November 4, 2022  

Councillor Tony Belton’s Battersea November 2022, Newsletter (# 161)

  1. Having been away for most of September, one of my top priorities was to check on progress with the Council’s development of 106 new council homes on the Surrey Lane estate. I was impressed that work had started, indeed was almost completed, on re-arranging the parking space so that none would be lost – and indeed the work proceeded apace and the car parks were re-surfaced. As always though, there is a problem that has not yet been resolved – and that is the number and positions of disability parking spaces – I have a blue badge owner making her views well-known to the council staff and me – I hope we are able to solve the problem. Meanwhile, other building work seem to be proceeding well.
  1. On 5th October I went to the Annual Meeting of the Picture1Katherine Low Settlement. In the picture the Director, Aaron Barbour, is looking on amused, it appears, by one member’s intervention. KLS and Aaron deserve a vote of thanks from many people living in the area. The Settlement has maintained most of its services during the pandemic. And indeed added a sizable, and very socially valuable, lunch club to its activities.
  2. On the 13th October, we went to Christine Eccles’ funeral and life celebration. Christine had been a long-time member of the Battersea Labour Party. As so often on these occasions, I wished I had known more of Christine. I am sure that I played a very insignificant role in her life, but there had been a time in the 1970s when I was Chair of Wandsworth’s Planning Committee when she was one of my severest critics, along with the late Brian Barnes and Ernest Rodker (Ernest was at the celebration). Christine was one of the guiding lights of a group that put together an “activist newspaper” called Pavement. It sold, as I remember it, for 2P a week. In those pre-PC days, its production standards were spectacularly high – not something I, and I think most LP members, thought about all of its editorial values. Why did a Labour Council, which by modern standards was quite ludicrously left-wing, get so panned from the further left? The answer, I guess, is that after a Labour victory, the expectations of some are unrealistically high.
  3. Christine’s main passion, however, was the stage, as a critic, an actor,Picture2 and a director. She was clearly very good but, for whatever complex reasons, she did not have the success that she probably deserved and for which she certainly hoped. My main exposure to her talents was in December 2011, when she directed Battersea Labour Party’s Mid-Winter Revue at the Battersea Arts Centre. Battersea Labour Party had (and has) some big stage names, of whom the best known are Prunella Scales and Timothy West; they were all involved but so were many of us amateurs, such as Will Martindale, Labour’s 2015 General Election candidate, Simon Hogg, now Leader of the Council, and me, ex-Leader of the Council. We were, of course, dreadful and, no doubt, an embarrassment to the pros – but how we improved after a couple of rehearsals with Christine in charge. Finally, we put on a great show. In a nineteenth-century complimentary phrase, she was a woman “of parts”. Christine Eccles, RIP.
  4. You may recall that, last month, I said that the Planning Applications Committee was on October 18th. I cancelled it; there was only one application to consider. There was no work to do! Amazingly enough, it appeared that ex-Tory Leader Councillor Ravi Govindia was intent on criticising the still newish Labour Council for this apparent STOP to construction activity in the Borough. I must have mis-understood. After 12 years of Tory (mis-)rule in the country and the Borough, he surely can’t believe that Labour has been the cause of this building hiatus, if hiatus it is. A new PM every month, Home Secretaries falling faster than the autumn leaves – the country becoming an embarrassment to many of its best patriots – how long can this continue?
  5. His intervention does, however, give me the excuse to get back onto my favourite hobby-horse of the day! On Saturday, 22nd October, Penny and I went on the Re-join the EU march. I guess that I must describe myself as a veteran marcher. My first was an early Aldermaston March, which took place every Easter from Aldermaston, a nuclear research station, to Westminster. It was a kind of “Rites of passage” event for many youngsters of the 50s and 60s. It took all four days of Easter and included sleeping in massive marquees in public parks; lots of amateur Bob Dylans; and not a few sexual explorations. They were fun – serious fun – I had a Welsh friend, who went back to mid-Wales during the Cuban crisis, thinking that if the apparently inevitable nuclear war did take place then he had a fighting chance of survival in the mountains of Wales and no hopes at all in London.
  6. Then there were the Vietnam War demos, much shorter, much less fun than Aldermaston but also much larger; Penny and I were in Grosvenor 1968 when mounted police charged at us – I will always maintain that the police over-reacted – but, provocation or not, I can tell you that being charged by 4 or 5 mounted police is a very scary proposition – the noise as these heavy animals hit the ground was something else – you can get a feel for it standing by the rails at Tattenham Corner, except those are light-weight racehorses, not intent on scaring you! Fortunately, we kept our heads and simply stood behind the big trees – and horses, being sensible beasts, do not try to charge through large, mature trees.
  7. Since then, there have Picture3been anti-Thatcher, pro-this and anti-that, marches, although the largest was the 2003 anti-Iraq war march. This one on 22nd October was different; this was about our lives; about our freedom to live, work and retire anywhere in a continent; about our standard of living and about our futures. It was big, maybe 50,000, of all ages, friendly, very peaceful – multi-national but unfortunately not as multi-ethnic as we need it to be.
  8. But I have passed mention of the full Council Meeting on the 19th When, following Covid, cameras were invited into Council Meetings, all councillors knew their behaviour would have to change; members have become very conscious of just how public their behaviour has become. Perhaps, even more significantly, councillors know that their most flippant or passing remarks are recorded for posterity. Hence Council Meetings, never the most entertaining evenings of the month, have become yet more staged, rehearsed and, for this veteran, dull. As it happens, on this occasion, I did think that we were more and better prepared than the Tory councillors were. But people are not any longer going to go to listen to a Council Meeting because they hope to influence the debate or because they want to listen to real-live, blood-and-guts debates. The whole process has become too homogenised for that.
  9. The next day, the red-letter day of 20th October, was time for the “cataract with complications” operation on Pen’s left eye. It was much feared but thank heavens it has gone brilliantly and now I am being told to clean up all kinds of dusty nooks and crannies around the house, that she hasn’t noticed for years.
  10. On the 7th October, I played chess (and lost) for Surrey versus Kent at St. Mary Cray – miles beyond Orpington!Picture4 I thought I was doing quite well until my opponent’s fourteenth move but the most astounding thing about that afternoon was the rainbow over south-east London at about 5 pm. I took this picture from the train in Herne Hill. Then on 29th October, I played again for Surrey against Kent but on our home territory in Cheam. This time I won, in what I thought was a near perfect game. I came home really pleased with myself but then I sat down to analyse the two games on the computer. In the one I lost, I played too defensively. In the second, my opponent missed a winning move on the tenth! As football managers complain about VAR, computers are taking all the fun out of the game!
  11. On the 30th October, we went to another life celebration of another Battersea Labour Party member – Sue Twining. Sue had been living in Italy for many years; prior to retirement she had been the head teacher of a comprehensive school in Chelsea or Kensington; her husband, Richard, was a councillor for St. John ward in Battersea 1980-86. Inevitably most people there had been active in the local Battersea left scene, forty years ago, or from the world of teaching, or indeed from Italy. RIP Sue
  12. We went from the Sue event to hear Marc Wadsworth speaking at a Black History Month meeting in the Southside shopping centre. He was helping us to celebrate the centenary of the election of Shapurji Saklatvala as MP for Battersea North (MP 1922; 1924-29). “Comrade Sak” was a commanding orator, and a controversial figure. He was Britain’s first Asian MP and he was also a communist, albeit elected in Battersea with Labour Party endorsement. He was a rich Parsi – according to Wikipedia all Parsis are rich – don’t ask me why! When he lost the Labour Party’s support he was quickly ousted as Battersea North’s by Stephen Sanders, after whom a council block of flats in Salcott Road has been named.
  13. On the 31st October, I went at last to the new Battersea Power Station (BPS) It had been opened on the 12th or 14th October, depending whether you were a VIP or a member of the public. You may have seen that Wandsworth’s Labour councillors boycotted the occasion in a principled protest at the low level of affordable housing being provided in the whole of the BPS area – it was a controversial decision.
  14. I do not have a record of all the many, many votes that councillors have had on the future of BPS in both the full Council Meeting and in the Planning Applications Committee, but over the years I suspect that I have voted against the development more times than anyone else. That, however, does not mean much nowadays (remember that at one time the Tory Council was pressing for it to be the largest waste incinerator plant, probably in the world). And clearly, it was a triumphant day for the then Tory Leader Ravi Govindia when he could announce that Apple Inc was making the building its European Headquarters.
  15. But I must say, I am still not convinced. I appreciate that this high-end shopping mall does not have me in its potential target customers group. But on the Monday, when I went, the half-term crowds had gone; the sight-seers were gone, and I felt like a lonely pea rattling round in an enormous inhuman pod. I have a good sense of direction and I know the building well, having been round it scores of times, but I almost got disoriented. It reminded me of a large airport shopping mall where Mammon is only interested in getting you to part with your cash. I hope that I am wrong but let’s see on a wet November day in a year’s time just how bustling BPS really is.

