Laburnum School Meeting
Posted: May 13, 2002 Filed under: Haggerston, Schools Comments Off on Laburnum School MeetingAre there more places than kids in this part of Hackney? “We don’t think that they have done their sums right.”
A “consultation” process will start in mid-June. Parents’ views will apparently be considered by the Learning Trust, which takes over Hackney Education on August 1st. If Hackney Council consultation is a joke, then what will it be like for the unaccountable Learning Trust?
Speaking at the meeting for Hackney Independent, Peter Sutton pledged our support for the fight to keep Laburnum School open and proposed that a parents’ committee should be set up to act as an independent voice for parents. This was agreed by the meeting and the Hackney Independent has been invited to attend to support the campaign.
Encouraging Result for Hackney IWCA Candidates
Posted: May 13, 2002 Filed under: Elections Comments Off on Encouraging Result for Hackney IWCA CandidatesHackney IWCA candidates in Haggerston ward chalked up impressive results last night, narrowly missing out on a council seat. The full results were:
Percentage Turnout: 32.15
Boff, Andrew The Conservative Party 435
Bright, Afolasade Oluyemidale Labour Party 802
Ellis, Alexander The Conservative Party 404
Rae, Benjamin Christie The Liberal Party 270
Sarikaya, Erdogan The Conservative Party 420
Sen, Nusret Independent 504
Sutton, Peter Independent Working Class Association 595
Taylor, Carl Independent Working Class Association 610
Thompson, Coral Christian Peoples Alliance 87
Tiyamiyu, Suraju-Deen Olatunde Labour Party 700
Young, David Labour Party 841
Candidate Peter Sutton stated “We are the official opposition to Labour in Haggerston and will use that position to put pressure on the Council to take action on crime and anti-social behaviour, to improve the repairs, cleaning and manageement of our estates and to resist any loss of community facilities in the Ward.
While Labour gained votes acros Hackney South – winning every seat in the constituency – the trend was bucked in Haggerston where they lost votes on their 1998 results. Labour are on course to lose Haggerston in 2006 or in any by-election before then.
We would like to thank everyone who voted for us, and there are a number of tenant and community leaders – you know who you are – who put themselves out to support our campaign.”
IWCA Slams "Misleading" Labour Election Leaflet
Posted: April 7, 2002 Filed under: Elections, Haggerston, ITnet, Labour Party Comments Off on IWCA Slams "Misleading" Labour Election Leaflet“In the leaflet – the Haggerston Rose – Labour are claiming to have solved problems that they themselves caused,” said IWCA (Hackney Independent) activist and candidate Carl Taylor. “And they have claimed that things are getting better when all the evidence is that they are getting much, much worse.”
The leaflet claims that the £30 million secured by the council from central government has ended the threat to libraries and nurseries, that Labour were responsible for terminating the costly ITNet revenues and benefits contract and that they have brought improvements to schools, street cleaning and social services.
“The news that the threat to libraries and nurseries has been ended must be news to workers and users,” said Carl Taylor. “Each week in the Gazette we read about the ongoing libraries dispute and renewed threats to existing nursery provision. The ITNet contract was brought in by Labour in the first place and they were forced to sack them only in the face of the anger and misery of Hackney tenants. Thanks to Labour, ITNet nearly bankrupted this borough. Rather than claim credit for sacking them they should be apologising to all of us for their own incompetency. The massively overspent Service Team street cleaning contract and the Initial school meals fiasco shows that they haven’t learnt anything from ITNet. As for social services, how can anyone claim that reducing home care for the elderly and cutting Freedom Passes to the disabled are ‘real improvements’!?”
The IWCA (Hackney Independent) have also condemned labour councillors claims to have ‘worked hard to keep open the Apples & Pears Adventure Playground’. The IWCA’s Peter Sutton – another election candidate in Haggerston Ward – said “the only reason this valuable site is under threat in the first place is because Labour councillors are determined to sell off our facilities. Apples & Pears was only saved from the hammer at auction because volunteer workers and parents got a court injunction which has delayed the sale. Are Labour now saying they have no plans to sell the site, or do they intend to push the sale again after the election when it will be less electorally damaging? Whatever their plans are they should come out and say so. No wonder people are increasingly fed up with this kind of dishonest ‘politics’.”
