Sandy Walkington

http://www.libdems.org.uk/sandy_walkington

Sandy Walkington
St Albans

Sandy Walkington has lived in or around St Albans for more than thirty years. He has stood three times for parliament in the constituency and has also served two terms on the council.

His political views were formed during six months loading lorries in Cold War Berlin and experiencing both sides of the Berlin Wall. He studied economics and law at Cambridge, was called to the Bar, and worked as a letterpress printer (and crane operator, fettler, swarf clearer, and nightwatchman).

In 1978, he went to work for Emlyn Hooson MP in the House of Commons and then became Head of Research and speechwriter for the Parliamentary Liberal Party. Moving into industry, he joined the Texaco oil company, where he ran the press office, negotiated joint ventures in the North Sea, looked after the Texaco Trophy one-day cricket internationals, and spent two years in New York managing international public relations.

He returned to the UK in 1992 to become Director of Public Affairs for BT during 13 years of the dot.com boom (and burst) and the whole debate about broadband Britain, also leading the largest corporate social responsibility programme in Britain. His final full-time job gave him public sector experience as Director of Public Affairs for Transport for London.

He first ran for Parliament as the Liberal/SDP Alliance candidate for St Albans in 1983 (polling more votes than Mrs Thatcher!), and he was again the candidate in 1987. In 2005 he ran general election communications for the Liberal Democrats as part of the national campaign team.

In 2006 he took the plunge back into frontline politics as the Liberal Democrat candidate for St Albans. In the 2010 General Election, he leap-frogged over Labour to come closer to winning St Albans than any Liberal Democrat or Liberal candidate in the last 100 years.