Carpenters Estate | >Re-PHOTO

Housing Crisis Protest in Stratford – 2015

Housing Crisis Protest in Stratford: Housing activists marched through Stratford on Saturday 19th September 2015, with a short occupation of estate agents Foxtons by Class War ending with a rally by Focus E15 outside the flats on the Carpenters Estate they had occupied a year earlier.

Focus E15: Rally before March – Stratford Park

Housing Crisis Protest in Stratford - 2015

Two years earlier Newham Council had tried to close the Focus E15 hostel housing young mothers in Stratford, but they had fought the eviction which would have seen them dispersed across the country into private rented flats with no security of tenure and in some cases hundreds of miles from family and friends.

The Focus E15 campaign had attracted wide support and gained national headlines when they had occupied a small block of flats on the Carpenters Estate in Stratford. They succeeded in getting rehoused in London but continued with a much wider ‘Housing For All’ campaign for proper housing for the people of London who are facing being replaced by a new and wealthy population.

The campaign has continued, with a weekly stall on Stratford Broadway and protests to stop evictions in the borough. Their actions enraged the then Mayor of Newham Robin Wales and led to various attacks by him and council officials including the issuing of penalty notices and the farcical “arrest” of the table they used as their stall. These almost certainly played a part in his downfall in 2018 when local party members in this Labour stronghold turned against him.

The march brought together housing activists from around 50 different groups around London including many from council estates under threat of development under the guise of regeneration, private tenants facing eviction or huge rent hikes, and some political groups. Fortunately not all spoke before the march. You can read a long list in my account on My London Diary at Focus E15: Rally before March.

Focus E15: ‘March Against Evictions’ Stratford

It was a large and high-spirited march from Stratford Park and around the busy centre of Stratford with banners, placards and much loud chanting, demanding Newham Council end its policy of gentrification and use local resources to house local people and an end its policy of social cleansing, moving them out of London.

Housing has always been a problem in London, at least since the industrial revolution led to a great increase in the population and enlargement of the city. From the late Victorian period various charities and philanthropically minded commercial enterprises began to construct housing – mainly blocks and estates of flats – for the working poor, and from around 1900 they were joined by local municipalities and importantly the London County Council.

After the First World War, the Addison Act in 1919 to build “homes for heroes” and later housing acts led to 1.1 million council homes being built in the years before the Second World War.

From the 1950s, London Councils led by all parties built large amounts of council housing, with many finely designed estates, providing much higher quality homes than those in the lower end of the private sector, where much of the population was housed in poorly built and maintained overcrowded slums. At least rents were relatively low – until rent control was abolished in 1988.

That was only one of the changes made under Margaret Thatcher that hugely worsened housing for the majority. Council housing, earlier seen as a way of providing decent housing at reasonable cost for that majority became seen as simply a provision for the failures in our society who were unable to get onto the “housing ladder” and buy their own homes.

Her introduction of ‘right to buy’ was a disaster for public housing and new council building was almost entirely ended – 5 million council houses were built between 1946 and 1981, but only 250,000 have been built since. And her abolition of the GLC largely ended any overall planning for housing in London.

The march stopped in front of Newham’s Housing Offices where they put up the banner ‘Newham Stop Social Cleansing – Keep us in London’ banner on Bridge House and held a short rally before continuing to the Carpenters Estate.

More pictures at Focus E15: ‘March Against Evictions’.

Class War Occupy Stratford Foxtons

Housing policy under New Labour and since has been largely determined by estate agents including Savills and Foxtons who have been leaders in the gentrification of many areas of London.

Class War seized the opportunity to rush into Foxtons as the march went past and I followed them before the police managed to stop others joining them.

‘*Fuck Food Banks – Eat the Rich’ and the Class War banner ‘We have found new homes for the rich’*

They caused no damage and left shortly after police came inside and talked to them, rejoining the march.

More pictures at Class War Occupy Stratford Foxtons.

Focus E15: Anniversary of Carpenters Occupation

It was two years after the Focus E15 campaign had begun and a year since they occupied 4 flats on the Carpenters Estate.

For the event the pictures of people from Focus E15 put on these flats with the message ‘This home needs a family‘ in June 2014 were up again

*Jasmin Stone of Focus E15 speaks at the rally*

I had gone into the flats with them that afternoon and seen perfectly good properties in fine condition which had been simply closed up and left after the tenants were moved out. On one wall was a calendar from 2004 they had left behind.

Despite a huge housing shortage in the borough they had remained unoccupied for ten years. Since the occupation by Focus E15 these four flats now have residents, but only 28 empty properties on the had been re-let a year after Newham had been shamed by their action.

There were a few speeches and then a party began. Some people had climbed up to the roof of the shops with the ‘These people need homes’ banner, but it was time for me to go home, stopping briefly at the pub with Class War on the way.

More at Focus E15: Anniversary of Carpenters Occupation.

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Vedanta, Tampon Tax, Roma, Monsanto & Mental Health – 2016

Vedanta, Tampon Tax, Roma, Monsanto & Mental Health: Saturday 21 May 2016 was another busy day for me covering protests across London. It started with a protest against mining company Vedanta at the Royal Festival Hall, then across the river to Parliament Square where protesters were calling on the government to meet their pledge to axe the tax on tampons and later Roma, Gypsies and Travellers arrived with horses and carts to protest against increasing attacks on their way of life.

A short distance up Whitehall was a small protest against Monsanto, part of a world-wide ‘March Against Monsanto’. My work ended out to the east in Stratford where Focus E15 housing campaigners held a march and rally against the mental health problems that Newham Council’s housing policy is creating.

Foil Vedanta at Jaipur Literary Festival – Royal Festival Hall

Vedanta, Tampon Tax, Roma, Monsanto & Mental Health - 2016

Foil Vedanta were inside the Royal Festival Hall to protest against the sponsorship of the Jaipur Literature Festival taking place there by Vedanta “the most hated company on Earth, causing pollution, illness, displacement, poverty and deaths by its mining operations, sometimes criminal, in India, Zambia, South Africa and Australia” in an attempt to whitewash its image.

