Blog

Haringey: moves against ‘Corbyn Council’ leader are already underway

Dave Hill

Predictions that newly-elected Haringey Council leader Joseph Ejiofor would soon come under pressure from Corbyn Left activists who didn’t want him to get the job appear borne out by recent events.

The Stop HDV campaign, the pressure group comprising members of Momentum and various non-Labour allies which led the successful campaign to get rid of Labour councillors who failed to oppose the last Labour administration’s plans to form a joint venture company with regeneration giant Lendlease, has already attacked the majority of the new Labour Group for preferring Ejiofor to what they call “the overwhelmingly popular candidate of the members”.

That individual is not named, but would appear to be Zena Brabazon, who easily topped an “indicative ballot” that followed a leadership hustings, one that only ward branch delegates to Haringey’s Labour constituency organisations – a Momentum-dominated group – were allowed to vote in. But the final decision on who leads the Labour Group is taken by the councillors themselves, a more politically varied bunch, and they were far less keen on Brabazon.

Ejiofor is member of Momentum’s national co-ordinating body, but he was deputy council leader under the last Labour regime. This placed an obligation on him not to oppose the HDV policy in public, but Stop HDV describes him as having “a spotty history when it comes to opposing the HDV”. They are organising a lobby of the next council meeting later this month.

There has also been muttering about an interview Ejiofor gave to the Enfield Independent, in which he expressed confidence that “the vast majority” of commitments in the Labour manifesto will be delivered with existing resources, despite ongoing budget pressures brought about by central government funding cuts.

This included housing policy. Labour’s manifesto promised that “we will build at least a thousand new council homes at council rents by 2022,” a commitment that raises the usual questions about what defines a “council home” and a “council rent”, whether that 1,000 will be wholly in addition to current stock, and whether such dwellings already in the supply line before last month’s elections will be counted towards the 1,000 target.

But Ejiofor sceptics have fastened on his saying, “We are aiming to take a thousand people off our waiting list,” which isn’t the same thing as building at least 1,000 new council homes. They are also perturbed by his remark that, notwithstanding a preference for public sector delivery, “the reality is we will need some form of partnership with the private sector” in order to deliver what he called “more housing options across the borough” for people on the council’s waiting list. This falls well short of the Full Jeremy fighting talk desired by the more fervent opponents of HDV.

Since becoming leader, Ejiofor has also attracted comment from former Labour councillor Alan Stanton, who has posted a photograph on Twitter of uncollected rubbish, which he says is in Ejiofor’s Bruce Grove ward.

Stanton did it again eight days later. “Will Cllr Joe Ejiofor do a better job of keeping Tottenham streets clean,” he inquired, after confirming that he “despised” most of what the last Labour council did. Stanton and Brabazon are married.

More on the tensions surrounding what one activist termed the nation’s first “Corbyn Council” coming soon.

Categories: News
Tags: Alan Stanton, Bruce Grove, council housing, Enfield Independent, Haringey, housing, Jeremy Corbyn, Joseph Ejiofor, Labour, Lendlease, Momentum, Tottenham, Zena Brabazon

Vic Keegan’s Lost London 44: the hauntingly beautiful Temple Church

Victor Keegan

On March 15, 1927, the choir of Temple Church recorded O For The Wings Of A Dove by Felix Mendelssohn with a 15-year-old boy called Ernest Lough as the soloist. Young Ernest is believed to have had to stand on a couple of books in order to reach the microphone. The recording became a global hit, one of the first to reach a million sales – incredible for classical record in those days. It eventually sold nearly seven million copies. For many years afterwards, visitors from around the world flocked to the site of the original recording. Lough was one of the church’s loyal parishioners, and is buried in its yard. 

More recently, Temple Church has achieved notoriety by being featured in Dan Brown’s bestselling thriller The Da Vinci Code and its movie adaptation, thereby attracting yet more hordes of visitors, albeit for fictional reasons. This is all for the good, otherwise tourists would be unlikely to stumble across this marvellous building hidden in the time warp of the Inns of Court, whose outside walls date back to its consecration in 1185.

The church served the Knights Templar, who were military monks pledged to protect pilgrims making their to the Holy Land. The order was founded on the site of King Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem, the model for other circular churches the Templars built in the big cities of Europe. At first, the knights were backed by popes and kings, but eventually the huge wealth they accumulated – which effectively meant they were the world’s first international bankers – attracted enemies. Edward II confiscated the London Temple and later Henry VIII did the same. James I granted the Temple Church in perpetuity to the emerging Inns, as long as they maintained the edifice – which they do to this day.

