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In conversation with Cllr Chris Roberts, leader of Greenwich Council

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Unveiling of Nike statue in Woolwich

What were your personal highlights from this incredible year in Greenwich?

It is difficult to pick one thing because it has been such a phenomenal year, one we’ll never see the like of again. If I pick a Royal one and an Olympic one: For the Royal one, I think it would be actually bringing the charter in to the town hall. When we came back, the Mayor and I, we brought the Letters Patent in to the town hall and all the staff were around the balconies and standing in the Victoria Hall and all of a sudden starting clapping and cheering, which is unusual for the leader of the council to receive! All around that royal weekend was a great highlight.

On the Olympic side, it has to be Gemma [Gibbons] winning her medal. Particularly having set up the Starting Blocks charity and knowing that we funded her and she asked for additional help just a two or three months before the games. She’d lost her ranking through injury and the way to get it back was to compete in tournaments which were in Singapore or Thailand. But she had would have had to pay for that herself and the Greenwich Starting Blocks charity paid for her to go. Actually seeing one of our own, in every sense of the word, and in such an iconic moment for the rest of the country.

The Games themselves seemed to go very smoothly. Did you expect at the start of the year that it would have gone as well as it appeared to and was it as smooth as it looked?

It actually did go as smoothly as it looked, yeah.  If you take the Olympic arrangements, we had teams of staff working in three shifts, twenty-four hours a day, and we had to report to Government about 4am so the Prime Minister could get a national briefing at about 6 or 7. We had to collate the responses from other boroughs in south east London, everything from terrorist threats to anything that might impede the smooth flow of the Olympics. They do this traffic light system and you started query it when everything appeared to be green on every day and you think, “are we sure?” As you got more and more in to it, it just ran really smoothly.

And you were satisfied with the council’s response to the concerns from Greenwich town centre businesses during the Games?

Yeah, but I think you can tell from the nature of an event who will potentially gain and who might not and the lesson from other areas that have had successful games like Barcelona and Sydney is how you capture the tourism in future years. That’s why it’s with great relief that Greewich Hospital have abandoned plans to knock down the centre of Greenwich when we want to be saying to the tourists, “now come back.”

Obviously you were against the redevelopment of the market but they were promising a very high quality hotel for Greenwich. Is it a loss to the town that there won’t now be that hotel?

I regret the loss of any hotel and yeah, that did look like an interesting one because we do need more hotel spaces, particularly to change the nature of the tourism. But in terms of which bit of Greenwich town centre you need to improve, it isn’t the market. If every shop was like the inside of Greenwich market you’d be saying it was a nicer place. So it’s not the place to start. We’ve started to talk to the new Director [of Greenwich Hospital] about things we can do jointly where everyone agrees there needs to be some improvement.

Do you think there’s anything to learn from the part-pedestrianisation during the Olympics and has it put it back on the agenda for the town centre?

I think we should continue to look to see if there’s better ways to manage the traffic which I don’t think means a pedestrianisation scheme at the moment. Someone [an outside contractor] has looked to see if there’s a better way to manage the traffic flow through the town centre and that might look at something like widening pavements and where I am at the moment is seeing whether we think that’s something we should go out and talk to residents about.

If we think there’s something that builds on the Olympics and looks good and doesn’t divert traffic up residential streets then at least it might be worth consulting on while the memory is fresh in people’s minds.

Parking in Greenwich town centre car parks is quite expensive – just going over  one hour would cost £5 because there’s no ‘part thereof’ payment.  Do you think the price of parking is an issue in Greenwich?

I certainly think it’s an issue. It’s an issue across the borough in all of our town centres. It’s something we’re going to have to revisit and look at and see what’s the right balance between trying to ensure that we can manage the financial challenges we have alongside bringing people in to our town centres.

The price is due to go up to £2.70 an hour in Greenwich – will that price rise be going ahead as planned?

If there’s something planned in the system there’s nothing we’ve done yet that would say it wouldn’t.

Returning to London 2012, what are the tangible legacies that residents and businesses can look forward to?

Legacy means different things to different people. From the first person getting a job on the Olympic Park helping to build the stadium – we just had figures that show that of the Games Time jobs across the host boroughs, Greenwich and Newham have the same percentage and if you care to go in to the decimal points, you’ll find we got seven more jobs than Newham, not that we’re point-scoring!

All of that is a legacy. The volunteering and the thousand people we had as volunteers which we’re starting to use in other areas again. I think the planting of the 2012 trees, the green flag parks and so on, all of those things, the facilities at Thomas Tallis and Crown Woods schools. New sports equipment in to parks. We tried to do as much of that as possible because with thought this Autumn would be full of people asking, “where is the legacy?” and people complaining about the Games. We thought we’ll deliver as much of the stuff as we can ahead of time.

The legacy now is changing the nature of the tourism in the borough and building the tourism drivers such as the cruise terminal and making sure this becomes more of a leisure-based destination.We want people to stay over night, not come for 2 or 3 hours, then have a sandwich and coffee and disappear.

You mentioned the cruise ship terminal – what’s your most recent update on what’s happening with that?

The government has set up some new marine based quango which sits parallel to the PLA. Both organisations need to give licences. They’re through the PLA bit and this new organisation also needs to give some kind of licence.

In terms of a time frame, when would you expect to see progress?

Depending on how long these licences take but they’re ready to go once they have them so I would hope if it’s not built and operable by this time next year, it will the first quarter of 2014.

Moving from cruise ships to tall ships, did you learn much at the recent conference in Riga?

We learnt a huge amount, we really did. They rotate the tall ships race but they have things like tall ship regatta which are smaller. We bid for 2016 for the tall ships race. We threw this together after the Olympics, I think we were almost beyond the qualifying period. We went out there and they offered us a 2014 regatta.

They rotate the races between European regions and 2016 should be the Iberian peninsular. So we said to the Dutch guys we’ve been working with and who brought the tall ships here this summer and who suggested we should go for this, “why are we bidding for the race for the Iberian peninsular?” And they said, “Oh, there’s issues” and there can’t be any harm to put the bid in so we put the application in.

We went to the conference and there was a report back from each of the host ports. So we got a sense of how different ports had done things. What we started to learn is that there’s a shortage of bidding ports for 2016 and therefore there is the possibility of that race potentially being moved. I don’t think they’re in a position to say that yet but because of the nature of the recessions and austerity measures in Spain and Portugal, there’s an issue I think for some of those ports and city mayors.

There are other tensions with our arrival in this network of relatively small ports, who for them, this is the biggest thing they’ll ever have. I suspect there may be a tension between them and the big tall ship captains. You can see the captains are really attracted by Greenwich and what it means to access to London for how they can market the corporate hospitality element.

The arrival of London has been welcomed by the ship captains but you can see the smaller ports thinking, “the last thing we need in this is London.” but the demand is being driven by the captains and some are saying we want to come on our own next year anyway.

Did you learn anything about the economic benefit of being a host port?

All the host ports had these DVDs and I dont think anyone came out with less than nine-to-one in terms of economic benefit to the outlay and some were more than that.

Did anyone you spoke to raise any concerns about getting the largest tall ships under the Dartford Bridge?

They all know about it. Some can take their masts off and some can’t come but we met a guy who said he had the biggest tall ship in the world and he wants to come next year but he needs a berth like the cruise ship terminal.

The council has launched a campaign called Bridge The Gap – can you explain the thinking behind it?

Years ago before the mayor of London existed there was a proposal for what was called the package of three and the third was a rail link to the Woolwich. That one’s been delivered and we continue to support the other two crossings. The reason for both is partially to ease some of the congestion but also in recognising the development opportunities that exist on the peninsula and in Charlton, in Woolwich and through to Thamesmead and on the other side of the river around the Royal Docks. If you’re going to really promote employment and growth, then you need to maximise what you can get out of these brown field sites. The ability for goods and services to move between the two is crucial.

About five years ago I was told from someone in Canary Wharf but there was not a single business south of the river that services the Canary Wharf estate. The reason for that was because anyone offering to clean an office, or whatever service, is that was would have to be able to get through the Blackwall tunnel.  So our support has been consistent for the best part of 20 years on these crossings.

Increasingly the jobs are being created on the other side of the river. We’ll have some new jobs but we’re never going to be self sufficient in employment or solve our own employment problem. Access to those jobs is crucial.

Doesn’t more roads mean more cars and more pollution?

We’ve ummed and ahhed about the tolling but we do think tolling is a necessary. If that’s the only way of getting them built then we’ll support the tolling. Clearly with tolling comes the possibility of demand management. 85% of the traffic through Blackwall doesn’t start in Greenwich so why can’t that go over the Dartford Bridge? Why can’t it go elsewhere? Well there is nowhere else to go so the prospect of more capacity, also with a bridge at Thamesmead, but also with  a tolling system to manage demand. We’ll make an argument about local access and whether local residents can cross for free.

We are also making a case for Greenwich town centre and saying we want to understand the impact a tolling system would have upon the world Heritage site in terms of traffic through Greenwich if people seek to avoid tolls.

Question from a Facebook user: what is the council doing to increase advice and support for people affected by changes in benefits, legal aid and especially people with disabilities and young people without family support?

We are currently getting our head around the number of people we think will be affected by these changes to individual benefits. So we know that there’s something like 400 families affected by the universal benefit. 122 of them will lose more than £100 a week. We are looking at the people affected by the bedroom tax where they get their benefit cut if they’re under occupying. There is the council tax benefits scheme which the government is delegating to local authorities to implement from April 1st but doing so with a 10% cut. We’re not allowed to cut the benefit for pensioners which is fine but does mean the cut for everyone else will be more like 15% than 10%.  So what we’re doing at the moment is trying to identify all these people and support them. We’re talking to advice centres to see who’s coming through their doors but most of these changes hit in April so we are building profiles and how we can assist.

What’s the status of Greenwich foot tunnel and is there enough money to complete it?

There’s still work to be done on both of the foot tunnels and we know that we need to secure people to do that work. We have appointed construction lawyers to understand what went wrong and where liabilities might be. There’s an assessment going on as to what should be the proper allocation of responsibilities and liabilities. We appointed someone to do an independent look at other contracts just to see if the structures are in place to make sure there isn’t anything like the foot tunnels happening elsewhere. He’s not been asked to look at the tunnels until the lawyers have said who’s to blame for which bits.

