1. I had a very quiet start of the year, with little of note other than a very nice Twelfth Night Party, Penny and I hosted for our close neighbours; plus a nostalgic 70s and 80s themed ‘Labour Party’ party hosted by friends Mark and Sarah with Alf Dubs, guest of honour on 14^th January – great catch-up with many old friends.
   

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2. The Planning Applications Committee was on the 19^th January and continues to reflect the depressed state of the construction industry – there were not many planning applications for significant developments in the Borough – in fact precisely three – all in Battersea. One, I am sure that many people will be delighted to hear about, was an application to revive the old changing rooms on Clapham Common West, next to the zebra crossing, where the one-way system starts. The refurbishment will include café facilities, a sitting area and a public loo. Another was for a development in Alderbrook Road, which the Committee chose to reject; and the third was for yet another four-year extension on the so-called British Genius site in Battersea Park. In approving this application, the Committee expressed a general view that they would look kindly on an application for a permanent building on the site with more environmentally friendly qualities.
   

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3. Many of you will have heard about the “plan” to build a 38-41 storey residential bloc on the south-side of the Thames, alongside Battersea Bridge. The first thing to say about the “plan” is that a scoping submission has indeed been submitted to the Council, but it is NOT a planning application. It is an investigative enquiry. The Council’s current local plan suggests that a suitable height would be 7-12 storeys, so there is a very wide gap between the developer’s thoughts and the Council’s plan. No doubt local residents will have their views, which I suggest you register on the Council’s website when, and if, we receive a real planning application.
   

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4. On 25^th January, we had the first Alf Dubs Lecture at the Battersea Arts Centre. The idea of starting what is hoped to be an annual event was first mooted by Anne Reyersbach, a Battersea resident with relatives, who very much like Alf, fled to the UK during the Nazi-led, Eastern and Central European pogroms of the 1930s. Alf himself was, of course, one of the Kinder-transport children, whose plight was recently dramatised in the film One Life, starring Anthony Hopkins as Nicholas Winton. The lecture itself illustrated Alf’s traditional self; amusing, charming, courteous, committed, with the wisdom of age. In his early nineties, Alf, more formally of course Lord Dubs of Battersea, is an inspiration to us all.
   

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5. But, if January was a quiet start to the political year, it is not going to be quiet for very long. In early February, Labour councillors will be discussing this year’s Council Tax decision – the final decision will be taken on March 6th. Meanwhile, May’s London Mayoral and Assembly elections are looming over the horizon and not far beyond that is the General Election – I think it will be on the third Thursday of October – just 2 or 3 weeks before the American Presidential election. And over all, there is the dark, dark shadow of the wars in Gaza and Ukraine.
   

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6. Finally and closer to home, we have recently all experienced the horror of a pandemic, which one would have thought taught us all the wisdom of getting our jabs and yet we now see an ancient scourge, called Measles, getting a greater hold on a new generation! I was lucky enough to be a wartime baby when our parents took public health warnings and pandemics seriously and took no notice of dubious doctors and non-scientific Anti-Vaccers. So, get your kids, or grand-kids vaccinated now if you have not yet so done and don’t make them suffer because of your laziness or scepticism.
   

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My programme for February

1. On 2nd February, Simon Hogg and Kate Stock hosted a Saturday coffee morning for Falconbrook and neighbouring residents.
2. There is a Council Meeting on 7th February. It will probably be rather dull as it has, for technical reasons, been restricted to accounts and funding issues without being about the one big issue – the Council Tax, which will be decided on 6th March.
3. The Transport Committee is on 19th February.
4. The Planning Applications Committee is on 22nd February.
5. On 26^th February, I have the Finance & General Purposes Committee.
   

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Did you know?

So in the last two months, I asked, about these two plaques, where they are and what else is named after John Buckmaster. The blue plaque is in the car-park at the Brighton Yard entrance and the green plaque is on the Skylark café in Wandsworth Common – the café is on the wrong side of the tracks to be in Battersea – it is actually in Tooting constituency.

The other Buckmaster naming is, of course, Buckmaster Road, which runs south from Battersea Rise.

Many people knew the answer to this question, including of course Su Demont, who is a Battersea historian. But a special reply came from Liz, who wrote as follows, “My G G Grandfather was John Charles Buckmaster, born around 1822 in Slapton Bucks. His book “a Village Politician” under the pen name John Buckley in the first edition, now also under his own name is an interesting account of reform in the 19th C. Easily available on the internet. JCB was involved in lobbying for the repeal of the corn laws and was a paid agitator. Later he trained as a teacher in science subjects and wrote many textbooks, some of which are still available today e.g. “Buckmaster’s inorganic chemistry” – not actually a page-turner!”

“He lived where Platform 9 of Clapham Junction Station now stands and got involved in, and then led, the movement to save Wandsworth Common. Most of it is in his book. In 2021 it was the 150th anniversary of the Wandsworth Common Act which was celebrated by the Wandsworth Common committee erecting a blue plaque outside the main south side entrance to Clapham Junction and a green plaque outside the Skylark Café”.

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And this month?

There was a pub at the end of Lavender Gardens called The Cornet of Horse – a name from the long, last past. It is now part of a very twenty-first century comedy pub-chain called Jongleurs. But do you know what is a Cornet of Horse and how did the pub get that name? And what is the link between the pub and a council block on the Ethelburga Estate?

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1. On the 2^nd November I attended the second “Developers’ Lunch”. Simon Hogg, the Leader of Wandsworth Council, and Aydin Dikerdem, Housing Chair, initiated these soon after Labour’s victory in the 2022 Borough Election. They were inspired by Labour’s ambition to build more social, and therefore affordable, homes in the Borough; and they needed to set an agenda immediately.

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   The Tory Council had submitted their Borough Plan to Government literally days before the election, and although Labour has set about the process of amending their plan, the process takes too long for our liking. Hence, we are informing the development industry directly of the nature of our intention to look favourably at planning applications, which include a 50% allocation of affordable housing units.

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   My role as Chair of the Planning Applications Committee was essentially to show solidarity between application control and political direction, without in any way compromising my commitment to assess individual applications on their own merit. Whether, the development industry is going to work towards Labour’s aspirations, or stick to the kind of more market-oriented plan devised by our Tory predecessor Council is yet to be seen, although there are some encouraging signs.

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2. Later that same evening I had the Transport Committee. It was not a particularly dramatic occasion, but it did mark another small step into investing in a more pedestrian and cycle-friendly environment. Improved pedestrian facilities were introduced near Chestnut Grove School and a scheme was introduced to improve Burntwood Road, as the current layout annoys motorists, cyclists, and pedestrians alike.

