Councillor Tony Belton’s Battersea May 2024, Newsletter (# 179)

1. April Fools’ Day started with a good joke from CJAG’s(Clapham Junction Action Group) Cyril Richert when he released news of a planned 100-metre-high Asparagus-shaped sky-scraper on the Asparagus site at the corner of Falcon Road (Angela was right). I know at least two people who have admitted to being taken in for a few seconds. Just think, under the previous Tory-controlled Council it might even have been approved.

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2. Later, the same day, Penny and I had dinner at the National Theatre before going to see Nye (Bevan), a play written by Tim Price. Nye (1897-1960) was, of course, a left-wing icon of my youth – a kind of Tony Benn with added charisma. Famous for being anti-Suez, pro-CND, it was surely one of Clement Attlee’s (on the left with Nye on the right) greatest decisions to appoint the 48-year-old Nye as Minister of Health in the great Labour Governments of 1945-50/51. He was given the specific giant, nation-changing task of creating the NHS – and what an achievement it was, even if the dear old NHS itself is now in need of some rehabilitation.

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3. In my view, the play suffered a bit from being just too complex. It covered Bevan’s romance and marriage to Jennie Lee (1904-1988), a Labour icon in her own right; the creation of the NHS; Nye’s relationship with a schoolboy friend, who later became Councillor Williams; and Nye’s personal growth from miner’s son to Cabinet member. Bringing all these strands together in one play was an ambitious task, which I do not think the play totally managed to achieve. But perhaps we were unlucky not to see Martin Sheen playing Nye, as his understudy did not quite convey the full Nye charm and charisma – even if it was a valiant effort.

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4. I had a meeting of the Finance Committee on 4^th April. It was requisitioned by Tory councillors, who claimed that they wished more time to discuss details of policy, and to “scrutinise” the Leader and his policies. (It was a tactic I had used in the early 1980s when I was Labour Opposition Leader. The Tories then circumvented my tactics by changing the standing orders, making it almost impossible for me to repeat.) The interesting question is whether this Tory initiative is just about inter-political-party bickering or about real issues of scrutiny and accountability – if the former it will soon be forgotten, but if the latter then we will no doubt hear more – and devise our own response.

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5. On 10^th April I went to St. Anne’s Church to attend a meeting of the Wandsworth Prison Improvement Campaign. On the way there, I speculated on the likely attendance at such an event and concluded that there might be 16 people there. I was amazed to be part of a 250+ audience. The speakers included the recent prison chaplain, and the Shadow Minister for Justice, Lord Fred Ponsonby (a local resident and ex-councillor), and two or three ex-convicts. Speakers said that conditions in the prison were more Shawshank Redemption than Porridge. It was an horrendous story, demanding immediate reform. Even, if you have no interest in the quality of life in our local prison, there could be little doubt that current prison conditions militate against re-habilitation, but rather have a brutalising impact on both prison staff and inmates. I am keen to understand whether the Council can have some impact on the situation. (By the way, I note that in 1992, Wandsworth Council’s prison education staff numbered 14 teachers, who gave individual and group lessons to convicts – see Education Committee Report to the Council, 15 July 1992 – I don’t want to get too nostalgic, but those really were the days.)

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6. An American friend flew over for a few days, and on the 13^th we went, with her, to the Fortune Theatre to see Operation Mincemeat. If you have not been to the Fortune Theatre then let me recommend it. By West End standards it is very small and intimate. It has had the same play on there for years and years; so this was my first visit. But the centrepoint was the play – or rather the musical. It was about the UK deception of the Wehrmacht, which persuaded Hitler that the Allies intended to invade Greece (the musical says Sardinia – but why?) and not Sicily. The deception is executed with the help of a corpse acting the part of an important well-informed British officer carrying secret papers to Montgomery in North Africa. It did not seem an ideal subject for a musical, certainly not a tasteful musical. But the players, five young actors, created the musical, wrote the script, acted all the parts almost interchangeably, and ignored gender casting. Together and collectively, they created a very funny, witty play, with a totally unhistorical and clever twist in the tail. Imagine our surprise and pleasure the next day, when watching the BAFTA awards on TV to see the cast, the director, and the designer win the Olivier award for the best new musical of the year – Congratulations to all involved.

