What was the purpose of the apology signed off by new Sheffield City Council leader Cllr Tom Hunt and CEO Kate Josephs this week? Are they hoping to put the tree debacle to rest, drawing a line to say, ‘Yes, you were right, we were wrong, now this is the end of it’? Are they hoping to clearly differentiate themselves from the former regime headed up by leader Cllr Julie Dore and CEO John Mothersole? Are they apologising for their forerunners’ mistakes to highlight their own personal lack of culpability for the errors of the recent past?
How easy it is to apologise for something you played no part in. As my fellow resident campaigner and erudite observer Ruth Hubbard noted, “The length of the apology is in inverse proportion to the depth of accountability”.
A meaningless apology from the wrong people
The majority of people, officers and politicians, who are actually responsible for the appalling decisions made during the worst of the street tree campaign are gone. They knew, better than anyone, what was coming and they’ve found new posts, stood down or taken early retirement. Some are sitting very comfortably with generous pensions, protected from accountability. And what of the senior politicians who ought to apologise? MPs Paul Blomfield, Olivia Blake, Louise Haigh, Clive Betts, and peer Lord David Blunkett, were all complicit to varying degrees. Where is their apology?
South Yorkshire Police are said to have been placed in an invidious position and this may be true, but they didn’t need to support the council in deceiving the public. I won’t forget the egregious insinuations made by a senior officer about residents opposed to the felling of healthy trees displaying violent conduct. Similar false reports were repeated by MP Paul Blomfield too.
The Labour administration had complete control during this terrible episode and they were assured of secrecy by those complicit in their regrettably bullish ill-conceived agenda. It seems they were more concerned with asserting their dominance and displaying their power than they were with running the city for the benefit of residents. And yet, they remain shameless.
Labour’s deep-rooted arrogance in Sheffield
Lord Blunkett, soon after the publication of Sir Mark Lowcock’s inquiry report into the street trees dispute in March this year, wrote an article for the Sheffield Star suggesting that campaigners were more interested in seeking revenge than conciliation. Such hypocrisy and crass analysis say so much more about Labour’s deep-rooted arrogance here in Sheffield. They really have shown that they think they own the city and display a level of entitlement to govern that aggrieves those of us who favour a collaborative multi-party approach.
Can we expect better in the future? Only if Labour fails to attain overall control and is kept in check, as all parties must be, by strong well-informed parties working within a committee system.
For me, the Sheffield street tree scandal is a story of what happens when a dominant group asserts absolute power in such a cocksure manner that listening to alternate points of view is read as a sign of weakness. Let’s face it, they wanted to destroy the street tree campaign, and they didn’t care how much money they spent or what suffering they caused. What mattered most was for them to assert their dominance. They wanted to win at all costs.
Sheffield: It’s Our City
The apology, for me, is meaningless because the majority of the people who wanted to crush us are long gone and silent. I’d like to think they’ve taken their hubristic attitudes with them but sure as night follows day there lurks in each of us a capacity to indulge the worst of ourselves. The seed that was nourished by this bad blood was another unprecedented community movement called It’s Our City.
It was a response to the abuse of power we witnessed in the trees dispute and it has delivered the committee system which enables greater openness and transparency, and hence better scrutiny, within the council. This was delivered by residents, not by politicians. The real power lies within the community and when residents recognise a common threat they rise up and demand change.
All politicians must learn the lesson that they were elected to guide and serve, not dominate and control.
