Councillor Tony Belton’s Latchmere May Newsletter (# 49)

April highlights

1. Have you noticed that the Grant Road exit from Clapham Junction station has been kept open until 1 a.m. It used to be closed at any time after 10 pm but I raised the matter in January at a Passengers’ Liaison Committee with the representatives of Network Rail and they announced at the Committee on the 8th April that they have decided to keep the gate opened in future. Big success for local lobbying power 1.

2. Meanwhile I hope to have persuaded the Council and Transport for London to install a temporary bus-stop opposite Battersea Park School. The main stop had been closed because of the development on the old Labour Exchange, meaning that there was a very long gap between the Latchmere Pub and Alexandra Road. I had complaints from a couple of pensioners and a temporary stop should be in place shortly. Thanks to local residents for raising the issue and big success for local lobbying power 2.

3. The main item of interest at the Planning Applications Committee on 11th April was, unusually, a Latchmere item – the expansion or otherwise of the Falcon Road Mosque. I have sent out quite a few emails on this matter to many of the local residents most concerned and so I won’t repeat them all here, but I will make a quick reference to the consultation.

I have been through all the consultation comments and categorised them as best I could – I took no notice of anonymous support or opposition. Of the 215 responses in favour of the application, 53 came from within Latchmere ward and another 98 came from other parts of the Borough. 65 came from outside the Borough. Most of these responses were simple statements of support for the mosque, with many mentioning lack of facilities.

Those opposing the plans numbered 106, of which 105 gave addresses in the Borough (the one outsider says he is a landlord of property very near to the mosque), 90 of whom were within Latchmere and the vast majority of these were from Little India, Fownes/Este Roads and the immediate area on the other side of Falcon Road. In the nature of “opposing”, these responses were much more detailed and largely centred on the traffic and parking implications of an expanded mosque. Many of these “opposition” responses said very positive things about having a mosque in the neighbourhood, with some clearly coming from “traditional” British style names expressing pride in being part of a mixed, multi-ethnic community with a mosque in it. The second largest voice of criticism, after the traffic, was aimed at what people thought of as over-development of the site. There was only one opponent, who got anywhere near to saying that the mosque shouldn’t even be there.

Clearly opinion was very divided but those living closest to the mosque were the least happy about the application and also felt more strongly about the application than those supporting it. Most encouragingly the debate was held in a very civilised fashion, which might not have been the case. In the event, the application was refused.

4. On 8th April Mrs. Thatcher died and divided the country in death as much as she had done in life. As it happens I was due to attend a meeting of the Labour Heritage Society on the Saturday the 13th, when the main presentation was about Mr. Clement Attlee, born in Putney as it happened and the Labour Prime minister, who ruled for the six years between Churchill’s great wartime administration and Churchill’s rather less successful second peacetime administration. It was difficult to come away from the presentation by Francis Beckett without believing that Attlee was by head and shoulders the greatest peacetime prime minister of the twentieth century.

Now I don’t expect to persuade my Tory colleagues of this argument and certainly not in this newsletter but if you would like to read my thoughts on Mrs. T then I have quite a long piece in my blog at https://tonybelton.wordpress.com/. Take a dip.

5. On Sunday, 14th April, I attended a fascinating meeting of the Church of St. Mary of Debre Tsion and of the Ethiopian Community in London. You may have seen the congregation, the ladies all dressed in white, in Queenstown Road of a Sunday morning – but not recently. They have been locked out of St. Philips Church, which the Ethiopian Orthodox bought off the Anglicans for, apparently, £2 million, by their own clergy. The meeting was conducted in the Ethiopian language of Amharic and with some translation I gathered it was a “constitutional coup” with the congregation turning out the clergy – not often that a councillor gets to see a peaceful revolution in the making!

6. On 16h April, I went to the Battersea Library to hear a presentation on the centenary of John Archer’s installation as the first black mayor of Battersea – strangely there had been a man of Indian descendant as Mayor of, of all places, little rural Thetford in Norfolk, otherwise Archer would have been the first in the UK. Archer was a Latchmere councillor and hence one of my predecessors. He lived in Brynmaer Road, then a much more down-market street, and ran a photographer’s shop in Battersea Park Road – have you seen the blue plaque? – look out for it. The presentation was given by Kwaku, an “history consultant” clearly intent on raising the black profile in British history.

7. The Harling Court Residents Association met on 17th April. Residents there expressed reasonable concerns about the development built alongside them on the old Travis Perkins site but one good thing has come from that development and that is the recent installation at Harling Court of security doors.

