My Membership of the Labour Party

In 1970 as soon as I was able I joined the Labour Party. By then my mum Creena was a member of the party in Maidenhead.

In 1972 mum stood for the local council in Boyne Hill ward. She gathered over 42% of the vote. She was one of the first therefore to stand in the elections for the new District council of Windsor & Maidenhead. I was the local agent for those elections. Though we did not win a single seat in the town we scored over 40% in all the wards.

The Labour Party has gone a long way since those times. It would now do well to garner half that vote in an area like Maidenhead. This now now the land of the Conservatives and LibDems.

Over the last six months I have been pitched into a long struggle with Lambeth Council, which rather unlike Maidenhead is a Labour stronghold. The battle is about my house which I bought in good faith using a reputable solicitor and relying on the Lambeth Search Record. Neither of these precautions has served me well or indeed done me any good.

Richard and I bought a Grade II listed house which had been a neglected office and restored it to a home. It turns out the people we bought from had done illegal works on the house to create a roof garden, which under 1990 statute I am responsible for restoring. Not only do I have to pay for this but I also have to suffer the loss in sale value.You can see for yourself the state it was in from the galleries.

The great and good of Lambeth Planning Department made solemn public promises to me in front of witnesses in a meeting in late July. They have broken them and not just a little bit but like a good sinner they’ve done their bad deeds mightily. They have lied. I do not use this word lightly. They have lied in public and it is apparent now that no one, including elected councillors is able to do anything to put right a naked abuse of power by bureaucrats.

Though Richard and I stand to loose a lot of money through this injustice of the law – the real betrayal has occurred in the way the Lambeth Council has conducted its business. I wrote to the leader of the council in July. I never received a reply. When I complained I received an email acknowledgement. Since then…not a single word.

Justice rarely shelters under the letter of the law. But injustice thrives in legalism.

For most of my life I have been diminished in law because I was was gay and later demeaned because I was HIV/AIDS. The law’s letters did not make my life safer. The law’s letter did not even make much sense to me. When we as a group actively complained and campaigned we were advised to keep our heads down and not make a fuss. If there had been no fuss there would be no civil marriage for gay men and women. The law is not the same a justice. It does not guarantee fairness or equity indeed it may be deliberately designed to do the very opposite – the Penal Laws stripped Roman Catholics of their property. – all very legal but just?

However, for the Pharisees in Lambeth’s planning department serving the letter of the law has become their sole duty. Truth, honesty and even the promises made in public are bent before this notion of law. They have elevated it to the highest good. It is the gold calf they have fallen to worship. Yet, even then having raised it up so high they pay no heed to its formalities and their duty to due process under the laws nice letters. You cannot have the law and only a bit of it – like Shylock if you refuse mercy then all there is is the law to its last humiliating letter.

I will be writing more and more explicitly on this in due course. For the purposes of this post I merely wish to sketch out the background.

This has naturally had an effect on my health. I’ve ended up in hospital with a heart problem brought on by stress. I’m permanently in pain with shingles/herpes –  sometimes in my spine, mostly in my jaw and over my left eye. This also makes for a sense of depression and lethargy.

Last Sunday in one these moments of depression I wrote to my Councillor, Jack hopkins, my MP Kate Hoey and Graham Gilby of the Labour Party to resign from the party. It is the sort of thing one does when you are tired and maybe angry and frustrated.

I am so unimportant nobody even bothered to get back to me. There is nothing more wasted than a grand gesture that garners no attention. I feel suitably small which is great for my soul but doesn’t do a hell of a lot for my ego.

I’ve learned little in life worth passing on as wise let alone witty. Mum taught me never to let go of something when you’re right. And never let anyone take from you the things in which you believe in your heart. My religion has taught to keep the faith and try to bear with with adversity in good heart. I’m not so good at the bearing with adversity bit…it’s a work in progress as they say.

I may be beaten but I will not be broken. I may have to endure a lot of hassle and discomfort just in order to be a poorer. But I will not be robbed of my beliefs; my faith nor my values just because of load second-rate pen-pushers in Lambeth Council’s Planning Department lack integrity.

I will not go quietly into the night.

I will not resign from the Labour Party.

But I will speak out until justice rolls down from the heavens like a mighty river – as Martin Luther King once said in the Mall of Washington DC before the Lincoln Memorial.

Tomorrow more on the perils of Grade II listing and preserving the built heritage.

I will have to name names and there will be lots and lots of photographs. The names of the public officials are already identifiable in the public record for those who like to follow matters of procedure in Lambeth.

It is no small irony that I have discovered to my cost that safe as houses turns out not to be very safe at all.