Cllr Richard Watts has been Islington Council leader for the past eight years

• RICHARD Watts has presided over a council several of whose members have used their Twitter accounts to abuse residents campaigning to save trees – now-destroyed – at the Dixon Clark Court site at Highbury Corner, (Out of touch and the damage has been done, March 5).

Though not the worst offender, one of those was Cllr Angela Picknell who broke cover, together with her St Mary’s ward colleague, to attack the Green Party’s Caroline Russell, effectively Islington’s only opposition councillor. A reminder that two borough by-elections are but a few weeks away.

Cllr Picknell sat on the planning committee that granted permission to build the segregated housing on the Dixon Clark Court estate.

Her “go-home” tweet directed at the tree protectors evoked memories of the message on the side of Theresa May’s immigration vans, (We are delighted our ward will now have these vital homes built, February 26).

Now, with their claim of “activists who mostly come from outside the borough”, she and Cllr Nurullah Turan invoke the outsider meme and the “othering” of dissent, which has begun to raise its head among Islington politicians.

Cllr Watts’s interview with your reporter (I won’t miss the party’s factionalism, February 26) exemplified the outmoded class-war stand taken by the soon-to-be-departed leader.

Perhaps more troubling is the “Islington born and bred” theme that seems first to have appeared in the Labour candidate’s literature during the 2019 St George’s ward by-election and is now embedded in the twitter bios of at least two councillors; while an Islington Labour activist recently shrunk the map even further when she declared publicly that she was “Highbury born and bred”.

For a borough which proudly proclaimed its backing for the European Union, these themes strike a worrying and dissonant note.

Let’s hope local people will give a new lead to the direction of travel in our inner-city borough during next year’s local election. Those living in Holloway and Bunhill wards will have an opportunity to do so this May. Challenging myths and party-political agendas is fundamental to enhancing democracy.

Cllrs Turan and Picknell might like to reflect on their claim that the destruction of the trees and green space, to be replaced by a six-storey block of flats, means “increasing the greenery around Highbury Corner”. I live in St Mary’s ward and I reject this view from my representatives.

MEG HOWARTH
Ellington Street, N7