Our @LambethLabour housing pledges are:
🏠4000 social & affordable homes by 2035.
🚫A renters’ rights team tackling bad landlords.
💷Redistribute developer taxes to communities.
👷Invest £200m in our council homes.
🧑🧑🧒🧒Take former council homes back into public ownership.
It’s been very cold this week and in #Lambeth we’ve had our Severe Weather Emergency Protocol in place.
This means we have had extra measures to protect rough sleepers from life threatening weather conditions and get them into emergency accommodation.
https://t.co/gYofq3pCid
Blind Tom' Wiggins was an African American musical prodigy. Born blind, as an infant he Tom Wiggins was sold into slavery, along with the rest of his family. He also survived attempted murder as he had no economic value to his owners.
However, Tom had access to a piano, and his talent for perceiving, remembering, and reproducing sounds was immediately apparent. Many historians also believe that Tom was on the autism spectrum, which could explain his extraordinary memory. He would go on to perform at concerts throughout the Americas and Europe.
—Thomas Greene Wiggins was born May 25, 1849 to Mungo and Charity Wiggins, enslaved on a Georgia plantation. He was blind and autistic but a musical genius with a phenomenal memory. In 1850 Tom, his parents, and two brothers were sold to James Neil Bethune, a lawyer and newspaper editor in Columbus, Georgia. Young Tom was fascinated by music and other sounds, and could pick out tunes on the piano by the age of four. He made his concert debut at eight, performing in Atlanta.
In 1858 Tom was hired out as a slave-musician, at a price of $15,000. In 1859, at the age of 10, he became the first African American performer to play at the White House when he gave a concert before President James Buchanan. His piano pieces “Oliver Galop” and “Virginia Polka” were published in 1860. During the Civil War he was back with his owner, raising funds for Confederate relief. By 1863 he played his own composition, “Battle of Manassas.” By 1865, 16-year-old Tom Wiggins, now “indentured” to James Bethune, could play difficult works of Bach, Chopin, Liszt, Beethoven, and Thalberg. He also played pieces after one hearing, and memorized poems and text in foreign languages. Advertising claimed Tom was untaught, but in fact he was tutored by a Professor of Music who traveled with him.
James Neil Bethune took Tom Wiggins to Europe where he collected testimonials from music critics Ignaz Moscheles and Charles Halle, which were printed in a booklet “The Marvelous Musical Prodigy Blind Tom.” With these and other endorsements, Blind Tom Wiggins became an internationally recognized performer. By 1868 Tom and the Bethune family lived on a Virginia farm in the summer, while touring the United States and Canada the rest of the year, averaging $50,000 annually in concert revenue. James Bethune eventually lost custody of Tom to his late son’s ex-wife, Eliza Bethune. Charity Wiggins, Tom’s mother, was a party to the suit, but she did not win control of her son or his income.
Blind Tom Wiggins gave his last performance in 1905. He died three years later on June 13, 1908 at the age of 59 at his manager’s home in Hoboken, New Jersey.—
On Saturday @JacquiMckenzie6 and her team will be running a legal clinic for those affected by the Windrush scandal. To book an appointment, please call 020 7650 1200 and ask for the Windrush team, or the surgeries are open to walk-in appointments https://t.co/1oKLmn0dyf
Broxtowe is getting a raw deal under the Tories but we can only change that by uniting to beat Darren Henry.
I’m a lifelong trade unionist who puts our shared values into practice every day, standing to be the next Labour MP for Broxtowe.
Learn more👇
https://t.co/RU76UotNBJ
We will improve employment conditions in the social care sector in Lambeth by signing up to the Ethical Care Charter, ensuring travel time is paid and the length of visits matches the needs of residents. #OnYourSide
BREAKING:
The Conservative Party just voted against keeping energy bills low.
Instead of providing working families, pensioners and businesses with security, they are abandoning them.