In so far as there had been improvements, have they been worthwhile? Do you almost wish you’d never been given the money for the project?

As I understand it, after about a hundred years there was certain work that needed to be done and in one sense we went through this with the Cutty Sark. There was a point at which you could just put it back together, as it was, or you could raise it and do what has been done with it. We decided to go with the iconic scheme with the Cutty Sark. I said, “if you just put back as it was you’ll have spent £30 million and nobody will know what you spent it on other than having a state-of-the-art but original-looking rivet.”

With something like the Cutty Sark you can go the extra mile and raise the extra money and make it look like what it is. I think at the end of the day a tunnel’s a tunnel but if there starts to be seepage as there was the main job is just to fix the tunnel and after a hundred years of pretty little maintenance, it’s never going to be an artistic looking project.

There was some support earlier in the year for a change back to the committee system at the council including a petition and also a motion from the Conservative group which was dropped at a council meeting. The political groups went away to consider this further – do you have an update on that?

I think it was one particular Conservative member, from what I’ve been told, rather than the whole group. We have had a discussion. I have to say nobody spoke in favour of returning to the committee system and it was overwhelmingly defeated. I think the reason it was defeated was that people don’t want to go back to that system. If people have a view of what they want the council to be, then simply saying let’s go back to something that was very insular where all the committees are whipped so you wouldn’t have a planning or licensing meeting where the councillors in the room weren’t whipped.

In my party’s rules, it’s against the constitution to whip the scrutiny panels but you would move to a system where everybody would be whipped in every committee. So there was a lot of opposition to it, particularly with people saying is this the right time to be doing this, mirroring the debate nationally as to whether this is the right time to change the electoral system or redraw the boundaries or reform the House of Lords when the country’s got these debt problems.

I could sit here and talk to you about these 400 families that are about to lose £100 a week or the other people about to get trampled all over by the benefit changes and the unemployment challenges we have. But to then say actually what Greenwich Council is now going to do is talk about its internal management?

With regards to the town hall, it’s a very nice building but sometimes it’s hard to usefully attend meetings  because of the poor acoustics in some rooms. Is it still fit for purpose?

I think it might not work as well as it should but I think there would be a reluctance to get rid of the town hall although one of my councillors has advocated it. But I think we do need to spend some money on it and it’s always this balance of “oh, you’ve got money to tart up the town hall whilst your closing this, that or the other.” Although hopefully we’re not closing this, that or the other. But the challenge in the current financial climate is to be seen to be spend money wisely. We do know that the acoustic system is something that needs to be looked at.

Under the constitution, members of the public can’t record a meeting. Is there a reason why they shouldn’t be able to?

I think it’s just a discussion and debate we’ve never had so we have these current standing orders and rules. We need, probably, to have the discussion about are we fit for purpose in the social media world, I guess.

When it comes to those discussions, do you have any thoughts yourself? Do you think it’s a good thing if people are interested enough to want to record a meeting?

I don’t know, I’d want to give it some more thought. I haven’t given it a great deal of thought in all honesty. If you talk about a planning meeting, if a councillor says something that’s a stray word because they are not trained legal professionals, if you turn something down and a developer’s lawyers have recorded it you might find that that stay sentence, that stray word from one councillor, does you in at an appeal.

So I can see the upsides and the downsides but I don’t particularly have a hugely strong view about it.

Are you happy with the way the council engages with people through its meetings or does it need to do a better job?

I think we try to do that more through the service elements, so engaging in the way in which people choose to organise themselves such as friends groups, tenants’ groups, pensioner groups and young people. It’s a lot stronger in those service related areas. You can always say we should have more people [at council meetings] but I’m reluctant to say to people this is how you should engage with the council as opposed to facilitating other ways. I’m keen to make sure we’re engaging with people where they’re demonstrating their levels of interest and where our services are touching upon them.

One of the ways in which people get information from the council is through Greenwich Time. Do you think it will be around for the foreseeable future?

Well I hope it is because I think it enables us to engage with their residents. When I listen to my peers talking on a London-wide basis they often talk about the information gap they have. We did look at the statutory guidance from the Government and we did go through it in a lot of detail and looked at the costings and the coverage of local newspapers and talked to them about where they do and where they don’t deliver and there are great big holes in that, and there are great big holes particularly around council estates. I understand that because they’re delivering to the demographic of their advertisers which is perfectly fine, they’ve got a business to run.

But there is a real underreported element. There was a scam going on, and this was told to me by a Conservative Essex county councillor who said, when this debate was going on, that they tried to place an advertisement [in a local paper] as the county council and they were being charged an astronomical fee. Because it was something that bordered on being potentially party political, he said , they then did it as the Conservative Party instead and got it at a tenth of the rate.

Because newspapers knew that notices had to be issued for traffic, for licences, for planning and various things, the charges that they would make to local authorities…. it was virtually a monopoly.

What do you say to people who make the argument you get a political benefit from delivering your good news to people every week?

I don’t think we’re classed as a newspaper but I’d happy to sign up to Leveson!

I mean, it cannot be political. You won’t find a commentary on the chancellor missing his debt targets…

But even if not overtly political, doesn’t it seek to make people very comfortable with the status quo because it tells them all the positive side of the council’s work. Isn’t there a benefit, even if unintended?

I don’t think so, no. I think the public are far more intelligent than we give people credit for. If anyone has this debate it’s the Labour Party, asking how would you ever get a Labour government with the national media we’ve got. Well, the fact is we did with two of the biggest majorities in British peacetime history at times when Rupert Murdoch was at his most vociferous.

At a time when Labour nationally was not so popular, if that’s fair to say, in 2010, you still managed to increase your number of councillors. In 2014, with the coalition parties carrying out austerity cuts, is there a chance that opposition on Greenwich Council will be weakened even further – is it important to have an opposition?

You do need an opposition. You need a good opposition.

Has it got a good opposition at the moment?

I don’t think they’re as strong as they could be or should be. I don’t particularly want to comment on why not but talking about 2010, there was certain things you could read from the 2006 results about where the threats were to Labour.

So from 2006, absolutely nothing to do Greenwich Time, we set out to deal with what we could see were people’s concerns. I think the one thing you would normally get from a Conservative opposition, perhaps, is they would attack us on financial competence and spending and the realities they haven’t been able to do that despite that article you had [by Cllr Matt Clare on Greenwich.co.uk] which just beggared belief.

You’re one of the longest serving leaders of Greenwich Council – probably the longest serving – and a lot has happened in that time. Are there still things you want to achieve as leader of the council.

You always have things you want to do, there’s never a feeling of “oh well, that’s wrapped up”. Things are running in parallel  but if there’s one thing I want to do in the next few months it’s to nail the Crossrail station at Woolwich and resolve the finances of the fit out of the station. You can see that whatever the challenging times we’ve got, if you’re going to regenerate Woolwich – and it’s still the poorest area of the borough – it’s the one thing that would make sure it happened. We would cease to be on the cusp and it would just generate so much interest.

Do you have plans to go “on and on”?

That’s a phrase that will never cross my lips.

Do you have political plans or ambitions outside of the council?

Umm… No. I haven’t got any. Like what?

Maybe standing for parliament one day?

It was suggested to me before the last election and I looked at it and I thought in all honesty I’d be bored.

So you’re happy doing what you’re doing?

I think that whatever I do in the future and however long this lasts, it’s probably the best job I’ll ever have. It’s great – no two days are ever the same. You get to see things moving forward, you see people getting new jobs in Tesco and you know you had a hand in that. GLLAB in a sense was my baby before I became leader so it’s great to see things like that take place.

Thanks to Cllr Chris Roberts.

In conversation with Cllr Spencer Drury, leader of Greenwich Conservatives

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What was your highlight of the year?

This is going to sound a bit weird because it’s not the mainstream stuff but to me it was probably going with my kids to the rehearsal of the opening ceremony. That was just spectacular to see it in that setting and it was nice to see it before everyone else. It was quite nice doing something with the kids and I appreciate that’s not a very political answer but it was nice to be there. The telly couldn’t get across quite how big that was.

The council has just launched its London 2012 legacy report and it was recently presented to the Scrutiny Committee on which you sit…

That was a stroke of genius, the way they handled that.

What makes you say that?

Because they tabled two 40-page reports. There was no chance of anyone having read them. All we could do was listen to what was being said and then it was impossible to ask any questions because you hadn’t read the report.They told you about the report in a way that meant you weren’t going to ask any questions. So it was beautifully handled if you were the person presenting it but less good if you wanted any scrutiny.

If you’d wanted any proper scrutiny you’d have sent it out first and let us read it, or even bits of it that we were interested in.

Now that you have had a chance to look at the report, what do you make of the council’s claims over legacy from the Olympics?

The physical legacy is clearly there. The stuff they’ve built is there. The following question is “will they maintain it?” I don’t think they are necessarily best at maintaining these things because they cut the people in the parks department and they are quite good at sticking this stuff in but not necessarily making sure it stays the same way.

There’s other stuff that I asked about at that meeting which I got some follow-up replies on about the schools sports competitions. If you look at the way most of the other boroughs, particularly Bromley or Bexley, run their selection for London Youth Games, they use it as a platform to have local competitions between clubs and schools for say, rugby or football or netball or whatever. Whereas what Greenwich seem to do is find the nearest person they can think of and ask them to put forward a team.

This doesn’t seem, to me, to be sensible. We should be using this as a legacy in terms of promoting sports for all of our kids. I want to see a much bigger emphasis on developing school sports and sports for young people so that they see sport as a habit and something they do as normal.

One of the sports legacy projects was the BMX track at Hornfair Park. There were concerns before it opened about the impact it might have. Have those concerns been justified?

Hornfair Park is interesting. It’s a fascinating example of the lack of planning that the council has. So what you’ve got is Hornfair Park where, in theory, they said they were going to build an £11 million diving centre even though it was quite clear to anyone with a brain but they didn’t have the person to do that.

Then you’re going to redo the swimming pool, fine, and then you’re going to build a vandal-proof set of changing rooms but you haven’t got anyone there to open the vandal-proof changing rooms because there’s no one in the park.

Then you’ve got a bowls green which you semi-restore and then I go round and take some pictures of the tennis courts and put them on the conservative party website and you realise that the tennis courts are dreadful. You re-do the tennis courts and build over the bowling breen which was there and at the same time because you haven’t got anyone in the park, something burns down.

