Archive by Author | Tony Belton
December 23, 2020  

Festive Midwinter Greetings

from Tony and Penny

Sails on the Markermeer, the Netherlands, Photograph, Tony, 2013

November 17, 2020  

The 1918 “Spanish flu” and my grandparents: Lessons from a pandemic

I am probably one of the very few nowadays to have a “direct connection” with the 1918 “Spanish flu” pandemic, in that I had quite long conversations about it with my grandmother. Her husband, Ernest Belton, died of the disease in November, 1918. She was then seven months pregnant with Rose, my aunt. This picture shows my grandparents, with Nen their eldest daughter, in 1911 or 1912.

Gran told me that her husband had woken up one day feeling a bit worse for wear and died in her lap the very same evening – that was how virulent the 1918 pandemic was. At the time of his death, Nen was 7 years old, Ernest 6, and my father Stanley just 4. Rose was born two months later in January, 1919.

The Beltons were a working-class family with no private resources and no Welfare State to support them. My grandfather was a tram driver. They lived in tenement blocks in, variously, the East End and Islington. I don’t recall whether my grandmother had needed to work before Ernest’s death (our chats were in the late 1940s and 1950s), but, after his death, she certainly had to work daytimes as a seamstress in the big Regent Street store Dickins & Jones and in her spare time (with 4 children, aged 0-7!) as a domestic cleaner.

There was no widow’s allowance, indeed the Widows’, Orphans’ and Old Age Contributory Benefits Act did not come into force until 1925, but even then widows had to be over 45 to qualify for ten shillings (50P) per week. But gran was in her late twenties. She used to tell me that she regularly had to pawn her wedding ring for a shilling (literal but meaningless modern comparison is 5P), and, as I recall, redeemed it for a shilling and one farthing (quarter of an old penny, which in modern terms would be an interest rate of just less than 2% per week or 100% p.a.). As a sparky 10 year-old, I recall arguing with her that if only she scrimped and scraped for a week she would save farthing after farthing, but she told me that things didn’t work out like that – I never quite understood that argument then but perhaps I am getting old enough to work it out now!

Clearly, this kind of life was impossible without very strong, informal, community bonds. Women in particular must have shared endless family tasks and, most particularly, childcare duties. The early scenes of working-class life in the East End in Sarah Gavron’s film Suffragette (2015) struck me as having very much the same flavour as my grandmother’s stories. If you’ve not seen the film, I highly recommend it. The leaflet pictured below was produced by Wandsworth Labour Parties, two years ago, to commemorate the first centenary of the women’s suffrage. You can see it includes the picture of my grandparents.

Gran couldn’t afford the farthing bus fare from Islington to Oxford Circus and so walked every day, come rain come shine. The 20s might have been the “Roaring Twenties” for some but not for the British working class. In 1926 came the General Strike and three years later, in 1929, the Wall Street Crash. Just when my grandmother might have expected my aunts and uncles to contribute to the family income, they were finding it difficult to get any job at all.

My father turned out to be a bright lad and in 1929 won a scholarship to Christ’s Hospital, which according to Wikipedia was, and is, unique amongst British “public schools” in that “School fees are paid on a means-tested basis, with substantial subsidies paid by the school or their benefactors, so that pupils from all walks of life are able to have private education that would otherwise be beyond the means of their parents”. But, even with the subsidies, the fees were too much for Nan and so, Stan, aged 14, got a job as a post office messenger boy.

It is no wonder that, for the working-classes, solidarity was, and still is, such an article of faith; it is also no wonder that trade union solidarity, perhaps most explicitly the closed shop, was so important to the labour movement. (The “closed shop” was the name used to describe the practice of enforcing trade union membership on to a workforce; it was “organised labour’s” chief weapon against “the bosses”. The effective abolition of the closed shop was one of the main Thatcher “reforms”, and look, how weak organised labour has been since then!)

My father did quite well for himself and so, thirty plus years later, he could afford to contribute his element of the major county award, which I got when going to Oxford University from a state school. Just enough of Home Counties patina and Oxford rubbed off on me, for me at times to be accused by Tory councillors, of being a class ‘traitor’. They thought me to be sufficient of a toff to have “let the side down” by supporting the Labour Party.  How wrong they were and are; and how much I loathe what the Tories collectively have done to working-class life in this country.

To a considerable extent led by Wandsworth Council’s 1978 and 1982 intake of Tories, the Tories, nationally, have systematically coarsened and debased the working classes. Council house sales and the “right to buy” were part of the relentless Tory attacks on subsidised, community-owned housing – attacks which undermined the security and stability of many working-class communities. They followed that up with a policy of compulsory competitive tendering for manual labour; a policy, which cruelly and viciously squeezed the dignity out of so many jobs and coarsened our culture with crude ‘value for money’ measures, usually resulting in worsening pay and conditions, and eventually leading to the gig economy.

What very few people understood, however, was that the systemic changes introduced by the Tories could not be neatly controlled so as to affect only working-class communities and values. The digital revolution has helped to undermine very much more than simply manual jobs; the “loads-of-money” crudities of city slickers began to undermine all kinds of societal and communal values.

At the height of Wandsworth’s service privatisation, I quoted the great seventeenth century Norfolk protest song to Wandsworth’s Chief Executive, Albert Newman,

“The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from off the goose.”

He only half-jokingly responded that Wandsworth Council needed to become more like the man who stole the common. What Albert Newman was doing, however half-heartedly, was recognising the Council’s part in undermining the social and communal solidarity of our society.

If nothing else, this ghastly pandemic could restore our faith in well-funded, community focused services; undermine the status, privilege and arrogance of the super-rich; restore belief in a redistributive tax and social system; re-invigorate community; and provide a springboard for voluntary action.

In the twenty years after the 1918 “flu epidemic”, Europe’s real political battle became one between social democracy and the two very different forms of totalitarianism, Stalinism and Nazism. Today, a hundred years later, we must fight for the victory of a diverse and democratic polity exercised in most of Europe (and elsewhere) against the nationalistic autocracies we see in Moscow, Beijing, much of the Middle East and, frighteningly, maybe, until recently, even Washington. But equally we need to fight to ensure that we win a social democratic democracy, not the aggressive individualistic dog-eat-dog version resulting from neo-liberalism.

Tony Belton, 17th November, 2020

November 7, 2020  

Councillor Tony Belton’s Battersea November, 2020, Newsletter (# 137)

