EMPOWERMENT FOR SURRENDER: People’s Bureau, Engaged Art & The Elephant

A Bureau of the people, by the people, for the people!

In June 2016, the People’s Bureau (Rebecca Davies and Eva Sajovic) organised an open discussion on “ethics, tactics and place-specificity in artistic practice, with particular reference to Elephant and Castle and its labelling as an ‘opportunity area’.” The idea was to critically look at the artistic duo’s work in the Elephant, how they work with communities, the Council and developers. It was an open event and there was a panel of artists and academics contributing. Here we think through some of those questions, who is asking them and who gets to answer them.

Davies and Sajovic have been working as artists in the Elephant and Castle for many years and we have crossed sites and paths many times, offering support sometimes and criticisms at others. Increasingly, we just ended up getting frustrated that their work wasn’t based in any critical position about the regeneration of the Elephant. We wondered why this was the case when so many locals and campaigns were working so hard to counter the spin and lies of the Council and developers.

Their People’s Bureau started as a Tate Modern pilot project in 2014. It later developed when Tate Modern put People’s Bureau in touch with Delancey DV4, a big shot developer who now owns the Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre and who began to sponsor the project. Tate Modern will again be sponsoring a new round of People’s Bureau work as part of its ongoing 2017 Tate Exchange programme.

There is no need to go into detail here about how Delancey operates – have a look at our extensive write up on the planned murder of the Elephant Shopping Centre and 35% Campaign’s post about Delancery’s Tribeca Square development. What you do need to know is that Delancey is a developer accused by HMRC of “aggressive tax avoidance”. Their finances rely on being registered in the Virgin Islands and the use of multiple shell companies. They sealed off without consultation a popular public park (previously Elephant Park and part of the Heygate estate) and are paying a nominal fee of £100 per year to keep it as a construction HQ for Tribeca Square. This space is now declassified as public space. Delancey have sold the land to their own shell company, increasing the price from £8.5m to £18.8m in the course of the transaction. They then used this phony higher land value to demonstrate to Southwark Council that their development is not viable without removing all affordable housing and adding more private residential units.

It is worth mentioning that the artists had already worked with the previous owners of the Shopping Centre, St Modwen, as early as 2010, when their ‘Studio at the Elephant’ project was run from two vacant shops there. St Modwen Properties had partnered with Salhia Real Estate in 2002 to acquire the Shopping Centre for £29.25m in the hope of redeveloping it, but plans were delayed by the slump in the property market caused by the global financial crash of 2008/9. However, it still made a nice profit when it sold it for 80m in 2013 to a partnership of Delancey and Dutch pension fund APG. Delancey are planning on demolishing it to make way for hundreds more private rented homes (with maximum 3 year tenancies), a new LCC campus, a cinema and high street shops. The current shopkeepers are expected to sod off and the Shopping Centre market stallholders “may be able to” pitch up at the few replacement pitches promised at Tribeca Square. Considering that Delancey have already changed their original agreement promising to provide affordable retail space in Tribeca Square to displaced shops by giving this space to Sainsbury’s – we shouldn’t be holding our breath for an open-armed welcome to anyone being booted out of the existing Shopping Centre.

This is all by way of introduction to the kind of real-estate partner the People’s Bureau has chosen to work with in producing public art supported by Tate and Arts Council England. But what about the Tate itself, that big art factory on the Thames? Tate is clear in its strategy to embed art into real-estate development and also clear about carrying on the good work of making North Southwark into a luxury quarter – a plan which goes back to the Docklands developments and which the Council has been putting into place for the past 30 years. This is what they had to say about the Heygate estate ‘regeneration’ masterplan:

Tate makes no mention of any qualms they have about 1100 lost homes and those displaced out of the area – they see the Heygate demolition as an opportunity.

