Make Every Vote Count On Thursday

Some of the many supporters who turned up for our last mass leafleting

It was a tremendous honour to have so many fellow residents come out last Saturday to give the Make Willesden Green campaign a last push before Thursday’s election. With about two dozen supporters swarming across various parts of Willesden Green, we managed to leaflet the whole of the ward and still find time to speak to hundreds of residents outside the Sainsbury’s forecourt. Most people said they were disenchanted with the three mainstream parties, but were keen to hear about our electoral offer of an independent voice for Willesden residents.

These conversations, and the groundswell of support I have received over the past few months from a real cross-section of our community, has made me even more confident that we can make Willesden Green a thriving, clean, open, democratic and environmentally-balanced area in future if only we have better representation. People in Willesden Green have spent too much of the past four years fighting against developers and unelected bureaucrats for a neighbourhood with open spaces, secure community amenities, an improved High Road, more affordable housing and properly-funded public services. In the process, we have been ignored by our Councillors and dismissed by senior Local Authority officers. 

Watermelon Men: me with Shahrar Ali and Martin Francis, Green Party candidates for Willesden Green

In fact, when the Make Willesden Green campaign was taking shape one of the main drivers behind its formation was the general lack of accountability and unresponsiveness of our sitting councillors. Our current Labour councillor and one of the LibDem councillors were enthusiastic supporters of the Willesden Green Library project in the face of overwhelming resident opposition, while the second Lib Dem councillor has moved away from Brent, has barely been seen for a year and doesn't even respond to emails. Now of course, it's election time so we see both parties coming out of hiding to claim that they are listening and ‘on your side’, hoping that we will forget their past sins and misdemeanors.

We formulated a policy on the Right to Recall local councillors in between elections and I personally signed a pledge saying that as an elected councillor I would submit to to a by-election if enough residents demanded it. We challenged every candidate standing in the Willesden Green election to sign the same pledge – only the two Green Party candidates, Martin Francis and Shahrar Ali responded positively. Labour, LibDems and the Tories did not bother to respond at all.

However our attention was drawn to this rather mealy-mouthed blogpost from sitting councillor Lesley Jones who sets out a number of objections, all of which can be easily overcome. (‘Who will collect the petition signatures?’ Cllr Jones asks, ‘Well, how about the same people who collected 6,000 signatures against the Library development that you backed?’ would be an answer.)

All in all, the response to the recall pledge has shown that the main parties have learnt nothing from the anger, frustration and disenchantment of local residents. They want your vote on Thursday but they don't want to hear from you again after that. Do we really want to give a mandate to parties that are still scared of democracy, still afraid of participation and still reluctant to give us a real voice? 

I hope that I will get one of your votes this Thursday, but I hope you will also think about whether you want to give your second and third votes to parties who show such a fundamental disdain for the wishes of their electorate.

On Thursday we finally get a say: every vote sends a message, and by giving me one of your three votes, you’ll be making it clear the three main parties have failed our area. We need genuinely radical and grassroots Councillors to represent the interests of Willesden Green, and this Thursday is the time to vote us in. 

Where There's Muck, There's Brass

Despite the unenviable task of clearing up months of accumulated rubbish, the clean-up of the service road behind Walm Lane last Sunday was very much worthwhile. The pictures below show what a couple hours of bagging rubbish can do to the appearance of even the most neglected parts of our area (as well as revealing some decent compost, which large worms were getting stuck into). Most importantly, Sunday's modest clear-up was an opportunity for residents from the alleyway and adjacent streets to meet and exchange notes on how to find a permanent solution to that street's refuse problem. Our role in Make Willesden Green was to facilitate the process and encourage neighbours to continue pressuring  both private landlords and Brent Council to meet their responsibilities to alley residents and the wider community. Other similar initiatives are now being planned through the Willesden Green Town Team.  Hopefully this muck-raking has revealed a community that cares about its surrounding environment, and is willing to channel what have until now been individual efforts into a stronger collective voice.

