Blue Plaques for the Suffragettes of Brighton

This article was published in Brighton & Hove Independent newspaper on Friday 22 June 2018 and the Argus of 23 June 2018.

In this Centenary year of the first UK women getting the Vote, there’s been increased focus on the suffrage movement in Brighton. Residents have realised that though our city has a rich suffrage history – at a civic level, little has yet been done to explore or celebrate it.

Now the Council is rising to the challenge. Amongst other things, it has agreed to partner a charity bid for the government’s Women’s Vote Centenary Grant and to set up a suffrage display in the Brighton Museum before the end of the centenary year, working with campaigners to achieve this.

The Council has also signalled approval for a ‘scheme’ or group of four blue plaques to honour suffrage campaigners. In the past, the Blue Plaque Panel has agreed a scheme of plaques for soldiers awarded the Victoria Cross. Now the Panel, chaired by redoubtable heritage specialist Roger Amerena, has approved a new scheme to honour heroines of the suffrage movement. Mr Amerena said “The decision of the Commemorative Plaque Panel was unanimous. The plaques will be a permanent reminder of these brave women who overcame considerable opposition to get the vote.”

Campaigners have responded with delight, aware that while Hove has one blue plaque for suffragette Victoria Lidiard, Brighton has none.

A plaque will be erected at the North Street Quadrant where the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) had its headquarters. Plaques will also be placed on the former Brighton homes of three women – Minnie Turner, Elizabeth Robins and Clementina Black.

Minnie Turner was born in 1866 in London, then moved to Brighton. A Liberal, she first became a member of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), but then joined the more militant WSPU in 1908.

Minnie ran Seaview a boarding house at 13-14 Victoria Road in Brighton as both holiday destination and refuge for suffragettes recovering from imprisonment, hunger-strikes and forcible feeding. Her guests included WSPU leaders Emmeline Pankhurst, Annie Kenney, Flora Drummond, Emily Wilding Davison, Constance Lytton and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence. Pankhurst’s sister, Mary Clarke lived at Seaview while working as Brighton’s WSPU organiser and in 1910 she and Minnie were both arrested outside the House of Commons. In 1911 Minnie was imprisoned for breaking a Home Office window. When hostile local men broke Seaview’swindows, she hoisted a sign saying “Male Logic”.

Minnie was a member of the Tax Resistance League (TRL), whose members refused to pay taxes when they could not vote. In 1912 her goods were seized and sold at auction in lieu of tax. She died in 1948.

Elizabeth Robins was born in the USA in 1862, but spent most of her life in England.

A renowned actress, she introduced Ibsen to the British stage and published many books. After she left the stage, she joined the NUWSS and later served on the WSPU Executive. Her suffrage play Votes for Women and her novel The Convertwere hugely successful. 

She met Octavia Wilberforce, who became one of Brighton’s pioneering woman doctors, in 1909. They remained close companions for 40 years, living first at Backsetttown, Elizabeth’s country home near Henfield, which became a retreat for suffragettes and later a convalescent  home – then at 24 Montpelier Crescent, a house acquired by Dr Wilberforce in 1923, which she used as a surgery.

Along with Octavia and others, Elizabeth helped develop and fund women’s health services, first the Lady Chichester Hospital and later – with Dr Louisa Martindale – the New Sussex Hospital for women. She was a close friend of Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst and Virginia and Leonard Woolf and was admired by Oscar Wilde, Henry James, George Bernard Shaw. She died in 1952. 

Clementina Black was a suffragist, writer and trade unionist. She was born in 1854 in Ship Street, daughter to David Black, the Town Clerk. Her first novel was a published in1877 and she continued writing throughout her life.  A friend of Eleanor Marx, she joined the Women’s Trade Union association and in 1888 attended the Trades Union Congress where she moved the first resolution calling for equal pay.  She was active in the boycott of Bryant and May matches, which led to the match-girls’ strike. 

In common with many suffrage campaigners, she was incensed by hypocritical male politicians who denied women the vote on the basis of physical ‘delicacy’, but had no scruple in ‘sweating’ women workers through hours of heavy labour in appalling conditions. 

In 1911 she became Vice President of the NUWSS, later editing the suffragist newspaper The Common Cause. Alongside her trade union work she continued to write  novels as well as books about low pay. Her novel “The Agitator” was based on her work for trade unions. She died in 1922.

