housing crisis | >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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Rich Door, Poor Door – 30th July 2014

Rich Door, Poor Door: Class War’s Long series of protests against the separate and very different entrances to the tower block at One Commercial Street in Aldgate began on 30th July 2014 and weekly protests continued with some short pauses and a few extra visits until May 2015, when Class War devoted themselves to the General Election campaign.

Here is the introduction to my long post I made in 2014 about the event:

Class War, including three of their candidates for the 2015 General Election, protested at 1 Commercial St in Aldgate against London's new apartment blocks providing separate 'poor doors' for the affordable flats they have to include to gain planning permission for the development. Class War characterise this as 'social apartheid.'

You can still read the rest at Class War – Rich Door, Poor Door. At the time the building owners told us that there was “no internal connection between this part of the building and that containing the social housing” but on a later occasion I was taken by an owner of a flat in the “rich” section out of the building from her flat by the poor door – a route she took routinely when walking her dog.

I photographed almost all of the 30 events that took place in front of the building during that time, missing just a couple when I was out of London. And shortly after the protests ended I put together a ‘zine’ full of pictures from them (still available from Blurb) ‘Class War: Rich Door, Poor Door ISBN 978-1-909363-14-4′.

At the front of the zine is the text I posted on My London Diary on 30th July 2014, along with a list of the actions, and at its end a short note about how I came to photograph protests. But the bulk of the publication is simply pages of pictures with just a few short notes.

In a short conclusion I stated:

One Commercial Street still has its separate doors for rich and poor, but the campaign which had been suspended for the general election has made 'social apartheid' in housing an issue, and along with other housing campaigns has brought housing, and housing in London in particular onto the public agenda.

I should also had made it clear that Class War had taken an part in these other housing campaigns and their presence had helped to raise the profile of protests over these. In particular they had played an important part in making clear the involvement of Labour councils in London in collaborating with developers in the transfer of huge public assets into private ownership while failing to provide much-needed social housing.

Our current Labour government has still not got serious about the need to provide social housing rather than simply encourage developers to build more largely private housing (with a largely token amount of unaffordable “affordable” housing.) Perhaps if we do get a new party of the left things will change.

The preview on Blurb includes I think most or all of the publication and shows it better than the print publication. Viewing at full screen you can also read all the text, including my post from 2014 still on My London Diary. The pictures and text from all the other Poor Door protests are also still on My London Diary.

On My London Dairy for 30th July 2014: Class War – Rich Door, Poor Door

Housing and Planning Bill March – 2016

Housing and Planning Bill March: On Saturday 30th January 2016 housing activists including some local councillors and housing activist groups mainly from South London including Class War marched from the Imperial War Museum to Downing St in a protest organised by Lambeth Housing Activists against the Housing and Planning Bill.

They say the bill will have a particularly large impact in London and greatly worsen the already acute housing crisis here.

Speeches at the rally before the march in Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park at the side of the Imperial War Museum by Green Party Leader Natalie Bennett and an number of housing activists including Simon Elmer of Architects for Social Housing were warmly applauded.

But there was one exception; when Southwark Council Cabinet Member for Housing Richard Livingstone the atmosphere changed, with boos and loud heckling from several people in the crowd including Elmer.

The arguments continued in the crowd after Livingstone had left the platform with Elmer pointing out the scandal over the demolition of the Heygate Estate and now the Aylesbury estate, where thousands of council homes have been demolished and few of the promises made by Southwark Council have been kept.

Financially and morally Heygate was a scandal, with the council making derisory offers of compensation to leaseholders, far less than the value of comparable properties in the area and a huge loss of social housing, while getting rid of a huge public asset at a fraction of its true value. And since it was something the council seemed determined to repeat, and it is not surprising that feelings ran high.

Rather to the surprise of many the march set off walking in the opposite direction to its final destination of Downing Street, and it soon became clear that we were on a tour of Lambeth rather than taking a direct route.

“Class War decided to liven things up a little, first by dancing along the street singing the ‘Lambeth Walk’ and then by rushing across the pavement towards a large estate agency.

Police formed a line to stop them entering and they stood outside for some minutes with their banners – the field of crosses with the message ‘We have found new homes of for the rich’ and the Lucy Parsons banner with its quotation “We must devastate the avenues where the wealthy live” before rejoining the march.”

