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Vic Keegan’s Lost London 87: The Royal United Services Museum

Horse skeletons, ration bread and telescope's for one-armed warriors - all were gathered there
Victor Keegan

This is a tale of a lost museum. In its day it was regarded as the biggest and most important in the country, apart from the British Museum. It was started by the Duke of Wellington in 1831 and housed 9,000 artefacts, including Napoleon’s horse (well, its skeleton) and a telescope designed for the one-armed Lord Raglan during the Crimean War.

I first learned of the Royal United Services Museum in H V Morton’s wonderful book In Search of London, published in 1951. Morton described it as “the most surprisingly housed museum in the world”. I couldn’t  wait to visit and wondered how I could have missed it during my frequent walks along Whitehall. 

There are two reasons for that. One is that the entrance is marked merely by a slightly confusing set of initials – RUSI, a modest label for the Royal United Service Institute, the oldest think tank for defence in the world. The second reason is that the contents of the museum, which was housed from 1895 in Inigo Jones’s magnificent Banqueting House, complete with the Rubens painting on the ceiling next door (see picture), were dispersed in 1962 to other museums and galleries. The RUSI building is, however, still attached to the Banqueting House as a kind of Siamese twin with connecting doors. 

RUSI remains home to some of the busts snd paintings from the museum and also boasts a Grade I listed window on a shared wall with the Banqueting House, on which can still be seen blackened scars caused by the fire of 1698, which destroyed Henry Vlll’s Whitehall Palace.

The rest of the contents were dispersed to the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Army Museum, among others. When it was at the Banqueting House, the museum was a history of war told in objects ranging from a bottle of port and bits of masts rescued from Nelson’s flagship Victory to the skeleton of that horse – whose name was Marengo, after Napoleon’s victory at the battle of that name. Marengo’s frame is now restored and can be viewed in the Battle Gallery of the Army Museum in Royal Hospital Road. 

The original Royal United Services Museum catalogue is available online. The thousands of artefacts also including a scale model of the Whitehall Palace, a German crossbow, the Duke of Wellington’s umbrella and remnants of battles from Crecy to Alamein. There was, apparently, even a piece of ration bread issued to British troops on the day of the Battle of Waterloo. 

The origin of the museum can be traced back to 1829, when an article in Colbourn’s United Service Journal written by “an old Egyptian campaigner” suggested a society which would “apply the new lessons of science to the military art”. The RUSI would doubtless argue that that is part of what it is still doing today.

Read instalments one to 86 of Vic Keegan’s Lost London here.

Categories: Culture, Lost London
Tags: Whitehall

London Marathon 2019 sponsorship appeal

I will be running in aid of Hospice UK and in memory of a remarkable Irish woman who personified the London of openness and opportunity
Dave Hill

In the early 1950s, a young woman and a young man arrived separately in bomb-scarred post-war London, hailing from different rural parts of Ireland. They met in the Museum Tavern at the junction of Museum Street and Great Russell Street, where the young woman worked as a barmaid. The young man was a patron of the pub. The pair eventually married in London and had eleven children here. One died in babyhood but the other ten grew up in busy South London houses. One of them ended up being my wife.

My in-laws, both now deceased, were remarkable people and their lives in London demonstrated the city’s remarkable openness to migrants seeking work and better lives for themselves and their children – an openness that still manages to outweigh the forces of prejudice and suspicion. When I first met them, Pat ran a minicab firm and Moira worked as a waitress. She and some of her sisters, who had also settled in the British capital, told many stories of re-filling the glasses of the rich and famous, including a Prime Minister or two.

Pat was the first to leave us. He died in Ireland, to where he and Moira returned after retiring. But Moria continued to spend a lot of time in London, and often stayed with my wife and I and our children at our home in Clapton. She liked to get out and about in the city, and – rather like me, an internal migrant – never ceased to be amazed by London’s bustle and diversity.

When she became ill, she stayed with us more often, and when it became clear that she hadn’t long left, she moved in to St Joseph’s Hospice in Mare St, E8. I had passed St Joseph’s dozens of times on the bus, and now it became a temporary home-from-home for Moira, my wife, her London-based siblings and some of Moira’s many grandchildren. Moira was cared for beautifully there and her experience taught me a great deal about the work of hospices and the hospice movement more widely.

That is why I am so pleased and proud to have been asked by the charity Hospice UK, which is the national voice of hospice care across the country, to be a member of its 2019 London Marathon team. I’ve been training hard and am now looking forward, a little nervously, to pounding out the 26.2 miles. I have been asked to raise £2,000 in donations. I haven’t done too badly so far, but I still have a little way to go. If you can help me hit the target, ideally by race day, 28 April, I would be extremely grateful.