An open letter by Foil Vedanta and Round Table India signed by around 50 mainly Indian writers, poets, academics and activists had persuaded several authors to withdraw from the event and some others had promised to criticise Vedanta in their presentations.

The protesters took to the stage for a brief presentation of the case against Vedanta and then withdrew to continue protesting inside the venue but outside the area containing the festival stage. They intended to continue their protests for a couple of hours but I had taken enough pictures and left to walk across the river.

Foil Vedanta at Jaipur Literary Festival

End Tampon tax Now Osbourne! – Parliament Square

A massive campaign and lobby had resulted in the removal of regulations preventing the removal of tax, but the government had so far failed to implement the removal. Protesters held a short rally and then marched to Downing Street to deliver their message to Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne.

Among the protesters were ’50:50 Parliament’ who call for equal representation of women and men in Parliament. They say that if there were more women in Parliament there would not be taxes such as this – and rather less of the public-school bickering that often dominates the House of Commons.

More at Tampon tax now Osbourne!

‘Dosta, Grinta, Enough!’ – Parliament Square

Roma, Gypsies and Travellers came to Parliament Square on four horse-drawn vehicles to protest against the increasing attacks by governments which make their way of life difficult.

*You are not allowed to bring your horse onto Parliament Square*

Changes have let local authorities stop providing traveller sites and made it harder to find places to stop as they move around the country. And where travellers have bought sites local authorities have used planning laws in a discriminatory way to prevent them using it – as at Dale Farm near Basildon.

They say changes to the planning guidance are an attack on their ethnicity and way of life and they call for an end to 500 years of persecution.

Police and heritage wardens forced them to move off the grass in Parliament Square and they made a few circuits on the road before leaving as a rally began.

I left too, to cover another protest at Downing Street.

More on My London Diary at ‘Dosta, Grinta, Enough!’

March Against Monsanto Rally – Downing St

I’d looked earlier for the ‘March Against Monsanto’ but the march in London – part of a world-wide series of annual protests – was small and I had failed to find them until they arrived for a rally oppposite Downing Street.

Monsanto’s widely used herbicide Roundup was said by the WHO to be “probably carcinogenic to humans” and its neonicotinoid insecticides contribute to the killing of bees and other pollinators. Campaigners also oppose the genetically modified crops which they say are dangerous to human health.

March Against Monsanto Rally

Housing is a Mental Health Issue – Stratford

*‘Your Dream Home Awaits You’ a bus advert for a property show at Olympia. Only for the rich*

As a part of Mental Health Awareness Week, housing campaigners Focus E15 held a rally outside Stratford Station against Newham Council which they say is causing mental health problems for vulnerable people through evictions and placements with insecure tenancies and away from families, friends and support systems in cities and towns across the UK.

*Newham Council has kept some properties on the Carpenters Estate empty since 2004, despite a desperate housing shortage in the borough*

After the rally with speeches, songs and poems, the group marched around central Stratford where new high-rise building to house wealthy newcomers to the area or simply bought as investments and often kept empty is rapidly springing up “while those unable to afford sky high market rents are being forced out.”

These tall blocks also create inhospitable micro-climates at ground level which make areas such as these unpleasant for people at street level – and a sudden gust in front of one block tore one of the banners in two.

The short march ended on Stratford Broadway where despite harassment by police and council staff Focus E15 continue to hold a regular Saturday morning street stall.

More at Housing is a Mental Health Issue.

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Focus E15 Mothers Party Against Eviction – 2014

Focus E15 Mothers Party Against Eviction: Ten years ago today, on Friday 17th January 2014 I went to Stratford to photograph and support mothers threatened with eviction from their hostel.

Focus E15 Mothers Party Against Eviction – East Thames Housing, Stratford

The eviction threat came when Newham Council withdrew funding from the Focus E15 Foyer run by East Thames Housing Association. Rather than accept the evictions and be rehoused by the council in private rented flats in far-flung areas of the UK – including Wales and Liverpool, the women in the hostel decided to join together and fight.

They fought to be rehoused near to friends, families and support including nurseries close to their local area to avoid distress and dislocation for themselves and their children – and eventually they won.

The fight by Focus E15 brought national publicity to the scandals around local authority housing, and was a inspiration to others around the country. They continue their fight with their ‘Housing For All‘ campaign and remain an active campaign against evictions in Newham, including a weekly street stall every Saturday on Stratford Broadway.

Their campaign against Newham Council and its right-wing Labour Mayor Robin Wales who seemed to regard the London borough as a personal fiefdom led to some devious and at times illegal attempts to silence them and was almost certainly a factor in fomenting the revolt by Labour Party members that eventually led to him being deposed. Though his replacement as Mayor, Rokhsana Fiaz, is perhaps only a slight improvement.

All local authorities have suffered under cuts by central government, and in particular attacks on social housing provision, begun under Thatcher and continued by all governments since. The cuts made by the Tory-led coalition following on from the financial crash of 2008 tightened the screw on them still further.

Newham under Robin Wales appears to have decided that they needed to attract a wealthier population to the area and get rid of some of their existing population and had decided in the early 2000s to sell off a well-located and popular council estate close to the centre of Stratford to whoever they could. They began the process of ‘decanting’ people from the Carpenters estate around 2004, with many properties being left empty for years despite having – together with Lambeth – the largest housing waiting lists in Greater London – around 3.5 times the average among London authorities.

One of the Focus E15 slogans was ‘Repopulate the Carpenters Estate’ and it was in part due to their actions, alongside those of other campaigners, that the estate was not sold off and demolished. The estate is now being regenerated by the council although Focus E15 find much to criticise in the council’s plans.

The Focus E15 had begun in September 2013 and the action ten years ago was one of their earliest. I met with them and supporters, including those from the Revolutionary Communist Group, on a street corner near the offices of East Thames and walked with them into the large foyer, where they posed for a photograph for one of the local newspapers.

Then some of the mothers and children moved into the show flat at the front of the offices, with others remaining on the street outside with banners and placards, handing out leaflets to people walking by and using a megaphone to explain why the mothers were protesting.

