Broken Barnet

It was early evening, Thursday, February 13th, 1941.

No air raid warning had been sounded; few people had gone to their shelters.

Light gunfire was heard, and the sound of a plane.

Suddenly, a fearful rushing, roaring noise, like the sound of an express train passing high up in the air.

Lower it came.

People were blown off their feet as The Thing passed overhead.

Then a terrific crash and roar, and three roads in West Hendon were laid waste.

Over 70 people were killed, there were 150 casualty cases, eight people missing, many more suffered minor injuries, and upwards of 1,500 people were rendered homeless.

This is from the beginning of an account in a pamphlet published by the Hendon and Finchley Times, in 1945, describing a terrible event that happened only four years earlier in the recent war, an incident almost forgotten now, just before the seventy fifth anniversary, next year.

Almost forgotten, because the memory lives on in among the people who live there now, in the council estate in West Hendon, their homes, their community, about to be obliterated as surely as those streets of houses destroyed by enemy bombing in 1941.

The memory lives on, preserved as oral history, tales told by older residents, and those who grew up in the area, and because of a certain place, an open space, endowed with special meaning by the local community, the park by the waterside of the Welsh Harp which they believe to be dedicated as a memorial to the many lives lost that night.

I knew about the story of the West Hendon bombing, as my own father had served in the Auxiliary Fire Service, as a volunteer fireman, during the early part of the war, in the Edgware and Hendon areas, and then in central London during the worst of the Blitz. He witnessed the aftermath of direct hits on civilian targets, and would talk about the West Hendon incident, and the mysterious, massive bomb that took so many lives.

In fact we know now, from official records, exactly what the mystery bomb was: 'an SC2500 kg maximum heavy explosive bomb, the equivalent of two V2 rockets' - as described in 'Hendon and Golders Green Past', by Hugh Petrie, the Barnet Borough archivist. The bomb was dropped by a Heinkel He 111: aiming possibly for the many factories in the area, or, as Hugh suggests, perhaps the Welsh Harp itself, in a sort of 'Dambusters' style assault to try to cause widespread flooding. It is believed a seaplane was kept on the reservoir throughout the war, in case of the need urgently to evacuate Churchill - or possibly the Royal Family: perhaps that was a factor too.

Whatever the reason, the impact of the explosion was truly devastating, and widespread: forty houses destroyed outright; 160 in need of pulling down, 170 too badly damaged to be repaired until after the war; 400 more suffering various degrees of damage - and in one moment, 1,500 people had been made homeless.

The human cost in lives lost was extreme: seventy one dead, eight missing; as Barrett Newbery, the editor of the Hendon & Finchley Times, commented - it seemed that in some cases, whole families had been wiped out. He tells us the stories of some of those people: men, women and children, whose names he patiently lists.

In the borough's Archives, there are still the yellowing pages of the mortuary records of the residents of West Hendon who lost their lives that night. They make for deeply poignant reading.

The first three records, for example: first of all the details of Edith Brine, who lived in Ravenstone Road, right at the epicentre of the explosion, identified by her stepdaughter, from a photograph, recognised by the lace on her vest, through which the ribbon ran, and which she had crocheted herself.

Next was another middle aged woman, Agnes Bond, also from Ravenstone Road: then there is four month old Elizabeth Aldiss, identified by her grandmother.

Newbery asks if anyone remembers 'little Charlie Watkins, who stood each night at the corner of Station-road, West Hendon, selling the evening papers? Courteous to everyone, was Charlie - and he always 'knew the winners'. His name you will find in the list above.'

In another instance, a baby's cradle was found, blown high up on top of a pile of debris. By some miracle, the baby was alive, although orphaned by the explosion. In another house, three sisters were fatally injured.

A Mrs Halliday was killed 'when a wall of her house was blown in upon her, but her husband pushed their two children under the kitchen table when the bomb was heard, and this saved the children's lives'.

One little girl, four years old, was found in the wreckage of her home, her mother lying dead: rescuers tunnelled in to reach her. 'I can't come out', she said, I have no clothes on' - Her clothing had all been blown off.

In another house, a mother refused to go to hospital, until her trapped children had been freed ... the children's lives had been saved by a heavy dresser which fell on top of them and took the weight of the falling house.

Apart from fatalities, there were of course many, many casualties, including those seriously cut by glass, and in order to deal with these, before removal to hospital, an emergency casualty station was provided at the Deerfield Club: the community centre which has been acquired now by Capita, for demolition, and due to be built on.

There were twenty two rescue parties working to save people, as well as firemen dealing with the fires that broke out in the wreckage. The ARP, the Home Guard, local doctors and the local clergy, the Womens Voluntary Service and the Salvation Army all worked so hard that night to do what they could for the people of West Hendon: but perhaps most touching of all are the stories of those residents who put their own lives at risk to try to rescue others: family, friends, neighbours, tunnelling under the wreckage to help them, regardless of the danger, or performing great feats of endurance:

Twenty year old Peggy Stanley, visiting friends when the bomb fell:

'The house was wrecked, but Peggy held up heavy debris and prevented it burying other people, including a Mrs Horner, and daughter, a 15 year old girl friend, and Peggy's 15 year old sister.'

Mr A Cannon, whose own mother had been badly injured, but thought of their invalid neighbour, 83 year old Mrs Payne, whose house was destroyed, and had lain under the debris for several hours.

Mr Arthur Dade, a warden whose own wife and children were reported missing, but, we learn:

'stuck to his post all through the night and worked on for several days after the tragedy, until he was literally ordered off duty. Then he had no home to go to. His was a fine example of devotion to duty, and I am glad to say he had his reward in that his wife and children were found not seriously hurt. He later received a commendation among the ARP honours'.

In fact it seems, unsurprisingly, others were awarded medals for their courage that night, and rightly so. As the editor of the Hendon and Finchley Times put it, slightly patronisingly, the story of that night was one in which:

'the Little People of London's suburbs showed the true spirit of the Home Front, while the men and women of Civil Defence and the kindred services demonstrated that calm efficiency and unfailing courage which gave cause for pride throughout London's hardest trials by fire and high explosive.'

After the war, apart from a few temporary prefabs eventually put in place to provide short term housing, the area destroyed by the bombing was left alone, in respect for those who died.

Some of the land was added to York Park: and then, about forty five years ago, in an era when it seemed social progress meant the creation of low cost housing for local people, a small council estate was built, with houses and flats overlooking the beautiful Welsh Harp reservoir.

In the late nineteen nineties, the estate was beginning to look a bit tired, and in need of some renovation. By 2002, when a Labour administration was briefly in charge of Barnet Council, it was suggested that the Decent Homes programme might be a way to improve the quality of lives of the residents of the estate, by a process of regeneration.

We all know what happened next, don't we? The Tories took control of the council again: they made all sorts of promises and pledges to the residents of the estate, tenants and leaseholders - and broke them, one by one, in the course of changing a genuine programme of regeneration into a deal with private developers, Barratts, and Metropolitan Housing Trust.

This details of this agreement have been kept secret, all requests to put the financial viability study in the public domain refused, in complete contradiction of the need for transparency, even at the stage of the current government Inquiry into the Compulsory Purchase Orders now hanging over the heads of the leaseholders of this estate.

Because yes: despite the pretence of regeneration, this scheme has become not a replacement of housing for the people who live there, but an excuse for a massively profitable private luxury development, which will see the homes of West Hendon residents taken from them, and demolished, their community destroyed.

Within the past week, it has been confirmed that, as residents believed, Barratts were given the public land on which their private development is being built, while the residents' homes are being taken from them, and demolished.

Or, as the response to a question from the Inspector Zoe Hill puts it: 'There is no monetary consideration for the land transfer'.

We are also told only certain of the council's costs will be met by the developer. In my view, and the view I am sure of most residents and taxpayers of this borough, this 'transfer', and the consequent impact on the residents promised regeneration, and new homes, is simply scandalous.

Barnet Council and their development partners made it effectively impossible for any of the current leaseholders or tenants to move on to the new development.

Over the years, the council, through Barnet Homes, has had a policy of placing an increasing number of non secure tenants on the estate, many of whom are vulnerable in some way. Even though some of them have lived there for as long as a decade, the council would not give them secure tenancies, with the effect that they have few rights over the future allocation of any alternative accommodation, once their homes are knocked down, and they are evicted.

There are few secure tenants, but those few that there are, and their children, will be housed in a block outside the area of the new private development, on a former traffic island, with no views of the Welsh Harp, but looking over a section of the Edgware Road, now in a state of extreme decline - and next to two garages pumping out toxic fumes.

Leaseholders have had their properties - belatedly - valued by Capita, to be bought by Capita, at what the owners have stated are clearly way below market value. Capita's valuer, Mr Paul Watling, has admitted that his assessment of value is ultimately a subjective one, based on his opinion.

In theory, there are a small number of properties on the new estate which leaseholders were eventually told they could apply for, in a shared equity deal. They must, however, provide 50% of the value of the new property, a level higher than in other similar schemes in the borough: and they simply cannot afford to do so, based on the low valuations by Capita.

It is clear, therefore, that every pledge made in the original agreement regarding the 'regeneration' has been broken: including one that to the people of West Hendon represents the final insult: the worst betrayal - the promise not to build on York Memorial Park. The council refuses in all its submissions even to refer to it as such, insisting on calling what remains of it, after the developers have got their hands on it, as merely 'York Park'. There was no memorial status, they say, and dismiss all memories of a stone memorial on what is, ironically, now the location of the carefully placed, off-site block of housing for the lucky few secure tenants for whom the council must provide accommodation.

The promise regarding York Memorial Park, and its breach, has a significance that reaches beyond the bare outline of facts, that is to say an encroachment on land supposedly protected from development.

To residents, it is symbolic of their humiliation, and an act of contempt from the developers, and the council.

For the council, and Barratts, it might be considered to be a trophy of war: an act of triumph - a statement of victory.

They don't give a damn about the history of West Hendon, just as they don't give a damn about the future of the community that lives there.

There is no such thing as community, in their eyes - and history?

That only began in 2005, when Barratts moved into the picture, and the fantasy that is 'Hendon Waterside' was born.

Throughout the course of the Inquiry, one thing has become absolutely clear: the issue of York Memorial Park has become central to the argument not just for the residents, whose history and identity it represents, but for their opponents, the development partners, as represented by Neil King, QC.

The subject is a constant matter of reference, for both sides. It was the insistence on constant rebuttal of residents' assertions about the Park, in fact, which first made me suspicious that the Acquiring Authority's case was not substantiated by that thing so dear to Mr King: Fact. He was of course relying on certainty of the information supplied to him by Barnet Council, and the developers.

It appeared to be almost a matter of subconscious betrayal of something, the emphasis on the Park, and the statement, repeated by counsel, that the order lands, as defined within the limits of the Phase 3 properties lined up for compulsory purchase, were NOT within the area bombed during the war. The Park itself, we were constantly told, despite everything the residents claimed, had NO association with any sort of memorial. Fact.

What happened next is explained in the statement I submitted to the Inquiry, and read out on Tuesday morning. I should add I did so under the threat, later dismissed, of putting myself at risk of a claim for costs, apparently for daring to tell the truth, discovered in the course of the Inquiry: that Barnet's planning officers, and Barratts as developers, are seemingly unable to interpret the evidence of their own maps, or verify their claims regarding the history of York Memorial Park though a search of the documentation held in the authority's own archives.

My name is Theresa Musgrove, and I am a resident of Barnet, and I write a local blog, ‘Broken Barnet’, in the course of which I have written several articles about the West Hendon ‘regeneration’.

I should point out that I do not live in West Hendon, and do not belong to any local campaign group, , but have attended some sessions of the Inquiry as an observer, and to report the proceedings. I did not imagine that I would be obliged to take part in the proceedings myself.

I believe the new evidence demonstrates to the Inspector that she has been given information by representatives of Barnet Council and Barratt London which is both inaccurate and misleading.

It is of course up to the Inspector to judge whether that is correct, and if so to speculate why that might be.

In the course of listening to evidence presented to the Inquiry I became increasingly concerned about the lack of documentation supporting the Council and developer’s assertions regarding York Memorial Park, for example, as Mr Thomas Wyld claims in his submission, at point 5.4:

"A number of objectors have referred to York Park as a 'Memorial Park' left to the community during the Second World War. In fact, York Park existed prior to 1939 and is shown on Ordnance Survey Maps dating back to 1914. There is no evidence to support the argument that the park was created as a memorial to the Second World War".

Listening to the verbal evidence given by officers to the Inquiry hearing, however, led me to suspect that an objective assessment of the park’s history has not been made, as we believed.

After Thursday’s session I therefore visited the borough Archives, in the library next door to the Town Hall, and asked the archivist, Hugh Petrie, if it was true that there was no evidence to suggest the park had significance as a place of memorial. He immediately replied this was not correct.

Mr Petrie has a particular interest in the history of West Hendon, and in his own book, ‘Hendon and Golders Green Past’, published 2005, refers to the terrible events of 13^th February 1941, in which a massive SC2500 kg bomb, the equivalent of two V2 rockets, was dropped on the area by a Heinkel He 111, destroying 40 houses, damaging hundreds of others, and making 1,500 homeless. The centre of the impact, the book suggests, was at 50 and 52 Ravenstone Road: See Appendix 1. The range of destruction wrought by the explosion, however, was far wider.

We spent two hours reviewing relevant material which included maps, some of which, curiously, are included in the core documents but appear to have been misinterpreted, but other resources, such as the mortuary records of the civilian fatalities, example at Appendix 5.

The most important of these I attach as Appendix 2– a pamphlet published by the editor of the Hendon and Finchley Times, circa 1945: title ‘Hendon and Her Neighbours’.

This document includes a detailed and moving description of the widespread loss of life, and the courage of local residents who risked their own lives in order to save others: see Appendices 2a, 2b, 2c; It also has two photographs associated with the event.

These two photographs, reproduced in Appendix 3, show a memorial service held on the site of the bombing, attended by 3,000 people, with a cross made from a damaged tree.

This cross, as stated in Appendix 2c stood in the open space where the worst of the destruction occurred, as noted in 1945.

Below the second photograph it is stated that a memorial service ‘has been held on the site each year since’. Although this post-war pamphlet is undated, a brief inspection of the local newspaper archives produced a story from 1950 – see Appendix 4– which proves that at least nine years after the event, these memorial services were continuing in York Park.

The wooden cross made from a damaged tree was clearly of symbolic status to the people of West Hendon, and memories of a more permanent memorial would make sense, as would the belief that the trees in York Park were planted to commemorate the lost civilian lives.

Another important discovery is that although York Park did exist pre-war, the park appears to have been expanded post-war, in the area south west of what is now Marriotts Close. This would appear from maps and the photograph of the bombsite, Core Document York Park Appendix 1, to be due to the loss of houses destroyed in the 1941bombing, and this land eventually being co-opted into the open space.

Ravenstone Road, pre-war, followed a straight course down to the water’s edge: compare the information from the York Park Core Document Maps etc. It lies partly beneath Marriotts Close.

It would therefore seem likely that the buildings in Marriotts Close that are within the redline zone of the land the developers wish to acquire by compulsory purchase are, as well as part of York Park, and in contradiction to the assertions made by officers and the developers’ representatives, part of the area in which many residents lost their lives in the 1941 incident.

Bearing in mind the nature of the explosion, and references to missing residents, it is sadly possible that this is a place of interment, as well as memorial.

This new material is of immense significance to the Inquiry, as it supports the strength of feeling amongst the local community in reaction to the broken pledge not to build on this ground, and why they see the handing over of this ground to private developers as not only a betrayal of a promise, but as the desecration of a site of memorial.

It seems clear that the council has broken its pledge to residents to protect such a sensitive site, in allowing developers who we now know from a letter from the Secretary of State, in the Core Documents, to have acquired the land for ‘less than best consideration’, to exploit the commercial value of a place of such importance to our local history: the heart of what is effectively, to the people of West Hendon, their Ground Zero.

According to the ‘Hendon Air Raids’ pamphlet in the aftermath of the bombing, the local Mayor said:

‘Bruised and battered they may be, and their little homes in ruins: but there’s no whimpering or grousing. There is the determination that the Nazi barbarians shall not get us down. Here we have people reflecting the real British spirit: they are of the breed that a dozen Hitlers will never smash.’

It seems that British spirit continues in the resilience and courage of the West Hendon residents fighting this development. But the enemy they are fighting now is not waging war from the air, but by a subversion of the democratic process which the wartime generation sacrificed so much to defend.

It is true to say that housing occupies some of the original site of the West Hendon bombing, but that was council housing, and meant to provide decent and truly affordable housing for the local community. The Barratts development has taken that land, and is using it for private profit, whilst dispossessing the local community.

The issue of York Memorial Park is significant in a number of ways: residents refer constantly to it in their objections to the development, not as a technical argument but as something of immense pride and more: a symbol of the loss of tenure they hold over their own history, and their own future.

This development is not the regeneration of their estate promised so long ago, but a private development of luxury housing, on public land, from which they are excluded, has caused years of distress and now leaves them facing the destruction of their community, and the loss of their homes.

The other significance is that the way in which Barnet Council and Barratts have sought to minimise the arguments put by residents who do not have access to the expensive legal support their opponents are able to obtain. These residents, many of whom are financially disadvantaged or vulnerable in other ways, were not able properly to challenge the planning process, nor the case put before the Inquiry, and I believe there has been a serious inequality in the course of the development process.

The inaccurate information put before this Inquiry regarding York Memorial Park should perhaps act as reason to doubt the accuracy and veracity of other claims made by the council and developers, and remind us of the potential conflict of interest arising from Capita’s involvement in both running the ‘regeneration’ scheme and overseeing the planning process.

