Councillor Tony Belton’s Latchmere May Newsletter (# 60)

 2010-14 highlights 1.  I guess to most this May is much like any other May. Nice and sunny, we hope, very spring-like – good to be alive territory. But for some of us, including me, it is a bit different. This is the last month of the 2010-14 Council and, one never knows, possibly my last month as a councillor – it all depends upon you on election day, 22nd May. 2.  So, I thought this month I would highlight my pick of the most important moments of 2010-14. I have to start, of course, with the early announcement after the 2010 Borough Election that the Tories planned to close York Gardens Library.  Others will have other memories but I recall a discussion between Simon Hogg, Wendy Speck (my fellow councillors) and I when we decided that we had to call a public meeting at the library to fight the closure. Wendy and Simon had only been councillors for a couple of months so we decided that I had to Chair the meeting, which I was more than glad to do and which I am doing here. 3.  In the November, 2010, issue of this newsletter I wrote “And indeed we did not have to wait long  (for Tory Council cuts), since that very day (6^th November, 2010) we received early notice of the Council’s intention to close York Gardens Library. The local community was quick to campaign against this closure with petitions and a public meeting at the Library on Sunday, 5 December, at 2 pm. Do come if you can but if not please write to Cllr Lister (the then Leader of the Council), Wandsworth Town Hall, to protest at the closure of the library, which is in the poorest and most deprived area in the Borough.” 4.  In the December issue I went on to write that, “It was a very successful meeting in that 130 people were there. There were excellent contributions from many local residents and between us we wrote maybe 50 letters objecting to the proposal. We have also collected about 2,000 signatures on petitions. A few Conservative councillors attended but they kept very quiet. However, I think that the meeting had quite an impact on the Council and I sense that the Council is now trying very hard to come up with a compromise which saves the library and so it should. The Council’s own papers show that a higher proportions of children use the library for homework than in any other library in the Borough. Given the extent of over-crowding in Latchmere we can all guess why that would be but it demonstrates just how important the library is to Latchmere.” 5.  As we all now know the campaign was a great success and the library, now often just called YGL, is run by a local management committee on behalf of the local community. My colleague Wendy Speck is a member of the Management team. By the way there had been a long-running battle between the Tory Council and the local community over the library. The first campaign to save, what was then, the Winstanley Children’s Library was fought in 1981! The Community defended it then just as it did 30 years later in 2011. 6.  The main event of 2011, I hesitate to call it a highlight, was of course the riots that took place across London and in Clapham Junction on 6^th August, 2011. I produced my one and only special edition of this newsletter to mark the occasion. Here are a couple of the photographs that I took the day after. 7.  It was, of course, a terrible day and had a profound effect, of which more later. One immediate result was that it put me in the front-line against the eviction of innocent Council tenants. The news centred on one lady and her 8 year-old daughter, who was going to be evicted because her 17 year old son was arrested in Clapham Junction. I was not, of course, defending criminal activity, but when the courts eventually imposed a one year prison sentence on the rather silly young man it seemed a bit extreme (to me and to many others) to evict the mother and the totally innocent 8 year-old. I suspect not too many people would be happy to have their security of tenure totally in the hands of their 17 year-old sons! In the end the Council backed down and after a bad 6 months inside young Daniel has become a very nice, caring young man. 8.  I was interviewed on this case by many foreign newspapers and TV channels, especially in Spain, France and French Canada. They really found it very difficult to believe that here, in the UK, we could think of evicting whole families because of the “criminality” of one member of the family. I was also proud of the speech I made in Council on the issue, which if you are really interested you can see at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQukL9XxxYk. I am speaking between 0.40 and 11 minutes 26 of the video! 9.  The biggest news of 2012, as I wrote in March of that year, “was the Council’s decision to “spend” £100 million on Latchmere and Roehampton wards …at the same time (as) the Big Lottery has also allocated a separate £1 million to Latchmere.” The Council said it was not, of course, a response to the riots, indeed it was claimed to be despite the riots but we can all apply a pinch of salt to that lie/propaganda. What might surprise some is that now 2 years later we do not appear to be very much closer to action on the ground in the so-called estate regeneration. I suspect, however, that appearances are deceptive and that after the election there will be fairly rapid moves. I hope the vast majority of the residents will be happy with the plan but many are aware that some of the residents of the smaller Winstanley Estate blocks are not at all keen on possible demolition.. 10.  