BEFORE

AFTER

DURING

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

Community Clean-Up on Walm Lane

Make Willesden Green has organised a community clean-up of the service road behind Walm Lane this coming Sunday. Residents have seen the alley become a dumping ground for all kinds of rubbish over the past few years, and  the problem has now gone beyond the merely unsightly to become a potential health hazard. The land is privately owned and so the Council has refused to clear it, allowing the problem to escalate. After many months and numerous complaints the Council has finally issued a small fine and a clear-up order to the landowners, to which they have not responded. The next step is for the Council to take legal action which is a frustratingly slow process. Meanwhile the tip continues to grow.

 

Accumulated Rubbish on the Alleyway

Sunday’s clean-up should not absolve either the land owners or Brent Council of their responsibilities. Make Willesden Green has taken this initiative to shame the land owners and pressure the Council into urgent action. Most importantly, we hope the clean up will bring together local residents and businesses to try to find a permanent solution to the unacceptable state of the alley. This ugly and increasingly unsafe service road severely affects adjacent businesses and residents, but it  also reflects poorly on the wider neighbourhood. Join us on Sunday, even if it’s only briefly, to show you want a cleaner, safer and greener Willesden.

Dumping Ground

Less UKIP, More Democracy

 

Corrections to a UKIP poster in Swansea

Hope not Hate, a campaign group dedicated to exposing and combating far-right politics in Britain recently approached Make Willesden Green to help deliver a message against the politics of hate in Brent. I immediately agreed to distribute their ‘Let Hope Win Over Fear’ leaflet together with our own electoral material, as I think it’s important to challenge the mainstreaming of racist and xenophobic positions in the run-up to the local and European elections of May 22nd.

UKIP’s ascendancy is of course the immediate cause of concern here. Although they are only standing four candidates in the Brent local elections (happily none of them in Willesden Green; though there is one in neighbouring Dudden Hill), the European elections are offering Farage’s outfit an opportunity to spread their poisonous ideas across our Borough.

In fact, whilst canvassing, supporters of Make Willesden Green have come across the occasional resident who’s initially confused my standing as an independent with me being for UKIP. We’ve quickly disabused people of that connection, making it clear Make Willesden Green sits on the opposite end of the political spectrum to UKIP.

UKIP and other far-right parties play on people's genuine concerns about unemployment, housing, education and austerity, and simply blame them on foreigners. They encourage the most disadvantaged groups to take social inequality out on similarly vulnerable people from other nationalities, rather to focus on the gross disparity of wealth within the UK, and between different parts of Europe.

The likes of UKIP also make a lot of hay out of people’s disenchantment with mainstream politics. But the ‘free’ market they’re so fond of  (except for when it comes to freedom of movement) is a major cause behind the corruption of politics – either directly through corporate lobbyists or indirectly by handing over democratic control of public goods like education, health or transport to a private sector that’s only accountable to major shareholders. UKIP’s crude anti-politics stems from its extreme pro-market positions; and their free market dogmas simply exacerbate the economic inequalities they then accuse immigrants of causing.

Grassroots initiatives like Make Willesden Green are about the exact opposite. Our campaign has consistently been about involving people politically in the democratisation of our neighbourhood, and by defending those public spaces  and services that bring our area's rich mix of people together and protect the most vulnerable in our communities. Ordinary citizens can turn seemingly technical, non-partisan matters like the demolition of libraries or the academisation of schools into political issues -especially if it’s with a small ‘p’ that looks beyond narrow Party-political interests.   

Commemorating the Grunwick Strike

 

An area’s regeneration can take different forms, and one of them is surely to offer opportunities for learning and self-education in and about our community. The Birkbeck PopUp University has, in partnership with the Willesden Green Town Team been doing just that over the past weeks, with plenty of stimulating talks scheduled until the end of May on subjects ranging from Willesden’s conscientious objectors in War War I, the history of Britain’s urban public parks and green spaces, and the the politics of social housing in London, as well as regular slots on careers advice, counselling and returning to work and study.
   

The commemorative plaque at the former Grunwick site

This Thursday 24 April, the PopUp University will be hosting an evening of debate and discussion from 6-8pm on the Grunwick Strike of 1976-78. Together with the 1984-85 miners’ strike, the Grunwick dispute is one of the signal moments in the postwar labour history of this country - and it all unfolded in the back streets of Willesden Green. For a brief but intense period, striking workers in our neighbourhood, led by the emblematic Mrs Jayaben Desai, put collective struggles against racism, patriarchy and workplace exploitation at the centre of national politics.