I believe the Secretary of State may well have been misled at the earlier stage of approving the handover of land to the developers as to the real significance of the area, and the real likelihood of residents being accommodated in the new scheme.

I believe that the new evidence suggests there is a real argument for not confirming the Compulsory Purchase Order of the properties in Phase 3 of this development. It is true to say this will inconvenience the developers, who claim this would affect their return of profit, but that is another unsubstantiated assertion which demonstrates why the viability study that has been withheld from public scrutiny should be presented to the Inquiry.

Appendices:

1. Hendon and Golders Green Past, Hugh Petrie 2005
2. Hendon and Her Neighbours, Barrett Newberry, circa 1945
2a – A Mystery Bomb 1
2b – A Mystery Bomb 2
2c – A Mystery Bomb 3
3. Photographs of the Memorial Service in York Park, from same
4. Article from the Hendon & Finchley Times, 17th February 1950
5. Mortuary Record, Edith Brine, Ravenstone Road

While giving my evidence, the counsel for the Acquiring Authority busied himself very loudly with shuffling papers about, and whispering urgently, and rather distractingly, to his colleague. At the end, he declined to ask any questions, which was not surprising, although slightly disappointing.

According to his biography, Mr Neil King, QC, is famous for being 'unflappable', and Mrs Angry at least would have rather enjoyed seeing if she could make him flap.

And to express the view that it was quite extraordinary that she, with her grade three o level in geography, would appear to be more skilled at map reading than the planning officers of the London Borough of Broken Barnet, upon whose Facts he had relied throughout the course of the Inquiry.

But he merely smiled politely, and said: thank you, that was ... very helpful. Hard to tell, but possibly this was not entirely true.

Certain parties amongst the Barnet, Capita, Barratts contingent sitting at the Inquiry gazed across the room, with interesting looks on their faces: as much as you can tell, from the curiously emotionless expressions they have assumed throughout the Inquiry, with one or two individuals smirking at the evidence given by residents, or even, in the case of one senior officer, falling asleep.

A sixty minute programme from the BBC has been commissioned to tell the story of what has happened here, in West Hendon, and the proceedings of the Inquiry filmed throughout the week. This appears not to concern the attending parties whose development is at the heart of the matter, but it promises to be compelling viewing, in the tradition of that very British theme: the refusal of the underdog to accept defeat, and submit to the enemy.

As the film maker commented to me: no need to wait to make a film like Pride, or Made in Dagenham, or look back at Passport to Pimlico: here is a story happening right now, in front of our eyes.

And in my view, it is one that we need to understand, right now, before the next election, and before we launch into another period of government by those who put profit before people, and see communities as expendable, an irrelevance to be removed, and their history eradicated, as if it had never existed.

The wooden cross that once stood in the wreckage of the West Hendon bombing marked a place of memorial, and commemoration: it was a symbol of defiance, and survival. As the then Dean of Hendon said:

The last word shall not be with the destroyer. That is the meaning of our service, and of the simple Cross under which we stand ... Such scenes of desolation as this form a terrible monument to the wickedness of those who pursue brute force without reference to the God of Righteousness, and Justice and Love, before Whom they must one day render account for their deeds.

The 'Little People' of London's suburbs, whom they sought to smash, live on bearing the unquenchable torch of Freedom, and the rough wooden Cross at West Hendon remains as a symbol of the spirit that prevailed against the greatest peril of oppression humanity has ever had to face.

The wooden cross has gone, and so has the stone memorial: the park remains - and so does the spirit which prevailed, in 1941, amongst the people of West Hendon.

These are not 'little people': they are magnificent, courageous, intelligent and resourceful citizens, being dealt a terrible injustice, but determined, in the absence of any access to legal support, to defend themselves and their community from the prospect of another form of destruction, from a different enemy.

The next post will report their testimony, given to the Inquiry over the last two days.

In the meanwhile, here, for the record, are the names of the people of West Hendon, who lost their lives in 1941.

I would suggest to the developers that, as well as giving the residents of the estate justice, and abiding by the promises made to them so long ago, they make penance for their failure to respect the status of York Memorial Park, and pay for a new memorial, with all these names inscribed, in time for the seventy fifth anniversary, next year.

Violet Kathleen Adams
Alice Susannah Adams
Jacqueline Alldis
Peggy Joan Eva Beasley
Agnes Louise Bond
Edwin Bowen
Charlotte Bowen
Thomas Newman Brine
Edith Mary Brine
Lucy Cannon
Ivy Chambers
Julia Ann Cowland
Walter Cowland
Alice Collip
Walter Collip
Edna Adele Crabtree
Sarah Jessie Doherty
Walter J Dodge
William Evans
Daisy Florence Evans
Gertrude Emma Ellner
Florence Alice Fairbrass
Walter George Fairbrass
Patricia Mattie Fox
Sidney Martin Fox
Helen Brice Francis
Walter Good
Jean Cynthia Good
Gladys May Halliday
Dorothy Jeanette Hockett
Elizabeth Mary Holland
Eliabeth Holland
Jean Mary King
Edith King
Martha Kennedy
Sarah Loxton
Frederick Mardle
William Moffatt
John Moffatt
Minnie Moffatt
Blanche Lilian Hilda Moffatt
Stanley Mowlem
Ellen Alice Nicholson
Kenneth Frederick Preston
Ethel Preston
William Parker
Norman Pearman
Violet May Ponder
Brian Edgar Peacock
Gerald Preston
Bertie William Radley
Kitty Margaret Radley
Kitty Maud Radley
Pamela Blanche Radley
George Sloss
Elizabeth Spurr
Ethel Blodwin Sutcliffe
Arthur Timms
Mary Watkins
Charles Watkins
James Wilkinson
Richard Albert Waters
Ellen Minnie Walton
Edithe Mary Walker
Arthur Baker Warman
Nellie Warman
Isabella Warrington
Walter Thomas Willson
Roy George Woodbridge

Cllr Devra Kay, Dan Knowles from Sawyer Fielding: residents Jackie and Kalim

The West Hendon housing Inquiry wound up on Friday, with closing submissions from Dan Knowles, from Sawyer Fielding, residents' representative Jasmin Parsons - and finally from Mr Nigel King, QC, for Barnet Council and Barratt London.

We shall return to those closing statements later, but let us note a remark made at the end by Neil King QC, in reply to a comment by Jasmin Parsons, at the end of her final statement, explaining how upset she had been by the behaviour of certain representatives of the development partners present throughout the Inquiry, who sat while residents gave their statements, laughing, on their phones, or even, in one case, falling asleep. She had found that, she said 'very, very, very offensive'.

Mr King said he was sorry, if she had found the behaviour on the part of some - not quite sure who, he said, had been inappropriate: not intended, he remarked. He appeared to be quite sincere in his apology, which was only right, after all, because Jasmin was correct - we all had observed such behaviour, throughout the days of the Inquiry, notably by some officers from the Capita run council services, one of whom in particular appeared to be deeply amused by the proceedings, and apparently regarded it all as a sort of game, smirking throughout, and joking with colleagues.

Neil King, QC, with Zack Simons

Another senior officer had actually slept through some of the statements made to the Inquiry: Mrs Angry had considered poking him with her pen, to wake him up, paid as he is, after all, by the tax payers of Broken Barnet, a handsome salary to stay awake and at least pretend to take an interest in the proceedings - but the temptation to leave him there, with his coffee dangerously poised on top of his laptop keyboard, risking the loss of so much outsourced crapitorially managed data, was too strong, and she left him to carry on, oh dear: caught on film by the BBC camera present throughout the hearing.

This lack of respect for residents, and the terrible situation they find themselves in, the loss of their homes, and their community, was evident throughout the long years of the so called regeneration: there was never any likelihood that this would not have become embedded in the culture of the local authority, now staffed by Capita.

The men from Barratts, by and large, and in contrast to some of the other parties, sat still throughout the Inquiry, impassively, their expressions devoid of any expression: watchful, attentive to detail - unmoved. Calculating, of course, and during the course of the Inquiry attempts were made to appear to improve offers to leaseholders. Why now, at this point - so late, and so little? Because at last the developers, if not Barnet Council, had realised the impact that the Inquiry would have, if not on their plans for Hendon Waterside, in terms of reputational damage.

The real impact of the Inquiry is there, right there where it really hurts: the full glare of publicity and media interest on the testimony presented by the residents of the estate who have been so badly treated in the course of this development.

To some extent, some of the blame for this, seen from the point of view of Barratts, might be thought to be in the hands of Capita, who have been in charge of the valuation and purchase of the leasehold properties, and Barnet Homes, whose officers had responsibility for tenants, many of whom have made very serious allegations about bullying and harassment in the course of the process leading to their eviction and forcible removal from their homes: allegations that we must ensure have full investigation.

But it is in the power of Barratts now to mitigate at least some of the terrible injustice served to the people of West Hendon as a result of the development which they have imposed on them, excluding them, making their lives utter misery throughout the process, and dispossessing them, disenfranchising them, effectively, from any part in the new scheme.

Only since residents have dug in their heels, engaged in direct action, and made their voices heard, have any concessions, such as they are, been made, or efforts to address the needs of some of the residents in really awful personal circumstances. But it is too little, too late.

Barratts have been given public land, and allowed to do exactly as they please by a council indifferent to the consequences for the residents of the estate, indeed at times appearing to be acting as the agent of the developer rather than properly fulfilling its duty to residents, whether in West Hendon, or anywhere else in the borough. The problems of conflict of interest caused by Capita's stranglehold on this authority's services, and its part in the final stage of the current phase of development are as yet unaddressed.

The real cost of this development, in terms of value for money for taxpayers, the considerations of financial loss due to the 'transfer' of public land to a private developer - we cannot evaluate that as yet, while Barnet Council continues to withhold the viability study. But the cost in human terms, the effect on the people now losing their homes: that was clear to see, and painful to listen to, over the long days of the Housing Inquiry. Clear to see, and painful to listen to, if you were not asleep, or playing with your phone - or, yes: exchanging jokes with your colleagues.

On Tuesday morning, for example, we heard a submission from resident Shahnaz, who spoke quietly, but with great courage, supported by Jasmin, of her situation, living, as she said, in fear, since she first received the eviction notice.

Shahnaz, who has health problems, was desperately worried about where she would live: would she end up on the street? She dreaded a future without the support of her neighbours, isolated again.

She said that she felt 'harassed and bullied' by a Barnet housing officer and as she spoke about her treatment by him, began to cry. She bravely continued, but cried again when claiming she had been further harassed by a council officer's phone calls, and had become too frightened to open her post. The same officer, she said, had had the audacity to state in court that a housing assessment had been arranged - for the very day of the court hearing.

Other residents have also alleged that they were duped into not attending court hearings, on the advice of a housing officer. Those that did not attend, as advised, received eviction notices, of course.

Jasmin held her arm as she continued with the admission that she had nearly taken an overdose, as her anxiety had been exacerbated. She spoke of the constant noise and pollution caused by the construction, from 7 in the morning, to 6.30 pm at night: she is unable to rest during the day.

Shahnaz spoke with gratitude of the support from her community, and especially Jasmin.

Barnet Council, she observed, seems only to care about profit.

The next speaker was Hodan, a woman whose testimony, delivered with evident distress, but great dignity, was impossible to hear without feeling enraged - and needing to fight back tears of your own.

Hodan, who has lived at West Hendon for more than two decades.

Hodan told the Inquiry she has lived in West Hendon for 23 years, in a community of neighbours , she said, who have lived together for decades. She has three children, and works as a carer. She described how, as neighbours, she and others would often meet while their children played on the swings and slides of York Memorial Park. This has sadly ended, she said, because of the building site, the constant noise, the pollution, and for safety reasons.

We were all told we would be 'regenerated' and would all be back together, if we so wished, she said. She stopped here, for a moment, overcome with emotion, before explaining, with Jasmin supporting her, that her toddler was born with multiple congentital abnormalities. He suffers with recurrent chest infections and breathing difficulties, and this has meant that she is unable to have any windows open, because of the dust and pollution.

The council are trying to move her family, she said, into a building where the bedroom windows faced onto a garage, and which is right on the Edgware Road, with heavy traffic, and pollution. Her current home is suitable for her family's needs, a comfortable maisonette, that looks out on to the beautiful Welsh Harp, with all of its wildlife: and York Memorial Park.

The accommodation for secure tenants, outside the luxury development: with a view of the kebab shops and garages of the Edgware Road

When her child is ill in the night, which is often, she is able to take him downstairs, to nurse him, and calm him, without her two other children being disturbed.

Like other residents, her family had been promised 'like for like' accommodation in the new housing, but they had been excluded, and individual circumstances ignored.

Mr King had the grace not to put questions to either of these valiant women. Indeed what could he ask, without appearing to be appallingly insensitive? It was noticeable that as the sequence of similar statements continued throughout the week he built a wall of cardboard boxes between his table and the witness seat. Who could blame him?

Mrs Angry wondered once or twice during the Inquiry how it would be if he were presenting the case for the residents, rather than the developers and Barnet Council, and what a great shame that his skills as counsel were not matched by an equally robust barrister for the community being torn apart by the development.

No questions, but in his closing submission on the last day, Mr King informed us that Hodan had been offered a property on the estate at Gadwall House, which has been assessed as 'suitable for her needs' by Barnet Homes Medical Assessment Team, following a 'detailed review' of her medical evidence. Good news: but why now, after leading her to expect her lot was to be shoved with the rest of the unwanted secure tenants on the gyratory system by the Edgware Road?

Later that morning Jasmin read out a statement by Katrina, another resident with mental and physical health problems, on a temporary tenancy of five years, who said she had had not had a proper assessment of her housing or medical needs.

Another statement by resident Kirsty, living in sub standard conditions, obliged to throw out her baby's Moses basket, due to mould caused by damp: finding out that as a non secure tenant she will be 'decanted' perhaps to another 'regeneration' estate.

Katrina's mother Sandra, had lived on the estate since 1992. Her fate, as a 'privileged' secure tenant? Moved to the building on the gyratory system, outside the new scheme, overlooking the kebab shops & toxic fumes of the Edgware Road.

Leaseholder Kalim spoke now, in two statements, one with a neighbour and fellow activist, Mr Siddiqi, explaining the lack of consultation, the refusal of Barnet Council to disclose the viability scheme. His own statement, which in the interests of transparency, Mrs Angry will disclose she helped him to complete, was a powerful indictment of the sense of betrayal felt by not only leaseholders and tenants alike.

Kalim objected strongly to the use of the term 'decanting', for the removal of non secure tenants:

... as if the individuals concerned were some sort of liquid commodity, disposable: it is a demeaning term, dehumanising, reducing the lives of men, women and children to nothing more than that of an object, a pawn in a game, to be moved around, at the whim of the council, powerless, without rights, without dignity. It is an abominable way to treat us.

He referred as all the residents do, to the fierce sense of community felt by the residents of the estate, leaseholders, and tenants alike, to the fact that their campaign group was called 'Our West Hendon' so as to reclaim a sense of ownership over their own futures. The word community, he said, is not one understood by the London Borough of Barnet,

Where we see a community, they see nothing more than a collection of individuals, representing a problem to be resolved: an obstruction to be removed.

He accused them of engaging not only in social cleansing, but gerrymandering. He is absolutely right, of course.

After lunch, resident Alex made his statement. Another non secure tenant with health issues, dependent on the support of his community: friends, and neighbours, but also, like so many of the residents with their own needs and vulnerabilities, genuinely worried as much about the impact of the new development on the Welsh Harp, and the wildlife there, as their own fates. Alex did express the real fear that he would end back on the streets, where he used to live. He has turned his life around, with the support he found in his neighbours, and his community: what does the future hold for him now?

It should be remembered that many of the non secure tenants moved to West Hendon over the last decade are vulnerable in some way: some believe this has been a deliberate policy, moving in residents who are easier to exclude from any obligation to rehouse, and less likely to be able to resist the process of being 'decanted'. Again, the human cost of such contempt for the housing needs and human rights of those more vulnerable members of society is extreme: it must be acknowledged, and put on record.

What has happened at West Hendon, in my view, in regard to these residents is outrageous, a cynical act of exploitation, trading in lives as if they were expendable, and of no consequence.

As Cllr Kay remarked, there is something rotten in the estate of West Hendon - and it is, in Mrs Angry's view, a sickness we need to eradicate, spreading as it is from the Town Halls of all the Rotten Boroughs of this country, and beyond, eating into the fabric of our democracy like the damp and rot left to devour the concrete buildings of the estate itself.

Also making a statement that afternoon was Father John Hawkins, the vicar from St John the Evangelist, West Hendon, who has lived in the parish since 1999, and has had a role more recently as Chair of the residents' partnership board. He is an admirable man, Fr Hawkins: a minister who has no difficulty at all in doing what he should do, as a pastoral leader: tell the truth, and support the people of his parish, speaking out with authority - and courage: rumour has it that he told one local politician exactly where to go, when he tried to admonish him for daring to undertake such a role.

Fr John Hawkins, and fellow board member.

At the Inquiry, on behalf of residents on the Partnership Board, he gave detailed criticisms of the way in which the new development was affecting local residents.

He spoke of broken promises, 'diluted' pledges: to provide new homes to residents, not to build on York Memorial Park. Of the broken promise in 2009 by former Tory council leader, now MP, Mike Freer, to turn non secure tenancies into secure ones.

He spoke of the lack of consultation: of decisions involving significant changes to the scheme, put to the board too late for any meaningful input from them. Of the failure to get senior councillors such as Tom Davey and leader Richard Cornelius to attend meetings with residents, or even to acknowledge the invitations. Of the confusion caused by the processes such as valuation of property to residents, many of them vulnerable, and already feeling 'disempowered'.

