6 May 2022

Local Elections Interview Special Ft. Green Stanmore Candidate Linda Robinson

Zayn Ahmad, from Al Haadi Youth group, KSIMC of London in Stanmore, interviewed Linda Robinson for the Hujjat Podcast ahead of the 2022 Local Elections in Harrow. Listen to the interview here and read the transcript of the interview below.

Linda Robinson from Harrow Green Party

Zayn Ahmad: Thank you all again for tuning in to another one of Al Haadi Youth podcast and we have another Local Election special for you. Following on from the recent release of the podcast with Labour candidate for Stanmore, Navin Shah, we are now honoured to record with the candidate in the Stanmore ward for the Green Party, Linda Robinson. Without further ado, I'm going to pass it on to Linda Robinson to talk about herself and how she got involved in the political scene.

Linda Robinson: Hello, my name is Linda Robinson and I have stood for election for the Stanmore ward of the local council every election since 2010. I've lived all my life in and around this Stanmore area, so I know it quite well and I have seen a lot of political history here. Of late, none of it has been very good. Since 2010, when the Conservatives took over the national Government and the local Government became Labour, they haven't made a lot of good decisions. That's not always been their fault, but we find ourselves now in a situation where we only have two parties running our Council. They are constantly at loggerheads and good decisions are not being made. We need more political diversity and we need a lot more attention to the Climate Change Strategy that our Council approved three years ago, before they even declared a climate emergency. That strategy hasn't been followed and it was very weak in the first place. There's a lot more we actually need to take action on in Harrow, to preserve our climate and to spend our funds more wisely, locally.

Zayn: Thank you, there's some very interesting topics that you have touched upon and I think we'll revisit them shortly. Before we delve further into the Green Party manifesto that you're running on, I would just like to touch upon some of the issues regarding the structure of the Council, as I'm sure you're aware, a lot of people are perhaps unaware of how local Government is run, how it's structured, how many votes they get when they get their vote, where they go to vote, all these kinds of issues. So, I wondering if perhaps you're able to shine some light on that?

Linda: What I will first say is, be careful when you vote in Harrow in this local election, because some ward boundaries have been changed. Some are smaller and are only going to be represented by two councillors, rather than three, and this means that you only get two votes. Some people are thinking that they still have three votes, but if they do vote three times on their paper, they will spoil their whole paper and none of their votes will be counted. So, I think that's very important to stress to people who may have been used to having three votes in their local election and now they only have two, to check very carefully before you mark your paper. In Stanmore, we have three votes. You don't have to cast them all for the same candidates from the same party. You can cast them for candidates across all different parties, but the way they are counted and the way the seats are one, unfortunately, is not very proportionally representative. It means that whichever candidates are first past the post in terms of the majority of votes, become our councillors. And on the council, whichever party gets the majority of councillors, gets to form the administration and make the decisions in cabinet that affects the way that our Council has to behave going forward. So nobody else's vote really counts other than the successful candidates, from the two main parties. It doesn't have to be this way, but it will take a long time to change the actual voting system and messing about with the boundaries really doesn't help very much. But by voting for candidates who you actually listen to what they believe in and think that they can make a difference shows the support for ideas that are not necessarily party political; not about Tory Party point scoring or Labour Party moaning about the Government, but about what do people actually want to do about the things in their community and can they show their support, so that whoever gets into power knows the things that people are really expecting them to do.

Zayn: That's an interesting point that you raise, which brings me on to my next question. What are some of these policies that the Green Party is bringing, especially to the local area that perhaps differentiates it from, for example, you mentioned some of the failings of the current leadership of Harrow Council?

Linda: Yes, we do not have a strong environment portfolio holder at Harrow Council, but we are also weak in Harrow on a lot of other things. Almost every aspect of the Council's responsibilities touches on the environment that we live in and our contribution to the global environmental situation, but locally, I think what people notice, what people are interested in, what people think they can do something about and what they think the Council should do something about is our actual streets, littering and fly tipping in our streets, our street trees, our parks and open spaces. Looking after them properly and letting them contribute to environmental imperatives like flood resilience and extreme heat mitigation and biodiversity. I think people care about air pollution and water pollution, both of which are extremely bad in Harrow. And I think people care and worry about their recycling, their bin collections and all those things that householders write on social media about the Council not collecting my bin or somebody fly tipped on my street etc. The Council's policies on these things have not helped people to get a grip and they haven't helped people to do the right thing. For example, I think we should have free collection of bulky waste items - that's not only my idea, other candidates from other parties are also saying that. Food waste collection and the chargeable garden waste collection, I would argue those aren't working, they aren't making money. A lot of what the council feels it has to do is about making money now and not about saving money anymore. It's about making money and Councils are not very good at being commercial. Harrow Council has been a dismal failure in most of its commercial ventures. It needs a bit less money making thinking and more about investing in the community. Groups like yours within the community, who influence people and can guide people and can act as advice points for people. The Council is not making use of any of those type of community initiatives like it could; instead, it's alienating a lot of community groups from all faiths and walks of life and not getting people on board with things which would help everybody.