These struggles are far from over. Although the Grunwick processing plant has long disappeared, episodes like last summer’s Home Office xenophobic van campaign or the Willesden letting agent who was shown to openly discriminate against African-Caribbean would-be tenants remind us of the everyday racism still plaguing our streets. Similarly, our local Homebase cuts costs by using unpaid staff under the ConDem government’s workfare programme, while local Labour politicians rail against striking teachers fighting the privatisaton of our schools.

Thursday’s event therefore aims to be as much a commemoration of the Grunwick strike, as an opportunity to consider its legacies for today’s campaigns for social justice and equality in our neighbourhood and beyond. After screening the documentary “The Great Grunwick Strike”, we’ll be joined for discussion by Pete Firmin from Brent Trades Union Council and Dr Sundari Anitha and Professor Ruth Pearson who coordinated a research project on  “Striking Women: South Asian workers’ struggles in the UK labour market from Grunwick to Gate Gourmet”. The event is completely free, but online registration is required HERE.

The Opening of Birkbeck's PopUp University on Queen's Parade in March

How The Queensbury Was Saved

Typo Corrected

The sensational victory by Save The Queensbury campaign last Wednesday is a massive cause for celebration for Willesden Green. It was achieved through the relentless collective efforts of residents and their supporters. One of the founding members of the campaign and irrepressible agitator for its cause, Sujata Aurora, tells the story of how the battle was won.

Guest blog by Sujata Aurora

The Save The Queensbury group won a significant victory on 12 March when Brent’s planning committee threw out proposals to demolish Willesden Green's landmark community pub and replace it with a 10-storey block of flats. 

The 18 month-long campaign was a true community initiative initially set up in October 2012 by a handful of residents and largely ignored by the political parties until the local elections began to loom. It is much to the credit of the campaign that they mobilised mass local support to the extent that they persuaded several previously indifferent councillors to back their cause, almost certainly because the level of attention the issue was generating made them fear the electoral consequences of not doing so. Sadly two of our Willesden Green councillors, LibDems Ann Hunter and Gavin Sneddon, refused to represent residents’ views despite repeated requests, their unresponsiveness maybe a consequence of their not restanding for election.

Despite attracting the belated support of some local politicians the campaign never became compromised and fiercely iterated its independence. As Brent Council's treatment of Save The Queensbury became ever more shabby there was a dawning realisation that the battle was not just against developer Fairview Homes but also against the council itself. Many in the group had had no previous dealings with the council and, perhaps naively, put their faith in the ability of various processes and politicians to protect the pub. Their awakening was rude and the criticisms that they were subsequently forced to make of the council upset some of The Queensbury’s Labour supporters. Yet as one campaigner pointed out, "this is a cross party campaign and we welcome all support, but if we shy away from pointing out the failings of Brent Council where they could have acted to save the pub, then we are doing this cause a disservice.”

Getting the Message Across

While professing some limited support for the campaign, no political party or councillor was prepared to actively lobby in support of policies that would have protected the pub from demolition.

• The attempt to have The Queensbury listed as an Asset of Community Value (ACV) under the Localism Act was initially refused with Brent citing, in part, the reason that they needed to consider the developers intention for the site in considering whether it might have future community value. That reason has been confirmed by other authorities and by experts on the Localism Act as a significant misapplication of the regulations. It was only after a threat to go to the Local Government Ombudsman and a new application covering just The Queensbury Pub rather than the entire site, that a listing was successful.
• Queensbury campaigners took members of CAMRA and planning experts with them to meet with council leader Muhammed Butt in April 2013 - they presented him with examples of pub protection policies from numerous other local authorities. A request for Brent to develop a pub protection policy and produce some planning guidance which would prevent “Change of Use” applications for buildings listed as ACVs got an initially favourable reception from Councillor Butt – but almost a year on they are still waiting for even a draft policy to be produced and the expert on pubs and planning policy who offered to assist is still waiting for a call.
• A presentation by the Queensbury campaign in October 2013 to officers and councillors at the Partnerships and Place Overview and Scrutiny Committee asking for a review of the ACV listing procedure and a further request for planning guidance to protect ACVs from “Change of Use” resulted in the following resolution: "That the committee will write to the lead member for Environment and Neighbourhoods and ask them to consider implementing a policy on Assets of community value." Six months on, a direct query on progress to the Lead Member for Environment and Neighbourhoods (Cllr Roxanne Mashari) got a response that this is not her remit and she knows nothing about it. A further request for clarification to the chair of the committee (Cllr Zaffar Van Kalwala) is still unanswered. 
• Numerous requests to have the Queensbury considered as worthy of a local listing (i.e. regarded as of historical or architectural merit) were similarly stonewalled.

