Deja Vu as Labour's Attempt to Bully Tenants Backfires

Former councillor Paul Fisher
 with Linford Christie on Ivybridge

Back in the mid-1980s the Labour Party in what was then Isleworth South ward launched a sustained offensive to take control of the New Ivybridge Tenants’ Association (NITA). In line with its general policy towards residents’ associations at the time it sought to achieve this by ensuring that whichever members it had in the catchment area were active on the association, and these would then be sustained and promoted at every opportunity by the ward councillors, who would use any influence at their disposal to have them elevated to the most senior Committee posts.

On Ivybridge the Labour offensive was helped along by the fact that one of the people who had been elected to serve on the fledgling Committee was a member of the fascist National Front. Alan Minehan was himself an inoffensive and mild-mannered man, a fact conceded even by his critics, but nevertheless he was a member of an avowedly racist party serving on a tenants’ association on a multi-cultural estate. There were quite valid concerns about the message that his presence on the Committee would send out to estate residents.

Not that I accepted them as valid at the time. For in 1987, when it all began, I was still the NF organiser in the area. Taking its cue from Labour the local NF had also developed a strategy of attempting to infiltrate residents’ groups, and it was not unreasonably assumed that his presence on the NITA Committee had been part and parcel of that strategy.

As it happens though the assumption was incorrect. The first I knew of Alan Minehan’s involvement with the association was after he had been elected to the post. I distinctly recall my sense of surprise when he strolled into the Victoria Tavern in Isleworth that very evening, after the meeting, and told me all about it. He said they had asked him to be Treasurer - I advised him against it, counselling that the man holding the purse strings would be the easiest person for an adversary to set up once his presence on the Committee had become known to the local political establishment. But I told him also that he should hold firm and resist any attempts by anyone to boot him off on the grounds of his politics.

Sure enough, a storm blew up and the appointment made the headlines of the local newspapers. The councillors objected to his appointment and a number of his fellow Committee officials, most but not all of them Labour members, called upon him to stand down. Acting on my advice, he stayed put.

Looking at those events in retrospect I see them now in a very different light. Were a similar thing to occur today I would oppose the presence of a member of a racist political party at the top table of a local residents’ group with every fibre of my being.

However none of this detracts from the fact that Labour’s motivation in opposing Minehan, as both he and I suspected at the time, was primarily a cynical and self-serving one. This was borne out by subsequent events. Just as I had predicted, once he had been removed from the Committee a similar purge was conducted against other non-Labour members, none of whom had anything to do with the NF or held racist views of any kind. And the defection of one of the "approved" group's number to the cause of the purged residents confirmed the accuracy of our suspicions for once and for all.

In those days, as now, there were divisions within the ranks of the Labour Party locally. When a Feltham councillor by the name of David Archer, now sadly deceased, wrote to a local newspaper urging Alan Minehan to leave and denounce the National Front as a resolution to the estate’s sorry predicament I wrote back to attack him for his comments. It is only now that I understand his motive for making the suggestion, far from being hostile, was to offer us a way out of the impasse that had been created which would have well and truly scotched his party colleagues’ plans for the association. Through my own limitless arrogance and stupidity, a golden opportunity fell to waste.

Now let us fast forward 26 and a bit years, and to an incident which has truly demonstrated not only the paucity of Labour’s claim to have been acting out of the loftiest principle back in 1987, but that they have learned absolutely nothing from the emergence of the ICG and its not inconsiderable success, notwithstanding our election defeat in 2010, during the long intervening period.

A couple of months ago former ICG councillor and leading local activist Paul Fisher was co-opted to the Committee of the United Residents’ Association of Ivybridge (URA), the successor organisation to NITA. Unlike Alan Minehan, no claim of racism or fascism could conceivably be laid at Paul’s door. Nevertheless, prior to the URA’s last meeting its officers had been contacted by the local Labour group demanding that it reverses its decision to co-opt Paul.

Apparently Labour in Isleworth still operates under the peculiar misapprehension that it can decide who may or may not serve on the management committee of a local residents’ association. However, unlike in 1987 the association today is truly independent. Even the one high-profile member that Labour has on the Committee, who had been pressured by his party to lead the charge against Paul, told them to do one, and Paul’s continued presence on the Committee was reconfirmed by a unanimous show of hands.

