Tony Hillier, 63, has been known for many years as Swindon’s community poet. The former teacher and youth worker is also a member of the town’s People’s Assembly, and took part in Wednesday’s demonstration at the Civic Offices against the closure of seven children’s centres. Tony is the father of two grown-up daughters.

TONY Hiller paused to be interviewed on his way to London, where he planned to take part in the Occupy Parliament Square demonstration.

“The call went out last week for a week-long occupation of the square, because there’s a deficit in democracy,” he said.

“There are too few people with extraordinary, shameful amounts of wealth and too many other citizens, even if they’re working, not able to keep a roof over their heads.

“That is shameful, given that you’re talking to a 1960s idealist. I still hold the 1960s principles. I was on the edge of the hippie era – teacher training college 1969 to 1972. We were out on the streets for the teachers, the nurses and gender equality, and I could be out there today 40 years later for the same issues.

“Where did we go wrong? We were too soft. We thought that because we passionately believed in these things, it would equally follow that other human beings would see that kind of pathway of equality, and society would change.

“It’s not that we didn’t turn the knife; we didn’t even stick the knife in, let alone turn it. We had fancy words, which were truly meant, but we didn’t organise.”

Tony was born in Weston Turville in Buckinghamshire, one of six siblings. His father was in the Parachute Regiment, and was involved in the bitter D-Day battle for the Merville gun battery in Normandy. He was never the same again and was unable to work.

Tony said: “He had shell shock and wounds and was on a stretcher on the beach for three days, and invalided back to the UK.

“We were six children brought up on benefits. That’s why I was at the children’s centre protests. I was one of those children, from the second poorest family in the village, who was saved by the NSPCC, the British Legion and social services day trips to Bognor – the equivalent of family centres today.

“That was also why I was chair of Swindon Stop the War Coalition.”

Tony readily reveals he has suffered bouts of depression at various points during his life, although he is in recovery and hasn’t been troubled by the illness for four years.

He said: “If I can do anything to bring it out of the closet, to get society talking about it, then I’d like to play my part.”

Something else that happened four years ago was Tony’s decision to donate a kidney to his sister, Margaret, whose own had failed.

He seems to be only half joking when he recommends donating an organ as a tonic for depression.

“Psychologically, it’s a great thing to do. It gave me a boost to think I could do that.

“I was best placed to give it and I was very pleased to give it, because I knew if the boot was on the other foot she would have done it for me.

“I haven’t had one twinge since; the NHS has done brilliantly.”

After the operation he took a holiday to Kenya, and now divides his time between there and with friends who have an organic farm near Swindon.

Why Kenya?

“The people are friendly, it’s blue skies nearly every day and I can live for half the price, so I’m an economic migrant!”

After leaving school, Tony trained as an English teacher. There then followed a career consisting of what he calls about 10 proper jobs and about 20 for cash.

The ‘proper’ ones included teaching in a Leeds remand home, a stint as a roving youth and community worker in Hemel Hempstead, another with the youth service of the old Inner London Education Authority and time as an HIV outreach worker.

In 1977 he travelled overland to Calcutta via Afghanistan and Pakistan, and has been back seven times since. He moved to Swindon at the start of the 1990s, after the disbanding of the ILEA, working first as a community development officer, then for various charities and later for Voluntary Action and at New College, where he was a basic skills tutor.

He also became Swindon’s freelance community poet, a position to which he cheerily admits appointing himself. He has loved poetry and wordplay since childhood.

“What I believe is that everybody has a story and everybody has something to say. That includes me.

“Through the mechanism of a few short words – call it a poem – people’s voices can be heard.”

This unshakeable belief in the value of people is one of the reasons why he joined the People’s Assembly. He says it is non-political and its ideals resonate with his own.

“I’m there as a human being trying to get the fairest deal possible for the widest number of people.

“People’s human nature, I still believe, is kindness at the core, but the media and the Establishment would like it to be the old colonial divide and rule.

“They’d like to keep the house so they’re happy but have everybody else working all hours, all shifts on zero hour contracts. I’ve got the time to go to London and demonstrate. Other people have got their noses to the grindstone.

“Is there somebody reading the Swindon Advertiser that can think of a system that takes the best from communism and the best from capitalism and meets it in the middle, and can work on a large scale?

“Surely there’s a brain in the world that can think that up? There might well be, but will we have the power to enact it?

“There is enough wealth and resources in the world to give everybody a house and a meal and a job.

“We’ve an Everest, two Everests to climb to bring about change, but let’s amass on the foothills and start going up that incline.”