Labour's smears come back to haunt them in Herne Hill

There was an excellent London Assembly hustings event last night in Herne Hill, organised by the Herne Hill Forum.

It was very well attended, with lots of local people who are very active in the local Herne Hill Community.

I was particularly pleased to take part the event, as there was a Green Party councilor in Herne Hill until the last election. However, she was subject to a disgusting smear campaign by Lambeth Labour party, and lost her seat in 2010.

What was interesting about last night however, it that the smears are now coming back to haunt Labour, and I suspect they will continue to do so.

There was for example, a great deal of support for lowering speed limits in Herne Hill to 20mph. This was something that Labour's Val Shawcross claimed last night she supports. It is in fact a campaign that the Green's have long been championing, and calling for right across Lambeth. The blockage however has actually been the Labour Party on Lambeth council, who are refusing to implement 20mph limits across the borough. This made Val's claims ring rather hollow.

Even more so, when people there realised that this was something Labour had tried to make political mileage out of at the last election. In the literature Labour distributed aiming to smear the Green Party, they even suggested that the Greens were opposed to 20mph limits.

There was also a good discussion about how to cut crime. There has been a spate of burglaries in Herne Hill. Drugs policy came up, and once again Labour's smears in Herne Hill against the Greens on this issue were highlighted.

But it isn't just Labour's smears that are coming back to haunt them. It is also what they are doing now in Lambeth. Even on social housing, Labour cannot with any credibility claim to be standing up for local people, when they are currently in the process of evicting members of housing co-ops and selling off the property to developers.