In this context the decision of the planning committee to vote against demolition of the pub and to go against the advice of officers is a huge achievement and will hopefully set a precedent to show that Brent is not necessarily a soft touch for developers. As we lose our heritage buildings in Willesden Green like Electric House one by one, this is no mean feat – it is a testament to the well-organised and uncompromising campaign that has been led by residents rather than party politicians. More than that, it is a demonstration that people in Willesden Green desperately need a strong, independent and grassroots voice to represent them.

Our Manifesto is Now Out!

The full Make Willesden Green electoral Manifesto is now available here. It is packed with  radical new ideas to make our neighourhood and Brent more democratic, vibrant, egalitarian and environmentally balanced. The Manifesto is the result of many months of public engagement with and among residents, and draws from the various local campaigns that have championed our schools, pubs, libraries and public services and spaces over the past few years. It offers voters in Willesden Green a genuine alternative to the three main parties at the Council elections on 22 May, challenging narrow party-political outlooks and representing an independent, grassroots option for our area. I hope you will find much in this Manifesto to support – if so, please help us spread the message by canvassing, leafleting or simply letting your neighbours, friends and family know about Make Willesden Green. Join us by signing up to our mailing list here.

A Short Note on Our Policy Afternoon

MWG candidate Alex Colas discussing the education proposals

When Make Willesden Green was launched in October, a common response among our supporters was the need for the campaign to develop some specific policies. It’s taken us a few months of public engagement and private reflection to identify our key policy areas, but on Saturday a gathering of Make Willesden Green supporters discussed, debated and agreed to a Manifesto which will focus on four themes: democratic participation in Brent; our local environment (including the High Road); housing; and education. A general disillusionment with the way ward Councillors of both parties and the Labour-led Local Authority have responded to pressing issues like the Library and Queensbury redevelopment or the privatisation of our schools, was  matched in our deliberations with some very creative and radical ideas about how to make Willesden - and indeed Brent- more democratic, vibrant, sustainable, socially mixed and affordable. The final version of the Manifesto will be published and disseminated soon.



MWG supporters (a stripey jumper consensus seems to be emerging)

At Saturday’s policy afternoon a statement was circulated on an issue that has exercised some of our opponents, namely Make Willesden Green’s relationship with the Green Party. Here is the statement, which is hopefully self-explanatory:
'Make Willesden Green (MWG) is not a political party but an electoral platform emerging from various community campaigns that have been active in our neighbourhood over the past few years. Alex Colas, the platform's candidate is not a member of any political party. We welcome the decision of the Green Party to stand only two candidates in this ward, leaving their third slot to the local independent grassroots candidate from MWG. In recognition of this, and the Green Party's ongoing and consistent support for community campaigns in our neighbourhood, MWG recommends our supporters give their two remaining votes to Green Party candidates.'

More discussion and debate, this time on local democracy

Reasons to Be Cheerful

One creative alternative to Christmas lights

I thought hard about adding a question mark to this entry’s heading. As the festive season gets into full swing, hundreds of Brent families remain officially homeless, while the sharp increase in  possession claims continues throughout the Borough. The 92 luxury-flat gated community in Willesden Green is swiftly and mercilessly occupying our public space and skyline (no sign of the new Library last time I looked), and more -largely unaffordable- high-rise developments are in the  pipeline at the Queensbury pub site, the Electric House building,  and now the old Willesden Green police station. One of our popular local schools, Gladstone Park Primary is due to be privatised in April. And on top of that, we don’t even get High Street Christmas lights or decorations this year or the next. Hardly reasons to be cheerful.