Fundraising for the first plaque is complete, but £3,600 is needed for the other three.

Isla Robertson 10 April 1933 – 20 December 2017 – A Friend of Age and Guide of Youth

There are some people who are forces of nature. Individuals whose charisma and willpower drives all before them. In this city, you tend to think they should have their name on a bus. One such was Isla Robertson, pensioners’ champion and activist, who died on 20th December at the Royal Sussex County Hospital. She was 84.

Isla would not have been sorry to miss Christmas. Like a lot of Scots, she didn’t think too much of it – but she would have been upset to miss Hogmanay and above all Burns Night on 25th January. She love Robert Burns’ poetry and the ‘wee dram’ of whisky that goes with it.

So it was fitting that the celebration of her life was arranged for Burn’s Night, the 25th January. Friends and family packed into the Purple Playhouse Theatre on Montefiore Road. There were elected councillors from London, who had served with Isla on Westminster City Council. There were people from Scotland, who had known her from childhood and others who had worked with her in London, after she trained as a teacher. Probably the largest contingent were those, like me, who had met her after she retired to Brighton and became an activist for older people’s rights. She was best known as Chair of the Brighton & Hove Pensioners Association, but she had many other roles, not least as a Trustee for Age UK. As one of her admirer’s said “It didn’t matter what you were there to do, Isla always got the conversation around to pensioners’ rights”.

Isla had had several falls, but after the last one, doctors discovered that the cancer she had conquered years earlier, had returned with a vengeance. She said “I’ve beaten it once. I can beat it again.” But this time even Isla was defeated.

Born in Scotland, Isla worked as a receptionist for some years, before training as a teacher. She was an inspirational teacher, determined to give the deprived children she taught the best education possible. She had no patience with educational fads, telling younger colleagues to concentrate on making sure children could read and write well. As a former ‘mature student’, she knew that excellent literacy skills provide the tools for second chances in adulthood.

A life-long Labour Party member, she served, between 1986 and 1990, as a Westminster City councillor for Little Venice ward.  While on the Council she became a planning specialist – and the scourge of Dame Shirley Porter, Conservative leader of the Council. Shirley Porter was later surcharged £27 million pounds for her part in the notorious ‘Homes for Votes’ scandal of the 1980s, where constituency boundaries were manipulated for political advantage and poor council tenants forced from their homes. As one former colleague said to cheers and applause “Shirley Porter absolutely hated Isla”.

However, I cannot imagine anyone hating Isla. She was forthright and honest and did not suffer fools gladly. When she asked you to do something, such as speak at a Pensioners meeting, you knew you had to do it. And what’s more, it would be fun. She loved laughter and sweets and whisky and the poetry of Robert Burns, which she would read in her wonderful deep Scottish accent. A friend described how Isla broke down in tears half way through reading him Burn’s great hymn to equality “A Man’s a Man for a That”. When he attempted to continue reading the Scottish dialect in his English accent, she burst out laughing, grabbed the book back and carried on herself.

A friend from Scotland paraphrased a Burn’s poem “Epitaph on my own Friend”. The words are apt.

“The friend of age, and guide of youth:
Few hearts like hers, with virtue warm’d,
Few heads with knowledge so inform’d:
If there’s another world, she lives in bliss;
If there is none, she made the best of this”.

A bus for Isla, please.

Warren Morgan – To Go or Stay?

Published in the Argus 27.10.2017.

The late Tony Benn M.P. divided people into weathervanes and signposts. Signposts are guides, showing the way, firm under pressure. Weathervanes shift direction in response to prevailing winds.

Brighton & Hove Labour Party members should remember this as they consider re-election and potential de-selection of councillors. Warren Morgan and some other politicians do seem at odds with the current direction of their Party.

However, if Corbyn’s people pursue de-selections, they need to be sure that the politicians they get, will be better than the politicians they had. An atmosphere of cult-like adoration currently surrounds Jeremy Corbyn, as it once did Tony Blair. With most of the mainstream, pro-remain media in full cry after Theresa May, Corbyn is getting a remarkably easy ride. To many, he looks a shoo-in for the next General Election. As a result, every careerist and attention seeker from Oxbridge to Wapping, and Sheffield to Kemptown now tacks Left, just as they or their kind once tacked Right. Once selected, and when the political climate changes, as it will, they’ll shift direction as it suits them.