In a somewhat naïve write-up after their June discussion, the People’s Bureau say this about funding: “There is a tension between payment and action. Can we expect to influence and not be influenced ourselves? It is a dirty context, but there are opportunities and possibilities there.” The tension between payment and action plays out between receiving funding and the blessings of Delancey and the People’s Bureau’s ability to speak freely about what is happening in the local area. Sadly, in the work of the People’s Bureau you won’t see much challenging or engaging with Delancey’s ground zero plans for the Shopping Centre, their theft of a public park and plans for making Elephant a luxury destination. For us this is less an argument about taking developer money for projects but more the thorny question of what you actually critically do and say from that money. There is also precious little encouraging locals to involve themselves in the planning process by criticising the plans or making their own plan. In the same text, the People’s Bureau go on to think about the need to negotiate, and they say: “Trying to work in the ‘dirty context’ of a globally affected urban development is complex, but art and artists are not just a ‘clip on’. There needs to be negotiation, on both sides. We need to know what an organisation’s belief system is in order to engage with it.”

Shopping Centre painting by Rebecca Davies

Davis and Sajovic are artists who have a long-term engagement with the area, so how is there any doubt as to what the belief system of Delancey is? Moreover, if the full power of Southwark Council’s legal and planning team has rolled over to Delancey, what chance does the People’s Bureau have in renegotiating or changing Delancey’s plans? What effort has been made to do that? How is it working to redress the imbalance between the community and the developer? What exactly are the opportunities and possibilities in this ‘dirty context‘?

 

Putting The Cart Before The Elephant: Empowerment for surrender

The goal of the People’s Bureau, as stated by the artists, is “to support the essential preservation into the future” of the Elephant’s “diversity of culture, skills, networks and underlying spirit of the place”. Operating out of a customised traders’ mobile cart first given to them by Delancey, the artists began by organising fun and playful activities, as well as workshops and skills-exchange sessions (‘…sewing, knitting and crocheting, pedicure, massage, facials, gardening, baking, vegetable fermentation, light workshop, embroidery, dreamcatchers making‘, etc). The aim was to collect local E&C knowledge and memories: stories, drawings and photos. All the Bureau’s workshops and artefacts have been thoroughly documented, published or recorded.

At the same time, the artists are maintaining an ongoing open call for archiving artworks that have taken place in Elephant and Castle shopping centre, which the People’s Bureau identified as the “cultural capital” of the area. They invite us to imagine the grand finale of the project as a kind of museum of local culture on the post-demolition site in Delancey’s brand new shopping mall, equipped with Elephant and Castle memories, artefacts and archives: ‘The ambition is that the cart will eventually return to the newly built Elephant & Castle shopping centre, thus creating the link connecting the old and the new Elephant and becoming a museum of local culture’.

Such an ambition seems painfully wistful. Delancey seeks to create a cluster of luxury flats with upscale shops. They will have no ambition themselves to remind the new residents of who and what came before them. There will be no museum, just the dustbin of history for locals.

Most of the Bureau’s activities promise to have empowering effects: employment advice, C.V surgeries and sessions on managing your personal budget, clothes mending, house decoration, carpentry and other skills-exchanges. However, these skills-exchanges (despite the fact that skills are attempting to be exchanged in the artistic encounter between locals and that fun and enjoyment is produced) do not empower people to step outside of the frame they have been put in. That frame is the frame of everyday activities as defined by the artists. The everyday concerns of where the shopkeepers and traders will go, where will local people be able to hang out affordably, what can be done to alter the oncoming tsunami of regeneration etc. – all of these are strangely brushed aside. The empowerment of these skills-exchanges is therefore an empowerment to surrender, to go on with their lives as if nothing was happening in their community.

Locally-sourced locals: the applied art of consultation

We have already written loads about how ‘consultation’ works in the context of a ‘regeneration’ scheme (in particular, see our useful Listening to No End case study of how consultation was spun at Heygate Estate). However, with the People’s Bureau another aspect of consultation opens up, that of artists placed as a conduit for talking to ‘stakeholders‘ in the community. The work of the People’s Bureau works to prepare the displacement of a community by documenting the last breath of community life and carefully archiving its history in this our ‘opportunity area‘. The community is engaged in a process which is never explicitly called consultation, but the artwork and artistic outcomes end up being used by the developer to demonstrate community consent for regeneration.

Art consultation is not unique to the Elephant. All over the country, artists are seen as skillful creative communicators who get invited by councils and/or developers to organise events which are often not presented as consultation, but end up by being used as consultation by the developers seeking local legitimacy. We should stress that this is not consultation that obliges the developer (legally or morally) to make any changes to their plans. It is consultation as a PR job and it is often done by PR companies alongside artists who do this sort of work for much less money and who are seen as less compromised than the suited squaddies of the PR industry. But the Bureau’s activities are not presented as consultation, there is something else at play here.