  1. For me, all the days are merging into one amorphous whole. I work from home, I meet at home on Zoom, I eat at home, entertainment (TV, the internet and books) is at home. My partner and I get on well together so lockdown, or whatever we call the state we’re in now, is not particularly unpleasant as we both have protected incomes and own our house; but it’s not wildly exciting either. It must be so tough for those, who are on piecework, or who are on their own and don’t like it; or for younger people who want to get out there and explore people, places and experiences, or perhaps worst of all for those dependent upon others for care and services. Covid is dividing our community in a way and on a scale that Britain has not seen since at least the end of World War Two.
  2. One of the annoying features of this crisis, at least for me, is the complacency and self-satisfaction of the “fortunate”. It’s so easy to object to, say, the noisy activity of construction sites or refuse collection or even play-spaces; it’s so easy to disparage the “other”. It’s apparently not so easy to be a little tolerant, understanding and patient.
  3. And as for the news from the USA! I have been to both the East and West Coasts and quite a bit of the bit in the middle and love so much of it; I think it’s hard not to be swept away by some features of the States. But in the build-up to the Presidential election, thankfully over in a week’s time, bar legal challenges, it seems as though some Americans are intent on destroying their reputation, their primacy in the world and perhaps even the world, as we know it.
  4. Enough of this global moan! What has been going on in the Council? And what about my part in it? In formal terms the centre-piece was a Council Meeting on 14th October, which by the way was watched by 148 people online. But actually a “virtual Council Meeting” is a pretty tepid affair. The cut and thrust of debate, even at its best, loses so much flavour when delivered from one spare room to another. The reality during this pandemic is that the Council is, even more than usual, being run by the paid staff – the Council’s equivalent of the civil service, with very occasional steers from the Tory-controlled cabinet. As for the councillors, some are immersing themselves with volunteers, delivering vital domestic services, such as helping with food delivery through organisations like Kambala Cares and Waste Not Want Not, whilst others are helping set up “school streets”. And of course, depending upon personal and family circumstances all of us are, just like everyone else, pre-occupied with keeping alive and well.
  5. Meanwhile, I had a couple of meetings with fellow Latchmere councillors and officers about progress on the Winstanley Regeneration. The good news is that 50 or so residents will, by the New Year, be moving into the excellent new flats at Mitchell HouseIMG_5177 in the new block on Plough Road. The large block, Duval, next to Sendall Court and at the junction of Winstanley and Grant Roads, will also be occupied about then. Those units have been sold – not as a little maliciously rumoured to millionaires with vast incomes – but at prices ranging from £300,000 to £700,000. I know some of you hate the thought of Wandsworth Council, or any Council, building homes for sale at a time of great housing shortage BUT, with Government subsidies for housing construction a thing of the past, there is no other known way for the Council to pay for the modernisation or construction of houses available at Council rent levels. Frankly, the choice is to sell land, houses or other properties or not to build or re-furbish any new homes at all. As for raising the funds through Council Tax increases, in the first place even doubling Council Tax would not approach the sums required, and secondly, the Government wouldn’t allow it.
  6. I had a Planning Applications Committee (PAC) on 22nd Interestingly, it was watched live by 145 viewers, with another 58 later watching the recording. This total does not exactly match “Strictly” ratings, but indicates that this technology opens up the possibility for public involvement in a way that Town Hall meetings, as long as they are not broadcast, do not. The main reason for the audience interest was, I suspect, the great local (and political) interest in the planning application covering Roehampton’s giant Alton Estate.
  7. The main issue on the Alton regeneration, much as with the Winstanley, was the balance, taking into account the current formula for assessing financial viability, between the quantum of so-called affordable and private housing units. A majority of us, including me, thought that this application provided as much “Council housing” as the developer, the Council, could financially provide. Others argue that the Council could and should provide more Council housing. Either way, Mayor Sadiq Khan will now need to decide on the question of viability. If he presses further than the Council believes viable, then logically it will abandon the project. It’s a process of negotiation, where my guess is that the Council will be forced to concede a little. The question is how much.
  8. Most of the other important and large applications were, on this occasion, in either Putney or Tooting, the largest being one for more than 800 housing units, amongst other things, on the massive Springfield Hospital site. There was, however, one smallish application that will interest Battersea residents and that was for the site of Blacks store in St. John’s Road. As most Battersea people must have noticed Blacks has had a closing down sale there for what seems like years – it’s certainly more than 12 months. After the PAC meeting, the developers now have permission to concentrate the retail store on the ground floor and to convert the upper stories into six custom-built residential flats.
  9. On 24th October Radio 4 ran a Profile p08w0zqvof ex-councillor Edward Lister, now the Prime Minister’s No 10 adviser. The programme director interviewed a number of Wandsworth councillors, including me as I had been the Leader of the Opposition to Lister for 15 years. The interview lasted at least 30 minutes but, of course, my comments were drastically, but not unreasonably, cut to make the final 15 minute programme. If you are interested, you can hear it on iPlayer, Radio 4 at 19.00 on 24th October.
  10. Away from the Council I, like everyone else, have had a quiet month. My only memorable trip outside Battersea was to go to the National Gallery on October 5th to see the Titian I went with Marcy, wife of fellow councillor Peter Carpenter. She has recently completed a degree in Italian Renaissance Art. I was looking forward to being tutored through the visit, because I’d never really appreciated Italian religious art. That was my first mistake; these paintings were all about classical mythology. Gods yes, but capricious, malicious gods of the kind that the ancients seemed to revel in! Here, for example, the goddess, Venus, is pleading with the beautiful Adonis not to go hunting the wild boar, which inevitably turns on him and goars him to death. However, I am afraid that, despite Marcy’s fascinating tuition, I still don’t find Titian to my taste.

My Programme for November

  1. On 10th November we have a Zoom meeting of Battersea Labour Party members. That would have been interesting enough, just involving a membership of over 1,000, in a Zoom meeting, but after the 29th October decision about Jeremy Corbyn, it’s possible that “interesting” will prove to be an understatement!
  2. The November Planning Applications Committee (PAC) is on the 25th.
  3. As I said last month, with so few official meetings since Covid, it might appear as though we councillors have very little to do, but there are plenty of site meetings and discussions with officers as well as dealing with constituents’ queries and issues.
  4. On 26th November at 5.45, I have Latchmere Ward’s Safer Neighbourhood Team (SNT) SNTs were established across London some years ago in order to sustain and improve relations between the police and the local community. We (both police and Council) are keen to encourage broader community participation and just possibly the enforced migration onto an online platform will encourage YOU to join us. If you are interested (and I hope you are) then please email Roger Lyddon, at the Town Hall for details. Roger is at Roger.Lyddon@richmondandwandsworth.gov.uk.You can join us by telephone or online.  PC Gavin Gilliam, Latchmere’s dedicated Ward Officer will be in attendance.  We look forward to welcoming you on Thursday 26 November but, even if you cannot attend, please let Roger know your details so that he can contact you about future meetings.  But do join us on Thursday 26 November at 5.45 and get involved.

 Last month I asked about this impressive building?

I must confess to a little disappointmentBattersea 22 Qtown Rd-Ingate Place P1010251 (3) that no one else either knew or appeared to be interested.  No matter: the answer is 220 Queenstown Road. It is about 20 yards/metres south of the main Waterloo lines and, when I first came to Battersea in 1966, it was black with soot. When the last steam train services stopped in 1967, its owner decided to give it a clean. For most locals its sudden yellow and redbrick appearance was a great surprise.

Hopefully this month’s Did You Know inspires rather more interest!

Anyone from the Valleys will know that Eglwys Bresbyteraidd Cymru translates literally into Church Presbyterian Wales. My question is simply “Where is the Battersea Welsh Presbyterian Chapel?”

PS about the picture of a boxing match in Culvert Road

Rita, who now lives in Wimbledon, wrote to me in October saying “if you went under the Arch on the left-hand sideculvert-road-1955 there used to be offices situated there, rented by Battersea Council, one of which was my Dad’s office. The Council offices were there, I think before World War II, my Dad worked there during the 40’s, and even possibly before the War, until his death in 1958.

“I come from a Family of fourth generation, who were born in Battersea and Wandsworth.  I was brought up in Battersea.  My late husband was also fourth generation from Battersea. There was also a permanent caravan sited there, where a disabled lady lived. The caravan was always spotlessly clean.

Rita, thank you for that personal history. I am pleased that it brought back happy memories. By the way, there is still a caravan encampment there, which can be seen from the Victoria line.

PPS. In the last moments of October, the Prime Minister announced the Lockdown starting on November 5th (Talk about the old rhyme “Remember, remember the fifth of November, gunpowder, treason and plot” – it will be difficult to forget this one!) and hopefully ending on 2nd December. Wishing everyone a healthy November and I look forward to writing to you all again in December.

October 4, 2020  

Councillor Tony Belton’s Battersea October, 2020, Newsletter (# 136)

