Brent and Kilburn Times Letter 14 November 2013

A Sorry Tale of Two Boroughs

It is likely that next week Governors at Gladstone Park Primary, the local school for many children living in Willesden Green, will decide to become an Academy, handing over this Local Authority (LA) school to a private sponsor. This comes after a six-month campaign by parents and staff to keep Gladstone Primary under LA control HERE. Over in Redbridge, northeast London, staff and parents also organised during the summer to keep their school under LA control after it was put in ‘special measures’ by Ofsted and threatened with forced academisation. Yet Snaresbrook Primary last week won its battle against the Department for Education (DfE) and will remain a LA maintained school.

What explains this contrast in fortunes? How did a Tory-controlled Redbridge manage to fend off the DfE, while a Labour-run Brent sat on its hands watching the unwanted academisation of Gladstone Park Primary? The answer essentially lies in political will.

The Save Snaresbrook campaign had cross-party support from Redbridge Councillors, Council officers and their local MP John Cryer who actively sought to keep the school under LA control. Redbridge Council immediately and unanimously passed a motion opposing the academisation of Snaresbrook Primary and forcefully made their case to the DfE HERE. The Council also backed change in the school’s senior leadership - a new Executive Head and Associate Head were appointed and they immediately got on with the task of improving the school under the LA umbrella.

 When I joined a parent delegation to meet our local MP Sarah Teather in February, she told us fighting academisation was futile and the best we could hope for was to try and find a sponsor that met our school’s ethos. Soon after, a

Gladstone Park Parent Action Group was formed and we campaigned vigorously for our elected officials and senior Council officers to fight to keep our school under LA control. The spectrum of responses to our efforts stretched from apathy to hopelessness. Senior Council officers reiterated that there was no alternative to academisation (and that it ‘wasn’t so bad’, anyhow); Willesden Green Councillors remained silent on the issue, while Cllr Butt was asked to instruct his senior officers, including the Council’s Chief Executive, to oppose the academisation of our school. He sent a letter to Sarah Teather instead. To his credit, Dudden Hill Cllr Hirani did correspond with the DfE, but without wider Council backing such lonely voices inadvertedly detracted from our campaign.

It is this frustrating experience of indifference toward, lackluster opposition to and in some cases, complicity with the privatisation of Gladstone Park Primary School that has in large measure led me to stand as an independent, grassroots candidate for Willesden Green in the forthcoming Council elections. On this, as in other key issues affecting the ward, our elected officials have lacked the political backbone to stand up for their proclaimed principles, hiding instead behind the faceless authority of senior Council bureaucrats. Local residents deserve better than this. It now falls upon us to stand up for our own neighbourhood, to defend the public assets we all rely upon and thereby make Willesden Green more democratic.

Lift Off for Make Willesden Green

It was great to see so many familiar faces from local campaigns, and some new ones too, at the launch of Make Willesden Green last Wednesday. The aim of the meeting was to present this new electoral platform, collect ideas about where to focus our energies, and gather support for the campaign. I think it’s fair to say we’re now airborne.

I opened with a few introductory remarks about why I’m standing for the Council elections under the banner of Make Willesden Green – how this initiative emerges from neighbourhood campaigns around housing, education, public spaces and local democracy, and in response to the the lack of  proper representation from the mainstream parties.

Campaigners from Save the Queensbury, the Gladstone Park Parent Action Group and Keep Willesden Green spoke passionately about, among other things, the dangers of  developers turning our neighbourhood into a dormitory town; Brent Council’s dereliction of duty in standing up against the academisation of our schools; and the increasing disparities between Wembley and the south of the Borough.

People asked about my views on the Coalition’s cuts and the Immigration Bill currently going through Parliament, as well as my position on children with special educational needs in mainstream education (The clip below captures my response to these questions). A very important point was also raised about whether Make Willesden Green is a residents’ association or a political party.  I suppose the answer is neither and both: we’re an electoral platform seeking to give political weight to community campaigns.

Responses to our questionnaire on campaigning priorities highlighted the need for more community and open spaces, housing, education, High Street improvements and support for local business, as well as ‘tackling developers’. All these chime with the core aims of Make Willesden Green.

Wednesday marked the beginning of what will be a long and challenging effort to make Willesden Green’s campaigning voices heard at the local elections. We now have a critical mass of supporters and will be taking our message about affordable housing, state-funded schools, public spaces and amenities, and a more democratic local politics across the whole of our ward and beyond.

We’ll be  setting up a stall next to the Willesden Green Post Office on Saturday 9 November from 10.30am, to raise the profile of our campaign and to hear residents’ views on your aspirations for our neighbourhood. Please do come along to Make Willesden Green – you can stay in touch with the campaign by signing up to our email list above.

Hollowing-Out Democracy in Willesden Green

 
Demolition of Willesden Green Library & Bookshop (Thanks to Willesden Herald)

I've lived in Willesden Green for over a decade and, in the inevitable ups and downs of  any neighbourhood's public life, the last two years have marked a new low. This is partly due to the Coalition Government's callous and vindictive cuts to local authority budgets. But the asset-stripping of our community was planned before austerity set in, and it's been orchestrated by the Labour-controlled Local Authority, with the support of our ward's Lib-Dem councillors.

The gutted shell of the Victorian Library building, and the heap of  rubble that once was our Library centre are perfect symbols of  how local democracy has been hollowed out in Willesden Green. Thousands of local residents raised objections to the Library redevelopment and over 80 per cent of those consulted opposed the plans. Despite this, the Council steamrolled ahead with the project, while our ward councillors cheered them on. We have now lost  valuable open space, a cinema and a bookshop while the Council has gained new offices and sold public land to developers who are due to cash on the sale of 92 luxury flats marketed to wealthy speculators. Similar plans are underway for Electric House and the Queensbury pub on Walm Lane. Only a privileged minority will  benefit from these developments. The prospect of yet more absentee landlords will do little to revitalise our High Street or democratise our local housing  market.

But it's not just the lack of transparency and accountability in these property deals that is undemocratic. Democracy is also, fundamentally, about equalising people's life chances, and education is clearly central to this aspiration. Gladstone Park Primary - a highly-valued local authority school that has for decades been successfully educating our rich mix of children  - was targeted for forced academisation in January. Instead of defending this precious local asset, Council officers have been complicit in the privatisation of the school, leaving  parents and governors to their own devices as we fight to keep our school under public and democratic control.

 By demolishing our libraries, producing new gated communities with no affordable homes, facilitating the privatisation of our schools; in threatening to close a community pub like the Queensbury and evicting the only independent bookshop in our area, the Labour Council is drastically narrowing access to public spaces, services and amenities. It is effectively shrinking ordinary people's quality of life across our neighbourhood, and that is deeply undemocratic.

As local residents, we can respond to this predicament in at least two ways. We can elect  new councillors who will radically address the democratic deficit in our borough and beyond. The Greens are the only local party to have consistently supported grassroots campaigns for democracy in our neighbourhood. We can also make Willesden Green more democratic ourselves, by continuing to mobilise as citizens for social rights, political accountability and public goods in our vicinity. There is still a silver lining in the dust cloud hanging over Willesden Green: the sense of community and public-spiritedness that has emerged in recent local campaigns. I very much hope we'll keep that collective spirit alive and make it fight for our neighbourhood in the coming months.