In the 1990s, Blairite apparatchiks wore suits, carried pagers, defended global capitalism, courted “the filthy rich” insulted women and sneered at working class people. Nowadays, Corbynistas dress casually, argue for nationalisation and “the many not the few” while singing “Oh Jeremy Corbyn”. And still, it seems, insult women and sneer at working class people.

I do not agree with Warren Morgan, but he is, I suspect, a signpost rather than a weathervane. A political bruiser and front-stabber, at least people know where they are with him.

Gender Neutral Uniform at Priory School

The headmaster of the Priory School reports that there has been negative public comment about schoolgirls’ short skirts – and an increase in students claiming to be ‘gender-fluid’. He plans to kill two birds with one stone by making all students wear trousers rather than skirts. Predictably, there has been complaint, because, as always, it is female dress being restricted.

There’s no doubt that shortened school skirts constrain free movement and expose girls to sexual comment, so change is needed. However, schools seem to get themselves into a needless twist over uniform, placating one interest group only to offend or hurt another. In the melee, children’s – and especially girls’ – real interests are often lost.

Some state schools have approved a uniform hijab for pre-pubescent girls.  A decision made to placate one group of ultra orthodox parents, has appalled others, who rightly say it sexualises very young girls.

The intention of uniform should surely be to ensure all children are neatly and comfortably dressed, their bodies neither sexualised nor exposed to insult, humiliation or embarrassment and free to play, exercise and excel at sport.

I would suggest local schools give all children a choice of knee-length culottes or ankle-length trousers, provided that neither are too tight and both allow free movement. Culottes look like skirts, but cannot ride up or easily be shortened. This would allow girls free movement, protecting them from harassment – and the public from embarrassment – while giving boys access to cooler clothing in the summer.

Whatever schools do, they need to keep their focus on all children’s equal right to education, not the lobbying of interest groups.

Tony Greenstein and Uncomfortable Truths

Tony Greenstein, who occasionally writes for local newspapers, has been suspended from the Labour Party. He’s not sure of the reason, because despite repeated requests over several weeks, party officials still haven’t told him the nature of the complaint against him. However, he believes he is accused of anti-semitism.

He believes this because information was leaked to the The Daily Telegraph, which reported his suspension as evidence of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. The Party took no steps to challenge this report, though Tony did. As a result, the Telegraph has now published a retraction of any implication that Tony may be anti-semitic, as has The Times, which subsequently ran the story.

Tony is understandably aggrieved about the allegation. He is Jewish, steeped in Jewish culture as the son of an orthodox rabbi, and a life long anti-fascist. As an atheist he has rejected his religion (we’ve had many an argument about faith), but he remains fiercely opposed to anti-semitism and all forms of racism. He is also an anti-Zionist and has campaigned for years for better treatment for the Palestinian people. And this is why he has upset a great many influential people.

He is undoubtedly one of the rudest men in Brighton – as I know to my cost – but he is a sincere anti-fascist and his knowledge of both Nazi genocide and the history of Zionism is more comprehensive than anyone I know. He may sometimes overstate his case, but what he says is almost always based in firm historical fact.

Tony’s suspension has been greeted with a torrent of online abuse. In most political disputes, I would say Tony can give as good (or as bad) as he gets. However, no one should have to endure insults such as, “(It’s a) shame your family survived [the Holocaust] world can do without XXXX (an extreme obscenity) like you” or “You must feel terrible having a Yiddish name why don’t you change it to Hitler”.

Tony’s people were East European Jews from a German-speaking area of Poland near the border with Ukraine. His father was the last of the family to speak Yiddish. Most of his extended family died under the Nazis. Tony travelled there with his son some years ago, visiting Auschwitz and several towns and cities. In every one he says they found memorials to the victims of massacres and atrocities. This is why he has spent his life opposing fascism. And that is why it is a cruel insult and to call him an anti-semite.

The suspension has also been a low blow, considering his health. In recent years, Tony discovered he had somehow contracted Hepatitis C and that his liver was damaged beyond repair. He endured seemingly endless months of painful treatment and uncertainty – attempting to safeguard his family’s future, while waiting for a new liver he knew might never come. It was a worrying time, not least because he has a severely disabled son. In the event, a transplant saved his life. However, he is still recovering and is not really in a position to fight his corner.

