The flags were blowing wildly in the wind as the group marched down Willesden High Rd
When I heard and saw BBC London’s ‘Inside Out London‘ investigation into letting agents I thought of the 1950s and 60s, when signs saying “no blacks, no dogs, no Irish” became common on London lodging houses, and we had a ‘race riot’ in Notting Hill. The Race Relations Act 1965 outlawed discrimination on the “grounds of colour, race, or ethnic or national origins” in public places, and he Race Relations Act 1968 extended that to housing, employment and public services.
But the programme clearly showed that letting agents – at the request of a person wanting to let a Notting Hill flat – were prepared to make sure that they were prepared not to show that vacancy to a black enquirer, even though they knew this would be illegal. Even though some of those concerned were themselves from minority communities, they were prepared to discriminate rather than risk losing the business.
The two agents who featured prominently in the feature were both on Willesden High Rd, about half a mile from each other. I didn’t expect the protest, organised for the day following the protest to be huge, but I felt it was an important issue and decided to cover it.
My journey to Willesden, never particularly straightforward, was made more difficult by a derailment in the early morning when a container came loose and brought down the overhead power lines and gantries supporting them at Camden Town. Although it had occurred at 3am, the on-line information still had trains running normally when I left home considerably later, and it was only as the train from Richmond approached Willesden Junction that we were told it would go no further. We all had to get off, and found the staff on the platform there knew little more than us. After a few minutes we were told there would be a train running as far as Gospel Oak, more than far enough for me, as I only wanted the next stop, Kensal Rise, but when it would come was still a mystery.
I was still standing wondering whether to leave the station and take a bus when it did come in, and fortunately I arrived at Kensal Rise only around 15 minutes after I had expected. I ran for a bus, but just missed it. But on main routes in London it’s seldom too long before the next one.
In the event I arrived only a few minutes after the protest was meant to start, and before many of the protesters. Its a small but sometimes tricky problem to know what the times for protests mean, but normally I try to arrive at least a few minutes early, and just occasionally that’s too late, while other protests are considerably more laid back and don’t really get going for half an hour or more after the given time. A few I’ve waited half an hour or so, then left, assuming nothing was going to take place, only to read a report of them on Facebook the following day.
Among the protesters in a slightly larger group than I expected were several people I knew from previous events, including Isabel Counihan whose family campaign to get Brent council to rehouse them has attracted considerable attention. Their campaign soon widened to support others with having problems around social housing, including that of one man who committed suicide following loss of benefits through DWP incompetence and notice of eviction by the housing association who have plans to redevelop the property.
Also present at the protest were councillors and others from Brent Council, against which the Counihan family had been fighting – and whose housing department had caused their problems through initial poor advice and later what seems to be confusion and sheer malice.
A little coolness between the two parties might have been expected, but one man took it further, speaking rudely to Isabel and then standing in front of her banner in an attempt to prevent the press photographing it. I’d already done so, and made sure it was reasonably prominent in my coverage of the event, when perhaps otherwise it might not have been used.
I’d already talked to her and she had told me than that they were in the process of getting a new banner for their ‘Housing For All’ campaign, and later after the unpleasant scene she decided to roll her banner up, and instead carried one end of the Brent Housing Action banner on the march.
The protest was on a narrow pavement next to a bus stop on a busy road outside National Estate Agents. Fortunately the 16mm was just about wide enough to get the whole of the shop front and protest in without standing in the traffic, but a local press photographer perhaps didn’t have or didn’t want to use anything so wide, and organised people into standing on the edge of the pavement, going out in the road to take pictures. Personally I preferred to keep safe.
I’m not a fan of estate agents, who seem to me to take rather too much and do rather too little for the money. But at this protest some of them went up a little in my estimation as a couple walked out from another nearby agency, Harts, and joined the protest.
After a while and some chanting outside National Estate Agents, which was closed and shuttered, perhaps because it was Eid ul-Adha rather than for the protest, they decided to march along the road to the second letting agent, A to Z Property Services, where the protest continued, as you can see in Letting Agencies Illegal Colour Bar.
Later I read in the local paper that one of the agencies was disputing the version of events put out by the BBC. It was perhaps hardly surprising news, though having watched the programme I thought a statement more along the lines of “Its a fair cop, Guv” might have been more appropriate
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My London Diary : Buildings of London : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage
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