The Oxygen of Publicity ?

Now that I am unencumbered by high office I ask my self one central question about Politics in Leeds ? Is it time to start talking about the BNP ? First the facts and then lets ask if the political class in the City has been wise to deny the BNP the "Oxygen of Publicity" and use the fore blanket of silence.



Last Thursday the BNP got 11.35% of votes cast in the Leeds Metropolitan District. At the risk of causing offense and none is intended this is not a isolated small town somewhere but a very large, wealthy, cosmopolitan city which covers Eight parliamentary constituency. Why have 1 in every 9 voters gone out and voted for a Fascist, Nazi and Thuggish political operation with an abysmal track record of delivering anything other than crimes of violence, poisoned community relations and falling house prices in the areas they represent ?



The 11.35% figure is almost identical to the 2007 figure which in turn was half a percent down on 2006 thought they had to field far more candidates to get that average. Why then fuss about a declining force particularly when they seem to have peaked in there Morley Heart land ?



Because as any political campaigner would recognise they are now concentrating there votes in target seats. The two most remarkable results of the Leeds elections were in my view Middleton Park ( A Labour hold against the BNP by 40 odd votes) and Ardsley and Robin Hood (held by 11 votes). these are archetypal safe Labour seats and while they have had big BNP presences before they have never come that close. More interesting is Labours ability to repulse conventional party's assault on its marginals but having near death experiences against the midget BNP, a party with fraction of the big boys resources.

There are fours questions the city needs to ask. Why has this happened? Does it matter ? Is the current strategy working? What do we do now?

Firstly I think this has happened because Leeds is a city where everyone is in Power. Labour run the Country, the Lib Dems and Conservatives run an unloved Council, even the Greens have had a hand on the tiller recently. I think some Lib Dem colleagues have assumed they can effortless keep absorbing the anti Labour protest vote despite running the second largest council in Britain. there is a gap in the market for a "Bugger the lot of them" option and the BNP are the only show in town. Additionally i think the sheer bloody negativity of the Leeds campaign has sent people to the BNP. Labour leaflets slag off the council, coalition leaflets slag of the government. While of course the BNP exploit an all together more pernicious form of negativity no one is targeting there fore on them. Most controversially many people vote BNP because its a perfectly rationale choice. If you don't care and feel dispossess why not shove a stick in the eye of the establishment. For every BNP voter who votes on race in my experience there is another who votes on socio economic circumstances and housing shortages. The political class would do better to stop hand wringing and recognise some of these concerns. In Leeds I'm not pretending that wealth can be transferred by the council effortlessly but certainly the 800lb gorilla that is LCC could be more open, devolve more quickly and be more customer focused.

Secondly does it matter? Yes it bloody well does matter that a party that thinks the wrong side won the second world war is performing as well as it does. Its a sign of profound system failure when conventional choices are seen as so discredited that neo Nazi's have to fill a gap.

Thirdly is the current strategy working? Well clearly not as the swamp hasn't been drained. The single BNP councillor is shunned in the chamber rather than confronted ( I had a few pot shots but have been little better myself). WE don't debate publicly why they have done so well and therefore can't acknowledge the grievances of those that vote for them and so can't publicly address them. This is because of the oxygen of publicity argument but when one in 9 voters is voting for them I think that horse has bolted.

The only politician in the City taking the issue seriously is the evil genius that is Andrew Carter, Leader of the Conservative Group. By spouting xenophobic nonsense doubtless he thinks he is "absorbing" this vote and thus sanitising it. However if the price of this is dragging the City's political spectrum to the right then is it a Pyrrhic victory? The fact that he has been allowed to make press statements using the title of "Leader of Council" - a title he holds using Lib Dem votes - makes me wnat to throw up. Linking demand for new Housing - something Britain desperately needs - to immigration is vile and awful social policy. Why he has been allowed away with it unchallenged I don't know.

