The Lambeth years 1988 part 2

Those of us who worked with the LSPU thought that we were holding the fort until a Labour government could come to power and re start a new GLC and it was because of that that we all thought that we would be welcomed by everyone in the parent Borough Councils that were sponsoring the 'big project'. But we were all of course very young and naive. The struggle to get those from the LSPU who did not want to take redundancy redeployed proved to be a difficult task. The many motions and messages of support before our abolition looked like empty promises. I was given the option to go to Camden or Islington but wanted to be redeployed to Lambeth. Denise Skinner, the son of the D Skinner MP who worked with me moved to Camden and ended up being a Chief Executive there, so that was a major irony in a way.

Our arrival in Lambeth was greeted with suspicion but once we were there progressive activists like Amanda Baird, who was at the time a Lambeth NALGO Convenor did a lot to support our 'integration' into the chaos that was at the time Lambeth Council. So did Peter Woodward and activists from the Black Workers group. We soon learnt how to deal with the Lambeth beast and realised that we had walked into a mine filed. They were, at the time, going through the famous service plan which meant cutting many jobs. Linda Bellos was under constant attack and being linked to her was not as advantageous as I had thought!

But there were those who welcomed us especially the BWG activists. I decided to keep out of the politics but not for very long. It immediately became obvious to the Leaders of the BWG that I was a young man with many opinions and with a big mouth and did not care about the affect my criticism could have on my employment prospects, so they kept asking me to get more involved. Lambeth at the time was divided between the Mike Waller camp (he was the Branch Sec) and Tony Jules (Assistant) and the ultra left who had some unknown to me characters like Jon Rogers and a few others. I became a Shop Steward in June, two months after my arrival, for the centre and started another struggle which was to last for many years...