Don't Blame the Workers!

As Brent Council moves into the second phase of redundancies many of the remaining local government workers are finding themselves taking on additional work.  This is not just the work of those who have been made redundant as a result of cuts but also extra work  caused by the increased needs of Brent residents hit by cuts and the recession.

I recently received an e-mail from a Brent employee sent from their office at 7.30pm. Increased work demands result in longer (often unpaid) hours, increased stress and eventually increased sickness.  As a result so-called 'efficiency savings' actually result in inefficiency.This is exacerbated by the fact that many senior staff have taken redundancy leaving less experienced colleagues to deal with complex issues. The result is errors, delays and even loss of some funding in the case of the temporary primary school expansion programme. The setting of final school budgets for the current financial year have been delayed as firm figures are not yet available from the Council and it is likely that schools will not be able to submit their final figures, approved by governing bodies, until June. This may cause cash flow problems in some schools.

The central education services provided by the Council, which are 'bought-in' by schools, have had their workforces cut but the schools are being charged more. Many schools are looking to buy them from elsewhere on the basis that this offer is poor value for money (they have a statutory duty to look for 'best value') but information on Council service level agreements and precise costings were received so late in the budget making process that there has not been time to do this effectively. Other schools have reduced the number of services they buy-in, while some have wanted to support the local authority and decided to buy-in for this year and review the situation in 2012.

As different departments seek to meet savings targets and manage workload boundaries become more strictly policed, and disputes arise about which department is responsible for a particular area. Disputes involving say the clearing of rubbish from a vicinity arise as the Parks Department, Streetcare and Brent Housing Partnership all claim it is not their responsibility.  At a broader level there are likely to be disputes between the Council and Health over funding of particular areas of special needs such as speech therapy.

Inaccuracies, delays and lack of response are all likely to irritate the general public and infuriate them at times. Rather than blame the poor workers who are trying to hold things together against the odds we should put the blame firmly where it belongs: the Coalition for reducing local government funding and front-loading the cuts and the Labour Party and Labour councils for not putting up more of a fight.

The Wall Street Journal sums up Brent's library closures and the Civic Centre

When they write the history books, the councilmen and bureaucrats who chose to close a library rather than postpone some self-aggrandizing boondoggle won't make the cut, even if, for now, they are making the headlines.

See what the kids of College Green Nursery think LINK

Wembley Park Rubbish Dump

Returning to Wembley on Saturday evening after a brief holiday,  I was struck by the enormous amount of rubbish on Bridge Road and Forty Lane left by fans attending the match between Manchester United and Manchester City.  The bright blue carrier bags, discarded beer cans and take-away containers were scattered over the pavements, in the gutter, and on the grassy banks of the flats opposite ASDA. It was clear that many fans bought beer in bulk from the shops and then drank it at the roadside.

As I walked up Bridge Road local residents were steering their way through the rubbish and stepping over pools of beer on the pavement.  A child of about seven clutched his mother's hand and complained about the 'horrible smell'. On the corner I encountered a gang of street cleaners desperately trying to work out a practical way of tacking the mess in the time allotted to them.

There was much more debris than usual because of Saturday's late 5.15pm kick-off which allowed fans to get hours of solid drinking and snacking in before the match. According to the Guardian the late kick-off, arranged for the benefit of maximising ITV's live audience, had been criticised by the police, who saw it as a 'high grade' risk and by Virgin Trains. Alex Ferguson criticised the massive consumption of fuel entailed in getting two sets of Manchester fans down to London. The FA requires semi-finals to be played at Wembley to help pay for the out-standing stadium construction fees.


A suited drinker who was not a football fan approached me to ask where the nearest pub was as both the Torch and the Crock of Gold had closed because of the pressure of too many drinkers.  The Council's decision to build a mega library at the new Civic Centre, close to the stadium, looks even more foolish in the light of these events. Will the library have to close on match days and match evenings?

Library closure decision under scrutiny by councillors as campaigns band together and legal challenge mounted

The Council's library consultation and closure decision will come under scrutiny again on Wednesday April 27th at the Call In Overview and Scrutiny Committee. It will form the main part of the agenda as set out below:

• To fully investigate all proposed business plans put forward by all
campaign groups
• To discuss fully the impact of the closures on age and race equality
issues.

