PRESS RELEASE SURGING GREENS SELECT COMMUNITY CHAMPION ABBEY FOR GREENWICH & WOOLWICH

Greenwich Greens have selected long-standing Woolwich resident Abbey Akinoshun as their candidate for the Greenwich & Woolwich constituency at the general election on 7 May. A former NHS nurse and manager who now runs a service offering advice to people facing bullying, victimisation or harassment at work, Abbey Akinoshun has lived in the Royal Borough for more than 15 years.

He served for nearly 10 years as a governor of Hawksmoor primary school in Thamesmead, which his children now attend. He spent 14 years working for the National Health Service, including the Oxleas NHS Trust. He also served for seven years as an elected council member of the Nursing and Midwifery Council, the world’s largest regulatory body.

A former shop steward in the Transport and General Workers Union, in 1999 he was presented with an award by the Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Commander John Grieve, for fighting discrimination in the workplace.

In 2000 he received an Our Heroes Community Champion award from the South London Press for his voluntary work to fight injustice and harassment in the workplace. Before starting his nursing career he worked for London Underground, cleaning the track and Tube stations at night. He later worked as a kitchen porter before moving to a rehabilitation home for people with mental health problems. “I have represented hundreds of workers at employment tribunals and disciplinary hearings who had no financial means of hiring lawyers to represent them,” he says. “I get motivated to fight for justice for other people, having gone through the same experience myself.

My three priorities for Greenwich & Woolwich will be to ensure we create an economy that provides sustainable and local jobs paying the living wage; to support the local community in their campaigns against the Silvertown tunnel and IKEA in order to reduce the risk of long-term exposure to air pollution and demolition of green space in Greenwich; and I will campaign for the building of more affordable social housing and the use of empty properties to address the problems of homelessness in the constituency.

I have the passion and commitment to serve my local community. My experience in life has given me foundation and knowledge to serve the whole community by representing them in the next parliament.” Originally from Nigeria, Abbey spent six years in Bulgaria earning his masters degree in social psychology from the University of Sofia. He speaks fluent Bulgarian as well as Yoruba.

He later attended King’s College, London where he obtained his professional qualification in Mental Health Nursing in 1998. Before joining the Green Party nearly two years ago he was an active member of the Labour Party and was an elected official in the Erith & Thamesmead branch. “Having been a Labour Party member for over 10 years, I left because, sadly, I no longer saw it as a party to build a fairer society,” he says. “I joined the Green Party because I saw a fast-growing political party which has a fully developed range of policies addressing social, economic and political issues in our society.

I was attracted to the Green Party because of its core values. It is the only party of social and environmental justice that supports a radical transformation of society for the benefit of all and for the planet as a whole. I was also inspired by its call to ensure that everyone has access to a secure job and a decent living wage, and its belief in the restoration of public services to public hands.” This is not the first time Abbey has stood for Parliament. At the 2010 General Election he stood as an independent in Erith & Thamesmead, polling 438 votes. He hopes to do much better than this time. The Greens came fifth in Greenwich & Woolwich in 2010 with just over 1,500 votes, but this year they hope to capitalise on a massive surge in membership in recent months.

There are now nearly four times as many members of the Green Party in England and Wales as there were at the start of 2014, and the party has overtaken both Ukip and the Lib Dems to become the thirdlargest in England and Wales. Greenwich Greens have experienced a similar surge in membership locally so there is every reason to expect a big boost in their vote share. “We are delighted to have such an able and charismatic local candidate who has campaigned tirelessly for workers’ rights and has a proven record of fighting for the interests of people in Greenwich & Woolwich,” says Jan King, Election Agent of Greenwich Green Party. “We are also very proud that, in a constituency where 42 percent of residents are non-white, we are the only political party fielding a nonwhite candidate.

Westminster politicians nowadays talk a lot about how much they respect hard-working people. As someone who learned Bulgarian in order to put himself through university and then spent nights cleaning the Underground so that Londoners could get to work, Abbey Akinoshun knows all about hard work. He already spends his working life sticking up for people who have been treated badly and he will be a passionate fighter against the austerity policies which all the other main parties support, as well as supporting local campaigns for more affordable social housing and against the Silvertown Tunnel and Ikea.”

CONTACT DETAILS FOR MEDIA ONLY NOT FOR PUBLICATION:

For further information contact Abbey Akinoshun at abbeyerras@yahoo.co.uk or Jan King at 07931 370025 or at greenwich@greenparty.org.uk Web Site: http://greenwich.greenparty.org.uk