On Turkeys and Tents

Just as I predicted, it would appear the Lead Member and his administration at LBH have instigated a coup against the leadership of the Hounslow Federation of Tenants' and Residents' Associations (HFTRA). When the next meeting takes place they will be replaced with a compliant leadership comprised exclusively of turkeys eagerly looking forward to the coming of the Christmas season, and HFTRA will be safely back where it was when I was Lead Member - in the pockets of the local Labour Party. However with the current HFTRA leadership having vacated the tent, I do hope the Lead Member and his new "tenant leaders" have remembered to pack their umbrella.

Honest Politics and the Common Good

If we have lost trust in our politicians and political parties, how are we going to govern ourselves? What might reform and rejuvenate our politics?

Recently I went to a talk in London by veteran American campaigner Jim Wallis, and I think his proposal of a return to the old concept of ‘the Common Good’ could be the fifth thread of possibility for a faster revival of Independents in local and national politics.

Independents are able to speak out, but have often not been listened to because people do not know what they believe or what they stand for. Independents are not a political party, they do not have policies.

But over the last few years, as the Independent Network has discussed and experimented, four threads of possibility have emerged:

Honest Politics – we have set the Bell Principles as the standard by which we believe Independents should act in local and national politics.

It’s the Person not the Party – we encourage candidates to promote their campaign by getting prominent local people to endorse them, write about them, commend them: in this way, rather than the Independent Candidate asking to be believed and trusted on their own assessment of their own competence, the Candidate is calling on independent evidence from known trusted sources.

Improve the Election Process – Political Parties have the benefit of members who can deliver leaflets, so the election process is weighted against the small parties and Independents. Very often people will vote by post without seeing many of the candidate manifestos. Independents can set better standards by setting up a website and posting up all the candidates’ manifestos, by working with other candidates to share deliveries, by persuading more voters to vote by post only after looking at all the candidates, and to campaign for manifestos to be included with postal voting forms.

The Party Party – a Political Party is also a social network, where people enjoy working together on a shared interest. Many enjoy talking about politics, but do not like the idea of commitment to any one political party. ‘Politics for All’ meetings are a way of inviting anybody (including members of all the political parties) to a social event that will include wide ranging debates on local and national issues. Through such meetings, people with an interest but no commitment can find out how to get involved.

None of these four threads address the issue: but what do Independents stand for or believe?

Perhaps Wallis’ revisiting of the Common Good as a rallying point for political activism is a possible fifth thread that would make up a platform for Independents under the banner of Honest Politics and the Common Good. Wallis does not advocate utilitarianism, the greatest happiness of the greatest number, as Bentham put it. The Common Good has to take into account individual rights and the rights of minorities, so for an Independent Politician there will need to be constant listening and negotiation.

The Independent politician will need to be a leader and an advocate, a person willing and able to argue the case for a minority against vested interests and big business, a person able to persuade and inspire. Politics is not a clean game. It is messy and by its very nature requires compromise and fudge. Maintaining personal integrity is a major challenge for an Independent politician, and so having an over-arching vision of the Common Good will help set a framework and a compass when in situations with conflicting demands.

So how do these Five Threads of Possibility sound to you?

• Honest Politics • Person not Party • Improve the Election Process • Politics for all, we know how to Party • Our Policy is the Common Good of our nation and community

All of this works best at a local level – Parish, Town and District Council. When it gets to County, National and European levels, there is a need for political parties that are shorthand for a specific type of policies. However, as coalition becomes more likely, the Independent or group of Independents all focused on the over-arching Common Good can have great influence, out of all proportion to their numbers.


Reproduced with acknowledgements to Independent Network

On Honour - With a Little Knowledge, Trust and Respect

I was fascinated to read the story about Captain Robert Campbell, a World War One British Army officer who was captured by the Germans and sent to a prisoner of war camp in Magdeburg.

