In Praise of Ken Livingstone
For those for whom the 1980s are already ancient history, I thought it worthwhile to say a bit about Ken. Last month’s election was one too far – perhaps two elections too far, but let’s make no mistake he has been a giant of London politics for the best part of 40 years. It is difficult to remember now, just how popular he was for most of those years.
Apart from his roles both as a Lambeth councillor and an MP he has been the London city boss for 13 years, from 1981-86 as the Leader of the Greater London Council (GLC) and as Mayor from 2000-2008. He defeated the official Labour candidate, Frank Dobson, in 2000 (making him one of the most successful independent candidates ever in British electoral history) and massively outpolled Margaret Thatcher in all the London popularity polls in the late 80s.
But he also has a stream of achievements behind him, which would be the envy of many politicians. He almost invented today’s cosmopolitan London, with his emphasis on the Rainbow Coalition and a 24:7 city life-style. Certainly his espousal of equal opportunities, almost a joke at the beginning of the 80s, has made it standard practice in even the most conservative of establishments. Livingstone transformed London bus services and was the first and only person to reduce rather than enhance the dominance of cars on London roads, both with lower fares and the congestion charge.
Even his “mistakes” usually had a positive outcome. Too far back for many to remember but he invited the IRA (Irish Republican Army) to talks at what was then County Hall. The right-wing press slaughtered him for talking to, and giving respectability, to terrorists. But Thatcher followed not long after and 10 years later Tony Blair brought a level of accommodation and peace to Northern Ireland – but Ken had blazed the trail. Perhaps his finest single moment was his speech immediately following the dreadful London 7/7 bombings, when he stood up for a multi-cultural, cosmopolitan London which would not be cowed by terrorism and blood.
His opening sentence on the day of the bombing was; “This city is the greatest in the world, because people live side-by-side in harmony – and Londoners will not be divided by this cowardly attack. … We are here because people from around the world come to London; people live in London, to fulfil their dreams and to achieve their potential. They choose to come to London, as so many have come before, because they come to be free”.
Some had cause to regret his war with Margaret Thatcher, after all I along with perhaps 20,000 others were made redundant as a consequence of it and her consequent abolition of the GLC. But in the end he won and he was right. London needed some form of regional government and although the Mayor and GLA is not the model I would have supported (nor was it the model that he supported in the early Blair years) it is now clearly here to stay, commanding as it does bi-partisan support.
If Boris achieves half as much he will be doing well – something I hope he remembers at the opening of the Olympics, which would not be coming to London without Ken’s participation – along with many others.
Tory emotions – a lament for a Golden Age
It’s curious the way Tories hark back to a golden age of community values and community spirit, when kids could play in the streets and be left to go to school unaccompanied, when neighbours looked out for their elders, when men doffed their caps to ladies passing in the street and when the sun shone all summer through. Curious because surely no political party has done more to destroy that age, if it ever existed, than the Tory party.
OK, so Hitler played his part in breaking up the solidarity of British, and in particular London, working class districts, and no doubt urban planners and both major parties did their best to finish off the job with massive inner city council-led developments. But when I first represented such an area, the community was still recognisably the same as in the immediate post-war world.
Four decades later it is not and the main reason for that, I suggest, is the ruthless pursuit of neo-liberal economic policies first by the Thatcher Government – not in all honesty abated by the Blair/Brown Government but now being disastrously and incompetently pursued by the Coalition.
This is most obvious in the post-industrial north, where whole communities – typically but not exclusively mining and metal bashing towns – have had the heart ripped out of them. But it is also true in inner London. Whole sets of working class communities based on very short travel to work lifestyles have simply been torn apart by CCT or compulsory competitive tendering (where is the old style parkie living in the parkie house? Or the schoolkeeper’s house? Or the caretaker? Or the homehelps and meals on wheels staff? All replaced by minimum wage slaves hired and fired by facilities management companies with no connection or locus in any area at all except the City).
Of course, it is not just CCT. The ruthless pursuit of globalisation, largely in the interest of the political and City/Wall Street elite, has equally played its part. As, of course, has industrial and economic change. But the Tory party with its current neo-liberal economic policies can hardly avoid a fair proportion of the blame!
Call Mr Robeson: A Life – with Songs (2012)
My partner and I decided that we would write reviews of plays that we see. If you are interested this is our review of a play about Paul Robeson, the great American baritone, that we saw at the Warehouse Theatre, Croydon, a couple of weeks back. The review was largely written by Penny Corfield after our discussion. If Robeson is new to you then let me recommend looking him up on YouTube and playing Joe Hill – an American TU ballad.
Written and performed by:
Tayo Aluko
at the Warehouse Theatre, Croydon: 18 May 2012
Paul Robeson
The magnificent power of words – and, especially, of words set to music in song – laid the basis for this mesmerising performance by Tayo Aluko. He deployed his deep baritone and his acting charisma to take the audience through a summary of the life of the great American singer Paul Robeson (1898-1976). True, the audience was predisposed to be appreciative. Yet it would take a veritable heart of stone not to be moved by ‘Ole Man River’, ‘Steal Away’, and ‘Going Home’, sonorously performed close at hand, in the intimate surroundings of Croydon’s threatened Warehouse Theatre.
