Make Willesden Green Enters a New Phase

Around 25 residents met at the Rising Sun beer garden last Sunday to celebrate the phenomenal electoral result of Make Willesden Green at the May local elections and to discuss ways of taking the collective energies of the group forward.  Coming runner-up in the election and beating the Tories and LibDems  shows that we represent a significant number of people in Willesden Green and - with Labour's huge majority on the council - our independent voice is  now more important than ever: Make Willesden Green is effectively the ‘official opposition’ in this area.

People expressed different ideas on what Make Willesden Green can or should be. Some of the key points raised included:

• widen and deepen our reach across the community so that Make Willesden Green looks more like the neighbourhood it wants to represent
• keep the campaigning focus of the group, and hold our elected councillors to account
• address issues and include supporters from surrounding wards of Dudden Hill, Mapesbury and Brondesbury Park, and make sure that Make Willesden Green connects all parts of Willesden. 
• amplify other campaigns relevant to our area - from Brent Housing Action to Save the Queensbury

After some discussion, the following action points were also agreed: 

• To seek a delegation at the earliest opportunity to the Council regarding the management and community access to the new Cultural Centre
• To monitor Galliford Try profits from the library development and ensure the council receives additional monies due to the inflated housing market
• To investigate the possibility of a street party to involve more people in Make Willesden Green  
• To use the blog to focus attention on the the key areas of improving the High Road/and public spaces, promoting affordable and social housing, protecting our schools from academisation and upholding local democracy.      

The excellent turn-out and continuing fighting spirit on display at our first post-electoral meeting of Make Willesden Green bodes well for the group’s future activities. This website will now act as an on-line clearing-house for information on relevant events and activities. We have also set up an email discussion group which you can join HERE or email makewillesdengreen@gmail.com and we will add you directly. As a grassroots initiative the future of  Make Willesden Green relies entirely on resident’s collective efforts – so please sign up and  add  your ideas, expertise and energy to build an independent voice for Willesden residents.

Make Every Vote Count On Thursday

Some of the many supporters who turned up for our last mass leafleting

It was a tremendous honour to have so many fellow residents come out last Saturday to give the Make Willesden Green campaign a last push before Thursday’s election. With about two dozen supporters swarming across various parts of Willesden Green, we managed to leaflet the whole of the ward and still find time to speak to hundreds of residents outside the Sainsbury’s forecourt. Most people said they were disenchanted with the three mainstream parties, but were keen to hear about our electoral offer of an independent voice for Willesden residents.

These conversations, and the groundswell of support I have received over the past few months from a real cross-section of our community, has made me even more confident that we can make Willesden Green a thriving, clean, open, democratic and environmentally-balanced area in future if only we have better representation. People in Willesden Green have spent too much of the past four years fighting against developers and unelected bureaucrats for a neighbourhood with open spaces, secure community amenities, an improved High Road, more affordable housing and properly-funded public services. In the process, we have been ignored by our Councillors and dismissed by senior Local Authority officers. 

Watermelon Men: me with Shahrar Ali and Martin Francis, Green Party candidates for Willesden Green

In fact, when the Make Willesden Green campaign was taking shape one of the main drivers behind its formation was the general lack of accountability and unresponsiveness of our sitting councillors. Our current Labour councillor and one of the LibDem councillors were enthusiastic supporters of the Willesden Green Library project in the face of overwhelming resident opposition, while the second Lib Dem councillor has moved away from Brent, has barely been seen for a year and doesn't even respond to emails. Now of course, it's election time so we see both parties coming out of hiding to claim that they are listening and ‘on your side’, hoping that we will forget their past sins and misdemeanors.

We formulated a policy on the Right to Recall local councillors in between elections and I personally signed a pledge saying that as an elected councillor I would submit to to a by-election if enough residents demanded it. We challenged every candidate standing in the Willesden Green election to sign the same pledge – only the two Green Party candidates, Martin Francis and Shahrar Ali responded positively. Labour, LibDems and the Tories did not bother to respond at all.

However our attention was drawn to this rather mealy-mouthed blogpost from sitting councillor Lesley Jones who sets out a number of objections, all of which can be easily overcome. (‘Who will collect the petition signatures?’ Cllr Jones asks, ‘Well, how about the same people who collected 6,000 signatures against the Library development that you backed?’ would be an answer.)

All in all, the response to the recall pledge has shown that the main parties have learnt nothing from the anger, frustration and disenchantment of local residents. They want your vote on Thursday but they don't want to hear from you again after that. Do we really want to give a mandate to parties that are still scared of democracy, still afraid of participation and still reluctant to give us a real voice? 