The work of the People’s Bureau, as artists embedded in regeneration, takes the form of exchanging skills and harvesting personal experiences which are then meticulously made into museum exhibits as traces of a disappearing life. This fine touch of museumisation serves as a heavy-handed procedure of removing life from its natural heavily social context and representing it as an outdated or decaying community whose days are numbered by the logical ‘progress’ of regeneration. Art promises to ‘dignify‘ this life through placing it into (self-made) archives, art books, further work in galleries and modern art museums. Artists usually organise their activities encouraging local communities to share their stories, experiences and memories, turning ‘opportunity areas’ into archaeological excavation sites. It is no surprise that one of Eva and Rebecca’s other Arts Council funded (£13,500) projects is called ‘Unearthing Elephant‘. In their artistic statement, they claim: “we want to ensure that the shopping centre and its communities are documented and made visible at this time of dramatic change”. This process of museumisation turns the local community into objects to be researched through the expert lens of the artist-archivist. Collected artefacts (personal stories or objects fashioned by the locals) are carefully documented and archived for future institutional treatment that will potentially bring new value to a post-regeneration site. All of this is set in an arena apart from consultation or the planning process.

The role of the community in this mummification process despite being promoted as an ‘active‘ one that contains ‘power‘ is only really about ‘visibility‘ where there’s neither a publicly constructed space for confronting the ‘dramatic change’ nor for questioning who really has power in this ‘contested‘ site and how to make a local counter-power. There will always be a fundamental power imbalance here: the community is studied in its natural habitat by the artists sponsored by the council/developers. The unspoken agreement is that the artists never really look at how the community’s desires might be in conflict with regeneration plans. Without tackling that power imbalance, all of this works to prove that regeneration is inevitable: it is the best of all possible worlds, there is no alternative. The community is destroyed and its colourful life is placed in “the museum of fish and chips”.

How different the reality is from what Eva Sajovic’s says in her research profile: “In particular I am looking at participation as a method for engaging people in taking hold of their agency, political co- and self-determination and democracy. This includes looking at ways to use art as a tool to support people in being resilient and active agents of their lives, as a catalyst in the processes of power, decision-making and the erosion of public space.” Nowhere in ‘Unearthing Elephant’ or other of the Bureau’s projects is this foregrounded. There is no public trace of engagement with decision-making or the building of counter-power to the developer’s and council’s social cleansing machine.

At the same time the artifacts and events of the People’s Bureau end up being presented as consultation. Here is the pink cart being displayed by Delancey at their community consultation event:

People’s Bureau art displayed in Delancey’s consultation, August 2015

So, there is a double game being played here: the artists claim to be engaged in a process of making the community visible, while the developer uses this process to demonstrate that the community is visibly engaged with the process of regeneration. Are the people working with the People’s Bureau ever told that their activities are forming part of a pretend conversation with the developer? In our minds, this is not giving people agency and power. Power is not magically produced from the sheer ‘visibility’ and choreographed voices of a community about to be displaced. Such an archiving of voices does not amplify anything other than the actual muting of those voices in the celebration of an impotent nostalgia in the present tense.

 

Those star-crossed lovers: art and activism

Despite talking of art building up resilience and power, artists like the People’s Bureau tend to see their activities as distinct from activism (or anything which may rock the boat): “Art and activism, they are not the same thing, and one cannot replace the other. However they might exist alongside each other, finding moments of connection and ways to strengthen and enrich each other. In addition, artists may be able to get access to people and places which activists could not.” The Bureau asks where we should draw the borderline between art and activism? But they don’t ask if this separation is possible only in an era of making art subservient to developer’s interests. Should artists limit themselves to energising what they see as community, neighbourliness and sociability? Or it is just not enough? Does art involve the freedom to speak out about the plans for the Shopping Centre? Does it involve informing people of the future to come? Or is it in fact merely consigning the present to the museum of the past? If it is at all true artists can get access to places local people cannot then surely they are then in a very privileged place to speak out? Maybe access is premised only on not speaking out. While these questions remain unanswered, the Bureau’s pink mobile cart has traveled, after hard archaeological work in the shopping centre, to be proudly displayed by Delancey in their consultation sessions. So, while the Bureau’s activities are claimed not to be activism, they become an integral part of a ‘consultation’ which is justifying community support for whatever Delancey’s money cares to say goes. The cart stands to show the colourful local community is not against any of Delancey’s plans to purge them from the area and to prove a point to critics (and activists) claiming that regeneration is erasing the history of the place. Delancey has spoken of how they sponsor cultural projects wherever their assets are. Much like the asset of the high value land the Shopping Centre sits on, sponsored artists are appreciated as low value assets to make regeneration flow without much conflict or anything seeming out of the ordinary.

