As promised, here’s Stephanie Eaton’s valedictory piece–a look back on her past eight years in Tower Hamlets as she prepares to stand down on May 22.
(For what it’s worth, my view is that apart from one or two slightly rose-tinted opinions on the current regime–at its outset, at least–she’s been the most reasoned councillor in that time. Like Peter Golds, she has also been the target of attacks from senior council officers and ruling Labour councillors after she dared to take them on. The below front page story we did for the East London Advertiser was particularly memorable; it came only a few months after she was elected. It was highly embarrassing for Labour at that time, so much so that the council’s communications department posted thousands of letters to nearby residents to say she and the ELA were scaremongering. We weren’t. Eight years on, that site at the Oval in Bethnal Green remains derelict. But that brush with the East End Life department certainly opened her eyes to the misinformation it can spread.)
Here’s her final fond farewell (she declined to offer any views on the calamitous Lutfur Rahman/Labour fallout, but she does share a quite pointed opinion on the system of directly elected mayors; perhaps there’s a hidden meaning, who knows…)
I was elected to Tower Hamlets Council on 4 May 2006. On July 7 that year, I attended a memorial service for the victims of the London bombings the previous year. The then Assistant Chief Executive, Sara Williams was there too and I asked her what she had been doing at the same time last year.
Her answer opened my eyes to the importance of the organisation I had just joined.
Sara told me that the Council had activated its emergency plans on that terrible day, to ensure that children who could not be collected from school were cared for until their parents arrived; that meals for vulnerable residents were still delivered; that Mosques and Muslim businesses in the community were supported and protected from any retaliatory actions; that resources were made available to help the hospitals and Police; and transport was arranged so that workers at Canary Wharf and around the Borough managed to get home, or to other accommodation for the night.
Sara had worked continuously for 18 hours even though she had lost contact with her own family members.
Recognising the importance of the Council to people’s daily lives, it was a steep learning curve for me to appreciate how all the different elements of the Council work in the Borough. It was an even more difficult task to understand the politics of the Council and how to get things done as an opposition councillor.
I may be unusual in not coming from a political family or from student politics, and some political experience would have helped. I was told that people considered me naïve – I’m sure they were right. But I did have a terrific mentor in Peter Truesdale from Lambeth, and Peter’s advice and encouragement proved invaluable.
He told me not to take criticism personally, to divide my time equally between managing my group of fellow Liberal Democrats, attending Council Committees, and spending time in my ward listening to residents and helping them deal with concerns.
I didn’t quite manage to split my time into thirds: in my first year I attended every committee I could so that I could get to grips with the business of the Council. It was useful and important. However, when the then Leader of the Conservative group Simon Rouse told me “You’re spending too much time in the Town Hall”, he was right and I changed the balance of my work to spend more time with businesses and residents.
Being in opposition is horrible.
I presume some people enjoy it, never having to take difficult decisions, but not me.
Nevertheless, being in opposition is important, and a lot can be achieved, but it’s not the same as having a chance to put your plans into action or working closely with officers to implement policy. But all councillors can do important work to represent their constituents.
One of the first and most important pieces of casework I did was for a man who lived in a two-up two-down maisonette. He was dying of emphysema and could barely walk. He had a choice of living upstairs with the bathroom or downstairs with the kitchen.
He came to me and asked for help because he had been sleeping on the sitting room couch, using a bucket for a toilet so that he could be close to the kitchen. I arranged for him to get a stairlift as an emergency, to enable him to sleep in a bed and use a bathroom for the last few months of his life.
It shook me that firstly, it was so easy for me to do this for him – Council staff were brilliant and immediately recognised the need and urgency of the case – and secondly, that I had the power or influence, whatever it should be called, to make this happen.
All Councillors will have stories about strange requests and unreasonable demands: mine is the man who called me and said he had an emergency and I needed to come to his house. I had to see the problem, he couldn’t describe it, and it had to be that day.
I reshuffled my life, rushed over there to be shown to the back patio area. “Look!” he said. I looked and then asked “What am I looking at?”. “The leaves” he replied. “They’re falling onto the ground”. “It’s autumn” I said, “That’s what leaves do…”. “The council must sweep them up” he said. I’m afraid I left a slightly disgruntled homeowner that evening – even though I had offered to sweep up the leaves myself!