I hope that I will get one of your votes this Thursday, but I hope you will also think about whether you want to give your second and third votes to parties who show such a fundamental disdain for the wishes of their electorate.

On Thursday we finally get a say: every vote sends a message, and by giving me one of your three votes, you’ll be making it clear the three main parties have failed our area. We need genuinely radical and grassroots Councillors to represent the interests of Willesden Green, and this Thursday is the time to vote us in. 

Where There's Muck, There's Brass

Despite the unenviable task of clearing up months of accumulated rubbish, the clean-up of the service road behind Walm Lane last Sunday was very much worthwhile. The pictures below show what a couple hours of bagging rubbish can do to the appearance of even the most neglected parts of our area (as well as revealing some decent compost, which large worms were getting stuck into). Most importantly, Sunday's modest clear-up was an opportunity for residents from the alleyway and adjacent streets to meet and exchange notes on how to find a permanent solution to that street's refuse problem. Our role in Make Willesden Green was to facilitate the process and encourage neighbours to continue pressuring  both private landlords and Brent Council to meet their responsibilities to alley residents and the wider community. Other similar initiatives are now being planned through the Willesden Green Town Team.  Hopefully this muck-raking has revealed a community that cares about its surrounding environment, and is willing to channel what have until now been individual efforts into a stronger collective voice.

BEFORE

AFTER

DURING

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

Community Clean-Up on Walm Lane

Make Willesden Green has organised a community clean-up of the service road behind Walm Lane this coming Sunday. Residents have seen the alley become a dumping ground for all kinds of rubbish over the past few years, and  the problem has now gone beyond the merely unsightly to become a potential health hazard. The land is privately owned and so the Council has refused to clear it, allowing the problem to escalate. After many months and numerous complaints the Council has finally issued a small fine and a clear-up order to the landowners, to which they have not responded. The next step is for the Council to take legal action which is a frustratingly slow process. Meanwhile the tip continues to grow.

 

Accumulated Rubbish on the Alleyway

Sunday’s clean-up should not absolve either the land owners or Brent Council of their responsibilities. Make Willesden Green has taken this initiative to shame the land owners and pressure the Council into urgent action. Most importantly, we hope the clean up will bring together local residents and businesses to try to find a permanent solution to the unacceptable state of the alley. This ugly and increasingly unsafe service road severely affects adjacent businesses and residents, but it  also reflects poorly on the wider neighbourhood. Join us on Sunday, even if it’s only briefly, to show you want a cleaner, safer and greener Willesden.

Dumping Ground

Less UKIP, More Democracy

 

Corrections to a UKIP poster in Swansea

Hope not Hate, a campaign group dedicated to exposing and combating far-right politics in Britain recently approached Make Willesden Green to help deliver a message against the politics of hate in Brent. I immediately agreed to distribute their ‘Let Hope Win Over Fear’ leaflet together with our own electoral material, as I think it’s important to challenge the mainstreaming of racist and xenophobic positions in the run-up to the local and European elections of May 22nd.

UKIP’s ascendancy is of course the immediate cause of concern here. Although they are only standing four candidates in the Brent local elections (happily none of them in Willesden Green; though there is one in neighbouring Dudden Hill), the European elections are offering Farage’s outfit an opportunity to spread their poisonous ideas across our Borough.

In fact, whilst canvassing, supporters of Make Willesden Green have come across the occasional resident who’s initially confused my standing as an independent with me being for UKIP. We’ve quickly disabused people of that connection, making it clear Make Willesden Green sits on the opposite end of the political spectrum to UKIP.

UKIP and other far-right parties play on people's genuine concerns about unemployment, housing, education and austerity, and simply blame them on foreigners. They encourage the most disadvantaged groups to take social inequality out on similarly vulnerable people from other nationalities, rather to focus on the gross disparity of wealth within the UK, and between different parts of Europe.

The likes of UKIP also make a lot of hay out of people’s disenchantment with mainstream politics. But the ‘free’ market they’re so fond of  (except for when it comes to freedom of movement) is a major cause behind the corruption of politics – either directly through corporate lobbyists or indirectly by handing over democratic control of public goods like education, health or transport to a private sector that’s only accountable to major shareholders. UKIP’s crude anti-politics stems from its extreme pro-market positions; and their free market dogmas simply exacerbate the economic inequalities they then accuse immigrants of causing.

Grassroots initiatives like Make Willesden Green are about the exact opposite. Our campaign has consistently been about involving people politically in the democratisation of our neighbourhood, and by defending those public spaces  and services that bring our area's rich mix of people together and protect the most vulnerable in our communities. Ordinary citizens can turn seemingly technical, non-partisan matters like the demolition of libraries or the academisation of schools into political issues -especially if it’s with a small ‘p’ that looks beyond narrow Party-political interests.   

