Jasmin Stone | >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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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

Protests – May 16th 2015

The purpose of protests is to bring whatever cause they support to the attention of others, particularly those who bear some responsibility for them or who could act in a different way to address the problem that led to the protest.

The current Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill seeks to make protests entirely ineffectual – allowing police to insist they will only take place where they will not be noticed and banning them from making any noise or causing any inconvenience. Given the Tory majority and the lack of concern for civil rights shown by most MPs it seems likely to come into force, but I think unlikely to actually be enforceable by police, though it will lead to clashes and arguments which will greatly reduce public trust in the force.

On May 16th 2015 I was privileged to be able to cover a protest by the grass roots trade union United Voices of the World from their meeting before the protest to the end of the event. Most of the members are low-paid migrant workers and most of the business was conducted in Spanish, with some key items translated into English for the benefit of me and the few other non-Spanish speakers.

From the meeting in Bethnal Green we travelled by bus to Liverpool St and then walked quietly as a group to meet up with others close to the Barbican. Many were carrying drums, flags and placards as they rushed past the two security guards on the door of the centre who held up a couple of them but couldn’t stop the rest, and the group made its way to the heart of the Barbican Centre, where people were already gathering for evening performances.

Rather than employ cleaners directly, the Barbican Centre uses a contractor, Mitie. The Barbican is a relatively good employer and offers its employees decent terms and conditions, but MITIE cuts costs to a minimum and has threatened the cleaners with sacking if they protest for a living wage and proper sick pay and other conditions, and the union says they employ bullying managers who disrespect staff and fail to provide proper working conditions. One disabled worker had recently been assaulted by a manager and accused of ‘terrorism’ after posting a short video clip showing his working conditions.

The protesters held a short noisy protest, using a megaphone to let the public know why they were protesting and calling for an end to the victimisation of trade unionists and for negotiations to get satisfactory conditions of work and service and a living wage. They called on the Barbican to meet its obligations to people who work there by insisting that any contracts they make include safeguards to protect the workers – rather than denying any responsibility for those who keep the centre clean.

After a few minutes, police arrived and argued with the protest organiser Petros Elia who agreed to move, and the protesters then went on a walk around the centre to make sure all those in it where aware the protest was taking place and why the union was protesting. Finally they agreed with police to leave the centre, going out the way they had come in and rejoining members who worked at the Barbican who had stayed outside to protest. The protesters then walked around some of the public streets around the Barbican before returning to protest in front of the main entrance, where I left them still protesting noisily.

Under the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill all of this would have been illegal, and perhaps they might have been allowed just a small and quiet display some distance across the road from the centre, which few would have noticed.

I’d earlier photographed three other protests, two of which I’m sure would have fallen foul of the proposed new law. Newham Council had been trying to get rid of Focus E15’s weekly street stall in Stratford Broadway since it started almost two years earlier, and today’s protest celebrated the dropping of a contrived case against Jasmin Stone, one of the protest leaders. Later in the year the police and council came and ‘arrested’ the Focus E15 table – but had to release it a few days later.

While it might have been possible for the Free Shaker Aamer campaign to get permission for their protest on the North Terrace of Trafalgar Square, I think their activities and use of the megaphone would have been severely curtailed.

The small, silent ‘Stay Put’ vigil – seven people holding posters in silence by the wall in a corner of the square – is perhaps a model of what Priti Patel considers an acceptable level of protest. Though more probably she would like to go full North Korea.

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Caged vigil for Shaker Aamer
Victory Rally For Jasmin Stone