Councillor Tony Belton’s Battersea, August 2026, Newsletter (# 206)
- Wow! July 2026. What a month 3 resignations and a funeral, 2 coronations and a surprise award; 2 books near completion and dinner with Marsh de Cordova, MP, to celebrate.
- Ten years ago, the National Lottery decided to give 10 x £1M grants to an area of North Battersea, including what is now Battersea Park, Falconbrook and St. Mary’s wards. It was being paid out in chunks
, one year at a time, over the decade. Now the grant is ending and so the voluntary sector convened a Hardship Crisis Conference at St. Peter’s in Plough Road to discuss the problem. Without the £1M per year grant, many of the social projects held in Battersea and much of the co-ordination across the voluntary organisations will be under threat. The day generated much good talking and great ideas but now the challenge is putting those ideas into practice. I will certainly keep an eye on this good cause.
- Then on to the surprise award: On July the 19th and 20th the Greater London Labour Party (GLLP) annual conference took place in a hotel in the city. It is a long time since I was a regular attender at this conference and then it used to be held in places like Camden Town Hall. What a change – holding it in a hotel.
But I was not particularly interested; I’d been there before. Then two days before it started, I got notice that I was going to be given an award on the 20th. I did not even have a delegate’s pass, but it was easy enough to get one in those circumstances. And genuinely, much to my surprise, I received a merit award from the GLLP signed by Andy Burnham Leader of the Labour Party – pretty impressive since he was only announced as leader on the day before, 19th. The award was in recognition of my longevity as, I think, the longest serving councillor in London (55 years), possibly even the longest serving continuously in the country?). It was a show of appreciation from London Labour – and a delightful surprise. The picture shows me being presented the award by the GLLP chair, Maggi Ferncombe.
- Moving on to the more mundane: I had a meeting of the Battersea United Charities on the 20th July, followed by the Planning Applications Committee on the 21st . There was nothing to report from the BUC meeting and the major item on PAC was ‘only’ an application for a drinking establishment in arch 79 of the railway embankment under the Battersea Park:Victoria railway line. Unfortunately this application was deferred for the second month running because of new material that we need to consider. I doubt whether the application is of great interest to most people in Battersea but many of the local residents in Bridge House on Queenstown Road object vehemently. The item was deferred for one month.
- The Council Meeting of the 23rd of July was a “Special Council Meeting”, meaning it was not about normal council business but about the Tory councillors’ extremely half-baked ideas for running at the council. But it did not come to much, as the real meat of the evening was the announcement of the Tory leader, Aled Richards-Jones’s resignation and of the Labour Deputy Leader, Liz Dobres’s resignation both as Deputy Leader and as a councillor. Both resignations were just 40 or so days after the borough council election. Councillor Robert (Rob) Morritt was elected Leader by the Tory majority (my frst coronation of the month), whilst Liz Dobres’s resignation results in a by-election in Trinity ward, Tooting. Both resignations were for personal reasons. In the case Aled Richards Jones, he had strong family health reasons to resign, whilst Liz has just recently got a politically restricted job in the Civil Service. Good luck to both of them.
- Mention of resignations clearly brings to mind the resignation of Keir Starmer as Prime Minister on effectively 22nd of June three days after Andy Burnham’s by-election victory in Makerfield. Kier had done a tremendous job, with considerable help from Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, in making Labour, not only electable, but massive victors in the 2024 General Election. Personally I liked Keir and approved of much of his work especially in improving our relationships with Europe but the reality was, I’m afraid, that he just was not a practised, professional, political operator. I am sad to say that I think he will find resignation difficult: he clearly felt unappreciated and let down by his parliamentary colleagues and possibly quite rightly.