For much of the march Lisa Mackenzie who had stood at Class War’s candidate in the 2015 General Election against Iain Duncan Smith in Chingford stood in front of the banners waving a plastic trident with a small banner ‘This Bill is the end of Council Housing’ with its second message an image of David Cameron and the alternative text ‘Bell End’. At times she donned a face mask of Smith.

Eventually the march reached Downing Street where police tried to direct them to the opposite side of Whitehall, but the marchers walked past them and crossed back to protest outside the gates, blocking traffic on Whitehall.

Here there were several groups listening to speakers and a samba band playing. Eventually police persuaded most of them to leave the road and I left for home.

More pictures at Housing and Planning Bill March.

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Decent Housing & Saving the NHS – 2014

Decent Housing & Saving the NHS: Ten years ago today there were protests over two of the major issues which still face our incoming government today, but which I have no faith in them facing or improving.

Focus E15 March for Decent Housing – East Ham

The housing crisis largely stems from successive governments, largely starting with Thatcher prioritising private ownership above all other ways of providing homes for people. Thatcher gave away publicly owned social housing to tenants at knock-down prices and refused to allow councils to try to replace what had been lost.

Government housing policy since have been obsessed with the idea of the “housing ladder“; housing isn’t – or shouldn’t be – about ladders to increase personal wealth but about homes, and the ladder is very definitely that in “Pull up the ladder, Jack! We’re all right” and sod those left at the bottom below.

Private renting has also moved from being a way in which owners of properties derived and income from properties they owned, to a scheme where more and more tenants are paying high rents to buy properties for their landlords. It’s a crazy system and one which should be stopped.

We have also seen a huge growth in properties which are largely built to be bought as investments, particularly by overseas investors, often being left unoccupied for all or most of the time. Clearly this needs to be made economically nonviable, not only because of the effects it has on the shortage of homes, but also because of the way it is seriously distorting the development of our cities.

Second (and multiple) home ownership is also an increasing problem, particularly in the more desirable rural areas of the country and we need to find ways to reduce the impact of this, perhaps through taxation to provide a fund to build social housing in these areas.

But the basic solution to the country’s housing problems is simple. Build more social housing. Any government which comes in without this as the main thurst of their housing policy will fail to improve the housing crisis.

As I wrote ten years ago “We need a government – national and local – determined to act for the benefit of ordinary people, making a real attempt to build much more social housing, removing the huge subsidies currently given to private landlords through housing benefit, legislating to provide fair contracts for private tenants and give them decent security – and criminalising unfair evictions.” We haven’t got one.

You can read more about the march in East Ham organised by Focus E15 Mums to demand secure housing, free from the threats of eviction, soaring private rents, rogue landlords, letting agents illegally discriminating, insecure tenancies and unfair bedroom tax and benefit cap on My London Diary.

The march was supported by housing protest groups from Hackney, Brent and from South London and organisations including BARAC and TUSC. I was surprised to see the popular support it received on the streets with even some motorists stopping their cars to put money in the collection buckets.

More at Focus E15 March for Decent Housing.

Save our Surgeries on NHS 66th Birthday – Whitechapel

The National Health Service began on 5th July 1948 and on its 66th anniversary the Save our Surgeries campaign against health cuts in Tower Hamlets marched to Hackney in a show of opposition to health cuts, surgery closures and NHS privatisation.

The setting up of the NHS was opposed by the Conservatives and they and the doctors and dentists associations forced many compromises which led to it being a less than comprehensive health service, though still a great national achievement and one which for we are justly proud of.

Many doctors made – and some still make – large incomes from private practice and fought to keep these rather than back a universal system wholeheartedly. But in more recent years a huge private medical system has grown up alongside the NHS and more and more people are covered through work schemes providing private medical cover.

This private system has grown parasitically on the state medical system and all governments over the past thirty or more years have found ways to syphon off money to it, by allowing it to tender for various more straightforward aspects of NHS services.

Successive governments have also created huge administrative burdens on the NHS, setting up new levels of administrators which oversee and to some extent override clinical decisions. But financially the most disastrous impact on the NHS comes from the various PFI agreements, largely made under New Labour, which enabled the building of new hospitals without the costs appearing in the government’s debts, but tied the trusts running the hospitals into huge debt repayments and the kind of service contracts that make replacing a light bulb cost £1200.