Tayo Aluko as a young man in Nigeria had never heard of Robeson. Once having got the message, however, he determined that others should share his excitement. Hence his dedication in writing and performing the script as a one-man show. Incidentally, some people in the Croydon audience ventured that Robeson was less likely to have been forgotten in Britain than in his native America. Here he was feted for his music and his internationalism. But, either way, there is scope for all to learn more about this remarkable singer and activist.
Sensitive piano accompaniment came from Michael Conliffe, who wrote the incidental music which linked the scenes together. And the staging was simple but ingenious. Boxes and props were scattered around, allowing Aluko to move from point to point, picking up books, objects and photos to illustrate specific themes at specific times. In sympathy, his acting turned in an instant from happiness to grief, from enthusiasm to brooding, as the different episodes unfolded.
Amusing by-play was generated by the ever-changing names of Robeson’s female companions. In parallel, reference was made to the growing strains within his marriage to Eslanda ‘Essie’ Goode Robeson (1896-1965). She resented his many passionate affairs but, as Robeson’s ambitious business manager, contributed strongly to the advancement of his career. The play’s episodic format was not, however, geared to a close exploration of the sexual and psychological tensions within their marriage. Her disparaging comments in her biography of her husband Paul Robeson, Negro (1930) go unmentioned, as does his angry response. On such personal matters, it is notoriously hard for outsiders to judge. The play does, however, include a late song, in rather uncomfortable tribute from Robeson to his wife’s rock-like character. They split and reconciled several times, but never divorced.
Robeson was a polymath. As a young man, he graduated from Columbia University law-school, whilst playing as a professional in the National Football League. He became a celebrated concert-singer, film star, and stage actor, being the first African American to play Othello, with a white supporting cast, on Broadway. He was a staunch campaigner for human rights within America and an internationalist, aroused to active anti-fascism by the Spanish Civil War. As his career took him around the world, Robeson felt that he was better appreciated outside the USA than he was by his compatriots. For a time he had a house in Hampstead; and, at another time, he lived in Moscow, with his son Pauli. He sought to study his African origins but also to identify the bedrocks of a universal musical language. Above all, Robeson wanted to be accepted as a human being and musician in his own right, not just to be labelled by his ethnicity.
His later years were difficult. During the Cold War years, many Americans viewed Robeson as little more than a ‘godless communist’, although he proclaimed himself not as a communist but a socialist. He was notoriously grilled by the McCarthyite House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) – whence the title of this play: ‘Calling Mr Robeson’. From 1950-57, the State Department blacklisted him, refusing him a passport and the opportunity to travel overseas. Exhausting legal and political challenges followed.
Robeson, who accepted the International Stalin Prize in 1953, also became controversial on the political left and within the American civil rights movement. He feared that he was becoming air-brushed out of history. Despite getting his passport back and launching upon successful comeback tours, he now had a controversial past. Younger activists increasingly ignored his achievements. After a failed suicide bid in Moscow in 1961, Robeson became chronically ill and depressed, on heavy medication. He lived in seclusion with his wife and, after her death, with his son. Throughout, he kept his dignity; and he never rescinded his commitment to socialism and to human rights world-wide.
As indicated in the question-and-answer session at the end, Robeson remains both admired and contentious. The receding tides of history have marooned his uncritical belief in Soviet-style communism. Was he indeed just another of the ‘useful idiots’ (in Stalin’s phrase) who helped to deceive the international community and especially the political Left about the true nature of Stalinism? Should or could Robeson have protested publicly against Soviet communism’s own injustices, about which he was, however reluctantly, becoming aware? The answer is surely yes. Yet this play makes his political journey innerly comprehensible, without necessarily endorsing every step on the way.
Together, Paul Robeson’s life and songs bore witness to his multiple commitments, about which this play invites its audiences to reflect. Those who live quiet lives, their heads below the parapet, may wonder how they would have fared with such a career, in such testing times. And his songs live on: listen to Robeson’s recordings of ‘Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal’, ‘Joe Hill’, or ‘Going Home’. Magnificent – a voice from history for all times.
Author, performer and singer: Tayo Oluko
Call Mr Robeson was directed by Olusola Oyeleye; and designed by Phil Newman.
For future performances in the USA, Canada, and the UK, consult www.callmrrobeson.com; info@tayoalukoandfiends.com; and Twitter: @CallMrRobeson.
To support the Appeal to save Croydon’s threatened Warehouse Theatre, now in administration, see www.warehousetheatre.co.uk.
The Size of the Public Sector economy
In April, 2011, Cllr Edward Lister, then Leader of Wandsworth Council, said that he welcomed the Coalition Government’s plan to shrink the public sector although he acknowledged that implementing the cuts programme in local government, and in Wandsworth in particular, would be tough. This was slightly odd as he had spent the previous 18 years complaining that successive Governments, Labour and Tory, were not giving the Borough enough money and should be giving it more.