Whilst he was in captivity he received the sad news that his mother back home was dying of cancer. Desperate to be at her side for her final hours, Captain Campbell wrote a personal appeal to the Kaiser asking that he be allowed to go home. His request was granted - on the condition that he returned once his business back in England was done.

Having spent a week with his mother in Gravesend before she sadly passed away, Captain Campbell dutifully returned to Germany to hand himself over once again to his captors. As soon as he was safely under lock and key he set about trying to escape once more, as indeed is the patriotic duty of any prisoner of war.

What strikes one immediately is the incredible sense of honour that led Captain Campbell to keep to his word. He could quite easily have reneged on his promise. This was war, after all. However he had given his word to the Kaiser and he felt bound to stick to it.

It wasn't only about honouring a promise, of course. What Captain Campbell knew was that if he had broken his word, the next British prisoner who had found himself in a similar position would not have been granted the same favour. Having experienced the sense of helplessness and despair that came with the news that his mother was ill when he was locked away as a captive in a foreign land, he could not bear the thought of putting somebody else through that same heartbreak. By sticking to his word, just possibly if the situation were to arise again somebody else might be granted the same favour.

I could not help when reading this story but to compare the supremely noble and selfless actions of Captain Campbell with the perennially unscrupulous and self-serving ways of the modern politician. When the then Deputy Leader of the Hounslow Labour Group, Councillor Ruth Cadbury, told a Borough Council meeting back in 2007 that lying to electors in the course of trying to win their votes was perfectly acceptable and simply "politics", it would not have occurred to her that anybody listening to her words would have felt unable to trust the word of any member of her Group again.

Ruth now, of course, has her eyes on a bigger prize - the Labour nomination for the Brentford & Isleworth constituency at the General Election which is likely to take place in 2015. Yesterday one of our members received through the post her "election address". Entitled "Ruth2Win", Ruth describes herself as the candidate who is "Well Known, Well Trusted, Well Respected", and appeals to fellow Labour members to support her on the basis of her not unimpressive track record in representing her party in the area since the early 1980s.

Although I have a lot of time for her as an individual and recognise and respect her commitment to the cause of her Party, if she was selected as a parliamentary candidate I would not feel able to vote for Ruth on account of her attitude towards political campaigning. I am one of those sad people who thinks there is still a need for honesty and integrity in our politics.

Nevertheless it is nice to see more openness and less secrecy in the candidate selection process, to the point where even spectators such as myself feel moved to take an interest. May the best man (or woman) win.

New HFTRA Website Explains Current Crisis

A new website launched by the Hounslow Federation of Tenants' and Residents' Associations (HFTRA) gives an essential insight into the crisis in its current relationship with the London Borough of Hounslow, which has led to its funding being withdrawn and a refusal by the Council's Lead Member to meet to discuss the implications for the borough's 16,000 local authority tenancies and 8,000 leaseholds and for community involvement in Hounslow.

I will have more to say on this important issue very soon, but in the meantime please do visit the new site at www.hftra2013.org.

Time for Union Bosses to Get Real

I haven't had much that is positive to say about Labour recently. In Ed Miliband's quarrel with Len McCluskey over candidate selection in Falkirk my instinct is to side with the latter - up to a point. What really is such a big deal about a party with socialist roots fielding a working class candidate selected primarily by working class party members? And why is the presence of a significant working class element in any constituency party automatically considered to be cause for suspicion?

And yet when the Labour leader talks of changing the rules of the relationship with the unions by asking union members who support Labour to opt in rather than expecting those who don't to opt out he is speaking so much good sense.

Perhaps as somebody who is both a trade unionist and a community activist I am biased on this question. But why is it that I am expected to pay a levy towards a party that hates me for what I am and what I do when outside work, just because I happen to be a member of a union when in wage-slave mode? We work for so many hours a day, and do other things with the remainder of our time. Are we all to be classified merely by what we do whilst selling our labour?

The time when I had a duty to support the Labour Party solely by virtue of my being an unskilled worker is very long past. I respect the right of union leaders to support the Labour Party if they so wish, but they have no right to impose their views on me.