Among the dignitaries buried in this hauntingly beautiful church – as a horizontally laid statue – is William Marshal (c 1147-1219), a legendary warrior who helped the hapless King John govern England for a time after he took the throne in 1199. Marshal was a comparatively poor knight who ended up as the first Earl of Pembroke and Regent of England, serving under no less than five Angevin kings altogether. He was largely responsible for saving the dynasty of the Plantagenets, which would survive for 250 years.

Previous instalments of Vic Keegan’s Lost London can be found here, and Vic’s book of London poems can be bought here. 

Categories: Culture, Lost London
Tags: Inns of Court, Temple Church

Justine Greening and London Assembly Conservatives line up against Heathrow expansion as mayoral candidate contest nears

Dave Hill

Putney MP Justine Greening has launched a stinging attack on the government’s decision to approve the building of a new runway at Heathrow, adding to speculation that she could become the Conservative candidate for London mayor in 2020.

Greening’s description of the plan as “the worst kind of nationalisation” during Prime Minister’s Questions comes the day after senior Tory London Assembly member Andrew Boff responded to the Heathrow news by writing on Twitter, apparently expressing the view of the group as a whole, that “We expect our Mayoral candidate to oppose this,” and that “GLA Conservatives will oppose this decision with every breath we take for as long as it takes”.

Boff and Greening’s interventions come as Conservatives in London prepare to embark on the process of selecting their challenger to Labour incumbent Sadiq Khan in two years’ time, assuming he runs for a second term.

The decision to put a mayoral candidate in place early reflects a recognition among London Conservatives that they left the decision too late for the 2016 race and that they need a candidate with real appeal for Londoners following Zac Goldsmith’s disastrous and damaging bid two years ago and that, despite not losing as many seats in last month’s borough elections as feared, they are a long way behind Labour in the capital.

Following her PMQs remarks, Greening took to Twitter to say, “Heathrow third runway is bad deal for my community and for our country…we need 21st century UK airports strategy – regional airports with more connectivity on people’s doorsteps and helping regional economic growth”.

 Greening’s constituents are among those most affected by noise and air pollution from Heathrow flight paths, has long expressed concerns over the effects of night flights and other issues. In an article for The Times last week she listed “eight reasons why Heathrow expansion is a bad idea”, including its cost and impacts on other parts of Britain, and has called for MPs to be given a free vote on the issue.

Her support for remaining in the European Union, her social liberalism and obvious readiness to speak out against her party’s national leadership are seen by many as strong credentials in a potential mayoral candidate in the culturally diverse and strongly Remain capital.

Andrew Boff is a contributor to On London.

Categories: News
Tags: Andrew Boff, Conservatives, Heathrow, Justine Greening, London Assembly, Putney

Southwark leader Peter John is new London Councils chair

Dave Hill

London Councils, the organisation that represents the capital’s 32 borough councils and the City of London Corporation, has elected Southwark’s Labour leader Peter John as its new chair for the next four years.

John, who was previously the cross-party body’s deputy chair and its executive member for business, skills and learning, has led Southwark since May 2010 and joined the London Councils executive in 2012. He succeeds Claire Kober, the now former leader of Haringey, as chair.

London Councils plays an integral role in the capital’s local government system, lobbying and liaising with national government and the London Mayor, as well as producing its own research and policy proposals, running a number of pan-borough services, including the Freedom Pass and the Taxicard, and funding local groups concerned with employment, domestic violence and poverty.

John said that a key priority would be “ensuring that London’s services are sustainably funded”, stressing that “children’s services and adult social care are under incredible pressure in the capital.” He added that “investing in prevention at local level represents good value for all Londoners”.

In December, London Councils slammed as “wholly inadequate” the government’s local government financing plans, saying they would go nowhere near a funding gap for the 32 boroughs as a whole it calculates will reach £1.6bn by 2020. The body calculates that this will represent a 63% cut over a period in which the capital’s population will have grown by 13%.

Last month, a report by think tank Centre For London found that London’s local authorities are spending 19% less per residents than they were seven years ago, with planning, cultural and transport budgets suffering most as protecting those for adult and child social care have been prioritised.

