Sunset on a warm December day

Sunset over Barn Hill today

Temperatures hit 16C today against a normal December average of 7C. It was all a bit odd as I walked on Barn Hill. Someone with their shirt off lounging in the grass, catching the last rays of the December sun, a robin in full throated song as if Spring had already arrived, a woodpecker drumming frantically on a hollow tree, and on my return a daffodil in bud in my front garden.

If climate change is going to limit humans' future on the planet our last disastrous days may also be accompanied by an uncanny, regretful, staggering beauty.

Conditional discharge for Sweets Way social cleansing resisters

Brent activists joined those from Barnet at a solidarity demonstration outside Willesden Magistrates Court.

People from the Sweets Way Resists campaign were appearing before magistrates charged with obstructing High Court enforcement officers when they were evicting tenants from Sweets Way, in what campaigners see as enforcing social cleansing.

The accused were given a conditional charge, which means no prison sentence or fines, but they may have court costs awarded against them.

SweetsWay Website

Corbyn statement on council cuts presents problem for local activists

The statement from Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell stating that local council have no choice but to implement cuts is going to present a real problem for local activists, long critical of Brent Council’s ‘dented shield’ approach, who have joined the Labour Party and got involved in Brent Momentum. And, 'Yes' the actions of the Green minority council in Brighton presented similar problems for socialists in the Green Party'

From the Guardian article:

The statement from Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, published in the Guardian LINK  essentially sets out the 'dented shield' strategy - that Labour councils are better placed to make cuts 'fairer' than those that would result in them being carried out by council offers or the Tory Secretary of State:

In a letter sent jointly with John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, and Jon Trickett, the shadow communities secretary, Corbyn points out that councils must set a balanced budget under the 1992 Local Government Act.

The letter says: “If this does not happen, ie if a council fails to set a legal budget, then the council’s section 151 officer is required to issue the council with a notice under section 114 of the Local Government Act 1998. Councillors are then required to take all actions necessary to bring the budget back into balance.”

Failure to set a balanced budget can lead to action against councillors under the code of conduct, a judicial review and, more significantly, intervention by the secretary of state, the joint letter states. It continues: “It would mean either council officers or, worse still, Tory ministers deciding council spending priorities. Their priorities would certainly not meet the needs of the communities which elected us."

This is essentially what Muhammed Butt and Michael Pavey have been arguing as they have made cuts in successive years.

A Green Left colleague commented on the Labour leadership's statement:

No doubt JC & JM feel that they “have no choice” as 95%+ of their councillors support this approach. But it does undermine those trade unionists and campaigners actively arguing for them to stand up to the Tories. It implies there is no choice, when of course there is a choice. Labour has over 100 Councils. If Labour nationally opposed the cuts and organised some or all of its councils to refuse to implement them, there is absolutely no way the Government could send in Commissioners to run them all. It would provoke a huge national debate on the cuts and local democracy, and have the potential to force the Government to back down partly or wholly. As it is, right-wing Labour councillors are tweeting the letter to attack anyone on the Left campaigning against the cuts.

In the end, the problem with the JC letter is that it completely understates the scale of the attack on local government and local democracy. This is not “business as usual”, a few nasty cuts etc.  This is a once in a lifetime, permanent dismantling and shrinkage of the local state, a huge extension of privatisation of local services and an undermining of local democracy itself - there is little point in having locally elected councillors if their job is (from Nicholas Ridley’s famous quote): “to meet once a year to hand out the contracts”.

The only silver lining in the letter is its appeal for councillors to support local campaigners (even if this is clearly contradictory to their councillors supporting cuts budgets!) and to be organising mass campaigns against local government cuts. This gives an opportunity to campaigners to point out that Labour councillors are only doing one half of the message from the JC letter, and not the other.

But it really could have been so much better.

According to the Guardian some Momentum branches have been pushing for a more radical approach:

It is known that Corbyn’s office has discussed various forms of defiance strategy with council leaders, such as setting a needs-based budget. This idea has been raised at some meetings of Momentum, the pressure group set up by Corbyn supporters to retain his support in the wider Labour movement. According to a Socialist party account, some Momentum group meetings are backing illegal budgets, and are planning to call for them early next year.

