Tory MP} Sanctity of Marriage He Preaches Cheats for 12 yrs
Even so, it was perhaps unwise for the Tory MP to have held forth on the ‘sanctity’ of marriage, insisting it could work only between ‘one man and one woman’ when he spoke out against religious gay weddings in a BBC interview.
When it comes to politics, memories are long. And, as the MP for
Harrow East discovered to his cost this week, grudges endure.
Certainly, in the wake of his controversial remarks, it didn’t take long for unedifying stories to emerge of his 11-year affair with Tory councillor Carol Shaw.
Both were serving on the same council in London at the time — along with Blackman’s cheated wife Nicola, 57, whom he now employs as his office manager.
Speaking from her neat one-bedroom flat in Willesden Green, North London, the MP’s former mistress insists she was not the one to tell on Blackman, 56, this week — and that she spoke to newspapers only after they had been tipped off by another source.
‘He has many enemies,’ she says.
‘And it’s true that you meet the same people on the way down as you do on the way up.’
Indeed, as we shall see, far from being a closely-guarded secret, Blackman’s affair with Carol was widely known among their Tory colleagues at Brent Council.
Wronged: At first, Carol insists, she didn't realise Blackman was married to wife Nicola, pictured
Any number of individuals, angered by Blackman’s opposition to David Cameron’s backing of religious same-sex marriages, could have exposed him, making his self-righteous declarations even more foolhardy.
In short, his acrimonious affair with Carol, 62, a councillor of 22 years’ standing with a reputation for being fiery and outspoken, was a ticking timebomb waiting to go off.
Carol, a privately-educated retired nurse and midwife who switched allegiance from the Conservatives to the Liberal Democrats not long after their affair ended, says she has decided to talk now about their lengthy relationship as a ‘damage-limitation exercise’.
‘Others have exposed him,’ she says, ‘but I want the truth to come out. He was a fool and a hypocrite to praise marriage after making such a mockery of his own.’
She met him in the late Eighties, when newly-married Blackman was an ambitious young local councillor and a leading light among Brent Conservatives.
At the time, Carol, a vivacious unmarried blonde in her late thirties, was working as a volunteer at Brent East Conservative Association.
On a couple of occasions, she found herself alone with Blackman, the son of a BBC engineer, who had become a councillor in 1986.
‘We’d be stuffing envelopes late into the night,’ she says.
‘I could tell he was interested in me. He asked me lots of questions about myself. We would exchange looks and smiles at functions, that kind of thing.
‘I found him very attractive, very intelligent, very knowledgeable about a lot of subjects. And I suppose I was flattered that he was so interested in me. I was smitten.’
At first, Carol insists, she didn’t realise Blackman was married. The former head boy was a computer salesman for Unisys when he married Nicola, a divorced PA, at Hatfield Register Office in July 1988.
‘I was disappointed when I found out that he was married,’ says Carol. ‘I wished I’d got to him first.’
While the exact date is a little hazy, Carol says the relationship was first consummated about a year before she was elected as Tory councillor for Brondesbury Park ward in 1990.
It was after an evening organised by members of the Afro-Caribbean community that they became lovers.
Hotting up: Carol and Bob Blackman, pictured canvassing in Harrow, fell for each other after spending hours stuffing envelopes late into the night one evening
‘I remember sitting on his lap during the evening,’ she says. ‘He drove me home later.’ Sitting in his car outside her Seventies block of flats, she recalls asking Blackman if he wanted to come in and his response: ‘Of course I want to come in.’
The act itself, she says, was ‘rushed’ and ‘over very quickly’.
‘We just came in here and undressed and went into the bedroom,’ she says. ‘I think afterwards he said something like, “I hope I’ll see you soon”.’
Over the next 11 years, the pair saw each other with clockwork regularity — every Friday afternoon.
Their relationship could hardly be described as romantic. There were no candles or shared bottles of wine. The only gift Carol ever received was a bunch of flowers delivered by Interflora on her birthday each year — without a card of any kind to identify the sender.
Mr Blackman, pictured here with David Cameron, became an MP in 2010 and said marriage could work only between 'one man and one woman’
Blackman, a Tottenham Hotspur season ticket holder, would call Carol from his mobile on his way to see his team play. They only ever had one meal out — at a curry house in Wembley.
‘I would sometimes cook for him,’ says Carol. ‘I’d always have a packet of something or some chops in case he was hungry, something easy because he was a bad time-keeper.
‘After we’d been to bed, he would spend over an hour in the bath, listening to my radio, or he’d fall asleep for a while and snore. Then he’d go.’
From Carol’s point of view the arrangement was never satisfactory.
‘At the beginning I wanted more,’ she says. ‘I asked him about his wife but he didn’t want to talk about her. I asked him if it was possible to love two people at the same time and he said it was. But he never said he loved me, only that he loved the way I kissed him. I did feel sorry for his wife, but I knew they didn’t have children, so I felt him leaving her would be less complicated.’
When Blackman’s wife was elected as a Tory councillor in 1994, Carol’s dissatisfaction increased. She now had to face her unsuspecting romantic rival across the chamber at council meetings.
