Once, very briefly, I became a local Parish councillor in my local area for the Labour Party. It was, for someone with the attention span of a gnat, interminably dull. Street lights, pot holes, the positioning of wheely bins following refuse collection, flower beds and visiting people who had applied to build extensions to their homes. Interminably dull, but to ordinary folk these things all matter far more than what’s going on in national politics. However, this doesn’t apply everywhere in Britain. In some places issues that you might think are more relevant to national politicians have supplanted local trivia such as having decent local services.
Pictured above is Councillor Fliss Premru from Hackney Council in London. Along with two other comrades – I used the word comrades advisedly – our Fliss has left the Labour Party and formed a new Independent Socialist Group because of – and here I quote from the Hackney Palestine Solidarity Campaign – “the behaviour of the party in relation to the #GazaGenocide.” Actually, Felicity, sorry, Fliss, had already been suspended by Labour for debating a motion calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, something that you might think was slightly above her pay grade as a local councillor, but clearly what ‘s going on in the Middle East is more important to her than the mere trivia of ordinary people’s lives.
Better still, the comrades decided to announce their departure from Labour to a new independent socialist party alongside – and I am not making this up – a town hall encampment demanding that Hackney Council divests from Israel, supported by revolutionary comrades from the Socialist Workers Party.
Now I am all in favour of people believing in whatever they want to believe in, but I am not entirely convinced that local council campaigns on international issues is the right way of spending council tax money. And there’s another thing. Fliss and her comrades may not have noticed that actually the Conservative party has been office, for the last 14 years actually, not Labour, the party she has, mercifically in my opinion, left. But hey, blame Labour for something they have had literally nothing to do with because it makes you feel better, eh?
I haven’t written much about the conflict between Hamas and Israel because I’ve nothing new to say on it, beyond my view that Hamas started this murderous episode by its attacks on 7th October 2023 and, in my opinion, Israel’s retaliation has been excessive. And yes, I wish there would be a ceasefire, leading to a two state solution for Israel and Palestine, because frankly that’s the only way to sort this stuff out. Given the extremes – yes, on both sides – we seem to be further away from this than ever.
Councillors in our area, from all parties, have got it right. They concentrate on the things that matter to local people and are within their remit and if they have views on national and international issues, they are not debated in the council chambers alongside building applications and the provision of buses.
At least now Cllr Premru can concentrate on her myriad of other interests in climate change, curating a museum, #MeTU, a group of women and non-binary trade unionists committed to ending sexism and in the trade union movement as well as campaigning against Israel. I suppose local voters should be grateful that she still made some time to carry out the belt and braces work local councillors are supposed to do.
Once Palestine has been sorted, what next? Nuclear disarmament in Hackney? Pot holes? What pot holes?