Hospice UK is fine organisation that helps ensure all kinds of people, young and old, receive the love, kindness and comfort that Moria was given in her last days. Like millions of other incomers before and since, Moira and her husband contributed to the great things about London. I will be taking part in one of London’s great events in memory of Moira. Please give what you can to help me on my way. Thank you.

Categories: Culture
Tags: Great Russell Street, Hospice UK, London Marathon, Museum Street, Museum Tavern, St Joseph's Hospice

Charles Wright: Lord’s cricket ground continues to provide a great London sporting day out

The game is struggling in its traditional form, but the "home of cricket" still weaves its magic spell
Charles Wright

The Lord’s test match is a highlight of London’s summer – 28,000 people crowding into the St John’s Wood ground for top-level sport at the “the home of cricket”. This year sees the much-anticipated Ashes clash between England and Australia on August 14 – a fixture worth an estimated £9 million to the local Westminster economy alone – as well as five Cricket World Cup games, including the final in July.

It can feel as much a social as a sporting event, with corporate guests doing as much drinking as cricket-watching, Mick Jagger and John Major often spotted in the pavilion, and a sometimes uncomfortable divide between the “members” in the famous scarlet and gold MCC ties (18,000 of them, and a 29 year waiting list) and the rest of us lucky winners in the ticket ballot.

For cricket lovers though, a Lord’s test match retains a definite magic. Since my first visit in 1976, hitchhiking down the A1, paying on the gate and sitting on the grass to see the West Indies under Clive Lloyd, they have always had that sense of occasion, of anticipation, almost of privilege and, I suppose, feeling part of a living tradition.

All rather different for the first County Championship game of the season at Lords on a cold Thursday last week, a division two meeting between Middlesex and Lancashire. I was one of perhaps 2,000 or so dedicated spectators, in coats, scarves and hats; pretty much men of a certain age, and fewer young people than I’d expected in the Easter holidays.

With more than half the ground closed off, we huddled in the lower tier of the grandstand. The unroofed upper level of the Compton stand began to fill towards lunchtime as the sun grew stronger, and the pavilion, open to Middlesex members for county games, but its strict dress code still in force – “Gentlemen shall wear lounge suits or tailored jacket and trousers, shirt, tie or cravat…Ladies shall wear dresses; or skirts or trousers…or culottes, with blouses or smart tops…”

But even in early season, with the players themselves wrapped up in sweaters, hands in pockets between balls, the ritual of red ball cricket weaves its spell – a succession of slow-building moments of intensity, the intricacies of bowling change and field-placing, white on green.  

There was plenty of talent on show: Lancashire’s Jimmy Anderson, second best bowler in the world at the age of 36, test opener Keaton Jennings, Australian star Glenn Maxwell, England hopeful Haseeb Hameed, fresh from 200 not out in a pre-season friendly; and Middlesex ranks including England one-day captain Eoin Morgan and internationals Dawid Malan, Steven Finn and Toby Rowland-Jones.

It was a knowledgeable crowd too, including youngsters autograph-hunting by the boundary. And there was plenty to interest fans – an Anderson seam bowling masterclass and a Middlesex batting collapse in what was an early challenge for two venerable counties both seeking promotion to Division One, the league which Middlesex topped just two seasons ago.

The 18 first-class counties face a constant struggle to survive however, highlighted in a recent Sheffield Hallam University report, with low attendance at four-day games and significance reliance on grants from cricket’s governing body, the ECB. The advent of the new Hundred quick-fire competition next year, with eight city rather than county-based men’s and women’s team “franchises” taking part, raises new concerns about the future of the county championship, which is still the “bedrock of the cricket calendar”, according to the ECB, and the nursery for test cricket.

The new 100 ball a side challenge will provide all counties with funds over its first four years, but it’s a long way from the traditional game – cricket for people who don’t like cricket, as some commentators have said.

Meanwhile Lord’s continues to develop, with custodians the MCC planning two new stands replacing the tired and draughty Compton and Edrich stands in 2020, increasing capacity by 2,500 for major games.

But at £20 for five hours of cricket at one of the premier sporting venues in the world, a Middlesex county championship home game remains a great day out for London red-ball fans. See it while you can. Fixture list here, and there’s always the fascinating MCC museum if rain stops play.