The choice of Peter John as chair was made by an electorate comprising the 32 borough leaders and the chairman of the City of London Corporation policy and resources committee. They also elected 11 other executive members from among their ranks as follows, with their portfolios:

  • Lib Peck (Lambeth, Labour): deputy chair and crime and public protection.
  • Teresa O’Neill (Bexley, Conservative): vice chair.
  • Ruth Dombey (Sutton, Lib Dem): vice chair.
  • Catherine McGuinness (City Corporation): vice chair.
  • Muhammad Butt (Brent, Labour): welfare, empowerment and inclusion.
  • Clare Coghill (Waltham Forest, Labour): business engagement, Brexit and “good growth”.
  • Julian Bell (Ealing, Labour): transport and environment.
  • Darren Rodwell (Barking & Dagenham, Labour): housing and planning.
  • Ray Puddifoot (Hillingdon, Conservative): health and care (including adult care services).
  • Georgia Gould (Camden, Labour): skills and employment.
  • Nickie Aitken (Westminster, Conservative): schools and children’s services.

The number of executive positions allocated to leaders from different parties reflects the number of London boroughs those parties control following May’s elections.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories: News
Tags: Freedom Pass, London Councils, Peter John, Southwark

Grenfell inquiry might confound the “bad city” London narrative

Dave Hill

Throughout the year since the Grenfell Tower disaster, political activists, many journalists and a pack of social media agitators have been telling the world – and each other – a story about who was to blame, much of it formed from ignorance, prejudice, ideological zeal, a longing to pin guilt on convenient targets and a hunger for easy applause. Within it has been a thread of condemnation of London as a Bad City, with the fire characterised as shamefully symbolic of its failings.

Now, the fact-finding stage of the public inquiry into the fire has at last begun. Already, those proceedings are helping us to see that black and white, grand narrative explanations of whatever kind are not going to explain what happened on that desperate night last June, won’t provide justice to the fire’s victims and their loved ones, or ensure that such horror won’t be repeated. And as the inquiry continues throughout the months to come, a subtler, more variegated picture of what London as a place can learn about itself, how it is run and how its people are cared for may emerge.

It feels right to once again remember to keep an open mind. Last week, the London Review of Books (LRB) published a very long and very impressive investigation of the fire and the many issues flowing from it, written by Andrew O’Hagan. His work has come under attack, mostly for the very reasons it should be admired: even if some of his conclusions eventually look flawed, O’Hagan, unlike so many others who’ve written and pontificated about Grenfell, was not prepared to simply accept at face value explanations and accounts that became established as received wisdom even before the fire was out. As he so rightly put it:

Journalism, hour by hour, day by day, showed by its feasting on half-baked items that it had lost the power to treat reality fairly. You saw it everywhere. Channel 4 News, the Guardian, the Daily Mail, Sky News, the New York Times: from the middle of that night, they began to turn the fire into the story they wanted it to be.

Integral to that feverishly-constructed story, so neatly aligned with those broader and equally simplistic London-focussed grand narratives about gentrification and “social cleansing”, have been a refusal to accept even the possibility that the London Fire Brigade (LFB) made mistakes under pressure, the seemingly uncritical elevation of the Grenfell Action Group to the status of infallible prophets representing “the community”, and repeated accusations that the Conservatives who run Kensington & Chelsea (RBKC) enabled the fire to happen because they didn’t think “the poor” worth spending enough money on to keep them safe and that its administration was inept and indifferent when the blaze occurred.

No strand of that story should ever have been so readily and completely accepted, let alone eagerly perpetuated, by privileged, London-based journalists. Yet there’s been precious little deviation from it. Until the LRB published O’Hagan’s work, this website was, as far as I’m aware, alone in pointing out the inconvenient fact that the blog of the Grenfell Action Group never said anything about the cladding added to the building as part of its refurbishment, let alone that it, or the way it was installed, represented a fire risk. Two years before the disaster, I reported for the Guardian that RBKC had long had a social housing policy that would have been hailed as highly “progressive” on the left had a Labour council been implementing it, though no one at that news organisation appears to have noticed this relevant item in its archive when covering Grenfell. As for the LFB, it now seems clear that the inquiry will be looking closely at the “stay put” policy and the length of time it was kept in place.

None of this means that none of the Grenfell Action Group’s warnings had subtance, that the council did everything right, or that the LFB won’t emerge from the inquiry in a good light. But it does underline that some of the most pervasive assertions about Grenfell might not be as firmly rooted in reality as is routinely claimed: that it might yet turn out that some bad decisions were made by London’s fire service; that RBKC tried hard to do right by residents of its housing stock before, during and after the fire; and that a small number of local activists fervently opposed to just about any regeneration policy pursued by the council, have been given far more time and attention than their allegations have merited, rather than fatally less.

