Caroline Russell supporting the Greens at the election count

ISLINGTON Green Party’s longest-standing councillor, Caroline Russell, has bid farewell to the Town Hall after 12 years.

She was the party’s only councillor in Islington for eight years after first getting elected in 2014 – and the only opposition councillor full stop.

Being on her own for those eight years felt isolating and intimidating, Ms Russell told the Tribune. But she added that she used the strength of the community around her to help campaign for the issues that were important to her, and to them.

“I realised that in order to be on my own, I needed to work with the community around me to ask questions of the council, bring petitions and do demonstrations,” she said. “And in that way, I wasn’t on my own in the chamber because I had the voices of local people, local children and local families with me.”

In her first term, a mistakenly-sent email from the council’s chief executive invited her to a “secret meeting” to discuss budget cuts, which she had meant to be excluded from. Of course, she still turned up to make her voice heard.

She said: “I think there was a real cultural problem in the Town Hall at that time. The secret meeting – that was a really serious issue, to have written to every Labour councillor to come to a star chamber meeting – that was a real misstep and it indicated a lack of separation between the council as a formal body and the Labour group.

“That was the moment I realised quite how much I was on my own.”

Now, the picture looks a little different. In last week’s council elections, the Greens brought their total up to 19 opposition councillors.

Ms Russell said she was “so, so excited” to see what they would achieve, and added that she is standing down from the Town Hall to pass the baton on to the next generation.

Her focus would be on her other duties as a London Assembly member.