| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:The ICG celebrates twenty years | |
| Posted by: | Phil Andrews | |
| Date/Time: | 19/02/14 17:16:00 |
| Vanessa Yours is clearly a version of history from which you derive a deep sense of security and reassurance and it would be cruel and hard-hearted of me to unsettle you by resort to such things as demonstrable facts, so I will leave you to bathe in the comfort of your own delusions. For the benefit of anybody else who may be interested in the true facts of this matter, I would refer them to an exchange of views which took place on this very forum in the immediate aftermath of the 2010 local elections, in which both Vanessa and I took an active part. In essence, following those elections in which Labour recaptured the seats that had previously been held by community councillors we floated the idea that the new councillors might wish to ask themselves why some 4000 or so local people in three wards had voted for a non-party, community-based alternative to the big parties and consider whether there might be scope for them incorporating some of our concerns into their own programmes as they set about ploughing their own furrows. Certain people without, but on the periphery of, the local Labour Party - most notably Vanessa and one Robin Taylor, with whom many forum users will be well acquainted - reacted quite hysterically to the idea and counselled an uncompromising and confrontational approach by the new councillors towards the ICG and its thousands of supporters. "Why should they work with you, who do you think you are?" quoth Vanessa. In one fell swoop over 4000 local people were put on notice that there would be no way back for them and that their co-operation, and their votes, were not required. To emphasise this point a leaflet was distributed in Isleworth, which one of the councillors agreed to put her name to, which was unsurpassed in its nastiness and its personal attacks on members of the ICG. Remember this happened AFTER the election had taken place, and AFTER the ICG had expressed its desire to explore means through which its concerns and those of its voters might be addressed outside of the electoral arena. Anybody who knows me, as Vanessa really doesn't, will confirm that I of all people have no great desire to be a councillor. I've done that, got the t-shirt, as the saying goes. As I've said before, in 2010 it would not have taken very much of a sacrifice at all on anybody's part to persuade me to take another path, if I could have been permitted a little dignity in doing so. But Vanessa, and Robin, are vengeful and unforgiving types, enraged that we had ever had the audacity to gatecrash their little club in the first place and wanting of their proverbial pound of flesh. Believing that the ICG was finished, their advice to their inexperienced proteges was to move in for the kil - advice which sadly was acted upon. Now it has finally dawned on her that, very far from being finished, the ICG has not only survived but is perfectly positioned for an electoral challenge, she is actively rewriting her role in leading those who trusted in her to the slaughterhouse. Then I guess she would, wouldn't she? |