The member of East Thames staff who had been dealing with the mothers came to talk with them. He assured them that they would be allowed to remain until satisfactory accommodation had been found for them.

The mothers pointed out that East Thames had large numbers of homes available, including many on the former Olympic site in Stratford, but were told that East Thames could not allocate affordable properties directly, but had to work with Newham council.

He seemed genuinely suprised to hear from the mothers that Newham had made offers involving rehousing away from London, in Hastings, Birmingham and elsewhere, away from friends, families, colleges, nurseries and support networks, and stated that East Thames intended to see them rehoused in London.

Later the Group Chief Executive of East Thames, June Barnes arrived and talked with the mothers telling them the same. East Thames seemed clear that the real problem was with Newham Council and not with them, though the campaigners were not really convinced.

You can read a longer account of the protest and party with many more pictures on My London Diary at Focus E15 Mothers Party Against Eviction.

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A Table, COP21, Refugees and Santas – 2015

A Table, COP21, Refugees and Santas On Saturday 12 December 2015 I started at the ‘Free the Focus E15 Table’ protest in Stratford, came to Westminster where climate activists were protesting on the final day of the COP21 Paris talks, then to a solidarity vigil for refugees at Downing Street. Since Christmas was approaching there were also santas on the streets, including some on BMX bikes taking part in a charity ride as well as others taking part in the annual Santacon.

Free the Focus E15 Table – Stratford

A Table, COP21, Refugees and Santas - 2015

Focus E15 had since they began over two years earlier been a major irritant for Newham Council, drawing attention to the failure of Newham Council to sensibly address the acute housing problem in the borough, which has around 5,000 people living in temporary accommodation.

At the same time 400 council homes in the Carpenters Estate close to the centre of Stratford have remained empty, some for over ten years as the Labour council under Mayor Robin Wales have been trying to sell it off.

Focus E15 have opposed, at first on their own behalf and later for others in their ‘Housing For All’ campaigns the council policy they label ‘social cleansing’, which attempts to force those needing housing out of London and into private rented property in towns and cities across the country- Hastings, Birmingham, Manchester etc – and even in Wales.

As well as organising protests, opposing evictions, demanding the borough meet its statutory obligations to house homeless individuals by going with them to the housing office they had for over two years held a weekly street stall every Saturday on a wide area of pavement on Stratford Broadway, speaking, providing advice and handing out leaflets.

On the previous Saturday in a clearly planned operation, Newham’s Law Enforcement officer John Oddie assisted by several police officers, confronted the campaigners and told them they were not allowed to protest there, and that unless they immediately packed up their stall, sound system, banners and other gear it would be seized. Council and police cited legal powers that were clearly inapplicable to this situation and this was clearly an illegal act.

When Focus E15 stood their ground, police took the table they were using and threw it into the back of their van and drove away with it. It was probably on the advice of their lawyers that a couple of days later the council wrote a letter to the protesters asking them to reclaim the table; Focus E15 asked them to return it to them on Stratford Broadway this Saturday – but it didn’t arrive.

But there were plenty of tables there when I arrived with several groups coming to show solidarity and defend the right to protest including Welwyn Garden City, South Essex Heckler, Basildon and Southend Housing Action, Clapton Ultras, East London Radical Assembly, Anarchist Federation, Carpenters Estate, Aylesbury Estate Southwark, Squatters & Homeless Autonomy and more. Some came with tables and Focus E15 had also brought a replacement.

The protest was lively with speeches, singing and dancing, and although the local paper, too much in the council’s pocket, was ignoring ‘Tablegate’ a BBC local crew did come and film a few interviews. Police and Newham Council seemed to have learnt from the previous week’s farce and kept away.

Free the Focus E15 Table

Climate Activists Red Line protest – Westminster Bridge

Campaign against Climate Change protested by carrying a ‘red line’ across Westminster Bridge against the inadequate response to global temperature rise reached at COP21 which was on its final day.

Many climate activists were still in Paris, so the protest was rather smaller than usual. They met for a sort rally opposite Parliament in Old Palace Yard before marching behind the Campaign against Climate Change banner and a trumpeter on to the pavement across Westminster Bridge.

There they unrolled a 300m red length of cloth, carrying it above their heads across the bridge as a ‘red line’. For many countries, a maximum global temperature rise of more than 1.5°C will mean disaster, and the Paris talks have not committed to this nor have they set up any real mechanism for holding countries to the more limited commitments they have made.

The world needs a far more urgent change to renewable energy, with fossil fuels being left in the ground – or only extracted for use a chemical feedstock. But huge vested interests in the fossil fuel lobby are still dominating the thinking of most governments – and the annual COP meetings.

The protest called for the UK government to reverse the anti-Green measures introduced since the 2015 election, and to get behind green jobs, energy use reduction measures and renewable energy and t abandon its plans for carbon burning technologies and fracking in particular. Vital for the future of the world, these changes would also aid the UK economy.

More at Climate Activists Red Line protest.

Christmas Solidarity Vigil for Refugees – Downing St

As darkness fell refugees, solidarity campaigners and Syrian activists came to a Downing St vigil demanding justice for refugees, opening of EU borders to those fleeing war and terrorism and a much more generous response from the UK government.

A strong and gusty wind made it hard to keep candles alight and they had to be pushed through the bottom of plastic cups to provide windshields to stay alight.

As well as Syrians, there were other refugees from around the world, as well as some of the many British who are disgusted at the miserable response of the Tory government. Despite much lobbying which forced David Cameron to increase the UK response, the UK still only agreeing to take 20,000 refugees in the next five years, while Canada will take more – 25,000 – in a single year.

Christmas Solidarity Vigil for Refugees

Santas in London

While I was photographing the climate ‘red line’ on Westminster Bridge a large group of Santas rode past on BMX bicycles on a charity ride and I rushed across in time to photograph a few of them. These BMXLife ‘Santa Cruises’, in 2023 in their 9th year, have now raised over £135,000 for Children’s Heart charity ECHO. The 2023 ride starts from Leake Street at 11am on 16th December.