So what should we do? well my personal BNP eradication plan would be

1. Start building councils houses immediately. In the mean time at least acknowledge how wide spread the demand is.

2. don't make the mistake that you can neutralise the BNP by aping them. Say a multi cultural society has largely work and tell the truth about immigration. After 60 years of mass immigration Britain is still 92% white.

3. Don't ignore there presence. start a city wide debate.

4. A much greater emphasis on street cleaning and neighbourhood management.

5. radical re localisation of local economies and stop fetishising the city centre and the flats boom.

6. a decent voting system (STV) that would break up one party states that rot.

7. get real coppers ( and not just PCSO's ) out actually on beats dealing with nuisance rather than pursuing targets.

8. confront them rather than ignore them. tell people that they are the thugs that they are.

I doubt any of this will happen. In a perverse sort of way they need to do just that little bit better before the establishment reaches crisis point and that is perhaps in the end they will do better.

The Leeds 6 results

There were some mixed results for the Liberal Democrats in Leeds 6 which is/should be the party's heart land. The four "Inner North West" wards in the city cover the bottom half of the held Leeds North West constituency and in Mosaic terms could hardly be better for the party. There were some tight races. Firstly in Kirkstall the party failed to make its expected gain from Labour. Respected, Long serving and hard working Cllr Liz Minkin was retiring and our candidate Ruth Coleman was on her third consecutive attempt at wresting the seat. They cut the majority again but not by quite enough. Its now so close ( a little under 3 %) that it will definitely be a target again but I fronted the first two Kirkstall leaflets in 2002 in an attempt to kick start the ward and we seem to be getting diminishing returns from the current campaign strategy. As the party's only non held target seat in the city many will be disappointed we didn't quite pull it off. In Hyde Park and Woodhouse ward my colleague Penny Ewens hung on for the Lib Dems but with a majority cut from 10% to 2% from last year. Lib Dem travails in this ward have been well aired in the local rag and i won't repeat them here and we faced a massive Labour challenge.

If the glass is half full then we won in chronically difficult circumstances. If the glass is half empty then there was a clear swing to Labour and with a 2% majority they aren't going to go away. I'm not giving away state secrets to say that Cllr Kabeer Hussain (Ind, Hyde Park and Woodhouse )is likely to re defect to the party in the next few months giving the Lib Dems all three seats again. Whether they will be able to form more effective working relationships this time will be interesting.

In my old ward of Headingley I was replaced with Jamie Matthews the city's campaigns officer. While we held on comfortably the majority was more than halved falling from 25% in 2007 to 11.7% this year. I was pleased to see near record turnout ( by our standards - still less than 20% !) I deliberately kept light years away from the campaign to give new people space to do what they wanted. I raised an eye brow at the strength of the attacks on the Labour candidate for living outside the area when our other two sitting councillors also live well outside the area. Local politics being what it is I expect labour will revisit this in 2010 when my colleague who lives miles away in calverley is up for reelection.

Finally in Weetwood we made the expected "gain" from the Conservative Cllr Brian Jennings. Brian was elected as a Lib Dem in 2004 and went Tory after a spell as an Independent. he gave us a run for our money halving the usual majority but I never shared his confidence of victory simply because the LD majority in that ward was so colossal. I like Brian and he'll be a loss to the Council but ultimately I suspect he's another victim of poor personnel management.

So over all what were really three LD holds all with substantially reduced majorities in difficult circumstances and one failure to make a gain. I'm not going to attempt an inquest (thought that would be to strong a word really) in public but i would reiterate two points I firmly believe in but have had me burned at the stake on occasions.

Firstly elections are fought on issues.

Secondly when you are in power/control like we are in Leeds you have to run at least partially on your record.

You can toss off glossy and copious literature but its not rain dance. If it doesn't speak to peoples concerns then it won't work.

Finally I notice with interest the notional result for Leeds North West had the Conservatives 0.5% ahead on Thursday after being a full 10% behind the LD only 12 months ago. This blog has many faults but brown nosing the party establishment isn't one of them. However Greg Mulholland is an Excellent MP and deserves to get re elected. perhaps its time we stopped getting bogged down in the mechanics of Council administration and looked to the wider horizon? Perhaps its time we remembered our job is to represent the residents to the council and not the council to the residents?

