Councillor and Mayor - but who is the real Sven Hocking?
Inside Salisbury: Sven Hocking - “I ended up with no job, no car, no money, no nothing"
by Annette J Beveridge
How much do you know about the city’s councillors and our Salisbury Mayor? We put Sven Hocking in the hot seat to find out what makes him tick.
Originally from Cornwall, Sven moved to Salisbury aged 14 and went to school at Bishops Wordsworth. Having been through grammar school, then comprehensive school, then grammar school again, Sven was a year behind everyone.
He said: “Back in the day, you were expected to know [to be at the same level], so that was a bit of a struggle. It was 1978, punk rock in its heyday and I was getting my rebellious streak.
“And that’s continued.”
Sven managed to wing most of his exams but in his words, ‘failed spectacularly in his A levels.’
For Sven, the school was too integrated into the Salisbury Cathedral.
He said: “There were speech days, founders’ days, and services all at the Cathedral.”
He admitted it was drip-fed.
“When I left school, if the Cathedral had fallen down, I couldn’t have cared less.”
Pressured by his parents to find work, Sven began looking at the local jobs market, but in the 1980s, there were few jobs and a recession. But one job advert caught his eye - a job as a trainee buyer for Racal Electronics.
Sven said: “I had no idea what it was but for the first time, I applied myself.”
Sven was awarded the role and remained within the electronics industry for some years.
“I ditched my jeans and leather jacket, and rocked up in a suit.”
A few years later, another electronics company made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.
Travelling
Time passed and this time, the urge to travel set in.
He said: “In 1989, I got to the point where I thought, I need to go and see the world a bit.”
“I quit my job, explained [it] to the girl I was living with at the time, packed a bag and jumped on a plane to Australia. I spent 8 months travelling the East Coast, learning to plaster walls and lay bricks. Then, skipped to New Zealand and then, Los Angeles.”
By the time he arrived at JFK airport on his way back to the UK, he only had 3 dollars 58 cents left.
Sven admitted his outlook on life had altered.
“My survival instincts kicked in. I took a thousand pounds that’s all. But you need to adapt a bit, survive a bit. That took a year, but unbelievable stuff. The travel bug was in me.”
Saudi Arabia
It wasn’t long after he had returned to Salisbury that he was approached by his former boss at Racal and was back in employment but this time, he ended up working in Saudi Arabia, initially for three months.
Sven said: “We had a briefing about what we could or couldn’t do in Saudi Arabia. Truly terrifying. We got there but found it was completely the opposite of what we had been told. Three months turned into six months, then two years. There were two rules, rule one - don’t get caught and rule two was if you got caught you should have listened much harder to the first rule.”
“It was another life-changing bit of stuff. Because, all of a sudden, you were immersed in a different country, a different climate. It is a Muslim country, and prayers five times a day. It was good.”
Over the years, Sven worked in various countries including Egypt, Czech Republic and Malaysia.
“My phone bill to home was bigger than my hotel bill for the week I stayed there!”
Sven was married by then and they had purchased a house on Tollgate Road. Two children came along over the next two years but work prevented him from seeing them apart from at weekends.
Eventually, Sven’s work life had to change. He was offered a role back at one of the electronics companies and began working on airplane toilets and a production line was set up for Boeing 737s.
Sven said: “It was good but a different organisation than the one I had worked at before. I probably should have stayed at Racal.”
Then came two more children. Shortly afterwards, Sven was made redundant.
Changes
Sven said: “I ended up with no job, no car, no money, no nothing. I went to a networking meeting at The White Hart, and someone had a cafe to sell.
I said: “I can do that.”
He said: “So all of a sudden, I had gone from aerospace and defence manufacturing into catering, an area in which I knew nothing about at all.
“One of the guys who worked there stayed on. He showed me the ropes, and we expanded. It took 6 days a week.”
A chance conversation in the cafe in 2012 planted the political seed.
He laughed remembering that the individual had said: ‘Local elections are coming up, Sven, you would be good at that, you’ve always got something to say.’
Politics
Sven said: “I had no idea what that meant [being a councillor] but if you are going to go for it, then you go for it.”
He researched the role and joined the Conservative Party.
When elected, he admitted: “My ego was out here. I thought, I have been elected, this is my town.”
Having used the Winchester Gate as his campaign area, he walked in and was greeted by cheers. This was the welcome to his political life.
He said: “It became apparent quite quickly that you needed to carry other people with you if you wanted to get things done. It dawned on me you cannot just do what you want. It is a bit frustrating. I am used to getting my own way.”
Sven also sits as a Wiltshire councillor - but does this cause complications?
He said: “There are two schools of thought. One says you need to keep your distance but the other is you need to wear both hats.
“I think people at city level are generally in it for the right reasons, we agree sometimes and disagree sometimes. Even at county level, most of the people I know are in it for all the right reasons and want to make a difference. There’s stuff on social media saying all councillors are corrupt, that they are rubbish. If they are that concerned, and all councillors are that terrible, then they should stand for election and come and see what we have to fix and how difficult it is.
“We have regulated the country to death, so now you can’t do it without falling foul of X legislation, you try to deal with that, then you find there’s another bit in the way. It has made it really tricky to do.
“There’s reasons for that I guess. It stops people like me from just doing what I like. I just like my rules to be cooler than everyone else’s.”
Being Mayor
Sven Hocking is the 763rd Mayor of Salisbury but what is that like?
He said: “It is utterly brilliant. For a Salisbury lad to have grown up here, went to school here, worked here, bought a house here, got a family here and travelled extensively so knows what the rest of the world is like, and then to come back here to this city, to my city, my home, to be the Mayor is just incredible.
“When I go back to the school stuff of not caring whether the Cathedral had fallen over, as you start travelling and spend more time overseas when you come back, the first thing you see is the spire. All of a sudden, it is like….I am home - and that sinks in.”
And his views on the Cathedral now?
“What a place. It is a beautiful building, 800 years of history and it’s still there.”