The IWCA (Hackney Independent) believes that Labour’s claim that they will ‘continue to stick up for local people and vital community facilities’ is nothing more than a joke, and not a particularly funny one. “Labour’s record on community facilities is abysmal,” said Peter Sutton. “They have broken their promise in their last newsletter, put out over a year ago, to reopen Haggerston Pool. Why should people believe what they read in this one? We share people’s frustration at this kind of ‘economy with the truth’ and are committed to campaigning with local people to prevent more cuts and sell-offs. We will continue to do so whatever happens at the elections. Fortunately people now have a choice in Haggerston.”
These Hybrid Monsters
Posted: April 4, 2002 Filed under: Privatisation / Sell Offs Comments Off on These Hybrid MonstersNews like this would once have brought down the government. First, the company we all think of as the Post Office announced 15,000 workers would lose their jobs – the first strike in what could be a cull of 40,000 staff. That staggering figure overshadowed the second axe to fall: 750 naval workers laid off after the government decided to hire private companies to refit British warships. To cap it all, the biggest headline grabber: a Cabinet minister forced to make a full-speed, skidding u-turn by handing £500m of public money to the shareholders of the late and unlamented Railtrack. All of that on a single day: Black Monday.
What explains the change? It’s partly a tribute to Britain’s success: our official unemployment rate is the lowest in the European Union, hovering at 1975 levels below a million. We no longer think of joblessness as a problem. But there is a deeper explanation, too.
Industry mattered to politics when politics mattered to industry. Two decades ago, whole sections of the economy were under the direct control of the state. Now, in the era of privatisation, ministers are able to shake a fist or shout the odd plea from the sidelines but rarely to make the decisive difference. They can beg BMW or Motorola not to pull out of Britain – but if the boardroom has made up its mind, there’s little even a phone call from the PM can do.
So voters no longer look to government to make the industrial weather. Two decades of Thatcherite economics have persuaded us that the market is king: governments are powerless to resist. On this logic, politicians have a choice between doing nothing or making things worse. Their role is to stand aside and let the market sort it out. We are all laissez-faire liberals now.
And so the very phrase “industrial policy” – such a staple of 1970s political talk – has disappeared. And yet it’s worth examining Labour’s stance on industry, for inside it lies a glaring, increasingly risky contradiction – and Black Monday illustrates it perfectly.
The government believes in blending the lean efficiency of the private sector with the social goals once exclusively associated with public ownership. The result is a new industrial landscape littered with strange, hybrid creatures – part private, part public, they look and behave like neither. They are the “third way” made flesh.
Railtrack was one. Inherited from the Major government, this company walked like a private business, talked like a private business – but never quite escaped its genetic origins in the public sector. So it had shareholders and sought profit, but as soon as things went wrong it held out the begging bowl for handouts from the government. Of course it got the money: how could any country let its rail system go under? So Railtrack had all the fun and perks of life as a private company – safe in the knowledge that, whenever the chill wind of the market got too nippy, the nanny state would be there with a blanket.
That’s why so many voters, commuters especially, feel resentful about forking out an extra £500m in compensation to Railtrack’s shareholders. They know that reason is probably on the shareholders’ side: they owned assets which the government could not simply grab from them. But the admittedly emotional response of many is to ask: if your company was worth so much, how come you kept coming to us for more cash? More viscerally, why should we bail you out, just because your shares went down; how much did you give to us, the taxpayers, when they soared up? And isn’t that the whole point of shares: you do well if they go up, but you expect to take a bath if they go down? Railtrack shareholders placed a one-way bet: win if you win, but don’t lose if you lose.
And this is the core problem: we were asking a private company to take on an essentially public task. Railtrack was designed to follow the profit instinct of private enterprise when its real job was to provide a public service. It was meant to be governed by the iron disciplines of market forces, but it always knew its risk was more hypothetical than real: if trouble struck, the government would step in – as Stephen Byers duly did this week.
There is a direct lesson here for the public-private partnership plan still dogmatically pursued by Labour for the London Underground. Once again, the government will pretend that the private infrastructure companies are taking on the risk that things might go wrong. They will certainly be handsomely rewarded for it. But if things do go off the rails, we all know who will really pay the price: the government cannot let the tube collapse, so it will step in – with our money.
Consignia is a different strain of mutant company. It too was meant to behave like a private outfit, even though it remains government owned. And it, too, suffers for being neither fish nor fowl. It faces competition for key services, like a private company, but it cannot do what any private business would do if strapped for cash: it cannot raise the price on its core product. The price of a first-class postage stamp has gone up just once in six years, even though it costs a penny more to deliver a letter than it costs us to post it. The regulator has capped the price, on the reasonable logic that monopolies can’t just up their charges whenever they like: after all, the customer has nowhere else to go.
