The May 4th 2006 local elections
We’re a non politically-aligned organization. And some of us are life-long Labour voters. But we have to tell you that the tower block is very much a Labour project. Council Leader Ann John (LAB) is the driving force behind it.
Whistle-blowing former Labour Councillor Jonathan Davies has been so horrified by the way Brent are trying to impose a tower block on the community that he is standing down and has written to residents of the Queen’s Park ward, saying: “Although I am a Labour Councillor, I am totally opposed to the plan and I am appalled at the Council’s secrecy about their intentions and their refusal to respond to public opposition to the towerblock.”
Jonathan, until very recently an insider in Labour Brent, tells us that the only way we can be sure to stop the tower is to force a change of council leadership in Brent by ousting Labour councillors at the May 4th election.
So the most important thing you can do to stop the tower is to vote against Labour in the May 4th local elections.
It doesn’t matter what the Labour candidates say themselves about the tower – as individual councillors they will be powerless to stop it. The key thing is to change the balance of power in the council, so that Anne John’s pro-tower Labour group no longer has a majority.
If Queen’s Park elects Labour councillors – even ones who say they’re anti-tower – the Labour majority will remain and the tower will be built.
Once again, a vote for Labour on May the 4th is a vote for the tower.
NEIL, HELGA and REG
You shouldn’t feel bad about voting out Neil Nerva, Helga Gladbaum and Reg Freeson even if, like many of us, you’ve voted for them in the past.
Both Neil and Reg were our local councillors when Brent drew up the tower block policy in the first place. How good a job did they do of involving you in the so-called public consultation on the policy? And, once it was drawn up, how good a job did they do of letting you know about the new policy and what it meant for your neighbourhood?
Neil and Reg were still our local councillors when the Genesis proposal was put in – how good a job did they do of informing you about the proposal and in particular the height of the buildings?
It seems clear from what Neil and Reg have said and done – and from what they have not said and have not done – that they’d have been happy for the tower block proposal to go quietly through.
Neil has been slippery on the tower since the beginning and has never committed to opposing it. At Queen’s Park Day he told me that the public attitude to a tower block was “genuinely mixed”. We soon discovered the reality of how un-mixed public opinion is on the issue.
Reg Freeson, if he remains on the Planning Committee, would be one of the few councillors to have some say on the tower block. But he has been slippery on it, too. He manned the developer’s tent at Queen’s Park Day and misinformed visitors to it that the tower “would not be visible from the park.” Most bizarrely, he resisted residents’ attempts to put up copies of Brent’s own photographs of the tower block model (showing its height) alongside the developer’s misleading sectional model.
Reg was housing minister in the architectural dark days of the 1970s. Let’s not let him revisit past mistakes on Queen’s Park.
Helga isn’t a current councillor in Queen’s Park, but she has alread been spreading misinformation about the tower – telling QPARA that the tower “will now not be built” when there has been no change to Brent’s tower block policy.
And the waffle in the latest Labour leaflet about Helga, Neil and Reg not supporting a tower block unless it is “sympathetic and suitable” and has “wide community support” is the sort of bureaucratic blather we’ve been hearing from Brent whenever we try to get a clear answer on anything tower-related. You may recall that Brent describe their policy for a 20-storey building as being “broadly supported by the community” despite having held only three public meetings on it, all in the same week, and with attendances of 10 people, 11 people, and “approximately 6″ respectively.