It should be noted, of course, that no Tory councillor had the guts to attend any of the Inquiry, to defend their own iniquitous housing policy, or even witness the proceedings - whereas Labour councillors attended every day, all day, gave statements to the Inquiry, and supported their residents, especially Devra Kay, and Adam Langleben.

Father John was asked by Mr King if it was not in fact the case that the original pledge had not promised to leave York Park untouched, but referred to it being 'redesigned'. Ah. Oh really, thought Mrs Angry: and how does 'redesigned', Mr King, become interpreted as 'will be given to developers to build on'?

Wednesday at the Inquiry saw more testimony from West Hendon residents.

Zubna, a resident with many serious health problems, and who uses a wheelchair, took her place at the witness table, and made what was clearly an enormous amount of courage to make her statement: her hand shook as she drank some water before she began, and she spoke with eyes, closed, with no little effort, but evident determination.

As she had done with many residents, Jasmin Parsons sat with her for reassurance, her arm around her, and holding her hand. She remained sitting with her, in this position, during the adjournment, after Zubna had so bravely spoken of the extent of her medical condition, the complex, intimate details of her illness and disabilities.

That a woman of such fragility and vulnerability should be compelled to come to a public Inquiry and expose herself and her needs to the scrutiny of strangers in this way, persecuted as she is in her own home, threatened with the loss of that home, speaks of the desperation and intolerable level of fear being experienced by residents over so many years, and now coming to the point of crisis as Barnet Council and Barratts and Capita conspire to force these people out of the way of the luxury development that has been agreed without their involvement, without their consent, acting with complete indifference as to the devastation that this will have on their lives.

An adjournment was necessary because a sudden outburst of heavy drilling had erupted behind the room, and kept interrupting, drowning out Zubna's words, spoken with such difficulty, an ironic replication of the conditions in which she lives at home, trapped on a construction site, and of the way in which her voice, and those of the many vulnerable tenants on the West Hendon estate, is marginalised, ignored and ultimately silenced by the developers and the local authority.

Another non secure resident, Gazaleh, also coping with disabilities, has been moved three times in four years, and spoke of her latest removal from one 'regeneration' estate, Stonegrove, to the latest one here at West Hendon.

She said that for a regeneration scheme to be meaningful, it has to be inclusive: but West Hendon was degeneration, not regeneration.

A statement was read on behalf of Peggy, an elderly resident too ill to attend the Inquiry. She spoke as all residents do, of her love for the park, and the closeness to nature; the peace of mind - all members of the community enjoyed such a lovely, open green space.

Barratts, she said, look like they are only interested in those who are young, and working.

The elderly and disabled who were able to live in the flats provided for those on lower incomes: now it looks like such a way of life are just, she said: 'dreams of the past'.

Why should the poor, asked Peggy, be disadvantaged, just because other people can afford it? What happens to the rank and file, who have been living here all their lives, and still want to live here?

Jasmin, who had read out her statement, added that this tenant, as others have stated, had been told there was no need to attend court, that was a mere formality - and she now had an eviction notice requiring her to leave her home by March 31st.

Later that day we heard from another long term resident and leaseholder, Lee, who had taken nine days off work to attend the Inquiry, and sat quietly, steadfastly, all the way through, her beautiful, sad green eyes gazing on the witnesses and proceedings, watching the end of her forty five years in her home in West Hendon, minimised, trivialised, beaten down into a state of irrelevance by officers from Barnet, and representatives of Barratts, and Mr Neil King, QC.

At last it was her time to have her say, and she sat at the table to read her statement, handwritten, and written from the heart:

West Hendon, she wrote, was a little village, nestling in a small green valley with breathtaking views and such peace, the only sound you could hear was the sound of the birds singing.

Not so now!

Views have been destroyed by building works and bird-song replaced by the unbelievable noise coming from the construction site ...

When construction started at the back of my home in January 2014, what was once a small green hill, with trees and daffodils, was dug up and became at the time mountains of earth.

On top of one of the piles, lay the daffodils, torn from their roots, just like we are all going to be.

March came, and despite laying discarded, those daffodils bloomed.

They refuse to give up: and so do we.

As well as hearing from residents in this session, we heard from one or two non resident witnesses, that the council and developers, and indeed the counsel for council and developers may not have been awfully keen to hear from: such as Mr George Turner, a writer and campaigner who has a good deal of experience in fighting 'regeneration' schemes such as the Heygate scheme in Southwark.

He had come to talk about the issue of the refusal to disclose the viability study, disputing the claim by Barnet and Barratts that the reduction in affordable housing is due to a need to meet the requirements of a 'mixed and balanced' community, and because not to reduce the quota would compromise the financial viability of the whole scheme.

He discussed the London Plan, and the scale of the West Hendon scheme, which he said created its own community and therefore should in fact require the maximum amount of affordable housing: after all it was larger, he said, than the city where his mother lived, which had its own cathedral.

Mr Turner probed the interesting idea put forward by the development partners that there was an economic need for the scheme: he referred us to the ideas of John Maynard Keynes, in the nineteen thirties, who suggested that if you dig a hole, and fill it back in again, that will promote economic activity. That seemed, to Mrs Angry, pretty much a perfect description of what was going on, down by the Welsh Harp, courtesy of Barnet Council, and Barratt London.

After a reminder of the accepted view that Compulsory Purchase Orders are by nature a breach of human rights, but must follow due process to ensure that there really is a public benefit that overcomes those private rights, with breathtaking audacity, Mr Turner moved on from a referral to a CPO process in Tottenham, and the Shell case now being considered in the High Court by Justice Collins, to the Doon Street case in which our very own Neil King, QC, had been involved, but, goodness me, one in which he had insisted on, and been granted, the production of the viability study.

Mr King later said yes, well - that had been a planning matter: the implication being that this is a CPO Inquiry, and therefore the study was not relevant - but as we have observed right from the beginning of the hearing, Barnet and Barratts have constantly cited the viability study as proof of their need to proceed with the CPOs, and therefore it is reasonable to expect, in Mrs Angry's view, that this study must be seen and reviewed.

Another useful submission came later that day from a Labour councillor from Brent, Roxanne Mashari, member for Welsh Harp ward: the reservoir is shared between the two boroughs. She told us that it was important to note the scale and breadth of opposition in Brent to the development: there had been a unanimous, cross party agreement on the issue.

Cllr Mashari made a very interesting observation about the planning meeting in Barnet which approved the plans, and which she had attended, having been at the time the Cabinet member for Environment.

She said the presentation to the meeting had been of extraordinary length - 20 or 30 minutes - and described it as, well: not as balanced as you would expect from professional officers, who appeared to be clearly in favour of the development.

It is certainly very difficult to see where in this process, in Mrs Angry's view, the balancing act in favour of the rights of the residents of West Hendon has been given equal consideration, and protection, measured against the huge degree of support given to the implementation of the developers' requirements, especially in the light of the change of emphasis from a scheme that included the accommodation of residents, to one that effectively excludes them.

And there is now the added factor of the potential conflict of interest posed by the role of Capita in so many different capacities. We find ourselves now, in Barnet and no doubt elsewhere, beset by a diminishing capacity for scrutiny, accountability: transparency - all the fine aspirations of the Nolan Principles, the pretence and platitudes of the localism act, worthless in the face of such relentlessly anti-democratic, fawning accommodation of the needs of the private sector, at the cost of the public interest, even, as we see in West Hendon, of our human rights.

Time to take a stand, I think, Mr Pickles, don't you?

Part of the day's proceedings was spent in consideration of the submission by Jasmin Parsons, who tried valiantly to present the case of tenants and leaseholders on the estate. She recounted the now familiar facts: not the same sort of facts so treasured by the counsel for the Acquiring Authority: useful conclusions that appeared to have no rebuttal, but a description of the view from the other side: where the evidence of injustice has no glib, facile presentation from a top ranking barrister, but depends on the humanity and resourcefulness of the residents themselves.

Jasmin began to summarise her statement: with a typically modest understatement she explained that the fight against the development had 'taken up a lot of my life'. The worry, stress and confusion that residents faced meant she was constantly 'on call', all week - as well as having to work - our lives, she said, have been put on hold, indefinitely.

As she spoke, one of the Capita men was laughing.

She talked about her love for the community where she has lived for so long, in the place where she grew up, played as a child, brought up her own family: faced her own challenges - and then began what was really almost a eulogy: a reminder of the history of West Hendon and the Welsh Harp, from its creation as a reservoir, to the pleasure grounds that featured in Victorian music hall songs, 'The Jolliest Place that's Out' ... the first greyhound races took place here, as did tests of the first tank and - oh so much more that no developer, or Tory councillor, or Crapita clone will ever care about. She talked about the wildlife, and the impact of the new development: will it, asked Jasmin, become the stone crescent desert that is Grahame Park, like the dark, concrete jungle of Colindale - or will it be the squandered wasteland of West Hendon?

Thursday was set aside for members of the Inquiry to make a site visit, and there was no hearing in the Town Hall.

Mrs Angry had made her own site visit on Sunday, with West Hendon councillor Devra Kay, in order to check out the evidence unearthed in the borough archives, which contradicted assertions made by the council and developers that there was no memorial association with York Park. Jasmin kindly made us a cup of tea, and took us around the estate and Welsh Harp: tracing the line of the roads destroyed in the bombing, and seeing where the park expanded, post war: an inconvenient truth ignored by the planning officers, whose curious failure to consult the borough's own archival records regarding the matter is still unexplained.

A number of residents affected by the scheme came up to talk to us - including a grandmother who had lived there for thirty eight years; a single mother resisting the fate being assigned to her by housing officers. The sense of anger, and betrayal, was clear, as well as a feeling of stubborn resistance.

Back on Friday, though, the last day: merely to hear submissions from Dan Knowles, and Jasmin, and then, in closing from Neil King.

Dan Knowles is acting for 19 leaseholders in the course of the CPO process, but he is also acting, unpaid, as an advocate for tenants on the estate: a public spirited, admirable gesture without which many residents would have no access of any sort to any informed advice as to their circumstances.

Measure their position against that of the developers, and council: and then, please: tell me how this is a fair process, and not naturally weighted against the best interests of those without the means to pay for the best legal representation?

It was the last morning, the last day, and the end of an emotional two weeks for residents. For Jasmin, tired, and run out of time, it was clearly a difficult moment. As she sat and listened to the QC's final submission, to which there was no right of reply, she became upset, and left the room.

Mr King, busy dismissing opposing views on certain 'facts', or presenting them as 'a matter of perception', had to be told by the Inspector to stop talking, as Miss Parsons was distressed, which had escaped his attention.

He looked slightly abashed, and later had the decency to thank all the objectors, with sincerity, for their contributions to the Inquiry - as well as apologising for the behaviour of certain individuals out of his sightline throughout the hearing.

But who could blame Jasmin for feeling as she did, unable to counter what she felt were unfair points in his summary?

I was pretty cross myself, albeit on a rather smaller scale, noting that my own evidence about York Memorial Park, unchallenged by questioning earlier in the week, when it was too risky, was now, when it could not be contradicted, devalued and misrepresented: described as 'repeated but unsubstantiated accusations that the inquiry has been misled on the status of York Park', ignoring the evidence about the enlargement of the park, and the number of memorial services from 1941 to at least 1950 (only as far as I got in the short time available) wrongly dismissed as one event in 1950.

Part of Barratts encroachment on York Memorial park: a multi story tower

Not sure what Mr King's benchmark for substantiation is: but he advises 'the position is straightforward, and should not be contentious, if examined in an objective manner'.

Ah: objectivity - that quality not required, it seems, in the valuation of leaseholders' properties - as we heard from Capita's Mr Paul Watling, who said that ultimately, it was his personal judgement that counted.

For Jasmin, to have to listen silently to the long sequence of rebuttal of her case was unbearable. Having been the support of everyone else in this Inquiry, and all the long years before it, now she was the one who was vulnerable, and in need of comfort.

The Inquiry hearing is over: now the Inspector, Zoe Hill - who presided over the proceedings with great diplomacy and fairness, it must be said - will go away and consider her findings, to be presented to the Secretary of State, Eric Pickles. The outcome is unlikely to emerge before the election.

In the meanwhile the residents of West Hendon live on, as they have done for years, in a state of fear and anxiety, leaseholders unable to sell or move, even if they want to, tenants facing either removal to the holding block on the gyratory system, or 'decantation' to wherever the council dictates. Those that continue to live there do so in the hellish conditions of a construction site.

Last night the BBC's One Show included a very interesting item on the West Hendon story: watch Adelaide Adams describe her life as 'living in a prison', and cry when she explains how she only wants to live out her days in her own home. And then watch the ineffable Tory leader, Richard Cornelius, in his silk cravat, who described the properties for whom he and his Tory colleagues have had responsibility as landlord - the homes of people like Adelaide, and Zubna, Alex and Hodan, and all the others - as 'grotty', refuse to address the reality of what this development means for the community of West Hendon:

Adelaide and all the other residents, especially those who have lived here for so long, are being robbed of not just the homes they love, but the community they belong to: a network of neighbours, friends, a feeling of belonging and stability, betrayed by the council that is supposed to protect their best interests in favour of the facilitation of private development, on public land, handed over in secret, for luxury accommodation from which they are excluded, and very few residents of this borough will be able to afford. This is a simply scandalous situation, and has perpetrated a terrible injustice in the treatment of the residents of this estate.

A few days after the bombing of West Hendon, in February 1941, a memorial service was held in the centre of the worst destruction, and three thousand people stood in the midst of the wreckage, on the scattered debris, bordered by the remains of the many hundreds of houses that took the full force of the massive explosion, to mourn the loss of their loved ones, friends, and neighbours.

Amongst the local clergy who led prayers was the Rural Dean of Hendon, the Reverend Norman Boyd, who spoke eloquently and movingly of the terrible desolation of the scene before them.

Before serving the people of Hendon, Reverend Boyd had spent many years as a minister in Bethnal Green, where he was responsible for the spiritual well being of another working class community, noted for its resilience in the face of extreme hardship: a community whose close knit bonds became, post war, the subject of that classic study of working class life by Young & Wilmott: Family and Kinship in East London.

This was of course a hugely influential work in twentieth century sociology, and standard text for A level students like me, all those years ago: sociology a subject in itself which was the basis for raising my own political consciousness, in the perhaps unlikely setting of an admittedly unusually liberal and academic Catholic convent school.

The central theme of Family & Kinship, the lament for a lost way of life, a working class culture of complex relationships, extended families, lost in the transition of 'slum clearance', from East End to the new outer London suburbs, and the alienation of life on a new housing estate, might seem sentimentalised, and outdated, to us now. At the time of reading it, it seemed to strike a chord with me, brought up in the emotional sterility of semi-detached life in Edgware, with an unhappy mother whose own family had been part of a rich culture of working class, largely Irish Catholic background in a north eastern mining town, living in deep poverty, but sustained by its own network of family, faith, friends and community.

But here is the epilogue to Young and Wilmott's thesis, forged in the crucible of twenty first century Britain: the lesson learned, and another one ignored. The post war housing built in West Hendon, on this estate gave new homes for local people, and kept their community intact.

The buildings were not some anonymous, alienating collection of tower blocks in the middle of nowhere, but built on a human scale, in a beautiful setting, where people's homes looked onto each other, and where they were able to form a new network of neighbours.

Newcomers from a myriad of diverse cultures have joined them, and settled happily here, presenting a model of what we must become, if we are to progress at all: not a Big Society, but a small one, a community: a collection of neighbourhoods like the one now being torn apart, here in West Hendon.

And communities take time to evolve, flourishing in the right environment, even in the worst of circumstances. Location, architecture: these factors play a part: what matters is that people are given the chance to form relationships, and treated with dignity, and respect for their needs. Everything, in short, that our Tory politicians, in government, and here in Barnet, refuse to countenance, in their desire to put private interests before the rights of the individual.

Now in West Hendon, the alienation of life in a tower block will be reserved for the wealthy investors, the off plan buyers, the affluent property buyer willing to pay for an exclusive view of the Welsh Harp, fringed by the trimmings of what was once York Memorial Park, and haunted, we might imagine, by the slightest echo of a fearful rushing noise: and the sound of silence.

Mrs Angry is now taking a break from blogging. Normal service may be resumed, as and when.

One day last year, on the day of the local elections, there was a ring on my doorbell.

I opened the door. Standing on the step, in the rain, was a Labour party canvasser - a man, youngish, sort of, but of indeterminate age, indeterminate partly due to his resplendent greying beard - at that point he was aiming for the full Karl Marx - a broad grin, and a certain glint in his eye. I instantly recognised, from that glint, and that grin, a kindred spirit.

It's ok, I said, trying to stop my cat, wearing a Labour rosette too, from running out of the front door: on balance, I think it's fairly likely we will be voting Labour.

I know, I know, he said: I just wanted to ring your bell, and meet you at last: Mrs Angry!

Yes! Hold on: that beard ... you're Nick Goldberg ...

We had moved in the same circles, and been acquainted online, but never spoken face to face.

I'm canvassing your road, he said, look: with my lovely husband, Romin - pointing across the road, where, in the rain, the steadfast Romin, the great love of his life, was dutifully stuffing newsletters through doors, while Nick chatted away.

From then on, Nick became a friend: a dear friend - a comrade, fellow conspirator, a source of endless fun - and mischief.

No one was as funny as him, in the way he was funny: scurrilous, scathing, outrageous, but his subversive qualities largely hidden behind that devastating grin, mistaken by his enemies for endorsement of their nefarious deeds, unaware they were being sent up, and undermined.

He made the most tedious political meeting bearable, by his presence: his wink across the table; the nudge when he was sitting next to you, the whispered commentary in your ear, or scribbled remarks.

At one meeting once I noticed he was sitting next to me quietly, writing extensive notes, very seriously, listening carefully to a speaker pontificating at great length about something or other, nodding to himself as he wrote.