It seems to me that the Labour Party is far too ready to squander talent and experience, while being fearful of the genuine cut and thrust of ideas. Tony’s view is that, on the Left, the incidence of anti-semitism is negligible – and that hostility to Muslims is a greater problem. I strongly disagree with that view, but that doesn’t mean I cannot benefit from and respect his knowledge and commitment.

People should not be barred from public life because they challenge ideas or make mistakes – still less be silenced if they sometimes speak uncomfortable truths we need to hear. The Labour Party should think again.

The Archbishop at St Peter’s Church in Brighton & Hove

On 8th March 2015, I queued for 30 minutes to hear Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury preach at the 10.30 service at Brighton’s St Peter’s Church. Cold as I was, I couldn’t stop smiling.

This is a church that just a few years ago was earmarked for closure. It was expensive to run, needed extensive repairs and was situated on a prime site at the juncture of the London and Lewes Roads. Despite the protests of its small but loyal congregation, the Diocese proposed its redundancy and its clergy and the then bishop of Chichester agreed. The Diocese reckoned without two things, the stubbornness of the congregation and local people’s deep affection for the church.

A campaign was set up and over two years, the Friends of St Peter’s wrote letters of protest, gained cross-party support from Brighton & Hove Council and gathered a 7000 signature petition. In May 2008 a small group of campaigners travelled to London to appear before the Church Commissioners in London. It was adversarial and frighteningly formal, but the Commissioners were kind.

The Bishop of Chichester, the archdeacon and other members of the church hierarchy still argued forcefully for redundancy, but four of us spoke against. Our position had been strengthened by the fact that Holy Trinity Brompton (HTB) church in London had learned of the church’s dire situation and told us it had offered help. We asked the Commissioners to explore this option and, to our delight, they agreed. We were confident that, given the chance, HTB would succeed. And so they did.

The church authorities still closed the church and removed many things the ‘old’ congregation held dear. Nonetheless, HTB was on its way and, during the few months the church was closed, a small group of us met for Saturday matins, first in Bardsley’s fish and chip shop in Baker street and then at St Bartholomews Church.

In October 2009, Archie Coates, a popular clergyman from HTB (who is married to a Brightonian), was inducted as the new vicar. The church was packed at that event and has remained that way pretty well ever since. There were hundreds of people at Sunday’s service.

Archie Coates interviewed Justin Welby, whose self-deprecating style suited the mood of the congregation. Though he didn’t mention it was International Women’s Day (I wish he had) he made a point of saying that the “average Anglican” is an African woman in her thirties, living in poverty, who has lived with conflict and violence and has a 50% chance of being in an area in which Christians are persecuted.

Asked about leadership, he replied that nothing could be achieved without God and without humility (or as he said “keep washing feet”). He added that good leaders need the confidence to surround themselves with people who are cleverer, brighter and more spiritual than they are. He joked “share the credit for their success” but “be prepared to take the blame”. As we approach a secular general election this seems useful advice.

He said that at times he feels like “an imposter”, as if the real Archbishop of Canterbury will suddenly appear one day and tell him he’s taking over. He added that he didn’t quite know how he’d got there. I was similarly amazed – not, of course, at how Justin Welby had come to be Archbishop – but at how the Archbishop of Canterbury, spiritual heir of St Augustine, had ended up in our St Peter’s Church, doomed for so many years to closure. But then, in a way it was fitting. As Justin Welby said, a Bishop once told him before he was ordained “there’s no future for you in the Church of England”.

During the St Peter’s campaign, nobody ever told us what the developers intended to do with the church if it closed, but it was pretty clear a great deal of money would have been involved.

I smiled as I left the church, remembering that the gospel-reading for the service had been John 2.13-25….. the one in which Jesus drives the money lenders out of the temple.

Radicalisation in Brighton

BBC cameras recently filmed north Syrian Kurds pay tribute to Konstandinos Erik Scurfield, an ex-Marine from Barnsley, who died fighting alongside them against Islamic State. Soldiers stood at attention as the coffin passed. As if to emphasise the difference between their forces and ISIS, several women fighters stood in the front line of the honour guard, nearest the coffin, while an older civilian woman, probably around my age, put her arm about the dead man’s grieving father and kissed his forehead.

