Councillor Tony Belton’s Battersea September, 2020, Newsletter (# 135)

1. At the end of my August Newsletter, I announced two pieces of Stop Press news: the first was that Vauxhall Bridge was to be closed from 10.00 pm on Sunday, 2nd August, until the end of November, because it had been discovered that the internal ironwork was deteriorating dangerously and remedial work had to start immediately. The second was that Edward Lister, ex-Leader of Wandsworth Council, was to “receive” a peerage. Both items deserve updates!

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2. As you may have noticed, Vauxhall Bridge was not actually closed until the following weekend. What had happened, as I understand it, was that TfL (Transport for London) engineers had discovered a dangerous deterioration in the bridge, in the last week of July, and so decided unilaterally to close the bridge without informing the Mayor of London, or the leaders and traffic managers of Lambeth, Wandsworth, Ken & Chelsea or Westminster Borough Councils.

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3. Unsurprisingly, something of a fuss occurred and TfL decided/was forced to postpone the closure for a week. As it happened the “quiet, holiday month of August”, had already been chosen by some Councils, certainly including Wandsworth, for installing traffic calming schemes AND, to pile misery on misery, Tower Bridge decided at some point to get stuck half-open. The picture of Vauxhall Bridge in quieter times (1829) is by Thomas Hosmer Shepherd. The bridge had been opened in 1816 and it was the first in London to be substantially constructed with iron.

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4. It has been a bad month on the roads in inner south London, but it has also been a disastrous time for TfL. Its handling of the Vauxhall Bridge closure was inept, to put it mildly. Add that to the managerial, political and engineering disaster that is Crossrail, then it is inevitable that questions have to be asked: questions about the current management of TfL and/or was it ever a sustainable model for running London’s public transport system. Given that the trains are run by several operators, the roads by 33 separate London authorities, the bridges by individual riparian boroughs and the Government has the final say on its budget, the nominal boss of TfL, that is the Mayor, has an uphill task!

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5. Unfortunately, at the same time as the Vauxhall Bridge closure, Wandsworth Council has been installing many so-called traffic calming measures, which are designed to improve conditions for pedestrians and cyclists, whilst inevitably reducing the amount of road space available for drivers. Enthusiastic cyclists, and of course, many or all environmentalists want us all to use sustainable means of transport and they definitely do not include petrol or diesel-powered vehicles. However, it did not help this hoped-for change to have the Prime Minister asking people to return to work and to use our cars to do so. To say that the public is receiving mixed messages is an under-statement.

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6. The end result has been difficult, and perhaps dangerous, conditions for emergency vehicles as well as furious motorists, and general inconvenience. There should, of course, have been more consultation but no one could have guessed the combination of events that made August such a difficult month especially in Tooting and in the Nine Elms Lane area. From my experience, I guess that there will be some tweaking of the schemes as they stand today and a few months of re-adjustment to circumstances. But in the long run, I expect to see a substantial lessening of London’s reliance on the car.

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7. Attentive readers will recall that in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List it was announced that Wandsworth Council’s ex-Leader, Edward Lister, was to be made a peer. He was Leader of the Council from 1992-2011 at a time when I was the Opposition Leader, so we faced each other across the Council Chamber, as Leader to Leader, for the best part of 20 years and I estimate some 120 Council meetings. As a result, I know him a bit (and vice versa) and I promised some readers that I would write a bit about him this month. The picture is of the last five Leaders of the Council and the Mayor. From the right we are me, Lord Lister, Wandsworth’s Mayor Stuart Thom, Sir Christopher Chope, Ravi Govindia and Sir Paul Beresford at a lunch given by the Mayor in 2014.

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8. First of all, we have to acknowledge Lister’s achievements. He became a Wandsworth Councillor in a by-election in Southfields in March, 1975. At the time there were 48 Labour councillors to 12 Tories, but the real difficulties facing Jim Callaghan’s Labour Government and some serious political mis-judgements made by the Labour Council resulted in the Tories winning the Borough in 1978 by 36 councillors to 25. The Tories have been in control of Wandsworth Council for the 42 years since, with Lister as Leader for 19 years and as a major player for 14 years before becoming Leader. Whatever one thinks of the Tory “achievements” during that period, they happened on his watch and he must share much of the praise or the blame for them.

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9. Lister was never a great speaker, or a dominant personality in the Council Chamber, which possibly explains why, despite many attempts, he never became an M.P. He certainly expressed some frustration as many far less significant Tory councillors won safe Tory Parliamentary seats. Lister also lacked much knowledge of British political history. I remember one particularly enjoyable Council meeting, when the Council was debating education and he attempted to goad Labour councillors by threatening to rename Tooting’s Ernest Bevin school the Winston Churchill school. As he spoke, I realised that he (and they – most of the Tory councillors) did not know their Ernest Bevin, Churchill’s trusted, even if Labour, wartime Minister of Labour, from their Nye Bevan, the left-wing Welsh firebrand, founder of the NHS. Unusually, I had great fun that evening both lampooning Lister and winning the debate. Lister, however, got his revenge some 20 years later when I mistakenly bet him £10 that a buffoon, called Boris Johnson, would never be elected Mayor of London.