Public artists like the People’s Bureau like to present themselves as part of the solution, but to be able to challenge the lies and violence of regeneration, it is useful to understand their work as part of the problem. The Bureau claim not to be activists, but in fact they work as activists for Delancey’s interests, by achieving Delancey’s desired results and acting as Delancey’s on-the-cheap service provider. It works to extend Delancey’s ‘social license to operate’ by giving them a human face they don’t have. It works to offer skills which will not challenge or shape the regeneration in any way. It works as one way to neutralise criticism of the regeneration. It works indirectly as a public relations exercise masquerading as community activities. It pretends to be of the people, by the people and for the people. Whilst pretending to ‘empower’ local people as citizens so far it seems to only work to reduce them to colourful tribes ready for surrender.

Regeneration Is Violence

How is it in London in 2015 that people who reside in public housing can be subject to such extremes of subtle and unsubtle violence? When we use the word violence what do we mean? Well for starters we mean the slow burning, long-term violence done to those who are being forced out of their homes in the name of ‘regeneration’ with it’s routine accompanying upheavals, anxieties, stresses and affects on physical and mental ill health.

How is it to lose you home? What does it mean to be ‘regenerated’ and be asked to leave your home where there is no alternative presented to you but to lose your home. What does ‘home’ mean to people in this instance – isn’t it a vast collection of memories, events, experiences and also connections to others around you? How do you ‘regenerate’ those very personal aspects of people’s home lives and their community?

What is it like to be live day-in and day-out, not wanting to leave your home as more and more people around you are leaving? What is it like to have to move to Sidcup in Kent as you can’t afford to stay local as gentrification means your leaseholder compensation from the Council is too small to buy you anything where you have lived for much of your life?

What does it feel like to be treated with zero dignity or respect even though your crime is only to live in a home where the Council and it’s partners want the land your home sits on? Do you and your life and your community’s life count in this instance? Or are you just a statistic on the regeneration paperwork? How is it to be issued a Compulsory Purchase Order for your home that you have paid off, receive a low valuation and then be forced to take up a new mortgage for a home miles from where you want to live?

How is it that opponents of moving from their homes, of social cleansing, of gentrification, can be ignored by the Council as if these desires, feelings, views and good common sense simply does not exist. How is it to be in your latter years, be removed from your community and support networks? We know from our interviews with ex-Heygate tenants that there is a lot of anxiety, sadness, depression, ill health and in some cases early deaths happening with many of those decanted and displaced from that community.

How is that a Council would rather smash up it’s decanted homes than let homeless people live in them?

How is that once you could live in London in cheap housing because that was a common sense housing policy but now the policy is to force you out in favour of developers profits, those who use housing as investments, those who already have too much and those who think you are unworthy to live in central London?

This is what we mean by violence. This is where we see that regeneration is a type of violence.

These social costs of demolition and displacement are huge and yet the Council ignores this in favour of simple economic arguments that pretend ‘regeneration’ is all about benefiting a local community. But Londoners and especially those subject to these awful schemes are winning the argument that such schemes are only really about social cleansing. It seems that the last 6 months of high-visibility campaigns have won that battle. The next stage has been reached and campaigns are no longer simply arguing that regeneration is gentrification but are now moving into practical and shared actions to defend their homes from regeneration and to act against evictions – Focus E15 mums campaign and their re-occupation of Carpenter’s Estate in Stratford, the New Era estate in Hoxton victory of preventing a new private owner of their homes from evicting them, the Guinness Trust occupation in Brixton and the Aylesbury Occupation, are all amazing moments of the last few months.

