Now John Biggs’s Council lets centre-right mob into park

THE COUNCIL that banned a The Big Ride, a charity raising money for children in Gaza, from one of its local parks seems to have let a shadowy centre-right think tank hold an ideas conference in another park.

The Council’s website claims that the Mudchute Park on the Isle of Dogs is one of its parks – which is managed by the Mudchute Association. It is not clear whether Tower Hamlets Council sanctioned the booking or whether the booking was taken by the Mudchute Association.

The Mudchute Park’s own website says that the Mudchute Association was established in 1977 to develop the “People’s Park”. Its objectives are stated to be:
•to preserve the natural environment of the Mudchute
•to promote for local people the opportunity of recreation and leisure on the Mudchute, especially the young, the elderly and those of limited economic means
•to advance the education of local people in countryside activities
•to promote animal welfare through engagement with the Farm
•to provide education and training for young people
•to promote conservation both of the natural and the built environment

However, a political event called the “Big Tent Ideas Festival” is to be held on the Mudchute on 31st August – and it doesn’t seem to fall within any of these aims.

The Big Tent’s website lists its values in rather vaguer terms than the objectives of the Mudchute – to the point where an unkind soul might ask if this ridiculous drivel has been made up by a learner robot trying out Artificial Intelligence. Apparently the Big Tent is “strictly nonpartisan in its politics”, hopes to “convene and connect innovators and the non-tribal”, while “seeking to catalyse progressive partnerships and to make a difference both locally and nationally. How did Tower Hamlets Council officers cope with that one?

The Ideas Festival will be based in nine tents spread across the Mudchute, which will discuss “ideas” under the general headings of Economy, Innovation, Communities, Society… and “Politics”. The discussion sessions in each of the tents are as vacuous as the values of the event, but the discussions are clearly both political and controversial. The Politics tent, for example, will host two discussions on the “new politics” – a term usually used to describe populism without making it seem too scary.

The Founders of the Big Tent include George Freeman, Conservative MP for Mid-Norfolk (recently in the news after a guard waved off a train rather than hold it up for him as he ran towards it). Speakers at the Mudchute event include a mixture of Tory and Blairite MPs and similarly prominent public figures: a giant melee of the second-ranking politically bewildered.

That is perhaps what units them: their careers have stalled (e.g., failed Tory leadership contender Rory Stewart MP) or been diverted into worthy but insignificant areas (e.g., Labour MP Lisa Nandy, now founder of the think tank Centre for Towns). A topical political event which brings in Blair’s former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is truly desperate. They are a diverse bunch, but clearly united in an attempt to preserve the status quo – albeit by dressing up their strategy as “new politics”.

Nowhere in the programme is there any suggestion that the burning topics that affect the day to day lives of the residents of the Isle of Dogs and, more widely, Tower Hamlets will be taken up. Questions of class and equality are missing from the Tent Agenda – as it the suffering that the wealthy are inflicting on the area as they suck profits from us.

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