COMMENT A Putney reader, Ted Wainman, sent this note to Fleur Anderson MP this week after receiving an invitation to today’s Hammersmith Bridge protest:
“I am struggling to work out against whom we are demonstrating. Maybe the Liberal Democrats from Richmond?”
It’s a fair question. Labour controls the council that owns the bridge. Labour controls the Mayor who runs TfL. Labour controls Wandsworth Council. Labour controls the UK government. The Transport Secretary, Heidi Alexander, was Sadiq Khan’s deputy. Anderson could pick up the phone.
Instead, she’s organised a photo opportunity.
The banner that keeps touring
The “Putney Says Reopen Hammersmith Bridge” banner first appeared on Boat Race Day 2021. Anderson stood on Putney Embankment and demanded the bridge be fixed “by next year’s boat race weekend.”
That was four years ago. The banner has since appeared outside Parliament, in front of the closed bridge, and at a public meeting with Simon Hogg. Same banner, same slogan, different year. On Saturday it returns for another outing.
When Conservatives held power, Anderson knew exactly who to blame. “I am sick of this Government playing party political games,” she said in 2021. “The Government could and should have sorted this earlier,” she said in 2024.
Then Labour won. Anderson didn’t mention Hammersmith Bridge in Parliament for nearly two years. Now she blames Conservatives for not starting sooner.
to blame?
What a protest cannot do
The bridge remains closed because the Department for Transport hasn’t approved the business case Hammersmith & Fulham Council submitted in December 2022. That’s a Labour department, run by a Labour minister, under a Labour government.
The Treasury announced a £1 billion “Structures Fund” for broken bridges in June 2024. When a Treasury minister was asked on LBC whether Hammersmith Bridge would get any of it, she refused to answer.
A protest on the Barnes riverbank will not unlock Treasury funding. A phone call might. A backbench rebellion might. Sustained pressure in Parliament might. But Anderson went silent in Parliament throughout 2024, and the only MP raising the bridge in the Spending Review debate was Liberal Democrat Sarah Olney.
Who benefits from Saturday?
Local elections are in May. Anderson and Hogg need campaign photos showing them “fighting” for residents. The banner provides those photos. It always has.
The bridge, by Anderson’s own estimate, won’t reopen to vehicles until 2035. Nine more years. Nine more years of banner tours, public meetings, and press releases about “urgent action.”
Ted asked the right question. There is no one left to protest against. There is only the performance, and the audience it’s intended for: voters who haven’t noticed that Labour now holds every lever and has pulled none of them.
Same banner. Same promise. Same result.
Irrespective of one’s political leaning I firmly believe it is important to support our MP in her efforts to show her government the level of upset their lacklustre response thus far is having.
Lest we forget the same MP successfully petitioned the mayor of London when the 14 bus route was threatened.
Congregate at 24.01.26 at 14.00hrs Barnes entrance to Hammersmith Bridge to demonstrate your support.
If the old London Bridge can be sold off then why can they not call time on Hammersmith Bridge?
I love the bridge and used it as a child but its time to move on and help the surrounding area.
Putney is being punished by the councils and do-gooders involved.
If money can be found for the white elephant Garden Bridge ( what happened to the money there?) then surely it can found by TFL and the councils involved.
When Margaret Thatcher abolished the GLC on April 1, 1986, responsibility for maintenance and repair of Hammersmith Bridge was passed, like a poisoned chalice, to the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. What a wizard wheeze that was! The DfT and TfL are supposed to lend some technical and financial support, which seems to mean there are now too many cooks not only spoiling the broth, but not agreeing what to cook in the first place. The French can rebuild Notre Dame in the time it takes the UK to twiddle its thumbs and get nowhere. What have we come to in this benighted isle?