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3. On 7^th November, the Wandsworth Mayor, my fellow ward Councillor Juliana Annan, hosted the Civic Awards. It consciously modernised and diversified the occasion – with I think some success, as can be seen very clearly in this picture. And it also included brief, professionally produced videos of the work done in the community by the seven winning individuals or groups.

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4. On 10^th November, I attended the Armistice Day service in Battersea Park. This year it was unusually cold, appropriately for the current state of war in both Ukraine and Gaza. Mayor Juliana Annan read the lesson.

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5. On 15^th November, my friend Jeanne Rathbone, gave a talk on the Branson family, who lived in various parts of Battersea. I must confess that my major interest was in Clive, who did several naïve paintings of Battersea, which are now in the possession of the Tate Gallery (memo to self: must go to the Tate soon!) and I make no apology for repeating his picture of his wife selling the Daily Worker (memo to younger readers: the Worker was an overtly Communist Party paper published 1923-52), outside a factory in Stewart’s Road. Clive died in Burma during WW2, but, what I did not know were the longer radical histories of his wife and daughter – nice one Jeanne.

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6. On the 17^th November, I went to Wimbledon Park Golf Course, along with fellow members of the Planning Applications Committee, a couple of planning officers, and some other interested parties. The picture is of the first and the eighteenth fairways, running alongside the lake that can just be seen in the distance.

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7. The visit was obviously related to the All England Lawn Tennis Club’s (AELTC) planning application which was considered by the 21^st November Planning Applications Committee (PAC), which I chair. As you will probably have seen from the widespread media coverage, we rejected the application, not as reported unanimously but nem con (nemine contradicente – a traditional, useful Latin phrase meaning “no names recorded against”. There were abstentions.)

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   The application was for 39 extra lawn tennis courts, one of which was a full-sized show court, on the scale of Centre Court or Court One; for the removal of nearly 300 trees (not this great oak but the spindly sapling in front of it) and their replacement by 1500 others; for several maintenance huts to store mowers, temporary seating, nets, etc., etc.; hundreds of yards of concrete paths for access and spectator facilities; for the effective transfer of 5 hectares of the Capability Brown landscape park into Merton’s municipal Wimbledon Park. (by the way, no one noticed that last month I associated the park with Grinling Gibbons and not with Capability Brown, including Penny who is meant to know about these things!).

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   The picture shows the development with the new show court centre left surrounded by the many grass courts, with paved surrounds; and what is left of the “Capability Brown” park at the bottom right of the lake.

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   The main grounds for refusal were, to my mind, that there were insufficient grounds submitted to allow so much development on Metropolitan Open Land (MOL). Planning policies agreed by all parties to government state that there must be “substantial justification” to allow development on MOL. PAC members did not think that there was substantial justification. Given that Merton Council has already approved the application, I suspect that the decision will now go to the London Mayor, Sadiq Khan, or one of his deputies to approve or reject, before, perhaps, going on to the Secretary of State for the final decision.

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8. Two days later, on 23^rd November, I attended the TCPA (Town & Country Planning Association) Conference on the Contribution that Planning can make on Regeneration and the Climate Crisis, at Regent University in Regent’s Park. A major feature was the almost unanimous contempt that the planning community have for the current government. Whilst this is partly because planners nearly always have a different belief system from members of the Tory party, it was mainly because of the continual, and indeed continuous U-turning, which this government has pursued on planning issues from HS2 to licences for new coal mines and oil drilling in a climate crisis. On my way home, I thought this view of the handsome Marylebone parish church, near Regent University, was worth recording.

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9. On Saturday, 24^th November, Penny and I went to the Battersea Police Ball in Battersea Park. I have often said that this is the biggest, most OTT social event in the Battersea calendar – that I know of. In some ways, it seemed slightly more restrained than in earlier years – there were no handsome, semi-clad youths swinging on trapezes above the audience; but the event continues to be loud, raucous and enjoyable, with very jolly but crowded dancing and brilliant strobe lighting.

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10. The Finance Committee, on 30^th October, was both interesting, and for me, over-structured. There were interesting issues to consider, such as the report of The Cost of Living Commission and the Council’s response to the cost of living crisis, but with the modern fashion for pre-organised questions and answers, a fixed and timed guillotine and a limited number of committee meetings per year, there is no room for real political debate, which I believe is really much needed.

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11. Some of you have brought to my attention the scurrilous leaflet produced and distributed by the Tory Party, which might be described by some as a pack of lies. The central argument is that a Labour councillor, who was promoted to a senior position, was given a massive and unjustifiable pay-rise. If the Labour Party were to publish an equivalent leaflet, we could say that in electing one of their number as Leader of the Opposition on Wandsworth Council in May last year, the Tories had voted for him to have had a 250%+ pay rise, ignoring of course, the fact that he had replaced someone else who had taken an equivalent cut. That misleading presentation is typical of the rest of the leaflet and I am glad that we do not publish their equal.

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My programme for December

1. I have a meeting of the Crematorium Board on the 5^th December.
2. The Ethelburga Estate Residents Association AGM and Xmas meeting also on 5^th December.
3. A Design Review Panel of Roehampton’s Alton Estate on 6^th December.
4. A Labour councillors Group meeting on 7^th December.
5. Wandsworth Mayor’s Xmas party on 8^th December.
6. A Battersea Labour Party Junction Jazz evening on 10^th December.
7. On 12^th December, I have the Planning Applications Committee.
8. The December Council Meeting is on 13^th December.
9. And then family Xmas.

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Did you Know? Last month, I asked, “British and American, born in Connecticut, died in London and buried in Battersea, a hero and villain in both countries, a traitor and a loyalist in both countries, a spy and a military commander in both, a father of eight – who was this man and where can you find him? And many of you knew the answer – Benedict Arnold. Arnold joined the insurgents against Westminster rule (wouldn’t lots of us like to do that), became a general in Washington’s army; turned against the insurgents; joined the British army; moved to England after American Independence had been achieved and was buried at St. Mary’s Church, Battersea. But whilst many of you also knew about the stained-glass window referencing Arnold, I wonder how many of you have ever noticed this stone in the crypt? And this month? Whilst looking for a particular shop somewhere in Clapham Junction I came across this plaque, which I had never seen before. Can you tell me where it is? And who was John Buckmaster? And perhaps most significantly why did he deserve to be commemorated? (Members of the Battersea Society need not reply!)

1. The Finance Committee, on 3^rd October, was uneventful, although it dealt with important budgetary papers. It was followed, however, on the same night, by a bad-tempered General Purposes (GP) Committee. It is called the General Purposes Committee because it deals with anything and everything, which isn’t handled elsewhere. On this occasion that meant it discussed and decided upon Wandsworth councillors’ allowances. And that was indeed eventful.
   

