'Speak English'

Wednesday 28 May saw the all-singing, all-dancing Full Council Mayor-Making and AGM. For those used to RBKC Council’s ongoing deafness to tone it did not disappoint. The new Mayor, introducing her choice for Deputy - a minority party Black Councillor - insisted that he ‘speak English’, causing audible gasps from the back of the Chamber. It was bizarre and inappropriate, especially given the highly respected new Deputy Mayor’s long experience as a multi-lingual educationalist. Many of us remember a previous incarnation of this new Mayor as a bar owner famous for making extremely rude and occasionally racist comments to customers; the reviews are still online for the curious.

It was an evening of speeches, and more speeches, and yet more speeches. The former Labour Group Leader, now relegated to the back benches, endorsed the Deputy Mayor, but didn’t miss his opportunity to pitch for his hot sauce business venture.

The newly re-elected Council Leader, or we should say cheer-leader, was clearly euphoric at keeping Reform at bay, and keeping Labour where they belong, during the local elections. It was a speech of superlatives, platitudes and a total lack of self-reflection, or indeed, taste.

When the Council you have been elected to ‘Lead’ for the ninth year has, in the past 12 months, been awarded a Social Housing Regulator Level 3 damning report, and has suffered a cyber-attack that had been predicted or warned about FIVE TIMES, when the borough continues to be home to the richest alongside some of the poorest wards in London, including the Grenfell ward, this is nothing, absolutely nothing to be proud of. However this didn’t stop the Council Leader praising herself to the heights. The election results were achieved ‘not by luck…but responsibility, humility, energy, and a clear idea of what the people of Kensington and Chelsea expect’. Apparently, this is ‘the basics done brilliantly – clean streets, two rubbish collections…spending public money carefully’, and ‘practical caring competent local government’.

Most of all she said without embarrassment, in spite of the damning failures identified by the Grenfell Tower Inquiry which were ‘accepted as truth’ in the Council’s response, and in spite of the commitment to be ‘the best Council it can be’, that RBKC Council ‘does not need to reinvent itself’.

More bizarre and tone deaf was the praise for her former Deputy Leader, Kim Feilding-Mellen Taylor-Smith who was stepping down after nine years at her side. She tearfully recounted how he did ‘what was asked of him .. to sit with people who had lost everything’. Simply extraordinary how her tears were for the person instrumental in leaving a legacy of chaos and suffering after nine years of so-called ‘recovery’, and not for our bereaved, survivors and residents who continue to struggle under a system that is indisputably NOT caring or competent, and which continues to fail those most affected as well as many thousands across North Ken.

It was then the turn of the newly elected Leader of the Labour Group, Monica Press, who had stepped down in 2022 in a fit of pique having been refused the promotions she felt she deserved – finally on the front bench, in the position she had craved for so long. With eight new Labour Councillors, she has a tough job and a heavy duty to residents of North Ken who are far from feeling the elation of the K&C Tories. It was a fiery first speech based on ongoing issues but no new commitments or perspectives. She stated quite correctly that the Tories have never had a mandate in North Ken (at least not for some years), and declared a Republic of North Kensington. She said they would focus on local – not international – issues, which might be a grave error to the thousands of residents supporting Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Iran against US/Israeli warmongering and genocide. She stated that the perpetrators of the Grenfell Tower fire must be ‘charged and brought to Court this year’ - simply not possible according to EDC’s recent visit to the Operation Northleigh team at Scotland Yard.

Her most interesting comments, made in real anger, related to the Tories ‘withholding’ the chair of the Housing and Communities Select Committee from a Labour member. She is quite correct that a Council effectively in special measures due to their failure to repair and maintain homes should have a committee chaired by a Labour member. However, she had apparently demanded that the chair would be taken by a new Councillor, someone who had never sat in the committee nor had any experience whatever of Grenfell-related matters. When I chaired the Cabinet and Corporate Services Scrutiny Committee some years back, I had been on the Council for six years, shadowed it for a year, and sat on that committee for two years before becoming Chair, and was well versed in the rules, regs and procedures I was scrutinising. Proposing a newbie for that was foolish at best – had she promised the role to some highly ambitious incomer? Frankly the new Labour Group Leader has shown very poor leadership in this matter, and this failure of judgement has let down our community very badly. Rotten? will be watching the Labour Leader closely in months to come, and has dedicated a spot for her, ‘Bad Press’.

The declared plan of the new Kensington Labour Group leader to focus on local and not international issues presupposes that the two are separate. Many politicians wish they were separate, of course, but the reality is that the managed decline of Britain is intimately linked to British foreign policy.

Our foreign wars cause the flow of refugees into our country, people who disproportionately need essential support and guidance from local networks, which our Councillors should be part of.

Injustices like the occupation of Palestine, which is the one they really want us all to shut up about, are hugely important to thousands of people in West London, Diaspora groups and people repulsed by colonial violence. RBKC invests pension money in Israel’s violence and the Labour group is content to go along with it. The council also provides political cover for Zionism, with RBKC cancelling its annual diplomatic reception for the sake of the Israeli embassy, and offering no support to Palestinians, in contrast to the open arms and (superficial) solidarity for Ukrainians.

British and British-enabled violence eventually boomerangs back in the form of terrorist attacks and the state squeezing our civil liberties. A foreign policy that utilises racism and dehumanisation to maufacture public consent also shifts the domestic debate to elevate Zionist assets like “Tommy Robinson”. In this context, far-right gangs and the police can harass local peace campaigners, who receive no solidarity from local politicians. It’s why the Labour Party could disenfranchise local British Somali members to fix the MP candidate selection and nobody - no official, no member - said a word in protest.

Could that have happened if Somalis, Africans in general, Black British people, refugees and Muslims hadn’t already been dehumanised by the media and political classes for years, all to serve the war profiteers?