Members of Harlow Liberal Democrats have voted to elect the local party's former agent Peter Mabey as their President - their first since the death in 2003 of previous President Elsa Scammell.

Chartered engineer and Bush Fair resident Mr Mabey moved to STL Harlow in 1970, having worked in the aircraft industry as a structural engineer and at STC as a software engineer. He was involved in running the Harlow branch of the British Computer Society, and then with the West Essex Wine Appreciation Society. He served as agent for Harlow Liberal Democrats in the 2001 and 2005 General Elections, as well as local council elections up to and including this year.

Local party chairman David Wright commemorated Mr Mabey's election as President by presenting him with a bottle of wine, the appropriately-named Chateau Haut Bages Liberal, of the 1988 vintage - the year the Liberal Democrats was founded as a political party.

Meanwhile, Robert Woodthorpe Browne was elected as Harlow Liberal Democrats' Vice President, the first person to hold such a position. Mr Browne was the Liberal parliamentary candidate for Harlow in 1979. He has since contested several parliamentary elections, including the Kensington & Chelsea by-election against Michael Portillo in 1999, and most recently Sedgefield against Tony Blair in 2005; and was also a candidate for the East of England alongside Harlow councillor Lorna Spenceley in the 1999 European elections. A fluent speaker of several European languages, Mr Browne is a reinsurance broker and consultant specialising in Central and Eastern Europe and Third World countries. He is director of Robert Browne & Partners Ltd, and was from 1979 to 1995 a Member of Lloyd's.

At the same meeting, David Wright was re-elected local party Chairman for 2008, and Nick Macy was re-elected Treasurer. Mr Manny Doku is the new local party secretary for the forthcoming year.