  1. September was marked by the convergence of at least three crises, namely Covid, the UK’s economic troubles and London traffic chaos. Politicians, on the whole, did not come out of it well. The Prime Minister’s reputation has sunk to a new low with only his most purblind supporters not recognising it. But enough of him, this is a local newsletter and we are all equally affected by the general mis-handling of the crisis, with exhortations to go out and eat out followed by instructions to stay at home, to work from home if possible, to go back to work but go by car, then not to go to work but work from home if possible, to have eye tests in Barnard Castle and then not to leave your home.
  2. As for the traffic chaos, 1: the problems with Tower, Vauxhall and Hammersmith Bridges are being blamed by some on Sadiq Khan, Labour Mayor of London, and on Labour’s Hammersmith & Fulham Council. However, nearly all of London’s bridges are between 150 and 200 years old and it is unsurprising that they are running into maintenance problems. Actually the responsibility for maintenance of the bridges is shared out on a geographic basis between the boroughs – it is almost historical luck as to which are in the best and worst condition. Clearly London’s Thames crossings, tunnels as well as bridges, should all be under the one authority and not split between a dozen or so public bodies. That way there could and should be a properly co-ordinated programme of repair and maintenance.
  3. As for the traffic chaos, 2: Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) have been introduced all over London, including Wandsworth, in the time since Covid struck. The emergency gave authorities a great opportunity to introduce LTNs to coincide with a time of low traffic volumes, using considerable Government time=limited grants. Unfortunately, at the same time a series of major road works to Nine Elms Lane, Putney High Street and Bedford Hill were also timetabled. Consultation was limited and the end result disastrous. Again, the lesson is that changes need to be introduced with ample consultation.
  4. On the 2nd September I attended the Wandsworth Conservation Area Advisory Committee. The agenda was dominated by debate about the plans for the renovenation of the Arding & Hobbs building, at the heart of Clapham Junction. The developer’s architect/planner expressed pride and enthusiasm for his role in restoring the grandeur of the early twentieth-century building. The picture shows the building as planned with new roof extensions and without the rain canopy, currently between the first and ground floors. The developer hopes that it will work with retail on the ground floor and high-quality offices on the upper floors. Many Battersea people would like to see the whole building restored for retail use, but with the explosion of online shopping in the last five years, it is not surprising that the developer doubts that would work. The problem is, of course, that post-Covid it is equally not at all clear that there will be a demand for new offices either. My friend Cyril Richert has done an in-depth analysis of the project at https://cjag.org/2020/07/28/revealed-the-proposed-future-of-arding-hobbs-debenhams/. It is well worth the read if you are really interested in the future of the Arding & Hobbs building. The site is so central and important to Battersea that we have to get these plans right.
  5. On the morning of 3rd September, my fellow Labour councillor, Simon Hogg and I went for a tour of the three new buildings nearing completion on Grant Road. Mitchell House, on the corner of Grant and Plough Roads, is solely for council housing and was designed specifically for current council tenants of the Winstanley Estate. Duval House is the tall one, on the corner of Winstanley and Grant Roads, and will be sold for private occupation. Duval House is the “cash cow”, which enables the Council to proceed with the regeneration. The third building will house the combined Thames Christian College and Battersea Baptist Church, both now located in Pennethorne Square. We were both very impressed by the quality of the buildings and the high ecological standards to which they are being built. Here is Simon’s picture of me, taken from the “viewing” platform at the top of Duval House.
  6. That afternoon, I went to a webinar (a seminar conducted on the web), where the principal, but not sole, contributor was economist, author and one-time editor of The Observer, Will Hutton. He was not very optimistic about the future. He also argued that fundamental constitutional reform, protecting the rights of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, will be an essential pre-condition to the continued existence of the UK. However, I did not find the discussion overall very engaging. The format is remote and my main concern is to feel sympathy for this year’s university students: for whom learning online will be both the norm and very difficult.
  7. Special Neighbourhood Team (SNT police) meeting. The SNTs were originally an attempt by the Met Police to help the process of bringing the community and policing together. Personally, I don’t think that the SNT has worked particularly well, at least not in Latchmere (I am told that there are more successful models elsewhere). It has, of course, been a very difficult year for all kinds of organisations, not least the SNT. But we need to re-energise these consultations and we are now looking for drive and enthusiasm from more locals. So if you are interested in policing issues in the Borough, then please do let me know on cllr.t.belton@richmondandwandsworth.gov.uk. The SNT does not meet very frequently but it is potentially a key sounding board for local issues relating to law and order.
  8. The Planning Applications Committee (PAC) was on 15th September. This month there were several interesting and important applications. The first for Roehampton was a “Council Own” application to build 14 dwellings as part of the Roehampton Estate regeneration – perhaps not of direct significance to Battersea but an essential, small part of the Council’s estate regeneration plans. And there were several other Putney applications, one particularly important for Putney High Street. But there was also one major Battersea application. This applied to a potential Randall Close development on the Surrey Lane Estate. This application for 106 new housing units was contentious. Some argued that consultation with local residents had been truncated because of Covid and that assigning only 27 units as council houses was insufficient. No one objected to the basic design although some did not like the “gated” element of the development. Nevertheless, it was approved by the majority. This (not very good picture) has Whitgift House, the tall block, on the right.
  9. On 17th September, I went to the Housing and Regeneration OSC to talk about the Winstanley Estate Regeneration and broadly to sing its praises. Inevitability, there were criticisms of the regeneration and of its “failure” to gain more than some 150 bedrooms of social housing. However, much of our housing need is related to serious over-crowding, and I don’t think that a gain of 150 bedrooms (equivalent to about 75 new units) is insignificant. What I do care about is that the worst of our social housing, amongst which I include Pennethorne, Scholey and Holcroft Houses are at last really on their way out. And as a bonus, it now appears as though the Council might get an extra, unexpected bonus of 65 more new units of social housing.
  10. Penny and I went to the National Gallery on 18th September to see the Nicholaes Maes exhibition. We had a great day. First, the weather was perfect; the train was, of course, empty; the streets were nearly empty; London looked perfect from Hungerford Bridge; and Trafalgar Square looked terrific, as this picture of St. Martin’s Church demonstrates. Afterwards we had a nice Chinese meal in a peaceful Gerrard Street, and walked back to Victoria Station via the Mall and St. James’ Park. Our first trip “up West” since February. But the star of the day was the Nicholaes Maes Exhibition at the National Gallery. Maes was a Dutch wealthy man, having spent the last half of his life painting marketable portraits of rich sponsors and their families. Maes was a Dutch painter of the early seventeenth century, when Dutch wealth and influence was at their greatest, a contemporary of Jan Vermeer. He died a wealthy man, having spent the last half of his life painting marketable portraits of rich sponsors and their families. And in his youth, religious painting was the fashion which he followed, but his best paintings are very much in the domestic, Dutch style. Domestic scenes clearly often feature women and, hence unsurprisingly, so do his paintings. This image is a tender portrait of an elderly lace-maker, her bobbins carefully arranged on her lacework (front right).
  11. On 19th September, my partner and I had our flu jab. Why tell you that? Well as a reminder to you all not to put yours off any longer.
  12. On 22nd September I went to Ransome’s Dock, just off Parkgate Road, where I met Nicholas Symes and Dominic O’Riordan, who have the job of keeping the dock functional. They are concerned that some of the commercial interests around the dock would not mind too much if it ceased to function, freeing more of the site for further commercial development. Through contact with the Wandsworth Planning Department, I think I was able to re-assure them. However, the dock, judging by this picture, is not in a very healthy state. The weed is apparently a South American import, which has gone rampant in British conditions and is apparently very difficult to control! I hope that those interested in the health of the river and its docks can find a solution to the problem. The dock, by the way, is on the site of an old river creek and was excavated in 1884.
  13. On 23rd September I had an online meeting of the Battersea Labour Party when we were due to vote for membership of the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee. I was very keen to support Keir Starmer’s leadership, but somehow, I managed to botch the connections and so was disenfranchised! Infuriating!
  14. Finally, I have just upgraded my computer and this is the first job of any size I have done on it. It looks like a great upgrade but everything is in the wrong place, and I can’t find files, and Oh, why do IT companies upgrade things so often?

My Programme for October

  1. On 8th October we have a meeting of Wandsworth Labour councillors.
  2. On 14th October, we will have our second Wandsworth Council Meeting of the Covid era. I must say that it is difficult to see how it can possibly provide a forum for real debate – worse than sport without the fans!
  3. I have another virtual Planning Applications Committee (PAC) on the 22nd October and little else. The prospect of a Covid Halloween, Bonfire Night and Christmas looms closer and closer!
  4. With so few official meetings since Covid, it might appear as though councillors have very little to do, but I do have plenty of other site meetings and discussions with officers as well as dealing with many constituent problems.

Last month I asked, “Can you place (and approximately date) this picture?”

                Half a dozen of you got this right. (The first was Kimberley, so congratulations.) It is, of course, the Culvert Road underpass from the south-side. I guess the houses on the left confused people as they have now been replaced by corrugated iron and sheds. But I remember in the late 60s that there were terraced houses on both sides of the road, which can also be reached by a footbridge over the tracks from the Shaftesbury Estate. One can imagine, given the gloved appearance of these two lads, the presence of a referee, in a measured and drawn ring, and the attendant crowd, right just what a tight, little community it made. I would date the picture in the mid-fifties.

 

 

This month?

Almost everyone reading this newsletter has passed the impressive building picture here many times. Where and what is it?

 

 

PS Thanks to my Tory readership, who have reminded me that Edward Lister has decided to take the name Lord Wandsworth.