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   It is always tricky voting for one’s own pay – or allowance – increase. We all know that there is no easier target than MPs or councillors voting themselves more money. However, councillors’ allowances had been frozen since 2013 and hence in real terms they had fallen quite considerably. We decided at the committee to raise them by 4.04% and link future increases to the annual national local government pay rise.

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   In addition, we decided to increase the number of councillors in the majority party (that is Labour councillors – because, of course, we were elected to do the job) receiving a small additional allowance, typically about £3,000 for taking on major Council responsibilities, such as Chairing the Audit Committee or championing policies to improve the Borough’s air quality.

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   Finally, we reversed the cut that we made rather too hastily last year in the Chief Whip’s allowance – and back-dated our 4.04% increase to the beginning of the financial year, 1^st April. As they say, nowadays, the optics were not great, and the Tories unsurprisingly made the most of that. But what they fail to tackle is how can we expect elected councillors to spend large amounts of their time running the Borough (well or badly from your perspective) without getting paid. If we do not pay a basic allowance to councillors, then only rich people will ever be able to do the job.

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2. A couple of days later, I was making my way from Austin Road to Battersea Park Library, when I noticed that the Council has repaired the very uneven and dangerous paving between Park West and Eden Retirement Home. I had brought the matter to the notice of the relevant Council department, following a meeting I had with some Battersea Fields residents. The attached pic shows paving, as it was, at least 2 inches out of sync – one of several pictures that I could have used – and so I must say I am delighted that our efforts have been rewarded.
   

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3. A Safer Neighbourhood Team (SNT) meeting took place on the Doddington Estate on 17^th Google says, “The Safer Neighbourhoods Programme introduced local policing teams to provide a visible, familiar and accessible policing presence across London in order to close the `reassurance gap’ and further reduce overall incidents of crime and disorder.” I am not sure that SNTs have quite done all that yet, but this was the most successful meeting of its type that I have yet seen. One thing is clear, we still need to improve relationships between the police and the public in modern-day London.
   

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4. On the 18^th October, we had the full Council Meeting. Every regular reader of my newsletter will know what I think of the largely ceremonial and formulaic nature of modern Council meetings. But this was just after the Hamas attack on Israel and just as the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) was starting their counter-attack. What were we going to do?
   

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   The Mayor opened proceedings by making a suitable statement mourning the dead and hoping for a quick and peaceful end to the crisis; and she was followed, much as expected by the two leaders. But then, I am afraid, we got stuck into a totally inappropriate row between some Labour and Tory councillors, which bore no relationship to the war being fought 2,300 miles away – this was, in my view, competitive virtue signalling at its worst.

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5. The Mayor, fellow Battersea Park Councillor Juliana Anaan, held a charity dinner/dance on 20th October, It was great fun and gave Penny and me a rare chance to have a dance together. Perhaps more pertinently the occasion helped the Mayor to raise £12,000 in favour of her charities of the year, which are the Katherine Low Settlement, Black Minds Matter, and Keeping Families Together.
   

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6. On the 26^th October, I watched Merton Council’s equivalent of Wandsworth’s PAC (see para 7) debating the application for the extension and consolidation of the All England Lawn Tennis Club’s (AELTC) Wimbledon I was interested, given that the same application is going to Wandsworth’s PAC on November 21^st. Some would argue that this is the largest such application that we are likely to be considering in the lifetime of this 2022-2026 Council.
   

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   As you will probably have seen from widespread media coverage, Merton approved the application and now it is Wandsworth’s PAC’s turn to approve or reject the application. I think that we can guarantee that, whether we say Yes or No, there will be many who will disapprove of our decision. Frankly either way the decision will, no doubt, be passed up to the London Mayor, Sadiq Khan, and probably after him to the Secretary of State. Whatever the outcome I am certain that there will be widespread, even international, interest.

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   The decision will depend on how the committee balances the requirements of the club (and, of course, the Wimbledon Championship), and the benefits that the application brings such as the expansion and improvements to Wimbledon Park against the building of a show stadium and many grass courts on designated Metropolitan Open Land and the further encroachment on Grinling Gibbons’ historic conception of park landscape.

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7. The Planning Applications Committee (PAC), on 24^th October, was the most interesting for months, because it dealt with two highly political issues. By that, I do NOT mean political in the bastardised use of the word, of Labour versus Tory, or of one set of personally ambitious councillors against another. What I do mean, however, is that they were highly political decisions, posing two good sets of values against each other and demanding that we make balanced decisions for the good of the community (polis). They gave the lie to that unconsidered, but oft-repeated, phrase that “councillors should put politics to one side and decide what is the best for the community”. In both cases, genuinely held value sets were in opposition and the argument was about precisely what was best for the community.
   

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   In the first case, the integrity and preservation of the Nightingale Lane Conservation Area was in direct opposition to the desirability of providing two housing units for women and children, who had suffered from domestic violence. In the second, safeguarding the environment, both in general and, in particular, with regards to the residents of one street, conflicted with the Council’s desire and need to improve educational facilities for one small but important group of students – in the Pupil Referral Unit.

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   Councillors expressed their views on both matters with passion but also with balance and mutual respect in what were two of the best and most considered debates of recent months. As I chair PAC, perhaps I am a little biased, but it was local politics at its very best.

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   We decided to allow the two housing units at a potential, though clearly limited, cost to the conservation area; and to defer the second in the hope that a better planning solution might be found.

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8. On 27^th October, I accompanied Marsha de Cordova, our MP, Simon Hogg, Wandsworth Labour Leader, and Paul White, the Housing Committee Chair, on a tour round the Randall Close development in the Surrey Lane estate. I always find it a tad difficult to “see” what a future block of flats will look like, on the basis of a visit to a building site. But, the development, which is exclusively for 106 council homes is going very well and is due to be completed on time, in the autumn of 2024. Here Marsha and Simon are in discussion with one of the development team.
   

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My programme for November

1. I have the Transport Committee on the 2^nd
2. There are, of course, the traditional fireworks display in Battersea Park on both the 4^th and 5^th The 5^th, on what some might still think of as Guy Fawkes night, is specifically designed for families and children, and starts a bit earlier than the Saturday night show.
3. On 7^th November, the Council has its Civic Awards evening when major contributors to the Borough’s life are honoured.
4. On 9^th November my friend and neighbour, Carol Rahn, is giving a talk on the history of Northcote Road.
5. On 15^th November at 6 pm Battersea Society are hosting a talk on The Branson Family. Clive was a Battersea resident and an artist, some of whose works can be seen in the Tate Gallery. A real favourite of mine illustrates his wife selling The Daily Worker outside a factory in Stewarts Road in 1937. Free online tickets are available from the Society.
6. On 21^st November, the Planning Applications Committee is due to make its decision on the giant £200 million AELTC (Wimbledon) planning application, see above.
7. On 24^th November, is the Battersea Police Ball in Battersea Park – the grandest, most OTT event of the whole municipal year.
8. On 30^th November, I have the Finance Committee.
   

