The Battle of Barnet: the Guardian's war correspondent reports back from the frontline

Here is the online version of tomorrow's article by Guardian reporter Rob Booth about the not so civil war taking place here in Broken Barnet, the Battle of Barnet, written after a vist on Wednesday, as described in the previous post:
 

"A raucous cheer went up in a packed county court room in Barnet this week that could reverberate around the nation's town halls this winter. As David Cameron prepared to deliver his "aspiration nation" speech to the Tory conference in Birmingham, 110 miles away in Margaret Thatcher's former constituency a hotchpotch alliance of squatters, retired booksellers, local bloggers and international anti-capitalist activists whooped as a district judge blocked attempts to close a vibrant community library that has popped up in the shell of one controversially closed as part of the Conservative-led government's most radical experiment yet in shrinking local public services.

In the month since the Friern Barnet library reopened – illegally, according to the London Borough of Barnet, which wants the site sold to raise upwards of £400,000 – local residents have donated 5,000 books to restock the shelves. A volunteer staff of guerrilla librarians have kept the building open 48 hours a week; there are children's story sessions and exercise classes; and the lights are kept on by donations dropped into a biscuit tin. It might sound like an exemplary vision of the so-called big society: a community looking after itself after the retreat of the state.

But the sale of this 78-year-old library is part of the radical reform proposals of Barnet – dubbed "easyCouncil" for its vision of a no-frills approach. Plans include outsourcing £1bn of contracts to private companies for running everything from the crematorium to the planning and building control departments, sharing lawyers with another council, closing day centres for the elderly and quadrupling some parking fees.

Judge Marc Marin ordered a full trial of the competing claims to the library, to the disappointment of the council. Peter Phoenix, the blond, dreadlocked spokesman of the council's opponents, was delighted. "It looks like the kids get Christmas in the library," he said with a whoop. "We've got Conservative central office worried here. They wanted to have success here and then roll this model out across all the boroughs."

The need to make cuts is real but the big question is how to do it. Barnet has published a chart – known locally as "the graph of doom" – which shows how it will have no money to spend on anything apart from children's services and adult social services by 2030 because of rising costs and declining and flat budgets. Its "One Barnet" policy is perhaps the most radical response yet to 28% cuts in Whitehall funding of local authorities across England and Wales.

"We have been cutting for 10 years in Barnet," said Richard Cornelius, leader of the council. "We can't keep salami slicing so we have had a complete look at the way we do things. Our idea is to take the money out of administration and keep providing the services, but we won't be doing it directly. We are scheduled to save more than £65m."

"I don't think Mr and Mrs Resident are too bothered about who delivers the services," added Dan Thomas, deputy leader of the council with responsibility for finances. "Yes, its a bold move because it is the first time some of these services have been outsourced in local government but there's nothing wrong with being first."

According to local government analyst Andy Mudd in a report for the public services union Unison, the reforms go to "the heart of local government responsibilities for the safeguard and protection of public health and economic wellbeing". He warned "the impact of failure could be catastrophic". Opponents believe the project is already in trouble and the prospect of a trial over the library is not the only problem.

The council's own figures, seen by the Guardian, reveal that over the last two years the council has spent £670,000 more on trying to save money than it has actually saved, although the project is now edging into the black. The programme has so far cost £6.36m, while the savings have amounted to £5.69m.

Last week, one of the chief architects of the reforms, council chief executive Nick Walkley, resigned unexpectedly, while Councillor Brian Coleman, who oversaw the privatisation of parking services, is currently on police bail after allegations he assaulted a woman who filmed him parking in a loading bay.

Other hard-cutting Conservative councils appear to be in crisis too. The deputy leader of Cornwall county council resigned on Thursday over a £300m outsourcing plan that is facing a popular revolt. The council had hoped to save £2.5m a year by outsourcing services including payroll, benefits and libraries. In his resignation letter, Jim Currie said: "The financial risks involved with the rush into the new joint venture proposals are unacceptable. The joint venture is basically too large to control".

Last year, Suffolk County Council halted its own "virtual council" plan to outsource its services.

In Barnet, emotions are running high and Thomas concedes there can be "shouting and screaming" in council meetings. British Telecom, Capita and EC Harris are vying to take over two major contracts – one estimated to be worth up to £275m over 10 years to run building control, planning, highways and transport, the crematorium and cemetery, trading standards, licensing and environmental health. Another to outsource back office services has been estimated to be worth up to £750m. Youth services have been cut almost in half from six youth centres in 2010 to three this year and the number of full-time equivalent staff cut from 99 to 55.

A nurse working in sheltered housing where wardens have been removed told the Guardian: "I have residents who sit in their nightclothes all day because they cannot afford the alternative. Where is the dignity in this? These same folk who use to love going to a day centre can no longer go as, they tell me, it costs £35 per day and an extra £5 for transport. So now they sit all day, staring at four walls or at the TV. Where have we gone so wrong?"

All this has been met by an insurgency of residents, trade unions and a broad coalition of investigative bloggers. Their names give a clue as to the knockabout tone of political debate: Mrs Angry writes a blog called Broken Barnet, while others go under the names Mr Reasonable, Mr Mustard, Barnet Eye, and Citizen Barnet.

"The community library is the 'big society' by definition, but it is not the 'big society' as the government envisaged it," said Mrs Angry, whose real name is Theresa Musgrove, who has two children. "They wanted the 'big society' to be obedient and to enable the cuts they wanted."