The account states that a conference is being planned to oppose budget cuts: “Given that we were told that Bristol has the largest Momentum group outside London, with a network already of over 800 names, there is real scope for a conference to be an important milestone in our campaign. It was explicitly agreed within both the Action Hub and the plenary session that part of the campaign against local authority budget cuts should also involve writing to every Labour and Green councillor and candidate, demanding that they refuse to comply with any cuts budgets."

Since the local government cuts began the idea of setting a needs-based budget has been raised, with a softer position being constructing a needs-based budget in parallel with a cuts budget. The former could then become a tool in campaigning for a budget (and thus funding) that really meets local needs whilst at the same time setting a balanced budget that fends of government intervention.

Can any real campaign be built between Councils, some of which like Brent are not exactly stuffued with Corbyn supporters, and labour and trade union movement and the wider community?

After all, Brent Council leader Muhamemd Butt, said that budgets for the next two years will be 'cutting into the muscle, if not the bone, of local services.'

A critical approach to Prevent in Brent

Following on from the Public Meeting on 'Prevent in Brent' on December 10th I accompanied members of An-Nisa Society to a meeting on Tuesday December 15th with Cllr Muhammed Butt, Leader of Brent Council, Cllr Harbi Farah and Chris Williams, Brent Council Head of Community Safety to express our concerns. This was the day after Brent Council Cabinet had approved the 'Stronger Communities Strategy' LINK  and just before the GLA Policing and Crime Committee issued its critical report on Prevent. LINK

An An-Nisa Society spokesperson issued the following statement after the meeting:

There was a frank exchange of views when we met with Cllr Butt and we made it clear that we thought the Prevent Strategy should be abolished and that a strong statement should be made by Brent Council about its short comings.

The top-down whole community model stereotypes the entire Muslim community, makes it open to surveillance and increases Islamophobia. Naturally this produces suspicion and fear and undermines an individual’s sense of self and belonging. We believe the emphasis should be on developing social cohesion and tackling inequality - not creating social division. While recognising this, Muhammed Butt said that the Council was limited by its statutory obligation and the threat of government takeover of local implementation if the borough was deemed not to be delivering Prevent properly.

The Council was not able to modify the WRAP (Workshop Raising Awareness of Prevent) training and had to keep secret much of their Prevent work. This lack of transparency is a concern we raised at the meeting and at the Public Event.

Arising from the meeting Muhammed Butt promised to issue a public statement on Prevent and to invite the Monitoring Prevent in Brent organisers to address cabinet and senior officers on their concerns. He would also help facilitate a meeting with Brent headteachers.

On Wednesday December 16th, Cllr James Denselow, Lead Member for Stronger Communities, published the following blog on the Brent Council website LINK :

The threat of terrorism isn’t new to Londoners but is now fresh in our minds following the rise of the self-proclaimed ‘Islamic State’ and the Paris attacks and the stabbing at Leytonstone tube station. 

Cases in the courts and in the news have highlighted Brits travelling abroad to receive terrorist training. 
We’re now awake to the concept of ‘lone-wolf’ attacks, by people radicalised over the Internet without having any solid links to organised extremist networks.

It’s worth remembering that there is as much of a difference between Islamic extremist terrorism and the faith of the vast majority of Muslims as there is between the Ku Klux Klan’s cross-burning lynching parties and your local Christian vicar’s tea party and charity tombola.

In addition to the threat of terrorism there is also the challenge of the pernicious growth in the number of random anti-Muslim attacks in the UK in the aftermath of extremist incidents.  
Let’s call them what they are – hate crimes.

Brent is Britain’s most diverse borough, so this isn’t an abstract worry for us – it is real, and immediate. In the 12 months up to this October, there were 509 racist and religious hate crimes recorded in Brent, up from 460 the previous year.  Ten a week makes this a substantial issue.

This is an issue all across London, and Brent is still a safe and welcoming place to live, with crime rates falling.  We’re determined to maintain and enhance that.

We know how events that happen on the streets of Raqqa can travel around the world from Syria to our part of North West London within minutes.  Social media and 24 hours rolling news have made a big world feel very small sometimes.

The risk of hidden extremism in our neighbourhoods is painfully real.  It’s no good just wringing our hands – it’s the job of those of us elected to public office to do something about this.