8. On the 23rd, 24th and 25th I had the Planning and Transport, Finance and Corporate Resources, and Housing Committees. That might sound dull to you but on the whole they were duller than even that sounds! So a quick mention of the interesting bits from Planning. Further analysis of the 2011 census shows:-

• that the Borough’s car population is in decline, with 54.7% of us owning one, as opposed to 59.3% in 2001 – there are of course more of us!
• Wandsworth has the highest proportion of people in the UK aged 30-44
• We have the second highest proportion of non-related households, that is flat sharers
• 53.3% of us claim to be white British, but we had some of the highest counts of non-British whites from Irish to Polish to Oz
• 35% of us were not born in the UK
• With 54% of us having degrees or higher we are the second highest qualified population in the UK or 3rd if you count the miniscule population of the City of London

9. The Finance and Corporate Resources Committee had no immediately gripping matters under consideration but marked the next stage in the Government’s attack on local government services with large scale programmes of privatisation and out-sourcing. I feel strongly about all this and will have to get round to doing a blog on it some time trying to articulate my discomfort with it all – but not now – too big a subject.

10. The Housing Committee continues to tighten up the rules governing the allocation of council housing but, whilst I don’t like the changes, I realise that I am probably in a minority of one on the issue and in any case the changes are fairly minimal.

11. On the 30th many councillors attended a teach-in about Children Looked After. This very important group is, I guess, almost unknown to most constituents. It is about the 200 children in Wandsworth, there are 65,000 in the country, taken into care and for whom councillors have a personal and collective responsibility as in loco parentis – or in translation “in the place of parents”. Ever since the dreadful case of Baby P, when you may remember a small boy died through hopeless parenting and inadequate social service support, the Government has made it clear that in principle councillors are in loco parentis. What a responsibility!

My Programme for May

1. There is a Planning Applications Committee on the 8th May.

2. I said last month that I was going to a guest lecture from the poet laureate at Roehampton University. I got the date wrong! It is on 1st May!

3. The second week of May is traditionally the high point of the Municipal Year. On the 13th there is a reception for the outgoing Mayor, on the 15th the Annual Council Meeting and on the 16th the installation of the new Mayor. I must confess that I rather enjoy the week even if not many of my colleagues do!

4. There doesn’t seem to be much else on but here is advance notice of a history walk that I am leading on 1st June at 2pm as part of the Wandsworth Heritage Festival. It costs £10 per head and I guarantee that I will teach you something about the neighbourhood that you don’t know. We start on the corner of Albert Bridge Road and Battersea Park Road right opposite the Latchmere pub. If you are thinking of coming then please email me – nice to know the numbers to expect.

Did you know?

That Darius Knight is a Battersea boy, or more particularly a Latchmere boy? And this is Darius in his 2012 GB team kit. You don’t know about him? Well this is his story.

Born in about 1990 (he is 23 now), Darius went to Joseph Tritton school, now the Chillington Drive estate off Wynter Street, and Christchurch. When he was a kid he spent all his time in the York Gardens Adventure Playground (demolished last year by the Council!) and in the community centre, climbing on the apparatus and playing football – but also messing about on an outdoor table tennis table and on another inside the community centre.

He tells me that he spent hours playing round table, table tennis – that is where any number of kids play at the same time but after each shot the player has to go round the table and wait his turn until his turn comes round to play the next shot and you drop out one at a time when you miss until there are only two players left. They then play for the winning point. I can tell you from my own experience (Yes, I remember playing it), it is all action packed, fast and furious fun.

Anyway Darius turns out to be the best at this game and one day, yes the fairy story, he is spotted by a coach. A year or so later having dropped the soccer and the sprinting, he was a full-time student at a Table Tennis academy in Nottingham – quite a plucky decision for a youngster that age to take – up sticks and leave mum and home to be a boarder at a sporting academy in a distant town.

And then Darius starts a whirlwind sporting career, which included going to a Eurokids competition in Terni, Italy, the Portuguese Youth Open at aged 13, becoming Britain’s No 1 Under 15, being in the Under 21s European Final at the age of 18, winning gold in both the singles and the doubles of the Youth Olympics in Sydney, and winning a silver medal at the Commonwealth Games in Delhi in 2010.

Of course, the big target was the London, 2012 Olympics, for which he had become a mega-star of the hoardings being one of the faces used by Coke- Cola for advertising both the Games and Coke. But the Coke deal seems to have caused a bit of friction and as it turns out Darius did not make the final pick despite being in the squad.

Now, I sense Darius is at a turning point in his career. He is keen to help get kids off the street and round the tennis tables in York Gardens or the Katherine Low Settlement – he is very honest (and charming) about training and table tennis straightening him out after a couple of primary school suspensions but before he was too old and exposed to really going off the rails. He plays professionally in tournaments in Europe and is based in Vienna so as to be close to the big Euro action, which seems to be in Northern Italy, Munich and round and about. He wants (and needs?) sponsorship style deals but he also wants to train and concentrate on the Rio Olympics in 2016.

And Battersea and other things? his mum lives on the Dodd, and his gran (and for a while he) lived in Este Road until she died fairly recently at the age of 102. He has a girlfriend called Jordan, no not that one, and enjoys himself listening to 50 Cent – no I hadn’t heard of him either but he is a rapper called Curtis James Jackson III, better known as 50 Cent.