Meanwhile in the Council Chamber Tory Cllr Jim Cousins took every single opportunity to describe the public sector as non-productive. “It is the private sector which creates wealth”, he would say.
The implication from both men’s perspective is that a smaller public sector will result in a more vibrant economy and, presumably, higher standards of living for all.
I have tried to tackle this argument on many occasions, with my favourite example being that of the Thames Barrier, which was built to time and on budget in the 1980s by the Public Health Engineering Department of the GLC (then under the control of that left-wing villain Ken Livingstone) and just before the private sector Channel Tunnel, which opened in 1994 late and 80% over budget.
But I thought I should take a second look at the subject. One thing is undeniable and that is the consistent growth of the public sector in developed societies throughout the twentieth century. Just take a look at the size of the public sector in the USA from 1900-2010:-
A public sector of rather smaller than 5% of the economy in 1900 grows to 35+% by 2010, with three notable and unsurprising spikes as defence spending balloons in 1916-20, 1939-47 and in the early 1950’s (WW1, WW2 and the Korean War). Perhaps not quite so graphically but there is also a near doubling of the size of the public sector, admittedly from a low base, after the election of Roosevelt and his New Deal of 1932.
The twentieth century was, of course, the century of the US imperium. It was also one when the country exploded from a population of 76 million people to very nearly 300 million, with the fastest rising standards of living the world had ever seen. The relationship of this explosive growth seems to go-along with an expansion in the public sector and not the other way round!
Most European countries, with the ironic exception of the ex-eastern block, have a public sector typically 5-10% larger in relative terms than the States. For examle, a similar chart to the one above relating to the Swedish economy reveals a startling similarity, including surprisingly the spikes in the war years – though not the Korean War. All other western European nations follow a similar pattern.
Does their recent relative economic stagnation suggest that there is a relationship and that European countries have gone beyond the optimal level for the size of the public sector? Well not really because in the last decade it has been the Scandinavian countries (and Germany) with the largest public sector budgets that have been the most economically dynamic and it is the Mediterranean countries with their smaller (and relatively dysfunctional) public sectors, which have been doing worst.
Interestingly enough from my analysis the major differences betwen the States and Europe are unsurprisingly the higher percentage spend in the States on defence and the massively higher welfare spend in Europe.
At another level, it seems to me that in almost any country in the world, where I would want to live (apart from micro-states like Monaco or Fiji) the public sector is fairly comparable in relative size to the European and US norms. And this does not seem to me to be very surprising. Mature, complex societies need public works and public infrastructure; they need high standards of public education (a small highly educated elite will not do any more); they need a civic and legal structure carefully regulated and controlled; they need a large public sector, which not only creates wealth but creates the environment for the private sector to create even more wealth.
The flip side of the coin is that almost every country in the world where I would be worried about living has a relatively small public sector. So don’t invite me to Chechnya or ask me to spend an old age in either Russia or China, with their small public sectors (forget the assumptions about communist countries) and scandalous lack of law and order, regulation, public standards and provision for pensioners.
So given the lack of any substantial evidence to justify the Tory diehard position on the scale of the public sector economy just why do they stick so religiously to their current course? Well, it’s the dogma, stupid. The most pragmatic, flexible and some would argue the most successful political party in the western world has morphed into a herd of ideologues – that spells trouble for them!
Client Politics – the Punter is King
Client Politics seems to me to be an excellent description of a new brand of politics, which has grown out of triangulation and the Blairite tendency. Clearly closely related to the commercial version, “The Customer is King”, it can be taken at its extreme as an abnegation of leadership. “Giving the punter what s/he wants”, regardless of how it fits with “our policies”, may seem an extreme version, but it is getting close to a reality.
The most absurd examples of this philosophy occur in the education world, where student choice has led to many courses becoming a hotchpotch of popular subjects without any regard for the totality of the subject – hence endless Henry VIII and Hitler but no Magna Carta and the Black Death, or more and more IT studies and the end of chemistry. The rigour of an intellectual discipline is being lost in favour of a kind of X factor subject selection.
Is it fanciful to say, at least on the left, this comes from a loss of faith in leadership, whether expressed in the Leninist top-down model or in the milder British version of “the man from the ministry knows best”? And clearly leadership is extremely out of vogue. A recent meeting I attended in Battersea was all about “identity politics” and totally opposed to “political politics”. One older member of the left arguing that one could hardly become friends and discuss tactics until one knew each other’s politics whilst the younger community activists argued precisely the opposite, that you could not possibly discuss politics until you had become friends.
No one could argue with the proposition that both Lenin and the “man from the Ministry” got it wrong rather too frequently but now we have an education policy world under Gove, where any group of parents can argue for the establishment of a free school of any kind absolutely in disregard for what might have been “the man from the Ministry’s advice”. The absurd result is that in the Labour Party, which once believed almost entirely in non-sectarian education – see our experience in Northern Ireland – and which in the 70’s argued about the possibility of getting rid of Catholic and C of E schools, now has members arguing that we should not do anything other than welcome with open arms the prospect of having Jewish and Muslim primary schools as neighbours in our inner city.