At a national government level, the strategy designed to stop individuals being radicalised, whether from right-wing extremists or, so-called, Islamic extremists is called Prevent, and it’s our legal duty as a local council to cooperate with central government, the police and others to advance its objectives.

It’s important though to remember that Prevent is not just about Islamic Extremism – it tackles radicalisation from whatever direction, including far-right extremism.  Indeed, around 30 per cent of ‘Channel’ cases (catching signs of extremism early amongst young people) are about far-right activity.

As ever, when there’s a tricky issue, the first step is to acknowledge that there is something real that needs to be dealt with.  Ignoring one wrong in the process of tackling a second wrong has never worked well in the long-term.

Whilst public services have a central role in dealing with these issues, we can’t deal with them on our own.  We need local communities, neighbourhoods, families and individuals to come together to tackle extremism, together.

We need communities – and faith groups in particular – to acknowledge that religious extremism is a real issue, and that some young people are at risk of being attracted to it.  We need this to be talked about in community centres – and yes, in Mosques too.  We need to challenge extremism if and when we hear it.  Many of our faith leaders are already leading the way.

We need families to accept that they have a responsibility too.  Do you know where your children are and what they’re up to?  Are they falling in with the wrong crowd?  Are they being taken advantage of, groomed even?  It happens rarely, but it should be as worrying if your child was being groomed and lured into religious extremism as if they were being groomed for drugs, gang violence or sexual exploitation.  Sadly, too often several of these threats go hand in hand.

It’s our job to support communities and families in this.

If a community leader has a concern, they need to know there is someone they can go to who will take their concern seriously, and look into it, but without overreacting.

If a family member or a neighbour has a concern about a young person being led astray, they need to know there is someone they can speak to who can offer practical help, but without labelling them a bad parent or their child a criminal.

We need to work harder, but we need this to be matched increasingly by our communities and every individual playing their part. 

Considering this all together, that’s why we’re trying something genuinely new here in Brent.

In our Stronger Communities Strategy which we agreed this week, we’re not just doing more of the same.

We’re not turning our back on Prevent – but we want to go much further, and to build an approach that our community owns and engages with, not one that some feel is being done to them by a distant government that doesn’t understand.

Our new approach in going further is to say to our communities: we’ll work with you to construct your own solutions.  If you’re uncomfortable feeling that you’re being done to – now’s the chance to take control and ownership yourselves.

This model of co-production has worked well in other areas of social policy – but this is the first time such an approach is being taken on the streets of London to an issue like tackling violent extremism.

In the meantime, we need all to accept responsibility for challenging anti-Muslim prejudice and violence.  Not only is it just plain wrong, but it also does more harm than good – throwing up barriers between communities that we ought instead to be breaking down.

Problems this big require solutions just as big.  These are problems that affect all of us, so we all need to be part of the solution too.

Let’s start by talking about it.

This does not amount to a 'strong statement on the short-comings of the Prevent Strategy but perhaps that is still to come.  There is certainly much to discuss, including addressing the issue of a community feeling under surveillance.  This is from the Brent Stronger Communities Strategy about the 'Community Champions' Brent intends to recruit:

The new Community Champions will form part of a small network of non-statutory partners who will help other partners to act as eyes and ears in the community relaying messages in both directions.

It is interesting to recall that in the 1980s the tabloid press railed against 'Spies in the classroom' when Brent Council 's DPRE was attempting to challenge racism in education. Now some are seeing the Prevent Strategy as a spying system with teachers and social workers in the role of intelligence officers.

In her statement on the GLA Committee report, Green Assembly Member Jenny Jones aid:

[Prevent] may hinder the development of the counter-narrative in classrooms and colleges as communities withdraw from discussions in those controlled spaces.

Meanwhile Monitoring Prevent in Brent will continue its work. It can be found on Facebook HERE

Kensal Green By-election Result

Chris Alley Conservative 255
Jumbo Chan Labour 931
Sarah Dickson Lib Dem 417
Jafar Hassan Green Party 102
Juliette Nibbs UKIP 38

Labour achieved 53% of the vote.
Turnout 20.3%

FULL RESULT

Planning Committee sinks plans for a swimming pool at the former Brent Town Hall

The Kilburn Times has reported LINK that Brent Council Planning Committee has refused permission for the fee paying Lycee International de Londres Winston Churchill to build a 5 lane swiming pool sunken into the garden area in front of the former Brent Town Hall bulding, adjacent to Forty Lane and the Paddocks.