Social Housing, Not Social Cleansing

Campaigners of all ages at the South Kilburn Estate  Photo: Sujata Aurora

Last Saturday afternoon I joined other members of Brent Housing Action on a ‘Housing Inequality Bus Tour’ highlighting the harsh human consequences of London’s deepening housing crisis. A double-decker bus hired by the union UNITE set off from Bishops’ Avenue near Highgate (also known as ‘billionaire’s row’) and made stops at key sites where regeneration schemes are contributing to housing injustice, including the Jubilee Sports centre near Queen’s Park and the South Kilburn Estate in Brent.

The nature and dynamics of this housing crisis are of course complicated, involving the drastic decline in the supply of social housing and its replacement by private rented accommodation during the Thatcher years; New Labour’s promotion of London as a property honey pot for the global super-rich; and now the ConDem government’s use of welfare reform to socially cleanse large chunks of the capital - including Brent, as a recent BBC Panorama programme illustrated.

The community mobilises to save the Jubilee Sports Centre Photo: Pilgrim Tucker

The really insidious aspect of this process, however, is that, whilst the drivers of the housing crisis may be global, their implementation is very local. Not a week goes by in our city without another neighbourhood asset and community space being picked out for lucrative ‘redevelopment’ – almost universally with the assistance and complicity of local authorities. In Willesden Green, the Library re-development is the most blatant example of putting profits before people. In neighbouring wards, the ongoing saga over the former Kensal Rise Library and the recent cross-Borough decision to demolish the Moberly and Jubilee Sports centres in order to build 155 housing units, only 12 of which will be ‘affordable’ represent further instances. Even the much-trumpeted South Kilburn ‘regeneration’ is in fact  ‘decanting’ many existing residents out-of-Borough to make way for one-bedroom flats with price-tags starting at £284, 950. Anyone chasing an ‘affordable’ home should expect to cough up 80% of that market price. 

The Willesden Library Gated Development for Sale in Singapore

Local campaigning groups like Brent Housing Action have sprung up across London and the rest of the country in an effort underline the connections between Council-led ‘redevelopment’ and social cleansing, and to join-up the dots between seemingly parochial regeneration schemes which are rapidly changing the social mix of the whole of London. 

One of Make Willesden Green’s slogans is that our campaign is local but not parochial. That’s why our focus on the scandalous Willesden Green Library centre re-development is not simply about unwanted changes in our own backyard – it is also fundamentally about promoting a different housing model that allows Local Authorities to build more social housing, apply rent controls to the private sector and reverse the promotion of ‘buy-to-leave’ properties.

Commemorating the Grunwick Strike

 

An area’s regeneration can take different forms, and one of them is surely to offer opportunities for learning and self-education in and about our community. The Birkbeck PopUp University has, in partnership with the Willesden Green Town Team been doing just that over the past weeks, with plenty of stimulating talks scheduled until the end of May on subjects ranging from Willesden’s conscientious objectors in War War I, the history of Britain’s urban public parks and green spaces, and the the politics of social housing in London, as well as regular slots on careers advice, counselling and returning to work and study.
   

The commemorative plaque at the former Grunwick site

This Thursday 24 April, the PopUp University will be hosting an evening of debate and discussion from 6-8pm on the Grunwick Strike of 1976-78. Together with the 1984-85 miners’ strike, the Grunwick dispute is one of the signal moments in the postwar labour history of this country - and it all unfolded in the back streets of Willesden Green. For a brief but intense period, striking workers in our neighbourhood, led by the emblematic Mrs Jayaben Desai, put collective struggles against racism, patriarchy and workplace exploitation at the centre of national politics.

These struggles are far from over. Although the Grunwick processing plant has long disappeared, episodes like last summer’s Home Office xenophobic van campaign or the Willesden letting agent who was shown to openly discriminate against African-Caribbean would-be tenants remind us of the everyday racism still plaguing our streets. Similarly, our local Homebase cuts costs by using unpaid staff under the ConDem government’s workfare programme, while local Labour politicians rail against striking teachers fighting the privatisaton of our schools.

Thursday’s event therefore aims to be as much a commemoration of the Grunwick strike, as an opportunity to consider its legacies for today’s campaigns for social justice and equality in our neighbourhood and beyond. After screening the documentary “The Great Grunwick Strike”, we’ll be joined for discussion by Pete Firmin from Brent Trades Union Council and Dr Sundari Anitha and Professor Ruth Pearson who coordinated a research project on  “Striking Women: South Asian workers’ struggles in the UK labour market from Grunwick to Gate Gourmet”. The event is completely free, but online registration is required HERE.

The Opening of Birkbeck's PopUp University on Queen's Parade in March