Councillor Tony Belton’s North Battersea December, 2016, Newsletter (#91)
1. On 1st November, I went to the Battersea Society’s organised debate at York Gardens Library on Affordable Housing. The speakers were 
Lord Bob Kerslake of the Peabody Trust and Councillor Paul Ellis, Wandsworth’s Tory Cabinet Member. It was well attended, but frankly I was a little disappointed. Lord Kerslake told us just how awful the housing situation is for those without their own, secure roof over their heads (he added statistical detail but we all know the “truth”) and both he and Councillor Ellis talked about what Peabody and the Council were doing to resolve the “crisis”. However, as one of the audience said, their contributions are woeful, relative to the scale of the problem. Something much bigger than their worthy but small schemes is needed now!
2. Then on 2nd November, I was off to Wembley to see
my team, Spurs, give an embarrassingly lame performance (0-1) against Germany’s Bayern Leverkusen. You may well ask – Spurs and you get elected in Battersea! My explanation is that I was a kid in Tottenham and that loyalty never dies! But I must say, I don’t really like Wembley, at least for watching soccer. It is so enormous that the players are specks of colour on a green handkerchief in the distance; it’s nothing like as atmospheric as White Hart Lane. I do so much hope that the new Lane is more like the old one than it is to Wembley.
3. Last month, I said I was going to have tea with William Mitchell, the sculptor 
who did the concrete sculptures on the Winstanley estate and on Badric Court. I did so in his Marylebone flat on 4th November. He was eloquent about how he wanted to create artworks, which relate to the estate, and interestingly, where and how he did the work, which was mainly on site, using the materials that
the construction guys were using at the time. I think his murals do work and interestingly they are and always have been remarkably free of graffiti. The pictures show him, looking sprightly at the age of 90 and another of his sculptures, which adorns that I had forgotten also adorn Totteridge House, Yelverton Road. Oh, and his wife made a great cup of tea.
4. On 8th November I was at the Share Community Annual Awards in the Town Hall. What an amazing organisation Share Community is! It works with and trains people with disabilities, some quite severe and others less so. But almost all their “clients” have serious problems coping with everyday activities.
I admire the staff’s dedication and perhaps most of all their loving patience. I know that I would probably lose my rag with some of the clients some or most of the time. I guess that it helps that the atmosphere in the “share community” is so warm and positive. Here are Wandsworth’s Mayor Richard Field, and Share Chief Executive, Annie McDowell, appreciating one of the musical numbers performed.
5. And on 9th November, I was at the Council’s so-called Let’s Talk meeting at Bolingbroke School. These meetings were an interesting innovation in the 1990s and were designed to give Jo & Joanna Public a chance to meet and discuss with their local elected representatives. I was at the first one in 2001, in Roehampton. But now the meetings seem to have atrophied. At this one there were more councillors and officers than members of the public and all of the public who were there were “the usual suspects”, who the councillors all knew quite well. There needs to be a “re-think”!
6. The Queenstown ward by-election did take 
place on 10th November and I spent much of my time driving, usually elderly or infirm people, to the polling stations. But the significant thing is that “our man”, Aydin Dikerdem, won by 574 votes, in what, for Queenstown, was a landslide. The last time a Labour candidate had a majority this big in that ward was 1974! Well done Aydin. Here is Aydin, with his agent Battersea resident Amy Merrigan.
7. I was at the Remembrance Day Service in
Battersea Park on Remembrance Day itself. As is usually the case, by some strange quirk of the weather gods, the day was beautiful and bright. It was a good experience and led me into a peaceful moment of contemplation, not least about the futility and waste of the once so-called Great War. Fellow Councillor Simon Hogg is to be seen in the middle left deep in conversation with the military.
8. The fund-raising dinner in Providence House, on the Falcon Road, on 12th November was a fun event, which made over £4,000 for the club. “Providence” is by far Latchmere’s largest youth club and deserves to be suppo
rted. Here is a picture of the Providence House farm on Dartmoor, where many of the club members get an opportunity to stay and “muck in” around the farm.