The Civic Hall and then Horsforth

What an odd day. I had a bit of a lie in ( No Good Morning Leaflets in Horsforth - Don't ask) and then wandered down to the fabulous Brudenell Social Club which was acting as a polling station for the day. I thought this as little odd as its technically outside the Hyde Park and Woodhouse Ward which it serves. Suffice to say turn out was lower than the the recent secret gigs by Duffy and the Kaiser Chiefs. This bit of Hyde park is a sea of Labour posters largely on local shops but also a surprising number of family houses. Even after close of polls I'm not going to comment on why this might be but it was eye catching simply because i haven't seen anything like it since 1997.





I then took my final walk to the Civic Hall. I have never liked the building though don't tell anyone. Its a 1930's public works project that looks like a Wedding cake and is frankly unfit for purpose. The Council chamber and lord Mayors room are a part of history but the rest is probably the most energy inefficient office block in Britain. I did a Jed Bartlett style last tour of the building and handled a crisis. ( Missed Bin Collection not an inter state train crash)





I'd completed my wind down operation the night before so really my only reason for coming in was to say a few good byes to office staff, hand over wine, flowers and chocolate to some hard working staff and handing in my badge, computer key fob and swipe card. Sad but cathartic.



I then went off to Horsforth for knocking up and telling. Horsforth is beautiful and its not hard to see demographically why its a Tory/Lib Dem battle ground. The committee room was busy and well organised. I committed a faux pax by commenting tweely on the "old style" dark orange old liberal posters. I enquired whether they had been in some ones garage for 20 years only to be told they were brand new. Very Horsforth.

Telling made me mildly optimistic as there were lots of nods and chatting although as ever I had to remind myself it was a strong box. The knocking up was good in that people were coming out and the canvassing seemed accurate though god alone knows why we still have data from 1994 on the sheets !

I like elections because I like issues and it was interesting to listen to grumbles and moans and even the odd thank you about local schemes and concerns.

Again for reasons that escape me we stopped knocking up at 2040 and I was kindly offered a lift home by a friend of the candidate. A politically engaged clergyman it seems and it was refreshing to have some one interested in more than the bins.

I walked from Hyde Park Corner along the edge of the Moor til I got home getting the odd odd look and it wasn't till I arrived home I realised I still had my Rosette on. I took in the view of Leeds 6 from my top floor flat one last time as a Councillor. The dusk consuming the minaret, the stadium and then the spire of St Michael's.

An odd day but a strangely satisfying one.

It ends where it started

I did a residents drop in tonight about the former Lounge Cinema on North Lane. The miserable Multi Millionaire owner wants to reverse all the safe guards and successes residents won on the last application in 2006. I previewed the issues on my last post about this so will concentrate on the human side of it.



I love residents meetings because I love people. We had the Methodist Hall from 7pm to 9pm and had advertised it as a drop in facility. We had a very healthy trickle through out the evening and it was a very " Headingley " do. The odd engaged student but overwhelmingly permanent residents who had had a letter from me informing them of the application, a case summary from our community planner and details of the drop in. This is a lot of work to create for myself with 2 days to go but its what (decent) councillors do and the site is so high profile and key to central Headingley.

Casting modesty aside I was touched by people telling me how much I would be missed etc, why don't you stand as an independent etc etc. All very gratifying but in an inner urban ward 90% of residents won't know my name after 8 years and its worth remembering that.

Nobody likes the Lounge proposal and we garnered a lot of objections which is good. The planning officer was good cop being completely impartial and i was bad cop confirming residents suspicions.

Just before we wound up the absolutely lovely caretaker of the Methodist hall bent my ear about the level of alcohol related disorder she suffers living right in the town centre. Very little I can do but made one last set of action promises about Mobile CCTV vans and just offered as much empathy as I could.