The appeal is in the immediacy of the punters’ support. Whether the support is still there a few years, or even a few weeks, later is deemed irrelevant. Whether the long-term implications for the community are good or bad, we can justify our decision, because it was what the punters wanted. In the circumstances it is odd that we do not take too much trouble in trying to assess whether the punters are merely a vocal minority or perhaps even a misguided majority.
This is very apparent in the Wandsworth example of the Springfield Hospital development site. This large, undeveloped, NHS site has stood under-used for decades. The NHS, which of course needs the money, has put forward two perfectly acceptable development proposals, but they got their politics wrong. Their last application was submitted at a time when it got caught up in the 2010 General Election. Both major parties, for largely electoral reasons, took part in a vigorous anti-campaign and the Council, assisted by the fact that its Deputy Leader lived opposite the site, decided to reject the application.
The community, or rather the immediate neighbours, knew what it wanted and won the argument – the Council gave the punters their desires. But just what are the odds on a semi-privatised NHS, even more strapped for cash, and/or its developers coming back with a larger, much less neighbour friendly application – fair to middling I guess – and in the meantime we have had an extra few years of decay, fewer desperately needed homes and less money for the health service. So we have total victory for the punters in the short-term but arguably a loss for the wider community (the homeless and patients) and a probable long-term loss.
It is, of course, hard work standing up for one’s core beliefs when one really doesn’t have any. Hence as a working councillor, I hear arguments such as “free/faith/foundation schools are popular with the parents” and therefore we should not oppose them – regardless of our long-held belief that sectarianism should be kept out of schools. It’s an attractive proposition; especially when, over the course of time and government legislation, it seems particularly ostrich like to maintain one’s so-called principled position. A persuasive advocate of client politics would say, after Keynes, “Ah so as the facts change so does your position – and quite right too”.
But surely there has to be a limit to such an argument. Some core beliefs have surely to be really at the core. Client politics is too easy an escape from taking responsibility. Leadership must be receptive to public opinion, but it cannot escape the ultimate responsibility to lead.
Councillor Tony Belton’s Latchmere May Newsletter (# 37)
April highlights
1. I have to be honest – there weren’t many highlights as they affect anyone else, as I flew off to Cuba on 31st March. Of course I could tell you tons about that but as we all know no one is interested in other people’s holiday stories so I won’t other than to say Havana is great if you love music; the city is spectacular in a bizarre bomb site kind of way; the scenery in general is over-rated though parts are spectacular – see photograph where the insects were venomous!
What happens when Castro dies? Well that is the $64 million dollar question. Difficult to say, but I think that there is a fair bit of respect for Fidel and his Revolution. My own guess is that IF there were an election tomorrow, which of course there won’t be, he would get a respectable vote. May be sufficient even to retain control against an assortment of right and left-wing alternatives and, of course the Social and Christian Democrat alternatives! But that is not the same as saying that the regime will continue without him because I rather think it will not. The young are beginning to show signs of impatience – but what do I know? I was just a semi-casual observer!
2. The Finance and Corporate Resources Committee met on the 19th. There was stacks on the agenda but I’d have to say it was mainly of a house-keeping nature. There was a paper about how the Council is trying to shift everything online, which of course is fine for those of us happy to pay and claim for everything on-line but not so good for the non-IT literate – but you can see why. According to the experts every time we make a face-to-face enquiry it costs the Town Hall £7.40, every time we do it by phone then the cost is £2.90 but email business is done at £0.10P a time – as the Americans would say – “It’s a no-brainer”. There were other papers on office strategy, corporate objectives, emergency planning (What happens here in the event of a 9/11 catastrophe) and housing benefit.
One item that will interest some of you, however, was the sale of the Eltringham School site. Council rules don’t allow me to say exactly the price that the Council got for the site but it was way upwards of any of the speculation that I had heard. That one sale alone resolves most of the Council’s problems with the capital programme for the whole of this year!
3. The 18th April Planning Applications Committee had a couple of interesting applications, one for the partial redevelopment of Craven Cottage, the Fulham FC ground, and another for yet another giant, 500 feet (1870 metre) high development at Vauxhall. Neither of them are in Wa
ndsworth but all Boroughs are asked to comment on important applications close to the Borough boundaries. I wonder what you all think about the mini-Manhattan, which is inexorably taking shape at Vauxhall? I must confess I am not the keenest advocate of tower blocks and hence I have my doubts though I know one or two of you disagree with me. Here is an artist’s impression of what the “Tower” on its own will look like when completed – and there are quite a few more in the pipeline at the same height.
4. Went to see the Duchess of Malfi at the Old Vic on Friday, 27th April. It was written by John Webster, a couple of years after Shakespeare died, and it is a bloody tragedy – and do I mean bloody. I think 12 people got zeroed in the last act. Strange to say, it really is quite difficult to avoid laughing when bodies are collapsing all over the stage in front of you! Indeed there were so many that I am not even sure that I counted the number accurately. It is, however, about a very modern and horrible crime – so-called honour killings. Then, in the early 17th century it was about sexual desire and the class system – nowadays as we know it is frequently about religious intolerance. A stimulating evening!