- As for Andy Burnham (the second coronation): his start has been phenomenal; and Labour is enjoying, what is known as, the Burnham Bounce. However the UK’s problems are as they were before he took over and consequently he will soon have difficult and unpopular decisions to take. As it happens, I do have personal experience, even if very limited, of Andy. A few years ago when he was Secretary of State for Health, he came to Battersea, indeed to the then Latchmere ward, and with me as a Latchmere councillor, we opened the Grant Road health clinic. We spent an hour or so walking round the Winstanley estate, passing the time of day. I can certainly vouch for his easy pleasant, personal, conversational style and the keen interest he seemed to take in everything. Andy certainly has the common touch and an easy manner. He is going to need them in the two to three years we have before the next general election. I will be suporting him as best I can.
- And the funeral, was for Annie Trevelyan on 24 July at the Friends’ Meeting House in Wandsworth High Street. I had known Annie since the early 1970s, or even the sixties; she married one of my dearest friends and indeed the four (Penny was there) of us went on holiday together in Tuscany, Paris and the Lake District. In a sense it was, of course, a sad occasion, but it was also wonderful. I had been to a Quaker wedding but never a Quaker funeral. They are so communal, very uplifting, so free of the fake religiosity, experienced in many other religious ceremonies. I am quite happy in my atheism, both intellectually and emotionally but if I was ever persuaded to believe differently then it would be Quakerism for me. RIP Annie
- After the council meeting on the 21st of the month, Penny and I set ourselves a joint-target of completing our separate books by the 31st of July. I am delighted to say that I finished reading the final print proofs of my book at about midday on the 31st. Meanwhile Pen finished writing hers at about 4:00 in the afternoon. We later had dinner with Marsha de Cordova, Battersea MP, and shared a bottle of bubbly – a great way to end the month.
- Penny’s book started by being a consideration of meritocracy and its place in the post-enlightenment world and ended up about meritocracy and democracy. One of my tasks in August is going to be reading it and delivering a hopefully friendly and helpful critique. My book The Wandsworth Challenge, I expect to publish in the autumn – but that is now up to printers Austin Macauley. It is a personal and political history of Wandsworth from 1964 to 2022 which I hope many of you will find interesting.
My August Programme
August is of course the major holiday month and hence the programme is rather thin but it will include:
- A cataracts operation on Tuesday, 4 August, at Chelsea & Westminster. I know that it is a terribly trivial procedure, which millions have experienced, but the idea of people cutting in to my eye, whilst I am under only local anaesthetic, still makes my blood go cold. To think that the great physicist, Isaac Newton, experimented by injecting himself in the eye!
- The Planning Applications Committee on 20 August.
- The Trinity ward, Tooting, by-election on 27 August, where given my current mobility, I am likely to be spending many hours at a polling station flying the flag.
Did you know?
Last month inspired by my Brazilian trip, I asked a question about, how many “created” capitals like Brasilia can you name?
A few of you half-answered the question by naming three or four. Most mentioned Washington, a compromise roughly in the middle of the 13 original states of the USA; and nearly as many said Canberra, neither Melbourne nor Sydney, and close to the centre of the then three most populous provinces of New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia; some correctly said Ottawa, neither the largest city of French nor English-speaking Canada but between francophone Quebec and anglophone Ontario; and of course Brasilia, but no one mentioned my fifth, which was Madrid. It was made the capital when Spain was effectively created upon the marriage of Ferdinand ll of Aragon and Isabella l of Castile in 1469. Prior to that date Zaragoza was the capital of Aragon, whilst Toledo, Burgos and Valladolid swapped the role in Castile.
But the question really grabbed the attention of my friend, John Oughton, who has long since reached double figures, and has probably now got to 20. Of those I recall that Rangoon is no longer the capital of Myanmar but Naypyidaw is, and that a whole series of ex-USSR countries have changed their capitals, whilst Indonesia is in the process of changing from Jakarta to Nusantara, and many more…… Well done John for his encyclopaedic knowledge of international politics.
And this month?
Everyone knows Battersea Power Station, but not so long ago Battersea had a second power station built, run and owned by Battersea Borough Council. Do you know what it was called and where it was?
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Tony Belton
Tony Belton 