Haringey Growth & Ritzy Strike: On Saturday twenty third September 2017 lots of marched from a rally in North London towards the council’s plans to make an enormous switch of council housing to Australian multinational Lendlease, which might outcome within the demolition of hundreds of council properties, changing them largely by non-public housing. I left the march near its finish taking the tube to Brixton the place strikers on the have been marking a 12 months of motion with a rally.
Haringey Towards Council Housing Promote-Off
Individuals had come to a rally and march towards Haringey Council’s ‘Haringey Growth Automobile’, HDV, which proposed a £2 billion giveaway of council housing and property to a non-public company run by Australian multinational Lendlease.
This might outcome within the speedy demolition of over 1,300 council properties on the Northumberland Park property, adopted by comparable lack of social housing throughout the entire of the borough.
Related ‘regeneration’ schemes in different boroughs reminiscent of Southwark, Lambeth and Barnet had resulted within the lack of really reasonably priced housing, with the results of social cleaning with lots of the poorer residents of the redeveloped estates being compelled to maneuver out of those boroughs to areas with cheaper non-public housing on the outskirts of London and past.
London’s housing disaster has been made a lot worse by the actions of rich international traders shopping for the brand new properties and retaining them empty or solely sometimes used as their values rise. Among the many teams on the march have been these reminiscent of Class Struggle and Focus E15 who’ve down a lot to deliver this to public consideration.
In London it’s primarily Labour Councils who’re in cost and accountable for the social cleaning of the poor and the lack of social housing that’s happening on an enormous scale.
Together with audio system from estates throughout London the place comparable schemes are already happening there have been these from Grenfell Tower the place price chopping and ignoring constructing security and residents’ complaints by non-public sector corporations together with the TMO arrange by the council created the catastrophe simply ready to occur.
On My London Diary I quoted a part of a speech by then Labour Chief Jeremy Corbyn a number of days later on the Labour Get together convention which condemned present follow on property ‘regeneration’ and housing of which the HDV is the prime instance.
“The disdain for the powerless and the poor has made our society extra brutal and fewer caring. Now that degraded regime has a tragic monument: the chilling wreckage of Grenfell Tower, a horrifying hearth by which dozens perished. A completely avoidable human catastrophe, one which is an indictment not simply of many years of failed housing insurance policies and privatisation and the yawning inequality in one of many wealthiest boroughs and cities on the earth, additionally it is a damning indictment of an entire outlook which values council tax refunds for the rich above respectable provision for all and which has contempt for working class communities.”
You’ll be able to hear the speech in full on the article by Architects For Social Housing on the convention, the place they offer their feedback and extra element on the part I quoted above:
“Certainly it has. And excessive within the checklist of that brutality is the property regeneration programme that threatens, is at the moment being applied towards, or which has already privatised, demolished or socially cleansed 237 London housing estates, 195 of them in boroughs run by Labour councils, which vie with one another for the title of ‘least caring’, and amongst which the councils of Hackney, Southwark, Tower Hamlets, Lambeth and Haringey might give the Conservative-run Kensington and Chelsea council a lesson in disdain, privatisation, failed housing insurance policies and the inequality they produce. Nevertheless it’s good to listen to Corbyn discard the Tories’ contemptuous terminology of ‘hardworking households’ and ‘bizarre folks’ and eventually – if belatedly – confer with the ‘working class’.“
They go on to remark much less favourably on Corbyn who they are saying had ignored “the property regeneration programme that’s on the coronary heart of London’s transformation right into a Dubai-on-Thames for the world’s soiled cash” and so had did not understand that “each property present process demolition and redevelopment might produce the same testimony of inept and incompetent native authorities, dangerous political selections and a failed and damaged system of democratic accountability.”
The grass roots revolt towards the HDV plans resulted in a political change and the scrapping of the plans. However the Labour Get together has additionally modified radically, and people very folks accountable for these ‘least caring’ native authorities in London and throughout the nation are actually in authorities.
Extra footage at Haringey towards council housing sell-off.
One 12 months of Ritzy strike – Brixton
A fairly completely different automobile was the star of the present in Brixton, the place BECTU strikers on the Ritzy Cinema have been celebrating a 12 months of strike motion with a rally supported by different commerce unionists, together with the United Voices of the World and the IWGB and different union branches.
The strikers continued to demand the London Dwelling Wage, sick pay, maternity and paternity pay, for managers, supervisors, cooks and technical employees to be correctly valued for his or her work, and for the 4 sacked union reps to be reinstated.
After speeches in English and Spanish, got here the shock. The automobile in Brixton was the newly acquired ‘Precarious Employees Cellular’, a vivid yellow Reliant Robin, outfitted with a robust amplifier and loudspeaker, and after extra speeches this led the protesters in a gradual march round central Brixton.
Numerous actions on the Ritzy had began three years earlier than this, when staff known as for a boycott of the cinema. In 2019, after an industrial tribunal had gained a few of their claims BECTU suspended the boycott and the Dwelling Employees Dwelling Wage marketing campaign though nonetheless persevering with to battle for equal pay and towards different dismissals.
Extra footage at One 12 months of Ritzy strike.
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Tags: 1, 300 council properties, Architects for Social Housing, ASH, BECTU, Brixton, Class Struggle, council properties, Council Housing Promote-Off, demolition, Dubai-on-Thames, property regeneration programme, Focus E15, grass roots revolt, Grenfell Tower, Hackney, Haringey, Haringey Growth Automobile, HDV, IWGB, Jeremy Corbyn, Labour councils, Lambeth, Lendlease, London, London Dwelling Wage, march, maternity pay, Northumberland Park property, peter Marshall, Precarious Employees Cellular, non-public housing, protest, RCG, regeneration, Ritzy Cinema, Ritzy strike, sacked union reps, sick pay, social cleaning, social housing, Southwark, UVW
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