Suggested action for the Call-in Overview and Scrutiny Committee to
take:-
One group of councillors suggested the following:-
• To consider the full implications of the decision and to discuss
alternative methods of library service delivery.
Another group of councillors suggested the following:-
• To consider how to support community and other groups in running
their library services locally by providing sufficient time for business
plans to be developed.
• To consider possible efficiency savings and the use of the
Council’s financial reserves to enable further library service
delivery.

BRENT SOS LIBRARIES

 

Meanwhile the separate library campaigns have set up a joint  campaign BRENT SOS (Save our Six) LIBRARIES.  There will be legal action in court this week to lodge a judicial review and an attempt to stay any action by the Council while the case is heard.

The Council's action at Charteris Sports Centre when they boarded up the Centre with police present in advance of the expected closure is a worrying precedent. Be alert!

Continue the Fightback - come to Monday's meeting

The next Brent Fightback meeting is tomorrow, Monday April 18th 7.30pm, at Brent Trades Hall/Apollo Club. 375 High Road, Willesden - Dollis Hill tube. 

All are welcome, we will be discussing the next steps in building the campaign against the cuts, in particular:

• The continuing campaign in defence of Brent’s libraries after the Council’s decision to close six;
• The proposal to conduct a “People’s Scrutiny” of the cuts on May 7th in Wembley;
• Building for the MARCH TO SAVE THE NHS, Tuesday 17 May 5.30pm

Jayaben Desai: Lessons from the past for the future

The scene outside Grunwick's, Chapter Road, Willesden as painted by Dan Jones

The Tricycle Cinema was crowded this afternoon for a commemoration of Jayaben Desai, leader of the Grunwick Strike Committee, who died in December 2010.  The meeting temporarily brought together councillors and activists who have recently been battling over local council cuts.  As the audience reflected on the events of the 1970s both sides could draw lessons from this historical strike.

As I watched the film and once again saw Jayaben's bravery in the face of police violence, her impish sense of humour that bettered many a journalist, her self-identification as a strong woman against crude stereotypes of Asian female submissiveness and  most of all her steadfastness in standing up for her rights and that of her fellow workers, I could not help but be moved.  As people spoke about Jayaben from different perspectives our appreciation deepened. We heard from Amrit Wilson how Jayaben invited her to her home and talked at length about herself and the strike and the links with race and colonial struggle. It was alleged that George Ward, the Grunwick boss, continued to pursue Jayaben after her death, with threats of legal action against obituarists who mentioned accusations of racism  at Grunwick.

We heard from an Asian Women's group how Jayaben clashed with the group's chair about the suppression of ego and advised the women to stop buying jewellery with their money but instead empower themselves by using the money instead to buy driving lessons. It also emerged that she was an erudite contributor to the Gujerati Literary Society.

Cllr Janice Long asked for support to persuade Brent Council to name a building after Jayaben Desai to commemorate her life and urged to audience to write to the leader of the council, Cllr Ann John, who was  also present. Another speaker, stressing the need for children to be educated about the importance of Jayaben's role, urged that a school be named after here.

Broader issues were also raised. Pete Firmin linked the struggles of immigrant workers, and the support they received from  rank and file white trade unionists, with David Cameron's attacks on multiculturalism and the attempt to divide new arrivals into 'good' and 'bad' migrants.  Jack Dromey, then Secretary of Brent Trades Council and now a Labour MP reminded the meeting that a few years before Grunwick, dockers and Smithfield meat porters had marched in support of Enoch Powell after his 'rivers of blood' speech. Jayaben had said, 'We are lions - I am afraid of no one' . She went on to say that the strike had shown that immigrant workers will fight and white workers will support them. Dromey concluded that Grunwicks had 'demonstrated all that is best in our movement and in our immigrant community'.

There were many critical comments about the TUC's role at Grunwick's and warnings that their lack of will to fully use their potential power remains in 2011 as we face the attacks on public services, benefits and the vulnerable. Geoff Shears, at the time a young  legal representative for the strikers, confessed that he had felt intimidated by Mrs Desai.   He said that anti-trade union laws did not exist in their present form then but instead there was a conspiracy that enabled courts to break the law by restricting the solidarity action of postal workers, the police to break the law by attacking pickets, and George Ward to ignore the recommendations of the Scarman Inquiry that came down 90% in favour of the strikers.  He said that had prepared the ground for Thatcher in the 1980s and warned that it would be used again by the Coalition government.  Mrs Desai had understood the meaning of solidarity as requirement for workers to organise collectively to ensure that the unions served their interests.