Categories: Culture
Tags: John Major, Lords cricket ground, St John's Wood, Westminster

Florence Eshalomi: the Mayor is doing his best to reduce violent crime in London but he can’t do it alone

National government continues to be in denial about the consequences of austerity
Florence Eshalomi

The rise in violent crime is nothing short of a national emergency. The impact it has on families and communities across the country is devastating. But the rise in violence is nothing new, and the warning signs have been with us for a number of years. Knife crime alone has risen by 46 per cent in London since 2013/14, and by almost 60 per cent in England and Wales as a whole.

While such a dramatic rise calls for decisive action, too many of those with the capacity to act have been at turns invisible, in denial and unable to agree on a co-ordinated approach. Former Mayor of London Boris Johnson dismissed rising knife crime as “peaks and troughs”, while in 2015, then-Home Secretary Theresa May accused police officers of “crying wolf” over the impact of cuts.

Of course, the police were quite right to sound the alarm. Across the board, austerity has contributed to a breakdown in the support structures and services that keep young people engaged, in education and away from violence and crime. Deputy Metropolitan Police commissioner Steve House has spoken of the cuts to “mental health, youth outreach workers, social services, diversion schemes…a drawing back of all these services [that has] impacted on the situation we are seeing today”.

Set against all this, the Met itself has been subject to huge cuts in funding too, hampering its capacity to deal with the consequences of austerity elsewhere. With the service forced to make £850 million of savings so far and the government cutting well over a third of their core grant in real terms since 2010/11, the thin blue line on which we all rely for our safety is looking thinner than ever before.

The announcement this week that the Met are due to receive a one-off £17 million grant from the Home Office to help tackle knife crime is, of course, welcome, but this is a drop in the ocean in comparison with the austerity cuts our police have faced – and continue to face – with the savings imposed on course to top £1 billion by 2022.

With offending rates going up, it’s critical that we do all we can to support rehabilitation and minimise the prospect of first-time offenders returning to crime. Probation and youth offending teams have a vital role to play in helping young people who have committed an offence from getting sucked into a life of criminality. But once again, the government has been found wanting, not least as a consequence of their disastrous privatisation of the probation service for medium and low risk offenders.

As ever, early intervention remains one of the most effective methods of preventing young people from engaging in criminality. We already know that there is a striking correlation between school exclusions and crime, with nine of out ten young people in custody in England and Wales having been excluded from school at some point. Despite this, we have seen a 40 per cent rise in school exclusions in London between 2013/14 and 2016/17, and with so many young people now educated in free schools or academies, there can often be little democratic oversight of the use of this sanction and its sometimes counterproductive repercussions.

In the face of inaction and austerity from central government, City Hall has been doing good work to mitigate its worst effects. Sadiq Khan’s mayoralty has seen a shift in both tone and substance on police funding and prevention. The Greater London Authority is protecting frontline police numbers, with an additional investment of £234 million in the Met in the coming year. We’ve also seen the launch of the first ever dedicated anti-knife crime strategy and the launch of the new Violent Crime Taskforce, with 272 officers  working to take weapons off the streets and focus on the capital’s most dangerous criminals.

On prevention, the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) is now in the process of setting up the new Violence Reduction Unit, which will take a public health approach to tackling violent crime, while a £45 million Young Londoners Fund aims to divert the most vulnerable young people in our city away from a life of crime, plugging the gaps left by nine years of austerity. MOPAC is also working with the Ministry of Justice to design a probation service that truly works for London. We want powers to shape it over the long term devolved to City Hall too.

Knife crime is a complex issue that will require politicians, the public sector and the whole community to come together to tackle the multiple root causes of violence. The Mayor is doing all he can, but he cannot stand alone. A public health approach to knife crime is the way we can address the full range of explanations for the rise in violence: poverty, the loss of police officers, county lines, the closure of youth clubs, school exclusions and probation services.

I know what it is like for people to make judgements and stereotypes about you, based on where you live and come from. I work with and mentor young people who are striving for a positive future, despite the many obstacles they face. We need to look at how we can use the full range of tools available to us to create meaningful opportunities for them.

I will continue to call on the Mayor to argue for the resources needed from government in order to properly tackle the rise in knife crime across the capital, and I will continue to work with local community groups who have the shared experiences and real understanding of how to best engage with the minority of young people caught up in violent crime.

The government remains in denial about this problem and is refusing to acknowledge that its policies have contributed to this public health crisis. It is now time for it to accept that austerity is a major factor and give our public services the resources they need if we are to save Londoners’ lives.

Florence Eshalomi is London Assembly Member for Lambeth & Southwark and a member of the Assembly’s police and crime committee.