General practice was set up in 1948 under doctor-owned surgeries but increasingly these are now owned by healthcare companies after New Labour in 2007 allowed larger companies to buy them up. Operose Health, part of US healthcare giant Centene Corporation in 2022 was running 70 practices and a BBC Panorama report showed they were only employing half as many doctors as average practices, while employing six times as many physician associates (who have only 2 years of medical training rather than the 10 for GPs) who were being inadequately supervised.

Unfortunately Labour policy appears to be to increase the reliance – and transfer of funds to the private sector rather than reduce it. You can read more about their position in the 2023 Tribune article Labour’s Love Affair with Private Healthcare by Tom Blackburn, which aslo sets out clearly the financial links of Wes Streeting to private healthcare. And of course he is not the only Labour MP with a financial interest. Labour might sort out a few of the problems but the creeping privatisation seems sure to accelerate.

The protest in East London was over changes in the funding of NHS surgeries which have failed to take into account the extra needs of deprived innner-city areas and were expected to lead the closure of some surgeries as well as other NHS cuts, particularly those happening because of the huge PFI debt from the new Royal London Hospital.

There was a brief rally in Altab Ali Park before the march with speeches by local politicians and health campaigners before the crowd of several hundreds set off down the Whitechapel Road on its way to London Fields in Hackney where it was to meet up with other protesters for a larger rally. But I left the march at Whitechapel Station.

More at

Housing Act, Student rents & Open Gardens – 2016

Housing Act, Student rents & Open Gardens: On Saturday 18th June 2016 I went to three events all with a connection with housing. First was a protest against the 2016 Housing and Planning Act passed the previous month, after which I briefly visited students celebrating a victory at UCL before going to South London for an Open Gardens event at an estate which Lambeth Council want to demolish.

Axe the Housing Act March – Hyde Park Corner

Protesters marched from Hyde Park Corner to Parliament against the Housing and Planning Act which tenant and housing groups, councils, academics, trade unions and communities say will deepen the current housing crisis, removing security from many tenants and will result in the demolition and selling off of almost all social housing.

The Act extends the ‘Right to Buy’ to housing association tenants and allows councils to sell vacant ‘higher value’ vacant council homes to fund this.

It brings in mandatory rent increases for households in social housing with a combined family income of ore than £40,000 in London and £31,000 elsewhere with their rents increasing over time to market rents. Amendments made this slightly fairer by limiting the income considered to the taxable income of two main household earners and excluding most of those receiving benefits from the calculations.

The Act removes security of tenure for most council tenants. New tenants will only get fixed term tenancies generally from 2-5 years, with some longer tenancies agreed for those with a disability or children living at home until they reach the age of 19 following pressure from the House of Lords.

The Act reflects and emphasises the Tory view that social housing should be a very limited resource only supporting the the very poorest in society, second-class citizens, with the landlords and house builders being able to make profits from the rest of us. But housing campaigners generally see it as by far the most cost-effective way to provide for one of our basic human needs and also argue that it can provide an income for local councils to support other vital services.

The protesters urged councils to refuse to implement the Act and call on people to stand together to boycott the pay-to-stay tax, resist evictions and block regeneration and estate demolitions.

Among the speakers before the march began was Richard Livingstone, a councillor from the London Borough of Southwark, Cabinet Member for Adult Care and Financial Inclusion and formerly responsible for housing in the borough.

Southwark is a borough with an appalling record on housing and estate demolition and many at the protest were appalled at his presence calling Southwark’s demolition of the Heygate and Aylesbury a shameful example of exactly the kind of social cleansing this protest was against.

Many feel that many Labour councillors and officers are now careerists, driven by political or financial advancement rather than caring for the people in their borough. A number have earned themselves highly paid jobs with developers and other companies in the housing sector.

I left as the march moved off towards Parliament and made my way to UCL.

More at Axe the Housing Act March.

UCL Rent Strike Victory

It was good for once to be able to celebrate a victory, after after the Complaints Panel at UCL decided that the residents of Campbell House West will be compensated in full for the final term last year – up to £1,368 per student.

They determined that UCL Management “Not only demonstrated a lack of empathy towards students’ circumstances and an understanding or appreciation of what would be an acceptable student experience, but was disingenuous to the students concerned.”

So the mass protest that had been planned, an Open Day Manifestation, turned into a celebration of their victory, and also to show their determination to continue their campaign to cut student rents.

I left after a brief visit, missing the lively victory march around the West End with flares and the helium-filled balloons I had watched them preparing.

