Our London Assembly candidate for Merton and Wandsworth, Dr Pippa Maslin, was a state secondary school English teacher for thirteen years and a media arts university tutor during the completion of her Ph.D. She is currently a caseworker for a local Deaf and Disabled People’s Organisation.
Born to a Filipina and a Briton, she moved from Manila to Morden in 1977 and, after some time away, returned in 2013. Angered by pernicious ‘austerity measures’ imposed by the coalition government, she joined The People’s Assembly Against Austerity. Determined to fight cuts to essential local services, particularly in Adult Social Care and at St Helier Hospital, she threw herself into campaigning.
In 2015, Pippa and her neighbours found themselves having to fight their housing association, Clarion, to lower a bill for major works. The ward Councillors proved ineffective. Thus, the residents took matters into their own hands and managed to negotiate about 60% off the original figure. In the same year, she joined the National Health Action Party, compelled to counter unjust cuts to local healthcare and the burgeoning backdoor privatisation of our NHS.
Drawn to not only our environmental policies, but also our deep sense of social justice, shown in our policies on, for example, healthcare, education, the Criminal Justice System, and global relations, a move to the Green Party came in late 2015. In 2017, she stood as a candidate in a by-election for the ward in which she lives and, shortly after, became Merton Green Party’s Election Agent. Since then, she has once again represented her ward in the 2018 council elections, and was the Mitcham and Morden candidate for the General Election in 2019. She is now Merton Green Party’s Membership Secretary.
Since returning to Merton, Pippa has been involved in a number of local campaigns, from helping to protect her local park from being used for events which disturb the wildlife and surrounding neighbourhoods, to protesting the felling of mature trees for a bridge design without safe cycling provision. Most notably, she led a successful petition to the Council to declare a climate emergency and review its current carbon reduction plans for the borough to help to limit global warming to 1.5°C., going on to work with the Council, as part of a Climate Emergency Working Group, to create a Climate Strategy and Action Plan, whose implementation is beginning to take shape.
Chosen as the London Assembly candidate for Merton and Wandsworth in 2019, she has been working hard to understand what it is like to live and/or work in neighbouring Wandsworth. Naturally, this has involved getting to know Wandsworth Green Party, learning from their first-hand experience of campaigning in the borough. In 2020, they organised public meetings with Co-leader and Mayoral candidate, Sian Berry, Co-leader Jonathan Bartley, and Member of the Lords Natalie Bennett.
If you would like to follow Pippa on Twitter, her handle is @pippamaslin. If you would like to contact her, you can email her at pippamaslin@hotmail.co.uk or call her on 07939 816296.