I have loved (nearly) every minute of being a Councillor, but especially the first four years up to 2010. I opposed the directly elected mayoral system made possible by the Local Government Act 2000.
The referendum in 2010 that brought an executive mayor to Tower Hamlets was shrewd politics for the Respect party – because it means that only one elected position really matters any more – that of the Mayor, as that person can administer the borough without the input of any councillors.
Having power vested in one individual is potentially risky, and for me, the model of collective decision-making by a leader and cabinet elected from among the Councillors provides a more representative way to take decisions on behalf of our community.
On a personal note, having been a councillor for eight years, I now understand much better how the world works, from getting the rubbish collected, to the development of multi-million pound contracts for new homes.
I have been warmly welcomed by many people into their homes and lives. I have made an astonishing range of friends across the political boundaries: of course my partner is a Labour councillor and our home has been visited by people from all parties.
Other political party activists canvassing in our area know they are always welcome to use the loo! On one memorable occasion – Liberal Democrats, Labour, and Conservatives met in our house on the same evening – but that’s a story for another generation.
My best wishes go to all new and continuing Councillors taking office on May 23.
She is a fantastic councillor who isn’t ridiculously partisan, has a proper job and isn’t trying to fill her boots. So many councillors have absolutely no politics and no interest in residents. I’d vote for her over any Labour or Tory candidate any day of the week. I think it’s a real shame that she didn’t stand to be the Liberal Mayoral candidate if only to show up the absurdity of this contest.
John Biggs is running a campaign that basically says: I’m not Lutfur Rahman.
Lutfur Rahman is running a campaign that is built on: I’m not a crook. Chris Wilford who recently hatched out of an egg shell wants a “Fresh Start”. I have no idea what the invisible Liberal Reetendranath Banerji wants – and then there’s the joker. The hustings are going to be a complete and utter farce.
Good luck to Stephanie.
Whose the joker? Could you possibly mean the only actual Eastender running? You know eastenders are sick and tired of people looking down their snooty noses at us because we do not speak with a plum in our mouths. Do not assume anything about anyone by the way they speak. Eastenders are capable of running our village and cannot cock it up anymore than Labour have and their child Lucifer
Isn’t Lutfur an East Ender?
No luftur is not a born and bred eastender .read his bio
She kind of represents the end of a certain era. An era when the historic town hall in Bethnal Green was flogged off, gone forever… replaced with that dump at Mulberry Place which is privately owned and which the public don’t even have a right of access to. It was the time when in 1993 leaflets distributed by the Liberal Democrats accused Labour of diverting funds to Asian communities, claims which, it would seem, have been vindicated in the 11 years since and at the time resulted in a BNP candidate getting 34% of the vote in Millwall. The “backlash” of this event led to a Labour Party feeling vindicated and intensifying the diversion of funds from the “white” community to the Bangladeshi and ultimately the circumstances that resulted in the rise to power of Lutfur Rahman and the ordure the borough finds itself in today.
It would be nice if Eaton came clean and wrote something about the decisions the Lib Dems made back in the day and her views on how those events in the 1980s and early 1990s created the ‘world’ we live in.
If all councillors could be as good as you Tower Hamlets would be a better place. Good Luck!!!
Stephanie was lucky with her disabled person.
Our local newspapers printed the story of the man without legs, living in the Labour leader’s ward. The council has ignoring his basic needs.
I went and saw him. Its incredibly easy to bang on people’s doors and talk to them even outside the voting season.
For 18 months the man had waited for help in a Labour local authority. Friends had made a type-of-extension to the back of his house that contained a crude toilet.
The man could not wheel himself into the kitchen because the gap was too narrow for his wheel chair. He stay on a bed in the rear of his living room.
A kind lady from a different area took pity on him and voluntarily drove to his home every day to ensure he has some food and water, provide him with company and wheeled him to the local shops.
I got kerbs dropped. I complained to the Labour chief executive (previously a Labour election agent) who wrote back that the man had not completed a form properly 18 months ago and no one at the council had done anything to help. I appealed passionately and desperately to the Labour and Tory council Leaders but no action. The bastards did not care – none came to look.
