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news
Hartington Road, Chiswick 1 (copyright Simon MacMichael)Tory councillor apologises for comparing LTNs to South Africa’s apartheid era pass laws
The leader of the Conservative group on Hounslow Council has apologised for comparing the impact of low traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) on residents in Chiswick to the experience of South Africans subject to the country’s Pass Laws during the Apartheid era.
Gerald McGregor, who represents the Homefields ward, the easternmost in the west London borough, was described as a “bombastic dinosaur” by a Labour opponent following his remarks, which he initially defended, reports local website ChiswickW4.com.
Interventions he has opposed include motor vehicles being banned northbound on Hartington Road to prevent drivers using it as a rat run from Chiswick Bridge to the A4 and thereby avoid the Hogarth Roundabout.
He said: “We are in a very bad situation. The language and temperature have gone up.
“I used the word ‘apartheid’ as Hounslow seems to be preventing people from using their vehicles.”
Referring to the legislation in force in South Africa until the mid-1980s which imposed severe restrictions on black people in terms of travel, residence, employment and citizenship, McGregor said: “What I meant were the pass laws. That’s actually what is happening in Chiswick right now.
“The council has no desire to hear what we have to say.”
In response, Labour councillor Salman Shaheen said: “He is a bombastic dinosaur. He really is from another era. He uses very colourful language.
“It’s shocking for a modern-day politician to compare apartheid to the traffic challenges of Chiswick.
“It’s so out of touch. They are using language that is disgracing themselves.”
In a statement reported on by ChiswickW4.com, Councillor McGregor has now apologised for his comments.
He said: “I have taken some time to reflect on my remarks over the past week and would like to apologise unreservedly for the comments I made. The language is inappropriate and has understandably caused offence to residents and this was never my intention.
“My words fell well short of the high standards by which I try to conduct myself in public life and, while I will never stop standing up for people across the London Borough of Hounslow, I recognise that in future I must take more care with the language I use.”
Labour, with 50 of the 60 seats, controls Hounslow Council, with the Conservatives holding the remaining 10 – all of those in the affluent Turnham Green, Chiswick Riverside and Chiswick Homefields wards in the east of the borough.
It is not the first time that Tory councillors there have used inflammatory – and tasteless – language when expressing their opposition to measures aimed at reducing motor traffic and encouraging active travel, such as the implementation of LTNs or Cycleway 9, which opened in December last year and runs from Kew Bridge along Chiswick High Road to Hounslow’s border with Hammersmith & Fulham.
Turnham Green Ward Councillor Joanna Biddulph was heavily criticised last year after she quoted an unnamed resident who had apparently likened traffic interventions in Chiswick as akin to “Belfast during the Troubles,” and the councillor also described LTNs being introduced in Grove Park and Strand on the Green would turn the area into a “ghetto.”
More recently, former chair of Chiswick Riverside Conservatives David Giles was suspended from the local party after he described Labour Hounslow councillors as “the Brentford Taliban.”
McGregor defended Giles, saying that he had simply been quoting a local resident.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
Latest Comments
- brooksby 2 sec ago
You mean that they are Otherwise Law-Abiding™ ?
- brooksby 7 min 53 sec ago
What fresh devilry is this??? - perhaps they had a design for some handlebars, and another design for some forks, and somewhere along the line the...
- brooksby 11 min 32 sec ago
And finally: I wonder how many of the "more than 3,000" signatures on that petition are actually locals, who live or work there (and are not just...
- Doug_D 1 hour 47 min ago
Another book suggestion - I can highly recommend "Lost Summers and Half-Forgotten Afternoons: A Mint Sauce collection" - a beautifully presented...
- chrisonabike 3 hours 5 sec ago
But... the last is only not the case with drivers on normal roads because driving on the cycle path / footway / rolling a vehicle up there is seen...
- mdavidford 3 hours 38 min ago
I think you're missing an opportunity to pack even more tech into it - add accelerometers that can detect whether they're pedalling or stepping....
- chrisonabike 4 hours 2 min ago
Thanks. I guess the question is "need". If the road is busy, it sounds like it is a desired route between places? In which case (given this an...
- mdavidford 4 hours 10 min ago
Don't know what you mean. I thought my suggestion was entirely practical.
- Rapha Nadal 4 hours 45 min ago
I'd buy a motorbike fo rthat kind of money!
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12 comments
At least he apologised for his mistake; not something most tories are able to do, in fact, I can't remember one every doing it before. Arrogance personified.
But he did take a week to do so and defended his comments at first, so it doesn't sound like he was doing so by choice.
So not a real apology at all.
Sorry, but not sorry.
FTFY In the interests of a more widely true statement. Wouldn't want to make it look like we were diminishing the achievements of the Keith Vazes and Claudia Webbes of this world!
Or the war criminal Tony Blair.
Just wait 'till he hears about vaccine passports - he'll have to invoke the Nazis (or possibly the mark of the beast)!
And boycott Tesco, according to some of today's newspapers...
Not being able to use a residential road as a through-road/rat-run is not, as far as I can see, anything like the activities carried out under apartheid... Am I missing something?
Well as a Tory*, they didn't seem to be to bothered with Apartheid in the 80's, with only doing lip service to putting political pressure on SA to do anything about it. So I'm guessing it doesn't see it as being a big deal, which LTN's are not, hence like Apartheid.
*TBF, all the Governments both red and blue kind of ignored it over the years.
Did you not hear? being a driver is now a protected characteristic. It;s not lawful to discriminate against these cyborgs who cannot be seperated from their cars.
"Hounslow seems to be preventing people from using their vehicles".
TIL a few blocked roads (to cars at least) = preventing people from using their vehicles.
I'm curious, how far away does a road block have to be for it to meet this criteria? If there aren't any blocked roads throughout the whole of Europe, but a blocked road in say...Vietnam...is that preventing people worldwide from using their vehicles too? The nonsense some of these local representatives come up with.
Well it's change, see? And the wrong kind - it's not the (lucrative) march of progress here that's disadvantaging people. It's also disadvantaging the advantaged (those with cars) which is unnatural. (Go on - prove to us that the queue is solely ambulances and vehicles transporting the disabled and infirm...).
Interestingly the reverse idea - running access streets through the quiet places / cul-de-sacs that councillors often live in - doesn't seem to get much support. We want the benefits but let others bear the costs.
We'll tolerate blockages as long as they're temporary e.g. twice a day for heavy traffic, or allowing some company to dig up the road again to fix / install some new utility, or for a large shopping / hotel complex to be built.