FOLLOWING the election of six community councillors in Isleworth and Syon wards on 4th May 2006, and New Labour's removal from overall control of Hounslow Council, all of us were left with an important decision to make.  Would we - if such an offer was available - be prepared to work with another party or parties to provide a workable council leadership for the next four years?

With the Labour Party having returned with 24 councillors and the Conservatives 23, from a total of 60, any new leadership would obviously have had to involve at least one of these two parties. 

We very quickly decided that we could not work with New Labour, irrespective of whether or not they were prepared to work with us.  It was not a question of ideology, simply that the old regime in Hounslow, indeed the whole local party generally, was of such low moral standing that to be involved in any kind of arrangement with these people would be in direct conflict with everything the ICG as a group stands for - honesty, openness, fairness and a commitment to local democracy which demanded more community participation and less political control.

What needs to be remembered is that the ICG is not a political organisation in the sense of being united by commitment to a particular ideology.   Some of our members have a Conservative orientation, others are more inclined towards Labour's historical outlook.  Many more occupy whatever space is left between, or even beyond.

What unites ICG members is a commitment to participatory democracy and the right of people to get involved and to have their views heard and listened to.  There is nothing, as far as we are aware, that is "unsocialist" about such a position but that it is "un-New Labour", and particularly "un-Hounslow New Labour", cannot in all good sense be denied.

Given that the ICG is not bound by one particular set of ideological values or another we are, when faced with the possibility of being an active partner in any new administration, left in logical terms with a simple choice.  Either we are prepared to ally ourselves with anybody who shares our commitment to empowering the community irrespective of their own ideological bent, or else we remain aloof and never ally ourselves with anybody on account of the fact that we are not of one or another political persuasion.

It was our view that to ask members of the electorate to vote for us in the certain knowledge that we would never and could never be in a position to influence events would be fraudulent.  We had to be prepared to form alliances from which we could bring positive change for our constituents, even if it meant that a certain amount of trading and bartering would need to take place along the way.

Even if it meant, I have to say, that we would sometimes find ourselves associated as a consequence with decisions with which many of us did not entirely agree.

The alternative, for us, would be to deny those who elected us the opportunity to put many of the objectives which we have been fighting for for years - objectives which, in some cases, are of such fundamental importance that they triggered the ICG's very formation and have sustained it since for over twelve years - into practice at last.  Not to have taken such an opportunity would, frankly, have been a crime.

With this in mind our decision to enter into an alliance with the Conservatives was something of a no-brainer.  Recent experience had led us to the view that, whatever ideological differences may have existed, these at least were people who were open and honest, had goodwill for the local community and conducted their business out in the light of day.  Our even more recent experience of working with them in the new administration confirms this view, and we have absolute confidence in their integrity as partners as I would hope they have in ours.

There will be times when we cannot agree, and then as mature adults we will all need to get around the table and try to reach agreement.  The Conservatives may be the larger of the two groups, but both partners need the other in order to make it work and both partners realise that.  There is much that we will be able to achieve together.  Many aspects of our two manifestos can be brought together.  Those which can't may need to be shelved.

The new administration isn't a Conservative administration.  It isn't an ICG administration either.  Arguably it provides our community with the best of both worlds.  It is an alliance of two groups of well-meaning people who are prepared where necessary to put ideology aside in order to pursue the greater goal of cleaning up Hounslow Council and introducing good, honest, transparent local government.

We in the ICG have always said that ideology counts for little in local government in this day and age.  It is mostly about ways and means of doing things. 

We didn't care for the ways and means of the old regime and now, at last, we have an opportunity to do something about it.  We believe there are few who will blame us for taking it.

Councillor Phil Andrews -

Organiser, ICG.