Yet looking ahead into the new year, it turns out there are some glimmers of hope. People in Willesden Green and neighbouring wards have been mobilising to reverse the misery and pain designed by the ConDem coalition and delivered by our Labour-controlled Council. Brent Housing Action has established itself in a short time as the local campaign fighting racism, social cleansing and the victimisation of the most vulnerable residents in both the private and social housing sector of our Borough. The Save the Queensbury Campaign has finally –third time lucky – got Brent to recognise our community pub as an Asset of Community Value (that now makes two in the whole of the Borough). This status should count as a material consideration in the Council’s decision on planning permission, and residents’ objections  to Fairview’s proposed scheme are piling up on the Planning application website. Separately, a working group issuing from the Willesden Green Town Team has recently been established to prepare a Neighbourhood Development Plan which, if supported by widespread participation, could offer residents some real power in designing our area’s built environment.  Even in Gladstone Park Primary there seems to be some positive movement: six months after the Parent Action Group suggested ways to keep  the school under local authority control, it seems Brent has finally listened – as of January the school will share an Executive Head with an outstanding Camden school, effectively forging a ‘soft’ federation across two local authorities.

None of this, of course, is to say these various campaigns are on a path to victory. There are all kinds of powerful obstacles in the way of making Willesden Green more democratic; in keeping our neighbourhood socially mixed, protecting and extending our public spaces and services, and defending  the area from colonisation by developers. Some of these obstacles come in the shape of  dismal representation from our local Councillors and the three mainstream parties. But we have an opportunity to change that at the local Council elections on 22 May 2014. Willesden Green residents will each get to vote for three candidates next year – with my own independent grassroots candidacy seeking to give electoral voice to these various local campaigns there will at least be a real alternative at the ballot box. However small, and  in these times, that’s hopefully one reason to be cheerful. 

 

If you wish to participate in building this alternative, there is a Make Willesden Green policy afternoon scheduled for Saturday 11 January 2014. Email me or sign up to our list for more details.  

That Was The Week That Woes

Signposting  the Willesden Week of Action

Residents and visitors to Willesden Green were welcomed to our neighbourhood last week with a massive sign that made our area look like the South Bronx in the 1970s. Were they doing a chilly remake of the Summer of Sam? Or perhaps Crimewatch was filming in the area? The reality was less glamorous but just as scary: this was Brent Council’s idea of engaging the community during the ‘Willesden Week of Action’. And as this collection of Tweets indicates, people were unimpressed with the stunt.

Visiting the actual Week of Action stalls outside Sainsbury’s, anger over the threatening sign changed to a sense of disappointment: a potentially fruitful initiative was being squandered by Council incompetence. The fire-fighters, NHS employees, Council Housing workers and Transition Town people who were at the Week of Action Tent (though oddly the Willesden Green Town Team seem not to have been invited) are at the core of our community, and it is very important that we have an opportunity to meet  and exchange information face-to-face. Yet the whole event was overshadowed by the bizarre signage outside the tube station and the more sinister anti-immigration raids that seem to have been part of the Week of Action.

The Willesden Week of Woe was not just a PR disaster for Brent Council. It shows how one hand just doesn’t know what the other is doing. While the stalls at the Week of Action rightly tell us how important it is for health and well-being to get out and about, to stop-and-chat to neighbours (immigrant or otherwise), our Council decimates our area’s remaining public spaces, evicts our independent bookshop and threatens to close down our community pub. As Council workers look to advise vulnerable residents about their housing rights, their bosses see it fit to build gated communities on public land, marketed at wealthy speculators.

The Week of Action Tent on Saturday

We set up our own Make Willesden Green stall outside Sainsbury’s on Saturday to offer this alternative message: we want Brent Council to start joining-up its thinking with its actions. If Councillors and their officers really want to focus on our area’s needs and priorities, then ditch the scaremongering and start defending our community assets and fighting school academisation; build more social housing and protect tenants' rights; preserve our public spaces and stop private developers swallowing our neighbourhood up.     

Welcome to Brent EasyArchive

Will Shanice also be serving as Brent Museum archivist?

One of the aims of the Make Willesden Green platform in coming months is to establish connections between budget cuts, the quality of our public services and local democracy.  These are obviously hot political issues across the whole of the country, but they manifest themselves in very specific ways in our own neighbourhood, and should be a focal point of next year’s Council elections.