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Did you Know?

Last month, I asked, “Where in Battersea is there a private road?” and I got no replies at all, except one to tell me that I was wrong! So, either not an interesting question or perhaps an obscure one. I had thought that Stonell’s Road, off Chatham Road, was a private road, but one near neighbour disagrees and so I will check that out in the coming month!

And this month? 

British and American, born in Connecticut, died in London and buried in Battersea, a hero and villain in both countries, a traitor and a loyalist in both countries, a spy and a military commander in both, a father of eight – who was this man and where can you find him?

1. Penny and I were away in Croatia, from 24^th August until 16^th It was splendid, never more than 100 yards/metres from the Adriatic, in an apartment in the centre of a small fishing village, with five bar/restaurants and maybe 4/500 residents. We swam across this small bay, from these steps, and back every day – perhaps half a mile. We did some work, which was good, ate fish in the restaurants, and read Sara Paretsky’s crime thriller Hardball. If you like American crime writers, Chandler, Spillane, etc., and do not know Paretsky, and her female sleuth Vic Warshawski, then go down to Waterstone’s and get yourself a great read today.
   

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   Last month, I had a moan about the fact that the most polluting way to travel is by air and yet we subsidise it. The most ecologically sound way is by train and boat, and we pay cost-price (+ profit). We went green, which is of course time-consuming and expensive, but one does discover fun places on the way, like Train Bleu restaurant in the Gare de Lyon or Piazza Vittorio Veneto, Turin. But it also has its setbacks, like when at 6 am on 16^th September we arrived at the station in Milan to discover that all trains to Paris were cancelled because of a land slip in the Alps. The station was fast asleep; there weren’t even any taxis; the metro had not woken up; and we had a Eurostar to London to catch in the afternoon. Saturday was excitingly expensive– thanks to Swiss railways – but we did get to Paris in time to catch Eurostar and home.

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2. I had the Planning Applications Committee, on 19^th This was even more unremarkable than last month, when I queried whether the economy really was tanking? Well, I noted a comment in the business press that planning applications across the whole of London for developments on “brownfield” sites are 90% (Yes 90 and not 10%) down on last year. If that fall in activity continues into next year, there will be serious consequences for all.
   

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   On the bright side, isn’t it great to see Clapham Junction’s Arding & Hobbs building free of scaffolding and substantially restored after all these months? Personally, I think that the roof additions work well, and they are certainly worth it, if the financial return on their construction was what was required to restore the whole building. Now let’s hope that the developer has got occupants lined up for all the new business, restaurant and commercial space,

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3. On 21^st September, I went to Emmanuel School – the private school next to the Royal Patriotic Building, off Windmill Road – for a design review of a new extension that the school plans to build. Their plan is to enhance both the main science classrooms and the refectory. Both the classrooms and the dining hall demand quite a lot of backroom space – whether technical support or kitchen facilities.
   

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   The current facilities are ridiculously inadequate for a school with more than 1,000 pupils. Nevertheless, everything about the school displayed its wealth relative to Battersea’s state secondary schools, Chestnut Grove,, and the Harris Academy and even Bolingbroke Academy. Surely such a gap in our two-tier education system cannot be good for the long-term health of our society?

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4. Mind you, I am one to talk. On 23^rd I went to a garden party at my college Magdalen, Oxford (pronounced as maudlin). Can there be any more beautiful a place to spend three years as an undergraduate? The Tower, the cloisters, New Building (New as in the 1700s), Addison’s Walk, the River Cherwell – I did not appreciate them as much as a 20 year-old, as I do as an 80 year-old. I guess everyone regrets time wasted in their youth – but I’ll never regret the punting, that was a sublime pleasure.

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   On the 27^th September, I went for a tour of some of the new developments in Nine Elms and in particular along the Nine Elms Linear Park. The park threads its way through Nine Elms from Wandsworth Road, near Vauxhall station, to the new Battersea Park underground station. It is by no means complete but it is taking shape and looks lovely – especially so on a warm, sunny early autumn day – though I don’t think that my picture of the US Embassy does it justice.

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   I was told that the “charter,” created to govern the relationship between the Council and the private interests, who own and run the park, is a world first, and is of considerable international interest. Both it and the new Springfield Park being opened on Burntwood Lane are interesting examples of something new in Britain – public parks being provided out of developer profits and private service charges. It’s a post-austerity model, which has worked well in Wandsworth because of the profits coming from its massive development potential – but how does this model work in less affluent parts of the country?

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6. And then on 28^th September, I went to the RCA (Royal College of Arts) Building on Parkgate Road. I joined a class of international students, who for a term’s project were doing a study on the area between Battersea and Albert Bridge Roads, the River and Battersea Park Road. They asked me along as Wandsworth’s Planning Chair to inform them about the community and its needs. I do not know what value I took to their class, but I found it very interesting and enlightening to see the area through the eyes of 15, or so, 20 year-old, international art and design students. It remains to be seen what mutual advantage we (the students and me) might gain from the experience.
   

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7. On the last day of the month, 30^th September, Wandsworth’s Labour councillors had an ‘away-day’ at Battersea Arts Centre. It was a team building exercise, not specifically about any particular policy, but highlighting traffic and environmental issues – on the same day as a large anti-Ulez demonstration took place on Tooting Common. The demonstrators were clearly targeting Mayor, Sadiq Khan’s Furzedown home. In the same week as Prime Minister, Sunak hinted at stopping local authorities from implementing pro-ecological policies, we can all guess what Tory tactics are going to be for the coming year and the build-up to a General Election. I think, despite the Uxbridge by-election result, that the Tories have got it wrong. The public are genuinely concerned about the climate crisis.
   

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8. One of my colleagues, a Tooting Labour councillor, was attacked at her surgery in September. She has not been physically hurt to any substantial degree but clearly, the psychological damage has been considerable. Whilst the Council is considering the position all councillor surgeries have been suspended. Given the near-universal use of the phone and email, I would not be surprised that this may presage the end of councillor surgeries.
   

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My programme for October

1. I have the Finance Committee on the 5th October, a Council Meeting on 18th October and the Planning Applications Committee on the 23^rd
2. And on 14^th October, I have my first, competitive chess match of the season.
   

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Did you Know?

Last month I asked where in Wandsworth is there a statue of Edward VII? And who paid for it?

Quite a few of you knew that Edward’s statue can be found on the pavement outside Tooting Broadway underground station. And all so knew that it was funded by public subscription.

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And this month?