Billy Hayes, General Secretary of the Communication  Workers Union (successor to the Union of Post Office Workers) said that the union's next conference would be considering awarding honorary membership to Jayaben Desai and wiping out the fines imposed by the union on the Cricklewood postmen who refused to deliver Grunwick mail at the time.

As I have remarked on this blog before LINK Jayeben and the story of Grunwick is a far better subject for children to study in Brent Black History Month than rehashed versions of American black history that currently dominate the curriculum.

URGENT - library consultation critique needed by noon tomorrow

The Kensal Rise Library Users have put out an urgent call for feedback to to their legal advisers concerning the Council's consultation on libraries. The feedback is need by noon tomorrow (Monday 18th April). Send to kensalriselibraryusers@hotmail.co.uk

1. in what ways is the statistical information about use of the
 libraries up for closure misleadingly presented in the officers'report?:

2. what relevant information about local needs and impact of the
proposed closures could the Council gave gathered, but did not (e.g. the
views of schools, the Education Dept., regular users who were
disproportionately under represented amongst consultation responders)
and what difference might that information have made?;

3. what else is wrong with the needs assessment included in the
officers' reports?;

4. the impact of the six closures on use of the remaining libraries (and
indeed the impact of the future planned closure of one of the remaining
ones) does not seem to have been analysed. This seems to be a serious
shortcoming. In your view, if the Council's plans are successful and all
those who currently use the six libraries up for closure do use the six
remaining ones, will that be practical? If not, what particular problems
will there be;

5. are there groups that can be defined in terms of race, gender,
sexuality, disability and religion whose particular needs are met by one
or more of the libraries up for closure, but will not be in future and
have not been taken into account in the equality impact assessment: and

6. what comments the public made in response to the consultation (by any
means - i.e. in meetings or written submissions as well as on the
on-line questionnaire) that were either not passed on to the Cabinet, or
were summarized in a misleading way?
 

Labour Councillor: Closing libraries is 'the best thing we've done'.

I am just back from holiday and catching up on local news. It was no surprise to hear that the Brent Executive voted through the library closures as that decision was anticipated by the budget approved by the Council earlier, by the officers' report to the Council and by Cllr Powney's utterances throughout. 'Consultation', 9,000 petition signatures, 'Big Society' schemes and even two hours of eloquent  presentations to the Executive. mean nothing if the Labour leadership and its supine councillors have already made up their minds.

The attitude of some Labour councillors is summed up by this comment posted on the Save Preston Library Facebook page. Cllr Colum Mahoney was alleged to have said at the end of the meeting when demonstrators said how gutted they were at losing their library:

He said with a wide grin on his face, "It's the best thing we've done." As we he was walking out of the Town Hall doors, he shouted back at us, "Go and read some books."

The issue of the Civic Centre has come to the fore as a result of the press and TV coverage and the Conservatives on the Council, despite being part of the previous Council Coalition that initiated the project, are now more vocal in their opposition. When all the political parties on the council voted unanimously for the Civic Centre, the Greens were the only voice of opposition.  Cllr Reg Colwill can bee seen on the London ITN News criticising the project:



Interestingly even the Wall Street Journal LINK suggests that Brent Council could move into cheap office space:

......instead of constructing what it aims to be "the greenest building in the U.K." Forgoing the new center's wedding garden, winter garden, terrace, and charging points for electric cars might also leave a little more cash for libraries.

My colleague Shahrar Ali has posted a report on the Executive Meeting HERE

The question for me remains, 'What price local democracy?' The Willesden and Brent Times last week in a editorial echoed my warnings about the impact of poor consultation procedures, decisions made in advance of consultations and the rubbishing of active citizenship on the electorate's long-term relationship with the Council. The Council may express concern that only 20% of residents use the public libraries - those same 20% are probably a much bigger proportion of those people who actually vote at local elections (only just over half of those on the electoral roll last May).