SELF-styled working class hero and Oxford’s last remaining Independent Working Class Association city councillor Stuart Craft will stand down at the May election.

The Northfield Brook councillor has represented residents in Blackbird Leys for the past 10 years.

But he has decided a decade is enough, and will be stepping down to concentrate on more grassroots projects.

He is the last of four IWCA councillors to have been elected to Oxford City Council in the past decade.

Mr Craft, a bus driver with the Oxford Bus Company, said: “On a personal level I never intended to stay this long.

“I was only going to serve one term. And I wanted to leave because I’m in danger of just becoming part of the furniture.

“People start to see you as part of the system you’re trying to change.

“I couldn’t stand on people’s doorsteps any more, telling them we were going to change things when that wasn’t going to happen.”

When he was elected in 2002, Mr Craft was the first IWCA member to gain a seat.

He was joined by Blackbird Leys councillor Lee Cole and Claire Kent in Wood Farm in 2004, shortly followed by Jane Lacey in Northfield Brook in 2006.

Mr Craft said: “We’ve been banging our heads against a brick wall for 10 years now.

“We’ve been trying to push the agenda for working class people, but nothing seems to get done in the council chambers.

“We’ve gone as far in the council as we can.”

He added: “All the hours I spend in the chambers would be much better spent on the estate doing something valuable for people living there.”

Among its achievements over the past decade, was helping remove drug dealers from Blackbird Leys.

He added: “Our biggest success was getting elected in the first place.

“We got into the Labour strongholds of Wood Farm and the Leys.

“And we demystified politics, showing that working class people can get elected.”

The IWCA now aims to concentrate on pushing its message through political comment, campaigning and other means.

The association also runs an athletics club and is working on other priorities, including a working class history week later this year.

Mr Craft added: “We are in no way giving up.

“If we continued to stand in the council and achieving nothing, all the hard work would be forgotten.

“Maybe we’ll come back to it one day. But it will never be me, I will never stand for election again.”

And he jokingly likened himself to a former boxer, adding: “I’m retiring un-defeated, like Joe Calzaghe.”

Half of the council’s 48 seats will be contested in May.