September 3, 2020  

Councillor Tony Belton’s Battersea September, 2020, Newsletter (# 135)

  1. At the end of my August Newsletter, I announced two pieces of Stop Press news: the first was that Vauxhall Bridge was to be closed from 10.00 pm on Sunday, 2nd August, until the end of November, because it had been discovered that the internal ironwork was deteriorating dangerously and remedial work had to start immediately. The second was that Edward Lister, ex-Leader of Wandsworth Council, was to “receive” a peerage. Both items deserve updates!
  2. As you may have noticed, Vauxhall Bridge was not actually closed until the following weekend. What had happened, as I understand it, was that TfL (Transport for London) engineers had discovered a dangerous deterioration in the bridge, in the last week of July, and so decided unilaterally to close the bridge without informing the Mayor of London, or the leaders and traffic managers of Lambeth, Wandsworth, Ken & Chelsea or Westminster Borough Councils.
  3. Unsurprisingly, something of a fuss occurred and TfL decided/was forced to postpone the closure for a week. As it happened the “quiet, holiday month of August”, had already been chosen by some Councils, certainly including Wandsworth, for installing traffic calming schemes AND, to pile misery on misery, Tower Bridge decided at some point to get stuck half-open. The picture of Vauxhall Bridge in quieter times (1829) is by Thomas Hosmer Shepherd. The bridge had been opened in 1816 and it was the first in London to be substantially constructed with iron.
  4. It has been a bad month on the roads in inner south London, but it has also been a disastrous time for TfL. Its handling of the Vauxhall Bridge closure was inept, to put it mildly. Add that to the managerial, political and engineering disaster that is Crossrail, then it is inevitable that questions have to be asked: questions about the current management of TfL and/or was it ever a sustainable model for running London’s public transport system. Given that the trains are run by several operators, the roads by 33 separate London authorities, the bridges by individual riparian boroughs and the Government has the final say on its budget, the nominal boss of TfL, that is the Mayor, has an uphill task!
  5. Unfortunately, at the same time as the Vauxhall Bridge closure, Wandsworth Council has been installing many so-called traffic calming measures, which are designed to improve conditions for pedestrians and cyclists, whilst inevitably reducing the amount of road space available for drivers. Enthusiastic cyclists, and of course, many or all environmentalists want us all to use sustainable means of transport and they definitely do not include petrol or diesel-powered vehicles. However, it did not help this hoped-for change to have the Prime Minister asking people to return to work and to use our cars to do so. To say that the public is receiving mixed messages is an under-statement.
  6. The end result has been difficult, and perhaps dangerous, conditions for emergency vehicles as well as furious motorists, and general inconvenience. There should, of course, have been more consultation but no one could have guessed the combination of events that made August such a difficult month especially in Tooting and in the Nine Elms Lane area. From my experience, I guess that there will be some tweaking of the schemes as they stand today and a few months of re-adjustment to circumstances. But in the long run, I expect to see a substantial lessening of London’s reliance on the car.
  7. Attentive readers will recall that in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List it was announced that Wandsworth Council’s ex-Leader, Edward Lister, was to be made a peer. He was Leader of the Council from 1992-2011 at a time when I was the Opposition Leader, so we faced each other across the Council Chamber, as Leader to Leader, for the best part of 20 years and I estimate some 120 Council meetings. As a result, I know him a bit (and vice versa) and I promised some readers that I would write a bit about him this month. The picture is of the last five Leaders of the Council and the Mayor. From the right we are me, Lord Lister, Wandsworth’s Mayor Stuart Thom, Sir Christopher Chope, Ravi Govindia and Sir Paul Beresford at a lunch given by the Mayor in 2014.
  8. First of all, we have to acknowledge Lister’s achievements. He became a Wandsworth Councillor in a by-election in Southfields in March, 1975. At the time there were 48 Labour councillors to 12 Tories, but the real difficulties facing Jim Callaghan’s Labour Government and some serious political mis-judgements made by the Labour Council resulted in the Tories winning the Borough in 1978 by 36 councillors to 25. The Tories have been in control of Wandsworth Council for the 42 years since, with Lister as Leader for 19 years and as a major player for 14 years before becoming Leader. Whatever one thinks of the Tory “achievements” during that period, they happened on his watch and he must share much of the praise or the blame for them.
  9. Lister was never a great speaker, or a dominant personality in the Council Chamber, which possibly explains why, despite many attempts, he never became an M.P. He certainly expressed some frustration as many far less significant Tory councillors won safe Tory Parliamentary seats. Lister also lacked much knowledge of British political history. I remember one particularly enjoyable Council meeting, when the Council was debating education and he attempted to goad Labour councillors by threatening to rename Tooting’s Ernest Bevin school the Winston Churchill school. As he spoke, I realised that he (and they – most of the Tory councillors) did not know their Ernest Bevin, Churchill’s trusted, even if Labour, wartime Minister of Labour, from their Nye Bevan, the left-wing Welsh firebrand, founder of the NHS. Unusually, I had great fun that evening both lampooning Lister and winning the debate. Lister, however, got his revenge some 20 years later when I mistakenly bet him £10 that a buffoon, called Boris Johnson, would never be elected Mayor of London.
  10. Lister was, however, a very effective political operator. In June, 1979, he moved in Wandsworth Council that the ILEA (the Inner London Education Authority) should be side-lined as far as Wandsworth was concerned (abolition came later). This move was a startlingly bold one. The ILEA was responsible for London’s schools, adult education, some 40-50 Further Education colleges, the Careers Service, evening classes and many other functions. It had a world-wide reputation as a beacon of state education services. The thought that a relatively junior councillor should initiate a move, which questioned its authority was considered to be a joke. Eleven years later, the ILEA was no more.
  11. Meanwhile, his colleagues were pressing forward with Wandsworth Council’s Right to Buy (council homes) policies and Lister became a major player in the move to test public services competitively in the market-place. Mrs Thatcher later added compulsion to the policy and made it Compulsory Competitive Testing or CCT. Both RTB and CCT had major short-term political benefits for the Tory Party in Wandsworth. From my perspective, the main disadvantages were that RTB enabled the Council to sell off public assets cheaply, more than halving the stock of social housing, and helping to create today’s housing crisis, whilst CCT undermined the bargaining position of the less-skilled sectors of the workforce, creating conditions conducive to the growth of today’s gig economy.
  12. In the spring of 2011, a vacancy arose for the role of Deputy Mayor of London, deputy to Boris Johnson. Lister was appointed. One of his first duties was to address a London Conference of councillors and senior officers. I was there, as Lister articulated right-wing mantra that the public sector played too great a part not only in the British economy, but also in British life. I am sure, for example, that he would wish to slim down the BBC; introduce greater business involvement in running the universities, just as he has done in schools; and apply greater commercial disciplines in the NHS, amongst other horrors.
  13. Sir Edward Lister, soon to be Lord Lister (surely not of Southfields), has until recently been a senior adviser to Boris Johnson (in this press photo of Johnson’s first cabinet, Lister is the man at the back with the red tie, second from the left) and certainly a constant presence at early Cabinet meetings where no doubt he continues to advocate and press for the implementation of his simplistic neo-liberal views. It is ironic that he has become an important player in the government just as circumstances have conspired to put the public sector at the heart of the economy and the centre of all decision making.
  14. Finally, I should recall that many Labour Leaders, such as Robin Wales, Jules Pipe and Toby Harris, Leaders of Newham, Hackney and Haringey Council, were far more appreciative of Lister’s political skills than were the average Wandsworth Labour councillor. That was because his skills were about negotiation and arranging deals and not about debate. Consistent with those characteristics, Lister is a secretive and reserved character, not a deep thinker, but a straight-forward, highly competent machine politician.
  15. On August 19th my partner and I stayed the night with friends at their house in the South Downs, immediately behind Hastings. This view from their dining room window certainly includes my tree of the month. The next morning was beautiful and we went for a walk in the so-called Garden of England, but I had to dash back to take part in my fifth virtual Planning Applications Committee (PAC). I really can’t think of anything interesting to say about it other than that it was important for all people directly concerned but mundane in the big scheme of things.
  16. On August 26th I went for an annual family walk from the Birling Gap to Beachy Head. We had planned to do the walk on 12th August but that turned out to be Britain’s hottest-ever day. In contrast, the 26th was cool and very blowy. Fortunately, we were walking with the wind. The view is looking west over the Gap and at the Seven Sisters.