5. Last month I commented that the Government is cutting back on many forms of housing benefit. I know that policy is not yet as unpopular as I think it will become but canvassing this month for the Mayoral election I came across examples of families, who believe that they will have to move out of Inner London because of their housing benefit cuts. When and if they do, they will be losing social connections, school placements and jobs – comment is hardly necessary.
6. OK, so I mentioned the Mayoral Election but I have always said that I would not use this newsletter as a crude party political campaigning tool – apart from anything else I know most of you reasonably well and all of you are quite capable of making up your own minds who to vote for. But one thing I do hope you do is to make the effort to go to vote – without that minimal effort you lose the right in my book even to complain with credibility.
My Programme for May
1. The Election on 3rd May will clearly keep me out of mischief most of this week – or perhaps that is mischief!
2. May is the big Month of the Year in Council terms. Hence there are Annual Meetings aplenty when we decide who the Mayor is going to be and who is going to run which Committee – except of course it isn’t quite like that at all. We already know that the Mayor is going to be Roehampton’s Adrian Knowles – what happens in May is that he is officially inaugurated as such.
3. The Wayford Street Residents Association AGM is on the 17th but unfortunately that is the evening of the Mayor’s inauguration and none of us councillors will be able to attend.
4. The Planning Applications Committee is on 23rd May.
5. On the 27th May at 11 am I am leading “an Historical Walk” from the Latchmere pub to the Battersea Arts Centre. It is part of the Wandsworth Heritage Festival – I charge £10 for it but I can guarantee that you will learn more about the history of Battersea than you had ever imagined – see below. If you would like to come then do drop me an email and I will give you more details.
What do you know?
The last duel in British history was fought in Battersea Fields, where Battersea Park now is. It was between the serving Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington (Yes, he of Waterloo and shown in the inset rather more reputably defeating Bonaparte) and the Earl of Winchelsea – and it wasn’t about gambling debts or a woman! It was all about the Duke’s plan to remove discrimination from British Catholics. Both were real old Tories and nothing had been further from Wellington’s mind when he took over as PM but the pressure to remove the legal constraints on Catholics taking public position were becoming impossible to maintain.
The year was 1829, and in the end Winchelsea chickened out – or rather did not make any serious attempt to “win” and the Duke fired his pistol into the ground. The public and press were furious and the papers the next day were full of condemnation – politics is perhaps just as lively today but no one has yet challenged me to a duel!
My Latchmere April Newsletter (# 36)
March highlights
- Last month, I reported that the Council had decided to “spend” £100 million on Latchmere and Roehampton wards, and that the Big Lottery has also allocated a separate £1 million to Latchmere. Since then I have set up a meeting on 29th March with the Big Lottery “facilitator”, Helen Garforth – officially the “Big Local Representative”, when she will be able to meet many local interest groups, such as resident associations, youth groups, women’s groups, councillors and town hall officers. Helen will tell us what the Lottery Fund is prepared to grant fund and how we go about putting bids together.
- Meanwhile we await developments on the Council’s plans for its £100 million infrastructure development, though many who live in the Grant Road, Plough Road, York Road and Falcon Road rectangle will by now have seen the Council’s first publicity flyer on the issue.
- STOP PRESS. An hour and a half before the 29th March meeting, there was a shooting in Plough Road. One young man was taken to hospital and, it is said, two others were seen “escaping” on a motor bike. This is not the place to talk about the shooting (I am sure the local Guardian and the police will have things to say about it), but it did mean that we had to move the meeting to Thames School. It also rather dramatically reminded us of some of the issues that need to be tackled in Latchmere.
- The meeting itself was an early launch of what the Big Lottery Fund is trying to do with 150 projects nation-wide, £1million a time, aimed at helping isolated or more deprived communities to re-generate themselves – far too early though to give anything other than superficial comments. We did, however, learn the boundaries of the area concerned. It was Latchmere ward from the Eltringham School site to Culvert Road, and a small part of St. Mary Park, covering Badric Court and the very bottom end of Battersea High Street.
- The Planning Applications Committee met twice in March on the 5th and 15th. On the 5th there were very large developments approved; one in the Nine Elms area, amounting to 1800 flats, plus associated retail and office developments. What with the notification of further very large developments on and around the Sainsbury’s store, Vauxhall and Nine Elms stand to be transformed into a mini-Manhattan over the next few years. I must admit to having my fears about this. First, I just can’t see where all the business is going to come from for the scale of retail development that is envisaged – what with us all increasingly shopping online. I am not at all sure that it will work. Secondly I haven’t seen much evidence of these massive developments adding much to the community. In many of the existing estates such as the one on Chelsea Bridge Approach, the number of residences that are empty for many weeks of the year is scandalous – such a lot of them seem to be owned by foreign companies wanting a London pad for the occasional convenience of their visiting senior staff.