Categories: Comment
Tags: Boris Johnson, crime, knife crime, London Mayor, Ministry of Justice, Mopac, policing, Theresa May, violence reduction unit

Q&A – London Change UK activist Marx de Morais on the newly-created party and its ambitions in the capital

An early supporter of the parliamentary Independent Group, a Camden former Tory is now helping organise supporters of the new political party across the capital
Dave Hill

Marx de Morais has stood three times as a candidate for Camden Council, twice as a Conservative and then as an Independent, backed by the pro-European umbrella group “The Movement”, a student political education project he co-founded at the University of Westminster. He stood down as a Tory candidate before last year’s borough elections, dismayed by the local party’s approach to Brexit in the campaign. He is now an energetic supporter of Change UK, which has just secured approval as a political party. We conducted this Q&A by email. 

Question: What is your role in the London TIG/Change UK project?

Answer: Home is where the heart is, and for me that is Camden, the amazing borough which has been my home for the past eight years. I’m currently building on my past local campaigns to increase and coordinate the Change UK supporter and activist base in Camden, and I am also active in bringing them together across London. I organised our first event for activists and supporters last Monday, with Gavin Shuker MP in attendance. We really do want to do things differently, with a more inclusive approach, where everyone is heard, not just those who have the loudest voices. I am someone “with an abundance of hope for the future” (Ham & High) and my role is to radiate that across Camden and London as a whole for Change UK.

Q: Can you tell me roughly how many people have been involved in supporting the Independent Group and the Change UK project in your area and across London as whole, and anything about them, such as their age profile and any previous political party affiliations?

A: Change UK will represent a diversity of opinions that reflect the complexity of our society. It’s not just about Brexit, although that is the catalyst which has brought us together. Our supporters still share the British tradition, envied throughout the world – to “agree to disagree”. Last Monday we held our first London meeting and it was amazing to bring so many different people together and see that we have not forgotten to talk to each other – and to enjoy and great British tradition of scones with cream and jam.

Reasons given by Londoners for supporting TIG include:

“This is about all our futures. There are underlying problems which need addressing in society. It’s time for a new start, a new beginning – that’s best achieved with a new party.” – Jonathan Livingstone.

“I was a card-carrying member of New Labour, and more recently, until Anna Soubry’s defection, was an approved candidate on the Conservative list of parliamentary candidates for the next general election.” – Kate Denham.

“I’ve come on a political journey that started as an intern in parliament for a Tory MP, then switching to support the Lib Dems post-referendum. But they have done a poor job of fighting Brexit and representing the centre ground.” – James Diggle.

In summary we have a mixture of political camps and others who previously had no political home. It is too early to make any statement on membership numbers, but we have hundreds of thousands of supporters across social media and a number of registered supporters equivalent to the population of a middle-sized city. It really is incredible – and indeed truly unprecedented – to have seen the social media groups grow in advance of the party being given its formal approvals by the Electoral Commission. In London, we have a core of several hundred activists who are spending time building local structures. Change UK can therefore immediately be present in many local areas, including Camden.

Q: It has been reported that plenty have people have put their names forward as possible Change UK candidates in May’s European elections, assuming the UK has not left the EU by then. What is the situation in London?

A: Change UK has received hundreds of emails from people across the UK who would like to register as European parliamentary candidates, and this interest and excitement has been mirrored in London. Londoners who have expressed this great interest in representing our country as Change UK MEPs are as diverse as those who have applied from other parts of the UK; they are from both sides of the left-right political divide, representing a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds, ages and careers. It is particularly refreshing to see also the involvement from people who have no previous active political involvement. It is possible to apply as a candidate until 10 a.m. on Monday 15 April and I would strongly encourage anyone who like me is tired of what our politics has become to join us at Change UK. We want to give the voting public the choice of the best possible 73 candidates to ensure we are properly represented in Brussels.

Q: Do you anticipate there being Change UK candidates for London Mayor and for London Assembly seats next year? If so, what stage have you reached with finding such candidates?

A: We need to change our broken politics at all levels, and I believe Change UK fully intend giving Londoners a fresh choice to ensure that we can all share the prosperity of our great city. Our public services are stretched as never before, and it is important that the mayor is held to account on issues such as Crossrail delays, failing to deliver on targets for building affordable homes and Londoners’ concerns on crime. The current political malaise in Westminster highlights the old adage that a government is only as good as its opposition. It is therefore essential that a possible Change UK’s candidate for London Mayor is someone who can credibly win the keys to City Hall as it is abundantly clear from recent polling that the other declared candidates will not. Change UK will build on the candidate selection process for the European parliament in selecting candidates for London Assembly seats. I would love to run as a Change UK London Assembly candidate if I have the honour of being selected.

