Camden News: Tony McNulty | Camden Council | Nash Ali | Marchmont Street Community Centre

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Camden News - by PAUL KEILTHY
Published: 29 January 2009

Users and staff of the Marchmont Street Community Centre joined by guests at the opening party

Minister:‘Council is singing in the bath while jobs are lost’

EMPLOYMENT minister Tony McNulty challenged Camden Council’s strategy for dealing with recession joblessness as he opened a refurbished King’s Cross community centre on Tuesday.
The minister opened Marchmont Community Centre in Marchmont Street after a £1million refit, praising the efforts of centre trustee Ricci de Freitas and King’s Cross Brunswick Neighbourhood Association director Nash Ali as “part of what is clearly a rich history of community activism in Camden”.
But after centre-user and King’s Cross activist Pamela Mansi had outlined nearly 30 years of assistance to youth and the elderly that the association had provided, Mr McNulty used an interview with the New Journal to warn that the Town Hall should do more to tackle worsening unemployment and questioned the wisdom of its “better and cheaper” programme of job cuts.
He said: “I’m not going to pretend that it is anything other than tough, and I’m not going to pretend that it’s not going to get tougher. Camden will do what Camden wants to do – but sometimes short-term expediency doesn’t add up to investment in the community.”
Although the minister was not able to identify ways in which the government had intervened directly to ensure unemployment was alleviated in the area, he claimed London-wide measures would aid the borough.
But he criticised the approach of Camden’s ruling Lib Dem and Conservative coalition, which has so far declined to introduce economic rescue packages of the kind seen in neighbouring boroughs on the grounds that a global recession cannot be tackled by local measures.
Mr McNulty said: “To dismiss unemployment as a macro-economic problem is just about the politics of despair – it is singing in the bath. On the other side of the border Westminster – a Conservative council – is looking at what it can do, and the Mayor of London, a Conservative, is talking to me about what he can do. Camden need to look to their own employment practices and look to their own procurement, both of which are ways in which councils have an impact on their local economy.”
The Town Hall’s regeneration chief, Councillor Andrew Marshall, said: “Unfortunately the government is still speaking with many voices on the recession. But we [the council] are a big part of the local economy and we’re going to continue the work we are doing over the next few months. If the government gave us more capital, we’d be able to do more.”

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