After the Refugee Vigil I walked up to Trafalgar Square where santas were beginning to arrive at the end of a long day walking around London in the annual Santacon, an alcohol-fuelled annual fun event which describes itself as “a non-profit, non-corporate, non-commercial and non-sensical parade of festive cheer.” This year’s event was last Saturday, 9th December.

More pictures at Santas in London.

Climate March & Open House 2014

Climate March & Open House: On Sunday 21st September 2014 I photographed the so-called ‘Peoples Climate March’ in central London before going to party with Focus E15 Mothers on the Carpenters Estate where they celebrated a year of their fight to be rehoused in the area.

Peoples Climate March – Embankment

As in this week in 2023, a Climate Summit was taking place in New York in September 2014 and marches were taking place in London and elsewhere to demand divestment in fossil fuels and an end to the domination of politics by the fossil fuel industry which has blocked action against climate change.

Little has actually changed in the 9 years since then. More empty words and promises but too many governments including our own in the UK continuing to encourage exploration for more gas and oil and even approving new coal mines. And carbon levels continue to rise, with at least a 2 degree rise in global temperature now seeming inevitable.

What has changed is that we are all much more aware that climate change is real and are feeling its effects. While many in the Global South have been suffering for years, we in Europe and North America have now felt the new record high temperatures and seen the increasing wild fires and unstable weather caused by global temperature rise.

Last Saturday I photographed another Climate March in London, and it had a rather more serious and committed air than the 2014 event, not just because it was organised by Extinction Rebellion, but because the global situation has worsened, with new an disturbing reports coming out almost weekly.

Back in 2014 I wrote about some length about the march and how it “seemed to have been rather taken over by various slick and rather corporate organisations rather than being a ‘people’s march’ and seemed to lack any real focus.”

Then I commented that “There was one block – the ‘‘Fossil Free Block’ that I felt was worth supporting, and what the whole march should have been about. We have to stop burning oil, coal, gas. We are certainly on our way to disastrous climate change if we fail to severely cut carbon emissions, and probably need to actually reverse some of the rise that has already occurred. Drastic action really is needed.”

The 2023 march was behind a banner ‘NO NEW FOSSIL FUELS’ and another read ‘BIG OIL HAS FRIED US ALL’. But it didn’t get the kind of corporate support of the 2014 event and I don’t think there were any celebrities on the march, though I think some spoke at the rally afterwards, but I had left before this.

Worryingly in 2023 it was much smaller than the 2014 March. Back in 2014 I still felt there was time to avert catastrophe, but now I’m rather less optimistic. It may be too late. I have a feeling that in another nine years time we will be marching again, world leaders will still be talking and doing little and the world will be descending into chaos. Given my age it may still see me out but I worry about those younger.

More on My London Diary at Peoples Climate March.

Focus E15 Open House Day

I left well before the end of the march in 2014 too, catching the Underground to Stratford to get to the Carpenters Estate in Stratford where Focus E15 Mothers were celebrating the first anniversary of their fight against LB Newham’s failure to provide local housing for local people.

It was a year since Newham Council had cut funding for their hostel in Stratford run by East Thames Housing and they had been given eviction notices. Newham, which had a statutory duty to rehouse them told them it would be in private rental property miles away in Birmingham or Hastings or Wales but they wanted to stay within reach of families, jobs support services and friends in London.

Unlike many others they decided to fight the council, and launched an active and successful campaign, later widening their personal fight into “a wider campaign for housing for all, for social housing in London and an end to the displacement of low income households from the capital, with the slogan ‘Social Housing not Social Cleansing’.”

Despite the desperate shortage of social housing in Newham, the council led by Mayor Robin Wales had been trying to sell off its Carpenters Estate for ten years, moving people out and leaving good homes empty. The estate is next door to Stratford Station and Bus Station and so has excellent transport links making it very desirable for development. It is a post-war estate with large numbers of good quality low-rise housing along with three tower blocks. By 2014, most of the properties had “been boarded up for years, empty while thousands wait on the council’s housing list.“

In June 2014 I’d come with Focus E15 to the estate and had photographed them pasting up large photographs of themselves on some boarded up flats with slogans such as ‘This home needs a family‘ and ‘This family needs a home‘ and ‘These homes need people‘. I’d been told something intersting might happen at the party and wasn’t surprised when after a noisy session by a samba band to mask the sounds of removing some of the metal shutters at the rear of the flats we saw some of the E15 mums and supporters waving at us from a first floor window.

“It was Open House Day in London and courtesy of the Focus E15 Mums, 80-86 Dorian Walk was now one of the houses open to the public, even if not on the official lists, and we formed an orderly queue in best Open House tradition to go in and look at the four flats. “

I was surprised to see what good conditions the flats were in, “fitted kitchens and bathrooms still in good working order – with running water, wallpaper and carpets almost pristine, and the odd piece of abandoned furniture. In one of kitchens, the calendar from 2004 was still on the wall, a reminder that while Londoners are desperate for housing, Newham council has kept this and other perfectly habitable properties empty for ten years.”

Focus E15 occupied the flats for a couple of weeks, leaving after the the Council issued legal eviction notices but their fight continued. Most of them have been rehoused in London and they have supported many others in Newham and neighbouring boroughs to get proper treatment from the council and prevent evictions. Their actions saved the Carpenters Estate and it is now being regenerated, although the plans don’t satisfy many of the groups demands. Their campaigns for housing for people in Newham continue.

More on My London Diary at Focus E15 Open House Day.

Fire Risk Tower Blocks

Fire Risk Tower Blocks – On Saturday 12 August 2017 Focus E15 Mothers led a march from Ferrier Point in Canning Town to a rally at Tanner Point in Plaistow pointing out the danger of these two blocks with the same cladding as Grenfell Tower, and then on to the Carpenters Estate in Stratford demanding safe homes, not social cleansing in East London.

The May 2022 Fire Risk Assessment of 119-205 Butchers Road, Canning Town conducted for Newham Council was obtained by a Freedom of Information request and can be downloaded. The 11 floor block of 43 flats has a single staircase and then had 86 people sleeping there.