The council’s carers, supposed to feed and wash him every day, sometimes never arrived. The man had no food. He often became ill because of lack of regularly feeding and watering and sometimes ended-up in hospital as a result. If it wasn’t for the volunteer lady who came at different times every day, the man would have easily died.
I pleaded again with the council. The local newspapers didn’t seem too bothered. As a new councillor I wanted prompt action but the council bastards didn’t want to respond. About a year later, the council reluctantly decided to cut a hole in the ceiling so the man go go upstairs for the first time in about 3 years, widen the gap in the kitchen so he could wheel himself in,.
Then the day the work was due to start he died. I have never forgotten the matter or the man’s name or his sad plight. 10 years later, it still makes me angry and sad.
English local government can be disgustingly inhumane.
Curious Cat.
This isn’t about you.
Thanks for all your work Stephanie, particularly on some of Labour’s dodgy planning deals with their housing association chums. 8 years is long enough as a councillor – there’s no reason why you can’t return to it after a break, but think what a shake up it would be for parties and democracy if it elected office wasn’t a career option.
Stephanie has served Tower Hamlets altruistically and energetically. Her service to the whole community is a great credit to her generous principles and compassion. She has served the whole electorate with distinction and dedication. Without succumbing to petty partisan posturing or self-interested careerism she managed to retain her integrity and sense of proportion in a very difficult, fractious council. One of the LibDems finest – our borough has been served well by her and it is sad no one will have a chance to vote for her again in this election. She can be very proud of here achievements.
I’ve always thought of Stephanie as a ‘proper Councillor’.
Somebody who wasn’t in it for the status or a political career or the money.
Somebody who chose her party according to her beliefs – and didn’t jump ship when life got difficult and she became the sole Liberal Councillor.
Somebody who didn’t shout or bang the table but just quietly got stuck in and tried her level best to make things better for people.
There are always people who you admire as Councillors irrespective of their politics – and I think Stephanie has a lot of people who admire her right across the borough.
If Stephanie stood for Mayor I’d vote for her – and I think there’s probably a lot of other people who would too.
“she’s been the most reasoned councillor in that time.”
No she hasn’t Ted. I don’t see why you feel the need to say this, or why the commenters above want to talk about her like a favourite old aunt.
Her behaviour in the last four years has been that of a Quisling – there’s no other word for it. Shamelessly angling for an SRA from a rotten administration like Lutfur’s doesn’t strike me as “reasoned”.
I think she turned down an SRA..
What’s an SRA?
Special Responsibility Allowance
Slightly off topic but not much. An article in today’s Guardian about developers has relevance to some things going on in Tower Hamlets. With the boom in house prices developers are trying to reduce or wriggle out of altogether the Section 106 requirements for social housing. The article is about Milton Keynes and the question has been raised by the current Tory administration of that town.
There is huge pressure from developers to do away with any social housing provision at all and although this article highlights a very large scheme there are smaller ones close to home which are well worth a scrutiny. Most people will probably not have heard of the London Legacy Development Corporation. It took over all of the assets of the Olympic committee and these are considerable.
There are two pieces of prime land almost entirely owned by the LLDC by Hackney Wick station which are in Tower Hamlets. These are among the very few open areas left in the borough where social housing could be built. The land is, technically at least, publicly owned and was bought with public money.
The LLDC is a semi secret quango which although containing on its board elected members of the boroughs which encompass these pieces of land, takes decisions behind closed doors and seems to be more concerned with the needs of developers than of local people.
A few yards away from the Tower Hamlets land the other side of the London Overground line in Hackey, are two even larger sites also owned by the LLDC and bought with public money. The Hackney Gazette of Feb 21st this year reported that,
“Last month, councillors on Hackney Council’s planning sub-committee heard from the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC) at a special pre-application meeting to find out about its plans for the East Wick in the Hackney part of the park.
If the LLDC removes a condition attached by the now defunct Olympic Delivery Authority’s planning committee, the target of affordable housing in East Wick will drop from 38 per cent to 29 per cent-reducing the number of affordable units from 336 to 254. The sub-committee which had secured the condition has agreed to a site visit.
Overall plans for social housing on the publicly funded site have dropped from 50 per cent to 28 per cent on some new developments”.