Another fixed component of the hegemonic version of the Grenfell story is that the fire was an indictment of the gap between the most and the least prosperous Londoners – a proximity until lately regarded as a cause for pride has, since the fire, been re-characterised as a grotesque social failure. The accusation is that blocks containing largely social housing are fobbed off with cheaper, more dangerous cladding than those which are privately owned in a city where developers and politicians conspire to “push out” the least well off. Yet recent government figures say that, in England as a whole, almost as many private sector residential buildings are unlikely to meet current building regulations guidance as those owned by councils or housing associations. Again, the picture is not black and white.

The same, I suspect, will be true of the Grenfell inquiry’s ultimate findings, as they dig deeper into the morass of regulations, contracts and decisions where the key explanatory details may lurk. Bad things about London could well be exposed along the way – but they might not fit the verdict on the city and some of its institutions that so many have already been encouraged to reach.

Categories: Comment
Tags: Channel 4 News, Daily Mail, Eddie Daffarn, Grenfell Action Group, Grenfell Inquiry, Grenfell Tower, housing, Kensington & Chelsea, New York Times, Sir Martin Moore-Bick, Sky News, The Guardian

London Festival of Architecture: buildings and identity

Dave Hill

The 2018 London Festival of Architecture, which runs for the whole of June, formally opened on Friday evening with a party in the roof garden of 120 Fenchurch Street (pictured above), a 15-storey Square Mile building for which planning consent was granted in 2008, although construction did not begin until a main tenant was secured six years later. Public access to the roof garden is promised and a restaurant will open on the 14th floor next spring.

A quick scroll through the project’s history and still-unfolding plans provides an insight into the complexities of putting such a pile together, both financial and architectural. You can see a long way from up there – Canary Wharf climbs into your eyeline on the horizon – and also feel as though you’re within touching distance of the Gherkin, which, it is easy to forget, has now been standing for 15 years.

How do London’s buildings come into being, whether cathedrals of commerce, monuments to civic values or homes of different tenures and types? Where does architecture fit in to the long and complicated processes that decide what sorts of building appear in the cluttered capital, and when and where?

Before going to the party, I attended one of the Festival’s opening day events, an informal “open studio” walk-and-talk though the London office of design consultancy CallisonRTKL, which are just south of Holborn Viaduct. There, thanks principally to a very patient man called Richard, I was able to ask a lot of questions and acquire a better understanding of the design of buildings in London (and elsewhere) and the changing nature of the challenges involved in doing that job well.

Other practices are scheduled to take part in the Open Studio programme on the remaining Fridays of the Festival, organised by geographical cluster: Fitzrovia on 8th; Cambridge Heath on 15th; Shepherd’s Bush on 22nd; Kentish Town on 29th. And the Festival offers a lot more to enjoy as well.

I’ve made my own small contribution to the Festival in the form of a short essay for the organisers, addressing its central theme of this year – identity. The piece has already been published by Prospect Magazine. It starts like this:

London’s buildings tell compelling stories of the capital’s identity, not because they express some fixed essence of the city but because they reflect its lack of one. Like London, their variations are infinite and changing endlessly. Like London, they are both ancient and new, loved and loathed, dazzling and dreadful, stupid and stupendous, and often all of those things in the same street.

Read the rest here.

Categories: Culture
Tags: architecture, CallisonRTKL, Cambridge Heath, Fenchurch Street, Fitzrovia, Holborn, housing, Kentish Town, London Festival of Architecture, planning, Prospect Magazine, Shepherds Bush

Football: Tibet comes to Enfield Town

Dave Hill

The CONIFA World Football Cup, not to be confused with that other competition with a similar name soon to begin in Russia, kicked off in north London on Thursday and will run until 9 June, furnishing the capital’s long history as a place of wondrous cosmopolitanism where a welcome awaits outsiders, and providing some decent sporting action in the process.

CONIFA stands for Confederation of Independent Football Associations and represents teams from territories not recognised by FIFA or, in its own words, those of “de-facto nations, regions, minority peoples and sports isolated territories”. These range from the Isle of Man (Ellan Vannin), to Abkhazia (disputed territory in the north-west of Georgia) to Cascadia (a region straddling the US Canadian border with an independence movement), to Tibet, the geographic entity whose long-running dispute with China is well-known.