- The 15th March Planning Applications Committee had a lot of much smaller developments, though the approval of the Council’s plans to put 139 flats on to the Eltringham School site was of major interest (and concern) to many Latchmere residents, some of whom were at the Committee. Quite a few councillors expressed disappointment that the design was not very distinguished and that at 9 storeys, at the highest, it was just a bit over-sized, but unfortunately only I and one other councillor voted against it. There was also an approval for an extension in Rowditch Lane which has caused some controversy, with me asking some questions of the Town Hall on behalf of neighbours.
- As everyone knows the Government is cutting back on many forms of benefit as from 1st April. Housing and Children’s
benefits are perhaps the best known but some of the implications just might surprise you, as I discovered on 13th March, when I was asked to join the residents of the Dovedale Cottage alms-houses in a meeting they had with their managers – the Pathway Trust – about their rents and management charges. (Dovedale Cottages are at the corner of Battersea Park Road and Latchmere Road and are pictured here). - The charging system is complicated but taken in the round the end result is a rent increase of 20%+. Some of this is down to a straight rent increase but other items include the Council withdrawing a financial support programme for pensioners. Despite writing to the Pathway Chief Executive I am rather afraid that I will not be able to prevent the increase and the sufferers will be the 20-30 residents nearly all of whom are pensioners and not very well off.
- On a personal note, I went to visit my Aunt Nen in rural Essex on 16th March. So what? I hear you say, except that she is
101, as bright as a button and is the younger of the two of us in this photograph! Her family bought her a flight in a glider for her 90th birthday – don’t think she did anything quite so thrilling a couple of years ago (she is actually nearly 102) but she did have a great 100th birthday party – and of course has the telegram to prove it. - On the 3rd and 4th, I went to Dieppe for the week-end. Why Dieppe? Well it isn’t Calais or Boulogne and it is an easy trip from Clapham Junction to Newhaven and then on the ferry. One problem though is that since they have abandoned the old rail ferries, instead of docking by the station, and essentially in the centre of town, you get left a mile out of town and with no services – OK for us but not what you’d fancy burdened with luggage and/or disability. And on the way back, whilst we were watching France vs Ireland on the box, our taxi failed to turn up and we ended up running and, would you believe it, hitching back to the ferry, which we almost leapt on as she sailed!
- But one thing they do have organised very well is their public swimming pool. Built right on the beach it has spectacular play pools and Jacuzzis and a 50 metre open-air salt-water heated pool. If you ever go, do remember to take your trunks!
- Here is a picture of our favourite bar in the old town, which has been much bashed about in the Second World War (though
we, English, ably assisted by the Dutch, burnt it down in 1694 when we wanted to curb Louis XIV’s ambitions). - At 4 pm on 31st March I am going to a one man concert given by the Chair of the Battersea Labour Party, Will Martindale. I am really looking forward to that as he plays the piano and the cello; he plays classical and jazz. He is doing it as a charity event for Epilepsy Action at St. Nectarios Church in Wycliffe Road. If anyone wants to come along I would be delighted to introduce you.
- There was a by-election in Southfields on 29th March. There was a pretty dramatic swing to Labour but the end result was a Tory victory with a 340 majority.
My Programme for April
- You will be surprised about just how early this newsletter is. That is because I am off on Sunday for two weeks and my first real holiday for some years. I will talk about it next month.
- I have Finance & Corporate Resources Committee on 17th April.
- The Planning Applications Committee meets on 18th April.
- And of course every councillor will be busy pestering you for your vote in the Mayoral Elections on May 3rd. I wont use this newsletter as an electioneering tool – I promised not to when I started it. But if anyone wants help with getting a postal vote or a lift to the polling station then let me, or one of my colleagues, know. Actually as I am away it better be them on wspeck@wansdworth.gov.uk or shogg@wandsworth.gov.uk.
What do you think?
At the beginning of this newsletter I said that the Big Lottery was going to spend £1million over 10 years on funding community facilities in Latchmere and a small part of St. Mary Park. That works out at £100,000 each year. We need good ideas for what to do with it. We could for example argue that £10,000 should go on funding York Gardens Library or £5,000 on landscaping near Chesterton House. But what the Big Lottery Trust wants is our ideas. Do send me your thoughts and let’s make sure we make the best possible use of this £1million. I said all that last month but will continue repeating it for a bit until we get some ideas.
What about a Latchmere Olympics in York Gardens? An afternoon of events for toddlers to grandparents?
Mayors – their constitutional position
I have consistently opposed the Heseltine/Blair concept of Mayors, though I have to accept that they look like becoming a permanent part of the British political landscape. But last week-end I was trying to describe the London Mayoral set-up to an American friend, who lives in New York. He asked me about the control exercised upon the Mayor by the Assembly and I must admit that I found it rather difficult.
I explained to him that if 66% of the Assembly members objected they could defeat his budget, but apart from that I was not too sure that the members could do much except overview and scrutinise. Conversations over the years with Livingstone, Sir Robin Wales (Newham) and Edward Lister (Deputy London Mayor) confirm my general impression. They all began by opposing the Mayoral concept (though I am not absolutely sure of that with Wales) but having become Mayor or Deputy they are now so enchanted with their unlimited powers, not just of advocacy but also of executive action, that they are advocates for not only more Mayors but also more powers to be given to them.