Q: To become something more than a pro-EU party or movement in the long term, TIG/Change UK will have to stand for something more than our relationship with the European Union and will need to differentiate itself from all the current established political parties. Can you suggest what values it will need to champion if it is to make its mark on London government, both at borough and City Hall levels, and if it is to win London parliamentary seats?

A: At the recent activist event, Gavin Shuker remarked that “politics is a fundamentally a deeply human process – you have a conversation about someone about this crisis that we’re in and on one level you’re talking about politics but on another level you’re looking into someone’s soul.” UK politics is broken at the moment, Change UK is already different, the question is whether the established political parties have the ability to change, and on the face of it the answer is a resounding “no”. As a “once an enthusiastic member of the Conservative Party,” (BBC News) I am looking forward to actively participating in Change UK. I stand for reason-based politics: to be centrist and in case of doubt, to be progressive; to stand up for equal opportunities for everyone; to stand up for our environment in the decision-making process; and to stand up for the right to individuality. One of my personal concerns is that we must prioritise young people’s futures and be mindful of the impact of law and order policies.

Our urban society is in real danger of being brutalised and is already becoming colder. It’s not just pretty phrases like “London the best city in the world,” we finally need a real dream about the future of our city, which we can tackle to make it happen. Only then can we be sure we will remain the best city in the world. We have many problems in London for which we need urgently to find an answer.

Knife and youth crime are part of it, I’m the last one against more police to protect ourselves in such an acute situation, but that cannot end up being financed with budget cuts to social facilities for both young and old. If we really want to solve the problem and not just treat it, we need a massive budget increase for our youth clubs. I also know from personal experience that it is these facilities that keep our children and teenagers off the streets and out of gangs.

The horrible housing situation also needs addressing. I have lived in several cities throughout Europe, but it is unacceptable that so many Londoners have to pay excessively to live in places unfit for living. We must be honest if we are to solve this problem and not just give it cosmetic treatment. The promise that everyone can be a home owner no longer corresponds to reality and does more harm than good; it must be replaced with rental and other affordable housing solutions.

We can achieve this with a new type of political party, where membership isn’t run across lines on a map, but instead with a membership structure which fits with the 21st century. This will provide the springboard for the European Parliament campaign and enables us to build representation in parliament, City Hall and borough levels too. And let me say it unmistakably, Change UK will be a party built by its members out of their best intentions and not a party that wants to shape its members.

Marx de Morais on Twitter; Change Camden on Twitter: activist group, London, on Twitter.

Categories: Analysis
Tags: Camden, Change UK, Conservatives, Gavin Shuker, Labour, Liberal Democrats, London Mayor, The Independent Group

Vic Keegan’s Lost London 86: The huge Northumberland House

It once dominated one side of Trafalgar Square, now little bits of it can be found in the east and west of the city
Victor Keegan

Many buildings have been lost from around Trafalgar Square, but none as enormous as Northumberland House, the last and biggest of the majestic aristocratic houses that once dominated the whole of the southern side of the Strand. 

It started life as Northampton House before coming Suffolk House and then Northumberland, when it was sold to the Earl of Northumberland in 1640. It remained in the family until 1866, when, by that time owned by the then Duke of Northumberland, it met a force even greater than itself – the Metropolitan Water Board in 1874 under the leadership of Sir Joseph Bazalgette, who wanted to build a road from Trafalgar Square to his newly planned Embankment. What Bazalgette wanted, Bazalgette got. The Duke accepted an offer of £500,000. As a small gesture to history the new road was named Northumberland Avenue.

Img 8258

The only way to appreciate what the Strand looked like in those days is to view it from across the river (see picture above) and imagine that the entire Thames frontage was taken up with huge mansions owned first by bishops and later by aristocrats who wanted to be a short journey by water from the power and patronage of Whitehall. None survive to this day apart from Somerset House, which was a much later reconstruction. 

Northumberland House may have gone but parts of it live on in other areas of London, not least the lion – almost 22 feet long and 5.5 feet high – which used to sit proudly at the top of Northumberland House and which is now keeping watch at the top of Syon House (another family property) near Brentford. Part of the bottom of Northumberland House can also be seen today in the East End. An archway designed by William Kent is now the main entrance to the Bromley-by-Bow Centre where it was moved in 1998. If you want to know how the aristocracy lived inside the building, there is a sumptuous interior wall from Northumberland House in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The image at the top of this piece is a rare photograph of Northumberland House, taken in 1845. All previous pieces in Vic Keegan’s Lost London series can be found here.

