As all the political shows wind up for the recess and school is out for the holidays, the municipal year 2010-11 is also well and truly over. Its passing marks not only the coalition’s first year in office but 12 months in power for many of the Labour councils elected last year on the same day as the general election which we lost. On a personal level, my term as deputy mayoress of the London Borough of Ealing following Labour’s retaking of the council has concluded. No more bling around the neck or rides in the pimped-up car. Most of all, I will miss sitting in the place at full council meetings with the best view of the monthly ding-dong between the parties across the wood-panelled chamber of our Victorian gothic town hall.
To say I’ve learned a lot is a huge understatement. For me, the phrase “accelerated culture”, which has been knocking about since at least the early 1990s, has never been more fitting. While the past municipal year has flown by, the scale and rapidity of central government cuts that are now taking effect have shocked many.
Worse is yet to come and many unpalatable measures have been snuck in early with the intention that they should be accepted and long forgotten by the next general election. They include the VAT rise and reduced child benefit, penalising single and stay-at-home parents. Even Margaret Thatcher, notwithstanding her milk-snatching escapades as Education Secretary, would not have dared to tamper so recklessly with this universal benefit. But it is a clever move of the coalition to pass the burden of the cuts onto councils by squeezing local government budgets so that the fingerprints of David Cameron and company are less easily detectable.
In The Simpsons, the Mayor of Springfield’s seal bears the inscription “Corruptus in Extremis”. The yellow-faced, blue-collar family from across the Atlantic have often captured the mood of the nation with biting satire – even if they are brought to us courtesy of Rupert Murdoch’s 20th Century Fox. I wouldn’t quite put the antics of local authorities in the same league, but they are under extreme pressure to deliver good services while contending with external factors such as providing new schools coping with a rising birth rate.
The most notable debate in our council chamber concerned library services. Petitions had been delivered by local mums who spoke passionately about the need to keep smaller branches going. Houses in the streets near me started displaying “Save Northfields Library” posters in the windows, referring to our local branch at risk. Through Facebook and my local (Tory) councillor’s blog, I watched the campaign gather momentum, with plans to chant from the public gallery and unfurl banners during a council meeting. It was tough for the Labour administration to face taunts of asset-stripping from the Tories, even though such a thing was only being floated because of dogmatic decisions taken by the Conservative-led coalition at Westminster.
In the end, Ealing decided to close none of the libraries on the list, but mobile provision will be cut. In an ominously “Big Society” way, it looks like volunteers will staff some of the branches some of the time – not good from the point of view of a unionised workforce, but a necessary compromise. The management structure is also being pared back. Admittedly, if we were starting a library system from scratch, it would probably not look like the 19th century version that continues to dictate current practice.
Still, the residents of Northfields can now take their posters down. On this particular issue, war is over (if you want it).
