January 21, 2019  

Councillor Tony Belton’s January, 2019, Battersea Newsletter (#115)

  1. On 5th December, there was a Wandsworth Council Meeting, which has become, I am afraid, inconsequential. Why so? Both the frequency and length of Council meetings have been much reduced since I first became a councillor. Hence all the business has been taken out of them, and they have been cleansed of all the controversy, and all the interest, and all the drama.
  2. Since Tony Blair’s disastrous reform of local government structures, Council Meetings are the only political forum where the Leader can (sort of – it’s like Prime Minister’s Questions, like May, Wandsworth’s Leader doesn’t really answer the question) be held to account or, if you like, challenged to justify his/her policies. The Leader of Wandsworth Council, Councillor Govindia, is not on any Committee, where he can be given the kind of grilling that is the life-blood of traditional British politics.

  3. The old Council Meeting procedure may have been an out-dated process but nothing has replaced it. Govindia is indeed, what Lord Hailsham predicted 40 years ago, an elected dictator (of the Council). PS This is not a party-political point! Labour Leaders in other Boroughs are in a similar position, as indeed is Labour’s Leader of the Opposition, my Latchmere colleague Simon Hogg. We must either restore the old functions of the Council Meetings or put Leaders back into Committees. We must make Leaders regularly accountable once more – and not just at an election, once every four years.

  4. The next day Battersea Labour Party ran a Battersea’s Got Talent marsha & ajb as santacompetition at the Labour Club in Falcon Road. The judges were our MP, Marsha de Cordova, and Yours Truly masquerading as Santa Claus. Frankly, I was really surprised by the high quality of some of the performances, especially from our juggler, Ben. It was such an unusual display but, unfortunately due no doubt lyons peteto a lack of practice, there were a few dropped catches. So, we decided to award the first prize to our saxophonist, Pete Lyons, and his accompanist, on the trumpet, Martin Linton – formerly Battersea’s MP.

  5. On 7th December, the Labour councillors had a Christmas dinner at Latchmere’s Fish in a Tie restaurant. I was persuaded to join the wilder, and maybe slightly younger, spirits of the party for further drinks at the Revolution Bar in Clapham Junction. I was rather surprised to be accosted by the bouncers with a demand for my ID, it being some time since I had to prove that I am over 17. But having got “my party” in, I must confess that I decided to walk home and leave them to it.

  6. A group, called the Friends of friends of christchurch gardensChristchurch Gardens, organised an al fresco morning barbecue on Sunday, 9th December. The aim of the Group is to help tend and care for the Gardens on the corner of Cabul and Battersea Park Roads. It is, of course, the Council’s responsibility but, especially in these “austerity times” it is also for the local community to respond – and the community has in this case; 30-40 people turned up. Good luck to the Friends in the future.

  7. Talking of which, have you come across a Group called The Plog-olution? I don’t like the name, either; but it is an interesting local development. According to its web-site this group started in Putney and was a spontaneous public reaction to the parlous state of our public spaces. I came across maybe 20 of them, all tee-shirted, jogging around Clapham Common, collecting bags and bags of litter as they went. They have scoured the Thames riverside and Putney Heath, amongst other local public spaces. It is a fast-growing and spontaneous reaction to cuts in public expenditure – look them up at www.plogolution.com.

  8. The Planning Applications Committee, on the 13th December, was dominated by an application for a large development on the corner of Lombard and York Roads. Readers might know the site because it is currently occupied by a Halfords Store and a Pet Store. The proposal is to demolish the existing buildings and replace them with a six storey self-storage facility, including artists’ studios and so-called flexible office space plus a 4, 6, 8, 13 and 20 storey development of 168 residential units with ground floor shopping and 71 office spaces on the first and second floors. The proposal would also include 64 basement car parking spaces and 344 cycle parking spaces, plus ground floor parking and loading space for the self-storage building and surface level access and service areas. At the same time there will also be landscaped areas including the formation of a new square on Lombard Road and widened, landscaped footways. You might like me, wonder how all this will fit onto this relatively small site. I am not quite sure even having seen all the plans!

  9. The Lombard/York/Plough Road junction area is clearly destined to become, or already is, the centre of a number of very sizeable developments. The area will soon be very different from what it was five years ago and a good job too. Then it was, one has to admit, blighted and ramshackle. But I am concerned that we do not get simply more expensive and largely empty “boxes in the sky”. If the current down-turn in the property market continues beyond Brexit, as surely it will, then these massive developments are in danger of becoming expensive white elephants, loved by some but very unpopular with many.