HFTRA's Response to Hounslow Council's £12,000+ Propaganda Mailout

As I explained in my previous article Hounslow Labour's All-Out Assault on Community the London Borough of Hounslow has withheld funding from the Hounslow Federation of Tenants' and Residents' Associations (HFTRA), effectively preventing it from operating.

In the meantime the Lead Member for Housing and Lots of Other Things spared no (public) expense in circulating his version of events to the borough's 24,000 tenants and leaseholders by means of an unnecessarily expensive postal mailout.

Obviously without the benefit of funding HFTRA does not have the means to respond in kind. However I have reproduced below its reply to the Lead Member's allegations, send to elected members and various news media:



Dear Councillor,

Subject: Hounslow Federation of Tenants’ and Residents’ Association Partnership with London Borough of Hounslow Council

We are writing to you all to appraise you of our serious concerns at decisions that have been made by LBH to withhold grant aid and service support to HFTRA. The rationale and grounds for such decision we are not party too. We are aware of our need to both revisit and develop policies for HFTRA and we are dealing with such matters with the assistance of NFTRA, Community Matters, Council for Voluntary Action, external community development and legal advisers offering pro bono services.

In order to move forward we seek your support to maintain the” status quo” of our organisation in continued grant aid and service support partnership with LBH. This will ensure stability of your primary networking community sector organisation whilst meaningful discussions between LBH and HFTRA take place.

1. HFTRA has had discussions with Cllr Curran in regards to his concerns with our weakness in Financial Management recording. At no time has the London Borough of Hounslow expressed concern of any impropriety. We have agreed the need to have a clear Financial Management Policy and to move from traditional and outmoded Book-keeping to computer programmes appropriate and simple to operate, designed for small lay managed organisations. We looked at the Sage package, but we considered the less onerous package of “Quickbooks” to be best suited.

2. We seek to appraise you of what we understand are issues that it is suggested are included in a decision to withhold grant aid and services. There has never been an opportunity to jointly look at, and address such issues. It seems that LBH require us to become a registered charity particularly so that we are in a better position to bring in grant aid from grant giving charity trusts.

2.1 We were told that a grant would be dependent on our becoming a registered charity.

2.2 We are, as many thousands of local groups, a “voluntary not for profit organisation” but are open to consideration of becoming a charity. However HFTRA is concerned that this could lead to a permanent withdrawal of grant funding by LBH in the future.

2.3 We do consider it to be both wrong and misguided for a local authority to force any organisation to become a registered charity, such major change in structure, management and status bringing with it many onerous duties on lay volunteer trustee managers in the community.

2.4 HFTRA would seek specialist advice from professionals who are knowledgeable on the advantages and disadvantages of becoming a registered charity. They would be very aware of the Charities Act of the 1990’s and the Charities Act 2006. They would know that the simplicity requirements of becoming a registered charity have radically changed.

2.5 As to increasing our ability to bringing in grants because of charity status, everyone needs to be mindful of the financial impact on all sectors of our economy in the devastating Banking and Financial Services led recession. In reports from the Charity Commission the following analysis identifies a general lack of understanding of the impact on charities and charity trust grants:

2.5.1 There has been a major downturn in the annual £2billion in grant trust made by some 7,500 Grant Making Charity Trusts in England and Wales.

2.5.2 Charity Commission surveys show that 59% of charities report having been affected by serious drops in income from absence and growing competition for Charity Trust Grant aid.

2.5.3 It is evidenced that small Community sector lay volunteer managed Charities most often do not have either the resources or skills of the highly sophisticated and complex requirements in applying for grant aid. Grants available are now most often small and certainly not available for core expenditure requirements.

2.5.4 There are grants available to “not for profit organisations” and HFTRA seek the assistance in continued identification of such resources and training support in progressing such applications.

3. It seems that the fact HFTRA is not a registered charity is not in line with a requirement that any grant aid would be contingent on HFTRA becoming a charity. We know nothing of such a LBH policy.