This is an ecumenical insurrection where full-time activists and union leaders worried about jobs are joined by retirees and local mothers. The cause has attracted the support of the leftwing film-maker Ken Loach, who has contributed to a documentary about the matter called The Billion Pound Gamble.

But there is also anecdotal evidence that the aggression of the council's cuts is alienating core Conservative voters. Ann Foskett, a Tory-voting grandmother who has lived in the area for 40 years, dropped off a bag of books at the library as the activists celebrated their court victory with tea and biscuits. She said the closure was "absolutely scandalous".

"I do vote Tory normally, but things have gone to pot, particularly for old people," she said. "There used to be lots of local groups meeting in libraries, but there's nothing now."

It's a very good article, isn't it, nicely covering the broad theatre of hostilities here?  And Mrs Angry is pleased to see that the charm offensive launched at Rob Booth by deputy council leader Dan Thomas (well, it was offensive, if lacking in charm, as far as Mrs Angry could see) failed to turn his report into a glowing endorsement of One Barnet ... but Thomas thinks that 'Mr and Mrs Resident' - ooh, not very inclusive, there, John Thomas - not everyone in Barnet is living a Terry and June lifestyle, did you know? Anyway, Mr and Mrs Resident, according to Cllr Thomas, do not care who deliver their council services. 

I beg to differ, John Thomas: for one thing, quite a few Mr and Mrs Residents work for Barnet Council, and will not be terribly thrilled to lose their jobs, and the rest of the borough will almost certainly not enjoy the experience of their services being provided by an unaccountable, profiteering private company, whose call centres, and no doubt other employees, will be based in Bolton, or Bangalore, and whose charges will inevitably rise at the same rate as the electoral base of the Barnet Tory parties declines.

The graph of doom referred to here, by the way, used by Barnet to frighten everyone into a submissive acceptance of their economic terrorism, has been demonstrated by blogger Mr Reasonable and others to be a load of bilge, data distorted, misrepresented, and totally misinterpreted in order to fit the Tories' political agenda.

Leader Richard Cornelius brings out his salami once again, I see, worrying once more about it being sliced. Richard: put it away, we've all seen it, and it's nothing to boast about. Go back to the One Barnet matchbox metaphor, maybe: the scale seems to be more appropriate, somehow.

The most astonishing thing, perhaps is the reminder that the One Barnet programme, vaunted as a savings based policy,  has actually cost us more money to implement than it has saved. Hardly surprising, when you consider that the council's implementation partners, a private consultancy company,  are feasting off our taxes to the tune of a quarter of a million pounds every month. For what? We don't know, citizens: the council refuses to tell us. Redacted, if you remember. Commercially sensitive. 

Perhaps the most telling observation in this article is the remark by the nurse working in sheltered accommodation where wardens have been removed, and whose residents now face a bleak existence, unable to afford the opportunities of day centres; as she says - Where is the dignity in this ... Where have we gone so wrong?

Where indeed? 

It is so very tempting to look again at the ironic, iconic, psychogeographic context of what is happening here in Barnet, a place which appears to act as some sort of interface between endlessly conflicted forces: a place of inversion, where insanity is the norm, and common sense, and decency, and reasoned debate, are stopped at the boundaries and turned away.

Right across the road from the occupied library is the former Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum, now a highly privileged housing development. Will Self has just written a book, Umbrella, which refers to the past existence of the building (and he is coming to the library for a book signing on November 14th). 

This extraordinary place was, in its time, an innovative architectural design, built around the central precept of the longest corridor in any structure in Europe: designed, it is said with the idea that the ordered architecture, with its logical Victorian sense of purpose, subsections attached to a deliberate line of progress, like a scientific classification, would instill in the patient a sense of place, of logical organisation: of sanity. (Oh dear: footnote - Mrs Angry has just been looking at google images for the Asylum, and noticed that for some reason, not entirely unconnected with this blog, the face of Barnet's Director of Commerce, Mr Craig Cooper, pops up between faded mugshots of former inmates ...)

Fast forward to the twenty first century. The asylum has been shut, and the last remaining bewildered inmates ejected as part of the 'care in the community' policy, the excuse for abandoning expensive residential care for people with highly dependent mental health needs. 

The building which once housed so many tormented minds, including a man suspected of being Jack the Ripper, and a wife of wicked magician Aleister Crowley, is now renamed, rebranded, and owned by the Comer brothers, the entrepreneurs and developers who are the landlords of Barnet Council, at North London Business Park. 

And across the road, the library which was built with funding from another outdated nineteenth century concept, philanthropy, and a desire to help the working citizen obtain access to books, education, and a chance of self improvement, has become just another potential property development.

Booth's article makes reference to another significant event in this borough, the Battle of Barnet, an earlier example of internicine conflict. This fateful event, marked by partisan betrayals and tactical blunders, took place a couple of miles away from Friern Barnet, up in High Barnet, the home of our Tory party leadership. 

Five hundred years ago, the course of British history was decided here, on a foggy morning, in skirmishes acted out in the fields and woods of Hadley Green. Back in Broken Barnet, in the twenty first century, another battle is taking place, between two opposing houses of interest: who will win? The house of privilege, and profit, or the cause of those who are seeking to challenge the rule of might, and fight for justice, and a fairer share of good fortune?