My tribute to Ted Knight

Edward "Red Ted" Knight, a former Labour leader of Lambeth Council known for his resistance to Margaret Thatcher's rate-capping of local councils, died two days ago, aged 86.

 Ted Knight first came to prominence when he became leader of Lambeth Council in 1978, holding that position for almost eight years (for a brief period in 1982, the Conservatives controlled Lambeth Council on the Mayor's casting vote). During that time, Lambeth Council became one of the most radical councils in that country, although this did make it a target for the conservative press for some time. He was most notable for his prominent role in the "rate-capping rebellion", where Lambeth Council and 17 other councils, most of them Labour-controlled (except Brent and Portsmouth) either intended to set an excessive rate or no rate at all, although all except Lambeth and Liverpool set a capped rate after less than one year. Lambeth Council refused to set a rate in protest of the fact that the Rates Act 1984 not only significantly restricted local government spending but also local government autonomy in practice. However, the district auditor surcharged Ted and 31 other Lambeth councillors for not setting a rate and they were subsequently disqualified from office; in the end it made no difference to the curbing of rates or increased centralisation of local government spending controls. After being disqualified from office temporarily, Ted still made sure he was active in frontline progressive politics.

 So farewell, Ted Knight. In spite of this failure to in effect remove most local governmental financial autonomy, which has impacted local government in Britain ever since, your commitment to progressive politics across London will be remembered.

 Edward Robert Knight, born 13 June 1933, departed this life on 30 March 2020, aged 86 years.

Comments

  1. Pete E2 April 2020 at 02:34

    This was my tweet https://twitter.com/pete556/status/1244666713335042049?s=20 when I heard he had passed away - he lived on Gipsy Hill.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My analysis of the Swedish general election of 2022

The Swedish general election of 2022 generated some surprising results, despite also averting pollsters' predictions significantly. The last three years in particular proved to be a rough ride for the Social Democrat led governments of Stefan Lofven and Magdalena Andersson respectively. Although Sweden's laxer approach to the COVID-19 pandemic (compared to most countries in Europe, which imposed lockdowns during much of 2020 and 2021, an approach that arguably caused more problems than it solved) proved effective, Mr Lofven's desire to lift the austerity tax (which only affected a wealthy minority, similar in nature to the wealth tax initiative of former French President Francois Hollande) and to join NATO proved contentious, with two of the Social Democrats' former coalition partners (the Swedish Greens and Swedish Left Party, who had both pulled out of confidence and supply) unsurprisingly voting against Swedish accession to NATO membership (all other parties in the R
Read more

On the 2020 Serbian election: Why a boycott will only worsen things there

First of all, I apologise for the recent hiatus; however elections are still postponed or on hold in many countries, including the UK. Serbia, however, was able to proceed with its 2020 general election amidst this crisis. Its overall result proved reminiscent of Hungarian elections under Viktor Orban's tenure (2010-present), since the leading national-conservative coalition, the SNS (Progressive Party of Serbia) coalition led by Serbian President Aleksander Vucic (Ana Brnabic is the Serbian Prime Minister, and the first woman and openly homosexual person to hold that position), polled 61.6% of the vote, giving them as many as 191 seats out of 250 and a majority of as high as 132, almost unheard of in any country with proportional representation. Press freedom has endured significant curbs since President Vucic first came into power as Serbian PM in 2012 (he became President of Serbia in 2017), as have civil liberties of Serbs in general. Nepotism and corruption in the Serbian
Read more

On the Spanish regional elections of 2023-a warning for progressives

The Spanish regional elections of 2023, especially those in the "Empty Spain" regions far west of the federal capital of Madrid and prosperous yet famously rebellious Catalonia, resulted in a sharp shift towards conservatism and conservative populism. Both Partido Popular (PP, Spain's equivalent of the Conservatives) and Vox (the Spanish equivalent of Reform UK/UKIP) made sweeping gains in all regions, notably taking overall control in Madrid (normally an impossible feat under Spain's PR system), more than doubling their seat total in Valencia to top the poll there, and wresting control of Asturias, La Rioja, and Cantabria from the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE, Spain's equivalent of Labour) and the Cantabrian Regionalist Party respectively. Under the tenure of Pedro Sanchez, the current PSOE-Podemos coalition is floundering and has not done much to ensure Spain's recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic since the last restrictions ended in 2021, and P
Read more