Diary: A Letter to Emily Thornberry

I sent a handwritten version of this letter sometime in March. I was bored and in a very cheeky mood. Thornberry did not reply but passed the letter to Mark Field, who sent me a creepy letter saying there was nothing he could do, etc, not my place to interfere, blah.

Dear Ms ThornberryIslington Council and the City of London Corporation are about to unknowingly gift up to 300 of your constituents to Mark Field MP (Con).This is the outcome of a proposed plan to redevelop a piece of land on the edge of Islington South formerly occupied by the Richard Cloudesley School to create ‘much needed social housing' and a primary academy.
 On paper, the proposals look innocent by modern standards: a two-form primary school and a 14-storey tower block of dual-aspect apartments fronted onto Golden Lane. In practice, the development is a backdoor extension of the Grade II listed Golden Lane Estate. The Golden Lane Estate is, as you probably already know, a place of worship for architecture students worldwide and a historically important ‘living museum’. It was an attempt to regenerate a badly bomb-damaged area of London after World War II on principles of good functional design, and a socially progressive and humane demonstration of how high-density inner-city living can work and thrive. Key workers from the nearby St Bartholomew’s hospital were among its first residents. 

Today it is a much-loved urban oasis of hard-faced concrete, steel framing, coloured wall panels and green spaces. There is a gym, tennis courts and a swimming pool. There is the multi award-winning Golden Baggers allotment project. And we have a soon-to-be updated community hall that recently hosted herds of excited children crawling around the floor while adults sat gently swaying to the sound of a brass band playing David Bowie’s Life on Mars.Now it has become the plaything of political pygmies. Here we find two councils, City of London Corporation and Islington Council cosied up in a plot to plonk your constituents onto the doorstep of the Golden Lane Estate. Many of them, I am sure, would be very happy about that, but if the current plans go ahead their homes will be managed and controlled by the Corporation of London and, by extension, incorporated into Mark Field MP's constituency of Cities of London and Westminster. The details of this ugly manoeuvre, plus graphic illustrations of its hideous effects can be found at https://www.facebook.com/groups/GLERA/ Your local Labour colleagues Mary Durcan and William Pimlott can also brief you.

South Islington and Golden Lane residents have lived together happily for many years. We share a lot. We have welcomed our Islington neighbours to events here on Golden Lane and they welcome us to activities around Whitecross Street, King Square and St Luke’s. But now, the partnership of manipulation formed by the City of London and Islington Council in this proposed development is set to blur the borders so much that there is no way your constituents can be adequately represented. In this sense they become hostages to bad politics. I fear Islington has been duped by the dark forces of political chicanery and the desire for an instant solution to key social problems at any cost. The plans are being railroaded forward with unseemly speed and very little proper consultation.This letter is starting to sound like a Nimby rant, so I will finish, but ask you please to check the details for yourself, for the sake of your displaced constituents and for the reputation of Islington South.