1 October 2004
Lorna Reid, who stood as the Independent Working Class Association (IWCA) candidate for London Mayor election in June, has become the target of a plot by police and council officials to oust her from her position as an elected tenants’ representative.
Leaked email correspondence between a police officer and a senior council official refer to plans to set up a rival and indeed bogus tenants group on the Highbury Estate with the idea that it would act as a buttress for both the police and council landlord ‘Homes For Islington’ (HFI) against legitimate criticisms of their performance.
As spokesperson for the Highbury Estate Tenants Association, Lorna Reid has been highly critical of the council’s and police’s record on tackling antisocial behaviour on the estate, and alongside other residents, has consistently exposed HFI’s poor record on carrying out repairs.
As well as receiving widespread coverage in the local papers, the conflict caused huge embarrassment to the police and the Lib Dem run council when it attracted the attention of the national media, with coverage in the London Evening Standard and BBC London.
In the emails leaked to the IWCA, a WPC and a senior council official accuse Lorna Reid of ‘not being representative of tenants views’ and deliberately ‘spreading misinformation’. They go on to discuss plans to set up a pseudo tenants’ group as a rival. The necessity of keeping the council/police role secret is stressed: ‘They [tenants] might be moved to club together and take some sort of action—we of course can’t be seen to be encouraging this’.
While no proof exists that either the council official or the Police are working under the direct instruction of Lib Dem councillors, the notion that the Lib Dems stand for ‘Freedom, Equality and Trust’ as articulated by Charles Kennedy at the national conference in Bournemouth last week will be greeted with bitter laughter on certain estates in Islington.
Far from being a ‘centre-left’ party that will stand-up for civil liberties and fight vigorously for a fairer society, experience of the Lib Dem flagship borough in north London, reveals a cut-throat regime with a deserved reputation for silencing it’s critics by fair means or foul.
As mentioned, while no proof of a Lib Dem/HFI/Police collaboration has yet emerged, circumstantially there is evidence aplenty.
Firstly, Lib Dem councillors inevitably enjoy a very close working relationship with the individuals directly involved and clearly see Lorna and the IWCA as an enemy in common.
Secondly, the fact that the email exchange was copied to a junior employee, suggests the hostility to Lorna and Highbury TA within council and police circles is not a secret.
Thirdly, council interference in Highbury TA predates the latest episode. Shortly, after Lorna stood as an IWCA candidate in the 2002 council elections, the TA was forced to fight a year long battle for official council recognition despite being welcomed by the Federation of Islington Tenants Associations.
Fourthly, one local Lib Dem councillor, in front of startled witnesses, threw a hissy fit recently, implying that Lorna’s criticisms of the Council were party political: ‘For God’s sake the council elections are not for two years!’ she pleaded (Coincidentally just after the story broke the most recent Lib Dem Focus newsletter was devoted in its entirety to just one estate in the neighbourhood. No prizes for guessing which one).
Finally, Highbury TA is not the only one being discussed in Islington council circles.
Islington resident Thomas Cooper runs ‘The Coombe House Initiative’, a website dedicated to exposing the poor conditions tenants have to endure on his estate. Recently Mr Cooper was featured on the front page of the Highbury & Islington Express with the news that his website had expanded to cover the notorious Market estate, where 12-year-old Christopher Pullen was crushed to death in 2000 and would almost certainly be expanded further in the future to feature the Andover and Packington estates.
The following week a letter from HFI’s Chairwoman, Ann Lucas, stated emphatically that ‘We do not accept the validity of [Mr Cooper’s] website’, which was somewhat undermined when yet another leaked email from a senior council official was published, asking the Chief Executive: ‘I don’t know if you have seen this [website] yet, but it doesn’t make good reading. We need to discuss how we monitor and respond to these websites.’
As Mr Cooper commented, ‘They seem to be missing the point. The need is not to monitor websites which expose the truth—it is to monitor the provision of services, the lack of which have led to the deplorable conditions on the estate. And the response should not be directed to the website, but to the residents who have suffered.’
Speaking on the Highbury estate affair, Lorna Reid said, ‘We will not be silenced by these dirty tricks. We would like to know what “misinformation” Homes for Islington suggests we are distributing. Perhaps they regard the truth about the conditions we live in as information they would rather not see distributed. We have received a lot of support from Tenants Associations across the borough who are now equally worried about what may be being said about them. This is not the first time Islington Council and Homes for Islington have tried to shut us down. They failed the last time and they will fail again.’
She continued, ‘We are a democratically run tenants association. The Federation of Islington Tenants Associations (FITA) have said they regard us as a “model association”. All our meetings are open to all tenants and residents on the estate. Our meetings and agendas are publicised in advance. We produce regular newsletters informing all tenants of discussions held and decisions made at each meeting. Our officers are openly elected at AGMs overseen by the FITA.
‘I suspect the real concern of the police and Homes for Islington is not so much that we do not represent the needs and interests of tenants but that we do. And we are not easily intimidated into silence which is the reason behind the conflict.’
Echoing Lorna’s comments Jack Maculski, treasurer of the tenants association, said in a press release: ‘All this stuff about our tenants association being unrepresentative is a load of nonsense. It is a smokescreen for getting rid of what the council see as “troublemakers”. All officers of our associations are democratically elected and we hold monthly open meetings to which all tenants are invited. Our tenants association, and Lorna in particular, has been very effective in placing the grievances of tenants in the public eye. And this is why they want us silenced.’
Official complaints to the council and police have been lodged.
IWCA spokesperson Gary O’Shea said: ‘This is an absolute scandal. Here we have a mother of two, who as well as doing untold amount of unpaid work for tenants on Highbury estate is holding down a full time job, being conspired against by police and council employees, whose salaries are paid out of the public purse. It seems that rather than address the valid criticisms of their sorry performance by tenants , they, or their superiors, see the solution as silencing their critics by fair means or foul. Obviously the plot is politically motivated. You just wonder whether it is party political? There are a couple of key questions that need to be answered: under whose authority were these two working, and where does the political buck stop?’
The police and Homes for Islington confirmed this week that they have launched an official investigation of the allegations. |