Councillor Tony Belton’s Battersea October, 2019, Newsletter (#124)

1. I didn’t get back from Croatia until 8^th September, but in the event it was a quiet month, at least as far as the Council was concerned. My first “Council engagement” was the following Sunday, 15^th September, when Wandsworth’s Labour councillors had an “away day” in Roehampton. It was a busy day even if this picture of my fellow councillors, from the left, Paula Walker (Queenstown), Jo Rigby (Earlsfield) and Sue McKinney (Roehampton) at a tea break, suggests otherwise. Our aim was to focus on self-improvement, as councillors and as a group.
   

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2. On the 16^th September I attended a public meeting at the Alma pub, in Old York Road, Wandsworth, along with about 50 local residents. The meeting was focused on Waltham Forest’s exciting road and traffic planning initiatives, called simply Low Traffic Neighbourhoods. The presentation was given by Waltham Forest resident, Paul Gasson, and reminded me very much of a similar scheme Wandsworth Council implemented in Balham and Northcote in 1978. There was, however, one very, very big difference. In May, 1978, there was a Borough Election and immediately after they won the Council, the Tories scrapped the scheme. The Waltham Forest scheme seems to have got off to an excellent start; I hope that it gets well established before the next Borough election and that it becomes an example followed elsewhere.
   

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3. The following Tuesday, 17^th September I had the Planning Applications Committee (PAC). There was only one application of any real significance and that related to the semi-permanent, so-called, British Genius site in Battersea Park. The Committee agreed to allow the “temporary” structure even though the application was for a building 2 metres higher than the current one and for a longer, four-year, period. I am afraid that I am going to make myself unpopular with a few of my friends, who live very close to the Park, by saying that I think it is about time that we dropped the fiction of the structure being temporary. It has now been there for a long time and I rather doubt that any future PAC is going to refuse it permission. What is more I very, very much doubt that anyone could defend a refusal at an appeal hearing. Moreover, the sooner that the Genius site is accepted as an established part of the Park, then the more we can address the serious issue of landscaping the area around it appropriately.
   

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4. On 24^th September, I was at the Strategic Planning and Transportation Committee. There were some items about long-term planning issues, which, although very important for the future of the Borough, get a little lost in the technicalities and will not have much affect for many years. Hence they are difficult to describe. Of more immediate interest to lots of people were two items about cycling, which could have an effect in almost every street. First was the Council’s decision to have an e-bike contract. Let me confess, I don’t fully understand the system, whereby armed only with a membership card, anyone can use an e-bike from anywhere to anywhere. What happens as regards repairs, or returning the bikes to some base, any base? Are there insurance issues? None of these questions were considered and they certainly weren’t answered. We were simply re-assured that the company given the contract was willing to take all the risks and that there would be no cost to the Council. It was not, I think, a brilliant moment for the Committee, for which I take some responsibility as the lead on the Labour side – but my excuse is that the Tories have sucked all the life-blood out of the committee structure, which is now totally inadequate as a democratic constraint. As I have already noted, the committees are now restricted in time; worse debate and discussion are discouraged – overview and scrutiny is bound to suffer in the longer term.
   

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5. The second item on cycling referred to cycle parking and the fraught question of cycling security. As someone who has lost four (4) bicycles to theft and had a saddle and endless numbers of lights stolen from my bikes, I have something of an interest on this issue – if you are worried about car theft, you should spare a thought for the poor cyclists, who face far greater problems. So, to the good news: the Council has agreed to the provision of lockable bike hangars in our streets subject to demand and consultation. Paul Ellis, the councillor in charge, says he hopes for 40 such hangars to be in place in the course of the next year. The picture shows a bike hangar in Southwark.
   

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6. Meanwhile, of course, all hell has broken loose at a national level. Every news bulletin has brought shocks, horrors and total surprises. We have a Prime Minister, who, as of now, has lost every single one of seven (7) votes in Parliament and who has had a unanimous decision of the Supreme Court going against him. We have four weeks left before we leave the European Union OR stay in against the Prime Minister’s wishes. In four weeks time, we may or may not have trading agreements with our major customers and suppliers.
   

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7. The country’s governing Tory Party, or maybe I should say parties, with the Democratic Unionist Party playing second fiddle, seems to be on a different stage from everyone else. And yet the opposition parties seem incapable of getting their acts together to promote a more orderly politics. It looks like being a turbulent month with a ghastly prognosis! If we leave, the signs are that “Project Fear” was simply not pessimistic enough about what leaving the EU would do to our economy and our status. If we remain, then many of the 17.4 million who voted leave will be embittered, maybe for life.
   

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8. For my money, it becomes clearer, day by day, that, even if the thought is horrific, the only way out of this is for another Referendum, pitching a Leave package vs Remain but with the advantage that this time we would know more about what it means.
   

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9. On 15^th September, my partner and I hosted an evening’s discussion with our M.P., Marsha de Cordova, and twenty or so local residents. These friends of ours are concerned that the Labour Party is not 100% Remain, because of Jeremy Corbyn’s policy not to alienate those who voted Leave and his efforts to try and hold all parts of the party together. For many of them, the simplicity of the Lib/Dems position seems attractive. However, if I may, say about the Lib/Dems position: If Swinson and her colleagues do deny Jeremy Corbyn the dubious distinction of being Prime Minister for a limited and specifically prescribed period, with the sole purpose of organising and seeing through a Referendum, then, I think, they are likely to pay a heavy electoral price.
   

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10. Meanwhile, on a completely different theme, can I draw your attention to my partner, Penny Corfield’s, blog for this month? Her messages are usually aimed at her academic colleagues but this month’s is very much about the desperate need for all cities world-wide to go as thoroughly green as they possibly can! See: penelopejcorfield.com/monthly-blogs/106

My Programme for October

1. On 1^st October I gave a presentation to the Big Local AGM on Battersea, 1801-2019, A Social History, at Providence House, Falcon Road.
2. The next day I had the Katherine Low Settlement AGM.
3. On 4^th October I attended the funeral of Peter Martin Taylor, a young (39) colleague of mine, who was a Labour Party candidate for Queenstown Ward in 2014.
4. On 9^th October I have the Corporate Parenting Panel, of which more next month.
5. On 11^th I am off to Stockholm for the week-end accompanying my partner, who is giving the keynote lecture at a Swedish Conference on social history.
6. There is a Council Meeting on 16^th October
7. The Planning Applications Committee, “the committee that never stops”, is on 24^th
8. On the 30^th I will be, at the Town Hall, attending the what I think will be the first Healthy Streets Forum – an interesting new Council initiative?

Do you know?

Last month I asked whether you knew, after dissolving Parliament, how long Charles I managed before inviting it to sit again? And do you know how long Parliament took (after that) to try him for High Treason and have him executed? And do you know why, in the end, he invited the argumentative MPs back?

The answers:

1. Charles I dissolved Parliament in 1629 and re-called it in 1640;
2. he was executed in 1649, so nine years;
3. it was money of course. He needed money in 1640 to fight a battle about religious policy in Scotland.

This month my question is Do you know

1. Where was the Portsmouth and Southampton railway’s first London terminus?
2. When was Waterloo station opened as a replacement for the first terminal? and
3. When did the last steam train puff its way out of Clapham Junction?