Take the case recently highlighted by Phil Grant, staunch defender of Brent’s local history and eloquent advocate for Willesden Green’s heritage LINK. Phil patiently details his own experience of  the consultation over Brent’s new Museum and Archives Strategy, and how he has tried to stop this being made a waste of time by a staff restructuring exercise which is going on simultaneously.  The restructuring appears to be an attempt by the Head of Libraries, Arts and Heritage to impose her own ‘vision’ before the Council’s formal consultation process ends in December 2013. Key decisions around staff restructuring - which will have a huge impact on the type of service delivered at the new Brent Museum and Archive in Willesden Green - were made prior to her consultation with staff, making it in Phil’s words ‘a complete sham’. Senior Council officers have said the matter is not open to further discussion, and it seems the jobs of the existing Archives staff are to be ‘deleted’.

The  new ‘vision’ for Libraries, Arts and Heritage aims to ‘move to a culture of archives users learning to research resources for themselves’  where ‘[customers] will be encouraged to self-help’ – presumably in line with our friendly new receptionist at the Civic Centre, Ms Holly Gramm. In Phil’s view,  the job descriptions for the new Heritage Officer posts suggest ‘they are not expected to have the detailed local history knowledge, or knowledge of the collections they are in charge of, that the existing staff have. Where ever possible, they will point you to a computer and say "find out for yourself". There will be more "digitised material" available, but how you will work out what you need to find in order to answer your particular question remains a mystery’.

Budget cuts will no doubt be trotted out as the reason behind the Archive’s staff restructuring, yet I understand that there is an alternative proposal on the table that would allow for modest savings whilst retaining existing staff. This too, it appears, has been dismissed in the consultation process thus far without further consideration by senior Council officers.

Those of us involved in the farcical ‘consultations’ over the Willesden Library redevelopment will sadly find much that is familiar in Phil’s story. The wider context is certainly one dominated by the ConDem cuts to local authority budgets, but it is the arrogance and lack of spirited creativity on the part our Labour-led  Council that will ultimately be responsible for the ‘no frills’ DIY Archives Service when it reopens in 2015. Until then, you can make the most of our existing Archives Service, relocated to a desk in the basement of George Furness House, and contribute to the Museum’s revised content and design HERE.   

 

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.

How to Make Willesden Green – A Personal Invitation

Make Willesden Green is an independent, grassroots campaign for next year’s Brent Council elections. It is independent because it is not affiliated to any political party, and it is grassroots because its support stems from local residents who have been active in various local campaigns to save our schools, our libraries, our A&E departments and our community pub.

 The ‘Make’ in Willesden Green is all about emphasising the participation of ordinary residents in the public life of our neighbourhood. There is plenty of community activity in Willesden Green – some of it political; other less so. But it tends to be ignored by Brent Council and by our elected officers.

Make Willesden Green was set up over the summer by residents who feel unrepresented by local Councillors and mainstream parties, and who want to redress this imbalance. Our  aim is to make connections between local campaigns like Save the Queensbury, Save Gladstone Park School or Keep Willesden Green, and give them an electoral voice at the Council elections next year. This electoral platform emerges directly from the energies and ideas expressed around these campaigns, but it does not claim their exclusive representation. Instead, Make Willesden Green seeks to continue highlighting the democratic deficit in our Borough by  putting issues of  democracy, equality, sustainability, the defence of public realm and public services at the centre of the electoral campaign.

If you agree with most or even all of these aims, I would very much welcome your participation at the launch of Make Willesden Green on Wednesday 23 October 2013 from 6-7pm at the Queensbury Deli, 68 Walm Lane, NW2 4RA (the tube station end of the High Road). You will hear brief statements from local campaigners explaining why they think we need Make Willesden Green, and you will also get a chance to tell me, the candidate, what you feel our campaigning priorities should be.

We need to Make Willesden Green together.  It will only work if it is powered through the participation of local residents in whatever form you can offer: by publicly endorsing the platform, by helping to canvass neighbours, by offering to research policy ideas, by contributing funds, or simply by spreading the word.

I look forward to seeing you on Wednesday 23rd.

Alex