This of course applies to the sites in Hackney but they are a part of the same scheme and a few yards walk from the two sites that are in Tower Hamlets. The area, like the old London Docklands Development Corporation, has its own planning powers and although, as I have said, technically the mayors of Hackney, Newham and Tower Hamlets are on the board of the quango to supervise what goes on, in practice the LLDC does what it likes behind closed doors in, it appears, secret deals with developers.
It is to be hoped that John Biggs will be elected Mayor in a few weeks and that he will begin to exercise some scrutiny in his new office and open up the closed doors of the LLDC.
The second Section 106 bit of news needs to be confirmed and perhaps John Biggs could do something here. I hear from the Isle of Dogs that 106 grants from local businesses for specific local projects has been taken by Lutfur Rahman and is being used on his Whitechapel redevelopment.
While this is legal it is yet another example of how he robs the borough at one end to fund his supporters at the other. It seems that Livingstone is a beneficiary of this transfer. Does anyone know how much he is being paid as an adviser?
Section 106 of the Planing Act 1990 is a parliamentary approved legal bribe
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1990/8/section/106
Mr Mullah wrote
Don’t think it is.
Curious Cat.
I should have done a screen grab of the OBV site as Woolley has now removed any reference to Terry Fitzpatrick and I see Ted has once again censored a perfectly accurate and truthful post by myself.
What is interesting is that as late as last Thursday Livingstone signed a letter to the Guardian defending Lutfur. Read it on the OBV site http://www.obv.org.uk. Explanations please Ken.
“It seems that Livingstone is a beneficiary of this transfer. Does anyone know how much he is being paid as an adviser?”
Funny you ask. Cos several FOIs were submitted about that and I’m sure they’d have seen the light of day if they’d come back with the answer people were looking for:
http://www.towerhamletsfoi.org.uk/documents/10377/FOI%2010377%20Whitechapel%20Vision%20Masterplan.pdf
So it’s an ego trip for Ken. Still his ego has taken a battering of recent years.
Lib Dems in Tower Hamlets, especially in Bow are and were a total drain: lazy, election fraud through dead peoples’ votes, taking long trips abroad, organisational in fighting…
Stephanie Eaton should have left that sinking ship ages ago.
Actually the ship left her. The Lib Dems were basically the old Labour Party who started to leave or were forced out when the loony left began to join and pack the ward meetings in the early eighties.
We ended up with Cllrs like Phil Maxwell and Paddy Little from Militant, Sue Carlyle of, I think, Worker’s Fight, well worker’s something or other, and a whole slew of others who were more interested in race quotas, twinning with Gaza and Havana and declaring the borough nuclear free than actually doing anything.
The original Lib Dem entryists like Eric Flounders were able to mobilise this section of the borough which at the time was still a sizable majority. She joined and became a councillor when they were in decline. She will be a loss although I never understood her support for Rahman.
Can anyone explain Livingstone’s signature on the Guardian letter of the 17th and his current support of John Biggs? Perhaps he has just lost the plot. That of course begs the question what was the plot in the first place!
Can anyone remember some of those entryist cllrs from the eighties? There were quite a few of them.
Now they’re just more interested in race and twinning with Jenin than actually doing anything. Not much change then.
As I suppose I am one of the Mullah’s ‘entryists’, I would first add that we were the Liberal Party before 1988 and that the Liberal Focus Team was a very tight ship. In the 1979 general election a number of Young Liberals and like-minded individuals decided to contest some inner-city seats that the party might otherwise leave out. I’m not sure whether Eric Flounders & Brian Williams were part of this, though they fitted the pattern – Tudor Gates had previously fought Bethnal Green & Bow, but the attraction of the constituency – living there aside, was that (Orpington excepted) it had been the last in London to return of Liberal MP – Sir Percy Harris (Bethnal Green South West until 1945), who continued as a London County Councillor until his death in 1952. Memories of Sir Percy were still strong in the 1980s – amongst older residents of the Ranwell estate for instance. Eric & Brian attracted a very dedicated group of Liberal activists who would take control of the borough seven years later. Off the cuff, party membership was around 50 at the time and we weren’t interested in members who weren’t prepared to work. Unfortunately, the Liberal Democrats, with their centralized national membership let the genie out of the bottle, and the occasional attempts to put the stopper back have not been to the advantage of the local party.
