Interview with Sheila Simpson, Green candidate in Queen’s Park, Brent
Why a Green candidate in Queen’s Park?
I find myself very surprised to be in this place, because I don’t consider myself someone who is interested in politics. The things that matter to me are social justice and climate change, and those two things need to come together. The climate emergency is the central issue and I’m disatisfied with the other parties’ approach, so I joined my local branch which is a small group of people fairly independently minded, people who impressed me and even though I don’t think I have a chance of winning, I really felt that democracy needs proper opposition. In Brent, the majority of the seats are Labour, there’s 1 LibDem who is doing really well (so we’re not standing against him) and 3 Conservatives. The more I found out about our local politics, the more I realise that the way the Leader of the council and the small cabinet rule the organisation means there’s almost no listening. They make the decisions and tell people what they have done. My experience has been that the ordinary people are way ahead of the government when it comes to wanting action on the climate emergency, if you talk to people they make sense. It’s a bit like with COVID, when you ask them to do something they did it, because they understood that was important. It would be an honour and a huge responsibility to be a councillor. This is the ward I lived in for 30 years, this area has become very gentrified over time, and it’s very prosperous. I’m not interested in power, I’m interested in the climate, in getting something done, it’s all about getting results. I do believe in democracy, it’s the best of the systems but we need to reform it, we need proportional representation (PR).
What are the main issues you want to prioritise?
I’m not telling the people, I’m asking them what their priorities are. A key issue is air quality in schools, the air we breath is toxic. The other thing that’s happening in our borough is there’s lots of raw sewage going into the local waterways. This year, particularly after lockdown, people began to care more about the environment and to value the green spaces. That really matters to people now, and some of our waters are dirty. Those are immediate environmental things.
There’s also the cost of living crisis, we need to do something about our housing stock, which is old. A lot of people are renting, so they rely on landlords to maintain the buildings, but landlords aren’t necessarily doing what they could to insulate those homes so there’s a huge amount of energy wasted. In terms of activism I spend time with XR campaigning with them and doing some small actions just to keep on keeping on with this, otherwise there’s no future.
Why are the Greens the best alternative to the other parties?
We need an active opposition to Labour, that’s my feeling, to challenge the party that’s been there for 10 years, that’s how democracy should work. All I can say is, having never joined a political party in all of my life until five years ago, I’ve always campaigned for social justice through XR and the CND, and when I read the Green Party manifesto I agreed with everything and I thought of joining the party, and that’s what happened. If that was my experience, perhaps there are people out there similarly that don’t consider themselves quite political but they do want change. That change is possible, it’s something about a real alternative but also about working with other people.