4. It seems to be suggested that as an organisation we have no right to allow other organisations to use the Alf Chandler Centre. Surely, as a community development networking organisation, support to other local primarily voluntary managed community sector is our duty and entirely supportive of respective government policies and LBH Council. We have often been congratulated by LBH for our work.

5. It seems to be suggested that we are in breach of LBH requirements for use of the premises. We would argue that at best we have a common law unwritten Occupation License thus we do not understand how we can be in breach of an unwritten article nor do we understand why after all of our years of service provision as a networking organisation this matter should be raised in this way.

6. It seems to be suggested that our constitution makes no provision for the management of community premises. We are advised that whilst the constitution currently does not have a written objective on Community Premises Management, silence on the matter does not inhibit us legally nor constitutionally from managing community premises.

7. Whilst HFTRA has no formal lease on The Alf Chandler Centre nor a written “Occupation License” nor a written “Community premises Management Agreement” HFTRA management are concerned that this organisation has recently been treated as if invisible and certainly with disrespect. We were not informed or consulted with in regard to the visit to the site from LBH surveyors, you must understand that this has caused some concern, being left outside agendas for the possible re-development of the premises.

HFTRA is aware of the need to return to and develop its “Mission Statement”, Governing Instrument, Policies, management and Training. What we do not understand is why LBH has stepped outside a consultative and partnership approach and decided to remove grant aid and service support to what has been a good partner and previously well respected for its work.

We are sorry for the length of this communication but felt it essential to draw many issues directly to the attention of our Councillors. HFTRA is a strategic “cog” in community development and networking with community sector organisations rather than individual members of the public, the latter being the responsibility of all respective organisations we serve in the network.

We ask all Councillors to consider the matters we have drawn to your attention individually. Whilst HFTRA attempt to achieve wider financial support in advancement of “sustainability”, the removal of the core grant by LBH will herald the demise of the organisation and its services. We ask you to support our request for the “status Quo” in LBH Grant Aid and support services, and a return to a consultative process between partners.

Yours sincerely,

David Cox

HFTRA Chair

Hounslow Labour's All-Out Assault on Community

"In for a penny, in for a pound," goes the old saying. The concept is that if one has decided to commit to a particular outcome in any given situation then one should focus entirely and unrelentingly upon that outcome and not dither along the way.

Hounslow's ruling Labour Group would appear to be embracing this concept with gusto as we approach the local elections of 2014. Not unreasonably confident of a rout in its traditional quarrel with the Tories, Labour has quite clearly decided that the time is right to try to face down what it considers to be its real enemies - the organised community and residents' groups around the borough amongst which the Independent Community Group (ICG) almost certainly enjoys pride of place at the very summit of the hate list.

I have related elsewhere how Hounslow Council's Planning Committee, now safely returned in one piece to the Stone Age under the stewardship of Councillor Ruth Cadbury, eagerly endorsed the decision of the former Lead Member (Councillor Ruth Cadbury) to reject a series of amendments to the statutory Statement of Community Involvement (SCI) which had been drawn up by residents under the auspices of the expanding Group of 15+ and which would have given the SCI real meaning. The amendments had previously been adopted by the Planning Committee when it operated under the leadership of the unusually forward-thinking Labour councillor Theo Dennison.

Following on from this decision we have news that the current Lead Member for Planning, Regeneration, Housing, Celebrity Come Dancing and Virtually Everything Else is seeking to put an end to all formal contact between officers of the Council and G15+ and to replace it with a "forum", chaired by and with terms of reference drawn up by the local authority as opposed to the residents themselves as is presently the case. In other words a classic manifestation of the old "control or destroy" approach that has informed local Labour's relationship with community groups for at least a quarter of a century.

Meanwhile here in Isleworth the message we in the ICG are picking up amounts, essentially, to the old football supporters' invocation to "come and have a go if you think you're hard enough". In particular the threat to Isleworth Public Hall has begun once again to loom large, with sham consultations announced to coincide with the busy holiday period and timed to conclude after a decision has already been taken.