Zayn: Definitely. Thank you for that and some of the interesting ideas that you have put forward. I think one of them, obviously a staple of all Green Party manifestos, regarding environmental policies, brings me on to one of the concerns and questions that some members in our community have, especially with us living in North-West London, where there has been a lot of talk regarding certain groups such as, Extinction Rebellion and Insulate Britain, which have taken further steps in terms of protesting for environmental policies. Some questions were raised regarding, is there a link with these groups with the Green Party and is there any support for their activities regarding environmental policies from the Green Party?

Linda: I think there is some support from within the Green Party for some of those groups and their activities, many of those people may be Green Party members. I can tell you that local Green Party members, including myself have been on marches. Extinction Rebellion isn't really something that you belong to, it's not a membership organisation like yours or the Green Party. There have often been demonstrations and protests that I have been on, the really big ones, where I have sat down in the road in Trafalgar Square and stopped the traffic as part of bigger climate change movements. It's a shame that groups like the latest ones, Just Stop Oil and Insulate Britain, they are really trying hard, and they feel like people are not listening, and they're generally not.

Zayn: These kinds of protests that you mentioned, regarding stopping traffic have caused a large scale discussion in the political scene across the UK, with lots of mention in talk shows and the like. There has been a question regarding what the purpose is and what the message is they're trying to get across. It's important actually to consider protests like this in the wider context of other laws that are been passed at the same time. What I mean by that is on the 28th April 2022, so only a few days, Priti Patel's Policing Bill, to clamp down on protests, on forms of peaceful protest, has actually just received Royal Assent, after passing through that House of Lords and the House of Commons. It's making forms of what's considered lawful protest much narrower, where people can be imprisoned for forms of protest that cause disturbance - a deliberately vague term that can be applied quite loosely. I think the worry here is that whatever your belief is on the methods of groups such as Extinction Rebellion, Insulate Britain or any other environmental group, it is important to consider their message that sometimes it does require causing a disturbance for people to talk about their message. One of the important aims of some of these groups I believe, is to raise an issue, raise a talking point regarding the fact that individual action is useful of course, but the challenge we have for climate change is so much bigger than individual action. And we need to get serious about the scale of necessary change and speaking against state power. The comfort zone of local action and saying small is beautiful is almost risible, given the extent of the challenge, no matter how good it makes us feel. I mean, there was a report from Oxfam published on 21st September of 2020, almost two years ago now, which stated that carbon emissions of the richest 1% are more than double the emissions of the poorest half of humanity. Now, when we take into account things like that, it makes us think, sometimes some of these policies we talk about on the individual scale, such as, washing your dishes or something like that is almost nonsensical to discuss when we talk about the larger issue. Sometimes some of these groups are required to be more vocal. So the question then becomes, is it necessary for parties like the Green Party to raise their voice and say, you know what, we actually need to speak truth to power, we need to take a step forward, talk beyond individual action and take on who are the real culprits behind the climate crisis?

Linda: Yes, and that's so interesting, so many of those points that you've raised - I believe it is impossible to separate the climate crisis from social justice. The Green Party isn't just all about environmental issues; it isn't all about trees and recycling. It's about social justice and human rights and some of the sorts of things that you're talking about being clamped down. I mean, look what's happening now, not only do we have things like the Policing and Crime Bill, we have threats to take parts of our actual human rights away. I'm showing you my T shirt - it is a Greenpeace t shirt - and of course, long before Extinction Rebellion and Insulate Britain, people like Greenpeace and the Friends of the Earth (of which, I've been a member for longer than I've been a member of the Green Party), have been protesting, fighting and sailing the Arctic to save the whales in the case of Greenpeace, in their boats or scaling buildings to demonstrate against fossil fuel companies. So, things have changed since I was first involved, when people used to think the Green Party or environmentalists, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, all that stuff, was a waste of time. People don't think that so much now because people know that all those issues that we raised all those years ago have come to pass. And suddenly, people are thinking 'Oh, yeah', all those things that people demonstrated about for all those years. And it wasn't just about let's save the whales, it was about people. It's not fair on people in what we call the global South. The worse the climate issue gets, it's not going to be us here in Stanmore and in Harrow who are going to suffer the most, no matter what we do. It's going to be the people in the global South and we have to help to do something about that here in Harrow.