My New Yorker friend was scandalised. “You mean once elected these guys are in total control, and unencumbered by any elected assembly? That could never happen in the States – New York’s Mayor is answerable to his admittedly rather small (my italicised words) Council” he exclaimed. Lord Hailsham’s elective dictatorship has become a reality.
I have always thought that the risks we are taking, throwing away the checks and balances implicit, and indeed explicit, in our Council and Leader structure were pretty huge. We are set on the gamble now! I await the coming cronyism, scandals and bad governance with some sorrow for what, all in all, was a pretty good form of local government, once the envy of the world.
Interns – a necessary part of the new economy: good training or genteel slavery?
A recent ad from Wandsworth Council asked for trainee social workers to work for free, selling the idea as good for their CV. It sparked some debate in Labour councillor circles and I am interested in where you stand on the issue. We all know of sites like Work4MP where the expectation is frequently that the “job” you get will be an expenses only internship. Is this a scandal, which all MPs should avoid like the plague or is it a useful source of on the job training?
Starting from the perspective of a 1960s graduate, the idea of unpaid work training appears outrageous. The fact that it might be acceptable today shows just how we have allowed the markets to over-ride our ability to organise society. It also is an expression of the regrettable powerlessness of the trade union movement. One inevitably asks whether there is any limit to the power of the market – suppose market forces and a combination of globalisation and automation results in demand for labour being on a permanently downward trend – are we going to see this generation go from being 20 year old interns to 30 and 40 year old interns?
However, younger colleagues argue that there is nothing wrong with internships, especially when otherwise we would have to pay the bill (a dispute as to whether Battersea LP should pay our intern the national minimum wage (NMW)), and if it helps the intern to get something on their CV and a start to a career. But to me this argument seems self-serving as it actually implies that we are not prepared to pay the real price of our politics or (if the intern works for Tesco) the real price of our groceries.
It also seems to me that the use of interns is massively against equal opportunities with only the affluent, OK the comfortably well-off, being able to fund their kids to go through internship. Indeed one of my Labour colleagues is very open about it and, I quote, says “from frustrating personal experience of trying to start a career in politics 10 years ago – these opportunities are by their nature exclusive to those who have parents wealthy enough to support them. I’m generally opposed to totally unpaid internships for this reason.”
Ben, for it was he, went on to say that “social work degrees, like other professional degree level qualifications (teaching), include a lot of practical experience through placements – that’s much of the point of the course. Would you expect NQTs to do free teaching placements too? Or people with nursing degrees? ….. The obvious question therefore is, are these really training posts – and in which case how do the positions differ from the placements that newly qualified social workers will have undertaken as part of their formal training? If not, then this looks like getting people to work for free”. To which I might add that I doubt whether too many bankers, civil engineers or military folk are expected to start their training on a volunteer basis, though I understand that the Met Police is going that way.
Another of my colleagues argued that the training Wandsworth was going to give was of high quality to which my reply is that I am sure that is so but that it is straight discrimination against the truly less well-off just like any free internship is.
My conclusion is that it is all part of the generational warfare that we of an older (and if you are over 40 maybe even 30 that includes you) generation look like starting having had our free education, a vast range of career choices, good pensions, the NHS, owner occupied housing and now refusing to pay our taxes for following generations. We will only have ourselves to blame if the young are revolting!
My Latchmere March Newsletter (# 35)
February highlights
- The biggest news of the month, the year, the decade, was the Council’s decision to “spend” £100 million on Latchmere and Roehampton wards. And at the same time the Big Lottery has also allocated a separate £1 million to Latchmere. Let me explain. At the 29th February Finance and Corporate Resources Committee the Council came forward with its response to the riots. It was not, of course, said to be a response to the riots, indeed it was claimed to be despite the riots but nevertheless it seems to me to be quite a coincidence that one of the largest ever investments in the Council’s housing stock should come just 6 months after the riots and the independent paper the Council commissioned to analyse them.
- You can read the paper in detail at http://ww3.wandsworth.gov.uk/moderngov/documents/s23036/12-218%20-%20Aspirations.pdf but in summary the Council has decided to arrange its finances so that it creates the opportunity to borrow up to £100million on the refurbishment and regeneration of the most difficult estates in Latchmere and Roehampton. After discussing the paper with the Leader of the Council and the Chief Executive, it is clear that they expect about £60million to be spent in Latchmere and £40million in Roehampton. Whilst these are very large sums it should be remembered that the refurbishment of St. James Grove (Castlemaine) cost over £10m
illion. Here it is before and after the refurbishment. There are as yet no specific plans, nor any commitment to timescales, but it is clear that the Council expects most of the i
nvestment to be centred on the York Road and Winstanley Estates. So using Castlemaine as a template, then if the same amount is spent on the large York Road blocks of Penge, Pennethorne, Chesterton, Inkster, Scholey and Holcroft and, say, Sporle Court, then there will not be much left for anything else. However, it is also clear that the Council want to do something substantial with the square at the foot of Pennethorne House and some of the open land around the other blocks. - I did get a commitment from the Housing Director that the community, and your three councillors, will be very much involved in the process of developing plans and seeing through the process, which we all expect to take at least 10 years! So whilst I am sure things will start happening don’t let anyone imagine that it will all happen tomorrow because it won’t. By the way I was very involved in the consultation process at Castlemaine and it was pretty intensive and very successful.