No Stewart, when I mentioned entryists I was talking specifically about the far left. It was the antics of the people that I mentioned and others that led traditional Labour Party members and Cllrs to move to the Lib Dems.
I recall that the first Liberal councillor, I think Eric Flounders, was elected in May 1978 in Bow. They bumbled along as the only opposition that Labour had had since 1945 until that party began to suffer what the party nationally was, which was entryism by various types of Marxist.
These people typified nationally by Derek Hatton and in London by Livingstone were more concerned with what has become known as “identity” politics and grand gestures such “Fares Fair” and fighting rate capping than actually running services. Grand gestures and confrontations with ” Maggie” were far more important than education, housing and dustbins.
The Liberals/Lib Dems in Tower Hamlets were able to capitalise on the discontent that was increasingly being felt by traditional Labour voters who started to switch sides so that by, I think, 1988 they were in power. They were aided by a Labour split called Traditional Labour led by a former group leader Paul Beasley which eventually merged with them.
Things started to come unstuck when they started to run openly anti Bangladeshi campaigns like hiring ships that would be moored in the Thames for homeless Bangladeshi families. Eventually the then leader Paddy Ashdown stepped in and they were all suspended from membership or something similar, I can’t remember.
This was all running side by side with Kinnock taking on the Militant Tendancy and making Labour electable again and the far left being ousted from parties all over the country. Gradually the Lib Dems started to fall apart especially after Flounders and the other capable organisers lost their seats and in a week or so the last of what was thirty years ago an exercise in mould breaking goes as well.
It is time I think for some serious sociologist to start to look at that period of Tower Hamlets history whilst the dramatis personae are still alive. When I say serious I exclude the Young Foundation as their ” New East End” was a load of rubbish.
My champagne bottle has popped, I have had a history lesson about the Liberal Party. Gee thanks!
Were you being grateful or sarcastic John Wright?
themadmullahofbricklane – A bit of each. Teds post was about the resignation of Stephanie not the pro’s and con’s of past TH Liberal Party figures. Sorry if my comment offended anybody, it certainly wasn’t meant that way.
No offence occurred to me John. Taking up the Mullah’s points, my understanding was that Militant had the west of the borough and Socialist Organiser the east, with Carlilly floating somewhere in between. Paul Beasley didn’t join the Liberals, but some of his associates did. Aside from their fighting some of the wards, Beasley’s most significant act was using his casting vote as mayor to put the Liberals into office – Belinda Knowles was under 21 when elected so we were evenly tied with Labour.
The ship myth, made much of by the Trots needs to be knocked on the head. On taking control of the borough, the scale of its problems loomed much larger than anticipated. The percentage of the borough’s budget that went on temporary accomodation for homeless families (often miles away) was enormous. Paddy Streeter had connections with Lloyds and was aware that there was a surplus of ships available at knockdown prices. If it were possible we might use the like as a floating hotel instead of the fleapits of Finsbury Park and beyond. It was worth investigating, but didn’t prove possible, one factor being that the Port of London was the harbour authority, not LB Tower Hamlets. Whilst it wouldn’t occur to the average Trot, homelessness is not defined by race.
There has been a fair amount of academic interest in decentralization, but most of the sociology suffers from a one-sided view point (Foster – ‘Docklands, cultures in conflict, worlds in collision’ for example).
I was using the resignation of Stephanie, of whom I had good things to say I think without scrolling back, as a way of looking at a development in local politics that was quite unique.
In fact Tower Hamlets as been the cradle of some significant social movements from the Labour Party to our current third world kleptocratic Islamist one. I watched the Liberal episode closely and you haven’t mentioned the Paddy Ashdown intervention.
As I recall, from being the flagship Lib Dem borough all of a sudden it became a non person in Stalinist fashion, an overnight embarrassment. I will see what I can dig up.
My recollection of the ships isn’t that there was any concern for the conditions of the homeless people but a very brutal point was being made and, as I seem to remember, in publicity that was being circulated in Bangladesh.
I have never gone into the niceties of the differences between the various Trot groups, as far as I am concerned they are all potential mass murderers like their guru.
I would be interested in a reference to the “Foster” you mentioned as I think some real academic interest in the development of communities in East London is long overdue. Unfortunately “The New East End” that I mentioned above is being taken as an accurate account of what happened even though it was written to take a Labour Party/multiculti rose coloured view of events and some if it has been invented..