Categories: Culture, Lost London
Tags: Bromley-by-Bow, Joseph Bazalgette, Northumberland Avenue

Lambeth: Labour scrapes home from Lib Dems in latest Thornton by-election

The second by election in the same ward inside two months almost saw the former council leader's seat change hands
Lewis Baston

In staffing his administration, Sadiq Khan set up a sequel to the interesting by-election that took place a few weeks ago in the Lambeth ward of Thornton. Lib Peck, Labour councillor for the ward since a by-election in 2001 and leader of the council from 2012 until 2019, has taken on a high-profile role leading the new Violence Reduction Unit at City Hall. She had been an influential figure in Labour local government in London and at the Local Government Association (LGA).

Under Peck’s leadership, and that of her predecessor Steve Reed, Lambeth became something of a model council for the centre-left strand of Labour. Peck’s administration encountered activist opposition to its regeneration and financial management policies in the face of housing shortages and budget cuts, and in the wider context of rapid gentrification. Somewhat against the odds, given this and a hugely increased pro-Corbyn membership, there were no candidate deselections prior to the 2018 borough elections. There has been less unity at parliamentary level. Relations between Vauxhall MP Kate Hoey, a hard line anti-European, and her constituency party are very poor and since the previous Thornton by-election Streatham MP Chuka Umunna has defected from Labour to the Independent Group (TIG).

There is no need to update February’s description of Thornton ward, a slice of suburban London lying between Clapham and Streatham near the South Circular. And four of the candidates in yesterday’s vote also fought the contest of two months ago: Martin Read for the Conservatives, Adrian Audsley for the Greens, Leila Fazal for the Women’s Equality Party and John Plume for UKIP. The leading two candidates in the February election, though, were not on the ballot this time. Labour’s contender won, which explains his absence this time. The party’s candidate for Thornton by-election number two was legal researcher Nanda Manley-Browne. The Liberal Democrats , who finished a good second in February, also selected a different standard-bearer – Matthew Bryant, who contested Streatham South in 2018. Umunna’s new grouping, TIG within Parliament and Change UK as a political party, did not contest the election.

National and local factors interact in council by-elections. Simplistically, broad trends in changes of support for parties over a couple of months tells us something about the patterns of national politics, while big variations are usually driven by local issues. A party needs to be fit for purpose to be a repository for votes on those. No matter how unhappy people get with, say, Hackney Council, they are unlikely to turn to UKIP or the Brexit Party to express their displeasure because those are beyond the pale as far as the culture of Hackney is concerned. The 2010-15 Clegg-Cameron coalition caused a deep rupture in the relationship between the Liberal Democrats and some of their previous strong supporters, such as students and left of centre middle class professionals. They were punished by their disastrous performance in the 2014 London borough elections and their recovery in 2018 was patchy and incomplete in contests against Labour – they were again crushed in Lambeth, for instance. In contrast, they bounced back well against the Conservatives in Kingston and Richmond.

The first Thornton by-election in February suggested that the Lib Dems are now able to get a hearing in the sort of place where doors were slammed in their faces between 2010 and 2017. They were therefore able to campaign on local issues as well as exploiting pro-European unease about Labour’s contortions over Brexit. There were echoes of the SDP’s initial rise in 1981-82, when they were able to oppose both the left-wing direction of the Labour Party across London and nationally and the managerial centrist Labour administrations in many of the borough councils at that time.

The principal local issue in Thornton in both of this year’s by-elections has been the regeneration of the Clapham Park estate. It has been a long and convoluted story, reflecting political, managerial and economic trends since the early 2000s, but transfer of the housing stock has been troubled and the amount of new building in the regeneration has disappointed many locals in terms of its quantity, quality and how long it is taking to arrive. Local resident @langrabbie has often tweeted about the subject and other aspects of Thornton’s history and its debatable local identity.

The convergence of local and national factors, added to the knowledge of the ward’s electorate gained from the February campaign, made the April election a high-pressure confrontation between Lib Dem and Labour campaign machines. Activists from elsewhere in London came to help. Thsse efforts were not rewarded with a high turnout: at 26 per cent it was slightly down on the February election.

The result was a real squeaker. Labour’s majority, in a ward that looked rock-solid a year ago, was slashed to 19 votes. Even in February the party had won by a comfortable margin of 309. Manley-Browne goes to the council chamber with the backing of 998 votes while Matthew Bryant fell only just short with 979. The swing from Labour to Lib Dem is 5.6 per cent since February and a massive 27 per cent since May 2018. While the scale of the movement owes a lot to campaigning effort that cannot be replicated everywhere, Labour would be unwise to ignore the result. The two Thornton ward elections, and indeed the defection of the local MP, suggest that the party cannot take the liberal middle classes and the multicultural municipal estates that make up its London core vote for granted.

