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Why did Porter affair drag on?
• ARTHUR Latham was, during the middle of the last century, Labour MP for this area.
The Boundaries Commission, plus the necessity for the Church Commissioners (CC) to manage the Church of England finances efficiently and thus sell the whole swathe of property from Edgware Road to Gloucester Terrace for around £2 million, resulted in the area returning a Tory MP ever after.
The CC even helped the dead to add to the voters’ roll – they exhumed all the bodies buried in St George’s Cemetery (just off Bayswater Road) and the many flats built there boosted the Tory votes.
The fact that the CC subsequently lost around £700 million in its dealing is comparable with the responsibility of all the Tory members of Westminster Council who assented to the ‘Porter Plan’. None of them had any money and so landed Dame Shirley with the full £27 million surcharge.
Not unlike the present imbroglio in the Labour Party – Lord Levy is in place for the Porter role. In any event, the various grades of officialdom at Westminster were responsible for preparing the paperwork etc – including its legal eagles.
Why wasn’t the whole affair nipped in the bud?
HENRY BERNARD
Hereford Road W2
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