UCL Rent Strike Victory

Central Hill Open Gardens Estates – Upper Norwood

Lambeth’s Central Hill Estate is a popular and well-planned estate of considerable architectural interest in good condition under threat of demolition by Lambeth Council. Like some other estates it has been refused listing probably on political grounds. The properties, completed in 1974, were well built and are generally in good condition though suffering like most council estates from a lack of proper maintenance and in need of relatively minor refurbishment.

This was one of the estates under threat of demolition by Government Housing policies, council regeneration programmes and property developers which were welcoming visitors to open day events as a part of the Open Garden Estates initiative by Architects for Social Housing, ASH.

There was a display of the alternative plans for the estate by ASH showing how the council’s aims of increasing the capacity of the estate could be achieved without any demolition and at a much lower financial and environmental cost.

Lambeth Council had refused to make any serious consideration of these plans, almost certainly because although the cost would be much less, they would not provide the profits to the developers from the high market value sales of new properties and market rents, and the costs of the ASH scheme to the council would be greater.

One of the visitors to the open day was Labour MP for Dulwich and West Norwood Helen Hayes, who stormed out after being questioned why she was attending when she had given her backing to Labour councillors behind the plans to demolish the estate.

Also at the open day were various food, book and other stalls, a music performance, film show (I watched a film about how Southwark Counci had mistreated the residents of Myatts Fields) and a Marxist puppet show as well as estate tours. I’d visited the estate several times in the past and had photographed parts of it in the 1990s as well as more recently in February 2016 when I wrote more about it and Lambeth’s plans to demolish.

Although New Labour’s ‘Regeneration’ policy possibly had good intentions, its results have often been disastrous, and Labour really needs to rethink its whole approach to council-owned housing.

As I wrote in 2016: “‘Regeneration’ has resulted in huge transfers of public assets into private hands, in a wholesale loss of social housing, and in social cleansing, with people being forced outwards from London, unable to afford either the laughably named ‘affordable’ properties or those at market rates. It has meant the dispersal of functioning communities, in widespread and arguably fraudulent under-compensation of leaseholders, and in a great deal of sub-standard buildings, often to lower specifications of space and worse design than those they replace.“

More people were arriving at the event when I left to go home and I was sorry to have to miss some of the activities planned for later in the day.

The estate is still standing and the fight to save it continues. In March 2024 Lambeth Council set up a contract with consultants to reappraise the plans for estate ‘regeneration’ at Cressingham Gardens, Central Hill and Fenwick. Perhaps it will come up with some more sensible proposals …

More at Central Hill Open Gardens Estates.

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Fighting Brixton Gentrification – 2015

Fighting Brixton Gentrification – On Saturday 25th April 2015 the local community in Brixton held a day of activities to reclaim its social & cultural diversity, threatened by increasing rents and property development that are forcing out local businesses and residents.

I’d arrived early for main ‘Reclaim Brixton’ event in Windrush Square and first made my way to Atlantic Road where long-established local businesses were being forced out from the railway arches which line one side of the road. They were under threat from Network Rail who with support from Lambeth Council were carrying out a refurbishment programme which would result in their shops being closed and the rents for the shops after being three times as high, pricing the low cost local businesses out of the area.

All the stores were closed for two hours across lunchtime in protest, and mural artists had been invited to work on their metal shutters. In 2015 I wrote: ‘On Stella’s Exclusive Hair & Beauty Salon an artist was working on a mural for the United Families and Friends campaign, celebrating Cherry Groce, Sean Rigg and Ricky Bishop, all killed by Brixton police. All the shops on both sides of the arches were closed, and most had white sheets with the name of the business and a punning message about the evictions. Some of them have traded here for many years – Denmay Fabrics since 1948, and L S Mash and Sons have been fishmongers here since 1932. Their message to Network Rail – ‘Don’t rip the soul outta my place”

Street theatre groups walked past on their way to ‘Reclaim Brixton’ some in exotic dress carrying cardboard homes and others with posters against the threat to Communities, Homes, Businesses from Lambeth Council.

I walked along to the gentrified Brixton Village, an extensive arcade between Atlantic Road and Coldharbour Lane, to find that police and security were keeping out protesters who, led by London Black Revs, had planned to go through the market in a peaceful march.

I found Class War at Brixton Station and walked back with them to Brixton Village, where other campaigners including some from the Ayslesbury Estate where I had photographed the previous day making their banner and other South London housing campaigners were arriving for the march.

