March 1, 2017  

Councillor Tony Belton’s Latchmere March, 2017, Newsletter (# 94)

  1. I open with an apology! I did not, last month, mention Battersea Labour Party’s great Jazz night on 22nd January at the Clapham pub, The Bread and Roses. We were entertained by Junction Jazz with our star guest vocalist Rosena Allin-Khan, who of course is also now Tooting’s M.P. as well as being my fellow Bedford ward councillor. Here is Rosena accompanied by Nikki Marsh on the clarinet.
  2. On the 1st February, there was a special Council Meeting with just one item on the agenda, and that was a technical, financial paper setting the background of next month’s Council budget, when a 3.99% increase in Council Tax will be announced. I took the opportunity to denounce the state of local government taxation and finances – whatever your attitude to taxation, too much, too little, to be avoided, as inevitable as death, as the old saying goes, the fact is that Council Tax is grossly unfair in that the poor, on average, pay considerably more in proportion to their income than do the rich. For that reason, Council Tax is known as a regressive tax.
  3. Whilst on the subject of tax, the new business rates table was produced in February. It is a massive table, which I couldn’t possibly reproduce here but it does illustrate the vagaries of the system, which have resulted in a lot of recent press coverage. For example, 123 businesses in Latchmere ward have had reductions in their business rates, in some cases of over £5,000 per year. On the other hand 87 businesses have had increases, with 9 having had increases of over £10,000 and in one case an increase of over £36,000! Frankly I see no rhyme nor reason for these variations! So if your local shopkeeper has a good old moan at you – listen sympathetically and tell him/her to write to the M.P. and complain!
  4. On the 2nd February, I stood in for Simon Hogg, Labour Leader, at the Fairfield Let’s Talk meeting in St. Anne’s church hall, pictured here. I’m not sure that I would have mentioned it except for the many public complaints about over-development on the Homebase site near Wandsworth Town station. I don’t know how many of you are aware of the scale of the high-rise developments approved in York Road in the last year, but I can guarantee that the area will see massive changes in the next few years – see, for example, paragraphs 11 & 12 below.
  5. On the 9th I attended a Kambala Estate “wine and cheese” party. The weather was atrocious, cold and wet, which may have cut turn-out, but for those few who did turn up it was a pleasant evening.
  6. The next morning was Maurice Johnson’s funeral at Christchurch, Battersea Park Road. I have already posted an obituary of Maurice, my fellow Latchmere councillor from 1990-2010 at https://tonybelton.wordpress.com/2017/01/31/obituary-maurice-johnson/ and so I won’t repeat that but suffice to say that there was a very large congregation to see Maurice off, both from his family and the community but also from councillors of both political hues. At the funeral, I joined members of his family in saying a few words about his time as a councillor and his civic commitment. Here is his cortege making his last journey through Latchmere.
  7. On the 15th I was invited to Caius House to attend a meeting of Penge House residents and the Wandsworth Council team responsible for its modernisation. Although I did not go, I understand that there was a similar meeting for Inkster House residents the following week. They both worked well and appeared to be much appreciated.
  8. On Thursday, 16th February, I had the Community Services Committee, which considered a host of papers, but the one that caught my eye was the decision to bring the re-surfacing of Petergate up the Council’s work programme and to ensure that it is in next year’s, i.e. April-March, programme. That is a cause to congratulate local campaigner, Jane, for her tireless lobbying for Petergate – proof that persistence occasionally has its victories!
  9. The 20th February Housing Committee was entirely devoted to the next stage of the York Road/Winstanley estate regeneration. Yet again this covered procedural matters, but the Council is now getting within a few weeks of signing a contract to proceed with this massive project. With luck and a following wind, work will start on Penge and Inkster Houses around the turn of the year, proceeding later in 2018 with Pennethorne House. The project was first announced in early 2012, after the August, 2011, Clapham Junction riots, and now five years later we are within a year of physical improvements beginning to happen – Phew! It’s a long process, but inevitable, I guess, when the total project is as large as this one is and when there has been a lot of consultation and discussion.
  10. The next day, 21st February, Battersea Labour Party had as its guest speaker Lord Alf Dubs. Alf, who was Battersea’s MP from 1979-87, was presented with our informal award as Parliamentarian of the Year, 2016, for his work for child refugees and his tireless campaigning for their cause. For those of you who might not know, Alf was himself a child refugee (part of the Kindertransport) from Hitler’s Germany in 1938. Here he is telling us about his struggle to persuade the Government to let in 3,000 child refugees – for interest the much poorer UK of 1938 took in 10,000 child refugees from Central and Eastern Europe.
  11. This month’s Planning Applications Committee meeting was on 23rd February. There were two applications that were of particular interest in North Battersea, though both were amendments of previously approved applications. The first was the plan for an 8-storey block of flats on the old Savoy Theatre, or Shell garage site on York Road. As I have said before, but it is worth repeating, this was where this magnificent cinema stood prior to being destroyed by a V2 in 1944. The change in this application is the omission of the garage.
  12. The second application was to increase the size of the very large 800-unit development on the gasholder site, next to the Dogs’ Home, to over 900 dwellings. Interestingly this increase of 116 units is largely achieved by more efficient use of space, in particular reducing the height of the individual storeys in the 26 storey blocks so as to squeeze in two extra floors – we were assured that the ceilings will still be high enough!
  13. Earlier in the month I went to see La La Land – what was all the fuss about? I thought the first half was a bit boring and the second OK, but certainly it doesn’t deserve an Oscar in my book; at least they got that right at the awards ceremony! Give me a Fred and Ginger musical any day, or Gene Kelly, or Chicago or one of my favourites amongst musicals, the little-known City of Angels.
  14. On 24th February I went to see a 1962 play, namely Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? It was at the Harold Pinter Theatre and the leads were Imelda Staunton and Conleth Hill. It was brilliant and they were brilliant. Get to it if you can but if that’s not possible get the 1966 film starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. It’s a searing portrait of a dysfunctional but weirdly loving, loveless marriage. It’s a tough watch but it is a classic amongst films.
  15. On 26th February, I took myself off to the Victoria and Albert Museum (the V&A) to see an exhibition called Revolution. No, not the one 100 years ago, in St. Petersburg but the one 50 years back in Carnaby Street, London. Quite a thought for me that the Sixties Revolution of my university and immediately post-university days is exactly halfway back to the Russian Revolution! But, I didn’t find the rehash of great music, record covers, revolutionary chic (full of Mao, Fidel, Che images), etc., particularly inspiring – perhaps it’s all still too real to be in a museum – for me anyway.
  16. However, what I would say is, if you don’t know them, or seldom go there, “Do go to Exhibition Road and visit the V&A, or the Science Museum or the Natural History Museum.” There are amazing things there, and the 345 bus goes from the Junction almost to their front-doors. If you are not at home with museums, then just go in to the V&A (it’s free entry) and enter the first room on the right and spend 30 minutes, looking at the artefacts, sculptures and altar pieces from the ancient world. It’s got to be worth 30 minutes of anyone’s time.
  17. On the 28th February, I went to Honeywell School to attend a meeting of locals, from the Northcote Road area, protesting about the Council’s plans to redevelop the Northcote Road Library. The Council was consulting on a proposal to demolish and rebuild the library and Chatham Hall both to modernise them and to get rid of asbestos in the library building; with associated shops and 17 flats, which are designed to pay for the work. To say that the proposals were not popular with the 30 or so people, who turned up, would be an under-statement!
My Programme for March
  1. On 8th March, there is a full Council Meeting, when we will be debating Wandsworth’s budget. I have already said that the increase will be 3.99% – we already know that – but this is where we debate the rights and wrongs of that. Once upon a time the actual increase was kept secret until the last moment but those days are long gone.
  2. The day after, 9th March, I have a meeting of the Met Police Safer Neighbourhood Team at the George Shearing Centre, Este Road.
  3. On 14th March, I will be at Wandsworth’s Conservation Area Advisory Committee.
  4. And on the 19th March, I am going with a couple of friends to a last sentimental visit to the real White Hart Lane. For those, who don’t know it, I have been a Spurs supporter for years and years, despite representing a North Battersea ward, which is only a stone’s throw from Stamford Bridge. My excuse is that, when I was 6-8 years old, I lived quarter of a mile from the Lane. My first ever game, that I can recall, was in the 1948 Olympics (how many people have been to both the 1948 and the 2012 London Olympics?). The game, I must have seen according to Google, was the quarter-final, when Sweden the gold medallists that year beat Austria 3-0.
  5. I have the Planning Applications Committee on the 23rd.

