Last week the Labour Government’s pandering to its ethnic vote caused an outcry, when its promise to hold local inquiries into Pakistani rape gangs in five cities turned out to be hollow. This followed the ludicrous spectacle of Birmingham Labour MPs proclaiming the need for a new international airport in a remote area of Pakistan, rather than tackling their own city’s health-hazard bin strike.
The Labour-run London Borough of Camden (LBC) has now run into minor trouble for the same sort of motive, and despite its alleged devotion to clean air – see its unworkable (and now abandoned) Highgate Low Traffic Neighbourhood, and its determination to outlaw clean-burning wood stoves.
Waterlow Park, on the eastern edge of LBC’s doomed LTN, was gifted to the London County Council by Sir Sydney Waterlow in 1889 “To Be a Garden for the Garden-less” – as the inscription on his bronze statue declares.
Generations have loved its 26 tranquil acres, the play areas, three spring-fed ponds, the views over the city, the sweeping lawns and wildlife. Like other locals, for years we fed the ducks, walked the dog, picnicked, played tennis, walked through it to school; and the closest shave we had was when a heavy wooden puck whizzed past our baby’s buggy at his head height, as a couple of drunken Irishmen lurched past with hurleys.
The park’s management by LBC has been haphazard in recent years, despite assistance from the Friends of Waterlow Park and other local volunteers. Sometimes part of the park would be closed for a concert, sometimes all of it for filming – the fees for which were never declared, and which appeared to be used to pay the LBC staff who rented it out, rather than to serve any public benefit.
But recently private BBQs have become a polluting menace. As long ago as 2018, a reader wrote to the Camden New Journal (CNJ):
If Camden Council’s truly serious about tackling pollution, then I am begging them to stop people having air-polluting barbecues in beautiful Waterlow Park in Highgate.
I suffer from asthma and live in a polluted area with heavy traffic. I visit the park for fresh air. Waterlow used to be a real sanctuary for me, but in the last year or so I’ve noticed more and more barbecues. The stench is horrific. …
All that smoke! As well as the rubbish and the stink, the whole atmosphere of the park has changed, and I feel my health conditions are made worse. …
I was coughing a lot and my lungs felt bad. I had to keep moving around the park, trying to find an area that was barbecue-free. … And what of the wildlife? …It is completely the wrong place for barbecues. All the good work done by the gardeners is undone by the anti-social barbecues.
As other London boroughs banned cooking in their parks, Waterlow’s BBQs got bigger, noisier and stinkier – some commercially catered, with vans unloading cooking ranges, chairs and tables. People turned up from all over London, and LBC batted away complaints from locals as elitist, with the implication they were also closet racists – the ethnicity of many of the BBQers being clear enough.
A one-star Trip Advisor review last July said, “The park has turned into a dump at the weekend with BBQs, lots of smoke, dangerous for children playing in the playground, fire risk and BBQs burning off the grass. It is such a shame to ruin a perfectly nice park.” And on recent warm weekends, the situation got badly out of hand. Green Party councillor Lorna Russell called for an immediate blanket ban “before something very serious happens”.
She told the CNJ she’d seen “smoke pollution, public urination and defecation, traffic, road rage and parking issues on Swains Lane; and, very sadly, some destruction of the park from dangerous BBQing. In recent days I’ve also seen the police called here to deal with crowds and a fire engine struggle to get through rows of cars. It’s becoming a real danger.”
Local Annie Rigby told the Ham & High: “There have been massive events in the park with a huge influx of people playing very loud music, defecating in the bushes, fighting, leaving huge amounts of rubbish, and barbecue bins still smoking the next morning.” She said Hackney Council banned barbecues in 2018 as cooking on them for two or more hours results in “very high” local levels of particulate pollution.
Another local, perhaps reflecting Camden’s attitude up to now, felt differently: “It generates a really happy social atmosphere: the Iranian showing the Ukrainian how to light the BBQ, the Afro-Caribbean Londoner sharing space with a Kurd. How inclusive can you get?” By contrast, a Change.org petition this month against the park’s destruction swiftly gathered 780 signatures.
LBC has been forced to act and has banned BBQs in Waterlow Park with immediate effect, writing: “BBQs are not allowed at Waterlow Park. … From today, we will be updating our website, putting up NO BBQ banners at Waterlow Park and requesting a security patrol for the weekend.” No one’s yet got round to accusing Sir Sydney Waterlow of profiting from slavery and toppled his statue, though perhaps it’s only a matter of time? For now, may his bronze effigy, gazing south over his gift, enjoy the return of clean air, tranquillity and clean undergrowth to the garden he so generously gave to Londoners.
Mike Wells won the World Press Photo competition in 1981 and worked in many countries including Nigeria. He has written often for DS and elsewhere about repatriation of the Benin bronzes. Like Toby Young, for decades he lived close to Waterlow Park, and has been sorry to see it degraded by Camden Council.
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Sad. Meanwhile in Cambridge, on Jesus Green, the council have laid slabs in grass for people to put their BBQs on.
“Green Party councillor Lorna Russell called for an immediate blanket ban”
That’s the Greens for you – nasty, authoritarian and deeply anti-human. They would ban anything which people actually enjoy if they had the chance.
Doubtless some on here will have heard of the fires on Saddleworth Moors these last few years. Usually related to a popular tourist spot called Dovestones where there is a beautiful reservoir. It’s now frequently a shit hole at weekends infested with dregs from Oldham and Ashton. Some of the more adventurous visitors are known to venture up on to the moors with their barbecue kits but cannot be arsed with clearing up afterwards, hence the fires. Immies do like Dovestones.
Oldham Council cannot give a damn because Saddleworth exists solely to provide OMBC with funds for the latest immigrant housing projects and freebies. Countryside being destroyed, locals being pushed about.
Yes “dangerous BBQing” – does she know about “extreme ironing”? was my immediate thought on reading her comments!
I think I know why it is shit.
Imported people and their children.
I have a flat opposite Waterlow Park and can attest that it has become a no-go zone for anyone other than barbecuers at the weekend. Camden Council should be ashamed that it has allowed this to happen at the cost of local residents.
The sad thing is that a lot of people don’t go out anymore at all. I think social gatherings should be welcomed even if there is a bit of a stink and noise.