I have no military background or training, but it occurred to me as I watched those Kurdish militia that if I had been younger and stronger I would have wanted to fight as a volunteer alongside them. For the first time in my life, I think I understand what motivated young British volunteers who fought against Franco in the Spanish Civil War. I believe terrible dangers face this country and as the mother of a daughter, I fear for her future.

The second world war was a war against fascism and I know without a shadow of a doubt that I would have wanted to serve in it. In the years before the war, I hope I would not have been deterred by the siren voices of non-intervention and appeasement.

The young fighters of the International Brigades were not mercenaries and they were not ‘interfering’ in another country’s dispute. Long before their own government, they realised that fascism respected no borders and posed a grave threat to human civilisation. They lost in Spain, not least because the British blocked international aid reaching Spanish government forces, but failed to stop Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy supporting Franco. Hitler deployed 19,000 German soldiers in Spain, then used what he’d learned there to destroy much of Europe. Fascism flourished in Spain for more than 30 years.

Now we are faced with the possibility of another global conflagration and an equal or greater threat to civilisation. ISIS (like al Qaeda, Jabhat al-Nusra, Boko Haram and the Taleban) is a fascist organisation, committed to destroy democracy and set up a dictatorship by caliphate. While Hitler butchered Jews, Slavs, Gipsies, trade unionists and gays, treating women as either brood mares or sex slaves, ISIS tortures and kills without mercy, treating women, Jews, Christians, Yazidis, Shia, Kurds and other groups as ‘untermensch’, barely worthy of life. It sells women and girls into sex slavery, handing control of their lives and fertility into the hands of men, justifying rape, child ‘marriage’, FGM, domestic violence and wife-murder.

These are unspeakable people, but the views they hold are not uncommon in Britain. The ideologues of Hitler’s Germany found fertile ground when they went to the German people, parts of whose culture were already steeped in militarism and anti-semitism – coupled with a powerful sense of both entitlement and post-war grievance. In a similar way, sections of Britain’s muslim population provide fertile soil for the extremist Sunni ideas of ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra. Supported by Saudi money and political influence, the deeply anti-democratic and sexist Salafi and Wahhabi ideology has become deep-rooted in parts of Britain’s sunni Muslim community – including here in Brighton & Hove – as well as in some British universities and schools.

In the 1930s, Hitler’s diplomats and our own fascists tried to persuade British politicians and the British people that nazi militarism was a response to an unfair war-settlement and that fascism posed no dangers to Britain. There were many who supported appeasement and others who actively shared Hitler’s views, but there was aways a significant minority of intellectuals, trade unionists and politicians in this country who understood the danger. Regrettably, that is not now the case.

Liberal intellectuals who rightly rail against white British fascism and would have no difficulty in acknowledging the Roman Catholic church’s role in the growth of Spanish fascism, have become eager apologists for Sunni Islamic extremism in Britain, defending every assault on women’s rights – from sharia courts to the burqa, polygamy to discriminatory inheritance – caricaturing legitimate criticism as ‘islamophobia’ and permitting the development of a de facto blasphemy law in this country – one that protects only one set of extreme religious opinions.

If we want to prevent the so-called ‘radicalisation’ of young people, we need to confront the ideology at its root, challenging the attitudes that sustain it, using our equality laws to force the pace of change. For if British values are to mean anything they must include a commitment not just to ‘tolerance’, but more importantly to real equality and justice for all citizens – including all women.

First Prosecution for FGM poses a Challenge for Brighton and Hove and Sussex Police

Here in Brighton & Hove we have a significant and growing number of immigrant communities likely to have experienced FGM. I recently submitted Freedom of Information requests to both Sussex Police and Brighton & Hove Council , asking whether they had been involved in investigations of suspected FGM, what policies and arrangements for training they had in place and whether any steps had been taken to inform the public and support victims. 

Brighton & Hove Council gave a fairly comprehensive reply admitting there had been no joint child protection investigations with the police, that they have never taken legal steps to safeguard adults vulnerable to FGM and that they have no specific policies about FGM nor any specific strategy for professional training, though they say there is an “shared understanding” amongst professionals that this should be treated as a child protection matter. They also say that their training and communications strategies in respect of domestic violence are being reviewed and will address FGM.

