1. February started very sombrely with Jim McKinney’s funeral. Jim was the vicar at Holy Trinity Church, Roehampton, and also the husband of my fellow Councillor Sue McKinney. Jim was a much-loved partner in this very, warm cheerful couple. His church, a very large one built when Roehampton was a very, quiet rural village, was absolutely packed with a congregation of some 800 people. I don’t think that I had ever before been to a vicar’s funeral: the bishop was there and maybe another 30 of the local clergy, and a very large cross-section of the Putney/Roehampton community. It was a moving event.
   

   ---

2. The Council Meeting on 6^th February set the scene for this month’s decision on Council Tax. The decision on Council Tax is actually a long-winded process putting together the current year’s accounts and therefore the current balances, with the plans from all the various committees, the amount of grants received from central government and the demands made upon the Council by Transport for London and the Metropolitan Police all combined with what current legislation allows Councils to do! It hardly makes for an exciting Council meeting! As I have said before, we really need to re-think the civic function of Council meetings. This atrophy must be bad for democracy!
   

   ---

3. On 7^th February, members of the Planning Applications Committee visited Battersea Power Station and toured the building. It is difficult not to be impressed by the scale of the development or indeed the views over the London skyline, but it still feels a long way from completion. The Power Station company has reduced the percentage of affordable housing that was planned; I have hopes, however, that the level of affordable housing will be restored. I met the Chief Executive and he certainly stated that was an objective that he wished to achieve! I hope that I am not being gullible, when I say that I believe him, let’s see.
   

   ---

4. On 7^th February, I was happy to help Battersea M.P., Marsha de Cordova, host an event at the House of Commons for some of her new constituents and new Labour Party members. I know Marsha would be delighted to welcome you and/or your neighbours to the House – you don’t need to be a member of any political party, so please do let me know if you are interested.
   

   ---

5. On 16^th, my neighbour, Amy Merrigan – pictured here – invited us to a play that she was helping to produce. The play, called Bottled, was staged at the Vaults, Leake Street, Waterloo and written by a young woman called Hayley Wareham. The location was stunning, in the old under-pass under the Waterloo railway tracks. Instead of the dark, dank walls I remember from some years back, graffiti artists have been left free to design the décor; for anyone who ever worked at County Hall, it will make an interesting trip! I wrote a glowing review of the play, which is about the impact of domestic violence, both physical and mental. The review is at https://tonybelton.wordpress.com/2019/02/19/bottled-a-play-by-hayley-wareham/
   

   ---

6. Earlier that day, I was calling on a constituent in Rowditch Lane and stopped to photograph these six new council houses. They are to be used to re-house tenants from the blocks on the Winstanley/York Road estate, which are due for demolition and reconstruction. The new houses are a welcome change from the semi-derelict, unused garages that were there before.
   

   ---

7. You quite possibly know that Hillary Clinton got far more votes in the 2016 Presidential Election than Donald Trump but still, obviously, lost – actually 2,600,000 more votes. In fact, 2 American Presidential elections out of 5 this century were won by the less popular candidate – on both occasions Republicans; Trump in 2016 and George Bush in 2000. But did you also know that on two occasions since the Second World War the party that won most votes in British General Elections also lost the election? In February, 1974, the Tories won just a few more votes than Labour but very narrowly lost the election. In 1951, Labour won 4.5% more votes but got 7 fewer MPs than the Tories. How does this happen? It happens in both the British and American systems when individual constituencies are of unequal size or characteristics.
   

   ---

8. You may well wonder what that’s got to do with Battersea or Wandsworth. Well twice in Wandsworth’s history, in 1986 and in 2018, Labour won more votes but got fewer councillors than the Tories. Fortunately, unlike the States, where the locally dominant party decides on constituency boundaries, we have an independent group appointed by Parliament called the Boundary Commissioners. So possibly the most important preparation Labour can take for the 2022 Borough Election is to put the best possible case to the Boundary Commissioners for ward boundary re-distribution – and that is what we are trying to do now! I am involved in a series of meetings, 3 last month, surrounded by maps and spreadsheets – great fun for nerds! The Tories, and Lib Dems and anyone else interested, are doing the same. All trying to put together the most convincing arguments they can find for the version of the boundaries that they prefer, whilst at the same time ensuring that the resulting constituencies are of approximately equal size. N.B at this stage we are considering Ward and not Parliamentary constituency boundaries.
   