Council turns its guns on tenants

One area in which the gauntlet really has been thrown down is in respect of the 24,000 rented and leasehold properties which are owned by the local authority and managed by Hounslow Homes. Here the various resident groups come together under the umbrella of the Hounslow Federation of Tenants' and Residents' Associations (HFTRA), which has historically received and is entitled to expect funding from within the Housing Revenue Account (HRA) - the account to which rents and leaseholder charges are paid.

It was recently announced by the seemingly all-powerful Lead Member that funding to HFTRA had been withdrawn under what would appear, at least from the outside, to be highly dubious circumstances. A proposed meeting between HFTRA and the Lead Member to discuss the matter was cancelled by the latter as a punishment for HFTRA having the audacity to speak to the local press, although this publicity-shyness did not prevent the Lead Member from exploiting his advantage of office by widely circulating a £12,000+ propaganda mailout attacking HFTRA at the expense of the very tenants it represents.

Battle lines

Shocked and angered though we as a community may be we should at least be grateful that this most authoritarian of Labour administrations is setting out its stall in a more or less honest fashion, leaving absolutely no room for doubt as to where it stands on the question of community empowerment and in so doing clearly defining the battle lines for the forthcoming local elections in those areas in which the community is sufficiently well-organised to be able to make a challenge.

Activists should not fear a "trap" as such, this is simply about Labour trying to deal with its potentially more dangerous enemies in the organised community at a time when its conventional adversaries are at their weakest.

From their perspective it makes sense, but that does not mean it is a challenge we should walk away from. A handful of community, other independent and small party councillors, even operating in opposition to a large Labour majority administration, would set us up nicely for the much more favourable situation that 2018 is likely to present.

A Welcome Break in Ardgour

Not for the first time I found myself with a mountain to climb last week. This time however it was the highest mountain in the United Kingdom, having inexplicably allowed myself to be talked into a trip to Ben Nevis, which Caroline has always wanted to climb in celebration of a certain special birthday.

Thankfully at the time of said birthday, in early April, I wasn't able to get the time off work. This was particularly fortunate as the weather at that time was horrendous even in London, and I did not relish the prospect of trying to ascend Ben Nevis in snow and sub-zero temperatures.

Not that there was much danger of that happening this time around. Having heeded advice to go equipped with several layers of clothing and sundry waterproofs I ended up making the ascent shirtless, in what transpired to be 30-degree heat even at the top of the mountain.

It could have been different though. Having woken up at about 8.00 on an otherwise glorious Tuesday morning we were astounded to look out of the window only to see a heavy mist obscuring our view of more or less everything. Apparently this is quite normal in this part of the world, but had it lingered for half an hour longer than it did we would have been compelled to call off our mission.

As it happens I was surprised to make it to the summit. Although as a family we are quite good at planning events in the abstract, in practice we tend to leave everything to the last minute and travel unprepared. Even on this occasion we left half our water supplies back at the room and forgot to make good the deficit when we arrived at the store which is so conveniently located at the foot of the mountain.

But we did it, somehow, and I owe a big thank you to Caroline for persisting with this mad idea in the face of several unsuccessful attempts by myself to discourage it.

The climb itself occupied only one of four wonderful days in the Highlands. Having flown into Inverness on the first day we took a look around the city before heading off in our hired car to Ardgour (pronounced Ar-gower), which we reached with the aid of a car ferry some eight miles south of Fort William.

We stayed throughout at a marvellous little place called the Inn at Ardgour. I had feared that both the Inn and Ardgour itself would be too remote and unadventurous for our 16-year-old twins, but they loved it every bit as much as we did.

We were very fortunate to have had the weather we did, and I can imagine that Ardgour and indeed much of the region would be somewhat bleak when it is cold, and wet, and covered in snow. One minor disappointment was that I had been looking forward to undertaking my own personal "pub crawl" between the Inn and the Corran Inn, on the opposite side of the ferry crossing, but as fate had it the latter was closed for refurbishment.