9. I took my grand-children to London Zoo on Sunday 13th. Here we are plus three giraffes, courtesy of a tourist, like us. I am on the left then there’s Pen, Scarlett, Melissa, Jaimie and Jez.
10. I had an uneventful Conservation Area Advisory 
Committee on 14th November and 2 days later the Planning Applications Committee, which was dominated by discussion of the plan to install an artificial grass pitch in the southern part of Falcon Park. Wandsworth Council planners claimed that the new pitch would only take up 22% of the park, but that really is a case of proving anything with figures as at least another 18% of the park will become such fringe areas as to be almost unusable, resulting in about 40% of the whole, effectively being lost. I, of course, voted against this proposal but I am afraid that it went through by 5 Tory councillors’ votes to 3 Labour votes. In this illustration the pitch is olive green and the “usable” area of the park is in light green and it clearly shows the difficulty of fitting a rectangular quart into a banana shaped park.
11. Did you notice that from November 18th the 319 Bus started a Night Service. On its route between Streatham Hill and Sloane Square station it runs right through the heart of North Battersea and also stops at Tooting Bec tube station. Running every 30 minutes it will be a boon to all night-owls.
12. One worrying prediction about the future is the National Union of Teachers (NUT) and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (AST)’s assessment of what is going to happen to school staffing and budgets by 2020, which is after all only just over 3 years away. Across the country school budgets are going to be cut by an average of £401 per pupil per primary school budget and yet locally Falconbrook is taking a £752 hit, Christ Church £840, Highview £810 and Westbridge a jaw-dropping £960 cut. It really does look as though this Government is looking after schools in the leafy parts of the country and making us, in the inner cities, pay. The total cut for Battersea schools is just over a whopping £4 million a year.
My Programme for December
1. On 1st December, I have a meeting of Wandsworth’s Labour councillors. We have them every couple of months, which I don’t think is often enough, but it is our chance to get together and discuss how we are going to tackle the long-term Tory dominance of the Borough. As someone, who has not been able to solve that one for 40 years, I am of course the expert. But with Brexit to the east and Trump to the west, I don’t think that Labour positioning itself as simply a more caring, moderate version of Toryism is going to appeal any more, even if it ever did.
2. On Monday, 5th December, I am standing in for Simon as the Labour Rep on the St. Mary Park “Let’s Talk” session at St. John Bosco College in St. Mary Park ward. It will be interesting to see just what the new school is like.
3. Then on Wednesday, 6th December, we will have a full Council Meeting. I would no doubt be in mental anguish if, I were there having to listen to the nonsense emanating from Tory mouths (we, Labour councillors, are of course all geniuses), but actually I’ll be in physical anguish getting used to my new metal left knee, fitted that morning. And to be truthful I rather suspect that is my December but if things go really well then…….?
4. I will be back in the Town Hall for the 
Planning Applications Committee on the 14th December. The application for the corner site of Culvert and Battersea Park Roads is likely to be the major item of discussion. If you haven’t yet recorded your views, for or against, then now is the time to do so at https://planning1.wandsworth.gov.uk/Northgate/PlanningExplorer/GeneralSearch.aspx and look for application 2016/4188.
Do you know?
Last month I asked you, “Who was Hilda Hewlett, commemorated by a plaque on a Battersea house and one time resident of Park Mansions, Prince of Wales Drive? Was she the first woman:
a) Licensed pilot in the UK?
b) To run 100 yards in 13 seconds?
c) To star opposite Lambeth born star Charlie Chaplin?”
A couple of you got it right straight-away but not many knew. She was, of course, the first licensed female pilot in the UK. If I remember rightly it was in 1910 and she was actually only the 10th licensed UK pilot at all. She went on to start her own Battersea aircraft factory, with many of her planes playing an important part in the First World War. Later, she retired to a peaceful life in New Zealand.
And so for this month’s mystery question!
On 28th November, I received this remarkable picture from my friend Christine Eccles.
It shows an historic event in Battersea, which certainly was unknown to me. There is a road sign to give a clue as to where it is and the clothing gives a pretty good indication of the period, but can anyone suggest anything more specific about the date and who is standing on the traditional soap box addressing the crowd?
Tony Belton
Tony Belton 