We were more than pleased recently to read of a change of leadership in the RBKC Labour Group with Councillor Emma Dent Coad replacing our old adversary Judith Blakeman at the helm. We would like to offer the new Labour Leader our best wishes and we hope that Councillor Dent Coad will continue the robust rhetoric, for which she is famous, to confront the Ruling Party at Hornton Street, particularly on the thorny issue of “social cleansing” in the Rotten Borough.
The Grenfell Action Group is delighted to see the back of the leadership of Councillor Blakeman whose collaborationist and defeatist political approach has seen the Labour Party become an insipid laughing stock, especially at Lancaster West. We believe that Blakeman’s open and ill-judged support for the KALC development at Lancaster Green, her undisguised contempt for the Grenfell Action Group and all other critics of KALC, and her policy of openly colluding with the Ruling Party at Hornton St, has brought great shame on the Labour Party and has not served the residents of North Kensington well.
It is worth recording for posterity that even while Councillor Tim Coleridge (Conservative) was busily drafting the Council’s much feared and hated “Decant Policy” Blakeman was working closely with him and his Neo-Con pals in Hornton Street to oppress anti-KALC activists on Lancaster West Estate.
We believe history will show that Councillor Blakeman would have been better served using her time as Leader of the Opposition in fighting tooth and nail against Coleridge and his fascist “Decant Policy” rather than working with him and the Ruling Party to oppress the legitimate concerns of her constituents, presumably in the vain hope of benefitting from whatever scraps might be offered from the Tory table.
Let us all hope that RBKC Labour can now begin to fulfill their proper function, wake up to the fact that they are THE RBKC OPPOSITION PARTY, and start to hold the Neo-Con monsters in Hornton St to account. We have had enough of seeing our community sold up the river and our well-being cheaply traded for political expediency.
Grenfell Action Group 