This act of devotion seemed unlikely, so I peered down at what he was writing. It was a long list of the many absurdly mangled mixed metaphors spouted by the speaker in question, a bingo card of crashing political cliches - and worse - ticked off, and given scores out of ten.

I very nearly had to leave the room, unable to contain myself, sitting there disgracefully, a middle aged woman laughing as helplessly as the schoolgirl I once was, continually in trouble with teachers for similar misbehaviour - he sitting calmly, like an innocent schoolboy, still smiling, but with that familiar gleam of unrepentant naughtiness in his eye.

At another meeting, asked to help out with organising a ballot, he was instructed to tear up pieces of paper, for voting slips, and hand one to each person. They don't trust me with scissors, he announced, to every one of us, as he went around the table, a dangerous smile fixed on his face, like a warning sign - a warning, if you could read the signs.

Not trusted with scissors: selected as a candidate for the elections, but for the most safe Tory seat in the borough, so pointless, and a waste of his abilities.

Inevitably he would have stood somewhere, and been elected, and been a brilliant councillor, or MP. He passionately wanted to make changes, to galvanise the Labour party into a real force for opposition to the causes of social injustice: he glowed with a slow burning fury about the impact of the government's war on the poor, the dispossessed. And he chose to work for a charitable organisation, the Zaccheus Trust , as an advocate for some of the most vulnerable members of our society, struggling with debt: as his employers explain in their tribute to him:

Nick understood that it wasn’t enough just to help the individuals who walk through Z2K’s doors. He would always want to be part of the campaigns against the policies that drive them into poverty and despair, and he had great ideas for how we could do more in future to make the world a better place.

Wanting to make the world a better place, and doing the best he could in his own way, starting with himself, and his wonderful, sweet way of dealing with people, tactful, discreet, yet offering the most gentle, loving support wherever needed, with a judgement that belied his relative youth, and the biggest bear hugs for all his friends, the warmth that spoke of the enormous capacity for love and generosity that he had: the greatest heart - a heart that in the end, was not strong enough for life, and failed him.

It might seem, in retrospect, that he knew, somehow, his time with us was limited: he said the things that we always wish we had said, but too often have not, when someone passes away: and thank God, in his case, the huge affection that he inspired in all his friends meant that everyone told him, all the time, how much they loved him.

As we have been reminded, this week, life is short: if you put off saying those words to someone you love - there might never be another chance.

And here is the lesson for today, the day that celebrates romantic love: the truth is that lovers come and go, or let you down, and family ties are not always the ties that bind: the love of friends, and comrades, is what gets us through life, and maybe brings us the greatest joy, in the end.

One of Nick's favourite stomping grounds, of course, was twitter: when stricken with late night insomnia, more often than not, he would be there, ready to chat. He knew instinctively when you were upset, and would send you a private message, even in the early hours: are you alright? One of his last messages to me, on one of those sort of nights, was typical of his sweetness, to be treasured now, forever:

We and I in particular love you xxx

At other times, he would be off on a flight of brilliant diversion, improvising on a theme: quoting the most obscure passage of Yeats, for example, at the drop of a hat, wearing that as easily as any of his dandyish outfits, all got up in waistcoat and trilby, a roll up in his fingers, cracked up with laughter.

No one's laughing now, Mr Goldberg.

Your leaving us in this way is, without a doubt, the most unfunniest thing you could have done, and look - now we are all in tears.

Yeats sprang to mind, inevitably,then, when I heard he had gone: especially, inescapably, An Irish Airman Foresees His Death - a poem about the death of another young man: a different form of elemental death, by air, not by water: now brought down to earth, as we are, by his loss.

How we will miss him.

A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

Nick Goldberg: born London 1981, died Bark Bay, New Zealand, February 10th 2015

Finding solutions? Giving evidence, anyway - Mr Reasonable and Mrs Angry at the Housing Commission

Last night saw the latest session of Barnet Labour's Housing Commission, chaired by to which bloggers Mr Reasonable and Mrs Angry were invited to give evidence. Clearly at the last minute someone was panicking at the thought of giving us an opportunity to say exactly what we thought, in an open forum, and emails arrived urging us to focus not so much on the problems, as on finding solutions.

Hmm. Mrs Angry was of the opinion that her evidence was just that: based on five years of observation of Barnet's performance in regard to housing policy, and that it was her duty to contribute on that basis, and persuade the Labour leadership to try a bit harder to get into power, so as to implement a change in policy, rather than witter on about hypothetical solutions.

We dutifully went along, to a freezing cold community centre in Grahame Park,a council estate soon to be regenerated and gerrymandered out of existence, courtesy of Tory housing policy.

Here is the full text of Mrs Angry's contribution: an illustrated version - cut short due to time restraint, and probably just as well.

It's now five years since I started writing about local issues in my blog, ‘Broken Barnet’, and although in all the time since I have covered many other aspects of the political landscape in our borough, it was a housing matter which drove me to start writing it, related to the way in which Barnet was using the private sector to address its inability to provide social housing for those in need.

At the time, Barnet had the longest housing waiting list in the country. Instead of seeing this as an urgent reason to consider investment in new social or council housing, the then administration, headed by Mr Easycouncil himself, Mike Freer, preferred to use the private sector to exercise its duties to house homeless residents, and appeared to care little about the standard of accommodation in which these families would be placed.

Here we are, five years later, and Mr Mike Freer is – for a few weeks longer, anyway - MP for Finchley and Golders Green, and oh look: there he is, on the Sunday politics show, only a week ago, telling us that the housing list is now only – only – 3,000 or so, or just under, even, and that his Tory colleagues in Barnet are building an astonishing number of new homes, we’ve built 6,000 new homes in the last five years, he says.

There is no housing crisis in our borough, in other words, says Freer, who, as we should remember, was the leader of the council when the new agreement with Barratts to develop West Hendon was made, in 2008, the details of which agreement, in terms of the viability report, for example, are not in the public domain.

Mr Freer is not the only Tory politician to be blessed with a sense of boundless optimism about the provision of housing in this borough, of course.

Only last week, I had a disagreement on twitter with one of the new Tory councillors, Gabriel Rozenberg - yes, the son of Joshua, and Melanie Phillips - who was complaining that a letter he had sent to a local paper had not been published, objecting to an article which had quoted a local pressure group claiming, ‘that we are heading towards a housing crisis’.

What nonsense, he said: Barnet Council is going to build 20,000 new homes over the next two decades. We’re ready for the challenge.

Some loudmouths, he continued, only want to do Barnet down. The thousands of people moving to Barnet, year after year, prove just how wrong they are.

Oh dear. This was too much for loudmouth Mrs Angry, who engaged Cllr Rozenberg in a debate via twitter about his interesting views:

Me: Seriously? Are you being naive, or totally cynical? Those new homes will not be for ordinary families, but for the most affluent.

He replied: err totes serious. You think Barnet’s ‘broken’. I think Barnet’s terrific. If it’s so awful why is it set to be #1 in London?

Me: That can only be because you have not experienced what it is like for the huge number of people living in real need in this borough.

There is no excuse for this, other than fear of facing reality. Step outside of Hampstead Garden Suburb, & visit West Hendon ...

or Strawberry Vale, or Dollis Valley - or Sweets Way, if anyone is left there after tomorrow's evictions. This is real life, not HGS

Cllr Rozenberg: Mrs A, please accept, there is light and shade here. Many ppl are moving to Barnet cos it’s a great place to live.

Me: Oh Gabriel, please: the poorest residents are being mercilessly turfed out to make way for the 'well off' - is that fair?

Reply: Once again: if it’s such a hellhole of a borough, why is it so popular? You keep changing the subject.

Me: Popular with whom? It is hell for those living in poverty: anywhere is, just as most places are fine if you are wealthy

And answer this: how is it morally justifiable to give private developers public land, and evict the people living there?

No reply.

West Hendon residents facing eviction: pics courtesy of the Mirror

My mistake was to introduce the concept of morality into the argument: always a difficult subject of discussion with Barnet Tories.

To be fair to Cllr Rozenberg, he is, in my view, naive, rather than lacking in compassion, unlike some of his colleagues, and at least makes the effort to take part in some sort of discussion – unlike most of his colleagues.

Tory leader Richard Cornelius does not like to leave the safety of his comfort zone, the leafy avenues of Totteridge, but recently was obliged by the BBC One Show to make an unprecedented appearance in one of the less favoured areas of his borough, in West Hendon, in the estate which he has previously described as ‘grotty’, a community now being bulldozed out of existence to make way for the luxury private development by Barratts.

We now know that Barratts have been given the land for free, and are waiting for Barnet Council to ‘decant’ residents living there already, or compulsorily purchase their homes, at a price calculated by Capita valuers below the point at which they can take advantage of the supposed shared equity schemes which is their only way of achieving the new homes promised to them originally as part of what was once a genuine regeneration scheme.

Cornelius, in his interview, stood rather gingerly in the unfamiliar surroundings, dressed in his silk cravat, displaying his typically cheerful, if sometimes inappropriate, saturnine smile, talking his usual nonsense: denying the reality of the terrible circumstances facing the residents of West Hendon, and, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, claiming that:

“the owner occupiers are all getting shared equity and a new place”

“the secure tenants will all be housed on the estate as well”

“the temporary people will be accommodated locally”

The Tory leader seems to have forgotten that any perceived ‘grottiness’ is directly the result of his own failure as landlord to maintain the estate, nor does he seem to register the offence he might cause by describing people’s homes in this way.

This tells you a lot about the extent of disassociation he and his colleagues feel from the real impact of their policies: the disregard for people’s lives, other people’s lives, not ‘people like us’ – ‘temporary people’, who can be ‘decanted’: dehumanised.

Easy to have an easycouncil housing policy that deals with the destruction of a community, with the loss of homes, when you remove the human aspect of their stories, isn’t it? These people, temporary people.

And necessary to dehumanise the situation, when you are committed to an agenda of not just gerrymandering, replanting entire communities with more affluent residents, more likely to vote for you, under the pretext of ‘mixed communities’ – or when you are committed to an agenda of social engineering, an activity with which our Tory councillors are now dabbling, in their dilettante fashion.

Yet again, in the story of the Sweets Way evictions, we are seeing Barnet Tory housing policy in action, and at its most shameful: children, mothers, sick residents turned out of their homes, literally on to the street, with no real care for what becomes of them, just as long as they are removed so as to free up yet another estate for a private development.

I should say that by chance I met two of the residents who have now been evicted from their homes in Sweets Way. One was an elderly man with complex health problems, and who had had a heart attack as a result of the stress caused by the loss of his home. He was told to go and live in Hanwell.

The other was the mother of two boys who was given only the option of a flat in Grahame Park, another temporary location on another so called regeneration estate: she showed me the pictures of the filthy, squalid flat she was expected to move into with her children, with dirt, damp, and broken windows.

Yet only this week we see again the Tory leader claiming:

Residents who were temporary tenants are being found new places to live in the area. This process has gone quite smoothly despite the misinformation and scarcity of empty flats ...

Those who sell their homes will get a brand new flat to live in ...

The solid achievement of building homes needs to be recognised and celebrated. The new mixed areas are so much better than the old isolated council estates.

Sweets Way evictions: the impact on families, and the reality that Tory leader Richard Cornelius prefers to ignore ...

Housing is a key policy for our neo Thatcherite, materialist councillors: moving on from the provision of affordable homes, or social housing, for those who need them to a principle of removing what they see as dependence on the state, on council services, an absence of ‘aspiration’ – a culture of failure.

This is how housing policy in Tory Barnet has come to be a moral crusade, if morality can be used in this context: a value judgement, a measurement of material worth.

This is clearly reflected in almost every policy decision promoted by the current member for housing, ie Tom Davey: an individual who revels in controversy, and refuses to apologise for remarks such as wishing to see only the well off living in this borough, and hoping to see the penthouse flats of West Hendon filled with Russian oligarchs.

We are travelling back in time beyond the golden era so beloved of our local Tories, of Thatcherite values, to something approaching the judgemental politics of the poor laws introduced in the nineteenth century.

If you are not wealthy, if you are poor, you are almost certainly the undeserving poor, and must be punished, and corrected. The creation of new social housing will only encourage dependence and obstruct the development of self help.

Access then, will be restricted: priority of housing allocation given to those who can demonstrate ‘a positive contribution to the community’, and as we have seen in West Hendon, and now in Sweets Way, residents kept on long term non secure tenancies, some of them for a decade or more, so as to deprive them of the full protection of what should be their rights in law to a decent standard of secure housing.

Those lucky few who are awarded a council home now may only have it on a five year contract: the consequences on families of such flagrant disregard for the need for a home, and not just temporary housing, is simply of no interest to the Tory administration in Barnet.

Well: you can’t expect Tories to deliver a housing policy based on the principles of social justice, but we do expect the Labour party to do just that, and that is why we are here, giving evidence to this Commission.

What can Labour do?

It is easy to ask the question, and speculate, and formulate nice ideas about what we want, but the most important thing is to see commitment, and passion, and a real desire to make change, not just easy words, ill defined, and a message lost somewhere between a good intention and a real campaign of reform.

As Harold Wilson famously once remarked, The Labour party is a moral crusade, or it is nothing.

I absolutely believe this to be true, and I fear that in this borough, the Labour opposition, or at least its leadership, has sometimes struggled to communicate a strong commitment to that principle, and has failed to engage with voters because of it.

More recently, however, I believe there is a real recognition from most Labour councillors for the need for change, and the move to try to address some of the urgent issues through this Housing Commission is commendable and I hope that as many people as possible will support it, and engage with it. It is easy to criticise, but the only way to improve all the terrible housing issues which are springing up around us is to stand up and do something about it.

Housing is an issue that is already, as we have seen, made subject to moral evaluation: now is the time to reclaim it from the patronage of the Tory approach, and give back control of the decisions which dictate the direction of policy to the people who are actually affected by it, to empower communities and enable them to protect their rights to housing, to remain as communities. A re-invention of localism, a rewiring of the concept, so that it actually works, rather than sits in a box under the stairs, unused, Eric.

At the last session of the Housing Commission that I attended, the new Labour leader of Hammersmith and Fulham council made a very interesting contribution with an explanation as to how he had, on taking office, looked in detail at some of the developments agreed by the previous Tory administration, and shaken those agreements until a load of loose change fell out of the back pockets: to the tune of £26 million, or thereabouts. He is reinvesting that money in housing.

Here in Barnet, we should be able to do the same. The Capita contracts, as Mr Reasonable will tell you, are a licence to print money – not for us, the taxpayers, but for the contractors.

If we were to see a Labour administration take over, we might hope to see an immediate re-evaluation of the contracts, and a no nonsense demand for revision of the terms of the agreement, which would see more savings returned to the public purse, and rather less thrown in the lap of Capita.

Then, perhaps, we could re-invest that money in housing projects that safeguard the needs of local residents, especially those in the greatest need. New build council housing, a real commitment to affordable housing to buy or rent: a change of culture, and the replacement of the cynical facilitation of private development by a new programme of housing provision aimed at preserving and supporting communities, not destroying them.

But that is unlikely to happen anytime soon, sadly.

We missed the opportunity to take control of the council, despite the London wide trend of Labour wins. If there are any by elections - and Mrs Angry can exclusively reveal now that there is likely to be one, or maybe two, very soon, albeit in a very safe Tory ward - perhaps there will be another chance, but are we sure that there is the determination yet to challenge the contracts, and force change?

I’m not sure there is. We hear rumours that the Labour group is again going to support the Tory council tax freeze: if true, in my view such a move is utterly indefensible: no, reprehensible - and indicative of the need for fundamental change in the direction and leadership of the group in opposition on Barnet Council. Residents and voters need to see an opposition to the Tory administration, not one that endorses its agenda.

But there is a more important battle to fight now: at the General Election. Ultimately, all housing provision can only take place within the definition and restrictions of central government funding, legislation and policy making: and the only way to make radical change that prioritises the housing needs of London’s residents is to elect a Labour government – and then a Labour Mayor. We have three outstandingly good Labour candidates here in Barnet: Sarah Sackman, Andrew Dismore, and Amy Trevethan.

When we go to vote in a few weeks’ time, we need to remember who was responsible for the mess we now find ourselves in: who instigated the so called regeneration projects that are driving people out of this borough, the easycouncil standards that have reduced everything to a question of profit before people, greed before need, or stood by and refused to act, when residents needed help?

If you don’t like what is happening now, in this borough, and you want something different, something better - then please: make sure your voice is heard in May.

Here is a curious thing.

Look very carefully at these pictures of our three local Tory MPs ... and then tell Mrs Angry what colour you see:

Chipping Barnet MP, Theresa Villiers

Finchley & Golders Green MP, Mike Freer

And the other one, Hendon's Matthew Offord. DR Matthew Offord.

Now then: most people will immediately see the colour blue.

Go on, have another look, just to be sure ...

Yes: dark blue, accompanied by all the Barnet Tory trimmings you might expect, you know: a breathless endorsement of every last stupid thing their colleagues on the council might say or do, a refusal to criticise any aspect of council policy; a tacit agreement to avoid involvement in any local campaign of objection to any aspect of council policy - a strategy of doing nothing controversial, in other words, for five years, keeping your head down, and hoping this is enough to get yourself re-elected, safely returned to a very cushy job lounging about in the palace of Westminster, with a very nice salary, opportunities to tour the world on 'fact finding' trips, and all the world at your disposal.

But now look again ... still blue, but, hang on ... is it the light, or ... are our elected representatives beginning to look a little paler? Almost, if you look more closely, whiter than white, with an unexpected golden hue, around the edges ...

Odd.

