Community And Co-operation

Written by Sally Hamwee on Thu 1st Nov 2001

On my election to succeed a Labour member as Chair of the London Assembly, I removed his little bust of Lenin from the meeting table. The Tories offered me a statuette of Margaret Thatcher (I had never thought of her as having a diminutive suffix), but I had my own symbol: a tiny pebble, painted with a picture of an ant, designating, to the American Indian tribe which produced it, community and co-operation.

Important aims for the Greater London Authority, in my view. We are a new government and, though the Mayor / Assembly split is not one I'd recommend, we have a huge responsibility, in the way we work, to be good government.

The Assembly has done some thorough work in scrutinising the Mayor's strategies, and is starting some broader-based investigations: transport in outer London; smoking in public places and flooding are some of the issues. We're still finding our way in questioning the Mayor – he's pretty adept at deflecting the killer questions and, as he says with a grin when he's accused of flannelling: Yes, but it's engaging, isn't it?

We've begun a formal scrutiny of the way the Mayor consults with Londoners. A minefield, not least because no doubt lots of people will say we should have consulted them on how the Mayor consults, but it's a way into the difficult area of civic engagement.

My little ant is a reminder of the importance of community and co-operation. But I told the Assembly members at that first meeting that, if that sounded too woolly liberal, I'd also equipped myself with a stopwatch!