Where in Battersea is there a private road? If there is more than one then I’d be interested to hear where they are.

1. I am sure that many of you will know the beautiful swan sculpture, that stands next to Battersea Bridge, looking over the Thames. Very sadly, a constituent tells me that one of them was knocked from its pedestal and left smashed on the pavement after one presumably drunken occasion in the last month. What a depressing piece of mindless vandalism – We have few enough pleasant items of statuary but this one was both beautiful and magnificently appropriate for its sight.
   

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2. On the 12^th August, Penny and I joined her sisters, Alison and Rebecca, on a drive to a family party in Wantage, Oxfordshire. It was very pleasant but otherwise unremarkable except that one of Pen’s relatives was able to get a halfway decent shot of me smiling – not always a given when posing for a photograph!
   

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3. I had the Planning Applications Committee, on 22nd August and this too was unremarkable with just one very minor Battersea application. Is this just high summer or is the economy really tanking? I guess that August is never the busiest time for processing planning applications, but, with the mood across the country being so grim and the spirits so low, perhaps we are in for a recession to cap them all! PS If any of you are finding life particularly difficult then don’t forget the Council’s https://www.wandsworth.gov.uk/search?qt=Cost+of+Living+Hub website or your councillor, to discover what help is available.
   

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4. On 15^th August I had lunch with old college mates in town. When there I took the opportunity to wander around Trafalgar Square and pay a brief visit to the National Gallery. As always, I am surprised at the number of Canaletto paintings the Gallery displays. It really does demonstrate just how the affluent British, largely English, tourist came back from their Italian trips laden with Italian art. But the eighteenth century was also a spectacular time for British art, including Reynolds, Gainsborough, Constable and Turner. And also, Joseph Wright of Derby, whose paintings of scientific and industrial scenes are a superb record of the Industrial Revolution. I am showing here a detailed portrait from his most famous painting called, An Experiment with an air pump, in which an observer is seen captivated by the occasion.
   

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5. On the 16^th August I was delivering welcome letters to new constituents in Battersea Park ward. It is something I do every month, partly to keep fit, but also because I think new constituents get little enough welcome from the Town Hall. Personally, I think that the Council should send a welcoming letter to all new residents, listing the MP, councillors’ names and contact details, along with many other useful contact address details such as the CAB.
   

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6. On my tour, I stepped into the Library Space at the west end of what used to be Battersea Technology College, before becoming Kingsway College, Battersea Campus. It is the grand Victorian building on Battersea Park Road, opposite Tesco’s car park and used to be a real part of Battersea life with hundreds of students and evening classes. It is now home to some 220 people, living in rather grand and quirky apartments. This grand unknown Battersea jewel used to be the colleges’ library. I took the opportunity to step in and have a look around. It is exquisite and used as an activity space – but for what?
   

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7. And then off to Croatia on 24^th August for a welcome holiday – which is why this September newsletter is so early. Please note, however, that we are going by train and ferry. Isn’t it outrageous that the eco-way is so expensive (and inevitably slower) and that all countries, not just the UK, subsidise flying so massively? Tragically, as a species, we are subsidising our own mass destruction.

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My programme for September

1. I have the Planning Applications Committee on the 19^th September, but nothing has yet fixed for the rest of the month. I won’t know what to do!
2. Except that on 28^th September, my partner, Penny, is giving an illustrated talk to the Battersea Society on “The History of the Handshake” at Battersea Arts Centre, Lavender Hill. Time 6.30,

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Did you Know?

Last month I said, “Everyone, of course, knows about Battersea Power Station. But who knows or even remembers the other Battersea power station? Who built it, who ran it, what was it called? And why did it have an interesting role in political history?”

Interestingly these questions drew an almost completely blank response. The answer was the Lombard Road Power Station, which stood across Lombard Road and operated from 1901-1972. The coal came up the Thames to a wharf just downstream from the heliport, from where it was carried on a conveyor belt high across the road into the Power Station. Why was it significant in political history? Because it was built in the 1890s at the height of so-called municipal socialism, by Battersea Borough Council to help the Borough run the street lights and trams replacing gas-lights and the horse. I rather like this picture from the first decade of the twentieth century, where close observation shows an ad on the lamp post for electricity at 1d per therm (NB for younger readers 1d was the pre-decimalisation representation of 1P, although there were 12 to a shilling and 240 to the £1). Christchurch was destroyed in 1944 by a V1 bomb. The 1950s re-built Christchurch and Christchurch Gardens are now on the site between Candahar, Cabul and Battersea Park Roads.

And this month?

Where in Wandsworth Borough is there a statue of Edward VII? And who paid for it?