Anybody who doubts that, even if the wake of 2010, the goalposts have moved significantly in the community’s favour in its dealings with the dictators should consider the experience of Paul and the URA and reflect upon it.

Out of chaos comes opportunity?

If this is true, then hopefully the chaos that was that last night's (Thursday's) Annual General Meeting of the United Residents' Association of Ivybridge (URA) - which I chaired, at least for part of the time - will not have been in vain.

I arrived at the meeting just in time to fulfil the request of the outgoing Committee that I should chair the meeting and oversee the election of a new Committee. The presence of over 100 residents made it clear to me that there was a mood for change, but the agenda was straightforward - the outgoing Chair would give a report, and then there would be a vote at which a new Chair would be elected for the coming year.

It was during the reading of the minutes of the 2008 AGM that I was challenged by a particular individual, a notoriously obsessive and well-known New Labour agitator - a man who pines even today for a return to the old NITA system of One Labour Party Member, One Vote - who questioned my right to be chairing the meeting. Although I was under no obligation to do so, I called for a vote on whether I had the confidence of the meeting to continue acting as Chair. Sadly, the group of people who had attended with a view to changing the face of the Committee allowed themselves to be persuaded that I would try to subvert the outcome of the election - which I absolutely would not have done - and when the vote was taken the result was perilously close. Although, after two recounts, it seemed I had a slight majority in favour of allowing me to continue, I felt that under the circumstances the agitator and his new very temporary friends should be given the opportunity to find their own Chair, and so I voluntarily stood down.

After some deliberation, estate resident and former Labour candidate Chris Boucher stepped forward (supported enthusiastically by the agitator, whose objection to me had been that I was "political") and oversaw the election of former ICG Committee member Al Ayoby to the post of Chair, a task which he performed admirably under very difficult circumstances. Al then took control of the meeting and a Vice Chair, Treasurer and Secretary were duly elected. A second meeting will be held next week to decide which 14 of the remaining 23 volunteers will form the remainder of the new Committee, or indeed if a way can be found to include all of them given their willingness to serve the estate.

Whilst the meeting was chaotic the outcome was clearly that a new team had been elected which seemed to reflect very well the social diversity of the estate. Somali residents who had supported the "coup" queued up to explain to me after the meeting that they had sought nothing but fair and equal representation proportionate to their number, an aspiration that they felt, rightly or wrongly, that they'd not been able to realise under the outgoing regime.

Nominations to the new Committee comprise new additions as well as old stalwarts. Ironically, in spite of all the upheaval it will probably, in terms of manpower and ability, prove to be the strongest the estate has ever had.

I would like to pay tribute to the hard work undertaken by the outgoing Chair Tony Smith, former Chair Tina Howe and those other members of the Committee who have stood down. Equally I would like to congratulate Al Ayoby on his elevation to the top job, and to wish him all the very best in his new role.

Notwithstanding recriminations at the AGM it is right and fair that the new team should be allowed space in which to carve its niche, whatever that might turn out to be. I urge estate residents to get behind them and to work with Al - an honest and decent man - for the future benefit of the estate.

Ivybridge loses a legend - but gains a blog!

It is with great regret (for us here in Isleworth) that I have to announce the departure of longtime Ivybridge residents' stalwart Tina Howe (left), who is moving elsewhere.

Tina served on the old NITA association for many years, latterly as Chair, and assumed the lead role on the new United Residents' Association (URA) when it was created last year.

The amount of hard work that Tina has put into the estate over the years is difficult to overstate, but her achievements and those of the URA under her leadership speak very much for themselves. I wish Tina and her family all the very best at their new abode, and I am confident that she will continue to serve the community on her new estate as she has done on Ivybridge.

Tina's erstwhile deputy Tony Smith, former Chair of Ivytag, has already taken over in the hot seat and one of his first deeds as Chair has been to set up a new blog to compliment the URA's existing web presence. I urge visitors to take a look and to support it with their comments.