Rather to my surprise the march when it finally started was a short and fairly direct one to Windrush Square, turning off Coldharbour Lane to enter the square via Rushcroft Road.

Close to the mansion flats which had been squatted for 32 years before residents were violently evicted in July 2013 people accompanying the long black banner of B.A.G.A.G.E (Brixton Action Group Against Gentrification and Evictions) with its message ‘Refuse to Move – Resist the Evictions – Support your Neighbours’ and others let off several red flares.

Windrush Square in front of the Tate Library and opposite Lambeth Town Hall was a few years earlier re-landscaped by Lambeth Council, who deliberately turned what had been a popular place for locals into a bleak and unwelcoming windswept area to discourage the informal gatherings that took place there.

Perhaps it was partly due to this that the event taking place there seemed to lack any real cohesion with various groups doing their own thing in different parts of the large area and largely ignoring the speeches and performances at the Unite Community stage.

After an hour or so with not very much happening, activists decided it was time for a march and took to the road blocking traffic and walked up Brixton Road.

They stopped for a while outside Brixton Underground, drumming and dancing and shouting.

Then they marched along Atlantic Road and rather to my surprise returned directly to Windrush Square along Coldharbour Lane.

*Marcia Rigg, Sean Rigg’s sister, still fighting for justice for her brother’s killing by Brixton police in August 2008 and friend*

I hung around for a while in Windrush Square where nothing much was still happening slowly and things seemed peaceful. I decided I had done enough for the day and left.

This was a mistake. Shortly after (probably when Class War came out of the pub) sthings kicked off and some people stormed and briefly occupied Lambeth Town Hall, a large window at Foxton’s estate agents was broken, and a few activists went into Brixton Village with banners.

Many more pictures on My London Diary:
London Black Revs ‘Reclaim Brixton ‘march
Reclaim Brixton celebrates Brixton
Take Back Brixton against gentrification
Brixton Arches tenants protest eviction

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Class War Victory Over Qatari Royals

Class War Victory Over Qatari Royals – Thursday 8th February 2018 saw a remarkable victory for Class War against the one of the richest families in the world, the Qatari Royal Family with a $335 billion sovereign wealth fund who are now one of the biggest landowners in the United Kingdom.

In the morning I had gone to the Royal Courts of Justice on Strand where lawyers acting for the Qatari royal family were trying to prevent a Class War protest against the ten empty £50 million pound apartments in The Shard, the tallest building in the United Kingdom. The Qataris own 95% of the property with the remaining 5% retained by its original developers Sellar Property.

I hadn’t gone into the court but had waited outside, arriving in plenty of time to greet Ian Bone and his barrister Ian Brownhill as they emerged triumphant from the court.

Lawyers for the Qatari royals had tried to get an injunction against protests by Bone and “persons unknown” and to claim over £500 in legal costs from the 70 year-old south London pensioner for them doing so.

Brownhill had contacted Bone and offered to take up his case pro bono, and as soon as he contacted the Qataris’ lawyers they offered to drop the case if Class War ‘would stop attacking the Shard’. Class War would of course not agree to giving up their protest. The Qatari attempt to stifle protest led to articles in the national and international press and radio and TV coverage.

In the High Court the Qataris’ lawyers were forced to drop the attempt to ban protests and their demand for fees but Bone accepted a legal restriction on him going inside the Shard and its immediate vicinity.

Among documents supplied to the court for the Qataris were some clearly defamatory statments about another person connected with Class War but not named in the injunction and other information which had clearly been obtained from police sources. The Head of Security at the Shard got his job after retiring as a police commander.

Police have over the years carried out a number of clearly malicious arrests of people from Class War during protests, aimed at harassing people engaged in peaceful protest. The cases have either been dropped before coming to court or have been thrown out by the courts.

Class War’s protest went ahead as planned, pointing out that the ten £50 million pound apartments in the Shard have remained empty since the building was completed.

There appeared to be several times as many police as the protesters outside the Shard, as well as a large number of security men and plain clothes police, along with two men with search dogs when the protesters arrived. It seemed a huge overkill for what was always intended – and was – an entirely peaceful but noisy small protest.

Ian Bone’s health problems meant he would not in any case have attended the protest, and the other protesters were careful to remain outside the boundary of the Shard which is marked by a metal line in the pavement.

Despite this police still tried to move them away to the other side of the road, making the patently spurious claim that they were causing an obstruction to commuters attempting to enter London Bridge station. it was very clear that it was the police were obviously causing a rather larger obstruction than Class War.

