Emma Dent Coad was a Labour councillor from 2006, one of a frustrated handful in the Conservative controlled Kensington and Chelsea London Borough Council. From time to time she writes academic articles about architecture, and she has been doing a PhD on Spanish architecture as well as giving the odd lecture at the Bartlett.
After numerous recounts, she was elected as Labour MP for Kensington by just twenty votes at the snap general election of 8 June 2017. She is now the MP responsible for the Notting Hill Carnival and Harrods.
From March 2010 she maintained a blog site
http://emmadentcoad.blogspot.co.uk/search?updated-max=2010-03-13T11:58:00Z&max-results=7&start=7&by-date=false
detailing her frustrations as a councillor seeking to represent and defend the ordinary people of her wards against the onslaught of indifferent, inept, and possibly even corrupt ruling council administration. Despite being the richest council in Britain, or perhaps even the world, purchasing Pre Raphaelite paintings and running a huge surplus, council housing was subject to cuts and neglect. Clearly it would have suited the Council to see poor residents leave, they were strongly encouraged to move out of the area.
On 14th June the Grenfell Tower fire broke out, as yet there is no final count for the number of fatalities.
Emma provided a sober maiden speech to Parliament
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0o45pTawR7g
I recently made a text file out of her blog postings and I have been reading it on my Kindle. Over the years the blog grew to the size of a short novel, with comments on the arrogant ruling administration, Stella McCartney, the appalling condition of housing stock, creeping, or at times galloping gentrification (and not the nice kind), the Notting Hill Carnival, the normal ebb and flow of life as a councillor in a severely dysfunctional council.
Obviously this is a set of blog postings, written over a number of years, it lacks of polish of a top class political memoir like those of Barrack Obama, or a deep study of urbanism but it has an immediacy and tells a remarkable story. There was an appalling culture amongst the ruling council Cabinet of thinking that trickle down economics were a replacement for decent social housing and benefits.
All told the accumulated blog postings have been one of the most salutary and informative things that I have read in a long time. It is a highly recommended read and if there is an astute publisher out there, this could be the basis of a very powerful book of our time.
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