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Last month I said that I was mad to go to Rome for the first week of July – too right; it was hot at the beginning of my week, brutal by the end. The week marked the end of Penny’s four-year term as President of the International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. The evenings were convivial and fun, but the days were intolerably hot. But, I did manage to take in some of the sites of Rome – not least the extraordinary 2,000 year-old Pantheon, surely Europe’s oldest intact building. On 10th July I went to former Councillor Mike Williams’ funeral.  Mike was elected as a councillor for Southfields ward in May 1971, in the same year as Martin Linton (Battersea MP, 1997-2010), Penny and me. In 1974, Mike and I became two of the last Aldermen ever (the post was abolished in the 1970s, though aldermen still exist in the USA and as an honorary title in the UK) and then in ’78 he was elected for Roehampton ward, which he represented until 1990. He was a Labour stalwart – an aggressive and passionate debater; a loud and very funny heckler. He hated humbug, but, under the tough exterior, he had a big warm, soft-hearted personality. RIP Mike was a fine friend and a dedicated councillor. Two days later, 12th July, I visited Providence House for the launch of Robert Musgrave’s book One Year is Not Enough: fifty years a Battersea youth worker. Robert started at Providence House Youth Club at the same time as I became a councillor. The book is his and the youth club’s story, and says much about what the youth of Battersea owe him and how much they love him. Well done, Robert. I chaired the Planning Applications Committee on 18th July (as pictured). There were a few items of interest to Battersea, some of very local importance and one of major significance:- the largest was on the Halford’s site on the corner of Lombard Road. It consists of 3 large blocks – one of 24 storeys, and the other two of 15 and 7 storeys respectively. These will hold 294 residential units, of which 90 or 35% will be ‘affordable’, meaning the rent will be similar to housing association rents. There will be local retail shop units on the ground floor. I reckon that many/most people reading this newsletter will think that this building, as agreed, is far high. I am inclined to agree, but we are still hog-tied by some of the decisions made by the last Tory Council, which had already given similar consents. another minor application was for industrial plant on the top of the Arding & Hobbs building, which is pictured here, from Falcon Road. There have been some complaints about the roof extension on the old building. Personally, I think the Borough has done rather well to get this iconic building modernised and adapted for the twenty-first century. I look forward to all the scaffolding being finally removed. Finally, on a ward level I was pleased that the Committee put a halt on an extraordinarily inappropriate extension, being built in Maskelyne Close, Battersea Park ward. The enforcement order we issued should mean that the extension will be removed soon – to the delight of many neighbours. On the 20th July, Labour won a record-breaking by-election in Selby and Ainsty, and the Libs won another massive victory in Somerton and Frome. Yet the main talking point was Labour’s near miss in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, a seat which even Tony Blair in his pomp failed to win. The Tories are back-pedalling on whatever ‘green’ policies they may have had and, worryingly, there seems to be a danger that Labour might do so as well. With half the Mediterranean on fire, and the Canadian – the Canadian! – forests ablaze, with people across the country changing their holiday plans, and people across the world being burnt out of their homes, their livelihoods and indeed their lives, can there be any serious doubt that we face an existential crisis? The picture is of a lady, who has tragically lost her home in this Greek inferno. Do you know about the Wimbledon Foundation’s Community Fund? This Fund is a contribution to the Borough from the Wimbledon Tennis Championships, which awards up to £10,000 for one-year projects to eligible organisations and community groups in Wandsworth. In the Fund’s own words, ‘this fund is one of the cornerstones in the Foundation’s support of charities and community groups across the borough …, and in the last round 16 Wandsworth-based organisations received funding of a total of £140,000’. If you are in the fund-raising business and want to know more, then please do get in touch with me and I’ll put you in touch. My programme for August Fantastically, I have nothing except purely delightful social engagements in August until 22nd August, when I have the Planning Applications Committee. And then off to Croatia on 24th August for a welcome holiday. Please note, however, that we are going by train and ferry. Isn’t it outrageous that the eco-way is so expensive and that all countries, not just the UK, subsidise flying so massively? Unbelievably, as a species, we are subsidising our own mass destruction. Did you Know? Last month I asked, about a plaque to a single event that occurred in Battersea in the nineteenth century, and which is of international significance in the history of sport. Do you know what the event was, and where it took place?” I was interested to see that far more people knew the answer to this one than knew much about Battersea’s role in the anti-slavery movement! It was, of course, the plaque to the first (1864) match of association football, played under the 13 rules compiled by the newly formed FA. And this month? Everyone, of course, knows about Battersea Power Station. But who knows or even remembers the other Battersea power station? Who built it, who ran it, what was it called? And why did it have an interesting role in political history?

1. Did you have a great June? My June was fairly quiet, but, as the years pass, I must confess that the humidity gets to me a bit. What’s more, mad as I am, I am off to Rome for the first week of July: Why Rome in July? Because it’s the closing conference of Penny’s four-year term as President of the International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.
   

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2. On 4th June we went to visit an old friend, Sara, for lunch – and what a great lunch it was. After a cool and damp May, it was the first very sunny day of summer. Before lunch we went for a cruise along the Thames, and afterwards, we socialised the afternoon away. Sara has a bungalow on the Thames at Shiplake-on-Thames just upstream of Henley – magical, though prone to winter flooding!
   

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3. Two days later, 6^th June, I paid a visit to the Randall Close development, being built on the Surrey Lane estate. Progress on this site appears to be excellent and certainly, the site manager has worked well to keep all local residents happy. As you can see from this picture, taken from Wolsey Court, the site looks clean and well-run.
   

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4. From 6^th-10^th June, East Shallowford Farm paid its annual visit to Falcon Road. Youth trips to, and working holidays on, the Devonshire farm for Battersea kids have been regular items on the Providence House programme for many years. The farm also visits Falcon Road on an annual basis. This year the visit was also combined with a reception on 8^th June, which was a celebration of this urban/rural inter-change.
   

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5. The 9^th June started with a Design Review Panel of the Ashburton Estate, near the Green Man pub, on the corner of Putney Heath and Putney Hill. The estate was one of the most successful post-war council developments. And now, Wandsworth’s Labour Council wants to add some 50-odd new council flats to the estate. The panel largely approved the design but made some positive recommendations for a few small changes.
   

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6. On the way back from the Ashburton Estate, I looked in at the unveiling of another plaque in Lavender Sweep. On this occasion, Deputy Mayor, Councillor Sana Jafri was joined by Councillors Leonie Cooper (holding the megaphone) and Rex Osborn (deep in thought about his speech to come?) to unveil a plaque to the Diederichs Duval family – on a house in Lavender Sweep, where the family lived. The whole family had been pioneers in the suffragette movement in the first couple of decades of the twentieth century – most notably the indomitable mother Emily and daughter Elsie, who were both imprisoned and force-fed on several occasions. Coincidentally, the Council’s recently completed tower block on Grant Road has also been named Duval House.
   

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7. On the evening of 11^th June, we went to the Bread and Roses pub in Clapham for a delightful evening with Junction Jazz. The band, which plays occasionally on the Clapham Common bandstand, was doing this gig as a Battersea Labour Party fund-raiser. They have become regulars in our diary, enliving us with skilfull and enthusiastic renderings of jazz classics. In the picture, Nikki, the septet’s promoter is centre left in the pink dress.
   

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8. A week later, on 17^th Jun, we went to see ‘The Return of Benjamin Lay’ at the Finborough Theatre, Brompton Road. Four feet tall Mark Povinelli, coincidentally President of the Little People of America, was simply magnificent and moving in this one-man, one-act play as Benjamin Lay in eighteenth-century Pennsylvania. Lay was clearly a very, annoying, radical Quaker, thrown out of several Quaker meetings – largely for expressing his horror and rejection of the whole apparatus of slavery. Born in Essex, he and his wife travelled to the American colonies some 40 years before the Revolutionary War, proving that abolitionism did not start with Wilberforce. In my opinion, Povinelli’s performance was quite stunning. After the show we had a drink with Mark, and the play’s co-author Marcus Rediker. The other co-author was Naomi Wallace, who was not in London that day. By the time that you read this, the play’s short run will have ended but if it appears elsewhere, do NOT miss it.
   

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9. The 20^th June started for me with one of our quarterly meetings of the North-East Surrey Crematorium Board, one of the least exciting meetings of the year – but someone has to do it! You will be pleased to know that business has settled back to normal after a couple of years of peak-Covid – and that we have ‘cleaned up our act’ with the installation of a couple of catalytic-like converters on the cremators. I warned you about the excitements!
   

