Protesters outside Tate South Lambeth – photo credit Vivienne Lewis
OPINION: THIS ISN’T GOING TO GO AWAY
News that 200 authors have signed an open letter to Lambeth council calling on them to scrap their plans for closures and healthy living centres probably won’t make the slightest bit of difference to Lambeth council’s cabinet (which we’ve already described as increasingly beleaguered).
The authors’ letter is another nail in the cabinet’s collective coffin as they go round in ever decreasing circles.
Replacing Jane Edbrooke with – possibly – Cllr Jack Hopkins at next week’s annual council meeting isn’t going to work either. As someone who is already a cabinet member he is tainted. Out of the frying pan into the fire.
What Lib Peck should have done was replace Jane Edbrooke with a new face, tell them to go and sit down with the library campaigners, and reach an understanding.
It’s happened elsewhere in London.
News From Crystal Palace spoke to Sian Berry, Green party GLA candidate for Lambeth and Southwark, on the steps of the Carnegie library on Thursday.
She’s a councillor in Camden which is Labour-controlled. She explained that there had been plans to close four libraries in Camden borough. But they are still open – and not sharing their space with gyms.
The community in Camden put forward various ideas for how the buildings could be used – as work hubs, not gyms.
A few years ago her own library in Highgate was threatened and they worked up an alternative option.
“We’ve seen staff cuts but we’ve not lost the building. “If my council can save a library from closure why can’t Lambeth?” she asks.
And why not?