Hmm. Thing is, you see, although a strategy of doing and saying not very much by our Tory MPs might be enough to achieve re-election, in happier times, when there is a natural disposal to get rid of a long term Labour government, or the economy is doing well, and there is not in power a coalition government imposing an agenda of such remorseless, punitive assaults on the rights and well being of the less advantaged members of our society, and selling off our beloved NHS - oh dear: that is not where we are now, is it?

And here in Broken Barnet, after five years and more of the idiotic exploits of a maverick, delusional Tory council, seemingly set on a course of alienating its own natural electoral base, with hugely unpopular policies, the wholescale sell off of our public services to Capita, the catastrophic parking regime - we are now presented with the lunatic proposals to destroy our library service.

As Mrs Angry, with her usual delphic prescience, and a certain amount of schadenfreude, predicted long ago, this last brilliant idea by our emptyheaded Tory councillors, is without question the one most guaranteed to turn even the most moderately minded, apolitical resident of Barnet into an armed combatant, a freedom fighting suburbanista, determined on electoral revenge, on May 7th. Why?

Because, as we have said before, and let us say it again: you can close as many children's centres, support services, nurseries, as you like, in this borough; cut as many jobs as you please, and the silent majority of conservatively inclined voters will remain, well: silent, if somewhat perturbed, and possibly even mildly disgusted.

But there is one rule, in Broken Barnet, that must be obeyed: or rather, the first rule, and the second rule of Broken Barnet.

1. Do not mess with libraries.
2. Do not mess with libraries.

A couple of years ago, our Barnet Tories messed with libraries.

They tried to shut down Friern Barnet Library.

They failed.

Friern Barnet Library was taken over by Occupy activists, given back to local residents and campaigners, and re-opened by the community, for the community, in a breathtaking victory for real localism in action, direct action. The outcome was that the Tory council, under the nominal leadership of Richard Cornelius, was forced into a humiliating defeat, and the plans to grab the building, and flog it off for development, were trounced, good and proper.

But let us be clear and honest about that outcome: a humiliation for the Tories, and hugely damaging to any remaining credibility as an administration, but what remains, although a popular community centre, is not a public library, but a venture staffed by volunteers, with no link to the borough's service, and such as it is, its future is uncertain.

Worse still: out of the jaws of defeat the Tories have grabbed what they hoped would be a greater victory, in the long term. And that is the destruction, or at best the emasculation, of the borough's wonderful library service: one that has always been recognised as one of the best in the country, even in terms of value for money - at least until the present Tory administration took over, and set about running it down, and culling the professional staff.

The takeover of Friern Barnet library by volunteers - and the handover of the library in a shop Hampstead Garden Suburb branch, in response to the whinging of the local,hugely affluent voters and highly influential local residents association: these examples have served as inspiration for the scheming, philistine Tory councillors who see libraries only as a liability: a portfolio of potential lucrative property developments. Hence the current plans to close libraries, cut opening hours, cut staff - and even, most ludicrous of all, to shrink them in size by 93%, and - God help us - have 'open' libraries run with no staff at all.

Culture averse as they are, and never having read a book in their lives, let alone used a public library, the Tory members of Barnet Council failed to foresee the outrage this set of proposals would generate, and made a gross miscalcuation, in the process.

They failed to understand the totemic significance that the public library system has in this country, and in this highly literate, articulate, and well educated borough.

They did not grasp the interesting truth about this issue: that even residents who do not use their local branch libraries, who are wealthy enough to buy their own books from Waterstones, or Amazon, or read on a kindle, or maybe not at all, want them to be there, know that libraries are needed by the community.

It is the same philanthropic feeling which is expressed in the widespread unease over the effects of policies like bedroom tax, or the withdrawal of legal aid for others less advantaged than you, which still disturbs that very British sense of fair play, and justice.

And there is something undeniably British about the very idea of a public library: in the inclination to a staunch defence of a resource for those in need of free access to education, and information.

Outrage, at the thought of the destruction of our library service was the inevitable, immediate reaction to the announcement of these terrible proposals - and to the farcical 'nonsultation' which ensued, a loaded survey which the newly formed library campaign warned residents to answer very carefully, as it was clearly designed, as most Barnet consultation is, to provide data supporting their nefarious proposals.

And the impact of this was soon expressed, not only in the brilliantly resourceful borough wide campaign to save the libraries, but in a massive avalanche of furious responses from residents, expressing their horror to local councillors - ah, and of course to their MPs.

Library 'invasion' East Finchley

Our three local Tory MPs are a pretty complacent bunch: or at least they have been, until the reality of the pending general election has hit them, full on.

Matthew Offord, of course, lives in a world of his own, caught in its own mysterious cycle of orbit, in a surreal, parallel universe, where the fate of elderly cod,and turtles in tax havens, and narco terrorists sailing across the blue waters off the coast of Belize are so much more interesting than the tedious problems of, for example, the tenants facing eviction and the demolition of their homes, in West Hendon. Mr - DR, DR, Mrs Angry, DR OFFORD, only became worried about West Hendon earlier this year, when he solved the problem by, erm - inviting some of the leaseholders to the House of Commons, to pose for photos and be assured that all would be well. All is still not well, in case you haven't been keeping up with that story.

Mike Freer has been, until now, similarly unruffled by the prospect of convincing a grateful electorate to carry him on their shoulders, singing his praises, back into the House of Commons.

But what has he done, for the people of Finchley & Golders Green, over the last five years? What local issues has he pursued? Let's have a think.

Still thinking.

Worried about mansion tax.

And squatting.

In mansions, in Hampstead Garden Suburb.

Erm. Nope, nothing much else springs to mind.

No help either from the two leaflets shoved through Mrs Angry's door in recent months: one was so short of local issues to boast about, it was obliged to fill up space with a sudoku puzzle, and the second was an ill judged piece of work, reminding everyone how well the economy was doing, and therefore, by implication, how much better off we all are.

We are not all better off, though, Mr Freer, unless perhaps you live in a mansion in Hampstead Garden Suburb ....

Still, Mrs Angry's spies - including A Local Councillor - have told her, with some amusement, in the latter case, that Mr Freer is now copying his Hendon colleague's tactics, and, in the absence of any local campaigning, inviting great tranches of his constituents to, yes: the House of Commons, where they will have a tour, and an audience with the great man himself, before he loses his seat, which is a nice memory to treasure, isn't it?

For some unaccountable reason, Mrs Angry, who is a constituent, of course, has yet to receive her invitation to the House of Commons, with her MP, but then again, his last encounter at Westminster with Mrs Angry didn't go awfully well, ending with the man breaking out in a cold sweat, and backing away with rather over enthusiastic haste - mind you, he wasn't the only one to do so, on that visit, as Mrs Angry recalls. Such is her effect on most men, Tory MPs or otherwise, sadly, in and out of Westminster.

Theresa Villiers, of course, as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, is awfully important, and terribly busy these days, and barely has time to show her face at the recommended number of local events, up in Chipping Barnet, once the stronghold of Tory dominance in this borough: the nest of Barnet Conservatism - or was, until the nest took a tumble, with the downfall of Brian Coleman serving as an awful warning of things to come.

Goodbye, then, to the heady whirl of fundraising candlelit suppers and strawberry teas of High Society in High Barnet - an era past, now, with rapidly declining Tory membership, and a change in the demographics of the constituency to an electorate less likely to want to maintain the status quo.

Revolution in Chipping Barnet is unlikely to happen any time soon: but Villiers' majority is quite likely to take something of a bashing, as it seems she now realises. In fact Mrs Angry is reliably informed that Ms Villiers is in something of an unprecedented state of dismay at the state of things, in the run up to May.

In Hendon, Matthew Offord is being challenged for the seat by the previous MP, Andrew Dismore. Dismore only lost last time by a slender margin, 100 or so votes, even at a time of national swing against the by then unpopular Labour government. The reason it was so close was that Andrew Dismore, as even his enemies will admit, is a shrewd and hard working constituency MP. He will return, in May, and Dr Offord ... will be a sad loss, won't he?

In Finchley Freer is facing a real battle, with an outstandingly good Labour opponent, Sarah Sackman, a candidate who grew up in the borough, a barrister who is extremely bright, articulate - and whose intellectual grasp is matched by a genuine passion for social justice.

Sarah Sackman, in short, is everything that Freer is not, and, unlike him, has worked hard to involve herself in controversial local issues, exemplified by the advocacy she has extended to causes such as the families from Mapledown, a school for children with severe disabilities, whose respite care funding was slashed by our Tory councillors as soon as they had announced the 'gesture' of a council tax cut, just before the local elections last year. You might wonder why our local MPs failed to speak up on behalf of these children, or any of the many issues which have so galvanised the political debate here in Broken Barnet: whatever the answer to that conundrum, they are paying the price now.

Labour's Sarah Sackman with East Finchley library campaigners

Labour has Hendon and Finchley firmly in sight, but has of course followed the mistake committed by the local party leadership and campaign last year, in yet again overlooking the potential for Labour votes in the Chipping area.

Before the local elections, Mrs Angry pointed out that the Libdem sellout and other local factors were likely to see some significant Tory losses, and Labour gains in Chipping wards, and of course Mrs Angry is always right, about everything, and that is exactly what happened. One particularly satisfying departure was Robert Rams, in East Barnet, very largely due to his disastrous handling of ... the library fiasco.

So here we are at the general election, and the Tories have learned no lessons as the previous library cockup has been followed by proposals to destroy the whole service, and in Chipping Barnet - as well as the two other constituencies - this is having a serious impact on what Theresa Villiers has come to regard as a safe Conservative seat.

At the last election in 2010, Villiers had 24,700 votes. The Labour candidate had 12,773. Seems an impossible margin, perhaps, until you consider that the Libdem candidate had a whopping 10,202.

The Fibdems are unlikely to retain anything like that, of course. Other parties? Meh.

Green - move on.

Ukip? Bound to get some votes, but probably taking them from the Tories.

Add the Libdem vote with an increase in Labour vote due to national issues, and more still due to the changing demographics in the constituency, and measure that against the unpopularity of the current government, and the failure of any attempts to convince even Tory voters that the politics of austerity and an agenda of socially punitive 'reforms' is making their lives any better - and you can see why Ms Villiers might be, as reported to Mrs Angry this weekend, not a little concerned about her own position.

The Labour candidate in Chipping Barnet is a local councillor, Amy Trevethan, another very bright young woman, who has not had the benefit of party support and funding given to the other two constituencies, but should not be as easily dismissed as some would have you believe.

And put into the frame now the library issue: see how our Tory MPs have turned from a strategy of silence, and, apeing the tactics of Tory councillors getting it in the neck from furious residents, whispering quiet reassurance to individual constituents that their local libraries will not be closed, to this week's sudden leap into very dangerous territory: actually expressing an opinion, in public, on a local matter, and thereby appearing almost to, well ... f*ck me ... not support the shabby library bashing plans of their Tory council colleagues.

Theresa Villiers started the trend, the beginning of last week, emboldened by dipping her toe into the shark infested waters of social media only the other week, being forced to make a statement on the scandalous Sweets Way evictions, on to the street, despite pleas by residents to local Tory politicians, apparently unheard.

Ms Villiers, of course, has survived her time as MP for ChippingBarnet by not doing or saying anything remotely controversial - some might say remotely interesting - throughout her term of office, so this is a new departure for her. But her statement on libraries needs careful reading.

Support Our Libraries, trills our intrepid MP, although in fact her comments do anything but that - what she means is: please don't close my libraries .... and she favours 'elements' of Option One, outsourcing libraries, shrinking some of them in size, suggests we make savings by cutting staff, or even considering the truly idiotic 'open', unstaffed libraries. She completely fails to measure her own enthusiasm for such terrible proposals with what she herself identifies as the qualities so appreciated by her constituents:

There is strong support for the libraries in my constituency. In my view, they provide invaluable educational and learning opportunities for people of all ages. They also make a helpful contribution to social mobility, for example by providing a quiet place for children and young people to study, even if their home life is disrupted.

My understanding from the feedback my constituents have given me is that libraries are a popular resource for a very wide range of people from across our diverse borough, including our minority ethnic communities. Many older people place great importance not just on library services, but on the opportunity for social interaction a visit to the library can offer.

Ms Villiers has not quite grasped that all these features of the wonderful service our libraries offer to residents are provided by professional librarians and trained staff, already at minimum staffing levels, thanks to the cull instigated by Robert Rams, in the last round of assaults on Barnet Libraries.

As Chipping Labour's Amy Trevethan has observed to Mrs Angry:

"None of the 3 options in the Tories''consultation' are acceptable: each require closures or massive reductions in floor space- reductions which will presumably lead to closures in the future. In Chipping Barnet, Osidge, South Friern and East Barnet libraries could be shrunk to 1/32nd of the size of Chipping Barnet library - or 1/10th of their current size.

"Some Tories seem to think the pain can be avoided - or at least concealed - by 'changes' to how our libraries are staffed. In other words, they are lining up library staff to take the hit. But how can the quality of services be preserved without adequate levels of staff? Will children still be able to access the libraries during unstaffed hours? And what about the safety of other vulnerable library users, and council property, when the premises are unstaffed? Presumably the 'self-service' model will entail an extra reliance on an outsourced IT system, but given the IT problems that have plagued the libraries' computers over the last year or so, how can we be sure this system will deliver?

Chipping candidate Amy Trevethan with fellow new Barnet Labour councillors

"The Council have the opportunity to modernise the service and ensure it is run by professional, trained librarian staff: a service fit for the 21st century and able to meet the educational and training needs of all our residents. Trained staff are a vital part of this picture - rather than get rid of them, the Council could be making savings on its massive spend on agency staff and consultants (roughly £17m per year).

The Council claim they want to save £2.85m on the libraries, yet in just 16 months they have willingly poured £110m into Capita's coffers for the CSG and Re contracts. This is £70m over the agreed price for those contracts. At present trends, £1bn of the Council's money will have been given to Capita by 2025. Why the urgency to scrimp £3m on such a valued part of our local educational infrastructure when many millions more are being thrown at a FTSE 100 company? That's the bigger picture and it points to a deeply unhealthy set of priorities in the Tory administration."

Theresa Villiers' apparent sudden conversion to the joy of libraries was also queried in a letter to the Barnet Press by another Theresa, Mrs Angry's imaginary alter ego:

Villiers' statement was duly followed, almost as if it had been coordinated, by pronouncements by her two colleagues, Freer and Offord. That's DR Offord, to you, Mrs Angry.

Offord tagged along after Villiers and Mike Freer, apparently keen for us to remember a. he exists and b. he is "someone to whom books mean a great deal", and someone desperate to be re-elected so please don't shut any of the libraries in his constituency either.

Of course our three MPs are being very careful in what they say, ie not saying hands off and leave them as they are, thank you very much. Post election, if still in office, will they sanction a new service which keeps libraries in place in name only, with no staff, fewer opening hours, and shrunk in size? I think it is a safe bet, don't you?

Andrew Dismore and his fellow Labour parliamentary candidates raised the issue of libraries at the end of last year, in this letter, and asked:

Will Barnet’s Conservative MPs join us in campaigning against these cuts to such vital and valued local public services, given that their votes in Parliament have taken the axe to local government funding?

In January, Offord was sweating enough to agree to an unprecedented appearance at a meeting in Mill Hill to debate the library issue, and promptly tried to have Mrs Angry thrown off the panel when he arrived and realised she was on it as well as Andrew Dismore ...

At this event Offord again avoided making any direct opposition to the real impact of the plans, or criticise the consultation process, but chose to waffle on about a couple of books he read, whilst claiming, as a reason to 'modernise' the service that people don't read books like they used to... Other people, you understand, not DR Offord, who is a gentleman, and a scholar.

Been a long time coming, then, hasn't it, this new found zeal by our MPs, for 'supporting' libraries - or rather looking for the least worst of the Tory options for cuts?

In the Ham & High, for some reason, possibly because it caters more to the better class of voter in Finchley &Golders Green, rather than the hoi poloi who read the local Times, Mike Freer is described, in the headline as joining Labour in 'slamming' the Tory library cuts plan.

Hmm. Much as Mrs Angry enjoys the thought of her MP 'slamming' anything his Tory chums on Barnet Council ever do, have done, or propose to do, in the past, in the present or in the world to come, she thinks this is not an accurate description of his position. Interesting, and unprecedented, but the timing?

His apparent conversion to the joy of libraries is welcome, and indeed his anxiety over the consultation process, but rather a surprise, considering he, and indeed his two parliamentary colleagues, have kept quiet about the library plans throughout, erm, the entire length of the consultation process, and waited until it was safely over to raise any 'concerns'.

As the article states:

Mr Freer has been criticised by Sarah Sackman, Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Finchley and Golders Green, for failing to speak publicly about the cuts until now and for not attending a public meeting about the threatened closure of Childs Hill Library.

And as Sarahsays in her blog:

We spoke out publicly against the proposals from the start. Proposals which would mean that in Finchley and Golders Green alone, libraries in Childs Hill, East Finchley and Golders Green would see staff cuts, reductions in space and closures. The community united against the Conservatives’ ill-thought out library policy. We collected petitions, ran street stalls and attended public meetings. We wouldn’t let up.

Then yesterday, after 3 months of near-silence and after the consultation had closed, your Conservative MP said what Labour has said from day one – that the consultation is flawed. Why? Because with a 10,000 signature-strong petition and public pressure mounting ahead of next week’s Extraordinary Council Meeting, it’s clear Mike Freer and his Conservative colleagues are panicking.

If the Tories in Barnet really think the consultation is flawed, do they support Labour’s motion to halt the cuts and go back to the drawing board?

On Tuesday there will be the next full council meeting, preceded by the 'extraordinary' meeting, at 7pm, called to consider a motion by Labour in regard to the library proposals, urging the Tory council to put aside the current plans and reconsider the plans which will cause such devastation, if approved.