My Programme for September

  1. One day last month, one of my readers sent me his spy thriller, the latest in a trilogy. He included nice words about this newsletter and an invitation to drinks one evening in early September. He obviously knows a great deal about espionage, especially in Italy and Sicily. I look forward to meeting him, and will ask him to sign my copy of his book. Amazingly, of my 2,500 or so newsletter readers, more than a dozen are published authors – Battersea certainly has talent.
  2. On 2nd September, I have a virtual Wandsworth Conservation Area Committee. I have a feeling that this will be a difficult meeting – for technical reasons. The attenders have not previously worked together using Microsoft Teams, so I expect a host of technical incompatibilities and misunderstandings!
  3. On 3rd I am looking forward to a tour of Mitchell House, the first and most advanced of the new Winstanley Estate blocks, the one on Plough Road opposite Time House. And then in the evening, I am going to a webinar led by academic and journalist, Will Hutton. The subject, no apology, is how the UK manages to stay close to the EU and avoid many of the catastrophes forecast to follow a “hard Brexit”.
  4. On 15th September, there will be another virtual Planning Applications Committee (PAC).
  5. Once again September will be a quiet month. Even the traditional major Party Political Conferences will have to take place virtually this year.

Can you place (and approximately date) this picture?

 

                I’d like to thank fellow Latchmere ward councillor, Simon Hogg, for this little gem. Any other comments about the picture would be welcome. I have a couple of observations to share about the picture that I will share next month but in the meantime do you think you could write a paragraph or two about it?

August 2, 2020  

Councillor Tony Belton’s Battersea August, 2020, Newsletter (# 134)

  1. For 100 or so of my readers, this will be your first sight of this monthly newsletter. You can see from the heading that this is the 134th edition of my monthly newsletter, which means that I have been writing it for just over 11 years. Every month, I send the newsletter to just over 3,300 recipients and according to “the system” I get approximately 1,000 opens. I hope that you find it an interesting read. You can also see past editions on this blog site.
  2. I add to the readership every month, by meeting as many new residents as possible, whilst delivering a letter of welcome from your three local Labour councillors, Kate Stock, Simon Hogg and me. Because of lockdown I have had a backlog to “catch up”, in June and July, hence the extra 100 or so new readers all in this one month. By delivering these letters I also keep up-to-date with what is going on locally. This month, for example, I delivered to one address in Shepard House, on the Winstanley Estate and, as I pressed against the letterbox, the door swung open to reveal an empty cob-webbed flat. The “new Council tenant” had failed to turn up. Wandsworth Council has now re-let the flat and so my visit, happily, has resulted in a family being re-housed.
  3. Last month, I wrote about Kambala Cares and Waste Not Want Not (WNWN), volunteer organisations who deliver cooked meals and food packs to “shielded” residents, such as theelderly and the sick. Both groups are run by lively, dynamic, impressive community activists, namely Donna Barham and Hadas Hagos (the picture is of Hadas, in party mood, at the Yvonne Carr Centre). They have faced the challenge of the crisis by cooking and delivering 100s of meals each and every week. So, I was pleased to be able to write a grant application to the Council for Kambala Cares and to introduce WNWN to Battersea United Charities (BUC). And now, I am even more pleased to report that the Council has granted Kambala Cares £7,000 and that BUC granted £2,000 to WNWN.
  4. On the 8th July I joined my fellow councillors, Simon and Kate, on a visit to the Falcon Park play area. We were invited there by local resident, Doris and a friend, to review the state of the play facilities, especially those designed for toddlers. I am confident that we will be submitting a bid for a small area improvement grant. In similar style at the railway end of Petergate, there is a small area of common ground, which until recently had been a simple, uninteresting piece of open grassland – great for dogs and not necessarily much else. Now it is a one woman’s attempt to “prettify” her part of Battersea, see picture, and I am going to try and get the Council to fund a couple of hundred to put in a decent railing and a gate – if my constituent will let me!
  5. In mid-July the Council started an ambitious programme to help local hospitality businesses counter the impact of Covid 19. The most obvious sign of this has been the pedestrianisation of Old York and Northcote Roads, and now Bedford Hill and maybe before long Battersea High Street. I have had constituents writing to me telling me just how much they have enjoyed the atmosphere this has developed in Old York Road and I am sure the feeling is true elsewhere. The picture shows the impact in part of Northcote Road.
  6. You may remember that last month I featured a street concert given on the last day of the “clapathons” by 11 talented young women musicians. Well, on the 12th July the violinist, the cellist, and their mother gave a three-women street concert. Forty to fifty neighbours turned out to hear them play in a fund raiser for the South London Youth Orchestra. I will put one of the numbers in this month’s entry on my website at https://tonybelton.wordpress.com/.
  7. On the 15th July we had the Council’s Annual Meeting in virtual mode – very unsatisfactory. If it was meant to be political, then it wasn’t. How can you have the vibrancy of a political meeting in virtual mode? If it was meant to be ceremonial, then it wasn’t. What is the point of a virtual ceremony without an audience? Too much more of this and local government will truly become what it has threatened to become for some years: local administration, not local government.
  8. Last month I mentioned acting the part of “the wise old man” (couldn’t possibly be me, surely?) in Julia Donaldson’s children’s stories. If you want to see the series, you can on Wandsworth Council’s website and searching for A Squash and a Squeeze, or you can look-up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgx8wkDEAd4. I hope you enjoy it just half as much as we, councillors, enjoyed making it! There is a series of six made-for-children films!
  9. On the 22nd July I, and perhaps 20 others, had a webinar (trendy word for an online seminar or public meeting) with the public relations consultants acting for the Arding & Hobbs/Debenham’s site, in the heart of Clapham Junction. Many residents are no doubt concerned about what is going to happen to the grand old department store: and this was our first chance to see a first draft of the developer’s plans. It turns out that the plans are restrained, even modest and some might say “conservative”. The architects are clearly keen to keep and improve the old Arding & Hobbs building, most of its fabric and many of its features. There will be a roof-top addition, which would stay subservient to the cupola and the whole building would be re-engineered to the highest “green” standards. The end result is undoubtedly an improvement on the present much altered and abused frontage.
  10. But the real problem is that the development of digital, electronic technologies has completely changed the market for traditional shopping and offices, which raises the question of whether there is still a market for up-graded retail units and a small core of relatively up-market office units. Unfortunately, a problem with the webinar format was that there was no time or space to allow for any vigorous cross-questionning of the proposals or for discussion about the project’s viability – not at all satisfactory! (As it happens, on 29th July, my attention was drawn to the Clapham Junction Action Group’s analysis of the Arding & Hobbs development. Run by my friend Cyril Richert, I must say that his overview is a much more thorough job than my analysis and anyone who wants to take a really well-informed view of the site should look at Cyril’s CJAG website).
  11. On July 23rd I had my fourth virtual Planning Applications Committee (PAC). It was not a particularly demanding agenda, with a few domestic extensions and some minor amendments to larger developments. It is possible that this was merely a quiet summer planning committee, but it could be that it is an indication of a post-Covid economic recession.
  12. But this relative pause in the flow of applications gives me time to reflect on a couple of longer-term trends affecting planning and development, which concern me. First is the Government’s announcement that it intends to remove what it sees as the shackles, which planning control puts on businesses and economic vibrancy. The chosen vehicle for this greater “freedom” is the use of Permitted Development Rights.
  13. Permitted Development Rights is short-hand for allowing owners and/or developers to extend already agreed developments. So, to take an example, if a change in the rules meant an owner of a four-storey block of flats could build a fifth storey without asking the planning authority’s permission, then that would be called an extension of permitted development rights. Those who argue against planning controls argue that it is unnecessary bureaucracy to have to get planning permission for such developments when the overall principle has already been accepted. But the trouble is in the detail. So, if one extra storey is accepted without question, why not two or ten or twenty extra storeys? In my experience, those who want to limit the powers of local government to control development often win the argument, in principle, even though in practice local residents nearly always wish the planning authority had more control over developers. In my view, the planning process allows all interested parties to negotiate. Without that process, local residents will find that their interests are harmed without consultation or the opportunity to express reasoned protest.
  14. A second long-term trend is for Government to limit local authority control of classes of development: the most obvious examples being the restriction of local authority powers over changes of use, say from a greengrocer or a newsagent to a betting or sex shop. It used to be that local authorities could restrict or stop the opening of such shops, or protect the diversity of their main streets by preventing the growth of supermarkets in their area. But large vested interests in the retail industry lobbied governments, and persuaded national government that local government was “restraining” trade. Our powers were limited and now betting shops dominate the high streets of the UK’s most deprived areas and supermarkets have driven family grocers, fishmongers, greengrocers, etc., out of business. This trend is particularly noticeable away from the biggest cities, where country towns and villages have been almost totally hollowed out.

My Programme for August

  1. I was meant to be in Berlin in the first week of August, supporting Penelope, who was due to be at a German historical conference – but now, in these Covid-blighted days, listening to the Test Series between England and Pakistan might be the highlight of the week!
  2. Except, as attentive readers will recall, I recently lost a tooth (Upper Left 3 apparently) but now I am having to have two implants – a painful and expensive holiday!
  3. On 20th August, there will be another virtual Planning Applications Committee (PAC).
  4. August will be a quiet month.

