So why did their presence raise the hackles of suspicion rather than a cheer for the council's environmentalism? After all, issues such as air pollution and road safety have been a cause for concern around here for many years now; it's surely good to think that something might actually be done about them.

The answer is that after decades of apparent unconcern, the folk from the council came round on the very day that the education committee was facing a protest by parents and teachers against proposals to shut the school and sell off the site. Coincidence? Most probably. But with the education committee scrabbling around for every argument it can muster in defence of the decimation of primary education in the borough (even to the extent of suggesting that the nearby roads are too dangerous for it to be worth keeping a school open), it's no wonder that most parents and teachers thought otherwise.

If you didn't know otherwise, you'd find it hard to believe at times that Islington is still run by a Labour council. It's making cuts of £51 million over the next four years, most of which will take effect from April. The closures currently being considered include four libraries, a couple of swimming pools, a selection of community centres, most of our independent advice agencies, all of our old people's homes -- and heaven knows how many schools (the council certainly isn't telling anyone), including the one at the end of my road.

Now the parents and teachers at Grafton School will tell you that they don't believe that any of Islington's schools should be closed. Those that are underperforming should be helped to overcome their problems, and the supposed "surplus capacity", which has given the education committee its excuse for the proposed closures and sell-offs, should be used to increase nursery provision and cut class sizes. (The "surplus" is projected to amount to less than 6 per cent of total primary places in 2001 -- the difference between average class sizes of 30 or 28.)

It is worth noting, though, that Grafton has just 11 unfilled places on a roll of 420, and that on the council's own admission "the school has a high reputation and a good Ofsted report". It is particularly well-regarded for its work with the estimated 60 per cent of its pupils whose families do not speak English as a first language at home, and with refugees and other children who have a special need of stability at school to compensate for the instability they experience in the rest of their lives.

So why is Islington Council even considering the closure of what is, by any standards, one of the borough's most successful schools? The answer, though the council tries very hard to confuse the fact, is money -- or, more precisely, the money it could make if the site was sold.

A stone's throw away from the Nag's Head Shopping Centre, Grafton's playground (the biggest in the borough, used as an open-air market at weekends) has been put forward before as a suitable location for a multi-storey car park. If the school buildings could be made available to developers as well, interest in the site would be immense -- not least from Sainsbury's, who were granted planning permission by the council for a new supermarket half a mile down the road recently, only to have it rejected at a public inquiry following a campaign against the development. The fact that there are already two supermarkets at the Nag's Head is likely to be of little consequence in the face of the big bucks that could be made from the sale of the land.

The alternative to Grafton's closure and sale involves another potential development site at the nearby Montem School. This adjoins the Hornsey Road swimming baths, "temporarily" closed a few years ago with the promise that they would reopen. Now they too are likely to be sold off. The fly in the ointment of this particular scheme, however, is that Montem is a listed building and in a less desirable location for would-be developers than Grafton.

The constant refrain from the town hall in response to all protests is depressingly familiar. "There is no alternative," say our Labour councillors, a significant chunk of them veterans of those "Fortress Islington" days of the 1980s, when Labour stood firm in the face of Margaret Thatcher's reductions in local government funding and swept the board in elections locally.

In this year's local elections, as a consequence of the council's past incompetences and more recent cutbacks, the Liberal Democrats won as many seats (and polled more votes) than Labour, who held onto power on the mayor's casting vote. And now Tony Blair's government is bringing about the biggest round of cuts, closures and sell-offs in the borough's history by withdrawing more from its central government grant than Margaret Thatcher ever did. If there was an election tomorrow in Islington, the Liberal Democrats would sweep the board.

At the very least, any self-respecting local councillors whose first interests lie with the community they are meant to represent ought to be mounting a protest against a government that is hitting them so hard. "You should be leading us, not fighting us," as one of the Grafton teachers told Islington's education committee at a "consultation meeting" this week.

Instead, they're looking for what they like to refer to as "creative solutions". Like the appeal from my local library, no doubt, which turned the usual notion of a library service on its head last month by asking residents if we (ITAL) had any books that it (ITAL) could borrow as it didn't have the money to buy any books itself.

A Labour council, a Labour (ITAL) council, as Neil Kinnock once said in different circumstances. With not even the excuse now of a Tory government at Westminster.