  10. On 14th December, our MP, Marsha de Cordova, unveiled a blue plaque charlotte despard plaqueto Charlotte Despard on the Battersea Labour Party’s office at 177 Lavender Hill. Despard, who stood as the Labour Party candidate for the General Election exactly 100 years earlier in 1918, donated 177 to the party. During her long life, she was not only a suffragette but a doughty campaigner against many right-wing and for as many left-wing causes. For those, who are interested you can read ‘Why is the Remarkable Charlotte Despard not Better Known?’ in P Corfield’s blog at https://www.penelopejcorfield.com/monthly-blogs/.
  11. Afterwards there was a party anddespard plaque5 speeches just across the road in the Battersea Arts Centre. Speakers included Polly Toynbee, seen speaking here, Battersea’s own feminist campaigner Jeanne Rathbone and Sara Apps(Linton). It was a very successful event.
  12. One day in mid-steam train @ lmDecember, I was going along the Latchmere Road where I was captivated by this sight of a magnificent Steam Train, quietly sitting on the bridge. It was puffing gently, rather like a senior citizen relaxing with a big, fat cigar. It didn’t stay very long and, when it burst into action, it gave one just a little flavour of what Battersea must have been like before electric trains replaced these romantic but filthy monsters! This particular example regularly pulls an excursion train on trips out of Victoria.
  13. 20th December was a busy Christmas event day for me with the Battersea Park Rotary club lunch and the Battersea Society drinks in the evening at the Duke of Cambridge. It was encouraging to see lots of new blood at both events and both organisations seem to be in rude health.
  14. On Boxing Day, we went to Winchester to see daughter and son-in-law’s new house – very nice. In the afternoon, we walked, along with what seemed like every other resident of the city, up and over St. Catherine’s Hill, a steep if small hill commanding a great view over the Itchen Valley, the city and the mizmazecathedral. At the top there is an iron age fort and a charming cut pattern in the grass called the MizMaze, pictured here. It is old, but not so old, with best estimates suggesting that it was cut in the seventeenth century. It is a continuous 624 metre-long walk. I walked every step of the way – as you can see from the picture it was easy but did call for some self-discipline! However, I am afraid, St. Catherine’s Hill is so popular and so trampled on that I do think it is time someone started thinking about the need for ecological protection of both fort and Maze!
  15. We had actually done the same walk with the family on 2nd December. But then, it had been very wet and slippery on a firm chalk base. So, guess what? On the way down, Penny went head over heels and landed head first, fortunately, in a patch of soft, if soaking grass; and, immediately afterwards, I fell over and gave myself a black eye – and I wasn’t laughing at the time, as some unkindly suggested!
  16. Between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, we have been to a couple of shows, Company at the Gielgud Theatre, Shaftesbury Lane, on 28th and The Double Dealer at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond on 29th. Pen was a bit disappointed with the first, protesting that a musical really should have some dancing – she can be so traditional! But I must confess that I wasn’t smitten either. It was very cleverly staged and superbly directed, handling the constant change of players and sets with smooth professionalism. The quality of the songs and performances could not, however, make up for the lack of plot or character development.
  17. The Double Dealer was, however, completely different. Congreve’s Restoration Comedy (1693) is, like all Restoration Comedies, bawdy, slap-stick, enjoyable and wildly improbable. The plot changes with manic rapidity and is far too complex to follow – at least by me. A review of the play will appear shortly in the Criticks [sic] section of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies website at https://www.bsecs.org.uk/.
  18. The Orange Tree Theatre itself is a very intimate little theatre and one is literally in touching distance of the actors, who all seemed to be having great fun playing their parts. The theatre also has the great advantage of terrific convenience – for Battersea residents. You can easily be at Clapham Junction, platform 6, and in the theatre within 15 minutes and as the play runs until late January, why not give it a try?
  19. In the quieter period since Christmas I have done a bit of gardening and some thinking about the mess that the country and the political parties are in about Brexit. There seem to be very few options. I reckon that realistically there are four: a delay and extension of Article 50; May’s deal; a no deal Brexit; or an about turn engineered either by Parliament or a Second Referendum.
    1. The second option is May’s deal. It might work because everyone can see that it is, at least, a possibility, even if it is a worse option that staying in the EU as we are now. Any Labour fantasy that Jeremy Corbyn will be able to negotiate a better deal is precisely that – a fantasy, that surely not even the Labour Leadership can take seriously.
    2. The No-Deal Brexit option, once so beloved by Boris Johnson, is no longer taken seriously even by Liam Fox. The majority of Labour members especially here in London would be horrified. There is so much opposition to this option that it is likely, but not certain, to be a non-runner, but either way, Labour has no interest in it.
