Tributes have been paid to a veteran rural Stirling councillor whose death was announced earlier this week.
Conservative councillor Paul Henke, who represented the Forth and Endrick ward since his election in May 2022, was also a former chairman of Balfron Community Council after a varied life which included serving for the Royal Navy and the Naval Reserve. He was also a distinguished author, having published more than 20 books across his life.
Council chief leads tributes
Stirling Council chief executive Brian Roberts said: “Councillor Henke was hugely respected in his local community and across the Council Chamber. He served his local community with dedication for many years and ensured their voices were heard, first as a community councillor and then on Stirling Council. Our deepest condolences to Paul’s family and friends at this sad time.”
Cllr Henke was born in the Welsh valleys in the early 1950s and grew up around the city of Pontypridd. His father was a Polish immigrant who came to Britain during the Second World War and later worked as a coalminer. The politics of the valleys were overwhelmingly Labour, but Henke recalled that his father was a Conservative, and that he himself had always been “a Conservative, even in Wales”.
Naval career and writing
He was educated at Pontypridd Boys’ Grammar School and had wanted from childhood to become a naval officer. In 1968 he joined the Royal Navy, training at Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, before entering one of the service’s most exacting specialisms: mine warfare, clearance diving and explosive ordnance disposal. He qualified as a Mine Clearance Diving officer at HMS Vernon in Portsmouth in the mid-1970s. His work involved underwater mines, bombs and explosives, the sort of duties in which a calm temperament was not a decorative virtue but a professional requirement. He later recalled leading underwater bomb-disposal work and dealing with unexploded Second World War ordnance around the British coast.
After his regular service he continued in the Royal Naval Reserve, leaving with the rank of Lieutenant Commander after a combined naval career of about 25 years. He then took his diving experience into the commercial offshore world, including work in Nigeria connected with saturation diving systems. Later he moved into financial services, where he ran a successful business.
Writing became his next vocation. Henke published about 20 books, though book databases list more when editions and collected works are counted. His fiction divided chiefly between historical family saga and military-action thriller. The Tears series, beginning with A Million Tears, drew on Welsh roots and followed the fortunes of the Griffiths family through the upheavals of the twentieth century. His Nick Hunter and TIFAT thrillers, by contrast, inhabited the world of terrorism, covert action and international crisis. There were also Gumshoe detective stories and standalone thrillers.
Community service and politics
Cllr Henke settled with wife Dorothy in the quiet surroundings of Balfron and became deeply intertwined with the running of the community serving six years as president of a parent-teacher association and five years as chairman of Balfron Community Council.
After an ill-fated stint with UKIP - which eventually saw Cllr Henke banned from the party for ‘100 years’ - he joined the Conservative group in Stirling in 2017. He stood unsuccessfully for Stirling Council in Bannockburn in 2017, but in 2022 was elected as a councillor for Forth and Endrick.
Stirling Council’s Conservative group leader Neil Benny said: “Paul’s life was inspiring, serving his country in the Royal Navy, having a successful career in financial services and serving his community on Stirling Council. Paul will be missed by all of us on the council, for his wisdom and indomitable spirit. His campaigning on road repair, social housing and educational standards were to be admitted and he was exceptionally well respected on both sides of the chamber and in the community for his forthright views and his vivacious style. I was proud to serve with Paul, our thoughts are with his family at this time and he will be missed.”