At the very far end of the park you build the BMX track so what you’ve now got is a park with lots of different bits and pieces in. You could have had the new changing rooms in the lido development, that would have made much more sense.

If you had the BMX track down this end, it would have been much easier to keep secure and you would actually be able to charge for the tennis courts if they were somewhere close to the lido rather than over on another side. My point is that any sports facilities will be broadly welcome but this is just a series of piecemeal initiatives which they stuck in one park and I don’t really understand the thinking. That park is emblematic of the lack of forward-thought and lack of planning that Greenwich is serially guilty of.

But just specifically about the BMX track because there were those worries before it opened, do you think those concerns are still there?

I think if you’re a local resident then I’m sure they are. I haven’t heard any complaints so I’m assuming it’s better than they thought. I know things like the gate have been stolen from it but that comes back to things like security. I don’t think it’s the BMX track per se that’s an issue, it’s how it’s used and how it’s supervised in terms of opening and closing. If it had been closer to the lido though it would have been a much better facility because it could have had longer opening hours and more people using it.

Has the council done enough to secure an economic legacy from the games?

No, I don’t think it was ever going to… there were studies saying Olympic towns lose money when the Olympics are there because there is not a massive increase at the time.

In Greenwich you could see that people were going to the stadium and then leaving again. When you talk to some of the traders they’ve been clear to me there was a loss of business. So I don’t think there’s an economic legacy in that sense but one hopes there is a long-term economic legacy in terms of Greenwich’s tourism but I wouldn’t expect to see that in the short term.

I think the council has been slightly disingenuous in talking about a legacy. There won’t be an economic legacy at the moment, in fact I imagine the immediate impact may be quite negative.

Looking ahead, what are the areas you think the council needs to perform better in?

For me, it would have to be schools. It’s three or four years since we said that we needed 17 forms of entry extra at reception level because of the growth of population in the borough. The reaction to that has not been to build more schools but to put more Portakabins into schools and to open old schools. Broadly speaking, we’ve got a lot more crowded schools now with smaller playground space.  That is slowly feeding through and you can see it coming to secondary level soon. I would like to see some serious forward planning.

So the big long-term issue for me is that, and the short term issue it’s how you deal with the austerity package. How you cope with those cuts that are going to come and how we cope with, potentially, the introduction of business rates as the basis for local funding which is a bit arcane but could be huge in terms of the impact on council finances.

Moving on to Greenwich Time, which has been controversial…

It’s still controversial.

Do you feel at an electoral disadvantage because of the existence of Greenwich Time?

Of course! A Labour councillor said to me in the past, “you’re never going to win anything while Greenwich Time goes through everyone’s doors every week.” They are quite open and blunt about that but the Government should legislate to stop them doing it and that’s the truth. It’s just propaganda paid for by the state. In my view, it’s immoral.

The Government had a go and thought people would abide by the spirit of what it had said but Greenwich did not abide by the spirit at all. That can come as no shock. I think it’s a disgrace that they continue to publish what I consider to be propaganda.

If the Government did tell the council they couldn’t publish it, is that at odds with their localism agenda?

No, I don’t think it is. I read through the government guidelines, I thought they were far too generous anyway about what you could do in terms of local publications. The bottom line is you can do all of the things they claim Greenwich Time is for in much cheaper and more effective ways. It’s wrong for councils to be putting out newspapers that actively undermine the local press.

Question from a twitter user: why are the government attacking people on sickness benefits and blaming us for the rich bankers’ mistakes?

I wouldn’t agree with that analysis of what’s going on.

Do you support all of the government’s measures on benefits?

I think Iain Duncan Smith spent a lot of time coming through with a set of proposals. I’m fascinated to see [Labour MP] Frank Field heavily involved in this as well and the extent to which those two have come to remarkably similar conclusions about the way of dealing with this and frankly I’m absolutely behind it as a programme.

And you support the housing benefit cap?

Yep.

Would you support a cap on housing benefit even without the context of austerity cuts?

Yep.

Do you accept the concerns that a cap will drive people out of central London and in to the outer boroughs?

I think Greenwich Council are being deceitful about the way this is happening. They built the new Ferrier estate, the Kidbrooke Village , and they’re actually giving away two thirds of the homes in that new social housing to non-Greenwich residents. They’ve done a deal, I believe, with Lewisham and Southwark so we’re taking Lewisham and Southwark residents anyway and we were before this housing benefit cap came anywhere close, so they’re just playing it because they want to.

I think the Labour party in Greenwich have been disgraceful over this because they set up their own company which charges 80% of market rates, they said “we’re going to make sure there’s no security of tenure.” Basically everything the Government have done, Greenwich were already ahead of them on and they just don’t want to admit that.

Reader’s question: If you had been elected to parliament at the last election…

That wasn’t likely.

But if you had been, you would now be having decide on the equal marriage debate that’s causing some problems within your party. What’s your view?

I wasn’t expecting to be elected to be absolutely honest. I was hoping to make more progress on the council but that didn’t work. I have to say broadly speaking I’m in favour of plans for same-sex marriage. I wouldn’t want to say I have an in-depth knowledge of what they were exactly but, as I understand it, churches won’t be forced to conduct them and that seems to be a reasonable solution. But if churches are happy to have same-sex marriages I don’t see why that shouldn’t be the case.

Wouldn’t a third tunnel at Blackwall soon just get full up too and add to congestion and damage air quality?

Well, I would have to say that the lesson of the past is that whenever we build roads they soon fill to capacity. Not tunnels particularly but roads anywhere. Having said that, I think I read an interesting statistic recently about car ownership slightly dropping around London so I don’t know. But if we based it on the past, the answer is probably “yes” but that’s not a reason for not building more capacity where it’s obviously completely overladen at the moment and we do need that extra capacity.

Wouldn’t the people of Peninsula ward be paying the price for that in terms of air quality for the convenience of people driving up from Kent?

If we reduce the congestion, which I think it probably would overall, and if they weren’t sitting there in  traffic for a period of time, you’d have thought  that in fact air quality would improve so it’s going to depend partly on whether or not it solves the traffic flow.

We’re still awaiting an independent report in to what went wrong with the foot tunnel refurbishments, but what do you think went wrong?

I know the council think they’re really good at managing these big projects but I’ve got some doubts based on things like the Eltham centre where you had an electrical fault which caused a fire and currently the creche is closed because one of the pools is leaking. This is in a building which is not that old.

In the Woolwich Centre you had some problems with water going through to the computer storage unit which is in the basement. So I think possibly the council aren’t quite as good at this as they think are, it’s just that previously they had lots of money to spend. All of that could be supposition and I’ll be very interested to see what the independent person has to say.

Do you think there’s anything specifically the council can do to help the borough’s town centres or are town centres everywhere just suffering at the moment?

I still maintain the council is far too focused on Woolwich. When you look at the centre of Woolwich they’ve made an enormous change over the last 10 years so you couldn’t criticise them over Woolwich but I think they’ve done that to the detriment of everywhere else.

Thamesmead’s fascinating. As far as I can make out when you look at what Trust Thamesmead are doing, it’s almost all on the Bexley side not on the Greenwich side. Look at the centre of Greenwich: for the Olympics they suddenly got involved but is there a long-term plan there? I’ve got my doubts, if I’m honest. Destination Greenwich might make a difference.

Obviously as someone from the south of the borough, I’ve got to say I don’t think they really care at all. We are there to pay some council tax and be left alone. There is a lack of clarity as well. I’m relatively sure when you look at the revenue from the increased parking charges it’s well off of what was predicted and some of that is because the car parks are so expensive people don’t park in them.

If I pop down to Greenwich, I used to struggle to find a space but now you can park fairly regularly in car parks because it costs so much and that must be hitting businesses.

Has the council missed having a second opposition party since the Liberal Democrats lost their councillors in 2010?

No. No, I don’t think it has. The problem that we’ve got is that broadly speaking we have a small opposition and what we need is a bigger opposition. Now, whether that was the Liberal Democrats or more of us, I don’t think it would much difference. What the council does miss is a serious opposition voice in the north of the borough, in Greenwich, in Woolwich and in Thamesmead. There is a real need in the north of the borough for an opposition voice.

Let’s take the foot tunnels. The nearest opposition councillors you’ve got to that are people who are in Blackheath, both of whom live south of Shooters Hill Road so they’re not necessarily going to be cycling through the tunnel every day and that’s what you’re saying, there aren’t the people on the ground looking at this critically.

I’ll go down when people invite me down, and Alex [Wilson] and Geoff [Brighty] will but without actual opposition councillors in Greenwich and Woolwich, you simply don’t get the kind of response and feedback that’s required.

Is there a possibility that, depending on how popular the coalition parties are nationally at the time of the next council elections, there could be even less opposition in Greenwich?

Yes, there’s a chance…. The big unknowable frankly is the Liberal Democrats. Last time, they got about 20% of the vote doing nothing. They got 20% of the vote in some seats where I know for a fact they didn’t deliver a leaflet. They didn’t knock on a single door.  That 20% of the vote is up for grabs and could go anywhere. That’s going to be the interesting bit. Say for instance in Peninsula if those people all decided to vote Green, suddenly you could end up with some Green councillors.

Will you be standing again at the next General election?

Yeah I think I might do.

Would you stand again in Greenwich & Woolwich because I think it would be fair to say people associate you with Eltham?

Yeah, I think they do although I would hope also across the whole borough because I do a lot of work across the borough. The toughest thing about standing in Eltham where I live is that I do feel there’s a  responsibility as leader of the opposition to make sure you’re going up and visiting people in Thamesmead and Greenwich – that’s an important part of the job.

But I don’t  know is the honest answer. I quite fancy it but we’ll wait and see.

Thanks to Spencer Drury and for questions submitted via twitter and email.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In conversation with Nick Raynsford, MP for Greenwich and Woolwich

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Nick Raynsford arriving at NMM for Queen's reception
Nick Raynsford arriving at a reception at the NMM in April when HM The Queen visited Greenwich.

In the second of our end-of-year interviews, Greenwich.co.uk speaks to Greenwich & Woolwich MP, Nick Raynsford about the past year and a look ahead to the future.

Nick, what has your highlight of the year been?