And then there is a less subtle violence that all concerted actions against this regeneration bollocks will have to face and that is the ultimate use of the police and bailiffs by Council’s to get their way. This week we have seen that violence on Aylesbury Estate:

Aylesbury Occupied

This last fortnight has seen a somewhat incredible local and public denial that regeneration of Southwark’s large council estates is good for local communities. You probably already saw that part of Chartridge block on Aylesbury estate had been re-occupied by protestors who wanted to both draw attention to the social cleansing of poorer parts of Southwark and to give a boost to local housing campaigners on and off the estate. It certainly did that with daily meetings, petitions by residents of residents on the Aylesbury, street stalls on Walworth Rd, public meetings and a lively posting of news and arguments up on the Internet. All of these events and activities were organised by the occupiers, local residents and local groups.

Council’s First Response
Southwark Council’s only response was to repeatedly use the same tired old press statement in any media coverage.  None of the detailed arguments made by Aylesbury residents, leaseholders, the occupiers and people like us were answered in any way. Mark Williams, Cabinet member for Regeneration, instead claimed in the oft repeated statement that ‘In Southwark we are tackling the housing crisis head on and in the last three years we have built more affordable homes than any other London borough. The squatters do not represent the residents of the Aylesbury and are risking the delivery of the very homes they claim to be campaigning for, for the people they claim to be campaigning for. Southwark is working hard to tackle the London-wide housing crisis but others must also play their part to provide the homes Londoners need.’

We would say simply: How do Southwark think they are tackling ‘the housing crisis’ by building these so-called affordable homes (eg. 25% shared ownership in Southwark requires an income of £56k for a 2-bed)? 47% of households in Southwark have incomes of £15,000 or less per annum. The median income for Council tenants was just £9,100 (Southwark key housing data 2012/13). So the numbers just don’t add up as numerous criticisms can be found of ‘affordable’ homes where it’s clear that are not ‘affordable’ unless you are on a very good wage or unless you can move from a cheap council rent to a more expensive Housing Association rent. So decanting tenants out of the Aylesbury, demolishing it, and having Notting Hill Housing Trust build some social rented homes but mostly private or shared ownership homes is not tackling the housing crisis for local people. Decanting tenants off of the Heygate Estate, demolishing it, and having Lend Lease build a tiny amount of social rented homes (79) but mostly private or shared ownership homes (3000) is not tackling the housing crisis.

Both regeneration schemes immediately reduce the numbers of available council homes by demolishing them and not replacing them (Heygate 1100 homes gone, Aylesbury will be 3000+ gone). Not only are council places lost but decanted tenants are re-housed mostly in existing council housing stock further reducing available council homes for those 18,000 people on the waiting lists. The experience of Heygate is that when some new homes were built for decanted tenants locally very few ex-Heygate residents took up the offer as they were either too expensive or they didn’t want to move once more. By the time these homes were built the Heygate community had already been displaced so people felt there was no longer any point in returning to near the Heygate site. It will be the same for the Aylesbury regeneration scheme. In both cases, tenants and residents have long argued that they want to stay in their local area and in their local community. If you have kids, are ill, are elderly, are low waged or unemployed, like large spacious and light flats, like Walworth and its shops and so on, these are some of the many reasons people do not want to move. Council rent means being able to have a decent home and to be able to survive for many many people.

Removal of council homes means upping the level of those just above, on or below the poverty threshold and Heygate and Aylesbury sites are high on the Index of Multiple Deprivation. Let’s be clear, regeneration schemes do not tackle poverty, they make it worse. Decisions made in offices or at fancy dinners with developers do not arise from actual contact with local people. As was said this week on Twitter re: Aylesbury regeneration – Southwark Council just ‘doesn’t understand Council Housing from the perspective of a tenant’. We think that’s a very useful point. They do not understand and really do not care about the impact of these schemes on local communities. That’s the impact on the very people who vote them in to supposedly look after their community.

