What follows is my Maiden Speech delivered to Full Ealing Council on Tuesday April 5th 2011:
Mr Mayor, Deputy Mayor, Fellow Councillor’s, Comrades;
Allow me to begin my maiden speech by first of all thanking the good people of Northolt Mandeville for voting me into this chamber as their representative.
Although the May election is now a distant memory, I think it only fitting to say a few words concerning how honoured I feel to represent, in this chamber, the ward and people of Northolt Mandeville; a truly diverse part of the borough.
I would add how privileged I am to work with such an enthusiastic and committed group of colleagues within this Chamber; who have not only led by example in showing how a young councillor, such as myself, should conduct himself but also offered ample guidance.
They are also people whom I must applaud for the manner in which they conduct themselves and the sensitivity which they display in meeting the challenges posed by the axe wielding Tory-led central government
A government hell bent on front loaded cuts, and leaving us local councillors with the difficult challenge of making the less painful of otherwise two equally painful decisions.
Mr Mayor, comrades, having been raised and educated within the borough I can proudly call Ealing home; and it truly is a great borough to come from.
It is with a strong emotional attachment and warm familiarity, that I read through the lists and landmarks of the borough and can recall deeply personal memories.
Ealing was both a family home, and wherein lay the family laundrette business, at which several councillors on the other side frequently dropped off their dirty washing, including none other than our own Councillor Taylor.
Ealing studios are a landmark on the itinerary of every family member visiting from overseas; and it was at Ealing Cinema that this Councillor, served the borough’s residents as an usher, and perhaps a few of you were served popcorn by me.
Acton was an education, not least because it was where I went to school, but because this ethnically diverse part of the borough is a living, breathing exercise of successful multiculturalism - not the airy intellectualising that our current government favours.
Northfields, personally well-known not least because it hosts one of the cultural centres that the Armenian Community, a community from which I draw heritage – and which has deep roots in Ealing - have established in the Borough, but also because a certain bar therein. Some Councillors on the other side might remember me serving them wine.
Southall too, a special place, where my India-born grandparents swore you could buy the best jelaybis in London, Mr Mayor, I would suggest the best jelaybis in the world.
And Mr Mayor, as someone who regularly drives family members to Southall, someone who has personally experienced the frustration of trying to find a parking space in the area, I for one, wholeheartedly welcome the news of a much needed new car park that this Labour led Council has pledged.
Mr Mayor, comrades;
As a young councillor, it is with particular enthusiasm that I take an interest in the future of our borough.
It is to Ealing’s next generation that we owe a strong duty of investment by way of effort, resources and above all education. If we make decisions, as elected representatives that fail to safeguard a positive legacy for the young people of this borough, then we run the risk of bequeathing a lost generation with all the negative consequences that entails.
What’s more, if we fail our young people, we prove ourselves insincere in caring about our borough’s future.
It should be with interest that the members of this council note, that several councillors herein, have, like myself, graduated from Ealing’s schools; including my fellow Labour Councillor Daniel Crawford, who like myself was a pupil at Twyford Church of England High School. Other councillors’ children are likewise alumni of our fine educational establishments.
I wonder how the opposition hope a new generation will emerge from their own ranks to replace them when they so blindly apologise for cuts, and ignore that the only future they are succeeding in building for our community is a one where opportunity is denied, but for the wealthy few, talent refused incentive to develop, and services so reduced in ability, that they will forever be testament to the reckless thriftiness of silver-spooned politicians.
Mr Mayor that is why I commend the leadership of this Labour Council as they make tough decisions in tough times.
They do so in the spirit of progressive politics as identified by the Anglo-Catholic novelist and essayist G. K Chesterton, who says that when faced with the forces of reactionary conservatism, progressive politics is as much about preventing a worse world emerging, as creating a better one.
I urge all the councillors herein, it is not ideology that should compel our decisions, nor idle point scoring motions that form, and have formed, the bulk of opposition business to date. Instead, we should be mindful of why we are here; to serve the interests of the people of this borough.
Mr Mayor, I would like to make two pleas:
Firstly, I call upon the opposition to end their selective memory of Labour’s record, and instead encourage them to expend their energies in suggesting solutions, rather than unconstructive criticism.
Secondly, that we join Councillor Johnson in damning the national budget which does little to serve the hopes, aspirations and interests of the people of Ealing.
Mr Mayor, comrades, as a keen historian, I would like to conclude with a brief exercise in etymology.
It may interest members that the name Ealing is derived, in part, from an Anglo-Saxon particle meaning “place of the people” ensuring that Ealing lives up to its historic name, that is what I hope we achieve in these difficult times ahead and in the face of a budget that so resoundingly reminds us that we are not all in this together.