Last month I asked whether anyone knew where in Latchmere

this weeping willow stands?

                I was a little disappointed to get only one correct response.

And, my respondent having informed me that the two willows were in Latchmere Recreation Ground, Burns Road, told me that if you look up into the tree, that it is not in good health – sad, if true.

This month I am simply going to announce two very late items of:-

STOP PRESS

  1. Vauxhall Bridge is to be almost totally closed to traffic from 10.00 pm on Sunday, 2nd August, until the end of November. It has been discovered that the internal ironwork is deteriorating dangerously and remedial work will start immediately.

All northbound traffic including general traffic, private vehicles, buses, coaches, taxi and private hire will be directed via Nine Elms Lane, Chelsea Bridge and Grosvenor Road.  A bus lane will be created on Vauxhall Bridge throughout the work to allow southbound buses to operate.  All other general traffic (including private vehicles, coaches, taxi and private hire) travelling southbound will be diverted via Millbank, Lambeth Bridge and Albert Embankment.

Cyclists and pedestrians will be able to cross the bridge in both directions.

SO, AVOID VAUXHALL BRIDGE FOR THE NEXT FOUR MONTHS AT LEAST BUT WHAT OF THE LIKELY IMPACT ON BOTH CHELSEA & BATTERSEA BRIDGES.

  1. The latest list of peerages has just been announced including Wandsworth’s ex-Leader, Edward Lister. He was Leader of the Council and I, Opposition Leader, for the best part of 20 years. I will say a little more on this matter next month.
July 5, 2020  

Councillor Tony Belton’s Battersea July, 2020, Newsletter (# 133)

  1. This year continues its most extraordinary progress. Can any government ever have lost public support as rapidly as this one has? My own favourite mark of ineptitude came from Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, who told us not once but time and again that “we, the Government, will make the right decisions at the right time”. Have you ever heard of anyone boasting of making the wrong decisions at either the right or wrong time?
  2. On 4th June, we had our last street “clapathon” in honour of the emergency workers. It was followed by a concert, given by 11 local schoolgirls. The picture shows 6, with the harpist hidden by the violinist, the 8th and 9th playing cellos off to the left and two flautists off to the right. All were accompanied by the pianist, the musical mother of the violinist, who arranged the ensemble. They were spectacularly good with the violinist simply outstanding.
  3. On Friday, 19th June, an old friend, Andy Fearn, led a dozen or so refugees and asylum seekers, all members of Caras Community Centre, a charity based in Tooting, in giving a presentation to Wandsworth councillors. The presentation was a short film, Hold on to your Hope, showcasing their poetry and art. It was put together over 8 weeks during lockdown, with guidance from drama and arts facilitators from the Phosophoros Theatre Company and People’s Palace Projects. Through a series of online workshops, they explored issues around community, identity, challenges, fear, and future hopes. The workshops were part of a wider project called ‘Our Wandsworth’, which is being funded by the Wandsworth Community Fund and the National Lottery and delivered by the charity Protection Approaches. The aim of this project is to prevent prejudice and discrimination and to assist those from marginalised communities in Wandsworth to speak of their experiences to the wider community. The thought-provoking film can be seen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DEePjbm5MU&feature=youtu.be
  4. The presentation was done on Zoom. I am conscious that some readers of this newsletter may not be acquainted with Zoom, or with Microsoft’s Teams (almost none of us were pre-lockdown). They are software tools, now used across the world, to run meetings, or to teach children, or for presentations, or to play chess, or bridge or a countless number of other things. If you have not used either of them or something similar get your children to teach you, or if not your children then someone else’s. There will be very few jobs, or possibly even much social life, in future where Zoom is not used.
  5. Last month, I wrote of the work of volunteer organisations delivering food to those, who need that support. One of those organisations was WNWN (Waste Not Want Not) and, cleverly, they offered to deliver a meal to anyone prepared to pay for a fund-raiser. So, on 20th June, my partner and I settled down for the evening and right on time a meal was delivered by one of the volunteers. It was a scrumptious treat.
  6. Can I remind you of my last month’s message: If you want to help our community at this difficult time but perhaps can’t for medical/physical reasons of your own then one option is to give at – https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/wastenotwantnot
  7. On 22nd June, 26 Labour councillors held our annual meeting on Teams. Most of the evening was spent on important but totally internal matters but it was also the occasion of our annual election for Leader of the Wandsworth Labour Group. This year, it was contested and the winner, by the narrowest of margins was Leonie Cooper. Leonie, who as I am sure some of you will recall, was a Latchmere councillor 2006-10 (she was the one with the dog). Leonie succeeded Simon Hogg who, of course, is and continues to be a Latchmere councillor. Leonie is a highly effective member of the Greater London Assembly, where she represents Merton and Wandsworth, which is clearly a good fit for someone aspiring to be the Leader of Wandsworth Council after the 2022 Borough elections.
  8. On June 24th we had the third virtual (that is to say conducted remotely via a Teams link) Planning Applications Committee PAC. There were some large, important applications relating to sites in Earlsfield and Putney but the largest single application related to Battersea Power Station. Actually, the application was largely technical, switching the use of two very large (22,000 square metres) buildings from residential to office and vice versa, but leaving the total space for residential and office unchanged. The important sub-text is whether development continues across London, Wandsworth, and in particular Nine Elms, or whether the economy comes to a grinding halt, leaving to the developers by Harris Academy in return for a school gymnasium and associated facilities. As for the gym and facilities: where are they now?
  9. The PAC meeting had 105 live viewers with 38 later watching the archive “film”. The May meeting had 432 live viewers and has since had 329 views of the archive film. This decline in the ratings could mean that the original novelty of being able to watch the Committee at home has worn off but perhaps more likely it was because the May meeting dealt with more controversial applications. Either way, I think that, although we are not going to challenge Coronation Street in the ratings, there is little doubt that live streaming of Council and committee meetings are a modern fixture.
  10. Councillor Melanie Hampton, Mary Park, had the fun idea of making videos, from Julia Donaldson’s Gruffalo books. The idea was to provide the videos to schools so that they can show them to children in class and also share them with children, who are homeschooling.  The videos will also go to local libraries and will be shared in Brightside with links to YouTube.
  11. Sandra Evangelista, the Wandsworth Council officer tasked with putting this into action, thought it would be a great idea to film the videos in our local green spaces and for them to be distributed to people who are unable to get out and about. She also had the idea of using councillors to do the “acting”. So, on 26th June I went to Battersea Park to play my part in a drama called A Squash and a Squeeze. The picture is of me as the wise old man on the set!
  12. The first video out on release is The Gruffalo, starring fellow ward councillor Kate Stock and three other councillors. You can see it here at https://youtu.be/Cs8T4INVfOM. I think you will agree that it is a charming film. I just hope that “mine” is half as good.
  13. Meanwhile, we face a summer of off-and-on lockdown, public disturbances, rising concerns about community:police relations, high levels of unemployment, social distancing in schools, trains and buses, pubs and cafes; and, on top of all that, worries about life through and after Brexit. When a Chinese guru said, many years ago, “May you live in interesting times” he obviously had 2020 in mind!

My Programme for July

  1. On 6th July I am going to the dentist, having lost a tooth on 6th April – a very minor problem compared with many others. I am intrigued about how that will work in a socially distanced manner. Should be fascinating.
  2. Once again, in an official sense, July will be a quiet month. There will be a virtual Council Meeting on 14th July and a Planning Applications Committee (PAC) on 23rd We are now quite practised at virtual committee meetings with about a dozen participants but a full, formal Council meeting with 60 participants – that will be a new experience!

Last month I asked whether anyone knew who this woman was?

 

         I got a few responses with one person guessing it was Charlotte Despard, the indefatigable campaigner for women’s rights, and many other issues such as Indian and Irish independence. But moments before I finished this newsletter someone gave me the correct answer. It is a picture of Dame Millicent Fawcett (1847–1929), painted by Theodore Wirkman, now hanging in the Royal Holloway College gallery. Fawcett, who gave her name to a road on the Kambala Estate (Fawcett Close, SW11 2LT & 2LU), became the leader of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies in 1897. Her more reformist campaigning methods were possibly more important in winning the vote for women than has been acknowledged, in comparison with Christobel Pankhurst’s more radical Women’s Social

and Political Union.