The protesters pointed out that there are now a huge number of empty properties in London at the same time as a huge housing crisis – at the time including over 100 families from Grenfell who were in temporary accommodation.

There are large developments of high-prices flats taking place, totally unaffordable for those in housing need, many of which are bought simply as investments to take advantage of rising house prices and remain empty all or most of the year.

In 2018 there were plans to build 26,000 more flats costing over a million pounds each, including many on former council estates being redeveloped and replacing social housing – when thousands are sleeping on the streets and councils have huge housing lists. Currently in 2023 both Lambeth and Newham have over 35,000 waiting for housing and nine other boroughs have lists with over 10,000 names, with a total of over 323,000 over the whole of Greater London.

George Monbiot last Saturday wrote an important article In a world built by plutocrats, the powerful are protected while vengeful laws silence their critics. Class War in February 2018 showed it is sometimes possible to take on the powerful and win. Though the Qataris are still laughing all the way to the bank which they own anyway.

More pictures on My London Diary:
Class War protest at Shard
Class War victory against Qatari Royals

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Cressingham Gardens Calls For A Ballot – 2017

Cressingham Gardens Calls For A Ballot – On Saturday 2nd December 2017 residents of Cressingham Gardens in Tulse Hill marched with supporters to a rally at Lambeth Town Hall in Brixton to demand Lambeth Council hold a ballot of residents over the plans to demolish their homes. I went early to take a walk around the estate and take some photographs before the rally and march.

Cressingham Gardens – Tulse Hill, Brixton

Council estates generally get a bad press, with media attention concentrating on those which were badly planned and have been allowed to deteriorate, often deliberately populated with more than than share of families with problems of various kinds, used as ‘sink estates’ by local councils. Some councils have even employed PR companies to denigrate and demonise those of their estates they want to demolish and sell off to private developers.

These developers have also powerfully lobbied our main political parties who have handed over much of their policies over housing to developers and estate agents and other property professionals who stand to make huge profits from turning public property into private estates.

Yet many council estates are pleasant places to live, often much better planned than private developments of the same era, and providing more space for people than the cramped and expensive flats that are replacing them where redevelopment schemes have gone ahead. Lambeth Council have several such estates, including those at Central Hill and Cressingham Gardens where this would clearly be the case, and residents at both sites have campaigned strongly to keep their homes.

We seem always to be in a housing crisis in the UK, and some of the solutions that were taken to meet this have not always worked to well, particularly with some system-built high rises which were shoddily erected by private developers for councils.

After I left home in the early 1960s I lived in private rented flats, then in a New Town in a flat from the development agency and then for many years now as an owner occupier. The private rentals were pretty squalid and the publicly owned flat was rather more spacious than the small Victorian house we have lived in since. It would have been good to have been able to move into socially owned housing when we relocated but it wasn’t available.

Until the Thatcher government came into power public housing had regarded as something desirable with even Conservative Councils such as Lambeth was then having a mission to provide quality housing for working class Lambeth residents. They employed some of the best architects in the country, such as Edward Hollamby, the chief architect for Lambeth Council who was responsible for Cressingham Gardens and designed this low rise ‘garden estate’ development built in 1967 to 1979 at low cost and with a high population density, but with the 306 homes each having their own private outdoor space.

As the Twentieth Century Society state “this is one of the most exceptional and progressive post-war social housing estates in the UK” but the application for listing the estate in 2013 was rejected despite Historic England praising the way the design responds to its setting, with skill and sensitivity, “both in the scale and massing of the built elements, as well as through the integration of these elements with informal open spaces which bring a park-like character into the estate”. It appears to have been a decision made in defiance of both the estate’s architectural and historical merit and solely on political grounds.

The estate is on the Twentieth Century Society Buildings at Risk list. Lambeth Council have completed their preparation and brief for its complete demolition and their web site states they “will shortly be starting RIBA Stage 2 (Concept Design).“

Cressingham Gardens residents say Ballot Us!

People met up next to the Rotunda in the centre of the estate designed by Hollamby as a children’s nursery, many carrying banners and posters. Residents were joined by other campaigners, including those trying to save Lambeth’s libraries and housing campaigners from north London.

Residents love living on Cressingham – a small well-planned estate with a great community feeling and many know that they will be unable to afford the so-called afford ‘affordable’ homes that the council wants to replace their homes with – a 2 bed flat after regeneration will cost £610 (at 2017 values.)

