September 10, 2019  

Councillor Tony Belton’s Battersea July, 2019, Newsletter (#121)

  1. By the end of the month we will have a new Prime Minister, who will be chosen by the Tory party membership – a small electorate, largely of “mature”, white men. I have nothing against mature, white men, indeed some would say I am one (except for the mature bit, of course), but it must seem strange to almost everyone, who isn’t a Tory party member, that the electorate is so “exclusive”. And they have such a dispiriting choice to make! One candidate, Boris Johnson, could be Joker of the Decade and the other, Jeremy Hunt, the notorious scourge of junior doctors, has just qualified as Charlatan of the Century for his totally unprincipled bid to lower taxes and increase expenditure on everything under the sun – and this, the party that has the gall to accuse Labour of wishing for a “magic money-tree”.
  2. On the 4th June we went to see All My Sons by the great American playwriter, Arthur Miller. The play is about the pressure on the owner-boss of an aircraft manufacturer, during World War Two, to produce aircraft rapidly even when he knew his planes had design flaws. It was reminiscent of Boeing’s current problems with its 737 Max aircraft – You will remember that one Boeing 737 Max fell out of the air in Indonesia in October last year and a second in Ethiopia earlier this year. The acting was brilliant, with Sally Field almost too painful to watch, as the mother who living with her husband’s self-delusion and deceit. All My Sons, along with his better-known play Death of a Salesman, exposes the problems with capitalism, and the pressures caused by competition in an unregulated capitalist world. Both plays are brilliant.
  3. Two days later, I attended the Passenger Transport Liaison Committee. The Committee’s purpose is to give councillors access to the managers of the various bus and train companies, operating in Wandsworth. We had two pieces of good news affecting Battersea. First both Battersea Park (pictured right) and Wandsworth Town stations, the two busiest stations in the south western network without step-free access, are to be made fully accessible between now and 2024. And secondly, we were told that the 170 bus’s capacity is to be increased, by increasing their frequency.
  4. I had the Strategic Planning and Transport Committee on the 11th June, but there was nothing of great interest, I thought, to Battersea residents, other than the increasing pressure to restrict the motor car, by adopting play and school streets and speed limits.
  5. On the 13th June I attended the official opening of the Council’s new Work Match office in Falcon Road. The Work Match team supports people through the job application process, by helping with CVs and interview skills. The service, begun in 2013, has worked successfully and closely with Job Centre Plus, community organisations, local colleges and schools to provide an integrated support network. The Falcon Road office has been funded by the York Road/Winstanley Joint Venture Board, the arms-length company tasked with the estate’s regeneration. Let’s hope that it works as well in Falcon Road as it has elsewhere. It certainly has a dynamic boss in Chantelle Daniel. Here I am (third from right) holding one end of the ribbon, which the Council Leader is cutting to mark the official opening.
  6. Did you hear about the London Legal Aid charity walk? What was it? And what for? Well, on a beautiful, very warm evening, 17th June, 15,000 took part in the walk and raised the best part of £1 million, for over 100 organisations in London and the South East, helping them to provide free and pro bono legal advice. I walked the 6 miles from Chancery Lane round the Serpentine and back to Chancery Lane and raised £330. It’s a long time since I last walked round the Serpentine, and since then there seems to have been a lot of effort put into improving both the formal and informal garden aspects of the Park. Excited, if exhausted, walkers are pictured here congregating in Carey Street at the end of the walk.
  7. Three days later on the 20th June there was a by-election in Furzedown ward. This safe Labour ward is on the southern edge of Tooting Common. The by-election came at a bad time for both the so-called major parties but fortunately Labour’s Graham Loveland won. I knew Graham when he was last on Wandsworth Council between 1986-90 and now after retirement he has decided to return, bringing with him a lifetime of career experience as a Borough planner. Graham got 1,811 votes (49% of the vote), the Lib Dems 887 (24%) votes, the Tories 681 (18.4%) and the Greens 318 (8.6%). This was a comfortable victory but nonetheless masked an 18% swing from Labour and the Tories to the Lib/Dems. The Greens also had a small loss in percentage terms, suggesting that Wandsworth residents just maybe coalescing around the Lib/Dems as the main completely and totally pro-EU party. I need hardly mention, to those of you paying attention, that I am a committed Remainer along with 75% of Wandsworth’s residents.
  8. On the Saturday, we went to see a one-woman play called Woke at the Battersea Arts Centre. It was written and performed by Apphia Campbell – a tour de force. If you do get the chance, do go and see it. It is an enlightening expose of life as a black American woman in the American South. It is particularly insightful about the contradictions and cruelties of the imposition of summary justice.
  9. Sunday, 23rd June, was the day of the family’s annual walk from the Birling Gap to Beachy Head, where the South Downs disappear into the Channel. We have been doing it for so long now (nearly 30 years) that we can remember the coast extending about 50 yards/metres further out at the Gap – in geological terms the South Downs are disappearing fast. But on a sunny day, with the skylarks doing their thing high above, it is still a terrific walk.
  10. The following day, I went to the Hampshire Bowl to see Afghanistan play Bangladesh in the cricket world cup. I had decided at New Year to go to at least one of the cricket matches and to France for the Women’s World Football Cup. I never got round to booking the French trip but I did get a couple of tickets for the cricket – two Afghanistan games as it happens. The match itself was not a nail-biter with Bangladesh having a comfortable win but it was a colourful and noisy event, as displayed by this picture of some of my neighbours celebrating yet another Afghan wicket.
  11. On the 25th we had the Education and Children’s Services Committee. I am not a member of this committee but I thought I would comment on one particular item, which could, directly or indirectly, affect us all. It was a review of how “Youth Services” are provided in Battersea and focused very considerably on the youth club services currently delivered from the Devas Club and Caius House. Given the very public concern about “street violence” and the view that one problem is “that young people have nothing to do”, this was obviously going to be a contentious matter. With the Council, or rather the majority Tories, claiming that the service is being reformed and improved and we, the Opposition Labour councillors arguing the exact opposite, the position is confused. The truth appears to me to be that this is yet another cut in public services, camouflaged by a possibly sensible re-arrangement of how they are delivered. The budget will be cut by approximately 5% and the new services will be imposed “Top-down” and not through consultation and discussion; they will not be improved as claimed but nor will they be comprehensively trashed. Given the crisis on our streets, this is a typically inadequate response from Tory controlled Wandsworth Council. We need more Youth Services and increased funding – not cuts, however, carefully managed.
  12. The Planning Applications Committee was held on 26th June and included one major application and two others of significant concern to Battersea residents. The major one was about the redevelopment of the Atheldene area off Garrett Lane. It centred on the provision of 193 housing units, 40% being so-called affordable. It included some five storey blocks of flats and proved to be very contentious amongst local residents; but it was in line with the  London and Wandsworth Plans and was passed unanimously. Also approved was the redevelopment of the Northcote Road library and details of the new Sports Hall at Harris Academy.
  13. On the 28th June, I visited Christ Church School’s garden. The school has been proud of its emphasis on outdoor learning and the encouragement of gardening knowledge amongst pupils for some time, indeed, I can remember visiting the gardens 4 or 5 years back, when it did not have this English country flower section.
  14. The following day was the Falcon Festival. It has only been going for a short time, but it is now well established as one of Battersea’s regular summer events. The Labour Party stall did brisk business and was well staffed, here with from left Cllr Paula (Haggis) Walker, Cllr Kate Stock, GLA member Leonie Cooper, Marsha de Cordova, MP, party member Steve Worrall, me and Cllr Emily Wintle – and Leonie’s dog.
  15. Whilst at the Festival I took the opportunity to walk down Este Road and take a look at Falcon Park’s new all-weather football/hockey pitch. Its completion has been delayed due, apparently, to some problem linking up the water supply to the changing rooms, but hopefully it will be open in late July. In any event it should be ready well before the new winter season opens in September. The Council (and councillors) have been under some criticism for introducing the pitch and reducing the amount of “uncontrolled” park space, but I think it will be a popular, heavily used resource for local clubs, schools and casual use. Certainly, WOW mums’ Senia Dedic says “We are pro pitch because we needed a safe and clean place for children to play, as Banana Park and Falcon Park are used by dog walkers, who do not (always) pick up the mess”.
  16. Finally, a word about a new book titled Battersea’s First Lady, The Life and Times of Caroline Ganley, MP. It was written by my friend and Secretary of the Battersea Society, Sue Demont, and was published last month. Ganley Court on the Winstanley Estate was named after Mrs. Ganley, who was elected to the House of Commons for Battersea South as it was then, in 1946-1951. She was first elected a Battersea councillor in 1919, one year after women won the right to vote, and was re-elected from 1953-1965, when Battersea was merged with Wandsworth. The book costs £5.99 and can be bought at suedemont57@gmail.com.