 

Millicent Fawcett was also very active in furthering the cause of women’s education. She was a founding member of Cambridge University’s first woman’s college, Newnham College, and of Bedford College, London, later part of Royal Holloway College.

This month let me ask whether you can place my tree of the month? It is a weeping willow in Latchmere ward but where exactly?

June 3, 2020  

Councillor Tony Belton’s Battersea June, 2020, Newsletter (# 132)

  1. As I said last month, “One extraordinary month follows another. Brilliant weather, day after day. The sunniest May on record and probably the warmest and driest. Again, I have sat in the garden for more hours in May, than in some years in the past, and there enjoyed the bird song”. The bluebells and the apple blossom have now gone and, judging from the Park and the Common, we are on the verge of an official drought. Last month I had a picture of May blossom, this time my tree of the month is this magnificent young oak on Wandsworth Common.
  2. As, shall we say, a “mature councillor” on a local government pension, index proofed against inflation and keeping myself semi-isolated against the worst elements of this awful pandemic, it can be difficult to remember that many, many families and individuals are having a truly horrendous time. One couple of friends were unable to go to their son’s funeral, and another friend in her early seventies is dipping into and out of the Covid 19 infection with painful and harrowing regularity.
  3. However, the stark reality is that the pandemic is having by far the greatest impact on those, who can least afford it, both physically and financially. This separate life experience in our society between those of us, who are comfortably off, and those less fortunate explains to some degree the heartless arrogance of such policy decisions as the 1989 Poll Tax, the 2012 Bedroom Tax (still, disgracefully, in place), and Theresa May’s “hostile environment” for immigrants, May’s name for our treatment of low paid workers upon whom the economy relies and who are, so often, immigrants.
  4. For anyone, struggling with keeping themselves

    WNWN at work

    well and doing the shopping, can I recommend this link to Wandsworth Care Alliance, where there are details of organisations, who can help: https: //wandsworthcarealliance.org.uk/coronavirus/wandsworth-organisations-that/ These charitable organisations are using volunteers to do the shopping or deliver food for those in lockdown. Here are a few organisations operating in Latchmere: WOW (Women of Wandsworth), Providence House, KERA (Kambala Estate Residents Association), WNWN (Waste Not Want Not – Latchmere and Queenstown). The picture shows happy volunteers Georgia, Philip, Hadas and Kafui displaying a selection of food at Queenstown’s Yvonne Carr Community Centre.

  5. If you want to help but perhaps can’t for medical/physical reasons of your own then one option is to give at – https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/wastenotwantnot
  6. I do try in this newsletter not to be too overtly political, though my political leanings are obvious enough. When I lean over backwards, or so it seems to me, to be fair to the Tories, some of my colleagues think that I am too kind. But I do believe that the last fortnight of May, 2020, breaks all records of Tory arrogance, stupidity, callousness and obstinacy. John Major won a comfortable majority in April, 1992, but almost exactly 5 months later his Government was effectively destroyed by the economic disaster of so-called Black Wednesday. Boris Johnson has equally had 5 months since his election triumph in December, 2019, and now his government is in serious danger of being even more of a wreck thanks – not really to Covid 19 but rather to this government’s incredibly shambolic, hypocritical and chaotic response.
  7. With Major, we faced the prospect of four and half years of lame government run by a decent man, who was at the very least trying to be a Prime Minister. This time, however, we face four and a half years with a charlatan in charge, a man who, it turns out, only wanted to be PM but had no idea of what to do when he got to Downing Street. What is more he has thrown out of his party almost every Tory politician of integrity and stature. Just imagine being “forced” to tweet or in some other way support Dominic Cummings, as in late May many Cabinet members did. Compare this shambles with the firm way Nicola Sturgeon, in Scotland, and Keir Starmer, in the Labour Party, have managed rather lesser indiscretions from their respective party officers.
  8. Perhaps, even worse, this country, once respected for a myriad of reasons, is in danger of becoming the laughing stock of Western Europe. I would not be surprised if many economic sectors, which rely on Britain’s generally good name, industries such as insurance, banking, entertainments, Universities and colleges take an unexpected hit from our loss of prestige: it’s a blow to what many economists and commentators describe as the UK’s “soft power”.
  9. On May 19th I had the second virtual Planning Applications Committee. It can be viewed at: https://richmond.public-i.tv/core/portal/webcast_interactive/486684. 432 people watched from home online.
  10. It was dominated, in the public mind, by two applications: one a pencil slim tower in the centre of Wandsworth and the other an Astro-turf pitch application on Tooting Common. The tower, between Mapleton Crescent and Garratt Lane is planned to be 20 storeys high and contain 27 flats. It is squeezed between the Wandle River and Garratt Lane on an incredibly small site. As pictured here, the tower looks quite elegant, at least in concept, but I was not persuaded and voted against it. In the long term, I believe the environmental implications of putting so many people in so many tower blocks in central Wandsworth will prove to be a mistake. I, and one other councillor voted against it but 8 others supported it.
  11. The application to lay an Astro-turf pitch in Tooting Common, where now there is a “gravel” pitch and to re-arrange the nearby changing rooms and boxing club generated massive public interest, mostly in opposition as expressed in a petition signed by 6,000 people. In many ways this proposal is not very different from the new Astro-turf pitch in Falcon Park, but it was complicated by the popularity and significance of the Boxing Club, which was frequented not only by the current MP, Rosena Allin-Khan, but also by her predecessor and now Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. Personally, I agreed with the majority Committee view that the Astro-turf pitches would be an improvement and that the Boxing Clubs requirements will be safeguarded. I trust that was a correct judgement but it certainly was not very popular on the night!
  12. On a personal level, I miss, along with many others I am sure, the occasional pint. I have cooked more than at any time in my life: not just the frying standard “bloke’s” stuff like eggs and bacon, steaks and sausages, but also poaching and baking; creating vegetarian curries and interesting starters. I must confess, though this is dangerous territory, that I almost enjoy it! What does surprise me is how stressful cooking can be!
  13. Finally, the “claparamas” have become quite the social highlight of the week in my road. The highlight has been the 8.10 concert given by two sisters and their talented mother. This week, in June, we are promised a Finale Concert with further contributions from neighbouring children. We could be starting a youth orchestra all of our own!
  14. STOP PRESS. Then on 25th May George Floyd, an unarmed man of Afro-American heritage was killed by a Minneapolis policeman. BLACK LIVES MATTER. Of course, other lives matter too but it is the black population, which suffers most from the racial prejudice that poisons all our lives. Ensure that BLACK LIVES MATTER in everything that we do and then all other lives will be better too.

My Programme for June

  1. Once again in an official sense June will be a quiet month. There will be a virtual Strategic Planning and Transportation Committee on 9th June and a Planning Applications Committee (PAC) on 24th And I am sure that other business will arise but when and what, I will have to wait and see!

Do you know the last time elections were postponed?

was the question I asked last month. As many of you guessed I was referring to the five-week postponement of the 2002 General Election from 3rd May until 7th June

because of the outbreak of foot and mouth disease. Over 6 million cows and sheep were slaughtered (and incinerated in mounds on the roadside) that year in a successful but highly contentious response to the disease. As I said then the fact that, 20 years later, it has been almost entirely forgotten is perhaps a good omen for this year’s human outbreak of a viral disease!

This picture appeared in a May edition of the Guardian. One road in Latchmere ward is named after her. Does anyone know who she was and where the road is?

