1. May 2^nd was, of course, the day of the London Mayoral and Greater London Council elections. It was also the day of a Wandsworth Council by-election in West Putney. You will know that Sadiq Khan, pictured here, won the Mayoralty comfortably (in Merton & Wandsworth his majority was 33,000) and that Labour’s Leonie Cooper was returned as the GLA member for the constituency with a much-enhanced majority – 27,423 as opposed to 15,500, representing a 4% swing to Leonie. However, Labour’s Jane Briginshaw lost West Putney to the Tories, by 489 votes – a swing against Labour of about 4.5% (and my confident prediction to the contrary!) – no doubt there will be much speculation in both “major” parties about the causes and lessons that can be drawn from these massively different results. Congratulations to Sadiq and Leonie; warm commiserations to Jane.
   

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2. The elections made for a very curious first weekend of May as the results across the country dribbled out from Thursday until Sunday. It was livened up by a splendid party at the Bread and Roses pub, which was clearly enjoyed by Cllr Sara Apps (left), Leonie Cooper herself (centre) and campaigner Amy Field. By the way, for those who do not know the Bread and Roses, let me recommend this pub in Clapham Manor Street – not perhaps for the cuisine or the décor (though it does have a battling picture of a young, radical John Burns on the stump), but because it is owned by Battersea & Wandsworth Trade Union Council and run by the Workers Beer Company – surely unique.
   

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3. On the 7^th May, I had the Conservation And Heritage Advisory Committee. That allowed me to applaud the long-awaited restoration of the Vestry School on Battersea Rise. Most of you will have noticed this old monument to a bygone age, which was recently in a very poor condition. It might have been demolished but I and the late Tory Cllr Gordon Passmore got it listed as a building of historic interest. It has now been taken over and renovated and will soon be open as an architect’s practice. The school itself was opened and run by St. Mark’s Church in 1863 just prior to the 1870 Education Act which made children’s education in England free, universal and compulsory.
   

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4. I went to an Art Exhibition held at Battersea Place in conjunction with a local youth club, Carney’s Community on 9^th Battersea Place is the new development (maybe 5 years old) on the west-side of Albert Bridge Road, halfway up. The art was the work of four artists and they were selling their work at the exhibition with the proceeds going to the Motor Neurone Disease (MND) Association and Carney’s. Whilst I was there I got chatting to Sarah Ezekiel, pictured here. This remarkable artist suffers from MND and has to talk using her computer screen (top left of picture) and uses eye-gaze technology to create her art, bright and very vivid paintings – stunning! You can see her work at EzekielArtShop – Etsy UK.
   

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5. On Friday 10^th May Penny and I went to see The Picture of Dorian Gray at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. It is a brilliant one-woman performance over two-and-a-half hours (no interval) by Australian Sarah Snook. It spans the ecstasy of beautiful, captivating youth and its contract with the devil, through time – right up to the inevitable corruption of age, agony and death. It has obvious references to Faustus and Mephistopheles, and even to Jekyll and Hyde. Does English literature have a unique pre-occupation with this very masculine theme about ageing or are there equivalents in French, German and Italian literature? But my problem was that, despite the virtuoso acting and brilliant direction, I didn’t relate in any way to Dorian Gray, and therefore I was not emotionally involved.
   

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6. By chance, on the way back to Charing Cross we walked through Trafalgar Square, where we caught a splendidly beautiful lighting display of the National Gallery, which was celebrating its 200^th It looked magnificent; but unfortunately, the display was only on for the 10^th and 11^th May. However, the Square is going to be the centre of festivities for a full year. I recommend a visit.
   

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7. On Sunday 12^th Penny and I went to the St. John’s Hill Festival, to be followed a week later at the Katherine Low Settlement street party. The festival had a substantial emphasis on street meals and entertainment – I had a delicious African stew/curry from this stall. The party was very much oriented to KLS and its many members. Clearly, these events are enjoyed by councillors enjoy – I met many Tory councillors on St. John’s Hill and lots of Labour ones at the KLS party. There was even some cross-party fraternisation, with Mayor Juliana Anaan also a prominent visitor.

8. I was invited by Coventry University to be a guest speaker for a class of students from Oklahoma State University on Tuesday, 14^th And if that sounds strange, let me explain! Coventry University has a campus, well a smart building in Kennington Lane, Vauxhall. One of their courses is in real estate management – they didn’t do courses like that when I was at university either – and as a fund-raiser, they host Oklahoma State students for a one-week visit to London. The tutor had seen the piece in The Observer a few weeks back, where I had made comments about the costs, values, and Council Tax levies associated with the Nine Elms developments, which they had visited the day before. He thought that I would make an interesting commentator on those developments. I think the students enjoyed it – I certainly did – American students are very open and chatty. I asked them for a two word impression of the UK (they had been here 2 days from Heathrow to Vauxhall). Favourites were WET, CHAOTIC, PICTURESQUE- Vauxhall wet and chaotic I understand, but picturesque!
   

