“Progress with unity” is the motto of the London Borough of Ealing. The three words have gone from being somewhere in the depths of my subconscious to centre-stage as far as I am concerned in my new capacity as deputy mayoress of the borough. They were on the order paper of the council meeting I attended and on the chain I wear at official functions. While the media circus that is the 24-hour news channels and the national press have been obsessed by the Con-Dem nation we now live in following the general election, there have also been changes in local government as a result of the local polls held on the same day. These demonstrate that suburbs often written off as politically and culturally backward by the urban intelligentsia are in the progressive vanguard and that the Labour Party is far from dead.
Labour’s results in London were among the best anywhere for the party, particularly in the outer reaches of the capital. In Newham, considered by government funding formulae as outer London, with a council that has campaigned to have it reclassified as an inner-city area, Labour won all the seats. The same thing happened in Barking and Dagenham to Newham, where the British National Party was wiped out electorally. This area, once dominated by the Ford motor plant, is, by spatial positioning on any measure, suburban. Yet it is grappling with issues not usually associated with stereotypically suburban privet hedges and twitching net curtains; including new waves of immigrants from Africa alongside longr-established communities and the problems of de-industrialisation.
On the other side of London, Harrow and Hounslow Conservative councils fell to Labour in the north and the south-west respectively. The same situation occurred in Ealing, with my new status being a consequence.
I have now attended my first full council meeting since the mayor-making ceremony. After May’s shake-up, there is a sea of new faces on the members’ benches, many of whom have now made their maiden speeches. Most of the first meeting’s business was dominated by the newly-elected Labour administration leadership answering questions about the priorities for the term ahead. There was a fair bit of Con-Dem coalition bashing from Labour councillors. However, echoing central government action, Labour will be freezing both the council tax for the next year and councillors’ expenses for the next four years. Forget anarchy in the UK, austerity rules at every level.
A subjective observation it may be, but the level of debate in the wood-panelled chamber was on a par with that at Prime Minister’s Questions – and that’s not meant as a compliment but more a reflection of yah-boo adversarial politics.
Content-wise, the most interesting stuff consisted of petitions from the public. A children’s bookshop owner in a shopping parade in the north of the borough stepped forward with 200 signatures. His problem was not (directly) the plight of small businesses in recessionary times, it was instead an appeal to the council to reconsider the introduction of “stop and shop” parking bays on his patch which could prohibit custom – a reminder of how everything is interconnected. Another was from residents elsewhere wanting a box junction removed, again showing how motor-related issues are a frequent bugbear in the suburbs.
A Conservative motion proposed thanking the Tories nationally for ditching Heathrow Airport expansion – a policy that was more popular on the doorsteps than Labour’s environmentally less responsible proposal to build a third runway. A Labour motion attacked the uncertainty over the future of the east-west high speed Crossrail link under the Con-Dems.
The borough crest was next around my neck at the Hanwell carnival. It might not be Notting Hill or Rio, but this annual festival is now in its 50th year, having quietly notched up an impressive longevity. Nestling between better-known Ealing (one-time home of British comedy) and Southall (one of Britain’s oldest areas of Punjabi settlement), Hanwell is one of those areas that would benefit from regeneration to stop it subsiding into “neither here nor there” territory. The popular carnival, with floats from various community organisations, is vital to its continuing identity. It also demonstrates the multi-ethnic nature of the contemporary suburb, which can be seen all over the capital and in other large cities.
Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield are now without a single Conservative MP – as is Birmingham, where several visits from David Cameron could not prize suburban Birmingham Edgbaston, formerly solid Tory territory, away from Labour. In what was a generally bad night for Labour, the general election saw the party hold onto London seats first taken in 1997. These included constituencies that were considered no-go areas for Labour when I was growing up: Harrow West and Brent North, for instance. Ethnic change and the rising minority ethnic middle class go some way to explain such results. In short, the idea of suburbia as white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant and conservative no longer holds.
It’s going to be an interesting year. In the meantime, “Progress with unity” seems to be a fitting resolution for the 12 months ahead.