My Programme for July

  1. July looks like being a busy social month but without much formal Council business – the August recess draws near. The high point though, for me and particularly Penny, is her installation (is that the right word?) as the President of the International Society for Eighteenth Century Studies in Edinburgh, during the week 15th-19th July.
  2. Before then we are going to Leeds on 3rd July, where we are staying overnight before seeing the West Indies take on Afghanistan at Headingley in one of the last round-robin cricket matches in the World Cup. That might be a challenge for Penny but being Yorkshire born she once thought that she might be good at the game – afraid not!
  3. On the evening of the 3rd we will go to the magnificent, opulent Victorian Leeds Grand Theatre to see a staged version of the John Travolta film, Grease.
  4. The main Council Meeting will be on 17th July and the Planning Applications Committee on 25th.

Do you know?

Last month I asked “Who was the Battersea born and bred jazz pianist, who has a community centre named after him? And where is the second commemorative plaque to him in Battersea located?” Lots of you knew the answer was George Shearing and most of you knew that either where the community centre was (the George Shearing Centre, Este Road) or that there was a plaque to him at Northcote Lodge school, Bolingbroke Grove, which he attended in the 1930s. But almost none of you knew both, or read the question carefully enough to see that it was a two-point question! Congratulations to the two that did.

This month let me ask how many of you know the connection between the Winstanley Estate Regeneration and Battersea Park? Many of you will have seen some of the new homes being built as part of the Winstanley Regeneration, such as the six new houses in Rowditch Lane, due to be occupied this month, and the six-storey block on Plough Road. Well, before too long Pennethorne House will be the first block of the old estate to be demolished. Just what is the connection between Pennethorne House and Battersea Park.

The left picture is, I think, of Pennethorne House, being built in the late 19-sixties, taken from high up in Chesterton House. I think that the chimneys in the background are probably over the river at Lots Road Power Station, Chelsea. Can anyone confirm that? The one on the right is, of course, Pennethorne and Penge House, with the old frontage of either Plough or York Road behind.

 

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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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