The Green Party had 13 councillors elected in the South East London borough and have become the opposition group to the Labour majority
The Green Party in Greenwich has promised to uphold their “absolutely crucial” role of scrutinising the decisions made by the Labour-controlled council over the next four years.
The Greens had 13 councillors elected in Greenwich last week, increasing their number of seats by 11 and leapfrogging the Conservatives to become the new opposition group in the South London borough. They include a voice actor who played eight different characters in the video game Baldur’s Gate 3.
Tamasin Rhymes became the only Green councillor in Greenwich when she won the Shooters Hill by-election last June. She then retained that seat at the full council elections. Cllr Rhymes, the newly elected leader of the Greens, said she was “hugely proud” of their campaign which had “built massively” upon the single seat they had less than a year ago.
Cllr Rhymes said that voters in Greenwich had given her party a clear mandate; effectively scrutinise and challenge the decisions made by Greenwich Council.
She said: “We’re pushing for better scrutiny and an examination of things that have gone through easily because Labour had its votes. Okay, it’s not all going to go our way, but we can push a bit harder.”
Prior to last week’s election, Labour had a massive majority in Greenwich, holding 47 seats with only eight councillors representing other parties. With this number now reduced to 35, the Greens have more power to challenge Labour in the chamber.
Cllr Rhymes said: “It’s been in one-party control for such a long time. Even if you’ve got new councillors coming in, it becomes a comfortable thing and people get used to doing things a certain way.
“While some of those may well be the right way, just showing everybody that lives in Greenwich that everything is being looked at properly gives them confidence in what goes on and what gets decided, and I think people need that.”
Cllr Rhymes was a Green Party member for several years before becoming a councillor. A parent, her career started in theatre and television but she now helps manage a charity in Bromley.
Tamasin decided to run for office after becoming involved in several projects in her local area of Shooters Hill, such as planting a community orchard, helping out with her children’s schools and setting up a borough-wide network to help small environmental projects get the advice and funding they need to get off the ground.
She said she did this “not because I had any desire to be in politics, but because those things needed either support or fixing”.
David Monteith was elected to represent Plumstead Common for the Greens last week. He described himself as an “accidental” candidate who was not a “political animal”.
David previously worked for 25 years in the social sector working with young people to combat homelessness, addiction and antisocial behaviour. Now he works as a professional voice actor, with his most notable work being in the wildly popular 2023 video game Baldur’s Gate 3 in which he voiced eight different characters.
What drew Cllr Monteith to local politics was Greenwich Council’s recent decision to transform the way it operates its adventure play centres (APCs). David led the campaign to keep supervised provision at all five of the centres, speaking at meetings and organising community events.
He said: “For the first time, I spent time in the council chamber, in council meetings, in cabinet meetings and in scrutiny panel meetings. I was absolutely appalled at what I saw not just in terms of approach to the work, but the toxicity in the way in which the current council addressed not even its opposition but also the public.
“That first time I was in the chamber, when I went home I couldn’t sleep because I was so disgusted. As this went on, I started to look at other things that were happening [at the council] and I felt just as disgusted and just as angry.
“I just talk too much for my own good, so in the end people started to encourage me to stand and I ended up here quite by accident, just appalled at what I’d seen.”
Cllr Rhymes added: “I think that’s across many of our new group of councillors. They may have accidentally got into this process, but the passion to see change in how members of the public are dealt with, how things are delivered, how people are consulted; I think that’s driving on a lot of the group.”
Specific issues the Greens have said they will work to raise at Greenwich Council include finding out how the Renters’ Rights Act will affect Greenwich tenants, addressing the increasing number of HMOs and providing more fiscal transparency to distinguish between the authority’s statutory obligations and where it chooses to spend the rest of its money.
The party has also said it will challenge the council on its sale of the Greenwich Equestrian Centre, an ongoing story that could see the Olympic Legacy Project sold to private developers.
Cllr Rhymes said she and her party would work to make the lives of Greenwich residents more affordable. She said: “Whether that’s social housing that actually delivers good homes to live in, or encouraging businesses to pick up the London Living Wage so people are actually earning enough to live on.
“A lot of these things align with the council strategy and their stated aims anyway, so we will be pushing as hard as we can to make sure those things happen in a timely fashion. Beyond that, for me, it’s really just making sure people are listened to.”
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