All the same I would recommend the Inn at Ardgour to anybody for a nice break away from it all. The food is excellent, the bedrooms are clean and spacious and the hosts (English as it happens) are friendly and welcoming. The location is very much "away from it all", with scenery that is in places quite breathtaking. During our stay we took a pleasant boat cruise on Loch Linnhe, though I suspect the seals and porpoises which adorn their advertising material are as conspicuous by their absence as their monster.

And now, once more, into the breach.

The Summit of the Ben

Joe, Caz and Rosie at the Summit

Leaving Ardgour

Bringing Out Faith in Humankind

In the short month that has passed since I posted up the article Why Does Labour Want the ICG to Contest the 2014 Local Elections? the organisation has probably received more attention and enquiries than it had done for the previous twelve months.

Reporters have asked to meet us with press photographers in tow, new residents' groups and old ones have been linking up with us, borough-wide bodies representing various interest groups have been keen to establish common ground, and other independents and small parties have looked to discuss strategic alliances or even just to ask for advice.

Of course we are only too aware that, should we decide to run for office again in 2014, no number of alliances or private discussions will benefit us if we don't do the hard but really vital work on the doorsteps. But the volume of telephone calls and e-mails certainly puts paid to any ideas anyone may have had that the ICG is a spent force that can safely be discounted at the ballot box.

Why Does Labour Want the ICG to Contest the 2014 Local Elections?

It might seem an odd proposition on the surface of it. After all, in every local election since 1998 in Isleworth, and since 2002 in Syon, the Independent Community Group (ICG) has been Labour’s closest competitor, either winning the seats or running Labour a close second. Both wards being safely Labour in terms of the conventional Labour-Tory dichotomy, the logic of the situation might suggest that we are an opponent they could do without.

But logic in politics can be more convoluted than it is in other areas of life and sometimes, like in the Guinness advert, things aren’t always as they seem.

I have never considered myself to be naïve, but in respect of the 2010 local elections I made two simplistic assumptions – one just prior to the contest and one immediately after – the clumsiness of which taught me that my talents for reading and interpreting political events are nowhere close to being as flawless as I had hitherto liked to believe.

The first, which I have already documented elsewhere, was my costly miscalculation that the Conservatives, having been our partners in what to begin with at least had been an easy coalition, would see the benefit in not stepping on our toes in our two target wards (which from their own perspective were unwinnable). Whilst we all naturally understood their preference for an all-out Conservative administration we figured they would view the continuation of the coalition as a next-best option should they fail to achieve that.

What actually happened was that the Conservatives were so convinced they were on the cusp of an historic all-out victory that they consciously sought to oust the community councillors in Isleworth and Syon and to replace them with Labour ones, figuring that by so doing they would be creating for themselves a softer opposition for the four years of overall Conservative control that were to follow. This didn’t necessitate any kind of formal alliance with Labour. The coincidence of a natural convergence of interests was quite enough to do the trick.

The second miscalculation came in the immediate aftermath of our election defeat. Mindful of the fact that the ICG had commanded the votes of some 4000 people over three wards even in defeat, and aware that a new wave of Labour councillors in Isleworth would be looking to make their own mark, in their own style, on the communities they had been entrusted to serve, I simply assumed that they would be keen to engage with those thousands of people who had supported and voted for us, and that an opportunity had arisen, albeit in circumstances that we would have preferred not to have existed, for some kind of reappraisal of the relationship between Labour and the local community movement.

This assumption was made especially in consideration of the fact that our defeat and their victory made it reasonable for Labour to expect that they would be “in charge” as it were. Exhausted and drained after four years of very hard work, punching above our weight as the minority group in a coalition administration, and still if I am honest reeling from the demoralising effects of the Conservative betrayal, I do not believe the ICG’s price would have been a high one. Speaking strictly for myself, at that time I would have settled for more or less any arrangement that would have allowed me to walk away from the whole thing with my honour intact.