Zayn: Yep, definitely. And in fact, some of the points that we were mentioning regarding taking the issue of climate crisis to those who are more responsible. For example, what I mean by that is, the World Economic Forum and the Davos Conference, which they held in 2020, was pretty much there to speak about the climate crisis. And yet all these people were travelling there on private jets contributing to I believe, 1000s of metric tonnes of carbon emissions. It's almost as if the elites attending these conferences are laughing at us. They're telling us they're talking about the climate crisis, and yet they're travelling down on private jets. However, that also raises the question conversely, regarding the Green Party, which some people say doesn't have enough of a sensible plan to tackle some of these issues. What I mean by that, for example, is some say the Green Party is quite idealistic regarding talking about some of these things, but has not offered a structured plan. For example, one issue that was raised was that the party wants to eliminate fossil fuels immediately in its decarbonisation plans, but rejects the use of nuclear energy, which some people say is required if you need an immediate shift. So in its last manifesto for the Green Party, the party did champion net zero emission by 2030, but some say they didn't offer much of an industrial strategy to get there. On the Harrow Green Party website itself, it states Green councillors in Harrow will deal with the climate emergency. The question then comes about, what is a structured plan for the Green Party in its decarbonisation plans to tackle some of these issues?

Linda: Personally, I have never been in favour of nuclear power. Some people in the Green Party are and nationally in the manifestos have been, but they've sometimes changed their views on this. It's very hard for them to form a structure and a strategy about it when they've only got one MP and a few, although increasingly more and more, Green Councillors on local councils across the country, more than there ever used to be, even in London. They're making differences to those councils and to the Greater London Authority, for example, and holding the decision makers to account because at least they have a presence there and they can say, well, look, what about this, you haven't thought about this. But, there's not much we can do in Harrow about that national Green Party strategy. What we can do is show everyone, especially existing Harrow council officers and whoever is going to accede to power in Harrow next, whoever we get next as the Council Leader and the party with the control. We can show them what we care about, what we think that we can do as community groups and as members of the public who are interested in these things and have knowledge. We all have knowledge now about stuff to do with climate change; Different people have different fields of speciality and we need to contribute that and we need to say to the council, look, there are lots of people here who care about these issues, because they voted Green. We have 14 Green candidates in Harrow this time - it's not enough for one for every ward, but then we don't expect to form any type of decision making body in Harrow Council, but we do hope to be able to show that the Green Party voters, members and people who are interested in the Green Party's issues can show that their voices are there and it needs to be listened to by whoever is in a position to make the decisions. So, vote Green! You will only have an opportunity in whatever your ward is to vote in Harrow for one Green Councillor; use it! None of those Green candidates are seriously thinking that they are going to win, but if they do then they'll be delighted and they will stick up for all those things that are missing from the climate change strategy and all those ways in which the Council is wasting money and not achieving any progress towards better social justice, better services and better environmental handling in Harrow.

Zayn: Definitely. As you mentioned, voting for any of these parties does show even on the national level that while these are only local elections, that there is support for some of these. However, there remains a concern, that some people have, on asking certain people in parts of this community about their thoughts on the different parties, that some still say that the Green Party lacks a sense of strategy, and perhaps that means they can't lend their support. What I mean by that is, for example, this is just one example that there is out there - former MEP for the Green Party Molly Scott Cato in 2019, publicly dismissed a lot of the talk around the Labour Party as being ‘Corbyn mania’ in her words. Despite the fact that at the time, Labour was lauded for having one of the greenest manifestos by a major party in history. So obviously, naturally these different parties will have different opinions. Green Party will have different opinions to the Labour Party as well. However, when it happened later on a few months later in the 2019 General Election, there was a Unite to Remain ticket with the coalition between the Lib Dems, Green Party and Plaid Cymru in Wales. In Molly Scott Cato's seat in Stroud, she stood for that Unite to Remain ticket against the Labour candidate and it led to the Conservative Party winning by a smaller margin than the total vote share that she received. So, the question raised is, is there a strategy for the Green Party here that shows that they're serious candidate worthy of voting for? It's one of the concerns that is raised regarding if young people can lend their support to the Green Party.