2012 has been an extraordinary year for Greenwich. It started in the depths of winter with snow on the ground and the King’s Troop coming into Woolwich. A remarkable and very impressive occasion where people turned out in huge numbers to welcome this rather grand ceremonial init from the British army and it reinforced the military connections with Woolwich.

We than had the Queen’s arrival for the opening of the Cutty Sark and the confirmation of the Royal Borough status. Terrible day, poured with rain but it didn’t dampen the enthusiasm.

And then of course we had the Olympics and Paralympics and, as you know I’ve been a strong supporter of this for many years and I know not everyone has agreed but I thought it was a triumph. It showed Greenwich as its very best. The town centre looked great. The equestrian events were magical and the Modern Pentathlon allowed the world to see the last Olympic event at Greenwich before the closing ceremony.

It was very impressive for Greenwich and will last in the memory of people for a very long time to come. It was an amazing year and I will look back on it for the rest of my life as one of the highpoints of my time as MP for Greenwich.

There was of course controversy over the use of Greenwich Park – how do you think it performed as a venue?

I think it was one of the most attractive of all the Olympic venues and loads of people have said this, not just people in Greenwich or even the UK but international visitors just felt this was a spectacular location. The park looked beautiful and there was extraordinary vistas down through the naval college and across the river Thames.

The overhead camera which went from the Wolfe statue at the top of the hill all the way across to the Isle of Dogs produced some quite wonderful overhead views, not just of the equestrian event but also of the lcocation. It encapsulated the grandeur and beauty of Greenwich and that was beamed all around the world.

Do you think the differences of opinion, sometimes expressed very strongly, that existed will leave any lasting divisions within Greenwich?

I hope that people, even those that were opposed to it, will recognise that this was a great event for Greenwich and it didn’t actually cause lasting damage to the park. Yes, there’s been grumbles about the length of time it’s taken to get all the kit down and get the grass re-turfed and so forth but actually nature is a wonderful healer.

My guess is that the park next summer will look more spectacular than ever and ultimately it’s been one year that may have involved interruption in people’s access to the park but it’s brought all sorts of wider benefits to Greenwich and the park will once again be fully accessible next year so I hope people will get over it and say, “yes, we didn’t agree but it wasn’t as disastrous as we thought it was going to be.”

With so many events happening during this year, will it be followed by an inevitable lull as it would be impossible to top 2012?

Well one thing I didn’t mention was of course the opening of the cable car which was another great event and that points to the peninsula where progress has been seriously slowed down due to the recession but there’s now a real hint that things are going to move fairly rapidly.

There’s new Chinese investment coming in and it seems likely that we’ll see a start on several thousand new homes on the peninsula within the next year and that will be hugely important because we need housing desperately in London and in Greenwich so there will be things in the years ahead to celebrate as well as what we can look back on.

So you’re optimistic about the cable car, because statistics seem to suggest a big drop off in usage after the Olympics?

The figures are extraordinary. From the moment it opened until the end of the Olympics, it took a million passengers. That was masively more than anyone expected, it was hugely popular but as a summer attraction.

Since then, the numbers have plummeted because it’s not really very sensible for normal travel use though I did find myself using it unexpectedly. A few Sundays ago when I came from a conference in Kosovo, I got back in to City Airport at half past eight on a Sunday evening and I got the news the Jubilee Line was down. For me, living in North Greenwich, my journey back from City Airport is usually very easy. I thought I was going to have to go down to Woolwich and get the bus but no, I was reminded the cable car had opened so there was I complete with my luggage getting on the Emirates Air Line to fly over the Thames to complete my return journey. So, it has some benefits for regular users.

Should it be brought within the Travelcard?

Well it’s within the Oyster card system but you have to pay a premium and I think that’s almost inevitably going to continue. The thing I think is good news is that the price is not massively disproportionate whereas you pay a huge amount to go on the London Eye and indeed to walk over to O2. Actually the £3.20 to use the cable car, so long as you have an Oyster Card, isn’t in my view unreasonable.

What I’m really quite excited by is the possibility which is being discussed of an extension going on to Canary Wharf because that would make an enormous difference in terms of accessibility to the O2 and to North Greenwich. I think it could well be another attractive option.

Could the cable car be the first of many?

I wouldn’t say “many” but it could be the first of two.

Another big event of the year was the reopening of the Cutty Sark, which has had mixed reviews having been named as best new tourism project but also given the carbuncle cup for ugly design. Now it’s open, what’s your view of the restoration?

If you go down in to the dry dock underneath the cutty sark and see it as it’s now presented it’s quite amazing and this is a view that nobody has ever had before so I think it’s a success. I know there are questions about whether the glass cover that protects that dry dock is appropriate but actually what it does is it creates a quite wonderful environment in the dry dock where people can see what is the most defining characteristic of that ship, its very elegant hull which meant it was very fast.

What do you think of the Greenwich Pier buildings that opened opposite the Cutty Sark in 2012?

The concept of two buildings with a gap between them which would give the access to the pier did not seem to me to be a bad idea when it was first suggested in 1997. At that stage the design was rather more elegant and I’m afraid the current design is disappointing.

It’s slightly larger than it should have been and am afraid that characteristic of some of the retailers who want to put garish publicity on the outside is not in my view appropriate in Greenwich. So I have some criticisms but I think back to that old previous structure, that ghastly tin shed that was there from the 60s, and I’m not going to say I’m sorry about that disappearing.

Has the iconic view from across the river been damaged?

Not really, providing there isn’t a large neon sign.

What’s your view on the proposed closure of Lewisham A&E?

My feelings about the health service are firstly that it was was not appropriate or necessary to appoint a Trust Special Administrator. I think that the old body, South London Healthcare Trust, was doing a good job in improving standards and I’ve seen a lot of evidence of improvement at the Queen Elizabeth and I think they should have been given more help and support to continue that work rather than the whole thing be thrown up in the air and a whole new series of proposals brought forward.

I secondly think that the proposed closure of the A&E at Lewisham is a disaster. It will put enormous pressure on the other A&Es. Already the QE’s A&E is working at very near capacity – working very well but at near capacity – and I can’t see how they can take much additional pressure and the same goes for King’s.

So I am just very sceptical about the proposal to close the A&E. I think there is some logic in linking the Queen Elizabeth with Lewisham, demographically the areas have a lot in common and there was always something slightly odd about the link between Greenwich and Bromley which are a long way away from each other and are a very different characteristic.

So I’m not totally opposed to the Trust Special Administrator’s recommendations. I think are good elements there but I do feel the proposed closure of the A&E at Lewisham is a fatal flaw and will generate huge public opposition.

What do you say to people who are worried that the proposed Silvertown link tunnel would make congestion and air quality on the peninsula even worse, and that the proposed tolling would simply push some drivers along to Rotherhithe instead?

Well air-quality is already absolutely ghastly because traffic backed up at the approach to Blackwall. When you’ve got vehicles standing in a queue, all emitting fumes, you’ve got worse problems with air-pollution then if you’ve got relatively free flowing traffic

So I am a supporter of Silvertown because it will relieve the pressure but this is only in my view acceptable if you introduce tolling at Blackwall, and in doing so you can keep control over the volume of traffic in the area and you can adjust the toll if it looks as though it’s becoming too attractive.

There is a very difficult question about where you stop tolling. At the moment, Blackwall suffers because Dartford is tolled but Blackwall isn’t so those people who want to avoid paying the toll use the Woolwich Ferry or Blackwall and that is adding to pressure there. I think it is overwhelmingly sensible to toll Blackwall as well as Dartford but in the long term I suspect we’ll probably have to introduce a toll at Rotherhithe as well but I think that will be a step too far in the short term and my guess is that as long as the tolls are managed sensibly you can avoid putting undue pressure on Rotherhithe at the time that tolls are introduced at Blackwall.

The Greenwich Market redevelopment is not now going ahead. You were a supporter of the scheme – do you think it’s a loss to the town that the redevelopment and the new boutique hotel won’t now happen?

I think it is a loss. The good news is that the market is safe, there’s no question that the market is going to continue and, as I remind people that when this whole saga began many years ago, it was against a background of advisors to Greenwich hospital suggesting closing the market and filling the interior area with luxury housing which all of us objected to.

So I think there has been some losses in the abandonment of the scheme; the hotel is one, not doing more sensitive replacement of the post war infill in King William walk which doesn’t really fit very well into the Joseph Kay streetscape – that would have been improved by the scheme. But the overriding positive is that the market is safe.

Lord Adonis said on Twitter recently after attending a launch event for the Greenwich Free School, that you were a supporter of the free school. Does that reflect your view of the new free school?

I went to the free school two or three weeks ago. I was very impressed with the atmosphere, the ethos, the clear commitment to delivering high-quality education and the fact that this was a genuinely mixed group of pupils. The worry that many people have about free schools is that they will simply attract relatively privileged groups who are looking for a better education for their children then might otherwise be available. That would be socially divisive. That is not the case, as far as I can see, at the free school and I think the quality of what they’re doing there is very impressive. That is ultimately the most important thing.

We’ve got to have high standard education for pupils in Greenwich. The population is beginning to rise, there is predominantly pressure at primary school level at the moment but that’s going to extend to secondary schools before long so a wider range of secondary schools meeting a full range of needs and providing high quality education is vital.

Next year we’ll see the UTC open on the former Greenwich training company site near the Thames Barrier. That will be a further important addition to the range of educational opportunities.

I mentioned that Lord Adonis had tweeted about you. Lots of local MPs are now on Twitter but there seems to be one notable omission – do you have any plans to join?

I’m afraid not. This is an old dog who is too old to change tricks and I shall continue to follow more traditional and old-fashioned ways of communicating.

Have you decided whether you plan to stand at the next general election?

No I haven’t decided and I’ve always taken the view that that’s a decision I need to take in view of two things. Firstly, whether the electorate feel that I’m capable of doing a good job and secondly whether I feel myself I’m capable of doing it and if I begin to feel that I’m not as fit and lively as I have been in the past, then maybe I’ll take a decision to stand down but at the moment I’m feeling pretty fit and no decision has been taken but I will in the next year or so reach a view.

Thanks to Nick Raynsford and thanks for some of the questions which were submitted via Twitter and Facebook.