Screen shot 2019 04 12 at 07.52.52

Categories: Analysis
Tags: Chuka Umunna, Clapham, Conservatives, Green Party, Jeremy Corbyn, Kate Hoey, Labour, Lambeth Council, Lib Peck, Liberal Democrats, Sadiq Khan, Steve Reed, Streatham, Ukip, Women's Equality Party

Wandsworth Council’s post-Grenfell sprinkler dispute – the story so far

London borough that pioneered Right to Buy is at odds with some of its leaseholders over introducing additional fire safety features
Dave Hill

The horror of the Grenfell Tower fire prompted a range of rapid judgements, some of which no longer appear sound. Might these include Wandsworth Council’s decision to install water sprinklers in every housing block it owns of ten or more storeys in height?

That is certainly the view of at least some residents of the 99 buildings in the borough lined up for this form of fire safety retrofitting. Do they have a point? Will Wandsworth succeed in putting its plans into effect? If it does, who will meet the cost of implementing them? What are the wider rights and wrongs of a swift council action that has led to a long-running dispute?

Wandsworth took its decision to retrofit sprinklers within ten days of the awful tragedy in North Kensington, which claimed 72 lives. Council leader Ravi Govindia told the Evening Standard at the time that although he did not think there was a “specific risk to any of our high rise properties, we are simply not prepared to take a chance”. He pledged that sprinklers would be fitted to every one of the roughly 6,400 homes concerned “as quickly as possible”. A council officer’s report said installing sprinklers would “give a measure of reassurance” to those living in the blocks.

Local fire chief Darren Munro, also quoted in the Standard, welcomed the council’s move. However, it soon became apparent that not every resident Wandsworth wished to reassure was enthused by the announcement. The council approved the move in September and set aside £30 million to pay for the work. Then, in November, it said: “While council tenants will not need to pay a penny towards the overall bill, leaseholders who have bought their homes would be required to pay a modest share of the cost”. About 2,350 of the 6,400 homes are owned by leaseholders, the majority of whom live in them. They all found themselves looking at possible bills of £3,000-£4,000, to be paid through an increase in their service charges. This didn’t seem “modest” to some of them.

Govindia wrote to Chancellor Philip Hammond, asking for “specific financial aid for Wandsworth leaseholders,” to help them pay their share of the cost of installing sprinklers in their homes. As yet, this has not been forthcoming. And soon, other objections were being raised by residents. It was argued that fire brigade inspections had found no cause for concern and that Grenfell did not alter that fact, not least because (with two exceptions) none of the 99 Wandsworth blocks were encased in combustible cladding and that, in any case, there was no clear agreement that the presence of internal sprinklers would have made any significant difference to the progress of the Grenfell blaze. Also, the council’s right to raise leaseholder service charges for this particular purpose was questioned.

Seeking a resolution of the latter issue, in January 2018, Wandsworth decided to refer its decision upwards to the relevant national government body, its First Tier Property Tribunal (FTPT), for an adjudication. This was not about whether installing sprinklers was a good idea, but whether Wandsworth is entitled to charge leaseholders for doing so. However, debate about sprinklers in the Grenfell context continued.

In May 2018, James Brokenshire, secretary of state for housing, communities and local government, said in response to Dame Judith Hackitt’s post-Grenfell fire safety review, that “Sprinklers can be an effective fire safety measure, but they are one of many such measures that could be adopted and…no single fire safety measure, including sprinklers, can be seen as a panacea.” (see page three of safety review report via here). However, the following July, as Wandsworth was quick to note, the Commons housing select committee, also addressing the Hackitt Review, concluded that the retrofitting of sprinklers should take place everywhere. Hackitt herself had told the committee there is a “clear case” for doing so with older blocks.

Meanwhile, leaseholder discontent continued. In October 2018, the Wandsworth Times reported on opposition from different parts of the borough to what one leaseholder called “a blanket policy across all the tower blocks and a knee-jerk reaction to Grenfell”. Nonetheless, in December, Wandsworth made its formal statement of case to the Property Tribunal, arguing that it has the right to install the sprinklers in the leaseholders’ flat and that leaseholders are obliged to pay, as part of their service charge, “the relevant proportion of the cost of fitting a sprinkler system in the block”. In this document, the council’s estimate of the cost to each lessee was put at “between £3,500 and £5,000”.