The Big Lottery grant is also still going through a planning process. There have been several successful events organised in York Gardens and the Wilditch, but I sense a little frustration amongst those of us involved in the planning group that we have not yet found the “Great idea”, which will make our Big Local something unique. 11.  My highlights of 2013 were very personal! First there was the trip that we three Latchmere councillors, Wendy Speck, Simon Hogg and myself, made to Palestine in February, which as I said at the time had nothing to do with Latchmere, Battersea or Wandsworth, but it was certainly packed with interest. Here is a picture of the three of us with a banner given to us by the Mayor of Hebron.  (As I said then, before any cynics out there think otherwise, it was all paid for out of our own pockets and had nothing to do with the Council!). The trip did give me a chance to take my picture of the year, and here it is – a cactus caught by the flash-light in the Judean desert at sunset, high above Bethlehem – and, oh my,  was it cold. So cold in fact, I got shingles on this trip and very painful and unpleasant it was too, but at least it went after 3 months! Worse in September when I, and my partner, went on a cycling tour of Holland, our bikes were stolen in Amsterdam and I got streptococcal G poisoning in my left knee, after what seemed at the time a rather slight bump. (I am in the centre of this picture in Delft) That resulted in me spending a couple of weeks in St. George’s, feeling as though I was at death’s door! It made the shingles pain seem minor! So to use the Queen’s description of 1992 (the year of the great fire at Windsor Castle) as her “annus horribilis” then I would say the same about 2013! 12.  And so to 2014. Well, of course, the major highlight will be the May 22nd election – or at least I hope it will be but to get back to the more day-to-day, I do want to mention a couple of other things. 13.  The March figures for use of the Bike docking stations have been very encouraging. No doubt the great spring weather made a difference but use of the bikes went up 83% in March, with individual increases ranging from over 100% in Grant Road to only 67% in Fawcett Close – encouraging but there are still some with only small levels of usage. (Oh, I have been on them twice in the last few weeks!) 14.  Many of you will not have seen the 4^th May copy of the Observer. In the main section of the paper a full page 19 article is about Providence House Youth Club, which is celebrating its 50^th anniversary with a Saturday 10^th May party. The success of the Club was originally down to the pioneering work of Elizabeth Braund, who died in 2013 and who I featured in this newsletter (June, 2013), but I want to praise Robert Musgrave, the volunteer youth worker, who has been totally committed to the Club for since going there first in 1973. 15.  The Planning Applications Committee on the 14^th April had a massively, stupid 530 page agenda, with lots of very chunky applications although not affecting Latchmere directly. The largest two were about the Power Station site and Market Towers at Vauxhall, just inside the Borough boundary. I don’t know whether you know it but Vauxhall is just about to become a mini-Manhattan, but I am afraid that it is a development aimed solely at the mega-rich, international business world and will have very little to do with local residents! 16.  Finally, it has been a hopeless ambition of mine to get the station named, as it should be Battersea Junction and not, Clapham Junction. If anyone doubts me then look at the boundaries of Battersea parish, look at where Battersea District Reference Library and where Battersea Town Hall (now the arts centre) are. Well I may not have succeeded in getting it renamed but after many years of trying here am I and Wendy Speck celebrating the strapline, Clapham Junction, the Heart of Battersea. My Programme for May  1.  Of course there is, as ever, there will be the Planning Applications Committee on the 8^th, preceded on the 7^th by the final Council Meeting of this four-yearterm.. However, for me and my colleagues there will simply be more and more election campaigning. So give us a wave if you see us about – it’s just part of the process! Oh, and if you swear and curse at having your TV viewing disturbed and exclaim that we are all the same, oh and in it only for the money, just give a thought: “Would you rather live in a country where the only way to change a government was by war or revolution?”  Just what do you know about war-time, Battersea? A couple of weeks ago, I was canvassing a couple of elderly ladies on the Winstanley Estate, who told me about the area before the estate was built and particularly of their memories of the war-time bombing. And although I covered this a couple of months ago I thought it worth reminding you of what a pounding Battersea got during the war. The ladies remembered in particular Speke and Livingstone Roads, which I gather stood more or less where John Parker Square is today. And although I haven’t got a photograph of what happened when they were hit by a V1 here is another of Winston Churchill visiting Nine Elms after a particularly savage attack. PS I just wondered whether the photographer of Christ Church, in last month’s edition was John Archer, the first black mayor? He had a photographer’s business in Battersea Park Road at the time of that picture. But I don’t know. “Promoted and published by Sean Lawless on behalf of Tony Belton, Simon Hogg & Wendy Speck, all at 177 Lavender Hill, Battersea, SW11 5TE”