The report by Phoenix Green Group declared the likelihood of fire to be ‘Medium’ but the potential consequences would be ‘Extreme Harm’ and gave the building a ‘Substantial’ fire risk rating, stating that urgent action should be taken and listing what was needed. I can find no information on Newham Council’s web site of whether this has been done, or of other council properties which might still be needing urgent action.

The block on Butchers Road was not one of those visited on the march led by Focus E15 Mothers in their march around Canning Town and Plaistow to the Carpenters Estate in Stratford. This had begun at Ferrier Point in Forty Acre Lane, Canning Town around 5 minutes walk away, a rather taller 23 storey block with dangerous ACM cladding like that on Grenfell Tower.

The cladding on Ferrier Point was replaced with non-combustible cladding in 2019. Otherwise there would have been a very different story when fire broke out on a 12th floor flat there around 6pm on 22nd June 2020. By the time the Fire Brigade arrived at 6.22pm around 150 residents had left the building and the LFB had the fire under control by 7.45pm. Six people required treatment for smoke inhalation, one in hospital the others treated on the spot by London Ambulance staff.

Tanner Point in Plaistow was another stop on the march where residents were extremely worried as this also had fire-risk ACM cladding. Along with that on Nicholls Point, a little off the march route, this was also replaced in 2018-9.

The march was organised and led by the Stratford-based Focus E15 housing campaign but supported by other groups, including the Socialist Party, East End Sisters Uncut, the One Housing campaign, Movement for Justice, Whitechapel Anarchist Group, the Revolutionary Communist Group and local residents, including those from the blocks with dangerous cladding.

The march ended on the Carpenters Estate in Stratford, a once popular estate with over 400 empty homes which Newham’s Labour council largely emptied of people over 10 years ago and intended to demolish and sell off. Here there was a ‘hands around the Carpenters Estate’ solidarity event against decanting, demolition and social cleansing.

Events like this put pressure on Newham Council to speed up the removal of unsafe cladding from its taller tower blocks, but it seems there are still fire safety issues in other blocks that it owns. Years of actions by Focus E15 and others have stopped Newham selling off the Carpenters Estate and they are now going ahead with regeneration plans although these unfortunately lack the real commitment to social housing that the area so desperately needs.

More about the march and more pictures on My London Diary at Fire Risk Tower Blocks.

2012 Olympics – Lund Point Holdup By BBC

2012 Olympics – Lund Point Holdup By BBC: Eleven years ago on Saturday 21st July much of the nation was eagerly awaiting the start of the 2021 London Olympics. I wasn’t, though I was at least starting to think it wouldn’t be long before it was all over, but we still had it all to put up with. All the pictures in this post were taken at events around the area that day.

Many still regard it as having been a great national event, bringing people together, but I still find it hard to have many positive thoughts. Like another major event, most of the promises we were made about its legacy have turned out to be false. Many were clearly lies from the start, and a huge attempt was clearly made to mislead the public, with our newspapers and broadcast media playing a major and continuing role.

On the streets of east London there were many critics and sceptics from the start, many like me who were surprised and alarmed when the bid was won in 2005. Most of their worse fears have since come to pass and the local area has seen little gain.

Newham remains an area with huge housing problems, and it was some of those that took me there on Saturday 21st July 2012, specifically over the council’s terrible treatment of the Carpenters Estate, a once popular council estate adjoining Stratford Station.

It’s location made it a valuable prey for developers and Newham’s elected Labour Mayor, Sir Robin Wales had clearly thought the site was being wasted on its social housing tenants and had begun running it down and ‘decanting’ residents back in 2004. But schemes to sell it off, including one as a new campus for University College London (UCL) were eventually stopped by protests from residents, UCL students and staff and Stratford’s dynamic housing activists, Focus E15.

*Good solid 1960s housing on a pedestrianised street . A popular estate on which many bought houses*

Focus E15 had begun when Newham Council decided to shut down a hostel in central Stratford for single mothers and their children, offering only to move them out of Stratford to distant towns and cities across the UK into poor quality private rented accomodation with no security of tenure and higher rents, some hundreds of miles away from family, friends, nurseries and other support they had in Newham. Robin Wales infamously told them “if you can’t afford to live in Newham, then you can’t afford to live in Newham”.

*A woman still living on the Carpenters estate*

The Focus E15 mothers stood together and fought – and largely won, getting rehoused in the local area. But they decided to continue their fight for others in housing need, particularly in Newham. There story became national news and they continue with weekly stalls on Newham Broadway and a shop not far away.

*Lund Point – advertising added for Olympics without consultation*

Carpenters Estate residents were shocked when the council in 2011, upset that residents wanted to remain on the estate, decided to fix the elections to the Carpenters Tenant Management Organisation (TMO) by barring freeholders on the estate from standing and simply losing five of the six nominations from leaseholders. Security staff prevented freeholders who had received invitations to the meeting from attending, effectively allowing Newham council to take over the TMO and end any real participation by residents over the esatate’s future.

*BBC employed security – the sign says Residents Only*

Residents formed Carpenters Against Regeneration Plans (CARP) to challenge the decisions made by the TMO and to get it to fulfil its duties to all residents of the estate, and to fight for the future of the residents and for a sustainable community. In particular freeholders were appalled at the low valuations put on their properties by the TMO commissioned valuation service, with compensation for compulsory purchase often appearing to be only around half of market values for similar propeties in the area.

*This Barber – the last man standing on Stratford High St*

CARP had arranged a number of tours around the estate, and I met with them at Sratford Station, having on my way taken a few pictures of the Olympic Torch Relay which had passed along Stratford High Street earlier in the day, though only watched there by a small handful of people. There were more on a footbridge built for the Olympics across this busy main road, which would have been a small but useful Olympic legacy, but was to be demolished shortly after.

*Police had come to back up BBC security and refuse us entrance*

Our tour from the station led by Tawanda Nyabango who lived for many years in one of the tower blocks and several other residents including CARP vice-chairman Joe Alexander talked to us on a lengthy tour of the estate and the nearby Waterworks River, one of several waterways through the Olympic site.

