Another month passes, along with the 100 days countdown until the 6 May. I have a wall chart and am watching time evaporate whilst dispatching increasing numbers of canvassers and leaflets across the ward. This would be like a military operation if it wasn’t for my new theory about Labour Party Time which means that despite your best efforts, things never really quite go to plan.
Every activist has to understand that Labour Party Time operates in a different time zone to normal.
For example, I often find myself coming out with optimistic phrases like ‘it will just take me an hour to print out that direct mail’ only to discover that three hours later, the stuffing machine has jammed and I’m weeping as envelopes scrunch up, fly out of the machine and across the office. It’s the same with ‘it will just take me an hour to deliver these leaflets’ as I fill my rucksack with sticky bits of risographed paper and plod up and down steps, negotiate difficult letterboxes, and bang my head on hanging baskets. Times that hour by two, and I’m back at home covered in black ink, with new injuries and in a slightly cross mood. Meetings are similar – ‘just popping in for an hour’ simply doesn’t exist. There hasn’t been an agenda invented yet that just takes an hour.
Now I’m at one with Labour Party Time, I have learnt to accommodate it into my schedule. Aside from inspiring new theories to make exhausted Labour councillors feel slightly better about the amount of leaflets still sitting in their front rooms, a lot of this month has actually been about local campaigning and the politics of our High Street.
The A10 divides our ward in two with a mixture of pubs, social clubs, minicab firms, local shops, chain supermarkets and four major bus routes. Transport for London control the road which means we have very little influence to sort out issues. So they come along and dig up the pavements without telling us, and refuse to come up with a workable solution for parking bays for businesses and the hundreds of minicabs that operate in the area. They’re reluctant to change the one-way system even though all the cyclists and residents in our ward appear to be in favour.
And then we have pubs and clubs – mostly much-loved local institutions but the odd one that refuses to stick to the terms of their licence in a densely populated residential area. There is a vital gap in the current licensing legislation which means councillors do not have the power to act as an ‘interested party’ and seek a review of a premises license in our own right. So we work with residents who, night after night, keep logs of disturbances and try and reassure them that there will be some sort of enforcement action in the end.
Then we have Green party leaflets which have angry cries and protests against the destruction of the local area by evil supermarkets, and it becomes increasingly hard to explain the limits of planning law and that you can’t just stop a Tesco because it’s a Tesco and you don’t like it.
So we’ve thought carefully about what pledges we want to make around our local High Street. We want it to be swept regularly and kept clear of rubbish so people have a sense of pride in our local area. We want venues to be sensitive to the rights of those living nearby to have a good night’s sleep and have a balanced night-time economy rather than a second Shoreditch. And we want a pledge from local residents to shop locally, but also for businesses to play their part in reducing their carbon emissions so we can work together to make our area more sustainable.
As Lord Mandelson said at a Progress gathering last month we must be upbeat and confident. He probably wasn’t directly referring to our plans for Stoke Newington High Street, but as ever, I take his words to heart in our local campaigns and we keep fighting.
Waiting a few hours later than promised to complete a mail shot, sounds good to me. I’m still waiting for my 1986 annual wall planner from Walworth Road..!! Trick is to bash on….