A professional soldier at the time of the Suez Crisis and then a policeman stationed at Burslem. When Fred retired from the Staffordshire Police he turned to local politics, working as an agent and secretary to a Stoke-on-Trent MP.

Fred Hughes was elected at a councillor representing Burslem.

Often to be heard on BBC Radio Stoke and in articles published by the Sentinel newspaper, he became a consultative authority on Burslem's historical background.

MOTHER TOWN:

In the year 2000 Fred published a definitive history of Burslem with "Mother Town". The book is detailed, if not overtly so. The stories and insights from generations of "Boslemites" alongside maps, photographs and pictures, new and old, of the mother of the Potteries towns, highlighting it's significance in the fascinating history of the Potteries and Stoke-on-Trent.

Overview:

Burslem is universally known as the Mother Town of the Potteries - geographically in Stoke on Trent. The book tells the collective story of its illustrious company of famous potters - Josiah Wedgwood (who was born here) William Adams, Samuel Alcock, The Wood family, William Davenport through to the great Victorian potters, Burgess and Leigh, James Macintyre and Henry Doulton; on to William Moorcroft, James Sadler, Wilkinsons' and Midwinters; and to the post WWI artists, Susie Cooper, Clarice Cliff and Charlotte Rhead. Mixed in with this potent pot of art, craft and colour are the stories of the ordinary workers and their fight for survival in an impoverished town which grew from a Domesday reference into a frontiers town of the Industrial Revolution to become a Lilliputian Genoa.

"I wonder, do I have a right to tell her story? For now I struggle with the conscience of the historian advocating a sense of duty while flinching from a sense of shame. Integrity? What place has integrity in this contest?... And still I do battle with my conscience constantly - and not only mine but with yours also; for you, reader, have your part to play as well. And we will laugh, and we will weep together, you and I."