And the lingering glances she once shared with her lover were harder to manage.
Mr Blackman, pictured on the campaign trail in Harrow, has recently spoken out against gay marriage
‘It was terrible,’ says Carol. ‘It felt like a slap in the face when he got his wife to stand as a councillor. I asked if she knew about me and he said no. I’d ask if he would tell her and he’d say no or change the subject.’
Angry and jealous, Carol got her own back by playing a rather mean-spirited trick. Bumping into Nicola in the town hall toilets one day, Carol managed to persuade her to hand over a pair of gold earrings bought for her by her husband.
‘I said I liked her earrings but mine would suit her much better,’ she says. ‘She agreed to swop hers for mine which were smaller. I told Bob later I was wearing the earrings he’d bought for his wife. I could tell he was rather annoyed.’
During part of their affair, Blackman, who was by then with British Telecom, was working as a sales tutor at the company’s training college in Milton Keynes
On one occasion, he called Carol and asked her to visit him at the centre, which had hostel-style accommodation for staff.
‘He called me at about 10pm,’ she says. ‘He took me to a tiny room with a single bed. He asked me to leave very early the next morning so that nobody would see me.’
Another time, the pair had sex at the Blackmans’ Wembley home while his wife was away and Carol stayed the night.
Strangely, Carol says she felt ‘proud’ to be at the ‘cold, messy’ home. ‘I felt flattered and closer to him,’ she says. ‘I got some sort of kick out of it.’
She found it amusing too when local newspapers carried photographs of the pair at a 1992 cricket match, Blackman dressed in whites, holding an umbrella over Carol’s head as she went in to bat.
‘Council leader Bob Blackman bowled this maiden over with chivalry,’ read the headline in one unsuspecting newspaper. Another rather ironic picture caption read: ‘Councillor on a sticky wicket.’
But inevitably, the affair was never going to have a happy ending.
Ambitious: Bob Blackman had been a rising star on Brent Council when he began the 11-year-affair with Carol
After a decade, Carol began to tire of Blackman’s behaviour towards her, especially when he set his sights on becoming an MP.
‘He would never pay me any compliments,’ she says. ‘He liked beer and football and curries. He was a man of simple tastes. The sex became perfunctory. I was starting to lose interest.’
But even given her disillusionment, what Carol did next seems incredible. Egged on, she says, by one of Blackman’s rivals who hoped to see him ousted as group leader, she went to a solicitor and gave an affidavit — a signed, sworn statement — about their affair, which was copied and distributed among fellow Tory councillors by the rival.
The affidavit makes eye-watering reading. It refers in the starkest terms to the affair, detailing the sex she and Blackman had in his marital bed and at his workplace, along with mention of ‘distinguishing features of Cllr Blackman’s body’ which he would have found excruciatingly embarrassing.
With hindsight, Carol says she was ‘manipulated’ into it. At the same time she admits: ‘I felt cleansed afterwards. There were so many rumours. I wanted to get the truth out. I didn’t want to be his dirty little secret any more.’
Furious: Bob Blackman was angry with Carol's betrayal, slamming the phone down on her
Blackman was allegedly stunned by her betrayal: ‘He phoned me and asked why I had done it. Then he slammed the phone down.’
That was in 2000. Now, 12 years on, Carol suspects someone kept a copy of the affidavit, believing it might come in handy in the future.
And when Blackman made his controversial comments on homosexual relationships, clearly a political enemy felt the time was right to strike out at him.
The identity of the culprit remains a mystery. While Carol still has her copy of the affidavit, she is adamant she was not the original source for this week’s story.
She reels off the names of a handful of people who might have had an axe to grind from Blackman’s days on Brent Council.
‘He thought it was a dead story, but people have long memories,’ she says.
Blackman refused to comment on his affair this week. According to a colleague, though, he and his wife Nicola remain close.
The couple jointly own six buy-to-let properties in Welwyn Garden City and Mrs Blackman is paid around £25,000 a year to work in her husband’s office.
The colleague told the Mail: ‘He will be terribly upset by this and so will Nicola. She’s a very sensitive person. I can’t see the point in this being dragged up after so many years. It doesn’t benefit anyone.’
Speaking during a debate in the House of Commons on Thursday, Blackman offered seasonal greetings to those ‘who have given me support in the past few days, in particular, my wife, who has been long-suffering for many years.’
For now then, Blackman will continue to forge his career as a Tory MP, while Carol campaigns for residents in Brondesbury Park on issues such as rubbish collections and school catchment areas.
She admits skipping a council highways committee meeting this week, unable to face her colleagues, although she says she has received several emails of support from residents. She is hoping the dust will have settled by the next full council meeting in January.
‘I am coming to the end of my career. I plan to stand for one more term, but I can speak out without fear,’ she says.
‘I wouldn’t have said anything if it hadn’t come out anyway.
‘I wasted a lot of years with Bob Blackman and now I’m alone. I must have been mad. He just didn’t deserve those ten years of my life.’
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