They want the estate to be refurbished rather than demolished, which the council says would cost £10 million. Many dispute the council’s costings and say that some of the problems the council has identified are a matter of poor maintenance rather than needing expensive building works. But residents in any case point to the council having just spent over £165 million on a new Town Hall and say refurbishment is a cheap option.

It isn’t the cost of refurbishment which makes the council turn it down, but the profits that developers can make from the site – and which the council hopes to be able to get a share. Though such schemes haven’t always worked out well. Although the developers have done very nicely out of demolishing the Heygate site in Southwark and building high density blocks on it, the council made a huge loss, though some individuals involved have ended up in lucrative jobs on the back of it.

Lambeth is a Labour Council, and since the previous Labour Party conference party policy had been that no demolition of council estates should take place without consent, but Lambeth Council seem determined to ignore this and go ahead with their plans for a so-called ‘regeneration’ which would see all 300 homes demolished, without any plans to provide immediate council housing for the roughly 1000 residents who would be made homeless. To the council these residents are simply occupying a site worth several hundred thousand pounds – an asset the council wants to realise. It doesn’t care about communities, about people.

Those who have become leaseholders of their homes are likely to get even more shoddy treatment. The amount of compensation they are likely to receive is likely to be less than half they would need to buy a comparable property in the area – on or the rebuilt estate.

Cressingham is in a very desirable location, on the edge of a large park and with good transport links a short distance away. Many are likely to have to move miles away on the edge of London or outside to find property they can afford, far from where they now live and work.

The march set off for Brixton Town Hall on the corner of Acre Lane where a small crowd of supporters was waiting for them. The placed a box containing petition signatures in front of the locked doors on the steps and a rally began with shouts calling for a ballot.

Among those who had come to speak along with residents from the estate were Tanya Murat of Southwark Homes for All and Piers Corbyn, a housing campaigner also from neighbouring Southwark.

One of the strikers from the Ritzy cinema opposite told us that none of them could now afford to live in Lambeth now, and it’s clear that we need more social housing not less in the area. A local Green Party member also told us that they were the only party in the area campaigning for more social housing.

Potent Whisper performed his take on Regeneration, ‘Estate of War’, from this Rhyming Guide to Housing. The video of this was recorded in Cressingham Gardens.

Others who had come along included people from Class War and the e RCG (Revolutionary Communist Group) who have been very active in supporting social housing campaigns as well as Roger Lewis of DPAC who told us how council cuts affect the disabled disproportunately.

More on My London Diary:
Cressingham residents say Ballot Us!
Cressingham Gardens

Housing For Need Not Greed

Housing For Need Not Greed: Mostly my posts here look at old work, either from a few years ago or my work on London back in the 1980s and 90s. But I’m still goining out at taking pctures if not quite as often as I once did. So this post is about one of the two events I photographed last weekend.

Last Saturday, 8th July 2023 was National Housing Action Day, and a march from the Elephant to the Aylesbury Estate was one of 16 across the country on National Housing Day. Others were taking place in Lambeth, Islington, Kensington, Cardiff, Glasgow, Abbey Wood, Wandsworth, Harlow, Merton, Ealing, Cornwall, Folkestone, Devon, Birmingham, and Hastings.

Housing For Need Not Greed -Tanya Murat - Southwark Defend Council Housing — *Tanya Murat – Southwark Defend Council Housing*

The Southwark protest demanded Southwark Council stop demolishing council homes and refurbish and repopulate estates to house people and end the huge carbon footprint of demolish and rebuild. They demanded housing for need not corporate greed, refurbishment not demolition, filling of empty homes and an end to the leasehold system.

Housing For Need Not Greed — *Marchers at the Elephant on their way to the Aylesbury Estate*

Demolition and rebuilding of housing produces huge amounts of CO2, and whenever possible should be avoided now we are aware of the real dangers of global warming. Instead existing buildings should be insulated, retrofitted and refurbished and properly maintained.

Southwark Council’s estates have for well over 20 years been deliberately run down and demonised with some being demolished and replaced. Around 1000 council homes on the Aylesbury Estate have already been demolished buy around 1,700 are still occupied but currently scheduled for demolition.

*Marchers on Walworth Road on their way to the Aylesbury Estate*.