Have a look at http://www.sarahglynn.net. Go to documents and you are looking for two, Sarah is a serious researcher and prolific publisher so you will need to do some scrolling. You are looking for Playing the Ethnic-Card-politics and segregation in London’s East End and East End Immigrants and the Battle for Housing.
A lot of reading but all of it fascinating and backed up with notes and references. Even if you aren’t involved in the current round of political fisticuffs it is always interesting to know how we got where we are.
themadmullahofbricklane – Thanks for the very informative link.
Thank you John Wright. Does anyone know how to get the dvd of The Secret History of Our Streets, which I have got, up on you tube? The last one of the series dealt with similar themes around Arnold Circus in Shoreditch.
Just something saw on another blog. Lutfur’s tame Anglican poodle Giles Fraser has apparently written an elegy to his paymaster in The Daily Mirror this week.
He seems to think that everybody is being beastly to Lutfur and he should be “allowed to get on with the job”. Quite what the job is he doesn’t say. For those of you who don’t know, Fraser chaired Lutfur’s ” Fairness Commission”. What was that, I hear you say.
Well, it’s the kind of scam that people like Livingstone ran in the GLC and GLA days when you are elected on a very specific series of issues which you claim to know all about. You then appoint a whole series of lackies as “advisers” on huge salaries to advise you thereby admitting that you told lies to get elected in the first place.
Having told everyone he was going to sort out poverty in Tower Hamlets Lutfur, last year, appointed the Fairness Commission to find out if life in Tower Hamlets was unfair. The Rev Giles got himself appointed Chair at a salary for a few weeks work of £2000. I use work in the loosest sense of the word.
After earnestly collecting information the Commission reported, that for some people life in Tower Hamlets was unfair. This information can be bracketed alongside the religious affiliations of The Pope and the Chief Rabbi and the toilet habits of bears in rural situations. As Michael Caine would have said ” talk about stating the bleeding obvious”.
I found on the web that, amongst other things, Giles lectures on moral leadership and is interested in ethics. He should therefore give back the £2000 quid and hide his face in shame but of course he will justify it and simply go on to the next scam.
If anyone has time tomorrow at 4pm Lutfur will be at The Montefiore Centre laying out his policies on housing. He will explain the several thousand home he has built already and how and where he is going to build another 3500 over the next four years.
The only problem is that at the most the borough has built or renovated fifteen in the last three odd years and there is no money and nowhere to build any more, still, the bigger the lie the better. Joseph Goebbels would have been a good employee of Lutfur. Imagine him and Taki in charge of publicity. There would be a thousand houses built every week!
Nicely written. It made me laugh. 🙂
Thanks CC. Give me a thumbs up this everybody, I want to get the record.Ted should run a league for every post.
Apologies for the delay in getting back on various points.
Janet Foster – ‘Docklands, cultures in conflict, worlds in collision’ UCL Press 1999 – you may be able to pick it up at Judd Books, Marchmont Street (020 7387 5333). The author made no attempt to contact any Lib Dems to my knowledge, despite Janet Ludlow still being a councillor at the time (& a former member of the LBTH/LDDC Social Accord panel).
I’ll check out the other suggestions, thanks, though would add that I tend to associate Pluto Press with the SWP (which may be anachronistic).
The ship – the socialist left & their acolytes put out their own fantasies, which had nothing to do with reality, nor attempting to find a solution to the problems of homeless families (who are not defined by race).
Ashdown? I think he had his own agenda. I hope to investigate it some day. His published diaries are silent on the issue, but there are one or two clues.
There was always a tension between Tower Hamlets Liberals and the national party – to some extent success came out of that tension.
Picking up on Grave Maurice’s point, I haven’t seen the 1993 leaflet for a couple of decades, but my recollection is rather than ‘Labour of diverting funds to Asian communities’ it was about a specific organisation of which there were serious doubts. Straw claimed this was racist – he had to say something after Labour had elected the first BNP councillor on their fake canvassing returns claims, but as Bernard Levin pointed out, if something has a real name you can hardly not use it. Ashdown went along with Straw. The rest is history, the people of Tower Hamlets have much to thank him for.