What do these two things have in common: A councillor who hasn’t attended his council or committee meetings in over 6 months, and Amnesty International’s anti-xenophobia and anti-hate crime motion?

This week they both reinforced to me the importance of living my life based on principles. 

Councillor non-attendance

Councillors must attend at least one meeting of council or committee every 6 months. Failure to do this means the non-attender is no longer a member of council and a vacancy occurs.  

Vale of White Horse uses a loose interpretation of the law. If a councillor misses all his council and committee meetings, he can just come along to any meeting and sit in the audience. Vale doesn’t require that he attend the meeting of a committee where he is a member. Any audience time will do. 

I’m arguing against this interpretation of the legislation, because the law was clearly intended to ensure councillors met their conucillor responsibilities. But that’s not the main point. When people said to me, “But, in the past, members of your own party group have benefited from this interpretation” I shrugged because that’s irrelevant (it’s politics); the council’s stance is wrong in principle. 

Anti-hate motion 

Amnesty International have a current campaign to contact your local councillor, and urge them to table an anti-hate motion. You can see their wording of the motion here. 

Both Lib Dem and Tory councillors were approached to propose this amendment. One senior Tory proposed to change the wording to omit reference to the ‘support and resources’ promise. He worried they might get applications for grants they didn’t want to give. That’s the politics. 

I shrugged at this argument. If we get inappropriate grant applications, we have an approval process that would catch them. I said, “The answer to this concern isn’t to shut the door to applications for grants that you might not want to give.” It’s the principle. 

I don’t know yet the wording of the final Tory version of this motion; I left it with the council leader to sort out. (Both motions are on the agenda. But the rules say only one motion on the same subject is allowed every 6 months. So it’s likely to be the Tory motion that will be considered first (motions are tabled in the order received). Sadly this would mean the Lib Dem motion can’t be considered. That’s more of the politics part of this. 

These two frustrating situations this week taught me that sometimes the right thing to do is apparent because it’s based on principles.