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!
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!
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.
Political Evictions – OK so the last one was easy but what about this one?
Followers will know the position I took about evicting the family of small-scale rioter, Daniel Sartain-Clark. But that one was easy; he wasn’t found guilty of much.
But last week a gang of Latchmere residents was caught for fairly big time drug dealing. Against capital punishment as I am, my reflex action about drug dealing almost demands that the perpetrators are strung up. OK, that goes a bit far but what do you think about the Council’s threat to evict their families? (Though to be fair to the Council, it would be stretching definitions a bit far to call these political evictions).
Here are people actively destroying the lives of their neighbours, almost certainly with the knowledge of some members of their family, and the Council wants to evict them. What do you reckon? Evict immediately!
Well, I am not so sure. To start with, as luck would have it, living on the Kambala and Winstanley estates, some are freeholders, some leaseholders and some tenants and hence the power that the Council has to evict varies. Secondly young siblings and harrassed mothers are still innocent.
Let the judicial system take its course with the unpleasant dealers – on balance I still think that the Council should not evict the families any more than I think any criminal’s family deserves to be made homeless. Have I got this right?
Councillor Tony Belton’s Latchmere February Newsletter (# 34)
January highlights
1 The worst moment of the month was when Daniel was sentenced on 10th January for his part in the riots. Don’t get me wrong. I have no sympathy for those who were involved in the riots, but I do believe that we need a sense of proportion and quite clearly what Judge Darling had to say implied very strongly that the relatively minor misdemeanours Daniel was involved in would not have led to a custodial sentence at any other time. But for more detail see the 11th January entry below.
2. The best moment of the month, however, was when the Council back-tracked on their decision to evict his totally innocent mother and sister – see 19th January entry below.
3. On 12th January I was fascinated to hear Louise Casey, Head of the Government’s new Troubled Families Unit. Her Unit, a Tory Government initiative, is based on the old 80:20 rule, though in this case the figures are probably more like 99:1 rule, which says that you spend 80% of your effort on 20% of your caseload. This rule, if you haven’t heard about it, applies to all areas of work so a doctor, say, spends 80% of his time on 20% of his patients, a teacher spends 80% of her time on 20% of her pupils, etc. It is certainly true of me, with at least 90% of my constituents (more than 10,000 of you) taking absolutely no more than 10% of my efforts and the other 10% more than occupying 90% of my attention.
So the aim of this Unit is to focus government’s attention (government in this context is meant to mean everything, such as schools, the NHS, the judicial system, the police, social services, probation services, etc.) on the very small number of troubled families – Casey estimates that 120,000 families in the UK are the source of an extremely high percentage of the criminal, educational, health, etc., costs and problems that we face. The argument being that if we put a lot of money into solving their problems then we can save £millions more in the long term on all those mainstream services.
Interesting, but frankly I am sceptical. It seems to me that until we address some pretty basic inequalities in the UK (caused by low pay, youth unemployment, unemployment, poor housing) then resolving the problems of today’s 120,000 families will only mean that they will be replaced by 120,000 others in a few years’ time.
Marco Polo House
4. The Planning Applications Committee on 19th January had two dramatic plans to consider. One was for the demolition of the post-modernist Marco Polo Building in Queenstown Road and its replacement with 15 and 13 storey blocks of 456 flats with associated bars, restaurants and shops. If it goes ahead, this will be one of the quickest re-developments we have seen. The Marco Polo building (pictured) is itself only 25 years old. The other was for a 5-10 storey building containing 116 residential units on the site opposite York Gardens Library and Halfords on the corner of Lombard Road. That one was refused but the Marco Polo replacement building accepted.
5. The 25th January, Finance & Corporate Services Committee had stacks of very important but rather technical, internal matters relating to the running of the Council, which would not I suspect be of much interest to the public at large. One very small matter, however, might be of interest to some Latchmere residents as it concerns the sale of the St. Christopher Clinic in Wheeler Court, Plough Road. The clinic has been relocated and it will be converted into flats.
6. The 23rd January, Housing Committee decided to increase rents Council rents by an average £8.33p per week or 7%. They will continue to be the highest Council rents in the country.
My Programme for February
1. The Council meets on 8th February and the Clapham Junction Town Centre Partnership the day after.
2. The Labour Party is holding its “Ken Livingstone Manifesto” discussion on 11th but as I am doing a surgery at Battersea Library that same morning I will miss most, if not all, of that.
3. The Wayford Residents Association meeting is on the 23rd.
4. The Planning Applications Committee is on the 19th.
Eltringham School
5. For the more nostalgic amongst you I would draw your attention to two demolitions, yes DEMOLITIONS, taking place this month or about to take place. The most important to mention is that of Eltringham School in Eltringham Street, which for those who don’t know it is the Victorian School building on the left just as one drives onto the Wandsworth Bridge roundabout from York Road. One lady, who still lives in Eltringham Street, tells me that she went to school there (if you are reading this did you say in the 60’s?) and that her mother had lived in the same street for years before then.
St. Peter's Church Hall, Plough Road
And the second was featured in last week’s local Guardian and is the hall of the old St. Peter’s Church in Plough Road. The inside of the hall is rather splendid, if somewhat run-down, but the most notable element of it, at least as far as recent local history is concerned is the mural on the south side of the hall. The painting is very faded and it will hardly be a great loss to Battersea. But for some of it brings back memories of Rev Michael Wimhurst, who in the 70’s was a radical vicar at the church, which was burnt down at some point in the 80’s.
Royal Artillery Monument
Did you know?
Next time that you are in Albert Bridge Road, between Petworth Street and Albany Mansions, keep your eyes open for a blue plaque to Charles Sergeant Jagger, (no relation to Mick) who lived there in the 1930’s. It’s on about 60 Albert Bridge Road and very, very near to Jagger House on the nearby Ethelburga Estate.
Jagger born in 1885 near Rotherham, fought and was wounded three times in the 1914-18 War. For 10 years after the war he sculpted many of the First World War memorials that were constructed all over the country. His most famous memorial is the Royal Artillery Monument at Hyde Park Corner and, although it does not come out very well, that is a Howitzer on the monument.
Tony Belton
Tony Belton 