Do you know?

Last month, one of my readers, Ian asked, “Our canine friend here, in his original form, caused a cataclysmic event in the past. Firstly, who is the fellow, where is he situated? Also, what was that cataclysmic event?”

The answer was, of course, the Little Brown Dog, whose death by vivisection caused the 1907 Brown Dog Riots with over 1,000 demonstrators in Trafalgar Square. This statue, which I am afraid, Ian, I don’t like stands in Battersea Park, whilst the much better original shown right was the centre-piece of Latchmere’s Recreation Ground until stolen and smelted down by the “Anti-Doggers” during the night of 10th December, 1907.

A number of people got that right but what about the next question, which is not exactly a puzzle but a genuine request for information. My fellow councillor, Simon Hogg, came across this fascinating picture of a bridge built during the war and linking Battersea Park to the end of Royal Hospital Road, Chelsea. It was apparently built as a back up to Chelsea and Albert Bridges in case either of them were put out of action by German bombing raids.

Simon says that in 1948 it was taken down and shipped to Uganda, then of course, part of the British Empire. The questions that arise include: Do you remember this bridge? Did you ever cross it? Do you know where in Uganda it ended up? Do you know anything about it? Were there other back-up bridges elsewhere in London?

About Tony Belton

Labour Councillor for Latchmere Ward 1972-2022, now Battersea Park Ward, London Borough of Wandsworth Ever hopeful Spurs supporter; Lane visit to the Lane, 1948 Olympics. Why don't they simply call the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, The Lane? Once understood IT but no longer

Leave a comment