Linda: Well, this is something that has come up again currently now in parts of the country, where the Labour Party is finally getting on board with some forms of Progressive Alliance to defeat the Conservatives. I'm not saying that that's what we should do in Stanmore or anywhere particularly in Harrow, but we have fought for it in General Elections in the past. Where we have asked the Labour Party and the Lib Dems to form an alliance to try to force out the Tories or in the days of UKIP. And the Labour Party were never interested in standing down their own candidates in favour of the Lib Dems or any other type of Progressive Alliance and that was a shame. I fought for it, I protested in the street for it, but it never happened. Apparently in some places it's happening now in some of the elections, in some parts of the country. I don't think it's happening much in London. The trouble is that each party is just so politically engrossed in their own sort of identity and their history that they don't want to let go. even if it means getting out a far right candidate. I think Labour are coming round, after the red wall disasters. This isn't about London, but I think it's about elsewhere. Labour are starting to realise that unless they do form an alliance, they're not going to get very far. For example, they wouldn't get very far in Stanmore and they haven't done for all these years, unless they were to form some type of Progressive Alliance, but we're not there. We are where we are and that's what you have to work with.

Zayn: Thank you. So just before we close up, I’d like to go through one last question that was regarding the youth of our community, the primary audience for podcasts such as these. A large portion of the youth in our community have felt more disconnected from the political scene currently. They're facing tough times - obviously, it’s not just the youth that are facing the cost of living crisis, but something that's affecting everyone in the community. But the youth have felt the brunt of some of these policies of the current Government. They feel disconnected from every major party since 2019, where a lot of them were politically involved. Since then, they have felt that their voice hasn't been heard. Some of them feel connected to the Conservatives, but a lot of them feel disconnected. Similarly with Labour Party, and even with parties such as the Green Party, especially after former leader Sian Berry tweeted in 2020, which a lot of people seem to feel a bit put off by. Following reports that a large number of people were leaving the Labour Party, she tweeted suggesting that a lot of people were leaving based on racism, implying that they were racist. And a lot of people didn't like this idea - that they felt put off for one reason or another from various different parties, for whatever the reason. The question now comes in, what can we do to get the youth more involved in politics? Is there a way to make the youth feel that their voices are being heard in the political scene?

Linda: I hope so, don’t you? I hope that a lot more young people will instead of being necessarily drawn into Labour or Conservative or Lib Dem, or even Green Party boxes, being put into categories, people can instead inform themselves by listening to programmes like yours, maybe reading more informative stuff and watching more informative and true stuff on social media etc. Rather than being misled by what is, a lot of fake news. Sian Berry says something and then it sparks off all this counter argument - this party is worse in this way and that part is worse in that way. I've met Sian Berry and she's lovely, I've met Molly Scott Cato as well. And yes, maybe it was a bit of a mistake and then she lost her potential seat, because it wasn't a seat that she already had that she lost, was it?

Zayn: I believe she was part of the European Parliament.

Linda: Yes, that’s where I met her, in Brussels. Yes, it's a sticky one this Progressive Alliance business when you've got a party like the Conservatives, who have very loyal members. All of the traditional parties, all of those parliamentary parties, they have local constituency parties on the ground who are just so stuck in their ways. They just can't move on to a wider picture where we haven't got to keep carping on at each other. I tell you what it’s like - it's sort of like a video game where everybody has got to chip everybody else in order to get a higher and higher score and then say ‘oh look we won, we shot these people more times than they shot us’ or whatever. That shouldn't really be what it's about, should it?

Zayn: I definitely agree with that. In fact, just before we close out, I’d like to pass it back to you for a final 30 seconds or so to just close up. Why should people listening vote for the Green Party on Thursday?

Linda: In the local elections like here in Harrow, voting for the Green Party shows that you might want to send a message to the Conservative Party that you're not very happy with the way they are running our country. And you might want to send a message to Harrow Council that you are not very happy with the way they are running our Council, and that you would like them to take on some ideas about how we can do this more fairly, how we can spend our money more wisely, and how we can better protect our environment and the planet by listening to our communities and to the science.

Zayn: Thank you very much. And thank you once again, Linda Robinson, for coming on this podcast to speak to us in the run up to the local elections. And thank you once again to all our listeners as well for tuning in for another Al Haadi Youth podcast.






 

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