Officers
President : Dave Wetzel
As well as being President of the Labour Land Campaign, Dave Wetzel FCILT is CEO of 'Transforming Communities' the transport, housing, land tax consultancy he founded in 2008. For eight years he was the first Vice-Chair of Transport for London and was also Chair of London Buses and TfL's Safety, Health and Environment Committee.
Dave's career has included working as a student engineer with Wilkinson Sword, as a London Bus Conductor, Driver and Inspector, as a Manager for Initial Services operating a small fleet of vans in East London, in aviation with British Airways and as Editor of Civil Aviation News (an Airport Workers' monthly paper).
A Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport, Dave has also been Chair of the GLC's Transport Committee, Leader of Hounslow Council, a founder member of a radical housing association, chair of Hounslow Council's Planning Committee, Director of the transport disability campaigning charity DaRT (Dial-a-Ride and Taxicard Users - now "Transport for All"), President of London University's Transport Studies Society and Vice-Chair of a local Chamber of Commerce in Cornwall.
Dave is currently Chair of the Professional Land Reform Group (www.plrg.org) and General Secretary of the International Union for Land Value Tax (www.theIU.org).
Secretary & Treasurer : Carol Wilcox
Carol is a software engineer by profession but with a degree in economics. It was whilst studying at Essex University in the early 80s, disappointed that there appeared to be no satisfactory solutions to economic ills, that she first read about land value taxation. From that time she was puzzled why 'the only tax which meets all the criteria for a good tax' was ignored by policymakers.
By good fortune she discovered the Labour Land Campaign at the 1996 Labour Party Conference and embarked on her 'real economics' education.
Heather Wetzel : Chair
Heather’s varied working life that helped her to appreciate the economic and social injustices that exist in the UK and in the world. She has been a full-time mother, worked in the private sector, the voluntary sector and in the public sector as well as being a Councillor on a London Borough between 1978 until 1990.
Heather has a proven record of fighting all forms of prejudice – intended or unintended – and fighting for good public services that meet as many individual needs as possible.
As a youngster, she saw our land being 'owned' by individuals as unjust and illogical: how could the ownership and control of land be in the hands of a few when it is something we all need to survive? Over the years, Heather has learnt the economic arguments about how land wealth is created by all of us and why it should be collected and returned to the public purse to pay for the maintenance and development of infrastructure and good public services.
David Hirst : Vice-Chair
David Hirst has spent most of his career in IT, thinking about systems and how they work, and helping organisations and people make best use of the opportunities. He is also an inventor of better ways of doing things, particularly in electricity, but finds the blockages to sensible and efficient changes are largely political. Too much is blocked by rentier and corporatist thinking by powerful incumbents, driving a failed Hayekian ideology to force ever greater inequalities and injustices. Always left leaning, David joined the Green Party, to campaign for greater fairness and reversal of global trends that can doom us all. LVT is a clear and implementable policy towards these aims.
Richard Hithersay : Vice-Chair
Awaiting details.
Craig Lundie : Trade Union Liaison Officer
Awaiting details
Rob Evans : Co-operative Party Liaison Officer
Awaiting details.
Organiser : Alan Spence
LLC Organiser, Alan Spence's involvement with the 'Land Question' stemmed from his involvement in community activity to thwart property speculators' ambitions in Covent Garden during the early 1970s. The community's alternative proved successful and saw Covent Garden renovated whilst retaining its character of being of a human scale for housing, business, entertainment and culture.
Prior to that, Alan had been involved in the trade union movement in the engineering sector of the aircraft industry, and was the Communist Party candidate for the constituency which includes the City of London in the 1983 General Election.