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7. On 15^th April, Penny and I visited my young-old friend Councillor Sean Lawless (proud as punch) and his partner (ex-Councillor) Kate Forbes (radiant) but largely to see and enjoy baby Cara Forbes-Lawless (in her innocent world). Cara appeared on the scene about three weeks early and, therefore, is very, very small, but is now doing well. She has charmed not only her family and friends, but also Yoshi, the family dog, also pictured.

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8. On the 18^th April, I went to the Battersea Society’s Hustings meeting for next month’s GLA election. All the GLA candidates were invited and four turned up. They were Labour’s Leonie Cooper, Tory Eleanor Cox, Green’s Pippa Maslin and Lib/Dem Sue Wixley. Eleanor was tall and elegant; she looked like an international athlete, and it turned out that she was – the trouble is she also showed that she had only been in politics for the last two years and it showed. Pippa really was everyone’s nice neighbour; very likable, very charming. Sue had the standard Lib/Dem problem, trying to be all things to everyone. Leonie, OK so I am biased, was clear, decisive and knowledgeable – as she should as the incumbent. By the time you read this, the election will be over, and so I can say this, and you will all discover how good/bad I am as a political commentator. But, for me, there has been nothing like this since 1997 – there is not a Tory voter to be found anywhere; there may not be the enthusiasm for Keir Starmer that there was then for Tony Blair; but then, there was not the same despair and disgust about John Major and his team as there is now about Rishi Sunak and this mob. Sadiq Khan, who spoke so well at the time of the Grenfell Tower disaster, has lost some of his freshness and aura but, I think, he will win comfortably enough, regardless of ULEZ – as will both Leonie Cooper and Labour’s Jane Briginshaw in the West Putney by-election.

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9. The Planning (PAC) Applications Committee was held on the 24^th April. There were seven applications to be considered, a couple of particular local interest, one for four small council housing units on the Balham East Housing Estate and the other for new catering and science facilities for Emanuel College. More contentious, however, was an application for 113 Council housing units and a new health centre on the site of the old Atheldene Centre in Garratt Lane. It was approved because the majority of councillors thought that the benefit of new affordable homes out-weighed the disadvantage of building to the seventh story. If Wandsworth Labour is to fulfil its election pledge of building 1,000 new council homes, then we are probably going to see further contentious, similar applications.

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My May Programme

1. May 2nd is the big election day, with votes for the Mayor of London, the Greater London Council and many other elections across the country, and, not least, a by-election in West Putney. I will not be as busy as I used to be at election-time, but I will have a busy backroom role.
2. On 7^th May I have a meeting of the Conservation and Heritage Advisory Committee.
3. On 10th May I am off to see Dorian, a play based on Oscar Wilde’s gruesome story, The Picture of Dorian Gray.
4. The Planning Applications Committee is on 21^st May.
5. There is a Council Meeting on the 22^nd.
6. On 29^th May, I hope to be at the Ethelburga Tower Residents Association’s AGM.

Did you know?

Last month I asked, “just how many surviving pre-nineteenth century buildings or structures in Battersea can you/we name? I had one terrific answer from Chris, who wrote that in his “patch of St Mary’s” (ward), he could list:-

• Old Battersea House 30 Vicarage Crescent,
• St Mary’s Church itself, of course,
• Devonshire House 44 Vicarage Crescent,
• St Mary’s Vicarage 42 Vicarage Crescent,
• The Raven Inn 140 Westbridge Road – now a restaurant,
• and the façade of the Royal Laundry, 129-131 Westbridge Road.
• And further south, Gilmore House 133 Clapham Common North Side
• Maitland House 60 Clapham Common North Side and
• 83 Clapham Common West Side.
• I do not know why Chris didn’t include 82 Clapham Common Westside but that would have given him a magnificent TEN,
• And he didn’t include the cottage that I wrote about last month on Clapham Common Northside, which would have made eleven,
• Then again is it cheating to include other buildings, in Marsha de Cordova’s parliamentary constituency of Battersea, such as All Saints Church, Wandsworth High Street and the magnificent Church Row in Wandsworth Plain? It all depends upon how you define Battersea.

And this month?

Talking of both the NHS and of the prison, made me think of one of the prisons most famous inmates. A local lad, born in Stockwell but well-known in the “right” circles in Battersea, who spent many years in Brazil, but returned to see his family and old mates, and benefit from the NHS before dying in 2001. Who was he?