Michael became a Wandsworth Labour Councillor in 1974.
He chaired the Council’s Policy Review Committee, which produced reports on jobs and the local economy, and on the control of building contracts. Councillors and community groups were concerned about local job loss as developers began to acquire factory sites along the banks of the Thames, for redevelopment for offices or up-market housing.
One of these sites was the Morgan Crucible factory, next to Battersea Bridge. Michael presented evidence, opposing the redevelopment of the Morgan’s site, to two planning enquiries in 1974 and 1978.
Ultimately the campaign did not succeed. As part of the campaign, the Battersea Mural: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, also known as Morgan’s Wall, was painted on a wall by Battersea Bridge by local artist Brian Barnes and local people.
The Morgan Crucible company demolished the mural in 1979.
In 1977-78, Michael chaired the committee responsible for Wandsworth’s direct labour building organisation.
Labour was defeated in the 1978 Wandsworth Council elections. A radical right Conservative administration, committed to privatisation of services, sale of council houses, and outsourcing, took power and remained until their defeat by Labour in 2022.
In 1987 the London Labour Party published Michael’s pamphlet, Municipal Monetarism: a study of nine years of Tory rule in Wandsworth, which provides a detailed critique of the first few years of the Conservative administration.
At the request of the Wandsworth Labour Councillors, in 2014, Michael chaired an independent commission established to look at Wandsworth Council budgets and Council tax levels. The recommendations of the commission’s report underpinned the Labour strategy – Same low Council tax, different priorities – which led to recapturing the council in 2022.