Given the seriousness of the issue, there was a worrying complacency and lack of urgency in this response – but it was far better than the reply I received from Sussex Police, who curtly refused my request for information – on the basis that the cost of providing information was “above the amount to which we are legally required to respond”. They wrote “It is estimated that it would cost in excess of 18 staff hours to comply” because the information is “not held in a centrally collated or retrievable format” .

Frankly, eighteen staff hours does not seem much to me, when the issue to be addressed is the abject failure of the criminal justice system and the wider state to uphold the law and protect vulnerable children and adults from torture.

 

No Tax Rises Without Trust

Simon Jenkins recently speculated in the Guardian that the Green’s proposal to hold a referendum on the budget might “strike a blow for democracy”. He suggested the Greens  might lead resistance to Coalition attacks on local government. 

 

I fear not. Much as I like the idea of a brave radical council turning to its people in the fight to defend services, I don’t think this council can deliver. 

 

Labour councils throughout the country bottled it under Thatcher’s onslaught in the late 1980s – and so will the Greens. To do otherwise would require imagination, courage, discipline, and competence – and a extraordinary capacity to build alliances – and I don’t see much of that around. 

 

The more I look at the proposal for a referendum, the more it seems to reveal wishful thinking on the part of some good-hearted souls and pure cynicism on the part of others. The bulk of the Council’s proposed cuts are to adult services and will put elderly people and those with disabilities at particular risk. Therefore, I’m deeply suspicious that Jason Kitkat has linked recent proposals for a referendum specifically to the need to defend elderly services. When the people of Brighton vote ‘no’, as they surely will, will he, like Pontius Pilate, wash his hands and pretend the consequences are our responsibility?

 

I’m sure there are principled Green councillors who genuinely believe they can go to the voters and seek their support. The difficulty is that that process of getting alongside the people should have started on day one of the administration. Instead, the Green council, which started with so much promise, has been officer-led and as bureaucratic and elitist as any other council. Lacking a Whip, it’s also been divided against itself. 

 

Rather than attending to ordinary people, the administration has listened to its relatively privileged supporters and taken guidance from highly-paid council officers, many of whom have a vested interest in keeping things pretty much as they are. The Council hasn’t trusted the people, so the people will not now trust the Council.

 

In order to vote for the tax rise, I for one would need to be sure councillors would spend the funds on maintaining key services. That’s the only basis on which anyone should raise taxes for people struggling to make ends meet. But how can anyone be sure of councillors whose proposed budget puts frail elders in the frame for cuts, after 3 years of underfunding and mismanaging core services, while at the same time failing to check a growing and expensive bureaucracy.

 

There was a time when local council duties were clear: to provide and manage housing for people on low income; run schools; maintain libraries, parks, museums and art galleries; collect refuse; oversee planning and licensing decisions; and safeguard children and vulnerable adults. Council officers did the work while elected councillors provided strategic direction and scrutiny and oversaw grants to the voluntary sector. 

 

Over the years, as a result of the Tories’ disastrous drive to privatisation of council services and Labour’s obsession with raising the status and salaries of public sector managers, there are now too few workers on the ground providing the basic services we need – and far too many overpaid bureaucrats appointed to commission, liaise, develop, consult, scrutinise, co-ordinate, publicise and report upon services which, in many cases, have been cut to the bone.  Elected councillors may be better resourced than they once were, but their power has greatly diminished and with it the influence of those who elected them. 

 

Over the past two decades, competitive tendering and successive governments’ focus on inter-agency and community ‘involvement’ has provided a rich seam for the city’s paid bureaucrats. Now it seems that for every external agency and function, the council needs teams of officers who don’t serve the public, but instead develop ‘3 year strategies’ and development plans, convene forums and meetings, liaising with interest groups and external agencies. They may claim to ‘co-ordinate’, but in fact do little more than comment on, and sometimes fund, other agencies’ services. Statutory agencies tolerate them. A few ‘community representatives’ thrive on them. Charities have no choice, for their grants depend upon them.

Now, turkeys don’t vote for Christmas – especially in a climate of potential cuts. Senior bureaucrats who have built substantial fiefdoms will fight tooth and nail to keep their staff. Their inflated salaries and status rely upon it. And these bureaucrats are in the privileged position  of influencing budgets in a way that low-paid service deliverers never can – except indirectly through their unions, by which time cuts are usually already on the table. 