- The same paper also expanded on the Big Lottery Trust’s decision to invest £1million over 10 years in community projects in the area covered by the York Road, Falcon Road, Kambala, Badric and Wayland Road estates. I have been in touch with the Big Lottery Trust and will meet with their contact in what they call confusingly the Clapham Junction/West Battersea area. The intention is that this fund should be used very much for community projects such as funding play schemes or youth clubs. I think that there will be a tremendous emphasis on well thought out, well led local projects and look forward to seeing what might come from, say, the Falconbrook parents or WOW (Women of Wandsworth) or the most active residents’ associations, such as Falcon Road. But it is also a great opportunity for York Road and Winstanley residents. We must all work to get the best outcome from this once in a lifetime opportunity!
- The Planning Applications Committee on 16th February had nothing of immediate significance to Latchmere ward but it did have a massive development in Nine Elms Lane, which had at least 1,500 flats let alone all the retail space, parking, and leisure space that goes along with that. You can read the details, if you really want to at http://ww3.wandsworth.gov.uk/moderngov/documents/s22864/Paper%20No.%2012-134A.pdf although there is not an easy summary of this massive (2
00 page) paper. But here is an artist’s (one might say developers’ propaganda representation) impression of the development. As it happens I voted against it not because I was against it in principle. Indeed on the whole I think that what is beginning to happen in Nine Elms is very exciting, but because there is almost no provision for housing at prices that ordinary people will be able to afford. In the jargon the element of affordable housing is only 15% and not as Wandsworth itself wants 33% – and that leaves aside whether what is called “affordable” is something that ordinary people can afford as it is often geared to people earning £50,000+. 
On a personal note, I went to the David Hockney exhibition at the Royal Academy on 7th February. If you can afford it and have any interest in art then let me thoroughly recommend it – a real gob-smacker. And here is one of the works, simply a scene of trees in North Yorkshire.- And then on the 20th, I went to Oxford to hear Mary Jay give a talk on the diaries of Douglas Jay – who he?
I hear you say. Well Douglas was the MP for what was then Battersea North from 1946-1983. As I have been a councillor since 1971, I knew him and, of course, Mary quite well. - She is just in the process of getting his diaries published on the web. They are not, she says, strictly diaries but rather reminiscences of his time in the Harold Wilson Cabinet from 1964-67. I could write tons about it and him but suffice to say that Douglas was most famous for three things. First, his undying but unsuccessful opposition to British membership of what was then the Common Market, second, his successful opposition to the Motorway Box, which if it had proceeded would have left most of Battersea covered in a spaghetti junction of motorways. And third for being misquoted as saying, in the 1930s, that “the man in Whitehall knows best” – he actually said something rather different.
- The dinner after the lecture was fascinating as it included many of the major political figures of his day including Douglas’s son Peter and the BBC election guru David Butler, who for those of us of a certain age will remember doing TV coverage of elections for every year from 1959-2001 – he was credited with the invention of the swingometer!
- I also went to the “Ken Livingstone Manifesto” discussion on 11th but because I was doing a surgery at Battersea Library that same morning I missed most of it. But not as it happened Ken himself. I have heard Ken many times and he can veer from being pretty pedestrian to simply magnificent – who can forget his great speech after the 7/7 London bombings? Well this one wasn’t on that scale but it was pretty inspiring stuff and perhaps reflects his growing confidence about his chances at the Mayoral election on May 3rd. I am not saying that he looks exactly like a winner just yet but his position is much stronger than it was 6 months ago.
My Programme for March
- The Council meets on 7th March, when the Council Tax for next year will be rubber-stamped. If you don’t know, and I am sure that you do, it is frozen for the seventh year running, which given the impact of inflation over the years is equivalent to a 20% cut in Council Tax since 2005.
- The Falcon Road Residents Association AGM is on the 15th but I can’t make that because of the Planning Committee but I believe my ward colleague Simon Hogg will be there and maybe Wendy Speck later in the evening.
- There are two Planning Applications Committees this month on 5th March and 15th of which more next month..
What do you think?
- At the beginning of this newsletter I said that the Big Lottery was going to spend £1million over 10 years on funding community facilities in the central part of Latchmere, that is the bit nearest Clapham Junction station. That works out at £100,000 each year. We need good ideas for what to do with it. We could for example argue that £10,000 should go on funding York Gardens Library or £5,000 on landscaping near Chesterton House. But what the Big Lottery Trust wants is our ideas. Do send me your thoughts and let’s make sure we make the best possible use of this £1million.
Tony Belton
Tony Belton 