Councillor Tony Belton’s Battersea February, 2019, Newsletter (# 116)

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!