Даррен Джонсон: от политика к писателю и активисту

English Green Party politician

Darren Paul Johnson (born 1966) is a former English politician who was a prominent member of the Green Party of England and Wales. He represented the Green Party on the London Assembly from 2000 to 2016 and was a Green councillor in the London Borough of Lewisham. He is now a writer and has had several rock music biographies published.

Johnson was born in Southport, Lancashire, and at school, studied A Levels in English, Theatre Studies and Journalistic Studies. Johnson admitted to his "shame" that his first foray into politics was standing in a school mock election in 1979 as a Conservative Party candidate. He apparently "started to work on his PhD until the London Assembly distracted him". He was also once a "paid consultant to Friends of the Earth".

Johnson joined the Green Party in 1987 at the age of 20 He was Male Principal Speaker of the party in 2002. According to the Knitting Circle (a website with "resources on lesbian and gay issues"), his campaigning experience includes infiltrating "the military base at Aldershot dressed as Ivan the Terrible during an arms fair. He was saluted by the guards as he drove through the gates in a large limousine with tinted windows. He tried to buy arms with Monopoly money". As a London Assembly Member, Johnson was Chair of the Housing Committee and a member of the Business Management and Administration Committee, Budget and Performance Committee and the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority (LFEPA). and also chaired an inquiry on nuclear waste trains for the London Assembly. He was previously Chair of the Environment Committee (between 2004/9 and 2010/11). The committee produced a number of reports,
including investigations into the loss of street trees, and the effects of paving over front gardens in the city. Along with his long standing colleague Jenny Jones, he stood down at the 2016 election.

In the 2002 local elections, Johnson was elected as a councillor for the Brockley ward in the London Borough of Lewisham, the Greens' first councillor in Lewisham, He was re elected in 2006, when the Greens gained a further five seats in Lewisham. In 2010, he was the only Green councillor in Lewisham to be re elected and served until 2014 when he did not seek re election. In his time as a councillor, Johnson was successful in getting the council to adopt a Fair Trade policy. He opposed the closure of Ladywell Leisure Centre and put forward alternative sites for a new school. He also successfully campaigned for a new pedestrian crossing on Brockley Road, secured improvements to the traffic calming scheme and managed to halt evictions at St Norberts Allotments. In addition, he served as a member of Lewisham 's Housing Select Committee, Sustainable Development Select Committee, Council Urgency Committee, Elections Committee, Licensing (Supplementary) Committee, Licensing Committee, Overview and Scrutiny Committee and Marsha Phoenix Memorial Trust. He has represented Lewisham on the Local Government Association General Assembly.

Johnson was the Green Party's candidate for Mayor of London in 2000 and 2004. In the 2000 election, he won 2.2% of first preference votes (38,121 votes), taking sixth place. He also came third in unallocated second preference votes with 192,764 second preferences (13.6%), thus coming fifth overall. In the 2004 election, he received 57,331 votes in the first round (2.9%) taking seventh place, and took 10.9% of unallocated second preferences (208,686). Johnson chose not to seek selection as mayoral candidate for a third time. On 12 March 2007, the London Green Party voted to select Siân Berry as their mayoral candidate in the 2008 mayoral election, replacing Johnson. The winner in this election was Boris Johnson.

Having fought Brent South in 1992, Johnson was the Green Party's parliamentary candidate in the Lewisham Deptford constituency in 2001, 2005 and 2010. He came fourth in the constituency in the 2001 general election, polling 1,901 votes (6.5%). In the 2005 general election, Johnson, backed by the Fire Brigades Union (after being the only London Assembly member to vote against cuts in the brigade), received 11.1% of the votes (3,367 votes), coming fourth. In the 2010 general election he came fourth again, but his vote slipped back to 2,772 (6.7%).

Johnson, who is gay, lives in St Leonards, East Sussex. Johnson is a keen supporter of live music (rock and folk) and writes a live review blog. His book The Sweet in the 1970s was published by Sonicbond Publishing on 30 July 2021. This was followed by a second book Suzi Quatro in the 1970s published by the same publisher in July 2022; and a third book Slade in the 1970s published in May 2023.