Carried on the shoulders of the local fire brigade, draped in the Union flag and with Vera Lynn ringing out over the white caps of the local Sea Scouts, Sir David Amess could hardly have received a more traditional, patriotic farewell yesterday.
Nor a more heartfelt one.
From one end of Southend-on-Sea to the other, the murdered MP was applauded on his way by constituents of every political persuasion and none, united in their recognition of a man widely regarded as the exemplar of what a local Member of Parliament should be.
Pallbearers carried Sir David Amess' coffin from St Mary's Church in Southend yesterday following his funeral on a beautiful autumn afternoon
‘I’m just so glad that the last time I saw him I told him what a wonderful constituency MP he was,’ said Frances Neil, whom I met in the crowd during the two-mile procession.
‘And David replied: “You know me, Frances. I’ll help anyone”. And he did.’
Frances, it transpired, was a stalwart of the local Labour Party. That did not matter a row of beans yesterday.
I met everyone from local Tory luminaries to diehard socialists who had turned out on a bracing winter afternoon to pay their respects.
Sir David's family at his funeral. From one end of Southend-on-Sea to the other, the murdered MP was applauded on his way by constituents of every political persuasion
After all, Sir David is the man they all have to thank for the fact that they no longer live in a town but in a city.
One of his many long-running campaigns had been to secure city status for his sprawling conurbation on the south Essex coast.
It was a measure of both the dedication of the man and of the shock which followed his killing in the midst of a constituency surgery six weeks ago that the Prime Minister unhesitatingly granted his wish as a posthumous tribute.
Carried on the shoulders of the local fire brigade, draped in the Union flag and with Vera Lynn ringing out over the white caps of the local Sea Scouts, Sir David could hardly have received a more traditional, patriotic farewell yesterday
Today, the political establishment will honour Sir David at a requiem mass at Westminster Cathedral.
Yesterday was the turn of the people of Essex who had sent him to Westminster on nine consecutive occasions (as MP for Southend West and, previously, for neighbouring Basildon).
His widow, Julia, and their five children had chosen the Anglican Church of St Mary the Virgin, Prittlewell.
Though Sir David was a devout Roman Catholic, this handsome old Saxon church is by far the largest in Southend (indeed, it may now be upgraded to a cathedral thanks to Southend’s new-found city status).
Members of the local Sea Scouts lined a path through the churchyard along which Sir David's coffin was carried
St Mary’s was packed with 450 family, friends and representatives of the various organisations championed by Sir David.
The list was a long one, as his old friend and neighbouring Tory MP, Mark Francois, pointed out in his eulogy.
Quoting Tennyson’s Ulysses –‘Strong in will to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield’ – Mr Francois went on: ‘The David Amess that I knew, never yielded on an important point of principle, to anyone. And so, neither shall we. Despite this awful tragedy, we are going to “Keep Calm and Carry On”.’
Born on the edges of London’s East End just over six years after the end of the Second World War, Sir David was of a generation raised on an old-fashioned love of country, on tales of the Blitz, on the importance of looking after one’s neighbours. The day