   ---

9. This just may be the last time I write this newsletter when we are all fully-fledged members of the EU community. No doubt we all have slightly different views on this matter but for my part, I think that we are about to inflict the greatest act of self-harm on ourselves perpetrated by any European nation, since … Since when? Well perhaps the civil wars of the old Yugoslavian states, or GB and France’s attack on Suez in 1956. The fact that it is being largely led by the Conservative and Unionist Party is itself ironic as just one of the end results could be the end of the United Kingdom as we know it, if not immediately then within a decade or so. I hope Brexit still may be averted.

My Programme for March

1. On 1^st March, I am playing chess for Surrey against Essex! Never thought six months ago, that I would be doing that. Mustn’t leave you with the wrong impression though – it’s at quite a low-level grading!
2. On 5^th March, I am visiting the Tideway Tunnel works in York Gardens. I think I am going down into the Tunnel along which much of London’s sewage will be flowing in a few years time.
3. On 6^th March, we have the Council Meeting, where there will be a critical debate on GB’s role in Europe.
4. There will be a couple of further meetings about the electoral ward boundaries.
5. On Thursday, 21^st March, I will attend the Battersea Society AGM in St. Mary’s Church, where my partner, Prof Penny Corfield, will be giving an historical talk on the history of duelling. Several duels took place here in Battersea, including one notoriously involving the Prime Minister of the day!
6. On 23^rd March I will be on the big March campaigning for the UK to stay in the European Union. With luck we may still Remain.
7. The Planning Applications Committee is on 27^th March.
8. At 11 pm on 29^th March we are scheduled to be leaving the EU. I will be at a celebratory party, if we decide to stay, or a wake if we actually leave.

Do you know?

Last month, I asked whether anyone knew anything about the women commemorated in these names: Gladys Dimson Hall, the Yvonne Carr Centre, Joan Bartlett House, (Caroline) Ganley Court, (Nora) Clark-Lawrence Court, and Doris Emmerton Court. But not one person responded – where are all the feminists? Perhaps we are all exhausted with a year of celebrating the centenary of female suffrage. I know plenty about Dimson, Carr, Ganley and Clark-Lawrence but not Bartlett nor Emmerton. I would be genuinely interested if anyone does know about them.

Meanwhile, here is a question about a man who was connected with Battersea two hundred years ago. He was J Mallord Turner, the great artist. What are Battersea’s two connections with him?

1. Well, the contrast between political life in Wandsworth and in Westminster could hardly be greater and starker than it is now; dead as a Dodo right here and total mayhem in Parliament! But let’s start in Wandsworth. On 6th January, I went to the Battersea Society Annual Dinner: it was an enjoyable, social occasion but not party political in any way.

2. On 14th January, I could have gone to the Honorary Aldermen appointments evening “ceremony” in the Town Hall, but that is one bit of “municipal tom-foolery” that has never appealed to me. I don’t really see why one should be appointed an “honorary alderman” just for having been a councillor for ten year, which is the current qualification – count the years, never mind the real contribution. If my fellow councillor of the last eight years, Wendy Speck, had been appointed one, as I incorrectly said last month, then I might have gone. (Wendy had only been a councillor for 8 years and not 12 as I had thought).

3. On the 16th I went to Sacred Heart School primary school to see an Exhibition of the proposed “improvements” to Falcon (Banana) Park. It was well meaning enough, but, I thought, very much at a detailed level of planting and design – not, I think, an appropriate level for consultation. I hope the works get going before too long because at the moment, as locals will know, the Park is at a muddy, wintery preparations stage – as indeed is the all-weather pitch.

4. The Planning Applications Committee was on 24th January, and once again, had no large development applications of any note. There was, however, one interesting smaller application and that was for a four-storey block of flats behind All Saints Church, Wandsworth High Street. Whilst struggling with the traffic, most of us hardly notice this splendid church (built between 1630-1841). The Committee members wanted to re-assure themselves that the proposed new block of flats would not interfere with the view, unlike the block on the left in this photograph shown here. Most of us agreed that, unless one was on the top-deck of a double-decker bus, the view was safeguarded.

5. Meanwhile, whilst nothing much appears to be happening on the official, formal front of the Council (I mean in Committees or Council meetings), there is plenty of real politics bubbling along under the surface. Latchmere’s Councillor Kate Stock is helping the campaign to save all the facilities at the Children’s Centres in York Gardens and at the Yvonne Carr Centre. Depressingly, under the Tory’s crazy austerity policies, that looks a difficult task. Meanwhile, I speculate that the Tory councillors are wondering just how they are going to manage within next year’s government-reduced budget, without making politically damaging cuts – I doubt that they can do it. Come March/April I suspect that we will see many more cuts, and, I hope, more protests, too. Austerity is clearly damaging our society and we must do what we can to resist it.

