John Mills died over the weekend

MILLIONAIRES don’t often get great press, especially now in a nation divided more than ever by haves and have nots.

The affable businessman John Mills, who passed away at the weekend aged 87, was different.

Despite being endlessly busy running his JML shopping empire, he devoted more than 30 years to the not quite as well remunerated role of a Labour councillor over in Camden.

During the 1970s and 1980s, he ordered officers to buy up any street property they could. This eased the waiting list for council housing but also helped create neighbourhoods where people of different backgrounds could live together in a mixed community. This map and make-up has changed somewhat due to right-to-buy polices now, but it was a visionary policy for the time.

You will find many of these flats and houses from John’s legacy in Bloomsbury and near Covent Garden.

His business success meant he didn’t need to work nights in council meetings and at weekends holding surgeries as well, but he had an obvious wish to help those less fortunate.

It wasn’t just talk: he was there supporting community schemes and neighbourhood projects throughout his service.

His wealth became an often-talked about thing, largely because he donated so generously to the Labour Party.

But money did not lead to snobbery or conceit. In fact, he was always open, never hiding behind a press office or a dodging a call from our journalists, even when the issue was thorny.

Harrington even asked him about what he thought of his brother David’s controversial links to Silvio Berlusconi once, and he courteously still provided comment.

Political opponents found him approachable too and collegiate on shared goals.

Perhaps that is why it was a Conservative peer, the arch-Brexiteer Lord Daniel Hannan, who first noted his passing on social media this week.

John, to the chagrin of many London Labour friends, had always been a Euro sceptic too, right from the start.

“Everybody liked him,” said Lord Hannan.

It was true, whatever your position on Europe. Everybody did.