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10. Lister was, however, a very effective political operator. In June, 1979, he moved in Wandsworth Council that the ILEA (the Inner London Education Authority) should be side-lined as far as Wandsworth was concerned (abolition came later). This move was a startlingly bold one. The ILEA was responsible for London’s schools, adult education, some 40-50 Further Education colleges, the Careers Service, evening classes and many other functions. It had a world-wide reputation as a beacon of state education services. The thought that a relatively junior councillor should initiate a move, which questioned its authority was considered to be a joke. Eleven years later, the ILEA was no more.

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11. Meanwhile, his colleagues were pressing forward with Wandsworth Council’s Right to Buy (council homes) policies and Lister became a major player in the move to test public services competitively in the market-place. Mrs Thatcher later added compulsion to the policy and made it Compulsory Competitive Testing or CCT. Both RTB and CCT had major short-term political benefits for the Tory Party in Wandsworth. From my perspective, the main disadvantages were that RTB enabled the Council to sell off public assets cheaply, more than halving the stock of social housing, and helping to create today’s housing crisis, whilst CCT undermined the bargaining position of the less-skilled sectors of the workforce, creating conditions conducive to the growth of today’s gig economy.

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12. In the spring of 2011, a vacancy arose for the role of Deputy Mayor of London, deputy to Boris Johnson. Lister was appointed. One of his first duties was to address a London Conference of councillors and senior officers. I was there, as Lister articulated right-wing mantra that the public sector played too great a part not only in the British economy, but also in British life. I am sure, for example, that he would wish to slim down the BBC; introduce greater business involvement in running the universities, just as he has done in schools; and apply greater commercial disciplines in the NHS, amongst other horrors.

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13. Sir Edward Lister, soon to be Lord Lister (surely not of Southfields), has until recently been a senior adviser to Boris Johnson (in this press photo of Johnson’s first cabinet, Lister is the man at the back with the red tie, second from the left) and certainly a constant presence at early Cabinet meetings where no doubt he continues to advocate and press for the implementation of his simplistic neo-liberal views. It is ironic that he has become an important player in the government just as circumstances have conspired to put the public sector at the heart of the economy and the centre of all decision making.

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14. Finally, I should recall that many Labour Leaders, such as Robin Wales, Jules Pipe and Toby Harris, Leaders of Newham, Hackney and Haringey Council, were far more appreciative of Lister’s political skills than were the average Wandsworth Labour councillor. That was because his skills were about negotiation and arranging deals and not about debate. Consistent with those characteristics, Lister is a secretive and reserved character, not a deep thinker, but a straight-forward, highly competent machine politician.

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15. On August 19^th my partner and I stayed the night with friends at their house in the South Downs, immediately behind Hastings. This view from their dining room window certainly includes my tree of the month. The next morning was beautiful and we went for a walk in the so-called Garden of England, but I had to dash back to take part in my fifth virtual Planning Applications Committee (PAC). I really can’t think of anything interesting to say about it other than that it was important for all people directly concerned but mundane in the big scheme of things.

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16. On August 26^th I went for an annual family walk from the Birling Gap to Beachy Head. We had planned to do the walk on 12^th August but that turned out to be Britain’s hottest-ever day. In contrast, the 26^th was cool and very blowy. Fortunately, we were walking with the wind. The view is looking west over the Gap and at the Seven Sisters.

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My Programme for September

1. One day last month, one of my readers sent me his spy thriller, the latest in a trilogy. He included nice words about this newsletter and an invitation to drinks one evening in early September. He obviously knows a great deal about espionage, especially in Italy and Sicily. I look forward to meeting him, and will ask him to sign my copy of his book. Amazingly, of my 2,500 or so newsletter readers, more than a dozen are published authors – Battersea certainly has talent.

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2. On 2^nd September, I have a virtual Wandsworth Conservation Area Committee. I have a feeling that this will be a difficult meeting – for technical reasons. The attenders have not previously worked together using Microsoft Teams, so I expect a host of technical incompatibilities and misunderstandings!

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3. On 3^rd I am looking forward to a tour of Mitchell House, the first and most advanced of the new Winstanley Estate blocks, the one on Plough Road opposite Time House. And then in the evening, I am going to a webinar led by academic and journalist, Will Hutton. The subject, no apology, is how the UK manages to stay close to the EU and avoid many of the catastrophes forecast to follow a “hard Brexit”.

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4. On 15^th September, there will be another virtual Planning Applications Committee (PAC).

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5. Once again September will be a quiet month. Even the traditional major Party Political Conferences will have to take place virtually this year.

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Can you place (and approximately date) this picture?

                I’d like to thank fellow Latchmere ward councillor, Simon Hogg, for this little gem. Any other comments about the picture would be welcome. I have a couple of observations to share about the picture that I will share next month but in the meantime do you think you could write a paragraph or two about it?