Photographer, film maker and On London contributor Max Curwen-Bingley has been following the competition, paying particular attention to Ellan Vannin and Tibet. His build-up coverage even took him India, where the Tibet squad had its training camp. Amazingly, while there he even met Tibet’s exiled spiritual and political leader, the legendary Dalai Lama.

The Tibet team featured in the competition’s opening match at the ground of Enfield Town, a tough contest against Abkhazia, who are the current Word Football Cup holders. They lost 3-0, but were far from disgraced and Max, who took his camera along of course, reports that the pleasure they and their supporters took from the opportunity to celebrate their sense of denied nationhood brought a tear to his eye. The photo below shows the supporter flags of Abkhazia (left) and of Tibet (right).

 

Here’s a shot of the Tibet bench in the Enfield Town dug out.

And here’s one of the Tibet’s fans.

The photo at the top of this piece, showing Tibet players singing belting out their national anthem in the wilds of north London, is another of Max’s. The 16 teams in the tournament will play matches at the grounds of Sutton United and Bromley as well as Enfield. There’s a full fixture list here.

Follow Max Curwen-Bingley on Twitter.

Categories: Culture, Uncategorised
Tags: football

The mid-term Sadiq Khan has some big transport challenges ahead

Dave Hill

Two years since he became London Mayor, Sadiq Khan’s transport policies, including what he requires of Transport for London (TfL), are as sharply contested now as they were during his election campaign. The focus of attention then was the impact a four-year fares freeze might have on the transport agency’s finances, which were already under pressure due to the tapered removal of government financial support for the transport network’s day-to-day operation.

Khan’s confidence that the budget numbers could still add up was underpinned by TfL’s own assumption that public transport passenger numbers would continue to rise, as they had been for decades. So although a fares freeze implied less cash coming in than would have been the case had the inflation-plus fares rises under Boris Johnson continued, it also seemed reasonable to expect that more and more fares would carry on being paid by more and more people and, even that the freeze might help sustain this projected rise, because fares hikes tend to put some people off.

Arguments have continued about the effects of the freeze, with London Assembly Conservatives insisting that it is contributing to starving TfL of funds it needs for investment. In November, the purchase of replacement trains for the Jubilee and Northern Lines was effectively cancelled, though TfL ascribed this to the passenger number fall-off, rather than the freeze.

What no one disagrees about is that TfL’s finances look pretty strained. The organisation’s most recent business plan anticipates an operational deficit of nearly £1bn in 2018/19. As City AM reports, an assessment by the independent investment programme advisory group (IIPAG) compiled for TfL’s audit and assurance committee says that TfL’s finances are “under greater pressure than at any time since the IIPAG was formed in 2010”.

The IIPAG’s quarterly review also says that a changing emphasis on the infrastructure being funded, is “introducing new risks to TfL”. The shift is towards projects concerned with improving air quality, station accessibility and the “healthy streets” programme, which includes spending on dedicated cycling infrastructure. Unhappily, the group notes “a number of instances where there appears to be a reluctance to face up to cost increases when projects are underway, or where funds are simply not available to deliver the preferred option” (see paragraphs 4.17 and 4.18).

What will happen next? Khan’s 2016 manifesto said that the fares freeze would be “funded by making TfL a more efficient and profitable organisation, not by cuts to spending on better services and more capacity”. TfL’s progress with its consulting operation, which aims to sell its expertise to other cities around the world, provides some welcome reassurance. Establishing a TfL “trading arm” was another Khan manifesto promise, and is clearly being kept. But honouring that broader pledge is looking tricky.

A great deal now depends on the Elizabeth Line – Crossrail – opening on time at the end of this year and instantly creating a big, new TfL revenue artery. Putting up the congestion charge, another option for increasing income, was ruled out in Khan’s manifesto, which promised to maintain the charge “at its current level”.

The Mayor cannot be blamed for a failure to foresee the costly drop in Tube passenger numbers, which has been variously attributed to more home working, dreadful peak time overcrowding, fear of terror attacks and a Brexit effect. That does not change the fact that he, who chairs TfL’s board, his incoming new deputy for transport Heidi Alexander and TfL chiefs have some exacting challenges ahead if the Mayor’s transport programme is to be delivered convincingly.

Categories: Comment
Tags: Conservatives, Ken Livingstone, London Underground, Sadiq Khan, Transport for London