My programme for November

  1. We have a meeting of the Labour Group of councillors on 1st.
  2. I have the Civic Awards Ceremony on the 2nd.
  3. I have the Transport Committee on the third.
  4. The public hearings on the Borough Plan open on the 15th and will last until 30th
  5. We have an “AwayDay” meeting of the Labour councillors on 12th The aim will be team building and policy development.
  6. Penny and I are going on our annual walk from Birling Gap to the top of Beachy Head, near Eastbourne, and back on the 13th.
  7. I look forward to hearing the story of Battersea’s public baths from Su Demont on the 16th. Did you know, for example, that 100 years ago there was one of the largest indoor swimming pools in the country (50 yards long I believe) just where the new Battersea Park tube station stands?
  8. The Planning Applications Committee is on November 22nd.
  9. On the 24th Penny will be talking at the Battersea Society meeting about her new book, The Georgians.

Did you Know?

Last month, I said, that, there was another smash hit Picture6(at least in the UK) from the 1960s and that the film stars a true Brit mega-star as a lothario. I also said that it was incredibly dated and sexist by today’s standards. The film was absolutely loaded with London references including many in Battersea’s St. Mary’s ward. And here is Michael Caine on the steps of St. Mary’s Church in the film Alfie. Many of you knew the answer but most, I think, probably saw the film the first-time round! For the record: Alfie was directed by Lewis Gilbert and premiered in 1966.

And this month?Picture7

I am afraid that this picture is not very helpful, but how many can both place these three cottages and name them?

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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