1978 (520)
(DEPARTMENTAL SUPERVISOR)
Born at Leicester in 1916. On leaving school at the age of 14 Councillor Watson entered the shoe industry in Leicester.
He married Winifred May Cooke in 1937 at St. Augustines Church, Leicester. They have one daughter and two grandchildren.
He remained in the shoe industry for some thirty years, except for six years service during the 1939/45 war, when he served with the Royal Artillery from 1940 to 1946.
After demobilisation he returned to the Shoe Industry but, in 1962 was appointed Shoe Department Manager.
In May 1961 Councillor Watson was elected to the City
Council and, with the re-organisation of Local Government in 1973, he was elected to serve on the new Leicester District Council and also on the new Leicestershire County Council.
He was appointed High Bailiff of the City of Leicester in the year 1974/75 and his main interests on the Council have been the Works Committee, of which he is Chairman. He is also ViceChairman of the Highways Sub-Committee of the Leicestershire County Council. Councillor Watson is a Governor of Soar Valley School, Leicester, and Chairman of the Managers of Herrick Infant and Junior Schools, and Sandfield Infant and Junior School, Leicester.
The most outstanding achievement of his year of office was the Leicester Royal X-ray Scanner Appeal, a public appeal which he inaugurated and for which he worked tirelessly and with great enthusiasm for the provision of the most up-to-date whole-body X-ray scanner equipment for the Leicester Royal Infirmary. He succeeded in raising a sum in excess of £1,000,000 believed to be the largest public appeal in the history of the City.
Three important Diocesan events took place during his year of office. The Right Reverend Ronald R. Williams, Lord Bishop of Leicester for 25 years, retired and his successor, The Right Reverend C. Richard Rutt, was enthroned as the fourth Bishop of Leicester since the restoration of the diocese in 1926. The Reverend A. C. Warren, then honorary canon of Coventry Cathedral, was installed as the sixth Provost of Leicester in succession to the Very Reverend John Hughes.
Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Gloucester visited Leicester on the 26th October 1978 and Her Royal Highness The Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowden, visited Leicester and attended a Royal Variety Concert in aid of the Lord Mayor's scanner appeal on 8th February, 1979.
Councillor Watson maintained the City's links with the
Royal Anglian Regiment, visiting the 2nd Battalion of the Regiment in Berlin in February of 1979. He also visited the 9th/12th Royal Lancers in January 1979 and again in May on the occasion of the visit of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother, to the Regiment.
The Oberburgermeister of Krefeld and a delegation from that City visited Leicester in August 1978 and Councillor Watson visited Krefeld later that month for the Freedom Parade of the 16th Signal Regiment, Royal Signals.
Councillor Watson had the great honour of addressing the Assembly of the Council of Europe at Strasbourg at celebrations in that City to
commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the founding of the Council of Europe and became the first Lord Mayor of Leicester ever to address the Assembly.