I walked home via the cardigan road COOP deliberately twisting and turning having a last look at the place. The Bin strike and work to rule hadn't helped the general filthiness.

I love it. I will miss it. I was glad to be on the front line till the end but I will feel a bit of weight from my shoulders on Friday morning.

Looking back: A Hundred Weeping Women

Joyce Gossom was one of the most remarkable human beings I have ever met. Attending her funeral was perhaps the most remarkable event of my 8 years on the Council and the only time I have cried. Before the boundaries were redrawn in 2004 the Model farm in Meanwood was in Headingley ward. I quickly developed a soft spot for model farm and Joyce. Its a small, community run animal charity preserving some farm land, some out houses and most importantly some horses in a inner urban location and on the edge of a very deprived council estate.

Joyce exuded charisma in the literal Greek sense. She kept a ramshackle operation on the road often putting her hand in her own pocket to feed the horses. Numerous local groups used the riding facilities especially groups for young offenders and disabled people. What always struck me as the most remarkable aspect of the scheme though was the volunteers. Nearly always young and female and from the local estates. I've seen worthy schemes "doing good" before and on thousands of occasions seen the sheen of a bit of state cash spent in a poor area. But model farm was different because of the volunteers. They were aglow with pride, purpose and love. If I'm allowed to frighten the horses I believe green spaces can be healing but seeing the effect of a green space and the interaction with animals was profound.

I'm not qualified to be a feminist but I always feel a communities women keep certain shows on the road. Its rare to see however a completely matriarchal community project.

I heard that Joyce was ill a year or so after the boundaries moved although we had kept in contact with the project and was shocked to hear a few weeks later that she had died of cancer. I hadn't appreciated the seriousness of her illness and had not seen her to say good bye.

The funeral was at Lawnswood and the chapel was packed out. I listened to the eulogies, sang the hymns and had a bit of a cry. But because I had arrived late I was sat on over flow seating facing the bulk of the congregation. They were overwhelmingly women and every face had that mixture of tears ands smiles as they remembered some one who had touched them.

It would be wrong to appropriate Joyce for the Liberal cause but she was a liberal in this sense. Every single young girl in that crematorium left inspired to do something, not wait for others to do it for them. To take power for them themselves rather than wait for others to use it form them. Most importantly of all to fight for there community and locality rather than give in to the economic forces against them.

When the swings and gains and loses and analysis and news print and post mortems and recriminations are all over after Thursdays polls few of us politicians will have changed as many peoples lives as Joyce's leadership and we'd be better for thinking about that on occasion.

3 days to Go

Because West Yorkshire counts on a Friday morning I have 3 full days left on Leeds City Council and this blog has 3 days left to run. I will leave it up for a few weeks after polling day and then delete it. Its been too infrequent, poorly proof read and a little off message for one ( and only one) member of the Leeds party. However its generated a lot of interest from outside the Civic Hall bubble and more residents have read it than some people might think. Ironically it was meant to inspire people to think about standing for the Council. In that sense it might have failed as I have been a bit melancoly at times. Its unfortunate to resort to cliche at a time like this but "decsions are made by those that turn up" or perhaps the more classy Greek observation that "the price on non involvement is to be governed by lesser men." We elect over 22000 people in Britain to be Councillors ( the lowest number per capita than any democracy) and we are not well served by these posts being colonised by the political class or being a CV point for the climb up the greasy poll. For all my faults I'm a real person who decided the ward he lived in could be better and tried to do something about it.

Millions of people do that all the time without being politicans of course but if you don't stand then system doesn't go away. Its just someone else gets the place and believe you me Local Government isn't so brimming with talent that it can afford to lose YOU.

What will I do next ?

As Civilian life beckons what do Politicians do after elected politics? Local Councillors don't get to do the lecture circuit, build memorial Libraries or write there memoirs. There are no Historians to interested in there legacies so why bother polishing it ?