Following in Tina's footsteps will be no mean feat (no pun intended), but I and my fellow ward councillors will be offering Tony and his team all the help we can.

URA - One Year On

When I first took over the post of Lead Member for Housing, or half the post as it was at the time, my first challenge was to oversee the Hounslow Homes Management Review as part of the agreement between the London Borough of Hounslow and Hounslow Homes drawn up under the previous administration.

Whilst most people would, quite reasonably, have expected the main focus of the Review to have been upon such obvious matters as service delivery, my mandate as a community councillor was more about democratising the process through which tenants and leaseholders were able to participate in the management of their estates. Hitherto, of course, the ethos of the old administration had permeated Hounslow Homes and political allegiance had often been the criteria for determining which tenants could be part of the process and which could not.

The Review process was not a pleasant one. My political opponents recognised, as I did, what it was that was at stake and resisted it with all their might. It was probably the first determined assault made by the new administration on the values which had inspired the previous régime. Obstacles were thrown into my path from all sides which had to be overcome. House publications were mysteriously briefed, regional and even national newspapers launched personal attacks, and a question was even asked of the Prime Minister in the House of Commons! What the process had the effect of doing, however, was to exorcise the forces which had laid dormant within all of the inter-connected institutions and to draw them out into the daylight which they so feared. Once that had been achieved, they could be and were put to the sword with relative ease.

The inspiration for my conduct of the Review, indeed the inspiration for the ICG itself at least in its earlier years, came from Ivybridge and the problems which had torn the local residents' movement asunder. The whole ethical battle between the forces of cronyism and democracy had been fought out in microcosm on that estate for three decades. To a large extent those people who were running the old tenants' association at the time had merely inherited this culture and were not consciously advocates of it. But the damage had been done, and one of my first acts under the revised terms of the Management Agreement which I imposed was to try to bring the warring residents together under the umbrella of a new association which every resident had an equal right to participate in.

In July 2007 the former New Ivybridge Tenants' Association (NITA) and it's independent rival the Ivybridge Tenants' Action Group (Ivytag) agreed to simultaneously disband and a new association, the United Residents' Association of Ivybridge (URA), came into being. At the top table former leaders of NITA and Ivytag sat side by side. Tina Howe, the former Chair of NITA was elected to the same post in the new association.

Frustratingly, there were a few who saw my support of the new Chair as an act of betrayal. This small group, people who had previously been my allies in the struggle to change things for the better, were simply unable to comprehend that it had always been the principle for which I had fought, not the personalities. My quarrel had never been with any individual and I had never professed it to be, but only with the culture of cronyism which those individuals had inherited, and which had been actively fostered by the old régime at the Civic Centre and at St. Catherine's House.

So it was then that the URA was born, whilst a small rump from the former Ivytag (as well as one ex-member of NITA who was equally unwilling to embrace the unity concept) walked away. In an amusing application of the "any port in a storm" saying, the local New Labour Party against whose political interference Ivytag had been fighting since its inception, appeared to come out in support of the new (ex-Ivytag) rebels!

It was against this background of continued (although by previous standards much reduced) unrest that the fledgling URA had to operate. However in one short year the URA has already chalked up some considerable successes. A new safety fence outside Ivybridge Primary School, the removal of the illegal burger van which had squatted in the residents' car park on rugby match days, vastly improved communications between residents and Hounslow Homes, promised action against the nuisance caused by match-day chauffeurs and an impending £60,000+ bid for a play scheme project were all announced at last night's well-attended Annual General Meeting, which I had the privilege of chairing in the unavoidable absence of my friend and colleague Councillor Paul Fisher, who was himself chairing the Community Investment Advisory Panel at the Civic Centre.

A strong new Committee has been elected for 2008/09, and I have every confidence that this determined team will take Community Power on Ivybridge to new heights and set ever better standards. One pessimist in their midst complained that "only" 17 people had been elected to serve. It is easy to forget the days when the large majority of those who aspired to contribute towards the betterment of the estate were sitting on the outside looking in.

Councillor Fisher and I are always looking for fresh ways to boost involvement in, and the influence of, residents' groups around the borough and some ambitious ideas have already been actively discussed with officers of the Council. This space should be watched with some interest.