There were few objections to the plans and the Planning Officers' Report recommended approval  LINK  and continued to do so after members of the Committee visited the site and raised various issues  LINK 

The Kilburn Times quotes a Brent Council spokesperson: “The Planning Committee voted unanimously to refuse the proposal based, in particular, on concerns about its effect on the setting and views of the Grade II Listed Building on this prominent frontage site.”

This is an impression of the new pool building included in the planning application:

The refusal comes as a surprise and some local people and schools had been looking forward to the promised public access when the pool was not being used by the French School.

Around the corner there is some uncertainty over the promised community swimming pool, and the extent of public access.  on the site of the former Dexion House. This would be a 2,500 m2 pool in the basement of one of two new buildings which are given over to student accommodation.

Sweets Way Solidarity Rally, Willesden Magistrates Court, 1pm Friday

From Sweets Way Resists

JOIN US TO STAND UP AGAINST SOCIAL CLEANSING AND THE CRIMINALISATION OF PEACEFUL PROTEST!

On 23 and 24 of September, the Sweets Way estate was evicted by dozens of High Court bailiffs and 7 vans of London Met police. Nearly a hundred occupiers of dozens of homes were turfed out, as was Mostafa, the last original resident of the estate. Supporters peacefully attempted to stop Mostafa's eviction, many of whom were arrested. Fifteen now face criminal charges for obstructing High Court Enforcement Officers.

Their trial is scheduled to take place over three days, from 10am on Wednesday, December 16, through Friday, December 18. Supporters are encouraged to attend the hearings each day, but we are calling a solidarity rally outside Willesdon Magistrates Court for 1pm on Friday, December 18 to take a stand with those who were arrested for standing up to social cleansing.

Decline in air pollution masking major problems in UK cities

From the British Heart Foundation

The British Heart Foundation (BHF) is disappointed with the air quality plans released today and concerned that new emissions data might be interpreted positively when the UK population continues to live with a serious air pollution problem.

While the BHF is pleased to see that the new emissions data also released by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) today shows a continuing decline in emissions in the UK as a whole, the charity argues this is a distraction from the localised air quality problems that the Government has so far failed to act upon.

The Supreme Court order handed down to Defra earlier this year clearly shows that the UK is breaching its duty to clean up the UK’s dirty air yet the BHF feels that the Government’s air quality plans are not strong enough to effectively tackle these localised air pollution problems.

Laura Thomas, Head of Policy at the British Heart Foundation, said:

While pollution levels as a whole are declining, air pollution hot spots in many UK cities are seriously damaging our health. The devil is in the detail and the Government cannot use general statistics like this to shirk its responsibilities to clean up the UK’s dirty air. This is particularly worrying when we know how dangerous air pollution is for a person’s health – raising their risk of a deadly or disabling heart attack or stroke.

While these figures are superficially promising, they’re so shrouded in smog they’re harder to navigate than Oxford Street on Christmas Eve. They mask the major air quality problems faced by people living or working in UK air pollution hotspots such as areas of London and the Midlands.

The public deserves clean air that will not harm their heart health. We’re disappointed with the lack of ambition shown by the Government in this plan to clean up the UK’s air. Proposing five clean air zones where polluting vehicles will be allowed to drive as long as they pay to do so will harm heart health.

Since 2010 the BHF has provided nearly £7 million for medical research that will help us better understand the link between air pollution and cardiovascular disease. We have learnt that air pollution can make existing heart conditions worse and cause cardiovascular events in vulnerable groups. Recent studies have linked air pollution to increased incidence of heart attacks, strokes and a worsening of heart failurw/

There are 7 million people in the UK living with cardiovascular disease and the likelihood of their exposure to air pollution is high. It is therefore imperative the governments and administrations around the UK ensure they are meeting European Union air quality limits and targets as soon as possible to improve air quality.

Find out more about air pollution and heart health at bhf.org.uk/airpollution