    3. Lastly, the About-Turn option could happen like a flash of lightening as MPs realise that this issue is bigger than their individual careers and ambitions. However, an About-Turn seems unlikely without either a Second Referendum and/or a General Election. In the event of either of those, then Labour’s position is likely to be decisive but only if it comes out with a strong Remain position. If Labour doesn’t do that, then it will be playing second fiddle, at best, to the Government and the Brexiters, and hence failing the primary duty of The Opposition and that is to oppose and pose an alternative for the public to choose. If Labour does come out for a strong Remain position, however, there will of course be serious issues to address in many parts of the country outside London, but these issues need to be tackled anyway. If Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party do not wake up to this challenge, then, in my view, we will never be forgiven.
    4. But there is one version of the About-Turn, which no one has addressed. In the nineteenth century Disraeli reversed traditional Tory Party when he famously and infamously “dished the Whigs” by stealing their policies and subsequently winning the General Election. What if May, similarly, suddenly declared that she had genuinely tried her best to deliver Brexit but could not command a majority in the House of Commons; that in fact the Leave campaign had not been proved viable; and that she was now going to keep the UK in the EU. My guess is that she would win the day!
    5. Given the terrible state of our politics, I guess we might well go for the first of these options – i.e. kicking the can further down the road. And maybe the EU will let us get away with that for a while. But just why should it; the EU has business to get on with too and Britain will soon be forced to decide between the other options. In this short-term play, the Government is likely to be the only player whilst others can only watch and comment.
  20. December has been a bad month for my old pal, Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, but an even worse one for senior management at Transport for London or TfL. Early in the month it was announced that Crossrail was going to be delayed by nine months – perhaps no surprise on such a mammoth project. But this announcement was so sudden and so late that questions need to be asked of TfL. Then at the end of the month, it was announced that the Northern Line Extension to Battersea Power Station was also delayed – this time by a year. I can’t help thinking, with Oscar Wilde, that one major delay might be bad luck but two seems like bad TfL management.
  21. I can’t help recalling too that, before it was abolished, the much but unfairly vilified GLC managed to build the equally massive Thames Barrier to time and under budget. I hope that the Thames Tideway Tunnel, which is having such a big impact on North Battersea follows the pattern of the Barrier and not those other projects! (Personal disclaimer: I worked for the GLC and am proud of it.)
  22. My colleague, Latchmere Councillor Kate Stock, is getting more and more concerned about the future of the York Gardens Children’s Centre. The Council is not as yet being very explicit about its future but it is clear that the services will be much reduced. I know she would appreciate support from you. So, please write to Councillor Govindia, Leader of Wandsworth Council rgovindia@wandsworth.gov.uk, copied to cllr.k.stock@wandsworth.gov.uk, I know she would appreciate it.
  23. Finally, I was pleased to hear that Victoria Rodney, of the Mercy Foundation, Falcon Road, received an MBE in the New Year’s Honours List. I was asked last spring to write a reference for Victoria in support of her nomination and was more than happy to do so. Victoria, largely out of her own pocket, established the Mercy Foundation to help and support some of the most disadvantaged people in our community, with teaching in English, basic IT and other skills. She is both a warm-hearted and loving person and a woman of considerable tenacity and drive. Congratulations, Victoria.

My Programme for January

  1. On 6th January, I have the Battersea Society’s Annual Dinner.
  2. On 8th January there is a meeting of Wandsworth’s Conservation Area Advisory Committee.
  3. And on the following day there is another lunch-time Opera Recital given by the international students of Wandsworth’s National Opera School. It is held in Wandsworth Town Centre and is usually about one hour long. It is some of the highest quality entertainment that can be had – entirely free!
  4. On Monday, 14th January we have the Honorary Aldermen Ceremony at the Town Hall. I must confess that I am a bit conflicted about this. Honouring councillors merely because they have been councillors for eight years, or is it 10 seems to me to smack just too much of what one old friend of mine would have called municipal tomfoolery. I have never been to the occasion, but as this year one of the recipients is my old Latchmere colleague, Wendy Speck, I might just make an exception!
  5. On the 24th January the Planning Applications Committee will end what, for me, is a light month.

Do you know?

My question last month was as the Battersea Chess Club claims to be the oldest, continuingly functional chess club in the country, when was the nearest date to its foundation 1850, 1900 or 1950? The club was actually founded in 1885 and so the correct answer was 1900.

And this month? In honour of Despard, name more than one building or institution (e.g. school or hospital) in Battersea named after a woman – excluding the Virgin, Mary?

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

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