Never Mind The Ballots
The Council’s lack of will to actually enter into argument and debate about it’s regeneration policies comes from the arrogance of those who now control the Council. It’s a very top-down affair of thinking they know what is good for us without ever asking us directly and with a transparency and accountability that is needed. Instead, they use consultation companies to arrange ‘show and tell’ meetings with those facing regeneration where the outcome of those meetings have already been pre-determined to show pro-regeneration support. We have already written much on the consultation con and we won’t repeat here. However, two illustrations might shine a light on the current state of whether the Aylesbury regeneration is supported by a majority of residents :

When the draft Aylesbury Area Action Plan (AAAP) was published in 2009, a series of ‘consultation’ meetings and events happened. The AAAP was the master-planning document was the blueprint for how the demolition and regeneration of the estate would be. On 6^th and 7^th March 2009 the Action Plan was ‘publicly displayed’ in Thurlow Lodge Community Hall and people invite to comment on it. Over the weekend, ‘133 people recorded their attendence over the two days…of whom 100 filled in questionnaires’. The Council was then able to write that this event ‘clearly showed local support for the Action Plan where 82% of questionnaire respondents supported the vision for the Aylesbury’.

The Aylesbury had approx 6000 or 7000 residents. If we do some maths, we can argue that responses from 100 people out of whom only 82 were supporting the regeneration is not a large very sample to trumpet out local resident support for the scheme. This is especially the case when in 2001 73% of residents voted against their homes being demolished and their tenancies being transferred to a Housing Association. Yet the Council now ignores the ballot and also constantly refers to a ‘vast majority of residents who want to be rehoused’. It also refuses to runs ballots on any further estate that they seek to regenerate as they know people have rumbled the regeneration rip-off.

The 2014 Statement of Community Involvement summarises the process of public consultation that has taken place on the regeneration of the Aylesbury Estate in preparation for the submission of a detailed and outline planning applications. In the above chart you can see how many actual people attended each consultation or event. At the end of the chart the total attendance is put at 732 people in attendance. But how is it possible to know whether these 732 attendees were all different people and not a more likely mixture of the same people? How is it possible to know what they even said? The report only mentions in passing peoples obvious concerns about displacement. (You can see the hole-ridden 148-page Statement of Community Involvement here).

However, what struck us this week as we went to the occupation, the well-attended public meetings, the petition work or when we just met people passing through the estate was how few of them actually believed regeneration was in their interest. In fact the term ‘social cleansing’ came more out of people’s mouths than ours in these days. People instinctively grasp that what Southwark is doing is moving on poor people on large estates and moving in under the phony guise of ‘mixing the community’ more wealthy people. In one small shop on Westmoreland Rd, the owner was worried how his business would fare when the Aylesbury residents all moved on and more affluent people moved in. There was also a common acceptance of people living in empty buildings if they want too. People said again and again – ‘if they are empty why shouldn’t people live in them’.

Yet none of these concerns and desires not to leave the estate or the area, nor people’s support for the Aylesbury occupation seem to register in the Council’s propaganda machine. This week saw Leader of The Council, Peter John expressed dismay that any of this regeneration stuff could be seen as ‘controversial’. In light of Heygate scandal, the Aylesbury social cleansing with it’s stressful and pressured removal of tenants, the Compulsory Purchase Orders of very elderly residents, the non-affordable new housing, you wonder what there is there that isn’t controversial! Re-iterated again and again through public events about regenerating the Aylesbury  is that local residents see ‘affordability’ of new homes as their major issue and concern and yet the new homes are, as we know, going to be very unaffordable.

Council’s Second Response: More Violence
Every day, the Occupation held a public meeting at 6.30pm where many people came and discussed both the regeneration and the Occupation and how to proceed. Within the Occupation there was clearly a sussed understanding of how they were occupying to help local people re-energise their opposition to the regeneration.

The Council’s line was that ‘the squatters’ had no support nor we’re they representative of local people’s feelings. They tried to distance any support for the occupation that as we have said was clear by just pretending that a part of the estate has been squatted and this had nothing to do with the regeneration or it’s opponents. At one point, Peter John called the squatters ‘fakes’ because some other squatters who were clearly nothing to do with the occupied Chartridge block held an unwanted noisy party. Police both accepted that this was nothing to do with the protest occupation but also did nothing when some of the occupiers were attacked by the party squatters when they asked them to stop the music which was pissing off local people.

