"As I settled into my office at City Hall, it was exciting to think that we were really going to get things done"

Jenny Jones has campaigned for years to reduce air pollution. Here, in the first of two articles, she outlines how hard it was to make progress on the issue in London, despite mounting evidence of its harmful health effects.

Back in 1994, two ‘suited and booted’ members of the London Green Party launched their campaign for the local elections behind a desk, amidst the traffic on Waterloo Bridge (the entrance to the underpass was fortunately closed for repairs). This wonderfully visual manifesto launch focused upon air pollution and how to solve it. Fast forward six years and the Green Party had three elected representatives on the London Assembly, an independent Mayor (Ken Livingstone) and a set of air pollution targets agreed by the European Union. In late 2000, as I settled into my office at City Hall, it was exciting to think that we could really get things done.

What struck me about the realities of power, or in my case ‘influence’, was how politicians, the media and civil servants are all playing games. When Ken Livingstone pushed ahead with his (and our) manifesto promise to bring in a central London congestion charge, his political support hid behind caveats about London not being ready and predictions of chaos as poor people suffered. Exactly the same warnings and excuses for inaction as the current anti-ULEZ campaign. Meanwhile, I organised a very happy champagne celebration with campaigners at 7am near the Angel, Islington to welcome this step towards less traffic and cleaner air.

An early morning champagne celebration at Angel in Islington following the introduction of the new congestion charge zone 

Returning to City Hall I eagerly awaited the next step towards clean air, a Low Emission Zone that would enable London to hit the European targets for reducing air pollution. I joined a Mayoral working party and we got ourselves ready but it was all shelved for a few years as Ken’s office privately told me that they couldn’t have two anti-motorist measures in their first term.  

It soon became clear that nothing in the Mayor’s plans would deliver the kind of reductions needed to safeguard the health of Londoners, so I wrote a formal complaint to the European Union. The response from the Labour government was complacent, as DEFRA believed that the EU deal with the car manufacturers would deliver the reductions. They felt there was no need to stop building roads, like the urban motorway the Mayor had planned for East London. Ken’s notorious Thames Gateway Bridge.

What was more surprising was the reaction from the media, who mimicked the view of the civil servants, that it was no longer an issue worth reporting as it would fade away with time. Thankfully, the BBC London journalist (Tom Edwards) who covered all things transport related, stuck his neck out and argued with his producers to break that consensus. He started covering what I had to say and after the 2004 elections the Green Party on the London Assembly had a pivotal role when it came to signing off the Mayor’s budget, which resulted in our allocating multi-million pound budgets to schemes that would take forward the clean air agenda.

One of the most high profile projects was the 2007, Low Emission Zone. By this stage, the medical evidence about the damage that air pollution produces was starting to accumulate. The estimated number of premature deaths related to air pollution also escalated. Rather than becoming an issue that would fade away, the scale of this public health emergency was becoming far clearer. The whole campaign for clean air had also become far more professional with the amazing Simon Birkett setting up Clean Air London and putting forward his case with conviction and accuracy. .

Jenny with Ken Livingstone promoting active transport in 2003. But the London Mayor and Labour Government remained firmly committed to building more roads.

What hadn’t changed was Ken’s determination to build his urban motorway/bridge. Budget negotiations reached an impasse until we agreed to vote for it if Ken funded the local community objectors at the public enquiry. It was the only time a public authority has funded the objectors to a project it was promoting and it was amazing how many wonderful professors and medical experts we could get to work for not a lot of money. We won, mostly on air pollution grounds.

Boris Johnson, as Mayor, cancelled the plans for reducing the number of polluting heavy vehicles and vans, but instead proposed an ultra-low emission zone that the next Mayor could implement. He also came up with lots of stupid schemes, like pot planets at the side of busy roads and gluing the pollution to the road around monitoring stations. Anything to distract people from the real actions needed to deal with the problem.

Meanwhile, the technical fix that DEFRA had been relying upon for the previous two decades to solve the problem had been exposed as a fraud. Many motor manufacturers had fooled the European Commission by falsifying their test results and the whole system of self-regulation had resulted in a new generation of polluting vehicles being driven onto our streets.

As I started my career in the Lords, I realised that only a new Clean Air Act would shift DEFRA out of its complacency and enable people across the country to breathe easy.

Thanks to everyone who has shared their story on our Anniversary website. Watch out for the second of Jenny's articles on Friday - the final in our series - as she takes her campaign for clean air to the House of Lords. 

Promoted by Chris Williams on behalf of The Green Party, both at PO Box 78066, London SE16 9GQ