Local environment campaigner hits out at Council Leader saying that residents and their welfares have not been put first by this council.

Ian Pirie is well known and much respected campaigner for environmental issues and our planet here in Havering. Today, he shares his response on recent comments by Havering’s Leader of the Council-Councillor Ray Morgon.

I see from an article (6th Oct) in This is Local London that Cllr Morgon believes that ‘local parties’ are better for running local government than parties with political affiliations, because the latter cannot criticise their own parties when they are in government. They are, he says, hamstrung’.  This cannot go without comment, for a number of reasons.

First, it is quite clear that our political parties are not dictatorships, and are quite frequently subject to criticism from other MPs, councillors, and members of their parties. I doubt very much whether local councillors – Conservative or Labour – would accept that they are ‘hamstrung’ by their national parties. 

Second, it can be argued that unattached parties will simply drift unless they have some beliefs, philosophy or principles to guide them. This is declared, for example, by the journalist and author Will Hutton (see for example his book: The State We’re In, 1990) who recently wrote in The Observer: ‘Ideas are the lifeblood of politics. Without a philosophy, the politician blows in the wind and has no definition.’

In reply, no doubt Cllr Morgon will say, as he did in the article mentioned above: “We’re a residents’ association and we’re linked in with our members, so we know what’s important to them. We are only accountable to residents, not some higher authority.” Really? This is not what is happening over the proposal for a gigantic data centre to be built on green belt farmland in North Ockendon.  Their interests and welfare have certainly not been put first by this council.  

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