A protest will take place from 6pm onwards: if you care about your local library service, this might be the time to come and join other residents to show your opposition to the Tory proposals.

And when it comes to 7th May, and the general election, you might like to think very carefully as to which candidates you really trust to fight, when it is right, and not when it suits them, for the issues which really concern the people of Broken Barnet.

Update Tuesday:

Shadow Minister for the Arts, Chris Bryant, visited Golders Green Library this morning with Sarah Sackman, and spoke to local residents about the importance of libraries - as well as, of course, to meet People's Mayor, Mr Shepherd, who brought to his attention the glaring absence of the Morning Star from all Barnet libraries, except Burnt Oak branch, where the British Soviet Friendship Group used to meet, apparently.

Mr Bryant was somewhat lost for words, but after a moment of further danger, when the conversation veered off to matters apertaining to the corporation of the City of London, always risky with Mr Shepherd, he managed to collect himself and put together a few interesting thoughts on the library issue - and to give his backing to Sarah.

You know the score by now.

A Full Council meeting at Hendon Town Hall.

Barnet's Tory councillors, gathered together before the altar of Thatcherism, underneath a portrait of Her Majesty the Queen, and, more importantly, beneath the benevolent gaze of the incumbent Mayor, called to give formal approval to the policies created in their name by the senior officers of the London Borough of Broken Barnet, Crapita, and a cohort of bloodsucking, council tax leeching private consultants.

Our Tory councillors barely feign interest in the issues on the agenda, more worried about the more important matter of whose turn it is next to be Mayor, and deputy Mayor, and Mayoress, and dress up in the moth eaten furs and faded velvet gown of office, ready for a year of smiling graciously at civic receptions, and patronising the residents of Broken Barnet.

This is their raison d'être, as councillors: the pinnacle of their political ambition - a sense of status, at last, an endorsement of their sense of self, a necessary end for a collection of small time working class conservatives living in the past, looking on in bewilderment at the modern world, and camarooned within their own party, unknowing, unacknowledged: an evolutionary bottleneck, the last of their kind, claws at the ready, and feathers bristling with pride,as they slide slowly into the antedeluvian sludge.

Goodnight, and goodbye.

We salute you, Tory councillors, of Broken Barnet: last night was your finest moment, and perhaps the end of days, for you, though you don't see it.

Last night's pantomime, a full council and budget setting meeting, was to be preceded by an Extraordinary Meeting, which sounds more promising than it really is - called by the Labour opposition in an attempt to persuade our doltish Tory councillors to amend the budget, so as to spare the axe on our library service.

The proposals to cut libraries, shut libraries, shrink libraries, squeeze them until the last book jumps off the last shelf, into a waiting skip, and they can sell a collection of vastly profitable properties for development - all this has, predictably to all but said Tory councillors, caused uproar in Broken Barnet, even unto the very heartland of their own natural born voters - a consequence now leading our three Tory MPs, Theresa Villiers, Mike Freer and Matthew Offord to be quivering with fear, on the brink as we are of the general election, and forcing them on to a desperate, unprecedented course of actually forming an opinion on a local political issue - and then expressing it.

Villiers, Freer and Offord have now, at the end of the consultation period, weighed up their chances of being re-elected and realised that they are now, and have always been, dedicated defenders of the library service about to be destroyed by their Tory colleagues. We therefore arrived at the Town Hall, last night, wondering if this declaration of concern would hold any weight with our councillors.

Further speculation regarding the outcome of the meeting centred around the slender majority, of one, that the Tories now hold. As Mrs Angry had discovered, one of our Tory councillors was missing: the globetrotting young councillor for Hampstead Garden Suburb, Danny Seal, who once objected to Mrs Angry describing him as not being the brightest button in the box of Barnet Tories, on offer, and shoved to the back of the drawer as that box would be, in the bargain basement of political haberdashery.

Cllr Seal was very lucky to be reselected last year, due to his record of not showing up for council meetings, but as he told Mrs Angry at the election count, he had promised to reform, and attend every meeting, and be a very good boy. Nice boy, he undoubtedly is, but his attendance record this time round has been terrible: a 53% absence rate. This is simply not good enough, for someone paid £10,000 of taxpayers' hard earned dosh simply to turn up to a few meetings - and potentially fatal for his own party's administration.

Foolishly he also insists on drawing attention to his own absences by tweeting non stop about his travels, under the impression anyone is interested in which airport lounge he is sitting, at any given moment. This weekend it was El Prat. No, obviously Mrs Angry could not resist. But, oh dear: El Prat remained in Spain, rather than return for the crucial meeting, which meant the outcome would hang on the casting vote of the Mayor - unless any of the Tories recovered the use of their consciences, and voted against the group whip.

Outside the Town Hall at 6pm, residents and campaigners started to arrive, en masse, detemined to show to their elected representatives their determination to retain the library service we all care for so much.

Residents of all ages and backgrounds, campaigners from across the borough, who have been so well organised by the indefatigable Polly Napper, and Alasdair Hill, Labour councillors, Labour candidates, Sarah Sackman, Andrew Dismore, and Amy Trevethan - and of course, Mr Shepherd, the People's Mayor - were in attendance, the gravity of the occasion marked by the number of bags of clippings Mr Shepherd felt were required: the usual two bag rating upped to a four bag level.

Earlier in the week, the People's Mayor had complained, at some length, to Chris Bryant, Shadow Minister for the Arts, on a visit to Golders Green library to support Sarah Sackman, about the absence of the Morning Star from all but one Barnet library. Burnt Oak took it, he explained, but only because the British Soviet Friendship group used to meet there.

Some residents brought posters, with choice of quotes only people on a library protest would think of: quotes from Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future - and from a Patti Smith song - People have the Power: to redeem the work of fools.

Which was to be something of a motif of the evening to come. Or at least an aspiration. They like aspiration, don't they, Tories?

Other residents brought books. Mrs Angry was amused to see this choice, by one resident, of two books that may not naturally appeal to our Tory councillors.

True, they are naturally disposed to a dismissal of the working classes as 'Chavs', an underclass, and a problem to be removed from the boundaries of Broken Barnet, but the Kama Sutra?

None of them would have the inclination, the imagination - or the stamina, Mrs Angry would guess. Let alone the opportunity.

As night fell, a huge crowd continued to gather outside, yet, unusually for this sort of meeting, there was no waiting minibus full of police, or crash barriers. Had they been told to play down the risk of barricade storming, teetering as we are, on the brink of an election?

Funnily enough, despite their recent embrace of radical, grass roots campaigning, our three MPs were conspicuous by their absence.

Mrs Angry entered the Town Hall with some Labour councillors, and slipped into the public gallery, to read through the agenda and get ready for the meeting. After a while a member of the security staff came in, very embarrassed and apologised, saying that the Mayor had instructed him to tell Mrs Angry to get out.

Mrs Angry was not very pleased, and politely pointed out a. that she was there as a journalist and b. that if the Mayor had a problem with this, he was very welcome to come and tell her himself that she should leave, and try to make her - and then he might like to explain to her, and then Eric Pickles, exactly how this was compliant with the guidance from the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government on access to council meetings for journalists, and citizen journalists?

For some reason, the Mayor was too scared to come and face Mrs Angry, and she remained in her place, accompanied by a couple of Tory activists who appeared not to have had any trouble from the Mayor, or indeed anyone else.

The Extraordinary Meeting kicked off with a speech from Labour leader Alison Moore, who spoke of her love of reading (it's all the rage, you know, that sort of thing) - and the excitement of finding a book that catches the imagination. A book that catches the imagination ... Mrs Angry's too easily distracted mind began to wander ...

Pull yourself together, Mrs Angry.

The Labour proposal was an amendment to the budget which was reasonable enough: to get the Tories to stop, pull back from the brink and think again before agreeing to such a devastating round of library cuts.

Time for the architect of those shameful plans to speak: Reuben Thompstone, the member who was responsible for trying to impose cuts in funding for respite care for disabled children, straight after the Tories boasted of their pre election gesture of a cut in council tax, giving back 23 pence a week to residents, but of course necessitating a slash in budget elsewhere.

This, readers, is the ugly face of Barnet Conservatism.

Thompstone has once more been passed the poisoned chalice and tasked with the destruction of the borough's library service.

Ah: as Brian Coleman (remember him?) used to say - cometh the hour, cometh the man.

And there he stood before us, the angel of destruction, Cllr Thompstone, his voice, interestingly, betraying a certain amount of nervousness, and looking straight ahead, trying to pretend he was at a school assembly and not taking an axe to one of the best library services in the country. He talked of a 'misunderstanding', and suggested, with the grasp of a man with an intellect of infinite subtlety, or had read the thought in an article, somewhere, that libraries were an emotive issue.

Jack Cohen, who can't help being a Libdem, and carries it off better than anyone might be expected to, in the circumstances, made a rather better speech: as well as pointing out with barely concealed contempt that protecting the library service had been part of the Tories own election manifesto (promised myself I wouldn't mention Nick Clegg, and student loans here, Jack, so - I won't), he observed that overwhelmingly, people want to the council to think again - even the three local Tory MPs. And he noted that the decision to cut libraries in this way is, as must be admitted, a political decision, rather than one based on economic need.

Labour's Anne Hutton asked the Tories to please stop and reconsider, to look at other options, to try an holistic approach, to undertake a real consultation, to find what people really want. Of course it is true, as she said, that the Tories would rather not know.

The Mayor had clearly been expecting some sort of outrage from the public gallery by now - a fair enough assumption, on past form, but people were biding their time. At least they were until Rayner resorted to type, and decided, patronisingly, to tell the members of the public present - 'without being patronising', that they were behaving awfully well, by not interrupting. This did the trick, of course: stirring the masses into rebellion.

But first the matter of the vote on the Labour amendment. Labour members voted for it, of course, each proudly holding up a book, as they did so. The Tories voted against, of course, and did not hold up books, of course, as most of them are barely literate.

Thanks to Danny Seal disporting himself in Barcelona, the Tory majority was lost, and the outcome depended on the casting vote of Mr Mayor.

You can see from the footage below how events transpired: following an intervention from the People's Mayor, Mr Shepherd, and a reference regarding his fellow Mayor's interesting role as landlord, Rayner smiled graciously, and then launched himself into a constitutional minefield.

He voted. But ... he voted with the opposition.

We all looked at him.

He looked at us.

He then realised what he had done: and so did we, and then the chamber erupted: he had allowed the amendment to pass.

We stood and applauded him, the gallery and Labour councillors, unable to believe what had just happened

As soon as he realised what he had done, Rayner tried to retract it: he had made a mistake, he blurted out, as the opposition and members of the public in the gallery howled at him.

Did the vote still stand? No one knew.

They bluffed it out, eventually.

If you recall, Barnet disposed of all the experienced governance officers, and legal officers, and the much criticised appointment of a monitoring officer who had no legal qualifications had proved to be a serious error, but was addressed merely with the 'interim', part time replacement of a fill in from Westminster Council, Mr Large, who later on in the proceedings appeared to be under the misapprehension that the council is run on a Cabinet system.

The Mayor forced the proceedings to continue as if the matter of the vote was of no significance, whereas the matter really needed legal and constitutional advice, and clarification. At this point it was clear that the devastating findings of the investigation into Barnet's legal services by Claer Lloyd-Jones are still not being taken seriously by the Tory administration.

As confusion held sway in the chamber, the doors suddenly burst open, and a crowd of people from the overflow public gallery began to force their way onto the floor, shouting angrily about the Mayor's refusal to stand by his first vote, and calling for him to resign.

Pandemonium: we all looked on in amazement. Again, no one seemed to know what to do, and an impasse ensued, a stand off, with the group of protestors refusing to move. The Mayor got up and swept out, chased out of the chamber.

It was hard not to think of another annual budget meeting, five years ago, in which, in order to prevent any embarrassing scenes of this nature, our Tory councillors had used their illegally operating, unlicensed, non contractually appointed private security firm to physically bar ordinary members of the public from the gallery - and allowed them to film Mrs Angry and others with hidden cameras ... Some Tory councillors probably wished MetPro were still running the show, no doubt.

It seems the police were called, but considered the event, unsurprisingly, to be of low priority and took the long way round to get to the Town Hall, in order to silence the voice of democracy. In fact Mrs Angry did not see any arrive at all, and the residents in the chamber made their own decision when to leave, which was not for some time.

In the meanwhile, chaos continued not amongst their members, but in the chamber, as councillors and senior officers appeared unable to act, or decide how to proceed. Labour's Kath Mc Gurk, at one point, sat down in the Mayor's seat, and attempted to call the meeting to order, much to the fury of certain senior officers, who of course are rather more used to running the council, than councillors.

Tory councillor Brian Salinger snarled across the chamber towards the public gallery that he had seen nothing like it, since the 80s, and the days of the 'looney left'. The Town Hall chamber of Broken Barnet is, of course, strictly reserved for the exclusive use of the swivel eyed loons of the Tory party, and clearly Salinger felt deeply affronted, as we shall see.

Eventually the meeting resumed, and became the proper, full council. The Mayor swept back in, and his chaplain fumbled though a rather odd opening prayer, pleading with the Lord to help the people of Barnet to work in 'such harmony' in 'home and housekeeping', to set 'such an example'to other boroughs, and demonstrate that the 'impossible will be possible'.

And then, God help us, or not: the single most important item on the evening's agenda. No, not the budget, or indeed the library cuts ... the nomination for Mayor, of course. This is the single most important issue to Barnet Tory councillors, at any meeting - for them it is the absolute apogee of their political lives.

Clearly no one could bring to the role of Mayor of Broken Barnet anything quite matching the unassailable integrity and dignity of Councillor Hugh Rayner, so it was very difficult choice for the Tories. This time, they went for the only male councillor who is not either very very old, or very very young, ie dashing ex hedge banker Mark Shooter, who started off so promisingly, being rebellious, standing in a leadership contest, buying Mrs Angry drinks in the Greyhound, passing on scurrilous stories about his colleagues. But now: he has been well and truly tamed, and brought to heel, and rewarded for his good behaviour by being made Mayor.

Maureen Braun, in true Barnet Tory matron style, nominated her ward colleague, apparently on the basis of being a. young (relative to Cllr Braun, who is verging on the prehistoric), b. having a 'USP' (it might have been 'USB', but if so, it was unclear as to where, exactly, you would plug it in), and c. being 'fit'.

Mrs Angry and her neighbour in the public gallery had an urgent whispered discussion, at this point, as to whether or not Mark Shooter is, or is not, fit. And I'm not telling you what the conclusion was.

Councillor Finn seconded the nomination, giving a speech consisting of an interminable joke, which, Cllr Devra Kay suggested to Mrs Angry, was the sort of thing an uncle would bore the guests with, at his nephew's barmitzvah.

Time for the Labour nomination, which of course stood no chance.

One of Mrs Angry's councillors, Ross Houston, was proposing another of Mrs Angry's councillors, Kath Mc Gurk. Kath, as he reminded us, had served as a Labour member for 21 years. He described her as quick witted, speaking with passion, a hard working single mother: the Red Queen of Finchley, educated at that wonderful Finchley school, St Michael's which, he naughtily observed, had produced not only Kath, and Tory activist Vanessa Gearson, but ... Theresa Musgrove. The Tories looked appalled - as if they wanted to make immediate plans to put the school in special measures - and then it was time for the vote, and of course Mark Shooter won.

No longer possible to put it off any longer: it was time for library campaigner Alasdair Hill to present the 9,000 strong petition, and make a speech urging the Tories to reconsider their terrible proposals for our libraries which were, Alasdair reminded us, temples of civic society, and vital to all sections of our community, young and old,the frail and disabled.

He mentioned a number of Tory councillors who have been giving assurances to their residents that they opposed the library cuts - but still vote for the options to go forward, and so step forward, Councillors Sury Khatri, Helena Hart, and Lisa Rutter. Rutter even went so far as to sign the petition, as Mrs Angry reminded her in a timely heckle during the meeting. But what these councillors say, and do, are entirely different things. Remember that, when your library closes, and then again, when they seek your vote in the next local elections: all of the Tory councillors, because not one of them has had the integrity to stand up for what they know residents want, and expect them to defend.

Labour now proposed another way forward: the setting up of a commission, similar to their Housing Commission, a cross party body to try to resolve the issues at stake. It was of course rejected.

The meeting drifted on. Tory 'leader' Richard Cornelius was told by the Mayor that he had 15 minutes to speak on the Budget. Oh God, no, said Mrs Angry, rather louder than she meant. Too much for anyone to bear: starting with a statement proclaiming the Coalition government to be a great success - although, observed our Richard, in his ineffable style, he had always thought of Libdems as 'fluffy bunnies'.

The spectre of Jeremy Thorpe suddenly rose before Mrs Angry's eyes, just for a moment, and bunnies going to France, and all sorts of things the Libdems would rather we forgot, for some reason, and then, whoosh, we were off again, boasting about Barnet's marvellous housing record, and then, oops, expressing gratitude to Labour for supporting Tory policies. On next to a consideration of Hilary Benn: a two dimensional version of Eric Pickles, sneered Cornelius.

Something to drive Eric Pickles wild with jealousy ...

Hmm. Not sure how many dimensions Eric has, in his earthly manifestation. More than the average, for sure.

Now then: time for Labour. There had been talk of Labour supporting the Tory budget, at which point, in the interests of balance, Mrs Angry would have been ready with a range of heckled insults, but now we heard that the Labour leader was proposing merely not to offer an alternative budget. She did however make a range of perfectly valid suggestions as to where else the Tories could find savings, rather than cutting services like our libraries.