So the Post Office is sort of private, sort of public: exposed to competition, yet obliged to perform public duties (like delivering letters to remote rural locations) that cost them badly. Its rivals are full-blooded private businesses, able to cherrypick the profitable bits, unhindered by costly obligations. The Post Office is neither one thing nor the other – and soon 40,000 workers will pay the price.
The government needs to have a rethink. It should follow the logic of Gordon Brown’s speech last week on the NHS, and declare that some tasks are public by their very nature. Health is one, said the chancellor. Why not add railways, which will always require a public subsidy, and a collective, social need like delivering mail?
“The plain fact is, there are certain natural monopolies, best run by the state,” says director of the Industrial Society, Will Hutton. That does not mean, he adds, that they have to be run like the “organisationally dysfunctional” nationalised industries of the 1970s. Network Rail, the successor company to Railtrack, could be a step in the right direction. Its directors will be rewarded not for boosting share price, as with Railtrack, but by their performance on the “public” aspects of the service: safety, reliability, punctuality.
That may be a new way of doing things. But only if the government ends this unhappy experiment in asking private companies to do the public’s work. That experiment has failed.
81% Have No Faith in Hackney Council
Posted: March 25, 2002 Filed under: Hackney Council Comments Off on 81% Have No Faith in Hackney CouncilThe full results of the survey, which is the cover story in the latest Hackney Independent delivered to 4000 homes in Haggerston ward, make shocking reading. Crime and anti-social behaviour top the list of people’s priorities (70% chose it as their most serious issue) while repairs and cleaning came next as one of the 3 top issues that concerned people (56%). Lack of community facilities and people being priced out of the area came next (35% and 24% respectively).
Hackney IWCA started the mammoth survey back in the Autumn of last year as none of the major parties seemed to be listening to any of the concerns of Hackney’s working class majority. Hackney Independent spokesperson Peter Sutton says “Councillors from the main parties claim to represent their communities but when was the last time you even saw your councillor, let alone got any help from them? Simple issues like repairs to flats and estate cleaning should be easy for councillors to deal with, but the truth is they don’t want to know. Most of them are more concerned with their own political careers than serving the community”.
Back in November 2001, Hackney IWCA criticised the Council for paying the pollsters MORI thousands of pounds for carrying out a survey on people’s attitudes to the council. At the time Carl Taylor of Hackney Independent stated that “the council is using our money to pay other people to come round and do their job for them – to find out information that most people could tell them for nothing!”. The Hackney Independent Your Point of View survey – carried out by volunteers for free – reveals just how little local people think of Hackney Council and how many of them are prepared to do something about it at the next round of council elections. Encouragingly, 84% of those surveyed said they would consider voting for an alternative to the main parties in May. As Carl Taylor commented, “You can’t really blame people for not wanting to vote for the main parties when all you get are the same old broken promises. Labour have abandoned the people of Haggerston by shutting down the pool and threatening the Apples and Pears play area with closure. It’s hardly a surprise that people are turning their backs on this kind of politics”.
Laughably, the Conservative Party have just started their own “In Touch” postal survey in the same area, only 4 weeks before the council elections. As Peter Sutton comments “this is just a desperate attempt to find issues to campaign on in the run up to the elections. To call their survey “In Touch” is a little ironic as some of their members are supposed to be representing parts of Haggerston Ward already and really should know what people think”.
Give Us The Money
Posted: March 15, 2002 Filed under: Privatisation / Sell Offs, Tenants & Residents Associations Comments Off on Give Us The MoneyWenlock Barn TRA chair and Hackney Independent member, Tony Butler comments on the latest news about attempts to gentrify the area.
It is not the fault of Shoreditch council tenants that our homes ‘have been allowed to be run down to the condition where they are now deemed worthless’. Over the years, our rents have been paid only to be mismanaged by Hackney Council in whatever scurrilous means it has allowed it’s self. I wonder if any councillor’s homes are up for the draconian affects of demolition. These people are the very apologists who put us in this situation and laud up the value of such schemes as it means they do not have to take responsibility for council housing and pray, if it ever comes to it, that they will escape surcharging for the incompetent way it has managed our affairs. P.S. Which Housing Association is Hackney Labour M.P. Brian Sedgemore chair of?