Well I have a new Job which for obvious reasons I'm not going to blog about. Its with Headingley Development Trust and all I'll do is give people the link and say no more. http://www.headingleydevelopmentrust.org.uk/

I have become a School Governor for the first time at two schools in Horsforth. I will be doing some voluntary work with UNITY day this around fundraising. My plan is to get very involved with the Leeds Anti Incinerator campaign coordinated by Leeds Friends of the Earth though I suspect that battle is all but won. Depending on how well the BNP do on Thursday I may get involved in anti fascist work. The great mistake of the political class in Leeds has been to ignore them.

I'd like to spend a bit more time involved with the Church. I'm going to apply to do some voluntary work with St Georges Crypt as I remain interested in rootlessness and its what brought me to Leeds 14 years ago. I'm going to try and spend more time on the allotment for which read some time at all on the allotment.

And of course last July I was selected as the PPC ( Prospective Parliamentary Candidate) for the Pudsey constituency. I have deliberately avoided blogging about that but I'm pleased we'll be doing a major relaunch of the party Website in the near future. Where this role will go I don't know but its interesting to be able to talk a bit about national issues.

What won't I be doing? well for the moment I won't be taking on any "Councillor Emeritus" roles in Leeds 6. I have had a number of very generous offers from local community groups and campaigns to take something on but am drawing a line. If for no other reason than if I turn up to things and start mouthing off its not very fair on whoever succeeds me.

What could tempt me back ? Well I would make two cryptic answers to that. I'm absolutely knackered after 8 years on the Council and need a rest. The thing most intriguing about local politics is the situation in Hyde Park and Woodhouse Ward where Lib Dem travails have been well covered in the local rag. Its a desperately deprived ward which needs and deserves top notch representation.

City Wide the Leeds Council Group will , after Thursday , have to ask its self whether its a management company relying on anti government protest votes to hang onto what its got or whether its a liberal party that's in business to transform the Council and empower individuals. Its mission is to campaign on its record in office. If it's the former then I have better things to do if the later then that's more interesting.

Unity Day Fundraiser

I suspect this is one for da kids but a Fundraiser is being held at Burley Liberal Club on May the 10th 10pm to 2.30am with Tickets at £3 more details at dj_antix@hotmail.co.uk.

The more culturally engaged will get the reference to Frequency FM whoes DJ's are performing.

On a serious note what ever this music is like the Burley Liberal Club is an undiscovered gem and well worth a visit.

Unity Day Community Meeting

My engagement in community work in Leeds 6 began with Unity Day and it will end with it. Having a bit more time after May the first I went to the Unity Day planning meeting on wednesday and signed up to all sorts of fundraising tasks. The phrase grass roots could have been invented for the meeting. It was held in Wrangthorne Parish Church Hall ( OT but I was recently able to push through a £5k grant for redecoration and refurbishment from the Council) which could do with a lick of paint but is a much loved venue just off Hyde Park Corner.

It was attended by the usual mix of 20% old stagers and 80% ever shifting sands of students, bohemians and concerned friends of the area. The agenda was a familiar one. The lack of institutional memory in an organisation that turns over activists at the rate that it does. Raising £23k for the costs, getting the committed middle management type volunteers that make a huge event like this work.

The reason I love Unity Day is its unique ability to fuse the exact proportion of permenent residents with transitory ones and create something wonderful. They embrace the areas demographics and transmogrify it in a way that no one else can manage.

One of my last acts as a Councillor was to (after years of trying) pushing through a 3 year funding deal for Unity ( £5k for each of the next three years). Its a testament to Unity's prophetic role in the community that several members of the local political establishment opposed the funding sadly including a few Lib Dems.

For all the culture clash with the Council Unity delivers a huge, free, varied and terrific showcase of local culture on our premier public park. It will be a relief in many ways to do a bit of back room work for something with zero political edge away from the public eye.

I'll post event details and a link before i close down later this month.