Jack Cohen, the only surviving Libdem on the council, had his turn, pointing out the waste of public money by a Tory 'slash & burn' administration that fails to have any system of checks and balances of its dealings with Crapita, for example: the matter of the £16m 'investment' which was in the end not an upfront investment from them at all, but the sum we paid Crapita, meant to be for IT - where did it go? They don't know. Why don't they cut political assistants, councillors' allowances by £1,000, and dump the extravagant waste of £100,000 on the mayoralty, and 'the flummery of office'?

Time for deputy leader Dan Thomas to have his say. As usual he had sat bolt upright throughout the meeting, watching the proceedings with his cool regard, and smiling. Now with his usual fully automated delivery of true blue tory polemics, completely detached from anything approaching the reality of life for most residents of this borough, he told us about the wonderful new massive Brent Cross development agreement just made with Argent, with whom, he said, and he may well have been blushing, we have 'a new relationship'.

Of course if any of our Tory councillors had ever borrowed a library book, thought Mrs Angry, and sneaked out that copy of the Kama Sutra, they might better understand what sort of positions,and indeed contortions, will be required of us, in the expression of this new relationship, as we have endured with Barratts, in West Hendon. The Ass, or the Elephant - in or out of the room? (Warning, the latter position not for plus size men, apparently. Not looking at anyone in particular, Eric).

Will we, I wonder, be sealing this new partnership with gifts, as in the handing over to Barratts of three areas of land worth £12 million, exchanged for the token payment of £3.00? (See next post for more on this).

Thomas waffled on, lost in a wonderland of new development, a brave new world for people like him. People are being evicted from their homes, yelled Mrs Angry, in an attempt to penetrate his complacency: a waste of time, of course.

Labour's Barry Rawlings spoke of the Tory attitude, and referred to what he described as 'a diversion from the truth'. He mustn't use the word lie, he said. Oh go on, thought Mrs Angry: tell it like it is, for once.

But the meeting had now descended into the ditchwater of Tory delusions: and a debate that was not a debate, but voices speaking into a void, a vacuum, in an hermetically sealed chamber, safe from the toxic air of reality the rest of us depend on, here in Broken Barnet.

That this meeting took place in a state of such incompetence was one thing: that the Tories regard the process of democracy as nothing more than a ceremonial requirement is clear: the predictable absence by one councillor, repeatedly tolerated by the party leadership, an elected member who has only been to 47% of the meetings he is paid to attend, says much about their attitude.

They wonder why residents are driven to burst into their own council chamber, and yell, and wave library books at their elected representatives, in that very British way of demonstrating. It's not the storming of the Winter Palace, but it speaks of something gone awfully wrong in the life of our local democracy

But the final insult to the democratic process in this borough was demonstrated perfectly by another councillor: long serving Tory member Brian Salinger, a former leader, who, during budget speeches by opposition councillors, deliberately took out a golfing magazine and made a great show of reading it, to show his contempt for the proceedings, sandwiched between equally bored Tory colleagues:

Unfortunately for him, a photo was taken, and tweets by Mrs Angry and Councillor Devra Kay spotted by a journalist from the Mirror, who then producedthis story .

From kama sutra to instant karma, in one evening.

This is Broken Barnet.

There is nothing else to say.

Where we see a community, they see nothing more than a collection of individuals, representing a problem to be resolved: an obstruction to be removed.

Mrs Angry is now taking a break from blogging. Normal service may be resumed, as and when.

Eric Pickles: pic courtesy of the Guardian

In the course of the Inquiry into the compulsory purchase orders of homes in the doomed West Hendon estate, one thing above all else became absolutely clear: the fatal absence of information central to the matter under review; an omission that was deliberate, strategic - and fundamentally wrong.

That information was the viability report, the original basis for agreement between Barnet Council and Barratts in regard to the latest, bastardised version of what had originally been intended to be, many years previously, under a Labour council, a genuine programme of regeneration, but has now become a massively profitable private development, using public land, land which we know now to have been given away, not sold.

I say not sold: in fact that is unfair. Three parcels of land were bought for £1 each, for a site valued at the time as being worth more than £12 million.

This 'Poundland' deal secured for Barratts a unique opportunity for a private development on the edge of the beautiful Welsh Harp reservoir, a Site of Special Scientific Interest, fringed by open space, a sanctuary in the otherwise relentlessly urban landscape of this area of north west London.

A unique opportunity, of course, that has been achieved by default, or rather by stealth, smuggled through the gates of scrutiny like the Trojan horse, in the guise of a scheme meant to improve the local community, but which in fact will destroy that community, raze it to the ground, to be replaced by luxury housing, luring overseas investment or those fortunate few able to afford the non 'affordable' price of properties, and neatly facilitating the Tory agenda of gerrymandering the poorer, Labour voting areas of the borough out of existence.

How did we get to this point? We went into the process of the Inquiry knowing only that we did not know, well, what we did not know: the details of the agreement between Barnet and Barratts, and in particular the nature of the viability study. Requests for this information had always been rebutted, and now at the Inquiry, when the Inspector was asked to demand the release of the study, the consistent argument against doing so from Barnet and Barratts, a line stoutly maintained by their counsel, was that this information was not relevant.

At the same time, however, the developers and the local authority insisted the compulsory purchase order for the properties in West Hendon were absolutely essential to - ah, yes: the viability of the scheme.

Phase 3, the stage involving these three bargain basement pieces of land, was itself essential to the success - for that read profitability - of the entire development.

So: we were not entitled to know the details of the 'viability' they claimed was so perilous, yet the Inquiry was expected simply to take the word of developers and the council that this was the case, and feel sympathy with their plight, acting as they were, as pioneers in the brave new world of faux regeneration.

This desperate need to secure the 'order lands' was the real driving force behind the merciless treatment of leaseholders and tenants on the estate, and the issue of York Memorial Park was crucial to the matter too: it was necessary, from the point of view of the development, to set about denying the historical significance of the area in question, just as surely as it was to demolish the properties which stand in the way of Barratt's profiteering.

As the Inquiry hearings finished, and Inspector Zoe Hill went off with her library of core documents, sans viability study, one or two of us, who had sat through the two weeks of the process with rapidly mounting suspicions, decided to submit Freedom of Information requests for information relating to the development. The recent ruling by the ICO in favour of enforcing the publication of a similar viability report regarding Greenwich Council was encouragement enough to ask for what should have already have been in the public domain, and certainly should have been available to the Inquiry.

West Hendon Councillor Adam Langleben made a request to Barnet Council: and Mrs Angry made two, one to Barnet, and the other to the Department of Communities and Local Government, expecting, as was to prove the case, that the outcome in terms of response on broadly the same subject would be different, depending on the varying sensitivities of the respective bodies.

To Barnet Council:

Please send me copies of the letter and enclosures of August 7th 2013, sent by Barnet Council to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, and referred to in a letter of 25th September, by a Ms Karen Rose, applying for consent to dispose of land at West Hendon.

Please send me copies of any other correspondence relating to the disposal, to or from DCLG and Barnet Council.

This arrived with some redactions of names, and a dozen or so documents, some of which were inocuous enough, maps and notices already seen. These appeared to be padding, in fact, and possibly meant to fill the gap of other material held but not disclosed, as we shall see.

To the Department of Communities and Local Government, then, a request asking for:

Copies of all correspondence between the DCLG and Barnet Council regarding the disposal of land in West Hendon, which received consent in September 2013, and any memoranda or related documents, including such as may be from, to or by the Secretary of State.

So: broadly the same request, although oddly, the more specific one to Barnet failed to winkle out the correspondence referred to regarding the letter of 27th September, whereas DCLG sent what I had asked Barnet for, but did not receive: curious, is it not? Still, the belt and braces approach seemed to be quite effective, even if not all information has - as yet - been released.

As to the material sent from Barnet Council, the most obviously interesting document was a Development Appraisal from the Valuation Office Agency, dated July 20th, 2013full of stuff about such things as the 'Standalone Development', and grandly sub-headed, 'The West Hendon Masterplan' ...

Aha ... The Masterplan.

Yes: full of interesting details about the projected costs, fees - profit. And 'assumptions'. Masterplans tend to be built on a foundation of 'assumptions', don't they? Or delusions of grandeur.

Hard for a mathematical eejit like Mrs Angry to interpret these figures, and indeed they required reading, and re-reading, and a lot of head scratching, and checking with some of the more numerate bloggers of Broken Barnet, before she could be quite sure that some of those numbers, hidden so innocently on the page, amongst the costs for road works, and stamp duty, were, after all, the truly incendiary facts underlying this development.

The 'net realisation' of the 'regeneration' is estimated at £510, 516,436. 00.

The costs, including the architect's fee, at a stonking 8%, or £17,061,782.00, nearly £7 million more than the amount paid to the council as Section 106 funding, come to £418,182,108.00.

This means - and this is where you may wish to reach for your hankie, and dab your eyes - the hard pressed developers, or so we are told, will be making a profit of - of only ... £92,234,108.00.

Don't know about you, but when engaged in cobbling together a luxury housing development on public land, given away for £3, and masquerading as the regeneration of a council estate in West Hendon, Mrs Angry doesn't even consider getting out of bed for anything under £93 million.

The very thought.

Barratts, therefore, must be congratulated for being prepared to build their ghastly, 32 storey hideouts for all those Russian 'oligarchs', out of favour, doomed to live in exile amongst the kebab shops of West Hendon, instead of the saltmines in Siberia.

Harsh.

Almost an act of charity, you might say, by these developers - or a demonstration of philanthropic devotion in the field of housing comparable only to Mr Peabody, or our own local heroine, here in Finchley: that pioneer of affordable housing, Octavia Hill.

Mmm.

Of course presumably £92,234, 108.00 is only an 'assumption'. You never know, with a bit of luck, property values being, as they have been since then, on an upwards direction, maybe they might just be able to screw a little more profit from all that effort. More like £92,234, 109.00.

But then, hang on ... let's skip forward to the last document released, a Market Value report for Phase 3, prepared for the Valuation Office by DVS, the District Valuer Service, this is, we are informed 'to establish the market value for a proposed disposal of less than best consideration ...'

And here was another calmly listed set of figures, which again required reading, and re-reading, and not so much head scratching as a reaction of stupefied disbelief.

The three parcels of land that are required by Phase 3 of the scheme are valued as follows:

Phase 3 (i) - Unrestricted Value: £3,100,000

The unrestricted value:£1.

Phase 3(ii) - Unrestricted Value: £8,890,000

Restricted value: £1.

Phase3(iii) - Unrestricted Value:£325,000

Restricted Value: £1.

All three parcels of land had 'nil value' declared in regard to the 'voluntary conditions'.

Unrestricted value, we are told, is 'similar' to market value ... 'but includes the amount that a special purchaser may be willing to pay' ...

Of course that does not specify whether or not the definition of 'special purchaser' means one who wants a value below market value. Restricted value, ie the Poundland price? And what about those 'voluntary conditions'?

According to this, the valuation of £1 for each piece of land reflects the voluntary conditions by which Barnet will benefit from the disposal at less than best consideration ... voluntary conditions that we are told have 'nil value'. Oh.

Confused? Me too. Because on face value, if one dares to use the term, it would appear to indicate that we have given Barratts the land for £3 rather than £12 million, for no financial benefit.

Well, perhaps Mrs Angry has misunderstood.

The second parcel of land, by the way, though you wouldn't know it from the description, includes York Park - York Memorial Park, the open space which commemorates the many civilian lives lost in the terrible bombing of February 1941.

Worth, in financial terms, around £9 million.

In terms of social history, and the significance to a community being violated and destroyed in a campaign rather more effective than the one perpetrated by the Luftwaffe: beyond estimation.

Sold to Barratts for £1.

(And here is a curious thing: the document which show the notice published - in a way most people would not have seen it - in July 2013, for the disposal of York Park is in the name of the then Director for, oh dear: 'Place', Pam Wharfe, now departed from Barnet. Curious because her name, given as formal authorisation, is misspelt, twice, on the notice, in big letters, as Wharf).

We have been told by Barnet Council that the land was given away because of the marvellous deal offered by Barratts, to supply, within their private development, some affordable housing, and also that this deal was only possible if the land was given away, due to the viability of the scheme, and the need for the developers to make sufficient profit from the scheme.

The extract above, from the Application, and disclosed by DCLG, is blaming the requirement to deliver affordable housing for the developers' insistence on the land being 'transferred' to them for the price of only £3.

It may be that Mrs Angry is naive, and not grasping the point here, but it does seem that £92 million profit, plus presumably grants from central government, and tax free conditions that accompany so called regeneration projects have created a deal which entirely favours the developers, and not the taxpayers of the London Borough of Broken Barnet, whose land, worth at least £12 million, has been so easily disposed of. Paying market value, or at least the unrestricted value, would still have left them with a few quid in the bank, wouldn't it?

And as Cllr Langleben has pointed out here:

... as you will see, the point I am making is that in a world where Barnet Council didn’t own the land – Barratt would have had to cough up 20% anyway – but in the case of West Hendon they didn’t even have to pay for the land and they are still only providing basically half of the Council’s affordable housing target and most importantly – in line with developments nearby like Pulse where the land was bought at full market value.

Caught in the middle of this bargain basement giveaway are the people of West Hendon, the tenants and leaseholders being forced from their homes, after living for years on a building site, their lives made hell, unable to sell up and go, unable to find secure accommodation, their amenities taken from them, their local park built on, their community destroyed, and every promise made to them at the time of the original agreement broken.

The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government - or his representatives - has allowed the local authority in Barnet to destroy a local community, in fact, on the basis of a scheme put to him as representing something that has not happened: the provision of affordable housing to which residents already living there had a right to access.

To look at the documents released by FOI requests, and indeed listening to the jabbering of Tory councillors even now, we can see quite clearly that there was an expectation of residents on the estate transferring to the new properties, the Tory leader as recently as last month claimed that this would be the case. Yet as we heard over and over again at the Inquiry, leaseholders are effectively barred from the new housing because the council's Capita supplied valuers absolutely refused to give a valuation of their homes that was sufficiently high to enable them to apply for shared equity for any property, despite evidence submitted that indicates the Capita values are below market rate.

The crucial point here then is whether or not the Secretary of State or any of his officials at DCLG dealing with the application to dispose of the three parcels of land, for the knockdown price of £3, was assured that residents' ability to take up the offer of rehousing in the development had been safeguarded.

If such undertakings were made, then clearly the Secretary of State was misled: if not, why did he, or his junior minister, knowingly approve the action?

Well: it should be the case that, in the interests of transparency, of course, the reasoning behind the approval of the cutprice disposal is in the public domain, to allay any fears by local taxpayers that the deal does not represent value for money.

After all, Eric: you keep banging on about localism, and empowering communities: did you mean only empowering middle class, Tory voting communities, after all?

And do the people of West Hendon not have the right to take an informed part in the process of consultation that affects their lives to such a profound degree, and is now destroying that community, by default, by stealth, and by your leave?

Who took these decisions? On whose advice?

What do the documents released in the FOI tell us?

Oh dear.

When it comes to anything touching on this sensitive matter, guess what? It has been refused, or redacted. The response informs Mrs Angry that some information has been withheld because:

... there is a need to protect the safe policy space for recommendations to be considered. This exception can apply to information in whatever form it may take including memos, notes of meetings or emails and can include submissions i.e. consideration templates to ministers in government departments, information passed between officials in the course of their duties, internal minutes and briefs. Therefore we have redacted any recommendations, considerations or non-factual information, though factual information has been released.

The response continues:

In this case disclosure of the information you have requested would be the disclosure of advice that was provided to Ministers and which they were able to take into account in reaching a decision. The public interest is of course served by knowing that the advice that has been provided to Ministers is accurate and appropriate.

However, the Department must also consider that there is a very strong public interest in ensuring that Ministers can receive advice from officials within an appropriate degree of private thinking space. Whilst it may be appropriate to disclose factual information that provides an informed background to Ministers, it may not be appropriate to disclose actual advice, which may include the recommendation that officials have made.

We consider that this changes the need for Ministers to be able to receive advice and guidance from officials in the knowledge that it will remain within an appropriate degree of private thinking space, unless there is an at least comparably strong public interest in releasing that advice. We believe that it is particularly important that officials have the space within which to advise Ministers on sensitive and challenging issues without being constrained by the knowledge that the advice may subsequently be challenged in public. Ministers must also have the freedom to disagree, if that is their conclusion, with the recommendations and advice given.

A private space, for thinking. A safe space.

Rather a nice idea, isn't it? Shades of Virginia Woolf, a Room of One's Own: a virtual chaise longue on which Eric Pickles may recline, with a box of chocolates & a glass of sherry, thinking awfully hard, but in a private way, safely and blissfully unaccountable to the beastly spoilsports and nosy parkers who want to know why their council is giving away free land to private developers.

Hmm. Is this good enough, from the department run by the man who says he wants local government to be accountable to the people who pay the council tax that funds it? No, frankly, it is not, and of course Mrs Angry has objected to the withholding of this vital information, and will take it to the ICO, in due course, if they persist in stonewalling.

Was Pickles even briefed, formally, or informally, on West Hendon, or was it all decided by junior ministers and officials? We do not know.

In the meanwhile, we must make do with some redacted documents, including a letter sent on the 20th September 2013 to planning minister Nick Boles, from someone (name redacted) at the National Planning Casework Unit.

Issue: Whether to grant London Borough of Barnet consent.

This tells Mr Boles the sad story - get that hankie out again - sniff, that if the developers are not given the land for free, and a social housing grant of £5.5 million, they will incur a loss of £18 million. What they call 'a high level of affordable homes', needed to 'decant' those pesky residents, is what is to blame, see?

Never mind that secure tenants and their children are being packed into a horrible building outside the boundary of the luxury development, in a holding area overlooking the grimy backyards and businesses of the Edgware Road.

Or that the estate has been deliberately filled with non secure tenants living for years on temporary contracts, to minimise their rights to rehousing.