In conversation with Chris Smith, the chair of Greenwich Liberal Democrats

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Chair of Greenwich Lib Dems, Chris Smith
Chair of Greenwich Liberal Democrats, Chris Smith, pictured during “Movember”.

Chris Smith recently became the chair of Greenwich Liberal Democrats. In the first of a series of political end of year interviews, Greenwich.co.uk spoke to him and put a selection of readers’ questions to him.

With the party no longer having any councillors in Greenwich, but being part of the coalition of government, what’s it like being a Liberal Democrat in Greenwich at the moment?

Chris Roberts [the leader of Greenwich Council] says we’re vile. That’s how he refers to us. [Spencer] Drury [the leader of Greenwich Conservatives] hates our guts as well. There was a meeting when Roberts turned around and looked at me and said, “and the vile Liberal Democrats are destroying our country blah blah” and Drury stood up and said “that’s the only thing I’ll agree with the Leader on.” The hatred is visceral.

So, you’re like the Millwall of local politics?

Yep, they absolutely hate us. And there are people, the sort of Guardian reader types in Greenwich… I mean, I’ve been chased out on to the pavement several times. The hatred is absolutely extraordinary. You’d think we’d murdered their families!

I’m under no illusion. With the help from the national party, we’ve lost all our councillors. Now, apparently, people would rather vote for satan than us. If you promise something to somebody, which is what we did [over tutition fees] and then are perceived to have gone back on that in certain areas, that’s quite a difficult thing to come back from.

And what’s that done to your membership base?

Ummm…. yeah, it’s not been good.

Are you planning yet for the next council elections and do you have wards you are targetting?

Do you know what, we haven’t chosen them yet. Actually I’ve got a theory about this. Targetting is what all political parties do but obviously you run risks. If you put all your eggs in one basket and it doesn’t come off, you know. I’m very much of a view that I’d like to build the party irrespective of electoral success.

I think there will be an enormous explosion in independent candidates. It’s happening in Greenwich already. As a party, we’re being approached. There’s no way that our leading people are going to stand as independents, they’ll always stand as Liberal Democrats. But there are people who want help. Say you’re a small “l” liberal and you’re a democrat and you’re a brilliant candidate who’d make a fantastic councillor, but a lot of people, certainly in Greenwich, hate the Liberal Democrats.

Because of what the electorate perceive they’ve done, these people are never going to get in so obviously there’s a temptation for them to stand as independents.

But the problem for independents is the whole structure. Getting it all together, the cost of it – not that we’ve got much money ourselves.

Are you trying to appeal to independent candidates to stand as Liberal Democrats instead?

Yes, but they’re saying to me, they stand a better chance as an independent. They’re probably right.

Do you think the benefit cap that Lib Dem MPs helped pass is, in the words of Sarah Teather MP, “immoral and divisive”? (question via Twitter)

I personally agree with Sarah, although the problem of housing benefit costs in London has to be tackled. In my view the best way is to build more affordable housing, not cap benefits to the poor. In fact only a minority of claimants are at the very high levels and thus it is unlikely that this policy would help reduce rents at all.

To what extent have the actions of the Lib Dems in coalition at national government level demoralised local activists? (question via Twitter)

Coalition action has not affected the number of activists locally, although it is fair to say that the more hostile reaction on the doorstep has put some of them off going out. I am immune I am afraid!

Contrary to popular opinion we are not a weird adjunct to the Labour Party but are a distinctive liberal and democratic party with social justice at our heart. There are many government actions that I disagree with, tuition fees in particular, but I believe that what we did in 2010, by going into coalition, was best for the country and that is what the local party feel as well.

Do you agree with Clegg that we must ‘build our way out of recession’ and how will he ensure affordable homes remain a priority? (question via Twitter)

Yes I do agree with this policy but I also oppose the free-for-all planning approach such as mega conservatories that the government have been keen on, which will just promote neighbourly disputes.

In Greenwich we have a terrible record on waiting lists and delivering new affordable homes thanks to the Labour council, although finally a number of housing estates are now being upgraded – not before time. The governments affordable rent and the end of mandatory life tenancies and the new financing arrangements should all help provide more housing to those in need. The welfare benefit cuts have to be less draconian for Londoners though.

What do you think of the DoE spending money on opening secondary free schools in the borough, when we need primary schools? (question via Twitter)

The baby boom is presenting a need for more primary places, a trend the Labour government failed to provide for, but at the same time there has been a long term problem in Greenwich secondary education. It is improving but we are still in the bottom three in London. I am personally in favour of the Greenwich Free School as a way of helping to address this, although many in my party are against free schools.
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Will Liberal Democrats oppose the proposed Silvertown Link tunnel? (submitted by reader)

In principle we are in favour of more river crossings to the east of Tower Bridge. However a crossing which would merely provide alternatives for long-distance and orbital traffic as the Silvertown crossing would do, rather than benefit local areas, is madness.

The Kidbrooke pinch point would turn into a car park and the need to toll both Blackwall and Silvertown would present real problems. The Council’s “Bridge the Gap” campaign is insulting to local residents in its naivety. Other crossing solutions are not easy but a crossing further east would make more sense.

Thanks to Chris Smith for answering questions from Greenwich.co.uk. Thanks especially for answering some of them twice after an earlier audio recording file became corrupted.

London Assembly candidate interviews: Roger Sedgley

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I meet the Green Party’s London Assembly candidate Roger Sedgley at his award-winning architect’s practice in Greenwich. A long term resident of both Greenwich and Lewisham, Roger is dismayed at the quality of many of the recent developments in the area.

“I think it’s a real shame” says Sedgley talking about the buildings recently unveiled at Greenwich Pier. “It’s just corporate architecture. I’m very disappointed with it. I was sitting in the Old Brewery the other day looking at it and I just thought this is a glorified McDonalds or Frankie and Benny’s, or whatever it is. I think it’s a real missed opportunity.”

Sedgley points to the resurrected plans to build a hotel above the town centre market:

“The idea of putting a prestigeous hotel above the market just seems unnecessary. It’s trying to force something into a space where it just doesn’t fit. I think a lot of the way architecture is commissioned is very commercially led and so often in this country they go for the lowest common denominator. Everything has to be built as cheaply as possible”

Sedgley is more enthusiastic about the cable car currently being built on the Peninsula by the Mayor Boris Johnson. Wasn’t that originally a Green Party idea?

“It may well have been a Green Party idea but it was certainly [this company’s] idea. We entered a competition back in the 90’s organised by the University of Greenwich to celebrate the Millennium and our proposal was for a dome on the Peninsula and a cable car from the top of the General Wolfe statue down to the dome. So I think the notion of a cable car is a nice idea. It’s very expensive but it’s going to be built so let’s enjoy it.”

Somehow I suspect that building a cable car through the centre of Greenwich Park would have been even more controversial than plans to hold the Olympic equestrian events there have been. Was Roger in favour of those?

“No. The whole thing is just sad. Unfortunately there’s nothing we can do about it now so there’s no point me saying “it should be stopped” because it can’t. I think the way that Locog handled their relationships with local people was dreadful and I think people are right to be concerned about the park. If trees are being cut down rather than being gently pruned then I think they’re right to be alarmed. And I play cricket in the park and we can’t play up there now. It’s a shame. A great sadness.”

When the Olympics do come to Greenwich, all eyes will be on the park and the town centre. What about the rest of the borough?

“The south east is a forgotten part of London and if you look at something like Time Out the listings magazine, it’s almost as if it doesn’t exist and I think it’s really sad because I think it’s one of the best parts of London to live in. So the council’s planned DLR extension is a great idea. I’m absolutely in favour of it. It’s a logical way to link Eltham to the rest of the world. And these are the kinds of things we should be investing in, not just clogging our roads with more tunnels.”

Unlike the Labour and the Conservative candidates, Sedgley opposes all plans to build any new road crossings across the Thames:

“There’s a famous line in traffic planning that says if you build it the cars will come. You build something and it gets filled up immediately.”

But the roads approaching Blackwall Tunnel are already blocked up with cars pumping pollution into the air. How can we deal with that exisiting situation?

“It’s about getting the motorist to pay a greater share to use the roads to pay for the problems they cause and to invest in better public transport.”

Sedgley seems well versed on local issues. But when I ask him about the specifics of his party’s policies, his knowledge seems far sketchier.

One long-term idea proposed by the Greens is a London-wide “pay as you drive” scheme which would track drivers via satellite and charge them accordingly. In the meantime the party plans to introduce a “gas guzzler” charge on higher polluting vehicles. I ask Roger how much people would expect to pay:

“I will have to come back to you with the facts and figures. £13 seems to stick in my mind. I’ll have to come back to you on that one.”

And what about fares. The Green’s mayoral candidate Jenny Jones insists that she could cut transport costs as well. How would she pay for that given the cuts to TfL’s budget?

“I’ll have to come back to you because I can’t remember exactly what it is in the manifesto and I can’t remember exactly how we’re going to pay for it. It has been costed though and it can be justified.”

Given that these are two of the central planks of his manifesto, it is pretty surprising that he hasn’t got a response. I move on to ask Sedgley what he thinks of the current Labour incumbent Len Duvall:

“I’ve had quite a bit to do with him. I came across him a lot when he was leader of Greenwich Council and he never really inspired me or impressed me. I met him a few times at Labour Party meetings. He’s just a lifer really isn’t he? He’s there. He doesn’t have a very high profile. You don’t ever hear too much about him. I mean what does your Assembly Member do for you? It’s not like your constituency MP or your local councillor. Can you go and knock on their door and ask them to do things for you? I suppose you can.”

These are questions commonly asked by Londoners, with polls showing that only a minority can describe who their Assembly Member is, and what they do.

But for one of the candidates for the job itself to be asking these questions is slightly more worrying and suggests that whoever wins this week has got a lot of work to do.

Elections to the London Assembly take place on May 3rd. Get more information from London Elects.

London Assembly candidate interviews: Len Duvall

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Len Duvall campaigning in Woolwich

“I’m not exactly high profile in the media” says Len Duvall speaking to Greenwich.co.uk earlier this month.

“I will enter the media if I feel like I have to, and no disrespect to my colleagues, but the job is about more than getting your name in the papers or the party’s name in the papers.”

If Duvall wins next month then he will begin this fourth term as the London Assembly Member for Greenwich and Lewisham. But despite being in the job for over a decade, many people in the area will struggle to name him.