So I’ll admit it shocked me a tad to discover that Labour had other ideas. “Why should they (the new councillors) want to work with you?” they asked us on a local online forum, and to emphasise the point they hand-delivered a limited number of uniquely unpleasant leaflets to local residents containing little other than personal attacks on myself and other ICG personnel.

In the meantime we came under attack from a former Labour councillor who had clearly assumed, for reasons which were not explained, that the ICG would simply disappear following our defeat, and who seemed to take offence from the fact that members of a community group should continue to attend meetings and events in the community!

This, it would appear, was to be the basis of Labour’s continued problem with the situation as it had turned out, and the reason why our assumption – my assumption – that the party would want to reach an accommodation with our supporters turned out to be unsound. To put it quite simply and bluntly, they didn’t want any organised community activity on “their” patch. Fortified, no doubt, by tales of how things were in the good old days, they wanted complete control of our community life and expected it as the spoils of their victory. Such an outcome, of course, would have required the ICG to have vanished completely from the face of the Earth.

This then explains the spluttering anger of the former councillor as it eventually dawned on her that, election victory notwithstanding, things would never be permitted to revert to how they had been in her day, with every single “community” initiative having to be either dominated, or smothered, by members of her party. The new councillors, by contrast, were going to have to operate within a liberated environment.

It would seem to me that such is Labour’s determination to wield absolute power over our community that it is prepared to take the risk of losing the seats it gained in 2010 rather than continue to suffer the indignity of having to treat with civic leaders and free residents’ groups on anything approaching equal terms. The assumption being made now, just as it was in 2010, is that if the ICG fights the next election and loses we will all just mysteriously go away.

I have not mentioned outside influences, as I have in other articles, and there is a reason for this. Although in spite of Labour’s smirking protestations they certainly do exist, they could surely not be decisive in determining Labour’s local strategy without a good deal of willingness on the part of the local party.

I believe that if the ICG contests the local elections next year it will have a very good chance of recapturing the seats it lost. But if it doesn’t, let me be clear – we will be in the exact same situation that we are today. The ICG is here to stay, and those who care for the dignity and the well-being of our community will never roll over and die.

A Message to Mindu...

...pay your party dues. Don't be deselected on a technicality.

Here We Go Again!

At its most recent meeting the managing Committee of the Independent Community Group (ICG) expressed its great concern that the Group of 15 residents' associations, of which the ICG is a member, would appear to be being given the run-around by the Labour administration at the London Borough of Hounslow in connection with its contribution to the forthcoming and long-awaited Statement of Community Involvement (SCI).

A number of amendments submitted by residents to the original draft SCI were formally adopted by the Planning Committee under the chair of Councillor Theo Dennison back in December 2012. At the time we were advised that the proposed amendments, now with the Planning Committee's official endorsement, would be taken to Cabinet and thereafter to Borough Council in January. January became March and now, as we approach the latter half of April 2013, residents have been advised in a one-liner from Lead Member Ruth Cadbury that the proposed report has been pulled from agenda of the April Cabinet meeting too (with characteristic chutzpah Councillor Cadbury tried to sell this as some kind of good news story for the community on the grounds that "we have more time"!).

Attempts to seek clarification of the position from Councillor Cadbury have, at the time of writing, proved unsuccessful.

The ICG has never been convinced that the Cabinet would be happy to accept the community's lead on this process and it is our view that the process is being dragged out with a view to losing it in the confusion that invariably accompanies the approach of the local elections. Whether this exercise in obfuscation is being led by officers or by the political management of the present administration is really of little import. Both parties have an interest in fending off the residents.

As an activist residents' movement the ICG is committed to the process of empowering our community and we intend to increase the pressure on this administration to adopt an SCI in which G15's expressed concerns retain pride of place. Whether we do this as an active participant in next year's local elections or as a pressure group taking advantage of that event remains to be decided, but either way the present administration needs to understand that this is an issue that is not just going to conveniently disappear from the local agenda.