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10. Ironically that morning, so I later heard, ex-councillor (1971-90) Mike Williams I mention Mike’s death here because some of my readers will have known Mike and might not otherwise have heard. Mike was distinctly old school Labour; he was implacable in his opposition to the hard-line Thatcherite, Tory-controlled Wandsworth Council of the 1980s. He had a commanding presence, a ready-wit – and was one of the best of hecklers. He liked his sport, both soccer and golf, but first and foremost, cricket. He lay in bed the day before he died watching the first Test – and probably one of his greatest regrets will be missing the rest of this dramatic Ashes series.
    

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11. I chaired the Planning Applications Committee that same evening. It felt as though I chaired the meeting rather poorly, but on reflection it was OK, and all the applications were processed properly and, I believe, correctly. Some of the applications were really interesting:-

• the most contentious was for an industrial site in Lydden Road, just off Garrett Lane. Local residents were understandably not best pleased, and I am sure that the development will be annoying and disturbing during the forthcoming building works, but I firmly believe that the new industrial buildings will present a better long-term environment for them than does the current chaotic jumble of industrial detritus.
• the most eagerly anticipated application was for a residential development on the corner of Earlsfield and Algarve Roads – anticipated because, as you may have noticed, the site has been successively a ruin, an empty site and boarded-up for at least thirty years. Hopefully after many false starts the development as pictured will proceed relatively soon.
• The most ‘political’ was the change to the Randall Close site (see para 3 above) from a mixed tenure development to 100% council housing, in line with Labour thinking that we should help those facing the worst of the housing crisis, who are the least affluent members of our community.
  

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12. Off to the House of Commons on Wednesday, 21^st June, for MP, Marsha de Cordova’s, annual reception for new members of the Battersea Labour Party.
    

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13. On 24^th June we saw ‘Dear England’, James Graham’s play about England football Manager, Gareth Southgate. It was about Southgate’s emotional growth after missing a penalty kick in a critical game in 1996; and, more importantly, how he taught a lesson about team unity and collective responsibility, first to the English team and subsequently, maybe, to the British public. It is most simply expressed in the phrase, “We win as a team, and (if we lose then) we lose as a team” – an expression of community and not of individuality. The play owes a great deal to musical theatre; it is visually stunning and expressive; but more than that, it demonstrates playwright’s, James Graham’s, ability to address cultural and political issues through popular and appealing stories – good stuff.
    

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My programme for July

1. At the end of June, I am off to Rome, to join Penny in her last week as President of the International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.
2. I will be missing the 6^th July Finance Committee, which is unfortunate as the Council will be making some important decisions; but I have been part of the background work on those decisions, of which more next month.
3. On the 13^th July I have an interesting campaigning meeting on the Ethelburga Estate, when residents will be launching a campaign to get photo-voltaic cells installed on their very large flat roof area. On the same evening, I also have a meeting of the Labour councillors and the Battersea Society’s Annual Summer Party at St. Mary’s Church on the river-front.
4. On the 18^th July I have the Planning Applications Committee.
5. And on the 19^th Wandsworth’s full Council Meeting takes place.
   

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Did you Know?

Last month I asked, ‘As well as naming one block after William Wilberforce, the old Battersea Council named six blocks on another nearby estate after supporters or sympathisers of the Abolition Movement. Can you name all six, or even three of them?’

No one could name all six and some of you argued with my definition say, for example, of William Pitt Jr. or Charles Fox being sympathisers of the movement – but note that this is not my definition but in the opinion of the members of an LCC committee in 1946. The others were Thomas Clarkson, effectively Wilberforce’s PA and pictured here; Edmund Burke; Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, who took over the leadership of the abolition movement after Wilberforce’s retirement; and James Ramsay or Ramsey, a very well-known abolitionist.

At least two other blocks in the immediate area of Hope Street, Milner House and Chalmers House, bear the names of yet more abolitionists – indeed perhaps even the name Hope Street is connected to the Movement.

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And this month? 

Talking of plaques, and the subject matter of one of the plays I saw in June, there is in Battersea a plaque to a single event that occurred in Battersea in the nineteenth century, which is of international significance in the history of sport. Do you know what the event was, where it took place and where the plaque is located?

1. It’s just one year since Labour won control of Wandsworth Council, for the first time since 1974. One friendly, but jaundiced, critic has said to me “And so what? I don’t see any real change.” Well, if the expectation was that we were all going to wake up on 6^th May last, to a completely new dawn, in a new world, when it only rained at night, and the sun shone serenely on an untroubled world, then Russia’s war (then only 10 weeks old) on Ukraine and the consequent inflation put paid to that.
   

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2. So, what have we achieved? A fair amount. There could have been more, no doubt, but it seemed a busy year to us at the coalface. I list a few of my favourites:-

• We froze our element of Council Tax, that is the element of Council Tax that we control and is not set by the Greater London Authority, or in effect by the Government, or by the Wimbledon Common Conservators. But more importantly we removed over 10,000 of the poorest householders in the Borough completely from the burden of Council Tax AND we reduced CTax by £150 for another 5,000.
• We established a £5 million emergency fund to tackle the worst of the cost-of-living crisis. This is the biggest such fund in the country (the same size as that of the 4 times larger City of Birmingham) and much of it has been spent (about £3.0 million at the last count) on supporting the Citizen’s Advice Bureau, and numerous voluntary agencies, including foodbanks, community groups and the South-West London law centre.
• We spent £250,000 raising the wage level of all our contracted workers, so that all now earn at least the London Living Wage.
• We had a manifesto commitment to provide 1,000 new council homes during our four-year term. Currently, we are building, or have planning consent for, or have in the pipeline over 500 of those new homes, of which 106 are currently going up in the Surrey Lane estate, with a similar number on the Patmore and along Garratt Lane.
• We are installing bike sheds as quickly as the manufacturers can supply them – and, much to our gratification, we just cannot keep up with the demand for more. (I know cycling and cyclists are not universally popular, but the climate crisis demands that more and more of us must switch to sustainable transport and we should thank cyclists for easing the pressure on public transport and for not using a car instead for their commutes.)
• We have introduced regular mega-skips. They are successful in that they get filled very quickly. And in addition, fly-tipping in Wandsworth is 15% down on last year. We are soon to start our first, belated, food waste disposal pilot.
• We have started a public debate, with a people’s assembly, on the problem of air pollution. The report on this debate will be out later this year. (We’ve also received an international A-rating for our work on climate action, though I must confess I don’t quite know what that means).
• This year Springfield Park will open to the public; just off Burntwood Lane, this will be the largest new park in the Borough (I think) since the creation of Battersea Park in the mid-nineteenth century.
• You might claim that the Park is a result of Tory groundwork prior to May 2022 – and fair enough. But if you do that, then please don’t blame us for the extensive works on Wandsworth Bridge and Tooting Lido, which will mean that both bridge and swimming pool will be closed for some months – since their states of disrepair were due to Tory negligence for the previous 50 years!
• We have provided free breakfasts and provided help to buy school uniforms for many who are eligible for free school meals.
• As chair of the Planning Applications Committee (PAC), my own part in all this is limited in scope, as PAC is a re-active committee; we depend upon people and organisations applying to us for permission to develop. But we are the busiest Committee with 11 meetings in the last year, in which we considered 92 applications, approving 77 with 10 refusals and 5 yet to be resolved. We also deal with failures to comply with the rules and have taken 14 enforcement actions against ‘bad’ developments – one of the highest rates of enforcement in the country.
• In addition, I try to make the very technical business of planning applications as accessible as possible. We conduct our business on-line and have been watched by approximately 2,200 viewers, or about 200 for each meeting (one of the 11 meetings was not broadcast because of technical problems). I have also devolved the chairmanship of Wandsworth’s Conservation Committee from me to one of the amenity societies – actually, the Battersea Society.