 Care staff and cleaners don’t tend to socialise with elected councillors, use their first names, exchange banter on twitter or pleasantries at meetings or Festival events. As a consequence, when cuts are in the air it’ll be service deliverers not bureaucrats whose jobs are most at risk. 

 

So I’d be happy to pay more tax to maintain services, provided the Council comes clean about what its bureaucrats do – and what they cost – and commits to an honest debate about whether the city actually needs or can afford them. 

 

Ditching the Day Centres

I approach this New Year with a feeling of distinct nausea. Nothing to do with eating too much, rather a profound disquiet with local politics and the state of the city. 

Chief amongst my concerns is the proposal that services for vulnerable adults will bear the brunt of Council cuts. Denise D’Souza, executive director of adult social care, says £6 million will have to be found out of this budget. Older people’s resource centres are in the frame. So are day centres which provide a life line for them and their families.

In the earlier phases of my mother’s dementia, she attended a non-specialist day centre once a week – and then, as the illness progressed, 2 or later 3 days a week at a specialist dementia day centre. She received 24-hour care at home, but this could not have been achieved for so long without day centres. While she was there, carers could rest knowing she was safe, stimulated and well-fed. My mother ate well at other times, but for some of those who attended, day centre lunches were the only well prepared hot meals they received.

Council leader Jason Kitcat defends proposed cuts to these services. He wrote in this paper that “With the ‘personalization’scheme, elderly and disabled people are able to choose from a range of activities they would like to do with their allocated budget. This means that fewer are choosing to come to formal council run day care centres – instead going to the cinema or bingo, for instance.” He says “as a result… Our services at day care centres are being used less.”

This outrageous and self-serving statement, which in effect places responsibility for cuts in services for vulnerable elders upon slightly less vulnerable people who wish to live a normal life. I doubt those consulted about ‘activities’, had any idea that mainstream services for their frail peers were at risk. I also suspect there are few older people receiving council funding who would really prefer to spend it on bingo rather than food, cleaning and care. 

Cllr Kitcat cynically ignores the fact that ‘take up’ may have reduced because very frail people are not able to access services they need – either because they don’t know how to manage money previously spent by the council on their behalf or because the amount provided isn’t enough to fund what they need. It’s no accident that the personalization agenda came in on the back of a previous £400,000 cut in services. 

The truth is that many frail pensioners can’t manage personal funding – or simply don’t receive it. I’d like Cllr Kitcat to meet my old friend and colleague Pauline (not her real name). She worked for years in the NHS and then in the voluntary sector. She never earned much, but carried on working into her eighties because she loved the charity she served. In June this year, after 20 years, she reluctantly left her employment, not to retire but to care full time for her sister, who has dementia, and lives in the same house.

Pauline can’t get out. She cooks and cleans for her sister and deals with her fear, anxiety and occasionally challenging behaviour. To stay active, Pauline knits for charity. She’s worried about her own health, because she’s had a recent fall.  Social workers have offered her sister a place in a care home, but Pauline wants to keep her at home for as long as possible. 

I asked Pauline whether her sister attended a day centre. She hasn’t been offered one, not even a day a week. I asked if her sister had any money under the personalisation scheme. She hasn’t. Pauline hasn’t even heard of it. So there was no real choice.  It was the care home or nothing at all.

That’s the reality of life for many older people, especially older women. They work for years on low wages or unpaid in the home. In later life, they live on reduced pensions, frequently after caring for an older husband or parent. After their deaths, they struggle on alone. Then when they need help and turn to the state to provide it, it spits in their face. Or politely withdraws support, which amounts to the same thing. 

I’m sick of this council’s hypocrisy and the brazen selfishness of those who dominate it. They parrot fine words about equalities and diversity, but promote a culture obsessed with youth and privilege. Leading councillors and senior officers eagerly publicise their commitment to a few favoured minorities, those with social cachet, but fail to defend services for the elderly, especially those who are poor, sick or female – or the unfashionable jobs of those (usually women) who provide them. 

This council has white collar community safety officers, equalities and community development workers, commissioners and co-ordinators applenty – none of whom provide essential client services. 

Will they turn out to defend elderly services and the jobs of low paid colleagues? 

I don’t for a moment think so. 

Note: This was published by Brighton & Hove Independent on 3rd January 2014