The Wenlock Barn Estate 4 years ago made it plain to the council that we did not want Stock Transfer and caused them to back down when the overwhelming majority signed a petition to reject stock transfer and stay council tenants. Our insistence on this has not changed we do not view our homes as been decrepit or our social lives as impoverished. Yes, there are problems with our homes but using social engineering as a mechanism to destable our values is not going to work. We know what we are worth and what we want. We have paid for the maintenance of our homes over the years and have the moral right to be acknowledged for this and not used as a tool to encamp essential/key workers (what ever they are?) in to our homes our area.
My block was once referred to as a ‘bad social mix’. Where the consultants got this from, I cannot imagine because I get on with every one in my block. I can only allude this has come from a set of prejudices that have no connection with the culture and value system that has grown up over the 30 years this estate has lived. 1477 properties cannot be wrong.
The spectre of demolition still haunts the minds of every one but the council tenants concerned. We buried it before and we will bury it again.
WENLOCK BARN IS NOT FOR SALE. IS NOT FOR DEMOLITION. IS NOT FOR STOCK TRANSFER. If they do not believe us, let them come and take us on. We are organised, informed and ready. Take note Lord Falconer we know where you are at. You owe us and not the other way round.
Spring Newsletter published
Posted: March 2, 2002 Filed under: New Deal Comments Off on Spring Newsletter publishedHackney Independent, Spring 2002 issue (pdf format)
Haggerston Ward Election Manifesto 2002
Posted: March 1, 2002 Filed under: Elections, Haggerston, Newsletters Comments Off on Haggerston Ward Election Manifesto 2002Council elections: this time there is a real choice
Hackney Council has been running this area down over the last few years. The Council says it has no money, but keeps putting the rent, service charges and council tax up while cutting back on the essential services that our community needs. Since the last election Labour, Lib Dems and Tories have all taken turns running the Council and they have all played their part in bringing the Council to its knees. The Council is millions of pounds in debt and the only answer from the government and from our Labour, Lib Dem and Tory councillors is more of the same – more sell-off’s, more privatisation and more policies aimed at replacing Hackney’s working class majority with middle class city workers.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Over the last few years, Hackney Independent Working Class Association (IWCA) has worked alongside community representatives and other residents of the area in trying to implement another vision of Hackney. This vision is of a Hackney where ordinary residents get to decide what the priorities should be in their area. Only the IWCA has asked the residents of Haggerston for their views on what should be done in this area. All the other parties want to do is impose their vision of a privatised Hackney on the rest of us.
That’s why this election is different – this time there is a real choice.
The election manifesto has policies in the four areas set out below. But we know that none of these policies stand up on their own. You can’t deal with anti-social behaviour without realising that closing down youth clubs mean more of our young people will get drawn into crime. Campaigning for security doors on blocks is a housing issue and an anti-crime issue. And it is because councillors have been unaccountable that they have got away with things in this area for so long. We need councillors who will get involved with the community in finding solutions to these problems.
The IWCA spent six months talking to over 1000 people on 17 estates across Haggerston. You told us your priorities were crime and anti-social behaviour, housing repairs and cleaning and the lack of community facilities. You also told us that you don’t think your councillors represent you. The following manifesto is based on what you told us.
Housing
Hackney Council wants to sell off Council housing throughout the borough. Every estate they sell ends up with less homes for rents we can afford and more homes for high rent or sale. This is part of the Council’s plan to increase the middle class percentage of the borough, claiming they are creating “mixed communities.” We will oppose all Council plans for sell-off’s of estates in this Ward and across Hackney. Where tenants decide that they have been so let down by the Council that they will accept privatisation we will work to make sure they get the full facts and the best possible deal.
The current standard of housing isn’t acceptable. We will continue to campaign with tenants and residents and their associations for more money for essential repairs on our estates and for a better standard of cleaning and repairs. We support free parking for residents.
Labour encourages the building of £200 a week flats for City workers. We will campaign for new council housing aimed at overcrowded Hackney tenants and young people living at home.
We will campaign for every empty flat in this Ward to be done up and let on a council tenancy – not high rent housing association tenancies.
We oppose any rent or service charge increases at least until the Council meets its obligations to manage, repair and clean our estates.
We will work with private and housing association tenants to fmake sure these landlords fulfil their responsibilities. We are opposed to housing associations building for high rent or sale in this Ward.
Crime and Anti-Social Behaviour
This is your number one priority and it would be the main issue for IWCA councillors. We do not claim to have all the answers on this issue. IWCA councillors would convene a genuine community-based conference on this issue to look at possible solutions to the problem.
