Sir Robin Wales: Forest Gate Labour meeting

Last night the two Labour Party wards (or branches) North & South Forest Gate took part in a little bit of an experiment. We merged both ward meetings and had as the guest speaker our Labour Mayor for Newham, Sir Robin Wales. Also we asked Party members to invite friends and neighbours (non Party members) to attend the meeting and listen to the Mayor and take part in the Q&A. It was all a little last minute but we had a good turnout of Party members and residents (about 32 I think) in Durning Hall, Forest Gate.

By-coincidence Durning Hall is right next door to the local Royal Mail sorting depot where I was planning to go with some members of Newham Labour Party TULO to show support for the CWU picket this morning (the strike was called off yesterday for further talks).

The presentation and Q&A lasted about an hour and a half. So this is only a summary of key issues and topics that Robin brought up. Also the usual health check that notes were made on my netbook and I am not a copy typist:-

The aim of the Council is to make Newham a place that people choose to stay, work and live. To have choice you need to have money. So we need to get people into work or better jobs. Need to improve not only economic capacity but personal capacity – aspiration and ambition. Robin thinks he and the local councillors are first and foremost community leaders representing the will of the people.

Need to ask local residents who want things such as subsidised housing from the Council - what can they offer back to the community in return?

He is worried about what might happen if the Tories win the next general election. Their plans are to regenerate estates by exporting the poor from the Tory boroughs into East London. They will use the Bankers crisis to make cuts.

There is now a much fairer allocations system for housing in Newham. There will be less queue jumping and more opportunities for local residents. We can’t continue mind to keep putting poor people into the same place. This just creates ghettos. We need the poor and the better off to live together.

Things are changing – Newham now has better than average ratings London ratings for resident satisfaction. There is a 0% increase in Council tax and the lowest rate in London.

Need to do much better in education but have amongst the best results for qualifications when weighted to allow for factors such as the high levels of poverty in parts of the borough.

The Mayor’s Employment Project – guaranteeing the long term unemployed that they will not be worse off if they take up a training course or job. Paid for by the Council.

The most important regeneration project in Newham is not the Olympics but the new retail and business centre next door “Stratford City”. This will have the biggest John Lewis outside the West End. We don’t want to make the mistake made with Canary Wharf which regenerated an area but created more jobs in Kingston than Tower Hamlets. It is agreed that public policy should be that East London wealth is brought up to the standard of the rest of London.

Free School dinners for all primary school children. This is criticised as being expensive but no kids should go hungry while at school trying to learn. Every child in Newham should be offered the chance to have and learn to play a musical instrument. Middle class kids have this opportunity - why not the working class kids? Free books also for all our children. Apparently the American County singer and Actress Dolly Parton is paying for half of this scheme!

“Local Space” the housing organisation set up by the Council with no financial help from the government which has bought 1000 homes and rented them out. After 5 years some of these homes will be sold and the money ploughed back into housing.

Labour Beliefs – there are 9 community forums in Newham. Last year £12 million was devolved to the forums to decide how this money should be spent locally.

He wants every community hall on a Saturday to be full of kids learning to dance, to have a lunch club run by elders, an after school clubs and other facilities for older teenagers to keep them out of trouble. No one community or faith will be supported by the council to build their own centres. They should rent space in existing Council centres and mix with the local community.

Robin finished by urging Labour to attract new people especially the young to join the Party to continue to serve our community.

There was a number of questions at the end upon opportunities for women, more youth clubs for older kids, English language teaching, education, quality of local proposed redevelopment, Olympics, planning and licensing (too many fast food outlets and off licences).

This was a good experiment which worked and we had an interesting debate with many contributions from non Party members. I think this idea will be expanded across the borough.

It was a just little surreal at times since during this fairly serious political discourse it was of course Bonfire night and the sound of fireworks going off outside could be heard from time to time. As well as the singing and happy clapping of the local Gospel church who were holding a service in a room below us. It was very Newham!