Ilford South Labour Party

Seven Kings Councillor & Deputy Leader of the Labour Group, Bob Littlewood, has had discussions with leading Councillors in the Tory minority administration recently.  He has been told that, following years of pressure from Labour Councillors & residents’ organisations in Seven Kings & Newbury wards, officers have been instructed to look at sites with a view to coming up with a locations for a library in the Seven Kings area AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

Bob has also been pursuing the suggestion made by Take Action for Seven Kings (TASK) members to push for a temporary site for a summer reading scheme and passed on the fact that Sky Tours is about to be vacant and would be an ideal site.

The meeting last Tuesday about replacing the Pool resulted in a promise from the Leader of the Council that by September he will be announcing his plans for the project.  Mike Gapes MP and Bob Littlewood are to meet the Leader soon to plan a new round of lobbying for getting external funding.

As the new Chair of the Council’s Leisure Scrutiny Committee Bob will be encouraging maximum public participation at the Committee’s meetings at the Town Hall and making sure that progress reports on the library and the pool are presented at each meeting.

The results of the Euro elections were undoubtedly bad for Labour nationally. It is shameful that this country will be sending two members of the BNP to the European Parliament.

But Labour support in Redbridge held up well and is a tribute to the work put in by those party members who have been out campaigning. It may also be a mark of the disarray of the hopeless Conservative administration at the Town Hall.

Redbridge result, compared to 2004

The borough wide Labour to Tory swing was just 0.05%. The UKIP and Lib Dem performances were both weaker than 2004. The local Lib Dems again paid the price for failing to support London or European elections with a quarter of the effort that they put into getting elected onto the Council.

Thankfully, the BNP vote here will have been a major disappointment to them.

While Labour’s results nationally were dismal, the Conservatives can hardly be pleased. They gained only 27.7% of the national vote, just 1% more than in 2004. And the Liberal Democrats share of the national vote went down. Even though the BNP increased its share of the national vote slightly, it received fewer actual votes in the regions where their MEPs have been elected than it did in 2004.

Labour Party members were out this weekend, campaigning across Ilford South for the European elections.  Mike Gapes and Labour Party Councillors joined  Seven Kings party members (pictured below) while other groups campaigned elsewhere across the constituency.

The Tories say it’s their top priority to withdraw Britain from the Social Chapter, the legal guarantee that protects many of the rights of working people.  Labour has introduced the minimum wage, better maternity rights & new paternity rights, and the extension of paid leave.  The Tories threaten all these rights and more.

Labour wants to take a key role at the forefront of making European Union policies on the environment & climate change, economic recovery from the global credit crunch and tackling crime & terrorism.  The Conservatives have pulled out of the main group of centre right parties in the European parliament and joined a small fringe group of right wing parties from some of the smaller countries of the European Union, losing influence & relevance.

But on 4th June it’s also vital that everyone makes their vote count so that the racist BNP do not gain any representation in the European parliament on the back of a low turnout under a system of proportional representation.

Mike Gapes and Seven Kings Councillors campaigning in Westwood Road