Labour no show at Deptford hustings
Around 40 residents attended the open-air hustings organised by campaign groups Save Deptford High Street and Lewisham People's Assembly, but the Labour Party candidates were pointedly absent.
After a room booking mix-up, the event had to move outdoors but a good-natured crowd stood and sat on benches outside Deptford Lounge on Thursday evening.
Three councillor candidates showed up, Oliver Snelling for the Communist Party of Britain, Hau-Yu Tam for the Green Party and Mark Morris for the Liberal Democrats.
The three Labour councillors for the ward - Dawn Atkinson, Rosie Parry and David Walker - are standing for re-election, but none of them appeared.
Mark Morris was the only candidate to address Labour's absence directly:
"Incredibly, this is probably the only hustings being held in this borough during this election .. and the Labour Party just decide to put two fingers up to people organising events like this today."
Accusing Labour of arrogance, he added: "If you were a first-time voter back in 1971, you'd be 73 today, that's how long Labour have run this council".
In his opening address, Oliver Snelling, for the Communist Party, explained his five key points: homes for people, not profit; abolish the regressive council tax; public ownership; control of council jobs with secure, unionised jobs for everyone and immediate divestment from genocide in Gaza.
"The Communist Party has been involved in London politics for as long as anyone here has been alive", he said, giving the example of the communist MP Matt Pratton who "forced the government .. to open up the tubes as bomb shelters".
"The system is fundamentally corrupt .. and rigged against us as a class .. if you earn a living through a wage you're working class and the Communist Party is for you".
Hau-Yu Tam, councillor and deputy leader of Lewisham Green group said: "Lewisham Greens are standing on an eco-socialist manifesto of delivering hope to Lewisham ..
"Our plans include a cleaner, greener neighbourhood, building safer, affordable, sustainable housing, delivering on an economy of care and actually doing justice, equality and sanctuary as a verb, and not only as a noun, as Lewisham council often do performatively, we would actually do that in practice."
She referenced both the Save Lewisham Shopping Centre campaign and the campaign opposing the rubber crumb football pitch at Whitefoot Lane school playing fields - "an issue of environmental racism".
"When you present evidence to the council that minoritised communities are being hurt by the policies that they're delivering, they have no response," she said
Mark Morris, the Liberal Democrat candidate, called for Deptford residents to "put two fingers up to Labour on May the 7th .. whoever you vote for, don't vote Labour".
He criticised the Labour Party's national policies including "their horrific Immigration Act" but also "how they've run this council .. since 1971".
He pointed to the council's failures in meeting the decent homes standards and homes with continuing issues including mould and electrical faults.
"This isn't my personal opinion, it's the view of the National Housing Regulator and the Housing Ombudsman ..
"Why did the council not know about this until the regulator actually stepped in?"
The answer he gave was that councillors are out of touch and arrogant.
Among other failures, he mentioned the environment: "We have one of the highest flying tipping rates in in the country and one of the worst records for recycling ..
"This council is rubbish at rubbish basically, and then it all goes off to an incinerator".
The vast SELCHP incinerator is nearby.
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A campaigner from Save Deptford High Street, one of the organisers of the hustings, asked:
"So we fought the Save Deptford High Street campaign, and the question for us, and for a lot of the traders around here, would be what kind of guarantees can you make that these kinds of things won't be tried again in the local area?"
Oliver Snelling committed "if elected, as a councillor I would always be supporting the residents of Deptford standing up for what they want, whether traders want to see pedestrianisation or not".
But whether elected of not, he said "I can guarantee the Communist Party will be there after the election, on the street, organising, where the real power is".
Hau-Yu Tam said: "The Save Deptford High Street campaign was a really exemplary example of community engagement ..
"So we would support the campaign, we have always supported the campaign, and we would do more work to ensure that we stand against gentrification everywhere in Lewisham and beyond."
Mark Morris questioned the campaign's assumption of a direct causal link between pedestrianisation and gentrification.
He agreed with Hau-Yu Tam's point that Labour is poor at consultation: "You do need to carry people, you must engage properly, you must listen to market traders and all the individual traders of this historic high street ..", he said.
"But I'm not going to agree 100% with the idea that we must never, never, never pedestrianise Deptford High Street .. because it might have merit ..
"There are areas that have gone down that route and there's no enthusiasm to reverse it .. people would think you'd be mad to go back."
Martin asked the most direct question to the three candidates. He explained he had been a Lewisham resident all his life "but I'm now homeless. Housing is crazy. It's ridiculous. Rent and buying, it's just nuts.
"In all of your opening addresses, you spoke of affordable homes. But given the power you ask for, what would you actually do to make it more possible for me to access that?"
Mark Morris spoke of the need to build more houses, mentioning the huge plot of land at Convoy's Wharf that has been empty since 1999, and empty car parks at Milford Towers and in Lewisham Shopping Centre.
Hau-Yu Tam spoke of a care worker approach, rent controls and enforcing the Renters Rights Act properly. She said the Greens would work with London Renters Union, Tenants and Residents Associations, and she pointed to their manifesto pledge to build at least 1,000 social rent homes.
Oliver Snelling pointed to the problem of ownership of property. "We need a council, we need a government that builds houses for the people, by the people".
He promised to be "a thorn in the side of not only developers, but any party that is not guaranteeing houses for every single resident in our community".
Lewisham Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) asked how candidates would go beyond pledges to create meaningful change.
Other questions covered recognition of trades unions for council contractors, and "so-called" integrated care policies and council scrutiny of health.
Candidates were asked if they would be coming to the Stand up to Racism march against Tommy Robinson and his fascists on 16 May (they will be), while another asked them to commit to "no cuts, no tax, people's budgets".
Alex, a Green Party member, said that his question would have been for the Labour candidate, if they had turned up.
While Lewisham Labour "love talking about how we are the first borough of sanctuary .. I'm not seeing any pushback on the national rhetoric on this. We've got a Prime Minister who's echoing the words of Enoch Powell.
"We've got a lot of performative cruelty coming out of the Home Office, as Hau-Yu said .. in Lewisham we had Mike Tapp run down with a film crew to televise an immigration raid."
He asked how candidates would view their obligations to uphold Lewisham's status as a borough of sanctuary.
In their final summing up, all three candidates were in agreement that this election offers a unique opportunity for change.
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