Posted on Thursday 16 July 2009
Just before you reach St Anne’s Church at Limehouse there is a statue of a man who is inextricably linked to our Borough. A man who shaped the world we live in today. But for some time now you would have had a job finding the statue. It is covered in ugly old wooden sheets. It stands there like an upright corpse, our history shrouded and dead. To compound his redundancy he stands outside another discarded piece of east end history. This man was Clement Attlee. Post War Prime Minister and MP for Limehouse. And the Library is Limehouse Library, a place of self improvement and learning for generations of Tower Hamlets residents.
We live in a Borough full of history. Great lives have passed in our locality and great events have taken place. They are reflected in the many buildings that mark our heritage and define the environment we live in today. It is a heritage that we can be proud of and the buildings that reflect this glory should be a matter of pride. But how does Tower Hamlets Council care for the architecture that illustrates our Borough story? They are allowing our past to rot before our very eyes, mocking our forbears. Ironically much of our heritage is connected to the Labour Party but Labour in Tower Hamlets does not care for history, theirs or any others. To understand this you only have to look at the baleful example of Bancroft Local History Library which Labour threatened to close and Conservatives helped the campaign to save.
The list of buildings in their charge, which they are allowing to fall to ruins includes Bethnal Green Library, Limehouse Town Hall and Poplar Baths. Even if you accept that preserving history is an expensive privilege then what of the impact on our visual environment? The places we have to live. What of the waste of great community buildings? The waste of money itself on new buildings whilst old ones stand ready for use, for life, as they once had. As Tower Hamlets Labour Council continues to squander taxpayers’ money on new vanity projects they ignore what stands all around them. This failure to protect and utilise our architectural heritage is a testament to Labour’s misspent years in power. It marks their profligacy and, what is much worse, that they have no soul, no love for what makes our area what it is and makes us what we are. They recently put up signs welcoming people to the Borough. On the signs they mark out some of the iconic buildings that identify where we live, the Tower of London, Canary Wharf and Christ Church Spitalfields. All these buildings have one thing in common. They are not the responsibility of the Council. Thank goodness! You will not see their buildings highlighted. They are a shame on this Borough and they are an indictment of a heartless and stupid Labour Council.