Labour has no right to veto benefits of schools changes

Published: 24 February, 2011

• MANY Labour Party activists will say they’ve been fighting almost 40 years for a new secondary school south of Euston Road. 

Yet nothing happened up to 2006. While the Conservative-Lib Dem council from 2006-2010 was unable to include this new school in its plans under Building Schools for the Future – chiefly because of the lack of an available site within the right timescale – when campaigners found a group of council-owned sites around Wren Street, I got the site secured for use as a future secondary.

All the parties in Camden fought the 2010 borough elections saying they supported a school on the Wren Street site (in contrast, only the Conservatives had supported a secondary school south of Euston Road in its 2006 manifesto). 

I spoke openly on several occasions saying that future government policy (of whatever party) was likely to change to make it easier to set up smaller schools. So, therefore, the legislation that allows free schools to set up more easily should be just what is needed south of Euston Road and shouldn’t have surprised the Labour Party to the extent it appears to have done.

It beggars belief that the Camden Labour Party might now put ideology in the way of achieving the new secondary school so many of them have claimed to support for so long. I admire the way so many Labour activists have given so much time and commitment to local schools over many years. Yet that does not give them a veto to stop changes which will benefit future generations of Camden children.

Camden’s Labour leadership should embrace the free schools legislation, not just south of Euston Road but across the borough. 

CLLR ANDREW MENNEAR
Conservative, 
Frognal & Fitzjohns ward