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9. The Planning (PAC) Applications Committee was on the 21^st It was a quiet committee but it did have one very interesting and contentious application: for a “homeless hub”. The Council’s Housing Department was under direction from the Labour administration to provide a hub as a safe, managed place, where street sleepers could be “housed” and assisted back into a safer environment. I am sure that very few could or would object to the objective, as I know we are all concerned about the people forced to sleep rough in Clapham Junction and elsewhere. But recognising the worthiness of the objective is not quite the same as having the facility close to one’s own home, even if any fears or concerns are not justified, in reality. As Chair of the Committee my main concern was that the debate and decision took place in an atmosphere, respecting both the concerns of the community as well as the objective. I am glad to say that it was – a word of thanks here to Tory Cllr Tom Pridham, who spoke on behalf of the local objectors, many his constituents, and despite being the Tory parliamentary candidate for Battersea on July 4th, he spoke with admirable restraint. The application was approved with just one dissentient.
   

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10. And then it was the 22^nd May, 2024. Unquestionably a big day for Councillor Sana Jafri, who was elected Mayor of Wandsworth. Sana, born and bred in Wandsworth, was educated at Burntwood School, and is the Borough’s first Muslim Mayor. Here she is pictured left, with our first Youth Mayor Millie Quinn and her deputy, Favour Onirir – the appointment of the Youth Mayor is a new Labour initiative.
    

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11. But at about 5 pm all attention was somewhat distracted by Rishi Sunak’s announcement that the General Election would be on July 4th. For the next six weeks all Council activity will be on hold – not of course the day-to-day process of clearing the bins, processing rents and paying benefits, and all the other daily business of the Council – but all the politics of committee and council meetings. The political parties all jumped into action and on Friday 24^th Labour adopted Marsha de Cordova officially as our candidate and had our campaigning launch – pictured here with Martin Linton, Battersea’s MP 1997-2010, and with the impressive Battersea Banner, designed and handcrafted by local party members.
    

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12. So, what to make of the sudden call for a General Election? Personally, I am pleased that we are spared several months of “will, he, won’t he?” Furthermore, as the Treasurer of the Battersea Labour Party, I am glad that we will spend much less in 5 weeks campaigning than we would have done in a 5-month campaign later in the year. Some Labour colleagues think (hope) that he has made an enormous mistake, but I am not so sure. I am confident that the Tories will lose badly, but I argue that they would have lost more heavily after a long campaign into the autumn. Either way Sunak certainly now “owns” the result. Meanwhile, it’s going to be all ferocious activity for those of us who run around organising the campaigning, which will annoy and bore many people (maybe including you) with lives to get on with – but always remember that democracy is much better than any alternative yet known.
    

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13. The other night I saw a TV programme called The May Blitz. It was about the week, of 1-8 May 1941, when the Luftwaffe turned its attention on to Liverpool, which took one of the most intensive and destructive bombing assaults of the war. The SS Malakand was in dock; it had a cargo of munitions and on the night of the 3^rd May it blew up in what was said to be the single biggest explosion that has ever taken place in Britain. The amazing thing is that I have a slight tendency to claustrophobia, which I have slowly related to sheltering with my mother in a cupboard under the stairs, but never knew when or why. On that night of 3^rd May 1941 I was living in a house in Liverpool about a mile and a half from the SS Malakand and quite near where some of the bombs fell. Could it be that I have the very dimmest subconscious memory of that night? But I was 28 days old. Ironically my late mother had just been evacuated, with an embryonic me, from dangerous London to the safety of Liverpool. We survived but I don’t like being shut up in small dark places.
    

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My June Programme

1. July 4^th is The big election day, and hence the Council has entered the “so-called purdah Period”, with all political activity suspended for the duration. So there will be very few meetings in June.
2. On 5^th June, however, a plaque to Charlotte Despard will be unveiled near where she lived and worked, near the new US Embassy and the Skypool (you can just make out someone swimming above the hoi polloi of Nine Elms!). What the republican, Irish, socialist, anti-imperialist Despard would now think of the location of her plaque, hardly bares thinking about.
3. On the 11^th June there will be the funeral of my old friend Sean Creighton at Lambeth Crematorium, He was a very distinctive Wandsworth councillor in the years 1982-86, I will say more about him and others next month.
4. The Planning Applications Committee is on 20^th June – as a regulatory committee, with statutory responsibilities this, and licensing, are excluded from the purdah rulings.
   

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Did you know?

The month before last I asked, “just how many surviving pre-nineteenth century buildings or structures in Battersea can you/we name? I had one terrific answer from Chris, which I shared with you all last month. Then Roy added a lot more detail. I must confess that it was far too complex for me to work out so I will forward to Emma at the Heritage Library to see whether she can resolve it all for me!

So back to last month, when I asked who was a famous inmate of Wandsworth Prison and a local lad, born in Stockwell but well-known in the “right” circles in Battersea, who spent many years in Brazil, but returned to see his family and old mates, and benefit from the NHS before dying in 2001. The answer is, of course: Ronnie Biggs. If you want to see a romanticised version of his life produced by his son, then I recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgwlHgDSecI

And this month?

Can we create a list of Battersea’s MPs? – Both North and South, since 1900 and to 2024?

I’ll start with John Burns (1892-1914) as a member of Battersea Liberal Association, and finish with Marsha de Cordova (2017- ), Labour Party.