These homes were well built for the time to higher standards than their replacement and could easily and relatively cheaply be brought up to modern levels of services and insulation with at least another 50 years of life. The estate was carefully designed with open spaces, natural daylight and a range of properties, many with some private outdoor space. The planned replacements are at higher density, less spacious and unlikely to last as long – and only include a small proportion at social rents. Current tenants are more secure and the properties are far more affordable.

*People on the street watch and video the march*

Many of those whose homes have already been demolished here and on the neighbouring Heygate estate have been forced to move outside the area, some far from London as they can no longer afford to live here.

*Bubbles and Marchers on Walworth Road on their way to the Aylesbury Estate.*

Although the developers have profited greatly from their work with Southwark Council here and in other estates, and some officers and councillors involved have personally landed well-paying corporate jobs and enjoyed lavish corporate hospitality, the schemes have largely been financial disasters for the council and council tax payers.

Fight4Aylesbury was formed in 199 as Aylesbury Tenants and Residents First, and has been fighting Southwark Council’s plans to demolish the estate since then. While these schemes – part of New Labour’s regeneration initiative – have always been destructive of local communities and disastrous for many of those whose homes have been demolished, we now see that they are also environmentally unsupportable.

You can watch a video on YouTube of Aysen Dennis, Fight4Aylesbury and Tanya Murat, Southwark Defend Council Housing talking about the protest, and FIght4Aylesbury recently released a newsletter, The Future of the Aylesbury with more details on the estate and their proposals. A few more of my pictures from the event are in the album Housing For Need Not Greed – National Action Day, London, UK and are available for editorial use on Alamy.

Greedy Property Developers Reward Themselves

Greedy Property Developers Reward Themselves: Eight years ago on Tuesday 12 April 2015 I photographed housing activists protesting outside the expensive dinner at a Mayfair hotel for the 2015 Property Awards. The protesters held their own alternative awards ceremony for housing protesters as a part of the event.

Among those in my pictures is Aysen from the Aylesbury Estate. The Fight4Aylesbury exhibition in her flat on the estate continues today, Friday 21st April 2023, and on Saturday 22nd and Sunday 23rd. Parts of some of my pictures from this event were used in collages in that show.

Property Awards at Mayfair Hotel – Grosvenor House Hotel, Park Lane

Greedy Property Developers Reward Themselves

Property developers have powered the incredible rise in London Housing prices by building luxury flats for mainly overseas investors, many of which remain unoccupied to be sold later at even higher prices to other investors, and also by working with London councils to redevelop social housing largely for private sale.

Together with the actions of successive governments – Tory and Labour – they had created what by 2015 was clearly the worst shortage of affordable housing in history, with a record number of evictions and the doubling of rough sleeping in London. Over 50,000 families have had to move out of London while many more properties in the capital remain empty.

As I wrote: “Housing in London has ceased to be something to meet human need, and instead is servicing greed and selfishness.” And the expensive dinner taking place that evening in the luxury Mayfair hotel was to give awards to the property developers for their greed. Among those taking part in the protest outside were people from estates which are being redeveloped, including Southwark Council’s Aylesbury estate and Sweets Way in north London who were facing eviction because of the policy of social cleansing driven by councils and developers.

People arriving at the dinner were met by a noisy crowd calling for a fair housing policy outside the ‘red carpet’ entrance to the hotel on Park Lane and had to walk past the protesters to enter. Police tried to keep the entrance clear and some hotel staff directed the guests to other entrances to the hotel, where the protesters also followed.

The protesters held an alternative awards ceremony in front of the hotel entrance, awarding large cardboard cups for the Young Protester of the Year, Placard Making, Demonstration of the Year and Occupation of the Year.

Protesters also briefly occupied occupied a neighbouring branch of estate agents Foxton, who have played a leading role in the gentrification of London. Together with other estate agents they have also been an important influence on the housing policies of both Tory and Labour.

Foxtons is notorious among those who rent property for driving up rents – and in 2022 the London Renters Union reported that their annual revenue had increased by £5m as rents in London went up by an average of 20.5% in 3 months, with one Foxtons tenant reporting a rise of £12,000 per year!

Shortly before I left it became clear that most of those coming to the dinner were being directed to a rear service entrance to the hotel and the protesters moved around the block to hold a rally there. The gate was rapidly closed and there were some minor scuffles as police attempted to move the protesters away. I heard later that there had been two arrests after I left.

Many more pictures at Property Awards at Mayfair Hotel.