Focus E15 Occupy Police Station for Newham Show – Sunday 10th July 2016
It says something about Newham’s elected Mayor from 2012 to 2018 that the major public event in the borough was called The Mayor’s Newham Show. It should of course have been the People’s Newham Show or even just the Newham Show. But Newham was a monolithic Labour fiefdom, ruled by Sir Robin Wales, and the event, paid for by the people, was very much a PR exercise for the Mayor.
Housing action group Focus E15 were ejected from the Mayor’s Newham Show in 2014 when they approached the Mayor with protesting the borough’s housing policies – and Robin Wales was found guilty of a breach of the code of conduct by Newham Standards Committee.
The following year the council ordered private security to stop campaigners handing out leaflets at the show and members of the Focus E15 campaign were very forcibly thrown to the ground and evicted from the park in East Ham where the show is held.
So in 2016, instead of trying to leaflet inside the Newham Show, the Focus E15 Campaign set up a stall outside Newham Town Hall on Barking Road close to the park and spoke and handed out leaflets to people walking to the show in Central Park. Their campaign began when they faced eviction from the Focus 15 hostel in central Stratford when Newham Council axed the grant and the council attempted to disperse them to private rented properties in cities including Liverpool and Manchester and to Wales.
They refused, demanding to be rehoused within reach of families, friends and facilities they were familiar with, protesting the council’s policy of social cleansing, though various marches, high profile protests and occupations of empty council properties. Their campaign, which included a weekly street stall on Stratford Broadway widened from being a personal campaign into a ‘Housing for All’ campaign against Newham and other councils who are failing in their duty to provide housing for ordinary people across London.
Focus E15 continue to speak out and defend tenants from evictions and get suitable rehousing for those made homeless in Newham, while continuing to attack the council’s failure to provide adequate housing in Newham for long-term residents while hundreds of council homes have been empty for over ten years and the council encourages the building of huge areas of luxury flats for overseas investors and rich newcomers.
Among the many empty properties in Newham was the former police station on the corner of Barking Road opposite the Town Hall on High Street South leading to Central Park. After an hour or so of campaigning from the street stall they moved the short distance to this and four people climbed onto the two balconies with banners while the others held a rally in front of the building.
Police came to look at the protest, and tried to persuade the four on the balconies to come down, telling them they were worried that these were unsafe. There was nothing to suggest there was any risk at all as the building was still in good condition despite being unused. Police who want photographers to move also always lie to us and tell us that it is for our safety – and it almost never is, and sometimes actually results us moving into greater danger.
Almost certainly the people on the balconies were safe for the next twenty years or more – or until the building was demolished, and after they told police they would come down in a short time when the rally ended, the police gave up the pretence and simply watched from the opposite side of the road.
Support for the Focus E15 protest came from the Revolutionary Communist Group, Feminist Library, Boleyn Dev 100, Tower Hamlets Renters and Newham Green Party. Among the speakers at the rally was a woman from East End Sisters Uncut who talked about their occupation of an empty property in Hackney as a community resource in protest against Hackney Council’s housing failures.
In 2015 Newham sent 244 families families out of London, claiming it had no space or money to house them here. The borough then had the largest number of empty properties of any London borough – around 1,318 with a total value of around £470 million. Although Sir Robin Wales has now been replaced as Mayor, Newham’s housing policies are still failing the people, and the police station, last in use around 8 years ago, is still empty and firmly sealed against occupation. The Focus E15 campaign continues.
More at Focus E15 Occupy Police Station.