Green Party: fair is worth fighting for

Camden Green News ST PANCRAS AND SOMERS TOWN

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ELECTION SPECIAL

How to vote GreenFor your three councillors for St Pancras and Somers Town

You have three votes to elect your three representatives on Camden council. Please put your cross beside the three Green Party candidates...

For your MP

You can elect Green councillors on May 6

1 BENNETTNatalie Louise BennettGreen Party

7 MITFORDMatty MitfordGreen Party

12 SYMONSCathryn Judith SymonsGreen Party

Vote for no more than three candidates

1 BENNETTNatalie Louise BennettGreen Party

In 2006, the last time there was a council election in St Pancras and Somers Town, of the parties standing this year the Green Party came second to Labour.

If you’ve been living in the ward since then, you’ll know that the Green Party has been highly active, delivering regular newsletters to keep residents informed of local issues, and leading the fight against the proposed UKCMRI medical lab behind the British Library.

You might have met us collecting signatures

on our petition to get all people working for Camden council paid a decent living wage, or got from us a ‘no junk mail’ sticker as part of our campaign to reduce waste and rubbish in the ward.

You’ve got a clear choice in the council election on May 6 - it’s the Green Party or Labour in this ward.

What happened in the last councilelection in St Pancras and Somers Town?

St Pancras and Somers Town candidates Natalie Bennett and Matty Mitford with the Green “battle bus”, which toured the ward spreading the word to ‘vote Green’, powered by recycled chip oil. Pleasant fumes, for a change!

The Green Party has been highly active in St Pancras and Somers Town over the past four years.

We’ve been leading in the struggle against the pro-posed UKCMRI lab on the Brill Place land (behind the British Library). We believe that this should be used for housing and badly needed community facilities.

The proposed structure is grossly oversized and inappropriate, but on this GOOD NEWS: the devel-opers recently brought in new architects to substan-tially reshape the exterior, after strong local pressure against the plans. But the developers told us they would not reduce the size of their proposal, which means an unacceptable blot on our community, whatever its design.

We will continue to fight to see the land - the last of any size available in this ward - put to appropriate use for the community.

We will also fight to protect our NHS from privatisation

and cutbacks. The Labour government has sadly con-tinued to hand over pieces of our world-leading health service to private, profit-making companies. Over the past four years we’ve seen three Camden GP surgeries lost, and plans for a destructive ‘GP-led health centre’ on the Hampstead Road only stopped by cam-paigners’ court action.

The three current Green Party councillors on Cam-den council have been strong supporters of the Keep Our NHS Public cam-paign, and your St Pancras and Somers Town team have been, and will con-tinue to, work hard in the cause.

We’re also campaigning to tackle the risk that high traffic speeds and air pollu-tion present to our health and safety. We want to introduce a 20mph speed limit across the borough (this would reduce road injuries by 40%) and will be campaigning for effec-tive action to cut the 5,000 deaths a year now caused in London by air pollution.

Want to know more?Web: camden.greenparty.org.uk

Phone 0207 388 8969

Email: camden@greenparty.org.uk

Mail

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Camden Green News ... fair is worth fighting for

* The Green Party has opposed the sell-off of council housing conducted by the Liberal Demo-crat-Tory coalition over the past four years.We know that funds have to be found for restoring homes on which maintenance has long been neglected over decades of Labour councils in Camden, but once homes are sold they are lost to our public housing system forever. With 18,000 families on the council waiting list, this in disastrous.

* The Green Party has supported plans for a new secondary school south of the Euston Road.

The plans by the LibDemTory coalition to ex-pand South Camden Community School (already huge) and to build a new academy school in the leafy north of the borough where there are already other alternatives, fails to meet pupils’ needs for local, ‘human-sized’ schools.

* The Green Party has been campaigning for all people who work for Camden council, including for contractors, to be paid the ‘London Living Wage’ of £7.60/hour. The Green Party councillors proposed a budget amendment for 2010/11 that provided for this.

The Labour Party did not include this provision in its budget suggestions.

* The LibDemTory coalition plans to sell-off the Town Hall annexe for demolition, a building just four decades old, and build new offices on the King’s Cross lands.The Green Party wants the planning process to take full account of the waste of resources and community misery caused by unnecessary de-molition of sound buildings. And new buildings should only be approved if solidly and flexibly constructed to last.

Green Party

Green Party

Choose a new kind of politicsNatalie Bennett, Green Party candidate for Holborn and St Pancras writes:

The general election on May 6 is not just any election, but one that could mark the start of a new kind of politics. In Brighton Pavilion, Caroline Lucas, the Green Party leader, is now the bookmakers’ favourite to win a seat at Westminster.

The mad reality of the first past the post electoral system means that winning in a single seat is mighty hard. But now, finally, it’s a real possibility.

And here in Holborn and St Pancras, you’re in a seat that got the fourth-highest Green Party vote in the

country at the last general election. We’ve got a great chance to build on that.

So why vote Green? We’re offering a unique, fully costed manifesto that DOESN’T CUT public ser-vices (well except for a few wasteful, dangerous bits, like the Trident nuclear missile replacement, ID cards, and Labour’s plan to spend £35bn over the next decade on new roads).

And we want to raise the minimum wage to £8.10/hour, to immediately lift everyone working full time out of poverty, and to raise the single pension to £170/week, taking the more than 20% of pensioners now living in poverty up to

a decent standard of living.

And we want to pull British and Nato troops out of the unwinnable, deadly war in Afghanistan.

It all adds up to a genuinely fairer society, with £44bn invested in useful projects, from renewable energy to better public transport, from insulation of homes to an expanded Sure Start programme. Together these projects will provide 1 million new jobs.

That will ensure that we’re ready and able to face the challenges of the future – particularly climatechange – as a more stable, more resilient, far healthier society.

Working for you ... your local Green Party team

Natalie Bennett is a jour-nalist and local campaign-er. Natalie has been active in Camden Keep Our NHS Public, and edits the local community newsletter, The Link. She’s been working on the Green Party “living wage” campaign, and on developing community vegetable growing in St Pancras and Somers Town.

Matty Mitford is a NO2ID campaigner and director of Boris Keep Your Promise, set up to hold the London Mayor to account over rape crisis funding. Matty left school at 16 with no qualifications. She thinks it’s important that young people who do less well at school are still encouraged to succeed.

Cathryn Symons is an IT project manager studying for an MSc in renewable energy, focusing on ways to make inner cities sus-tainable. She is chair of the Cranleigh House Tenants’ and Residents’ Association. She said: “With the Kings Cross and Euston redevelo-pents we must ensure the local community benefits.” and that our voices are heard.”

In the London Assembly list elec-tions in 2008, the Green Party in the Holborn and St Pancras constit-uency finished a close third behind the Tories. Since then Labour has continued to privatise public services, has shovelled billions into the pockets of bankers, and contin-ued its occupation of Afghanistan. It has only become more unpopu-lar. And the true face of the Tories, with their plans to slash public spending, has been revealed.

In Highgate the first two Green councillors were elected in 2006. Then the third was elected in a byelection in Highgate in 2008.

The growing Green Party vote

ELECTION SPECIAL

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