Councillor Tony Belton’s Battersea August 2021, Newsletter (# 146)
- 1st July. I was on tenterhooks that evening as Kim Leadbeater won the Batley and Spen by-election for Labour by 323 votes. You will remember that this was the seat where the Labour MP, Jo Cox, was assassinated by a right-wing fanatic in 2016, and her successor resigned this year, when she became the Mayor of West Yorkshire. Labour had lost the Hartlepool by-election as recently as 6th May. Things did not look good for Labour or for Keir Starmer, but, in fact, Labour, in the person of Kim, just held on and suddenly the glitter had gone from the government. Johnson is beginning to get the bad press he so clearly deserves, with his own MPs getting uncomfortable about his failure to deliver. Unfortunately, there is as yet no sign of the public returning to Labour in any great numbers, but at least the Tory Party rocket looks to have burnt out.
- 6th July. I took
Battersea’s Labour M.P., Marsha de Cordova, to the Centre Court, Wimbledon, where we saw Angelique Kerber comfortably beat Karolina Muchova, 6-2, 6-3. But the day was not vintage Wimbledon. There were showers preventing us from walking the show; Marsha had had very short notice of a Shadow Cabinet meeting called for early the next day and was clearly concerned about that, whilst I was also pre-occupied. Meanwhile, the match was not great, with Kerber (pictured here) dominating from first to last.
It is sometimes amusing, when walking round Battersea streets, to see just how people decorate their gardens or, in this case, their corridors. But I have never seen the internal corridor of a “Council block” with statuary quite like these ladies on the right! I loved them.
- 12th July. I introduced our MP, Marsha de Cordova, to Battersea United Charities (BUC) – well virtually – in a Covid-approved sort of way. Both Marsha and BUC seemed pleased with the meeting, although both the trustees and Marsha would clearly have preferred a real face-to-face meeting. The BUC told Marsha of the kind and type of charitable grant they make (i.e. educational grants within the ancient parish of Battersea) and she, in her turn, suggested that they might wish to use her to publicise some of their projects, in order to increase the number of applicants.
- 19th July had been set up by the Prime Minister as Freedom Day. What an absurd notion! Freedom from what? Clearly not from Covid-19 as it is obviously fighting fit and ready to fight another day; freedom from regulations that are designed to keep us alive? So that we can be free to be infected? Or free from fear? Tell that to someone who is immuno-compromised. Freedom from caring for the sick and dying? Tell that to nursing staff; tell it to doctors. One thing, that we definitely are not free from, is the absurd statements coming from this most irresponsible of all governments.
- On 21st July I had a Wandsworth Council Meeting. It was a curious occasion. The Government had, earlier in the month, ruled that we councillors could no longer have hybrid meetings – that is, meetings held with both online and actual presence of councillors. However, there are several councillors with health issues, which prevented them from being there in person. Moreover, because of social distancing rules, we were, to some degree, discouraged from attendance, because the Council Chamber, large as it is, is not really large enough to allow adequate social distancing. All these factors made me decide to stay away, making this one of the very, very few Council Meetings that I have missed since May 1971.
- Watching the meeting online, I just did not think that the Council Meeting worked in procedural terms. I am not kidding myself into thinking that many of the public would want to watch such an event. It turns out that there was an audience of 75, but that total included half-a-dozen absent councillors, like me. In fact unless one knew the arcane processes of the Council, the procedures must have been indecipherable. I, for one, let alone the other 74, hardly knew what was going on!
- The Planning Applications Committee, on 27th July, featured an application for a two-form entry primary school in Nine Elms, just west of the American embassy. It was a Council application made on the basis of estimates of the future child population in Nine Elms. It is an inherently risky business, building a new school for an estimated future, as yet not born, child population: the Council will be criticised if there are too few 5-11 year-olds but, of course, it would have been crucified if, having granted permissions for the large developments in Nine Elms, it had not provided enough school places. The application was agreed unanimously. The other applications were of only local interest, though of course important to the applicants.
- On the 28th July, Penny and I set off for a three day trip to Alnwick,
Northumberland, where we stayed with some old friends. We had, however, never visited their house before – here it is, an early nineteenth-century house close to the centre of town with a view of the castle. We had a great time and their garden boasts having its very own hedgehog, which we did see one night. It was the first hedgehog that either of us had seen since at least the 1960s. I imagine that there may be hedgehogs somewhere in Battersea Park, but can anyone confirm a sighting in Battersea?
- On our first day there, we went for a walk from
the tiny port of Craster to Dustanburgh Castle. On the way back we were spotted by Battersea residents and fellow Labour Party members, Ed and Aviva with their son Henry – small world! Here they are with Penny, about a mile from the castle, which is clear on the horizon.
- Alnwick itself is a small market town with its own castle. But castles are, as they say, ten a penny, on this coast
with Bamburgh Castle, seen here, one of the most impressive. They are not display castles nor nineteenth-century follies; they are nearly all twelth- or thirteenth-century fortifications; and many played key roles in either defence against the Scots or the century of battles, culminating in the so-called Wars of the Roses, which basically settled the English (and I mean English not British) monarchy on the Tudors.
My Programme for August
- In terms of formal Council Committees or Council Meetings, there is only the Planning Applications Committee (PAC) on the 19th August.
- But I do have occasional management meetings about planning and housing issues and, of course, the regular flow of casework, helping constituents.
Did you Know?
Last month I asked, “Where in Battersea was the location of a pioneering aircraft factory, named Omnia Works, where WW1 fighter aircraft were made? And where, again in Battersea, did its owner and managing director live?”
There is a blue plaque commemorating Hilda Hewlett, the first woman licenced as a pilot, on the building at 4 Vardens Road, off St. John’s Hill. Vardens Road was the site of her Omnia Works, where aircraft, including WW1 fighter aircraft were made in 1912-14. Hilda herself lived at 34 Park Mansions, Prince of Wales Drive. Well done, Spen and others.
And for this month can you tell me:
Which Olympians from this year’s Tokyo Olympiad either live in Battersea or were said on TV to have had family watching the event on TV in Battersea? Clearly, I don’t have a definitive answer but can we collaboratively put together a list of, say, 3 which would be roughly three times Battersea’s proportion of the British population?
Tony Belton
Tony Belton 