he learned from them, can inspire people that “you can go from the bottom to the top.

“They say a leopard can’t change it’s spots, but it’s rubbish. People do, people change.

“I know what it’s like to struggling to get a pound.

“I want to show the girls and boys in our area what you can do if you put your heart into it. Don’t take no for an answer.

“I want to get over to them that things like dyslexia shouldn’t stop you.”

 

Cllr Mason, 52, was first elected to the St Cadocs and Penygarn ward in 2008.

His parents, Mary and Stuart, both 90, two of the proudest people in the Civic Centre at his mayor-making ceremony last week, grew up in what was dubbed the “tin town” in Pontypool, and street of houses with corrugated iron roofs near what is now Forge Lane before the family moved to Penygarn.

“I had dyslexia but of course they didn’t recognise that in my day, so they just kept kicking me out,” he said of his time at Trevethin Comprehensive School.

He went on to try to become an apprentice mechanic, but said his work experience consisted entirely of sweeping floors, and when he tried to go to Cross Keys College because he was illiterate he was turned away. It meant by the time he was approaching his twenties he had no money, no prospects and was becoming increasingly frustrated.

“I used to have a terrible temper. I don’t think I was nasty but I got in quite a few fights.

“I had to have about 400 stitches in my back once. I’d been in a scrap and they ended up pushing me into the window of Tesco’s in town. It was that glass with the wire in it,” he said.

“I was doing a bit of poaching, rabbiting, anything to get some money because I wasn’t working, so I did a few things I shouldn’t have done. I was one of the worst residents in Penygarn, I expect,” he laughs.

The spiral came to an abrupt conclusion.

“One night I had had a drink, I went through town and just went straight in through this shop door.

That’s why I went to prison.” He spent six months in Cardiff prison, including the whole of Christmas, with his wife left at home with a young baby.

“I was in a cell with Frankie Frazer, he used to be an enforcer for the Krays.

The guards roped me into playing rugby for them. I played for a few sides as a scrum-half. Abertillery, Garndiffaith, Usk. I was at Pontypool when Dai Bishop ousted me. He was a bit better than me,” he laughed.

Cllr Mason says a conversation stuck with him there.

“A prison guard said to me, ‘you went 20 years without getting in any trouble like this, surely you can manage to not get in anymore trouble again,’ and I haven’t. I’ve never gone back,” he said.

Woodlands Field was the catalyst

AFTER leaving prison, Cllr Mason worked doing odd jobs and said the help of people like Communities First helped him greatly.

But the real catalyst for change came at a Penygarn residents association meeting in 2002. Independent councillor Mike Davies was there to discuss issues in the ward and he saw Cllr Mason’s passion and wanted to use it to help turn round the Woodlands Fields area.

Cllr Mason started cutting the grass, but now heads up the group and in his time as a councillor has helped secure more than £6 million pounds in grant funding for projects in his ward. “Mike was my champion.

He got me on adult learner courses and things like that.

“Computers frightened me to death. I didn’t know what to do.

My wife has helped me a lot with those things too.”

In 2007 he was awarded a NIACE (National Institute of Adult Continuing Education) award for adult learning and a year later, a Queens Medal for voluntary services to his community.

“They say a leopard can’t change its spots, but it’s rubbish.

People do, people change.”

Cllr Mason stresses that education is key, and wants to use his time at mayor to promote that but also to give people belief they can change their lives around. “I want to show the girls and boys in our area what you can do if you put your heart into it.

“Don’t take no for an answer. I want to get it over to them that things like dyslexia shouldn’t stop you.”

Cllrs were unanimous in their choice of Cllr Mason as mayor and he says it is a huge honour.

He said: “I have come from the bottom to the top and have put my heart into my community. I will never forget my community.”

● Cllr Mason’s charities for his year in office are children’s charity Latch, Crownbridge special school and Plas-y-Garn care home