On Tuesday evening, the Council decided it needed a final reckoning, and after securing an Interim Possession Order in court that morning, police arrived on the scene team handed. Although they had been filming the occupation that day, had been stopping and searching people there, had police on site 24 hours a day and had been trying to understand the situation with the occupation, they still basically spent a couple of hours evicting an empty block. The Occupation has simply moved at the start of the police raid into the adjoining block that was not covered by the Possession Order. The defence of this block was made even easier because when the Council had previously smashed up these flats a week before to prevent them being occupied they had also erected sturdy metal fences that now aided the occupiers against further police incursion.

At this moment of impasse, the police then made 6 violent arrests of supporters from the crowd of 100+. It was entirely provocative when the evening had so far been angry but calm even when the police were raiding the empty block with a show of force.

With no eviction then in place, outsmarted and somewhat deflated, the Council then tried to persuade the police that they had evidence of criminal damage committed when the occupiers took over the block. Police then came to the occupied block saying they were going to arrest all who didn’t leave due to ‘criminal damage’. The occupiers and crowd made a great job of arguing that this was a lie and somewhat ironic as the Council had already smashed up the block the week before. In the end, the Chief Inspector on the night with a nervousness that was quite funny to watch declared a dispersal order to clear the area but also didn’t go through with an illegal eviction.

The Council, until it makes it’s next legal move, has been hiring private security to be a pain in the ass to the occupation, producing more intimidation and violence and its supporters and is also building many fences around the block as if laying it to siege. Potentially very dangerous but then the Council always operates from siege mentality unable to actually talk to local people, treat them nicely, see the actual harm of their regeneration regime and so on. They remain hunkered down in their in posh houses or secure in council chambers.

 

As we write the occupation continues at 69-76 Chartridge Block, Westmoreland Rd, SE17. Their website is here for news and updates. Last Saturday they held a Family Fun Day for all and this brought more people to the place to see what’s going on and to enable further discussions around local people’s objections to this ‘regeneration’.

We wonder when Peter John or any high-ranking regeneration officers last visited the Aylesbury for a chat with locals? Any guesses?

OBJECT TO REGENERATION: Please make your objection in one second please

The excellent Elephant 35% Campaign blog puts the current situation with the regeneration in stark contrast about how has power to make decisions on local matters and who is not welcome to unless they can speak very very fast.

MASTERPLAN

The biggest planning application ever submitted to Southwark Council is due to be heard by its planning committee on Tuesday 15th January. This is the Heygate Outline Masterplan (12/AP/1092) that will see the future of the built-up environment around The Elephant change dramatically with the demolition of the Heygate and all the new unaffordable homes put on that site. Not too mention the inevitable knock-on effect of other later developers feeling that with this planning permission being granted now would be the best time to build more and more private homes in the area in any space, building or park they can get away with.

MONSTERPLAN

The Outline Masterplan application is so huge that Southwark has spent 9 months evaluating over 2o0 submitted documents. You can see how big and bonkers it is by clicking the link above or here! You can also get a measure of it from our pictured screenshots of the number of documents listed on the Southwark Planning Register under this application – and that’s just A to D!

There has also been a lot of very detailed and critical opposition to many of the intentions and desires of Lend Lease (the developer) contained within their Masterplan. There have been over 200 objections so far. It’s no joke having to wade through hundreds and hundreds of pages of sometimes dense technical and legal planning speak but over 200 people got stuck in.

Anyhow, despite appeals to common sense and using the example of the King’s Cross Masterplan where that massive plan was heard over a number of sessions, objectors have failed so far to get any reasonable amount of time to present their case. The Council is insisting that the normal THREE MINUTES will be allotted for them to hear objections and criticism.

So, if only 50 people were allowed on the night to talk about the Masterplan’s failure to maintain adequate social housing levels, or, as promised, a car free development, or it’s reduction of local green space and the felling of 100’s of trees, or the carbon neutral development that was hyped, those people would have less than 3.5 seconds each to make their case. Even if only 5 people spoke up they would still have less than 40 seconds to make their case!

This is just plain regeneration madness! See you there: Tuesday 15th January 6pm – Council Offices at 160 Tooley Street, London SE1 2QH