Dealing in hard drugs in this ward must be stopped. The Council and the police have a duty to take action to stop it.
While trying to force the Council and the police to be accountable about the way they operate and the priorities they choose, we will also look for community-based solutions to the problems of muggings, car theft, burglaries and vandalism.
We will campaign with tenants and residents and their associations for block security measures and improved lighting throughout the Ward.
Community Facilities
Public space in Hackney is under attack from developers and their friends in the Council who are encouraging the selling off of land and buildings that belong to all of us. Everyone suffers when public amenities are turned into a source of profit for private builders. IWCA councillors would oppose each and every move that leads to the loss of facilities such as playgrounds and parks for our community. We are supporting the campaigns to prevent the Apples and Pears adventure playground being redeveloped and to keep the Haggerston One O’clock Club open and also back the re-opening of Haggerston Pool as a publicly owned facility at affordable prices.
We oppose all Council attempts to close down or sell off public assets in this Ward and across the Borough and will participate in any campaigns to protect our community facilities.
Accountability
Electing IWCA councillors will not change the World, but it would be a clear signal to the Council and the government that the community has a vision of its own for the area that doesn’t involve making it a playground for the wealthy.
IWCA councillors wouldn’t be doing the job to promote their own political careers. They would work as part of a team within the IWCA and with the community to expose the Council’s plans and come up with viable alternatives
These are just a few ways in which IWCA councillors would be different from the other parties:
We would call a Ward Meeting as soon as we were elected and then every six months and invite everyone who lives in the Ward to come along and participate. Councillors would report back on what they have done in the last six months and outline what would be likely to happen in the next six months. In this way councillors would be held directly accountable to the community.
We would open an office in or near the ward – probably in a shop. This would be an easy way for you to contact your councillor. The IWCA would use the office to run advice sessions, surgeries and as a base to run campaigns from.
All decisions that our councillors have to vote on would be displayed in the office and on our website – so that you could have your say on them first. We would look at every possible way of getting people involved in decision-making, including use of the internet.
We will never form any alliance with the establishment parties that have let Hackney down – Labour, the Lib Dems or the Tories. We will work with tenant and community groups and anyone else who is on the side of the working class majority.
We know that we would be in a small minority at the Town Hall and we will not waste our time point-scoring with the other parties. We would arrange for delegations of local people to have their say, and would confront councillors with the effects their policies are having on this Ward. The main role of IWCA councillors will be as part of the IWCA outside of Council meetings – in the community. IWCA members will be at meetings on your estate or in your community. We will be part of campaigns in this area and will be accountable to you.
After the election – who will stand up for the working class majority?
The IWCA is completely different from the other parties. While we campaign 52 weeks a year, you only ever see the other parties at election time – if at all. And while the other parties only want your votes, we want you to vote for us and get involved.
If Labour councillors get in they will be able to vote for things like increased charges for home helps, scrapping the Freedom Pass for disabled people and selling the Apples and Pears adventure playground site – and claim they have your support.
If the IWCA get in, our councillors will be able to put pressure on the Council, but it needs far more than 3 councillors on their own. The IWCA is creating an organisation that doesn’t just hold protests, but can force the Council to manage and repair our homes and that can take action to make our streets and blocks safe again.
We want you to join the IWCA.
The first thing to do is to ring Carl Taylor on 020 7684 1743 and see how you can help in the election campaign. This could be anything from just putting a poster in your window to giving some leaflets to your neighbours or even coming out and knocking on doors.
But after the election when all the politicians have forgotten Haggerston again, the IWCA will still be here creating an organisation that involves and stands up for the working class majority in this area.
IN THE COUNCIL ELECTIONS IN APRIL VOTE
Nusret Sen – Independent
Peter Sutton – Independent Working Class Association
Carl Taylor – Independent Working Class Association
Portraits from Well Street
Posted: February 23, 2002 Filed under: Gentrification / Regeneration Comments Off on Portraits from Well StreetPaul Mattsson is a local photographer who has worked closely with traders and residents on Well Street Market in Hackney, a street that has resisted the gentrification which is sweeping East London.
Paul’s exhibition of photos is being held in a shop at 230 Well Street until 1st April (12pm – 6pm daily, 7 days a week). The exhibition will be attended at all times by either Paul Mattsson or one of the contributing photographers. For more details contact Paul on 07940 576880/020 8985 9609 or write to 205 Well Street, Hackney, E9 6QU.
Denise
Marlon
Tina
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