Like long-serving Greenwich MP Nick Raynsford, Duvall is a quiet operator who seems more interested in getting on with the job than becoming a political celebrity.

But it is Duvall’s dedication to that job that is now being questioned by his opponents, some of whom have criticised his role as director of developers Tilfen Land.

Tilfen have extensive business in Greenwich Borough and his position there was the subject of a complaint to City Hall by one former Greenwich Liberal Democrat councillor. The complaint was ultimately resolved in Duvall’s favour:

“Anyone who knows me knows that I have been very scrupulous about those interests. I’ve never lobbied for Tilfen Land in terms of Greenwich Council and I’ve kept away from that. There’s one particular liberal Paul Webbewood who’s made a number of accusations against me on a whole number of issues that have been odd over the years. Good luck to him but I always say if you’ve got something then it should be investigated. I’ve got nothing to hide.”

Duvall is chair of the London Labour Party, and the party’s candidate Ken Livingstone has attacked Boris Johnson for being a “part time Mayor.” Is Duvall a part time Assembly Member?

“Look, I spend roughly ten to twelve days a year on Tilfen Land and not even whole days. That’s my other interest. I also do voluntary work for Firepower, the Royal Artillery Museum Trust. I don’t regard that as part of my role. I do that because my dad and my grandad were gunners. But if that’s the only thing my opponents can say about me then I’m not particularly worried.”

Livingstone has promised that he will not do any other outside jobs if he is elected as Mayor. Shouldn’t Assembly Members make the same pledge? “This job isn’t going to last forever. I do need to keep in touch with the world outside of politics.”

Duvall points to his role in securing the Cutty Sark DLR station as evidence of his commitment to the borough and says that he has been “humbled” by the responses he has received on the campaign trail.

“There is nowhere where we have not been to. There has been activity in all wards and I enjoy campaigning. It keeps your feet on the ground listening to people and not just your own supporters.”

The polls show that while Labour are likely to win more seats on the London Assembly, they will struggle to unseat the Conservative Mayor Boris Johnson.
Duvall is highly critical of Johnson’s decision to cancel the proposed Thames Gateway Bridge at Gallions Reach, but he says he is in favour of the mayor’s alternate proposal, a road tunnel at Silvertown.

“I am in favour of having both the Silvertown crossing and the Thames Gateway Bridge. It’s better to keep vehicles moving rather than being forced to make long unnecessary detours. We cannot continue as we are.”

Duvall admits that his support for these crossings “will not be popular.” Nor will his insistence that both Blackwall Tunnel and any new crossing should be tolled:

“I can’t see in this current period of time with the government’s attitude to infrastructure investment how we can do this without tolling and I think Boris is being disingenuous by not saying that these are going to have to be tolled.”

But couldn’t new crossings be funded by private investment and sponsorship like the Mayor’s new cable car on the Peninsula?

“We were told that the cable car was going to be all paid for by the private sector at one stage and it’s ended up that the public sector are going to have to pay for most of it And Emirates seem to have got a very good deal. Their contribution has fallen far shorter than what was promised.”

Will he be jumping aboard later this year?

“It’s a thing I would take my grandson on. It’s not a thing I would consider using unless I was going to the Excel Centre direct. If it was going to Canary Wharf then maybe that would be different. I could have seen people using that then as an alternative to jumping on the tube or bus. But I’m just not sold on it as being a strategic part of the transport infrastructure. It’s laughable.”

Duvall was the former leader of Greenwich Council. I ask whether he supports the campaign being led by Labour councillor Rajwant Sidhu to return to a committee system.

“I worked with the committee system and campaigned against it. There’s good and bad elements to both structures but the committee system wasn’t that wonderful. That said, I think there are issues with transparency with the current system which is why I’m in favour of councils moving to directly elected mayors instead.”

Should the council continue publishing the Greenwich Time newspaper, despite new government guidelines discouraging such papers. How does this help with transparency?

Duvall admits that “the style of Greenwich Time does cause some controversy” but insists that it has “done some excellent work post riots.”

“When I was leader we didn’t have it on a fortnightly basis, but I do like Greenwich Time. I don’t see it substituting local newspapers and I think we’re very lucky in Greenwich and Lewisham to have the Mercury, South London Press and the News Shopper, albeit they’ve all done stories that you would balk at.”

One newspaper that Duvall has regularly balked at is the Evening Standard. At the last mayoral elections, the paper campaigned vigorously against former Labour Mayor Ken Livingstone, leading to charges of bias.

Following a change in ownership, the paper promised that it would be far more balanced in it’s coverage with sources close to Livingstone insisting that they were promised a “fair crack of the whip” at this election.

Duvall does not believe that they have received one:

“Sometimes you get the press you deserve” says Duvall after another week in which the paper has splashed with damaging front pages for Labour’s mayoral candidate.

“But sometimes you look for a fair level playing field and I don’t want to attack individual journalists but there have been some occasions when I think the scrutiny of Boris over the past four years, I think they pulled their punches and other occasions they did a reasonable job. And why do I say that? Do I only want to see the negative stuff about Boris? No. I just want to see a level playing field. And of course it’s right that if they think the Mayor has done well on certain issues and they want to give him some column inches, but there have been some interesting stories which others thought were worthy of prominent coverage. How comes the Standard didn’t? That’s the charge.”

“There was the pension scandal at Visit London. There was the failure of the young black mentoring project. Where was the Standard there? They were crusading on that issue four years ago and then nothing. I think these have been news stories that would have been of interest to their readership and there was an editorial decision to suppress them.”

I’m interviewing Duvall soon after the paper’s owner told the Leveson Inquiry that he is a personal friend of Boris Johnson. It’s new editor Sarah Sands is also reportedly a close family friend of the Johnson’s. Does he think that this has been a factor in their coverage?

“I think Leveson will be dealing with some of these relationship. Look, when [Lebedev] took over, the Evening Standard said that it would be goodbye to the biased coverage they had in the past. They said it. It wasn’t me saying it. They said it. Have they stood by what they said at the time? I don’t think so. I’m not going to go to war with them. It’s their choice but could they be a bit fairer? Yes. We dust ourselves off and I’m certainly not attacking individuals. I think there’s either a culture thing or an attitude issue there. Maybe friendships are more important than political ties. Who knows?”

For a politician who claims that he doesn’t engage with the media very often, this seems like an extraordinary intervention.

Len Duvall on…

The closure of Blackheath Bluecoat School:

“It might well be controversial for the folk there but actually some drastic action needed to be taken, and I think you could argue that it should have been taken much earlier. We’ve worked with supporting the diocese and there may well be another Blackheath Bluecoat school emerging elsewhere but for those arguing to retain it, they’ve got to realise that the finances just didn’t stack up and it was killing the other schools by taking money away from them. And educationally it hasn’t served people well. It is a hard thing to confront. It’s not taken lightly. We don’t get out of bed to take these kind of difficult decisions that cause so many people worry and consternation.”

Preparing for the Olympics in Greenwich

“The conversation between TfL, Locog, the council and locals now needs to become much more public. Not a whispering campaign for the chosen few. We need some very good publicity to enable the public to plan.”

Breakdowns in Blackwall Tunnel:

“They’ve got a new system of removing the breakdowns which I think is working well which means they’re getting out the breakdowns much faster. I don’t think they’ve got the penalties right. Many of these vehicles breaking down are from big companies. They’re not single self-employed people. They’re big companies who should know the rules and are taking a chance. I think we should increase the penalties for recovery and if necessary impound their vehicles for a day. Let them have the inconvenience as we have to suffer the inconvenience.”

On Jubilee Line delays:

“TfL have identified the Jubilee Line as being most at risk of going down during the Olympics. And it’s a great piece of infrastructure but it seems to have been dogged by problems with the upgrades. I’m increasingly worried about it and it’s difficult to get to the bottom of it. I’m told there are issues around the number of staff on the line and incidents about Canary Wharf station exits being closed, because of staff cutbacks. But when you ask TfL about it they say everything is hunky dory.”

On Southeastern:

“The provision of information when things go wrong is just very poor. The snow hits the line and then everybody is in bloody chaos because even the staff can’t give you any answers. And I think they’ve worked hard since then and understand that so things can only improve. But I think there’s an argument when contracts come up to look again and question what the operators have been doing… I personally think there should be a Rail Board for London, a sub board of TfL overlooking this.

On Ken’s critics within the Labour party:

“I don’t want to close down debate and there are right times to criticise campaigns or what candidates say, but do you really want to give ammunition to your opponents? Why would you want to do that? What is that about? And I just question the motives of some of those individuals.”

On another term of Boris:

“I do think he’s getting bored. He’s got his eyes on other places. The worst thing we could have is a mayor who isn’t engaged. Who is leaving it to others. People will soon notice that. If there’s no buy in. If you’re just looking around for a Parliamentary seat and poking sticks at your mates because you want their jobs. That’s not good for London. You see it in council leaders that want to go off and be MPs. They lose their authority. And Osborne and Cameron are not going to keep taking these sticks from Boris. They’re going to start fighting war by proxy. You will start seeing some of the things the government needs to support London with suddenly not being supported.”

Elections to the London Assembly take place on May 3rd. Get more information from London Elects.

The Cost of Love: Valmike Rampersad Q&A

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Valmike Rampersad is one of the stars of The Cost of Love – the low budget movie made in Greenwich by local director, Carl Medland.

A graduade of the Central School of Speech and Drama, Rampersad has appeared in several movies and recently shot his first his first Hollywood feature, ‘The Exquisite Continent’ with Emmy Nominated Director, Stephen Gyllenhaal (‘Losing Isaiah’). He took time out from filming in LA to answer some questions about his role in The Cost of Love, which is released today on DVD.

How did you get the part of Raj in the Cost of Love?

I met Carl Medland (Director) at a screening of a friend’s film and he asked if I would be interested in auditioning for the role. The synopsis sounded too good to pass up, so Carl sent the script and I thought it was excellent. I then met with Carl and read for the part.

What attracted you to the character?

It was one of those scripts that you just wanted to keep reading until you get to the end – a real page turner. I was keen to be a part of this film because it is very different from any of the others I have done and it gave me a chance to be a character that brought me out of my comfort zone – one that is very different from me. My character, Raj, is also based on a very good friend of Carl’s, which helped to make him more real.

