ISLINGTON

INDEPENDENT WORKING CLASS ASSOCIATION

Sobell Centre: next to go

Letter to Islington Tribune, 19th September 2008:

WHILE supporters of the Lib Dem council might like to pretend the non-participation of the public in a council consultation process could be an indication the majority are "happy with the proposals", in reality it is the Lib Dems' cynicism towards the electorate that leads most people to conclude that it's not worth bothering to engage with any of their glossy propaganda exercises (Why cling onto Sobell? It's past its sell-by date, September 12).

The less than 3 per cent who responded over the future of the Sobell Centre is a case in point.
The Lib Dems' limited affection for democratic processes was best articulated by their ex-leader, Steve Hitchins. Achieving the highest vote through the ballot box was, he maintained, "sufficient mandate" to push ahead with anything the party chose for the four years between one election and the next.

This attitude explains why the Lib Dems refused to ballot council tenants about their plans to push ahead with the PFI scheme for Islington council street properties, despite huge tenant opposition.
In fact, in a show of hands at a conference organised by the Federation of Islington Tenants' Associations and the council only one tenant out of the hundreds in attendance said they supported the Lib Dems' plan to push ahead with the scheme. "Happy?" Hardly.

The same attitude also saw them plough ahead with plans to sell Finsbury Town Hall (initially to Berkeley Homes), with less than one per cent response to their consultation and with only 35 out of 15,000 residents (0.2 per cent) in support of the plans.

After the Berkeley Homes scheme fell through in 2004, a second petition was signed by more than 2,000 residents (out of the 4,000 households in the EC1 New Deal area), registering a 50 per cent opposition. "Happy?" I think not. Ditto, the hasty drive to transfer all council estates to an arm's length management organisation. They are many other examples.

Happily, there is a price to be paid for this chicanery. Not that far back the biggest Lib Dem majorities (800 approx) in the borough could be found in wards like Clerkenwell and Bunhill. But in the local elections in 2006, Lib Dem support had withered significantly, leaving wafer-thin majorities of 100 and 50 respectively.

So if the knocking down of the Sobell Centre can be justified on the grounds that "it is past its sell-by date and crumbling", the same principle can also be applied to the Lib Dem administration in the Town Hall.

GARY O'SHEA
Independent Working Class Association
WC1

24 September 2008 13:49