As you can see, many of these actions are both very simple and very basic and aimed to help the hard-to-reach – not headline but lifeline stuff.

3. Sunday, the 7^th May was not bad, weather-wise, for our street’s Coronation party. It featured good vibes and friendly chats plus a splendid dog race. Here are two of the contestants cornering at speed. I think that they capture something of the chaotic, innocent pleasure of the occasion. The spectators laughed a lot and all the dogs had a really good great time.

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4. On the 10^th May I had a club dinner in town of ex-GLC employees – very enjoyable but hardly of great public interest. On the 12^th May, I went to the Shrubbery, in Lavender Gardens, for the unveiling of a blue plaque, marking the residence in Battersea of Marie Spartali Stillman (1844-1927), a nineteenth-century model and Pre-Raphaelite painter of considerable distinction. The plaque is on the west wall of the grand house, facing onto Lavender Gardens but this picture is of the ‘opening day’ celebration, taken from the balcony, looking down into the hall.

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5. I assisted with Marsha de Cordova’s Saturday surgery at the new Battersea Chapel on 13^th I must say in praise of Marsha’s team, that it is much better organised than in her earlier days as the MP. Every councillor, and/or adviser, had a supporter taking notes. There was a clear plan for following up cases – well done Marsha; it was the best surgery of this kind that I have seen over many years.

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6. That afternoon (13/5/23), I dashed off to play chess for Surrey against Middlesex at our home ‘ground’ – a nice church hall in Cheam. I won with, believe it or not, a refined version of the old staple Fool’s Mate. Unfortunately, both of us were later disqualified – me because my phone pinged during the game, which meant (for the Rules’ Committee) that I could have been cheating – I wasn’t but I learnt a lesson about switching off the mobile! He was also disqualified for a technical but irrelevant (to the result) technicality! Surrey, however, won.

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7. Later in the month the chess team played Middlesex (20/5/23) at Wembley. We were hammered. When I left to go home, we were on the way to a whitewash (12-0 as I recall), which over 16 boards is some kind of an achievement. I regret that I just do not have the time, to play a game as wonderfully complex and demanding as chess at the level that I used to play.

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8. On 23^rd May I chaired the May meeting of the Planning Applications Committee. The committee featured an application for a 16-storey building, delivering high-quality office and affordable workspace, in Havelock Terrace, opposite Battersea Park Railway station; and also additional residential units in the Springfield Hospital grounds; and a further group of council homes in the Atheldene development, off Garratt Lane. The Havelock Terrace development involves demolition of ‘old’ industrial units – a nostalgic moment for me as I can recall opening the then-new industrial building in 1977-78 (see photo). I can date it fairly accurately as the Mayor on the left was Bill Ballantine, a Labour councillor for Earlsfield and his mayoral year ran from May 1977 – 1978, and the coat that Bob Cryer, a junior Industry Minister in the Callaghan Government, is wearing suggests that the date was either autumn ’77 or spring ’78. It was also a building, where I cut the first sod, and formally announced its construction, and I am now agreeing its demolition – a first complete building life-cycle I have seen all through!

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9. The following day, I am afraid that I missed fellow councillor, Juliana Annan’s, inauguration as Mayor of Wandsworth, because I was off to Geneva on the morning train from St. Pancras to Paris and then on to Geneva. The train from Paris to Geneva leaves from Gare Lyon, where one of the delights of the journey is eating at the station café, called Le Train Bleu. It’s a bit pricey but not extravagantly so. It is hidden away upstairs – they are not desperate for custom, they don’t have to be. It does have character.

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10. Geneva? Because Penny had business there. The city is beautifully positioned, with the lake dissecting it, and with the Jura Mountains as a back-cloth in the north-west and the Alps, and particularly Mont Blanc in the south. It is everything that one might expect from Switzerland; it is pretty, scrupulously clean, quiet for a large, but not very large city, efficient – everything works smoothly and quietly, expensive, but bus, and boat, travel in town is free – if you can get a pass from your hotel; and surprise, surprise everywhere one can hear hundreds of sparrows cheeping. One even stood on my knee, being fed an ice cream cone. Geneva was also, of course, the home of the League of Nations, where we came across

• • demonstrators protesting against Iran’s Islamic Republic and
  • the broken chair statue, designed as a protest against land mines and cluster bombs to international diplomats,
  • but for us more of a symbol of the failed League, which did not get the support that it needed.
    

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11. And apologies to several of you, including Hazel, who sent their best wishes about what I, last month, called yet another ‘special medical operation’. I was mocking Putin, and not being serious – it was real but very, very minor medical process and took a nurse about 2 minutes! But thanks to all for the best wishes.
    

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My programme for June

1. My Surgery at Battersea Park Library on 3^rd
2. A reception at Providence House on 8^th
3. The Junction Jazz, a Battersea Labour Party fund-raiser on 11^th
4. On the 12^th June I will be at a Design Review Panel about a Tooting development.
5. On the 20^th June I have the Planning Applications Committee.
6. And although not strictly my programme, for anyone keen to know what’s on in Battersea then can I recommend the Battersea Insider from the Battersea Society.

Did you Know?

Last month I asked, ‘Which social reformer lived in Battersea; has a block on a Council estate in Battersea named after him; and made a great speech against the slave trade in the House of Commons, ending with the ringing words: ‘You may say that you didn’t know. Well, you know now!’’

I was surprised to get so few replies to what I thought was an easy question. It was, of course, William Wilberforce (1759-1833). The former Battersea Council named a now rather anonymous block of flats on York Road, after him; and a plaque to mark the site of his Battersea (not Clapham) house can be seen on the side of 11 Broomwood Road.

And this month?

As well as naming one block after the leader of the British abolitionist movement, the old Battersea Council named six blocks on another nearby estate all after supporters or sympathisers of the Abolition Movement. Can you name all six, or even three of them?