Can you explain a little about the role of your character in the movie?

Raj is a cardio thoracic surgeon who has the world on his shoulders, but he hides his feelings from everyone. His fiance is dying from cancer and the reasons for his marriage to her are unclear. He is ultimately conforming to doing the right thing. Dale, a male escort (played by Christopher Kelham), is Raj’s best friend from childhood and is in love with Raj. Raj has the life that Dale wants – a good job, a fiance, a steady income etc. Raj’s life is intertwined with all of the other colourful characters in the film and in some way we all affect each other by one of the many types of ‘love’ at whatever the cost. Dale offers Raj an escape from his daily routine lifestyle, along with a sense of security.

The movie was made on a low budget and is very Greenwich-centric… what was it like to work on?

Indie low budget films are often the most fun. It was very professionally done and beautifully shot, all on schedule and with a really excellent crew, most of whom I am still in contact with. Carl is also an excellent Director – he knew what he wanted in each scene and he knew how to achieve it from his actors. Playing ‘Raj’ opposite Christopher Kelham (Dale) was made that much easier because Chris did such a brilliant job. He really put a lot into creating his character and was a fun person to work with.

Many people will fondly remember Michael Joyce who appears in the movie but died tragically before it came out. Do you have any memories of him?

Michael made everyone on set laugh. He was such a happy guy, always colourfully dressed and smiling. I had the joy of shooting a couple of scenes with him and he really was brilliant to work with. I actually couldn’t stop laughing whenever he was around!

Who do you think the movie appeals to?

I think the film speaks mostly to a gay audience but there are as many straight characters as there are gay, so hopefully with all the various stories going on in the film, it will appeal to everyone.

What have you worked on since The Cost of Love and what can people see you in next?

I am currently spending a fair bit of time between Los Angeles and London. I had a wonderful opportunity shooting with Emmy Nominated Director, Stephen Gyllenhaal on his film, ‘The Exquisite Continent’, in LA. I am also working on two other projects in LA but not allowed to say what they are for now! I shot a film called ‘The Rise and Fall of John Tesoro’ in Trinidad, where I was born, which was a lot of fun. It was nice to be able to go to work and then head back to my whole family at the end of the day, not to mention the home cooked food! The film is now doing the film festival circuit. I shot a print and commercial campaign for Nivea as one of their new faces, celebrating 100 years of Nivea, which has just launched. Hopefully a couple of other features I shot last summer will be out soon – one is called ‘London Life’ and the other still has a working title.

You can find out more about Valmike at his own website.

The Cost of Love is available on DVD from today.

Interview with Cllr John Fahy – Part Two

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Greenwich’s regal connections will come to the fore next year when it becomes a royal borough. As the man in charge of the council’s culture portfolio, is Cllr Fahy proud of this honour?

“I am very proud of it – notwithstanding Henry VIII’s activities in Ireland and all of that, forget all that,” the County Cork-born councillor says, “It’s just an enormous benefit for the borough. It’s long overdue.

“We are a World Heritage Site, home of time and all of that. It’s a joy that we’ve been able to get it, and again it’s because of the hard work of the leadership of the council in pushing that agenda forward.”

Is a new logo for the borough in the offing?

“I think there’s some work going on but that’s under wraps at the moment. We have to fit into the palace agenda.”

But the bigger story for 2012 is the Olympics. Cllr Fahy is himself looking forward to the swimming, equestrian and shooting events and is in the lottery for tickets.

How does he think preparations for the events being staged in Greenwich are going?

“Absolutely terrific. It’s interesting that the silent majority are totally enthused about the Olympics and I just find it fascinating that there’s this hard core of objectors around Greenwich Park who are a serious minority.

“It’ll just be amazing…  the millions of people that will see the iconic vista from the top of the Wolfe statue right down, it will just be amazing.”

One of the angriest press releases I’ve seen from Greenwich Council, I tell him, came when the ticket allocation for local children was announced. Was he disappointed with what was available for local kids?

“In reality, we continue to press… our ambition is to secure a ticket to some event during the Olympics for every school child in the borough.

“Whether we achieve that or not will depend on a whole range of things. They’d be able to tell their children and grandchildren ‘I was there in 2012’. As people were saying in 1948, ‘I was there’.”

Cllr Fahy raises the idea of staging a concert in Greenwich Park in August, between the Olympic and Paralympic games.

“There is an opportunity between the  Olympics and Paralympics to use Greenwich Park. There’ll be a stadium in there which will be kitted out so what the hell, why can’t we use it?

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we had Bono in Greenwich Park in 2012? It’s a space that’s there and we need to talk to LOCOG and the police and all that about it to see if it’s possible to use it. It’s a thought.

“It would be a promoter coming in and we would be helping to facilitate it. We wouldn’t be dipping into our pockets.”

With next year set to be huge for Greenwich’s Mr 2012, there’s still a few highlights in this year’s cultural calendar to discuss.

News of a new addition to the Greenwich Festival season, the Peninsula Festival, first surfaced on the 853 blog. It is the brainchild of entrepreneur Frank Dekker and is due to run on the peninsula for several years, including the creation of a temporary beach.

Fahy welcomes the start-up’s plans.

“We are engaged in facilitating and enabling organisations and companies to flourish, and giving a helping hand.”

“I think it’s helped where private sector organisations come in, set themselves up in Greenwich and establish the peninsula as a cultural destination of choice for people who want to enjoy themselves. I think it will be just great.”

Cllr Fahy is especially interested in plans to bring tall ships to Greenwich in 2012, having been to a tall ships festival himself in Amsterdam – “it wasn’t a council jolly”, he is quick to point out.

“There was something like two million people in Amsterdam during that weekend. Absolutely amazing. If we can create that kind of opportunity within the Peninsula, it could become a vibrant place.”

Cllr Fahy tells me he is “very excited” by the National Maritime Museum’s new Sammy Ofer wing, which is due to open later this year.

“Full credit to Kevin Fewster and the team for achieving their objective of getting the building on time and it will be bring enormous additional value to Greenwich.”

But what does he think of the NMM’s decision to charge £10 to stand on the Meridian Line at the Old Royal Observatory?

“Well, I think it’s a bit of an overkill.”

Would he pay £10 to stand on the Meridian Line?

“No.”

Could a £10 charge to stand on the Meridian Line damage Greenwich’s reputation in the eyes of visitors?

“Yeah.”

He is clearly not comfortable criticising the decision and his answers are noticeably shorter. He does, however, say he understands that “what they’re trying to do is increase their income”.

The missing link for visitors to Greenwich at the moment is the Cutty Sark. The restoration of the famous tea clipper is nearing completion. But the council has had to find £3million to help rescue the project.

Is he convinced there would be sufficient return on the council’s investment?

“Absolutely. You guys may get a sense that the council sometimes feels like a cash machine and we just give away money.  There’s lots of discussion and debate and analysis before we make any decision.

“It needs to be recognised that we have high levels of deprivation and unemployment, so the council has a role to provide opportunities though investment to maximise employment opportunities.

“The £3 million will have achieved an important development in terms of the Cutty Sark in the longer term. It will stabilise the town centre and increase tourism income and everybody will benefit. That’s the role of the council as it attempts to regenerate its areas.”

What came through during the interview was Fahy’s enthusiasm and optimism for Greenwich’s cultural offerings over the next 18 months and beyond.

With his cabinet responsibilities touching upon many of the issues that local people care most passionately about, he will be under the spotlight to ensure that the end results match his optimism.

Read Part One of this interview

Interview with Cllr John Fahy – Part One

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As I sat down opposite Cllr John Fahy, I remarked that this would not be the first time his words would be recorded this week.

Our interview was taking place a few days after local journalist Darryl Chamberlain broke new ground by posting audio clips from the council chamber onto the internet.

But Cllr Fahy was not bothered by his sudden appearance online.

“It’s important we keep up with modern day communication strategies so I haven’t any hang ups about it,” he said.

“The council meetings are a public venue where people come along, quite rightly, and represent their interests and the interests of their community.

“We have the press there who can take notes, so what’s the difference, really?”

His relaxed outlook on what may prove to be an important step forward for council transparency is not atypical for the genial Irishman.

Hailing from a small village east of Cork, John Fahy moved to the UK at the end of the 1950s. He first made his home in Guildford, where he started a career in the trade union movement.

He moved to London in 1987 and was first elected to Greenwich Council three years later. He has been the cabinet member responsible for culture, including the Olympics, for four years.

We met at the café in East Greenwich Pleasaunce, a park he describes as “absolutely wonderful”. Getting people back into parks is one of his priorities – and cafés have a big role to play.

“I became interested in creating an environment whereby the parks would be successful if we had cafés so people had an opportunity to come, walk their dog or play sport.

“Having a café here also has the element of security because people are here, the staff are here and so it brings it all together in a positive way.

“We’ve got this café, we’ve got a café in Eltham Park South, we’ve got Avery Hill and we’ve been discussing the prospect of a café in St Alfege Park”.

“It will probably mean converting an existing building and we’re working with the friends of the park to achieve that.”

The improvements at  the pleasaunce in recent years have seen it handed a prestigious Green Flag Award.

Greenwich Council has five-and-a-half Green Flag parks – the half being Blackheath, shared with Lewisham. Does he have ambitions to increase Greenwich’s Green Flag tally?

“We’re aiming for twelve by 2012 but obviously we want to create more. For instance, the Friends of St Alfege Park are talking of achieving Green Flag status by 2013/14 so the Green Flag parks will continue in a very positive away”.

But with Greenwich lagging behind Lewisham – which already has 12 and a half Green Flag parks – is there a sense of competition with neighbouring boroughs?

“No, no, no – I talk a lot with my counterparts in Lewisham and Bexley so we’re up to speed with what others are doing but it’s not competitive in that sense.”

Greenwich and Lewisham had worked together for many years on the Blackheath firework display, but Greenwich abandoned the event at short notice in 2010. Lewisham was left to set up a public appeal to cover the shortfall.

Had he apologised to his Lewisham counterpart or been embarrassed at the way it was handled?

He begins defensively.

“I’m very keen to talk about the future rather than the past.

“Human frailties exist in councillors as well as everywhere else really. It seems to me that we could have reflected further on what were doing.

