Ahead of the May 3^rd local council elections JesmondLocal politics reporters Ashleigh Smith and Thomas Goodall are conducting interviews with all the candidates in North and South Jesmond, to find out a little bit more about them and their policies.

Because of the large number of candidates standing this year the profiles will be split into the political parties for each ward. A number of key questions were asked to all candidates and these are the responses of the South Jesmond Community Party of Britain candidate, Martin Levy.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

ML – I used to work at Northumbria University. I was a chemistry lecturer there and I was union branch chair. I’ve been active in the trade union movement pretty much all my working life, since I retired I’ve continued with that and I’m now president of the Newcastle Trade Union council. I’ve been active in the Communist Party since I was in my teens and I’m currently the district secretary for the North of England.

What do you believe is the best way of ensuring that Jesmond has the right mix of students and local residents?

ML – Thats a very difficult issue isn’t it, because people who own houses may want to move on and sell them and they must sell to everyone who can meet the price and the problem is you have people buying to let and there’s no control over that. The local authority can’t do much about that so national politics actually requires intervention because nobody should own more than two or three houses at most. Students have a choice between paying high rent for privately owned houses or paying high rent in blocks that have been taken over by commercial organisations. The majority of students are well behaved and cause no problems for their neighbours, but of course it changes the character of an area when the houses are not owned by the people who live in them but by landlords who don’t really want to do much about them.

How would you make Jesmond cleaner?

ML –There’s a limit to what individual people can do in terms of cleaning up the area round where they live. The major problem is with the resources the council have for street cleaning and refuse collection and so on. The squeeze is there because the government has cut back on funding for local councils and they are limited in what they can do. 

Should businesses selling alcohol in Jemsond pay more in rates to cover the cost of cleaning up litter, policing antisocial behaviour, etc?

ML – I think that’s a national policy set by the government, but again you come back to what the resources are for Northumbria Police to deal with potential anti-social behaviour. You could talk about raising business rates but then do you want to drive local business out of business? If it’s young people below the age of adulthood drinking, then there’s a problem caused by cutbacks in local resources: there aren’t the places where young people can go in evenings so they end up drinking alcohol and making a nuisance.

What could be done to help Jesmond businesses flourish all year round?

ML – To have stable communities. Part of the problem in Jesmond with the transit population of students is that many of them are not there for a large proportion of the year, so you can’t make the same money on hairdressing or pizza production throughout the summer months – the consumers aren’t there. Unless you build low cost housing for students, where they will opt to live rather than shared houses, you’re not going to get the families moving in and ensuring local businesses have business all year round. Students do make a significant contribution to the economy, but when they are there.

Has Jesmond got the balance right with regards to pedestrians, cyclists and motorist?

ML – Well of course you can make roads completely pedestrianised, you can put speed bumps in – we have quite few of already – you can design cycle lanes but the basic problem is the volume of traffic. If people feel that they need to use their own private transport because they can’t get where they need to go on public transport, there’s the problem. The Metro is good but its not integrated with the buses and the buses are in private hands. When bus transport was privatised, the fares began to go up and people resorted to private transport. It’s really a national policy that you should be supporting public transport.  It’s important to the environment that fewer people use their private motorcars generating fewer noxious fumes and less of a carbon footprint on the environment. 

Is there anything you’d like to add? Any issues you are particularly passionate about?

M – The main point we are making in our campaign this year is that nothing will happen unless there’s a campaign about it. Essentially the council has been presiding over years of decline and it’s going to go on and on unless a stand is made. We see campaigning in local elections as part of a campaign for people to protest and to demand what is rightfully theirs. The resources for local councils should be there and there should be a redistribution of resources from the wealthier areas to the poorer ones. I class Newcastle as a poorer area, even Jesmond – though it is said to be relatively affluent, there are lots of people who are struggling and students who are not that wealthy either, just accumulating massive amount of debt. Nothing will happen without a struggle.