Keep safe!  and finally play this tremendous video made by the people of Battersea

https://youtu.be/hYyv3Z2uKww

May 1, 2020  

Councillor Tony Belton’s Battersea May, 2020, Newsletter (# 131)

  1. One extraordinary month follows another. I said that about March but again “What a month April 2020 turned out to be!”. Brilliant weather, day after day. The sunniest April on record and probably the warmest and driest, even if the last three days made an effort to catch up on the showers front.
  2. I have sat in the garden for more hours in April, than in some years in the past, and noted what I am sure we have all noted. The birds seem to be singing more loudly every day, especially my local blackbird, who is glorying in not having to compete with the constant scream of jet engines on their way to Heathrow. Our bluebells are out in profusion and the apple blossom is at record levels. The air is as clear as has been seen in London, since, maybe, coal first started being widely used in the mid-eighteenth century.
  3. At times, it is difficult to remember that for many, many families April 2020 has also been the terrible month when a family member died before his/her time, leaving grieving sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters, husbands and wives.
  4. In my road, there is a weekly clapathon, or is it a clap-in, in honour of our NHS workers, from physicians and nurses, to cleaners and porters. This last week it was completed by a small concert when 6 and 9-year old neighbours played Judy Garland’s Over the Rainbow on a violin and a cello, accompanied by their mother on the piano. The audience of about 50 neighbours hardly had a dry eye between them.
  5. On April 4th Sir Keir Starmer was elected Leader of the Labour Party. He won the vote with 66% support from Party members. He immediately raised the morale of many in the party with his inaugural speech and has since taken immediate action to quash the ant-Semitic issue. His two performances in Prime Minister’s Questions, in neither case against the Prime Minister, have been forensic and “cool”, in exactly the way his critics describe as bloodless and I think of as precise and deadly. Over the months we will discover whether it is effective, though it looks good to me – and to you, I wonder?
  6. On April 23rd I took part in a virtual Planning Applications Committee. It was “broadcast” online and on the 28th I heard that the committee was viewed by over 550 people, making it probably the most broadly observed committee in Wandsworth history. The Council used Microsoft’s Team software to film the committee. Take a look: https://richmond.public-i.tv/core/portal/webcast_interactive/484556 but remember this, the first broadcast is a little slow to get underway!
  7. Virtual committees seem to me, on the basis of this experience (and a few other online meetings: Labour Party and Charity), to have both advantages and disadvantages when compared to the “real thing”. The advantages include clearer sound (and picture) as the camera and mike are within a yard of the speaker, whoever he/she may be. But on the other hand, neither participants of the meeting nor the audience can see all the other committee members and so it is more difficult to gauge the mood of the meeting. Some councillors have already predicted the end of formal committee meetings and I suspect that the crisis is inevitably going to result in a re-think of the traditional and now very dated Council Meeting. But I think that Councils, like Parliament, will find it very difficult to operate as in any sense a political forum without some kind of meeting of people, face to face. The political process relies as much on exchanges over a coffee or the bar as it does on formal debate in the chamber.
  8. As for the Planning Applications Committee’s real, standard business, it was dominated by applications relating to Battersea. As always, there were a number of smallish applications, which were significant, only to the applicants and their immediate neighbours. But one major one raised issues of general interest.
  9. The major application was for a “collective” living project with rooms for 500 residents, along with a hotel, restaurants and a number of collective facilities such as work space and studios. The developers intend to build this project on two sites, backing on to each other in Mendip and Chatfield Roads. It is undoubtedly an excitingly different style of life from the traditional flat and/or house. However, to my mind, it raised a slew of questions about collective living in a post-Covid times. But I was in a minority of one and the application was passed.

My Programme for May is completely unknown!

  1. We had all expected to spend much of May fighting in the GLA and Mayoral elections, but as you know they have been postponed for a year. Does that mean that the next Mayoral term will be only three years or will we simply lose a year from the next cycle? I imagine that the legislation was clear on this matter but I don’t know.
  1. May is usually an important year in the municipal year. It is both the end of the 2019/2020 year and the start of the 2020/2021 year and is, therefore, the month of annual meetings and elections of the Wandsworth Mayor and of the Leaders of the Council and the Opposition. But by general agreement that is all going to be postponed until at least later in the summer. We shall see.
  2. Most of the committees will also be postponed but having had one virtual Planning Applications Committee (PAC) last month, I am pretty certain that we will have another on 19th May, but apart from PAC, I suspect it will be a pretty quiet month!

Do you know the last time elections were postponed?

                Elections were, of course, postponed during the two World Wars, although there were by-elections in the event of the death or resignation of MPs. But an election was postponed on at least one other occasion in my memory. Do you remember when that was and how long the postponement lasted? The fact that it has been almost entirely forgotten is perhaps a good omen for this occasion.

Remember, on this May Day, the International Labour Day all those front-line workers risking their lives to make our lives safer. And finally, look after yourself and your friends and families. Keep safe!

 

April 4, 2020  

Councillor Tony Belton’s Battersea April, 2020, Newsletter (# 130)

  1. What a month March 2020 turned out to be! I had “standard” councillor-type meetings on 2nd, 4th, 5th and 10th and then decided to postpone one on the 11th and then nothing, zilch, zero, stop and now the Council’s website says “Due to the current situation with COVID-19, we are urgently reviewing the need for formal Council and Committee meetings at the current time”. But let’s start from the beginning.
  2. On 2nd March I had a meeting with some local residents, who live near Battersea Park Road. They had legitimate concerns about neighbouring developments and extensions, which in their view were having a harmful impact on their lives and properties. We had a useful if not conclusive discussion, which I later raised with planning officers. Who knows what will happen in the new circumstances, but I will continue to pursue the matter.
  3. The Council Meeting on the 4th March unanimously agreed the Council Tax for the coming year. The Tory majority did not want to make too much of an issue of it because it did involve an increase. And as Labour councillors did not wish to broadcast the scale of the increase forced on the Council by outside factors, not least by the Mayor of London, the evening passed fairly uncontentiously. The really big news is, or might have been, what happens to local government taxation next year, given that the Government seems to be driving local authorities into a cul-de-sac of bankruptcy EXCEPT that now it is clear that, after the Covid 19 emergency, all predictions about future tax levels are obsolete.
  4. The following day I had a meeting of the Healthy Streets Forum. This body is devoted to making sure that the streets of Wandsworth are, as clean and environmentally healthy, as they can possibly be. It is a very worthy cause, supported by very committed community activists; but I hope that they do not take it amiss if I say that they need to avoid talking down to councillors and officers, who understand, and in many cases share, their goals and objectives!
  5. Then on 10th March, I had a fascinating meeting with Wandsworth’s new Assistant Director of Planning. I wanted to get her thoughts on what infrastructure developments would have been important to the Council after 2022. I had quite an impressive check-list and was going to do some work on it. But now infrastructure development will have to be completely re-thought in the coming, new post-Covid 19 world.
  6. But then on 11th March, I decided to self-isolate! Not because I have the dreaded symptoms but because, according to all the experts, I am in one of the vulnerable groups. Indeed, I am “mature” enough to have almost a “direct connection” with the 1918 “Spanish flu” pandemic. In fact, my grandfather, Ernest Belton, died of the flu in November, 1918. My grandmother was then seven months pregnant with Rose. She had three other children, Nen aged 7, Ernest aged 6, and my father Stanley just 4. Rose was born in January, 1919. The picture is of my grandparents and their eldest, Aunt Nen. My grandmother used to tell me about just how tough life was, as a lone parent, bringing up four children with no welfare state and no income. It’s quite a long story. If you are interested then you can read about it at – https://tonybelton.wordpress.com/2020/03/18/todays-pandemic-and-the-1918-spanish-flu-epidemic/
  7. Then the pandemic, at which point everything has changed. The Council has largely closed down but is, at the same time, trying to maintain essential services. Voluntary organisations and faith groups are trying to provide food parcels and back-up services. The community has rallied around with a “clapathon” at 8 pm on the 26th in honour and support of our care workers. Many of us have found new ways of working from home, using new technology to have virtual meetings and collaborative working. Many more have found new ways of entertaining each other, using technology to have virtual dinner parties, yoga sessions, dancing parties and chess competitions. As far as I can see, almost everyone is re-communicating with long-lost relatives and old friends. Probably, just a few are getting around to writing the first great twenty-first century novel, play, symphony, thesis.
  8. I did break my own self-imposed isolation on 14th March to play chess for Surrey vs Middlesex. Lost again, I am afraid but he was much higher ranked than me and I felt my old skills were coming back a bit.

My Programme for April is Covid 19 shaped!

  1. The Council’s plan is to have a “virtual”, probably Microsoft Teams based Planning Applications Committee in early April. The emergency legislation, passed through the Commons on the last day, allowed for that but as yet there is no plan to enable the public to observe, nor plans for any of the other regular committees to take place other than the Licensing Committee. The interesting question is what happens to democracy in a Covid 19 shutdown?
  2. The Labour Party is going to announce its new Leader on 4th April. You may have heard rumours that this announcement might be delayed. I desperately hope not. It is important, not only for the Labour Party but also, for the Government to have a functioning and authoritive Opposition.
  3. Finally, we have an exciting future to help shape and map out. We all have criticisms of the world as it was in 2019. I would want it to be fairer and more equal. We have to make it more environmentally friendly. This is our chance to help re-shape our society. It will be exciting!

I don’t suppose that the future will be quite as utopian as C. Alcuin’s City on a Hill, but it’s a thought!                                                                   © C. Alcuin

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