By then, the leaseholders were sorting out on their own position, supported by local councillors. These included the considerable figure of Malcolm Grimston, formerly a long-serving Conservative councillor who left the party in autumn 2014 and went on to hold his seat in West Hill ward in May last year, standing as an Independent and easily topping the poll. Ten of the 99 blocks are in West Hill. Grimston assisted the leaseholders with compiling their case, now submitted, arguing, among other things, that the council’s actions fall foul of the so-called “Wednesbury principles” – a reference to a 1948 test case of a public authority’s reasonableness.

The leaseholders asked the Tribunal for more time for preparation. Last month, they were given an extension until September. Among those celebrating was one of Grimston’s fellow West Hill councillors, Labour’s Angela Ireland, who is also involved with a local residents’ association. And so, nearly two years on, Wandsworth’s quick decision to install sprinklers “as quickly as possible” in response to Grenfell is still some way from being implemented.

The story has highlighted a number of important issues and, arguably, produced a few ironies too. Malcolm Grimston believes the council has brought its troubles on itself, initially by taking a very big decision without consulting any of those affected, including its own tenants, who, after all, comprise the vast majority of the residents of the 99 blocks. Attention has been focused on unhappy leaseholders, particularly the resident ones (about 1,000 are non-resident), but Grimston says many of the council’s tenants are unhappy too. Although they would not be billed for any future sprinkler works, these can be intrusive and disruptive, causing damage to decoration and furnishings (and, of course, council money spent on this would mean less money for other housing maintenance or improvements in the borough).

“The council has turned the situation into a battle,” Grimston says. “If they had taken a different, more emotionally intelligent approach, which recognised the attachments people feel towards their homes, whether they rent them or own them, a compromise might have been found and residents might even have come round to the idea.” He also wonders if the decision to turn to the Property Tribunal might have been influenced by the approach of last May’s council elections, which Labour had high hopes of winning for the first time since 1974 (they eventually fell a few seats short).

By contrast, Kim Caddy, Wandsworth’s cabinet member for housing, firmly defends the council’s actions, stressing Fire Brigade support and pointing out that retrofitting sprinklers “would bring these high rise properties up to the same safety standard as all newly-built blocks of similar height, where sprinklers have been mandatory since 2007”. She says turning to the Property Tribunal reflects council sympathy with leaseholder concerns, and will clarify the legal position regarding the works and any financial contribution they eventually have to make, “which would be spread over a number of years on an interest-free basis”.

Caddy also emphasises that other local authorities in England have embarked on installing sprinklers in 10-plus storey blocks, making the point that Wandsworth is not alone in thinking this important. In London, these authorities include Croydon, which says it was the very first in the capital to announce such a programme after Grenfell and has spent £10 million retrofitting all homes in 26 blocks. In October, Croydon announced that work on all but three had been completed (the council has been approached for an update). Also, across the river from Wandsworth, Hammersmith & Fulham, earmarked £20 million for a “fire safety plus” package in July 2017, covering tenants and leaseholders alike in blocks over six storeys in height “where sprinklers would improve safety”. It has firmly stated that “we will not be charging leaseholders for installing sprinklers”.

Like Wandsworth, these two London boroughs and others are asking national government to help them with the costs of this and other fire safety improvements post-Grenfell, so far without success. However, although it had begun removing unsafe cladding from its two affected blocks in advance of the government releasing funds to meet the cost of such works last autumn, unlike Croydon and Hammersmith & Fulham, Wandsworth has not proceeded with installing sprinklers. Why that is so is not yet clear – elucidation has been sought – but the sheer number of such blocks in Wandsworth could well be a factor.

There are other angles on this scenario too. For example, a commenter on a Hammersmith & Fulham website page, having established from the council that the cost of sprinklers for leaseholders would be met from the council’s housing revenue account, remarked: “So, ultimately, council tenants will be paying for the sprinklers in the leaseholder flats (unless the government comes up with the money).” Did Wandsworth conclude that such a situation, with so many leaseholders involved, would have been unfair on its high rise block tenants? How might those tenants have reacted had they picked up on the same point?

The Conservative borough has long been a Right To By flagship, as Ravi Govindia pointed out in his plea to the chancellor for funds. Now it finds itself at odds with some of that policy’s beneficiaries because it isn’t yet prepared to pay for the additional fire safety measures it said straight after Grenfell should be taken with all speed. It’s become a rather sticky situation, and what happens next will be intriguing.

Categories: Analysis
Tags: Conservatives, Croydon Council, Evening Standard, Grenfell Tower, Labour, Malcolm Grimston, Wandsworth Council