*After we were allowed in BBC security try to stop us leaving the lift*

We then tried to visit two more residents living in flats in one of the three tower blocks on the estate, Lund Point. The BBC were setting up in the top five floors of the block for their Olympic coverage, and we were prevented from entering the block by BBC security staff who then brought in police to support them.

*But finally we made it to a flat on the 20th floor*

We argued that we had an invitation from the residents, but were still refused entry, until after and hour and a half waiting finally the police officers present received orders that they had no right to refuse our entry and we were finally allowed in.

I was able then both to meet the residents and photograph the Olympic site from their windows. The residents of the block have complained strongly about the way the BBC have taken over parts of their building and apparently our holdup was simply one of many incidents. I took rather more pictures including some panoramic views – at Olympic Views though my time here was very limited.

I had intended to finish my day after the Carpenters Estate tour with a visit to the Open Day taking place at Cody Dock on Bow Creek, and I hurried there from Stratford. But because of the holdup at Lund Point, the events there had ended by the time I arrived, and I took a few pictures and left for home.

Robin Wales is no longer Mayor, eventually being forced out despite his attempts to manipulate votes to remain in office. Under the replacement Labour Mayor there are new plans for the Carpenters Estate though Focus E15 are still campaigning for the repair, refurbishment and repopulation of the estate with long-term council tenants.

Much more about all these events on My London Diary:

Olympic Flame at Stratford 6 Days Early
Newham’s Shame – Carpenters Estate
Police Deny Olympic Residents Access
Olympic Views
Cody Dock Open Day

I originally posted this on 21st June when it should have been posted on 21st July.

Housing Crimes Exposed

Housing Crimes Exposed: On the 14th June every year now our thoughts turn to Grenfell and the terrible fire there in 201. I wrote about this here a year ago in Remember Grenfell – Demand Justice.

We still haven’t seen justice, and the delays in investigation caused by the inquiry increasingly make it seem that once again our legal and judicial system have successfully kicked justice into the long grass. There are people who should have been in jail and organisations which should have been facing huge fines within a few months of the tragic but predicted event. The fire wasn’t an accident but the result of crimes.

Advance to Mayfair – London Real Estate Forum – Berkeley Square, Mayfair

There are other crimes around housing in the UK, and in particular around social housing, and people were protesting about these before Grenfell. On Thursday 16th June 2016 I photographed one of these protests, and two days later a second also in Mayfair, an appropriate location as these are crimes of the rich against the poor, coming from the Thatcher crusade to enrich the rich at the expense of the poor, rewarding the wealthy and retreating from the welfare state which had supported the poor.

Housing was one of the main areas of policy, along with privatisation which sold off key services and industries to private investors – and for which we are now seeing the results in high energy prices, sewage in rivers, high cost transport and huge subsidies to shareholders, with much of the costs of our NHS now going to supporting healthcare companies and their owners.

In housing Thatcher decided we should be a nation of home owners. Until then many of the working class had either been council tenants or were aspiring to be so while living in often poor and cramped accommodation provided by private landlords. Thatcher changed that, partly be selling off council properties to tenants at knock-down prices, but also by making it difficult or impossible for local authorities to build new council properties or properly maintain existing ones. It was a very popular policy with those who got their properties on the cheap, though many found they couldn’t afford to keep them and before long they were bough up as ‘buy to let’ properties by those rich enough to get mortgages and bank loans.

Under New Labour, the Labour Party took up many of the worst of Thatcher’s policies, and the ‘regeneration’ schemes Labour councils came up increasingly amounted in a huge loss of social housing, replacing huge estates with largely homes for private sale with some as largely unaffordable “affordable housing” and shared ownership. More and more of the housing associations, many of which had taken over social housing estates from hard-pressed local councils began to look more and more like commercial property owners.

In 2021 government funding to housing associations to build affordable housing was reduced by 60% and funding for new social rented housing was stopped altogether. Since then they have built many houses for sale and rent at market levels, partly to provide cash for some social housing.

London’s councils, largely Labour run, have been among the worst offenders. As I wrote in 2016:

Under the guise of New Labour regeneration, Southwark spent large amounts of council money in demonising the Heygate Estate, employing PR consultants to invent surveys, deliberately moving in problem tenants, running the estate down both physically and through the media to justify its demolition. A highly awarded scheme with its trees coming to maturity, and popular with many residents despite the lack of necessary maintenance was emptied over a period of years and finally destroyed. It took years to get some residents to move, as few were offered suitable alternative accommodation and the compensation on offer to leaseholders was derisory.

But this scheme turned into “something of a financial disaster for Southwark council (though doubtless not for some councillors) and certainly for the people of Southwark, as the Heygate, built with around 1700 social housing units has been replaced by Elephant Park, with less than a hundred, along with a large number of high price apartments which very few locals can afford.”

Undeterred, Southwark proceeded to apply similar methods to other estates, notably the neighbouring Aylesbury Estate, “converting public assets into private profit, with yet more Southwark residents being forced to move out to cheaper areas on the outskirts of London or beyond, in what housing activists describe as social cleansing, driving ordinary Londoners out of the capital.“

Similar polices were being applied under Mayor Robin Wales in Newham. They began emptying out the Carpenters Estate, a well-liked and successful estate close to the great transport links of Stratford station, in 2004. Many of the homes on the estate have been empty since then despite huge housing problems in the borough. A scheme to sell the estate for a new campus for UCL was defeated by protests both by local residents, led by Focus E15 and by students and staff at UCL.

Focus E15, a group of young mothers faced with eviction from their Stratford hostel when Newham announced they would no longer pay the housing association which ran it, engaged in a successful campaign against the council’s plans to relocate them separately to private rented accommodation in distant parts of the country, and brought housing problems in Newham and elsewhere onto the national agenda.

