Councillor Tony Belton’s Latchmere June, 2016, Newsletter (# 85)

2.      Leonie Cooper, a Latchmere councillor (2006-10) and chair of Chesterton Governing Body until a couple of years ago, was also elected on the same day as the London Assembly Member (GLAM) for Merton and Wandsworth. I am sure there are quite a few Latchmere residents, who will remember her. Congratulations to her and best wishes for her next four years.

3.      A couple of days later, I went to the Youth Club in Petworth Road to talk through Battersea’s 20^th century history with a group of youngsters putting a play on about the subject. They performed it, called Fight, a couple of times at the Arts Centre. If it does return to the stage around here do go and see it.

Battersea Park

4.      Afterwards I went for a walk round Battersea Park. And what a beautiful day it was. This picture of the Park on 8^th May shows it in its finest spring finery, a great place for family fun. Not that it is only the Park that can look at its best in spring. Here is a canvassing session at Shepherd House, Winstanley Estate! (NB. I cant get this picture to appear!)

5.      And so it was another great moment when later in the month,  Formula E decided that enough was enough and that they should find somewhere else in the city for their London Grand Prix. So this year’s event in July will be the last in the Park for this major, but highly disruptive international event. Although the Battersea Park Action Group can claim much of the credit for forcing this change of heart, I can’t help feeling that the real motivation came from Formula E’s organisers themselves. From my experience at the event last year, there are just too many trees in the Park to make the Grand Prix a really good televisual experience and not even Wandsworth Tories could imagine cutting down all the trees in order to improve the camera shots.

6.      That however is jumping ahead of myself. On 10^th May Wandsworth Labour Group had a reshuffle. Our then Labour Leader, Rex Osborn, stood down because of health problems and my fellow Latchmere ward councillor, Simon Hogg, was elected our Leader. It will be interesting to see how he takes on the still powerful Tory controlled Council.

7.      The next day I went to the Council’s “Academies and Free Schools Forum”. It was a fascinating glance of just how the establishment operates if it has its way. The Forum is not a public meeting. There is no press access and the agendas are not public – it’s just rather important. The man from the Ministry came and told us in no uncertain terms what I guess we all know. Namely that, whilst the Government may have backed off the public commitment to force all schools out of local councils and into privately led academy chains, there is no question that such a route is the so-called “direction of travel”.

8.      In case you ever had any doubt, this Government is clearly set on abolishing the public sector – bar perhaps the armed forces and the police. One would have thought education was difficult to privatise but they are well on their way to achieving that end. How long for the NHS? Hazard a guess!

9.      One other interesting straw in the wind, I think, is the potential tie up between Chestnut Grove secondary and Chesterton primary schools in some kind of academy trust. Meanwhile, it seemed to me from the discussion that one special interest group in the current established educational set-up to have protected itself from the Government is the Roman Catholic church, whose schools seem to have avoided all threats – at least so far!

10.   Went away for a week-end with our grandchildren on the 14^th – had a great time and here are mother and Jamie, dad and Scarlett.

11.   On the 18^th we had the Annual Council Meeting, where my other fellow councillor, Wendy Speck, was appointed/elected Deputy Mayor. The formal position is that she is appointed by the Mayor, but in practice she was elected by the Labour councillors. Here she is celebrating with a glass of red wine and wearing the old Battersea Mayoral chain. For historical interest, when Battersea and Wandsworth were merged to become the modern Borough in 1964, the Wandsworth Mayoral chain became the new Mayoral chain and the Battersea one became the Deputy Mayor’s chain, making it rather grander than any other Deputy Mayoral chain that you will see anywhere. I think we might see quite a bit of it this year, starting with the June 25^th Falcon Festival – see below!

12.   The next day I had the Planning Applications Committee (PAC). By recent standards this was a relatively light agenda – is the London property market taking a breather? One application affects Latchmere and that was on the corner of Chesney Street and Battersea Park Road. It is for an OK development of a fairly scruffy site and should not be too contentious. Two others might interest Battersea residents, one being for the development of a very thin, 11-storey block of flats in Elcho Street, which might be considered as a step towards completing large developments on the river-front between Albert and Battersea Bridges or an over-scale, over-dense calamity, depending upon your perspective! The other was the refusal of an application to re-develop the old British Lion Pub. Interesting that one – PAC much to the surprise of some, I am sure, decided that the applicant was just trying to get too much on to too small a site and was trying it on.

13.   On the afternoon of the 20^th I went to St. Marks church, Battersea Rise, to hear a presentation from Wandsworth Foodbank on Food Poverty in Wandsworth. It was frankly shocking. They told us that the Trussell Trust, which runs foodbanks across the country, calculates that the use of foodbanks has increased by 2% this year, that in London it has increased by 5%, and that in Wandsworth it has increased by 25%. It is perhaps particularly ironic that St. Marks’ Foodbank, which is used extensively by quite a few Latchmere residents, is just a couple of hundred yards from Northcote Road, a street devoted to plentiful, and on occasions excessive, consumption of food and drink!

14.   In the last week of May, and no doubt in the first two weeks of June, I will be spending time trying to ensure that another of my colleagues Councillor Rosena Allin-Khan wins the Tooting by-election, following Sadiq’s win, and then, as will we all I trust, I will be concentrating on the European Referendum, but just before that I spent the last May week-end at the Hay-On-Wye Festival – very enjoyable and great weather unlike here these last few days! I am the one in all red!

My Programme for June

1.      On Sunday, 12^th, I am leading one of my history walks from the Latchmere pub to Battersea Arts Centre. This event is part of the Wandsworth Heritage Festival. If you are interested, then do come but it would be helpful if you could drop me an email first and I will let you know time and details for meeting. It costs £10, which I hope will not put you off.

2.      Then on the 16^th is the Tooting by-election and on 23^rd the Referendum.

3.      On the 25^th we have the brand new Falcon Festival, centred on Falcon Road and Este Road, with special mention for Coppock Close. The whole show will be opened by Wendy Speck, our Deputy Mayor, at mid-day, and there will be lots of food and drink, of course, but also other entertainments and stalls. If you see me, I will be doing a Battersea history show in conjunction with the Heritage Library and Battersea Society. Do come up and introduce yourself.

4.      With all this going on, and the traditional close down of Wandsworth Council for elections, we will not be getting back to the Planning Committee (PAC) until 27^th, immediately followed by the Education Committee on the 28^th, the Passenger Transport Liaison Group on the 29^th and the police Special Neighbourhood Team on the 30^th!

Did you know?

The horse trough, I highlighted last month, is of course in Cabul Road, opposite about no.11.

I have to thank my good friend, Christine Eccles, for this difficult one. Here is a photograph of a grand building that stood on the north-side of York Road, just east of Lombard Road, until demolished in the 1960s, having been bought by the Council in 1963. It was replaced, on a different but nearby site, by a building many residents go into on every election day. Can you guess what it was and where its replacement is?

Another picture, discovered by

Christine, was this great c. 1882-5 picture of the shop run by Arthur & Lucy Layzell, at 80 Maysoule Road.

The prices, you can clearly see, for eggs, bread, etc., are 2 shillings and sixpence, 2/-, 1/8d, etc. Which in modern terms would be the equivalent of 12.5P, 10P and 8.4P. How very different Battersea looked back then!