6. The community is, however, re-acting to Government failure in many small ways. Last month, I mentioned the litter-picking group, Plog-olution, – a new group responding to the cuts in local authority parks cleaning services. Similarly, this month I have had a leaflet from another litter-picking group called Pick Up, which is leading a people’s campaign against single use plastics. If you are interested then visit them @pickuptheplasticnow, though I have to admit I did not find the website very user friendly.

7. What else? On January 2, Pen and I went to Ross-on-Wye to present a book, Time and History in Pre-history, to Ionwen Williams. How come? Well a couple of years back we went to the Hay Festival and on the way back I saw a sign to Arthur’s Stone in Herefordshire. We drove to the top of a nearby hill, where we found the “pre-historic” remains of the so-called Arthur’s Stone. I got out to take some pics and Pen struck up a conversation with a local farmer, who had personal memories, dating from the 1930s, of walking up to the Stone as a school-girl with her class and singing hymns to purge the pagan spirits. Pen was fascinated by Ionwen’s story so wrote an essay, on the stone’s five and a half millenia story. The essay, accompanied by a couple of my photographs, was published on 1st January in a book of essays by archaeologists.

8. Ross-on-Wye, by the way, is a pretty little market town on the Welsh borders and well worth an over-night stay, if you happen to be passing that way. On a cold and frosty 3rd January, the town looked a picture!

9. Since then, I have had a busy, but mildly disappointing month of shows and films. It started appropriately eleventh day of Christmas with Swan Lake at the Colosseum, lovely music, terrific dancing but stuck in a time warp; went on to the film called The Favourite, enthused over by many, including some of you, but not, I am afraid, by me; I was not prepared to suspend my credulity that far; then Anthony and Cleopatra at the National, which I thought wildly over-directed and over-acted rather as if the Director did not trust the writing, work of some bloke called Shakespeare; and finally to Tina, a homage to Tina Turner. I realise that modern musicals are meant to be loud and screechy but did it have to be quite so loud and screechy? I sound a bit curmudgeonly, like, “It wasn’t like that in my day!” But to be fair, I should say that, most of the audience loved the sing-along finale.

10. Finished off the month with a delightful week-end in Winchester but under-lying everything is my total pre-occupation with and concern about our political mayhem. The Tory party and government are leading us into what I consider to be a complete catastrophe – the beginning of the end of the United Kingdom. As I see it, our position in the world will be much diminished both politically and economically – and just because the Tories have not been clear-sighted enough to throw off the antics of a few Brexiteers. It is remarkable, isn’t it, that most diehard Brexiteers cannot keep a job in the Cabinet for more than just a few days, before they are overwhelmed by the contradictions in their own policies. It also staggers me that the Tory councillors I know on Wandsworth Council blame Labour for the mess!

11. Mind you, I am not suggesting for one moment that the Labour Party, and my colleagues in Parliament, are a clear-sighted, brilliant group pursuing a credible set of political positions. But knowing that the Labour position nationally barely stands examination doesn’t help my mood much either! I think, we will see much soul searching in the next few months.

12. Still March 29th is not only Brexit day, it is also really into Spring and lighter evenings and maybe with the daffodils, these political fears of mine will all turn-out to be unfounded. One compensation may be that, after this farce, we can look forward to the final demise of charlatans like Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg. Watch this space.

My Programme for February

1. On 6th February, there is a Council Meeting but not I am afraid a very interesting one. It is rather a comment on the sclerotic state of local government that at the very time that this “Austerity Government” is cutting school budgets and destroying the Welfare State, that we 60 councillors will be failing to have any meaningful discussions but rather simply rubber-stamping largely procedural matters.

2. Interested councillors, and certainly me, are going for a guided tour round the Power Station on 7th. And in the evening, I will be at a social for new Labour Party members at the Commons and hosted by our MP, Marsha de Cordova.

3. I have a meeting with some of the design staff at the Power Station on 12th.

4. The Planning Applications Committee is right at the end of the month, on the 27th. Another quiet month!

Do you know?

Last month, in honour of Charlotte Despard, the radical, left-wing suffragette, commemorated with a plaque on 12th December, I asked how many could name more than one building or institution in Battersea named after a woman – excluding the Virgin Mary?

I was inundated with responses. Here are just a few: Gladys Dimson Hall on the Somerset Estate, the Yvonne Carr Centre on the Patmore (even if actually just in Lambeth, it is nonetheless on a Battersea estate), Joan Bartlett House (Prince of Wales Drive), (Caroline) Ganley Court, Clark-Lawrence Court, Doris Emmerton Court (York Road).

Talking of those women my question is do you know anything about any of them? Can you tell me something about three of the six women named? And if this helps, then as a clue I knew three of them and many of you know roughly how long I’ve been in Battersea. It would also be interesting to be told something about the other three!