Focus E15 were among other groups, including Class War, the Revolutionary Communist Group and protesters from the Aylesbury Estate in Southwark who came to Berkeley Square to protest outside the London Real Estate Forum. Many Labour councils – including Southwark and Newham – were at the event, conspiring with estate agents and property developers to sell public land and transform estates which now house those on low incomes into homes for the wealthy. Councils now “appear to regard the estates they own as liabilities rather than seeing them as providing vital homes meeting the needs of the people who elect them. “

A few of those entering or leaving the event stopped to engage with the protesters, mostly trying to justify their activities. One man photographed the protest and engaged in homophobic abuse, but police who had been trying to move the protesters refused to take action.

You can read about the protest on My London Diary at Advance to Mayfair.

Municipal Journal Awards – Hilton Hotel, Mayfair

Two days later on Thursday 16th June 2016 I joined many of the same protesters and others outside the Hilton Hotel with Architects 4 Social Housing protesting noisily outside the Municipal Journal Local Authority Awards at the Hilton Hotel castigating the nomination of Southwark and Newham for awards.

They complained that Southwark was nominated for ‘Best London Council’ despite having demolished 7,639 units of social housing, sold off public land to developers, and evicted people unlawfully and accused Newham of social cleansing, rehousing people in distant parts of the country while council properties remain empty, and of causing mental health problems through evictions, homelessness and failure to maintain properties.

These were awards not for housing the workers in their areas, many of whom are on pay close or at the minimum legal levels. Not even for key workers such as teachers and nurses, few of whom can now afford properties in the areas close to where they work, but to attract high paid workers and provide profits for overseas investors, many of whom leave the properties empty all or most of the year, watching their profits grow as London’s high property prices increase.

They are awards too for contributing to the huge profits for the developers who are now building a new London, providing poorly built properties, often to lower standards of space than those they replace, and with design lives sometimes expiring much earlier. And because we have not seen the changes in building regulations and safety standards that Grenfell exposed as necessary, some at least may be the Grenfells of the future.

More about the protest and many more pictures at Municipal Journal Awards.

University Protests – Carpenters Estate & Outsourcing

Ten years ago today, on Wednesday 28th November 2012, I photographed two protests at London University. The first at UCL against their plans for a new campus in Stratford and the second by outsourced workers at the University demanding decent conditions of employment.

Save Carpenters Estate from UCL – University College. Wednesday 28th November 2012

University Protests - Carpenters Estate & Outsourcing — *Joe from CARP talks to one of those attending the UCL council meeting*

University College was founded in 1826 as London University, a secular alternative to the highly religious ancient institutions at Oxford and Cambridge. It bought an 8 acre area of waste land in Bloomsbury, just south of the Euston Road, and developed its elegant buildings around a large quadrangle. Although started in 1827, these were only finally completed in 1955.

What had seemed a very large site when they started now with many more students seems very restrictive, and in October 2012 UCL announced it had come to an agreement with Newham Council to take over the entire site of the Carpenters Estate close to the centre of Stratford, displacing all of the residents remaining in this popular council estate.

Newham Council, under its elected Mayor Robin Wales had long been hoping to realise a huge amount of cash by selling off the Carpenters Estate, a now extremely valuable area particularly because of its location close to Stratford Station and had been emptying out properties since around 2004 to facilitate this. UCL’s £1 billion proposal was exactly the kind of deal they had in mind, and it was quickly approved.

Residents remaining on the estate had for some years been fighting to remain in their homes forming CARP (Carpenters Against Regeneration Plan) to oppose the emptying and estate demolition under so-called ‘regeneration’. Newham’s reaction was to used underhand means to remove many of the activists from the tenant’s management organisation, but most most of the remaining members were now opposed to the UCL scheme.

Also expressing concern about the proposal were UCL’s own highly-regarded development planning unit, who issued a statement calling for a review of the proposals which should “include a clear commitment to the well-being of local and East London borough residents, the active participation of affected communities, as well as engagement with local government” of a scheme which had only emerged from private talks between Newham Council and UCL.

The protest at UCL began in the Main Quad with around a hundred people, including leading members of CARP and students and staff of UCL. After a few short speeches, the protesters moved to picket the main entrance to the building where the UCL council meeting had been rescheduled. They were then able to talk with some of the council members as they went in to the meeting, and one of these assured the protesters that the plans were not fully developed and there would be consultation with the residents before any development took place.

More protesters arrived, including members of Unison and the UCU who were picketing the meeting about proposals to change academic contracts which they say threaten academic freedom. The protesters then heard that the council meeting had been moved, and they decided to try to go closer to the new venue, moving into the university building. I walked with them, going past the dressed skeleton of Jeremy Bentham to a meeting room where they decided to hold an alternative council meeting. I left to go to another event, but some of the protesters kept up an ocupation of part of UCL for most of the day.

Save Carpenters Estate from UCL

3 Cosas – Sick Pay, Holidays and Pensions – Senate House, University of London.
Wednesday 28th November 2012

UCL and the University of London both received charters officially establishing them on 28th November 1836, and so today UoL was celebrating its Founder’s Day with an evening event inside Senate House. Cleaners and other low paid outsourced workers at the University of London protested outside the celebrations, calling for an end to unfair conditions and for equal employment rights — the ‘3 Cosas’ of Sick pay, Holiday Pay and Pensions.

UoL outsources its cleaning, maintenance, security, and catering services to private companies who cut their costs to make profits by paying low wages, with the legal minimums of sick pay, pathetic or no pension schemes, major pay problems, and lots of intimidation and bullying. They work under conditions no reputable employer would consider imposing – and much worse than similar grades of workers directly employed by the University alongside them in the same buildings.

The services these workers provide are essential in keeping the University running, but they are treated unfairly. Protests over several years led by Unison have led to the university finally agreeing that all those working on the site should be paid the London Living Wage. Many of the outsourced staff are Spanish speakers, some migrants granted asylum or right to remain and others EU citizens, often with qualifications not recognised in the UK. Their ‘3 Cosas’ campaign was led by Unison branches and the cleaners’ union, the IWGB, and supported by students and academics.

Over 50 protesters, some with drums and many with banners and flags protested outside the main gates to Senate House, handing out leaflets to those attending the Founders Day event. Many took these, while others angrily brushed them aside.