Senator George Mitchell

A final evening in the splendour of the Civic Halls' banqueting suite to hear the Olaf Plame Memorial Peace Lecture. As I have observed before Leeds City Council doesn't really do "Salon" as an institution so this annual event is a welcome throw back to more enlightened times.

Senator Mitchell will be a visiting Professor at the Leeds Met University Praxis Centre who co sponsors the event. A former Senate Majority Leader and chair of the Northern Ireland All Party talks this topic was whether peace processes work. The evening had three parts. Some introductory "after dinner style" anecdotes and jokes which put the audience at its ease, some fairly broad bush but well delivered remarks about global challenges and then questions. I rather got the impression that parts 1 and 2 were heavily scripted remarks by staff but with his delivery i didn't really mind. There was a strong hint of liberalism in parts when he advanced the classic "Anglosphere" view of liberty, parliamentary institutions and the enlightenment inheritance of the American revolution.

Where he came alive was in questions and answers. I asked something along the lines of "Do you think Al Quieda/Fundamentalist terrorists are Nihilistic or have negotiable demands? If the former how do we fight them ?, if the later should we negotiate ? "

Its when he went off script that he became interesting. He is is in his late 70's and looked a little tired otherwise I'd be pushing him for Secretary of State. While less intellectually taxing than an average economist article I got what I wanted from the article. A little warming of the Human Soul . His liberal optimism, his sense of historic progress and acknowledgement of human frailty gave a degree of cheer to a war weary pot hole fixer.

Despite the banqueting suite being packed out ( and its a difficult venue to fill) there always seems to be some anxiety about this events future. Ergo Councillors are always especially Welcome. Honourable mentions go to Couns Geoff Driver ( Middleton Park) Bob Gettings, Ralph Pryke (Burmantofts and Richmond Hill) and Neil Taggert and Ted Hanley(Bramley and Stanningley) for turning up.

I notice that despite having the Lord Mayor and Chief Executive on the top table not a single member of the Councils Executive Board was to be seen.

A final delight was the civic reception afterwords, probably my final freebie. I bumped into an old colleague from the Theology Department in Durham who I hadn't seen for 14 years and former Councillor Clare Nash (Green, Wortley) who was an enormous loss to the council and I miss deeply.

Before I left I foolishly asked a colleague about the city wide election campaign was going and he quite reasonably answered. If ever i realised i was ready for a break then it was this conversation. 6 days to go.

Scarbourgh Hotel St George's Day Beer Festival

One of the best pubs in Leeds. They are having a St Georges Day beer festival on April 23rd, 24th and 25th 11am to 12 midnight each day. Dozens of english beers as well as the usual real pub atmosphere, leather arm chairs and good food. Its situated in the city centre between the station forecourt and swinegate. If like me you prefer the cider they have Westons on tap.

Lounge Redevelopment Drop In

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water local Developer Chris Ure has submitted revised Planning Applications for the former Lounge Cinema site on North Lane, Headingley. A cynic might suggest that the applications do little other than reverse the hard won concessions/safeguards that the community won in 2006 on the last application. Because Mr Ure has expensive lawyers I'm not suggesting that.

I have arranged a residents drop in to discuss the issue between 7pm and 9pm on Tuesday 29th of April in the small hall of Headingley Methodist Church. This is opposite the Arndale Centre and access is by Chapel Lane.

There will be a full display of the plans, Planning Officers and Councillors will be present as well as comments forms. We'll also have a "Ballot Box" with case work sheets for residents to raise any other concern.

And the main issues?

1. Do we want a big outside drinking terrace as an addition to this scheme?

2. Does Headingley need another massive A3 unit given its saturation with such uses?

3. Do the currently preserved arches from the current building make a contribution to the area worth saving?

4. Will a Bulkier design on the roof over dominate North Lane?

yes, these questions are as loaded as they seem but as veteran of the campaign on this iconic site we should not allow back sliding from this developer when the Planning Panel made such a clear decision not long ago.

Any readers of this blog that can come along please introduce your self.