Or that leaseholders were about to be hammered with ten thousand pound bills for maintenance the authority has failed to implement.

Or that those same leaseholders, who did the thing our Tory councillors so admire, aspired to 'better' themselves, and join the property owning classes, were shortly to find no one cared when they pointed out the council's valuation of their homes, by Capita, for Capita, conveniently made sure they were unable to obtain a new home on the development?

And Mrs Angry is still puzzled by the figures here. Subtract £18 million, from £92 million, and ... that leaves, erm ...? Quite a lot of money, doesn't it?

Especially when you consider that Barratts announced recently announced pre tax profits rising from £120 million last year, to £210 million this year ...

And this complaint about having to provide a high level of affordable homes: you sure that was accurate advice? Compared to similar schemes in the borough, for which land was not given away in a Poundland deal?

Anyway, Mrs Angry, you are asking, what was the outcome of this letter, and the advice given?

It was as follows:

Oh well. And of course although we do not know what was said here, we also do not know what else we do not know, in terms of withheld memos, notes, emails, phone calls, minutes, and briefs, do we?

Eric Pickles is awfully keen on transparency in the Town Hall, of course -but his own department is able to wriggle free of this requirement when it suits.

Well, let's see about that, shall we?

The exemption from the FOI request being cited is on the grounds that they may withhold the information if the public interest in doing so outweighs the public interest in disclosing it.

Quite clearly this excuse is utterly spurious, and the real reason for not releasing the material is political sensitivity.

This is simply unacceptable, and the information must be put in the public domain, so that we can see exactly why and how the residents of the West Hendon estate came to be cheated and betrayed in the course of this development.

This is a scheme that has become a perfect example of the lie that is 'regeneration', the worst illustration of the many ways in which Conservative housing policy, and the mythology of localism, are failing the ordinary people of this borough, this city, this country, in so many communities: from Broken Barnet, to Broken Britain - it's a long journey, and a desperate ending, for all of us.

Greetings, friends from the MoD. Maybe use a proxy server, in future - slightly more discreet.

As you will know, Mrs Angry has a pet theory about the curious, seemingly unstoppable sequence of extraordinary events, here in Broken Barnet: one that depends on a pysycho-geographical interpretation of the world, charged with the power of a legacy our Tory politicians would rather deny, and destroy.

Our history, and our heritage - the story of the people who have lived here, and left something that survives and defies, somehow, the new order of things in this borough: the selling of our land into bondage to profit, a hostage to market forces, and the easy prey of private development.

The small rebellions which occur, from time to time, seem to take place in strategic points of the map of our borough. West Hendon, caught between Watling Street and the Welsh Harp: the occupation of the People's Library, Margaret Thatcher House, on the road that cuts across from Barnet to Finchley: the downfall of Brian Coleman, the occupation of the Bohemia, on the Great North Road ... and now on the same route, the evictions, and the occupation, of Sweets Way, in Whetstone.

Whetstone itself is of symbolic significance, of course: you can still see the stone itself, outside a public house, some say it was where the men fighting in the Battle of Barnet sharpened their swords. A more prosaic explanation is that it was a stepping stone for travellers from the coaching inn that once stood there. But as in all these things, the power is in what people believe, rather than what is true.

On the eastern side of the Great North Road, in Whetstone, a Mr Sweet once had a large hothouse nursery, growing grapes and tomatoes, and cucumbers, having been apprenticed to a Mr Kay, whose nursery in Squires Lane, along the road from Mrs Angry, has disappeared except for the high brick wall that once sheltered his own vineyard. According to one account from 1901, the young Mr Sweet used to look up at the trees at Hampstead Heath, and feel that if he could not become associated with Nature in a more or less intimate manner, he would not succeed at anything. Eventually he settled in Whetstone, built his glasshouses, and became known as 'father of the modern hothouse nursery business'.

During the second World War, this land was requisitioned by the army, and post war became the site of a housing development for military families, an estate in modest grey brick, but fringed still with a number of trees, which soften the effect of the subdued architecture, and lend an air of quiet to the area. Are they Mr Sweet's trees? Hard to tell, but it seems as if they might well be. And Sweets Way is a community of roads built on a human scale, family sized houses: exactly the sort of housing we need for families in need of a home, at an affordable rent, in our borough.

Evicted residents of Sweets Way, and Jasmine Stone, from E15

In which case, you might reasonably ask, why have these houses been emptied of their tenants, in some cases their belongings forcibly removed, by bailiffs, thrown on the streets, the properties secured and the families who lived there left without homes to go to?

Well, yes, of course: this is Broken Barnet, and Sweets Way is one of the last enclaves of social housing, or indeed any realistic definition of affordable housing, in the hugely affluent ward of Totteridge, represented by ... the local Tory council leader Richard Cornelius - and his wife.

The housing itself is owned by Annington Homes, a company which in 1996 secured a deal with the Ministry of Defence in which for £1.6 billion, it acquired 57,000 homes used to accommodate serving members of the armed forces and their families, leasing them back to the MoD, and selling on those homes considered surplus to requirements. This agreement was to prove somewhat controversial, over the years which followed, with complaints about the standard of accommodation and cost of renting back the properties, and becoming the subject of a parliamentary report in 2007.

Sweets Way has been used in the last few years as social housing for up to 80 families, some on long term temporary accommodation arrangements, of the sort we have seen at West Hendon, denying people the full protection of secure tenancy, and making them easier to dispose of - to decant', when they themselves become 'surplus to requirement'. Their homes are now to be demolished, to make way for a new development approved by Barnet Council last December, after a previous one, a very similar one, was turned down just a couple of months before the local elections of last year.

Barnet Council has had plenty of time to arrange for the families of Sweets Way to be given alternative accommodation, but has failed to do so with any semblance of competence. This has led to terrible outcomes for some families, evicted like tenants in the Irish famine, emptied out onto the streets, their possessions dumped there by bailiffs, the residents left to fend for themselves.

As reported here, a few weeks ago, Mrs Angry by chance met two residents about to be evicted from Sweets Way: one was Peter, a very nice, elderly man with complex health problems, who had suffered a heart attack at the end of last year as a result, he said, of the stress caused by the looming eviction, and his worry about finding a new home. He had accepted alternative accommodation, only to find housing officers had given the property to someone else, and then told him he must take up a place in Hanwell.

The other was a lovely woman called Shereen, who had two teenage sons.

Shereen

She showed me photos of the accommodation she was expected to move to by Barnet Homes: a flat on another 'regeneration' estate, so clearly again for another limited tenancy - but this place was simply foul:appalling. Filthy, damp, squalid: with broken windows, uninhabitable.

Filthy, damp, squalid: with broken windows, uninhabitable.

Sweets Way was home to around 160 families: all to be evicted, as we have seen, with no real consideration of the difficulty of finding suitable accommodation for them to move to. Only ten families remain. Eviction, court orders, bailiffs: all arranged with logistical efficiency. Rehousing? A matter of indifference, it seems, to Barnet Homes. Families uprooted, given one choice of accommodation, suitable or not, in any location, and in any state of repair.

By now the story of Sweets Way was beginning to make itself known: from the first tweet, denied by Barnet Council, claiming that the children of some evicted family had been taken into care, to the scenes witnessed and filmed by local housing campaigners of bailiffs evicting tenants and their possessions onto the street, what was happening here was now the focus of wider and wider attention, from the local media and beyond.

Sweets Way, of course, follows the course of much of what we have seen, are seeing, in West Hendon: tenants and residents in the way of private development, becoming in many cases the responsibility of Barnet Homes, for rehousing, with all the humiliation, desperation and vulnerability that entails: a dependence on the goodwill of housing officers, some of whom, as in the case of West Hendon, appear unable to communicate clearly with the residents their rights and options.

In the case of Sweets Way, as we will see, it seems only the media attention has brought any pressure to bear on the need to find homes for some of the evicted families that are anything approaching an acceptable standard of suitability.

And then last week, matters took another turn entirely: one of the houses that had been emptied of its inconvenient tenants was taken over by occupiers, in order to make a protest about the mass evictions. Among those taking part in this event were some faces familiar from other occupations in the borough, notably the reclamation of Friern Barnet Library.

On Saturday, Mrs Angry was invited to come over and visit - as well as one or two other people - and duly went, arriving on the edge of the estate, walking through the streets of a ghost town, an extraordinary silence hanging in the air, the sound of homes that are no longer homes, but merely buildings divested of their significance, their purpose: as redundant now as the nursery buildings abandoned here by Mr Sweet, from homes for families to hothouses of speculation, and profit.

Hard not to spot the occupied house: there it was, the fences draped with banners and posters, and there they were, our friends from Occupy, Bohemians Daniel, Mordechai, and Petra.

Bohemian Occupants: Petra, Mordechai and Daniel

Another face familiar from stories in the media: Jasmine Stone, from the E15 mums group and housing activist: and most importantly families who had been turfed out of their properties, but returned to make a stand at what they - and so many other supporters - see as a terrible act of injustice: the loss of their homes.

The day before had seen a visit from a large number of police. It was explained to them that this was a political protest, and on those terms it seems there was no criminal act being undertaken. The police waited, pointlessly, until the children came home from school, and got on with their homework ... and then left.

We went into the house, and talked to some of the mums and children staying there. I asked about the two people I had met, trying to ask the courts to stop their evictions: what had happened to them? Later on that afternoon, I had the answer to that question.

In the kitchen, stuck to the window, was a notice: a notice to vacate, stuck on the outside, so as to be read inside.

After taking a photo of this, I turned round, and standing behind me, in surreal fashion, holding a cake box, was Russell Brand. Hello, he said, putting out his hand. Oh ... hello, I said., slightly caught by surprise ... Erm ... I write one of the local blogs ... Oh: cool, he muttered. Short of anything else to say, I admired his selection of tupperware, which he was very worried about, as it wasn't his, and he had to return it.

At this point, readers, it suddenly occurred to me what a strange course my life has taken, in what should have been my respectable middle years, standing in the kitchen of a squat with Russell Brand, discussing tupperware.

In fact, at this point, Mrs Angry took a moment to text this thought to Miss Angry, who was at work, and primly refused to be impressed by her errant mother's misbehaviour, expressing some concern as to the likelihood of having to attend a police station, and provide bail cover. And: Yes but have you washed my white tights, she demanded, tutting, in her virtual way? Mrs Angry hadn't. The next day she received a lovely Mother's Day card, handmade, but expressing the wish that she might try to become a less embarrassing mother. And apply herself with more efficiency to her household duties.

Some hope.

Russell Brand, of course, has given his support to the E15 mums, and also made a short film about the West Hendon development. He is mocked by some for his new found zeal for political activism, and his rejection of political orthodoxy, his cynicism: but there is no doubt that in this case, at least, his support and the attention he brings to the terrible injustice being perpetrated here, is hugely useful.

Amusing to watch him in action: undeniably charismatic, more than a little manic: witty, of course, very bright, yet somehow, between the cracks of his madly energised persona, watchful, detached: thoughtful.

He loomed large in the house, tall and dark, loud and dominant - followed about by a troupe of kids, like the pied piper, particularly good with them: almost messianic in his insistence on speaking to them, rather than the grown ups: suffer the little children ...

He listened to the families, held their babies, jumped on the trampoline outside, and went to the swings with a gaggle of children.

Asked about the real issue of the day, ie the fate of Jeremy Clarkson, he yelled, from the swing, that he didn't buy into the automobilised obsession of Top Gear, and that the children should eschew that sort of thing, and prepare themselves to be 'radicalised' ...

And he pointed out the folly of perfectly good houses like the ones in Sweets Way being knocked down to make properties for rich people.

You're rich, observed one of the kids.

And off he went, in his blacked out people carrier, driven by a man, as he explained, keen to get to the Arsenal game. He waved royally as he left. It was huge fun for the Sweets Way families, and a real boost to their campaign. But what happens now?

One thing that seems to be happening, in another echo of the Irish evictions, is that there are reports of houses being already made inhabitable, to deter former residents from returning, or any further re-occupations.

Amongst the twenty or thirty residents, former residents who were at the occupied house, at last I had spotted Shereen. She hugged me and told me what had happened to her, since we had met a few weeks ago. She had now been sent to accommodation in Enfield, miles from her sons' schools - even though they are about to sit GCSEs.

I asked about the terrible flat in Grahame Park: officers from Barnet Homes had reportedly told a councillor that flats in such a state were only being offered with the clear promise that

the property would be fully renovated, with new kitchens and so on, before the tenant moved in, on a temporary basis, of course, as Grahame Park is due for 'regeneration'. Was that true?

No, she said. Only after she refused to go to such a filthy, substandard place did they say they would do it up. And based on the cases I heard at the West Hendon Inquiry, I can believe that is perfectly true.

Shereen and Russell Brand

Since the story had been widely reported, Peter, she thought - whose health problems, as he had explained to me meant that he needed to be close to Barnet General - had variously been offered somewhere in Bounds Green, moved to a studio flat in Wembley Park for a few days, and then to somewhere in Finchley Central, in a property she said had a heating system that was leaking.

I spoke to Rejane, another mother of young children, girls aged five and eight, who has lived in Sweets Way since 2009. She showed me, on her phone, an email from a Barnet housing officer which she had just received, telling her that she may have to wait weeks, or even months, for rehousing. She claimed other housing officers were pressurising tenants to go to the private sector, and relieve the authority of the burden of finding them the homes they so badly need.

Barnet approved this development, and knew full well the consequences for residents, in a borough in which housing policy is being deliberately engineered in order to exclude as many families in need as possible, and indeed to remove them from the borough. But they made no real effort to safeguard the wellbeing of families who would be losing their homes, as a result of the development they were suddenly, post local election, so keen to support.

The lack of alternative accommodation for those made homeless by the private developments encouraged and supported by the Tory administration is monstrous, but calculated. What they do not expect, have not expected, is the reaction from residents, campaigners, and the media.

One thing is sure: the reputational damage caused to the companies involved in current developments in Barnet is profound, and increasing. This can be measured, on a small scale, by the number of PR agencies and companies who read 'Broken Barnet', clearly worrying about the impact of direct action on their profit margins, present, or projected.

They should be worried: and their consciences, if they have any, should be ensuring that they feel a sense of shame for the trauma and disruption caused to the families who stand in the way of their lucrative development.

Today some of the evicted children from Sweets Way went to the offices of Annington Homes, and tried to speak to the Director, James Hopkins, who reportedly earns around £2.2 million per annum. It appears he was unwilling to see them, for some reason.

The series of small rebellions that are taking place in Broken Barnet, the direct action: brave acts of defiance by ordinary residents, but these are events that ought to sound a warning sign to all political parties.

The political disaffection embraced by celebrities, repeated by those frustrated and alienated by orthodox political campaigning is a symptom, not a cause of political failure.

The parties which are not engaging directly with the people most affected by the surge in social injustice that has occurred in the course of the last Tory led government's administration, or the last two local administrations here in Barnet must learn how to listen, and not shy away from the real problems people are facing.

As we move towards the election, and find our parties obsessed with their own campaigns, and worrying about how many kitchens are acceptable, or how many jobs, somehow they have overlooked the glaring fact that for many voters the challenge today is if they have a home to live in, or a job that pays enough to support their families.

So: Russell Brand came to Sweets Way - good for him. At least he made the effort to show his support.

We are unlikely to see any campaigning Tory ministers dare to show their faces on this estate, or any other 'regeneration' estate in Barnet. So let's see a shadow cabinet minister get on the tube to Whetstone, or West Hendon, and show their solidarity with the mums and dads, the children and babies, who have no permanent homes to go to, tonight, or tomorrow, or maybe ever again.

And let's see Tory council leader Richard Cornelius, and housing chief Tom Davey, and the smiling, true blue suit of deputy leader Dan Thomas appear in Sweets Way, and explain to the people there their views on 'aspiration', and the plight of the feckless poor.

Local Labour candidate Amy Trevethan has done her best to work towards a better outcome for the evicted tenants of Sweets Way.

Exactly what her electoral opponent, the current Tory MP for Chipping Barnet - and Northern Ireland secretary - Theresa Villiers, has done on their behalf is unclear.

Here is another neat synchronistic link: Villiers' illustrious ancestors include George Villiers, the 4th Earl of Clarendon, who was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland during the period of the Famine: and the mass evictions of tenants which ensued during that era.

In the meanwhile, the occupation continues, and it seems there will be a sleepover, tomorrow night, at 60, Sweets Way. Rusty Rockets is supposedly packing his sleeping bag and heading over. Mrs Angry imagines that it is unlikely that Mr and Mrs Cornelius, Tom Davey, Dan Thomas, or Theresa Villiers will be doing the same.

Nick Goldberg: born London 1981, died Bark Bay, New Zealand, February 10th 2015

Finding solutions? Giving evidence, anyway - Mr Reasonable and Mrs Angry at the Housing Commission

Last night saw the latest session of Barnet Labour's Housing Commission, chaired by Nicky Gavron, to which bloggers Mr Reasonable and Mrs Angry were invited to give evidence. Clearly at the last minute someone was panicking at the thought of giving us an opportunity to say exactly what we thought, in an open forum, and emails arrived urging us to focus not so much on the problems, as on finding solutions.

Hmm. Mrs Angry was of the opinion that her evidence was just that: based on five years of observation of Barnet's performance in regard to housing policy, and that it was her duty to contribute on that basis, and persuade the Labour leadership to try a bit harder to get into power, so as to implement a change in policy, rather than witter on about hypothetical solutions.

We dutifully went along, to a freezing cold community centre in Grahame Park,a council estate soon to be regenerated and gerrymandered out of existence, courtesy of Tory housing policy.

Here is the full text of Mrs Angry's contribution: an illustrated version - cut short due to time restraint, and probably just as well.