“But I think you have to put it in the context that we knew that whichever government was in power post the election, that there was going to be cuts so we deliberately took a decision to find savings where we could and build up some resources so that when it came to the cuts, we had a bit of a fair wind to seek to minimise the effects.

“I think we did reasonably well in terms of that, unlike Lewisham who are now closing five libraries and a whole range of other things.”

Do the Blackheath fireworks have a future?

“It will be difficult,” he says.

“I think there’s a balance to be struck between the private sector contribution and the council contribution and I don’t think in terms of the fireworks that the balance is sufficient. We’re happy to support projects. but in the next few years it’s going to be about doing more for less.”

Lewisham is looking at closing libraries and Cllr Fahy is proud that Greenwich isn’t doing the same. But with any internet-connected computer able to access more information than most libraries, I wondered about the future for libraries, and if the trend for usership was up or down.

“Before the fire in the Eltham Centre, figures were going up. But because the library was closed for a few months, we’ve had problems.

“With the opening of the new Woolwich Library, there’s going to be a significant improvement in IT provision so therefore the balance between readership and all of that will change.

“We need to develop life-long learning centres where it’s not only about taking out a book, it’s about going to the library, researching, using the IT. Kids going in after school to do research, improving their knowledge and all of that. That’s the thing we need to develop.”

The tech-savvy councillor says he is keeping an eye on the effect the Kindle is having on e-book reading and says he is “very interested in the concept” of people able to download music at libraries.

The council’s claim that no libraries are closing in Greenwich has been called into question after the Kidbrooke Kite blog revealed the library at the Ferrier Estate was closing and wouldn’t be reopened or replaced.

“Yes, but I mean, the library in the Ferrier was only open two days a week. It’s a bloody awful place in terms of the quality of the books we have in there so it’s not fit for purpose.”

Cllr Fahy points to “extensive library provision in Eltham… and increasing space in Woolwich”.

“The amount of floor space for libraries has increased dramatically across the borough,  and of course we’ve put significant investment in.”

Our meeting came just after the council increased the cost of tennis at its courts in line with inflation and, more controversially, decided to extend the enforcement of charging to Plumstead Common.

Local players were surprised to learn of the charges when a notice appeared and the courts were padlocked shut.

The councillor is aware of the criticisms that had surfaced on local blogs and a popular tennis website and anticipates my question.

Could he clarify the situation?

“Let me say this. The charges have only increased by the rate of inflation. The charges have always been there.

“But we have to look at these issues in the round, really, and we are developing a tennis strategy as we have been around a whole range of sports.”

He says the council is looking at ways to develop tennis across the borough and to create an elite tennis squad.

“Why can’t we provide opportunities for the next McEnroe or Murray to come from Greenwich or from Woolwich?

“But what we want to create is an opportunity for people, which has been the case for years at Plumstead, whereby mum and dad and the kids with a tennis racket and a few balls can come out and have some time on the courts.

“Would we charge for that? I doubt it because we would have to someone sitting there all day.

“I didn’t know the signs at Plumstead were going up. Was I aware, I would have probably said, well, you know, ‘we know what the score is’.”

It sounds like there won’t be an immediate change to the situation at Plumstead, I say.

He agrees, adding he was unaware of the courts being padlocked shut.

“Why do we need to wind people up like that? This is a tough call for all of us in terms of trying to achieve budget reductions.

“We don’t want to persecute people, we want to work with them to improve our sports.”

“Councils work like a bureaucracy and we need to be mindful… it is about collecting money but it’s also about making sure that we increase the number of people participating and if the barrier is one of finance, then we need to be flexible.”

Cllr Fahy says the council does need to improve revenues from tennis, and as with the libraries, he has an eye on greater use of technology.

“We have to find ways to maximising income within a flexible arrangement and I think a swipe card may be one way of doing it.

“We need to have different charges for different areas. The Greenwich Card may become a swipe card so a person who wants to engage in tennis can join on an annual basis, swipe their card and play.”

Read Part Two of this interview

From Laramie, With Love: Greenwich Director Joe Walsh

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‘Emotionally searing’ The Laramie Project talked to 200 townspeople following Matthew Shepard’s torture and murder in 1998.

Joseph C Walsh is the young Greenwich director behind the “searing” Laramie Project coming to Greenwich Theatre later this month. Based on the life and brutal 1998 murder of US student Matthew Shepard, the play’s subject matter – prejudice and homophobia – is still, as illustrated by Greenwich’s very own recent , a hot topic. Greenwich.co.uk spoke to Joe to find out more.

Joe, you’re bringing the Laramie Project to Greenwich Theatre – your local theatre – later this month. What’s the play about?

It examines a small town’s reaction to the murder of 21-year-old University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard in 1998. The original writers of the play travelled to Laramie six times in the 18-months after Shepard’s death and conducted over 200 interviews with people in the community.

Those interviews paint a fascinating, sometime funny, incredibly moving and insightful portrait of a town struggling with its own identity and international media scrutiny.

So every word in the play is ‘real’?

Yes. It’s completely based on interviews with the people of Laramie as well as journal entries and court documents. The play does an incredible job structuring this into a satisfying theatrical event.

You’ve produced it before haven’t you? What’s the history behind the show?

It was premiered in Denver, Colorado in February 2000 and then in New York in May 2000. Since then it’s become one of the most produced plays in the USA and has received productions worldwide including two major London productions. Our production is the first major London outing for the show since 2005.

And what’s your relationship with the show?

It started in 2000 when I saw the original Off-Broadway Production. To this day it is one of the most powerful, memorable and special experiences I have ever had in the theatre. It became a goal of mine way back then to direct the show and try to share it with as many people as possible.

Last year we presented it at The Space in Mudchute and revived it as part of the Dublin International Gay and Lesbian Theatre Festival. We’re thrilled to bring it to Greenwich Theatre – my home theatre.

It’s been described as a ‘must-see’ and ’emotionally searing’. Why emotionally searing?

Because the audience is aware that every word said on stage came from a real person. The town of Laramie is shown warts and all, and we as an audience are asked to come to our own conclusions about the people and the incidents presented.

The subject matter itself is hugely emotive, and the play is so well structured that the audience becomes completely wrapped up in the story-telling.


Joe Walsh in action in West Side Story. Photo: Mat Roberts / Facebook

Tell us about yourself. You’re from the States but live in Greenwich…

I’m originally from a city called Lynn just outside Boston. I grew up performing and in my teens began directing. Theatre has always been a part of my life. I grew up in a political family and although I didn’t follow directly in their footsteps I feel that my interest in projects like The Laramie Project comes from that background.

Is where you are from anything like Laramie? Are you from Smallsville USA?

Lynn is a fairly big city, so no. But I think what is amazing about The Laramie Project is that I do see some of where I grew up in it and the people I knew. I think the themes and concerns expressed by the townspeople are universal.

How did you end up in London and Greenwich?

I moved here eight years ago to do my Master’s Degree in Directing. I’ve lived in and around Greenwich the whole time.

And now you work fulltime as a director?

At the moment I split my time between freelance directing and education. I’m the musical theatre director in residence for Plumstead Manor, and previously was the head of musical theatre for Greenwich Theatre.

As a director, I’ve directed half-a-dozen UK premieres, a couple of Irish premieres, an acclaimed Irish tour of The King and I and a London revival of The Anniversary. In the West End I served as resident director on When Harry Met Sally and Coyote on a Fence.

What’s Laramie like now?

The company returned to Laramie for the 10th Anniversary of Matthew Shepard’s death to see how the town had changed. It seems that many people feel that Matthew’s death opened a dialogue that changed people’s opinions about sexuality. Others think nothing has changed and there are some who try to excuse the entire incident as a robbery gone wrong.

Matthew’s father said, “Matt’s beating, hospitalization and funeral focused worldwide attention on hate. Good is coming out of evil. People have said enough is enough.”

I suppose one of the messages from the play is that prejudice and bigotry happens anywhere, and can have dreadful consequences. What do you think then when you see something like the News Shopper letter row, in your own big-city back yard?

Well, it’s people like Mrs Fitzsimon’s that make me so proud of the work we are doing with this play. Mrs Fitzsimon is perfectly welcome to her beliefs and opinions, however, it does concern me that this letter may be read by some as a reason to commit violence against members of the gay community – marginalisation and judgement of a minority group plant the seeds of violence.

I would very much like to share The Laramie Project with Mrs Fitzsimon and hear her opinions on the Matthew Shepard case. I will try to get in touch with the News Shopper and offer her free tickets to the show.

Are you a campaigner at heart? Is that why you’ve brought this play to the stage?

Yes, I think I am. I was brought up in a political family and have always been drawn to theatre with a social conscience. I love the theatre. I love all genre of theatre, and I do think that at the heart of anything you can find a message to share.

Can theatre really change the way people think? Or is it usually a case of preaching to the converted?

I think great art can change the way people think. When I saw the original production of The Laramie Project there were older women sitting in front of me. At the interval one said she wasn’t enjoying it and wanted to leave. The other convinced her to stay. By the end the one who wanted to leave had to be helped out of the theatre by her friend because she was so moved. It had a profound impact.

Living in a place as seemingly open as London it is very easy to forget that people have fought hard and some have lost their lives in order to open up a dialogue about sexuality and all forms of equality.

I know your local is the Rose and Crown, next door to the Greenwich Theatre… what are your other local haunts / top tips?

Well, there is obviously our gorgeous park, lovely beer gardens and of course Greenwich Theatre and Picture House. I can also guarantee that the Organic Café has the best breakfast in London.

And what’s next for you? And the Laramie Project?

As I said, we’re keen to bring The Laramie Project to a wider audience. We’d love to take it on tour and find a home for a longer run in London. We’re also developing a very exciting schools project for the show, and are hoping to present The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later at Greenwich Theatre in October. Personally I’ve just begun writing a new musical and am going to be touring Germany with a theatre company.

Thanks Joe. That’s enough from us. Plug your play in 25 words or less.

The Laramie Project is an important, entertaining and moving piece of theatre. It will open your mind and make you think about yourself and your community. It is a special piece of theatre that will resonate with everyone, and leave you contemplative and inspired. Oh, that’s 44!

The Laramie Project, Greenwich Theatre
Tuesday 21 September – Saturday 25 September 2010
Greenwich Theatre Box Office: www.greenwichtheatre.org.uk / 020 8858 7755