One student president who had an invitation to the event stopped to address the protest, only prepared to cross the picket line after the protesters after the protesters gave him leaflets and urged him to go inside and argue for their case.

Some of those attending the event were going in by the back way, and after a while the protesters noisily marched around the street along the side of the building to continue the protest there. The protest was still continuing when I decided it was time to go home.

3 Cosas – Sick Pay, Holidays and Pensions.

Housing Crisis & the Carpenters Estate

Housing Crisis & the Carpenters Estate: Like many other areas, the 1945 Labour government laid the foundations of a sensible policy on housing which has now been lost. Among other things the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act brought in the need for planning permission and included a charge on developers which was assessed as the difference between the cost of the undeveloped land and its value after it had been developed. It gave local authorities the power to use compulsory purchase and either develop land themselves or lease it for private developers, and provided government grants to authorities for major redevelopment.

Times were hard after the war, and there were shortages of material with so much needing to be done. Even so around 600,000 new council homes were built in the first five years, and built to high standards. One of the election-winning pledges made by the Conservatives for the 1951 election was that they would build 300,000 houses a year – something they managed under Housing Minister Harold Macmillan in 1953, including both private and council houses, but it was achieved in part by reducing the standards of properties.

The Tories made other changes, including removing the development charge and limiting government subsidies, which in 1956 became limited to the building of high rise flats. While Labour had seen council housing as a way to provide good quality housing affordably to all, the Conservatives increasing limited its scope to providing only for the least well off, with private development and private leasing providing good profits for building firms and private landlords at the expense of house buyers and tenants of private rented properties.

Although it was Labour who had first proposed the idea of ‘right to buy’ it was of course Thatcher who made it policy and introduced it in a way which was intended to severely reduce the amount of council housing, in particular forbidding the use of the receipts from sales to
build new council homes. Cash-starved local authorities were often unable to keep up proper maintenance of their housing stock and much was allowed to deteriorate.

Labour under Blair and Brown continued the Tory policies, including the transfer of council run properties to housing associations, and amplified their effects with their programme of ‘regeneration’ which led to the wholesale replacement of large council estates – most still in sound condition which could have cheaply been repaired and brought up to current standards. But developers profited hugely from demolition and redevelopment for private sale and councils hoped also to cash in, though in some cases they made a significant loss, as at the Heygate in Southwark, where around 1200 council homes were demolished, the tenants and leaseholders displaced largely outside the area, and the two and a half thousand new properties built included only around 80 at social rents. Other Labour policies, including the disastrous Private Finance Initiative also worsened the housing crisis.

You can read very much more detail on the history of council housing on the website Municipal Dreams and in the book by the site’s author Municipal Dreams: the Rise and Fall of Council Housing published in 2019 which presents a detailed and balanced view.

The young mothers of Focus E15 came up against the the housing crisis when their Labour Council in Newham decided they should be evicted from their hostel. Most were told they had to move into private rented properties with little or no security of tenure miles away from families, friends and facilities in the Stratford area, some in Wales or the north of England. They got together and decided to fight the council, then run by elected Mayor Robin Wales and its policy of removing the poor from the area – social cleansing.

Newham is a borough with one of the worst housing problems in the country, and although there has been a huge building programme, partly around the 2012 Olympic site, this is largely student housing or private development. But one council estate close to the centre of Stratford had been largely empty for around ten years. Newham had ‘decanted’ the residents beginning in 2004 hoping to cash in on what would be a prime development site. The Carpenters Estate was a very popular estate, with low rise housing and three tower blocks overlooking the Olympic Park, a stone’s throw from the excellent transport links of Stratford Station and the town centre.

For some years Newham had hoped to sell off the area as a new campus for University College London, but local opposition and protests by students and academics at UCL led to the college abandoning the plans. In 2020 the council handed over the regeneration project its Housing Company Populo Living.

Focus E15 came to the Carpenters Estate on Monday 9th June 2014 to highlight the scandal of the empty homes, bringing with them life-size or larger colour portraits of the mothers which they pasted on the shuttered windows of a small block of flats at the centre of the estate, along with posters stating ‘We Could be Here’, ‘This home needs a family’, ‘These homes need people’, ‘You could be here’.

The protest gained some publicity for their campaign, which had moved on from being simply about the mothers to a much more general ‘Housing For All’ campaign, which still continues, with the group holding a weekly Saturday Morning stall on Stratford Broadway, supporting homeless families in getting proper treatment from the council and preventing evictions in the area.

I returned with Focus E15 to the Carpenters Estate a few months later in September when on the first anniversary of the start of their campaign they occupied this low-rise block of flats on ‘Open House Day, gaining national publicity, staying in occupation for around two weeks, and have photographed various other of their events.

Focus E15 Mums Expose Carpenters Estate

Focus E15: Rally before March – Stratford Park

Focus E15: ‘March Against Evictions’ Stratford

Class War Occupy Stratford Foxtons

Focus E15: Anniversary of Carpenters Occupation

Foil Vedanta at Jaipur Literary Festival – Royal Festival Hall

End Tampon tax Now Osbourne! – Parliament Square

‘Dosta, Grinta, Enough!’ – Parliament Square

March Against Monsanto Rally – Downing St

Housing is a Mental Health Issue – Stratford

Focus E15 Mothers Party Against Eviction – East Thames Housing, Stratford

Free the Focus E15 Table – Stratford

Climate Activists Red Line protest – Westminster Bridge

Christmas Solidarity Vigil for Refugees – Downing St

Santas in London

Peoples Climate March – Embankment

Focus E15 Open House Day

Advance to Mayfair – London Real Estate Forum – Berkeley Square, Mayfair

Municipal Journal Awards – Hilton Hotel, Mayfair

Save Carpenters Estate from UCL – University College. Wednesday 28th November 2012

3 Cosas – Sick Pay, Holidays and Pensions – Senate House, University of London. Wednesday 28th November 2012

3 Cosas – Sick Pay, Holidays and Pensions – Senate House, University of London.
Wednesday 28th November 2012