Save Catford

new article from the IWCA setting out the foundations (and the need) for a vision of economic democracy

In politics, being competitive in the realm of ideas is a prerequisite to being competitive anywhere else. The following is the first part of an attempt to start mapping out an explicitly pro-working class vision upon which a wider movement might be built, namely that of economic democracy as opposed to state socialism or ‘free-market’ capitalism. Part 1 attempts to cover the philosophical underpinning, the ‘why’ of economic democracy; part 2 will begin looking into the ‘what’ and ‘how’.

full article here

article written by a friend for red pepper magazine - does a good job of summarising the common sense position on the BNP

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The election of two BNP MEPs in the European elections has propelled the party onto the national stage and initiated a debate about why they’re achieving historically unprecedented results (or in some cases, even whether they are doing so), what is driving their recent performances and crucially, how they may be stopped and what the lefts role is in this - in a nutshell what our relation to anti-fascism is and should be in today’s conditions. There is one question that is not being asked though - is anti-fascism the answer to the BNP?

Some brief facts and figures to situate the debate first. The BNP now has 60 local councillors and around the same number of Parish councillors. By comparison previous fascist groups had managed 3 councillors in total in the previous 80 years - this is without counting the seats won and lost by the BNP. It has one member on the London Assembly, and it has two MEPs. It’s vote in Local, General and European elections has risen from a non-existent level to averaging around 15% in the first, winning deposits in the second (there are three constituencies where the aggregate ward votes at the 2008 local elections puts them in first place) and polling a million votes in the last. They had 10 000 members at the end of 2007 - a figure that will have risen since then, providing them with an expanding national activist base. They are, by national standards not a huge party, they are ‘a large small party’ - at best the 6th biggest in the country. They are not an immediate threat, they have zero chance of gaining any serious power - their real danger lies elsewhere - as will be outlined later. If their absolute vote is giving pause for concern it is its trajectory that is truly worrying, indeed, one anti-fascist group in 2007 estimated that it’s vote in local elections had risen 97-fold since 2000. [1] This trend has continued in the elections since then - the European elections seeing a circa 20% rise in their national vote from 800 000 to 950 000 - them and the Greens being the only serious national parties to actually increase their votes, and this in a falling turnout. The tiny meaningless fall in the two areas in which they returned MEPs (2000 and 6000 votes) is more than compensated for by the successful elections themselves and the large rises in their other target areas.

Failed approaches

Contemporary anti-fascism is represented by two main groups with broadly similar approaches. Firstly, Hope not Hate, an umbrella group for unions and individuals within the broad area of the labour movement but open to all. This group was formed by the Searchlight Network. Secondly, Unite Against Fascism (UAF) an SWP front group designed to continue in the same vein as the now mothballed Anti-Nazi League (though not shy of relying on the ANL’s reputation). Both groups concentrate their activities on two main activities/approaches; 1) exposing the criminal records and political beliefs of leading BNP members and local candidates and activists and 2) calling on people not to ‘vote Nazi’ - to vote anyone but BNP (with slight differences in how this is interpreted by each group) in an attempt to raise turnout and block the BNP electorally this way - this approach formed the basis of both groups failed intervention into the London Mayoral and European elections.

What is wrong with these two approaches? The most obvious objection to an anti-BNP strategy centred around these tactics is that they don’t work today and they haven’t worked for some time. This isn’t to say that they haven’t worked in the past, just that they cannot form the central core of an anti-BNP strategy in today’s conditions.

Exposing the BNP’s various criminal and political records has had no discernible impact. In a country in which over 40% of all males have a criminal conviction [2] pointing out to voters in the sort of areas the BNP targets that a candidate has a conviction for assault or theft is likely to have zero impact. If this were not the case then we would today be seeing declining BNP votes and councillors not being returned post-exposure. But we’re not, we’re seeing a steadily rising vote and increasing re-elections.

This tactic has been pursued over the last 10 years on a scale never seen before - every section of the mass media has got in on the game, every candidate has been hammering home their oppositions convictions. If it was ever to make an impact it would have done so in these almost ideal conditions, instead the far right vote continues to rise. We have to conclude that this approach is ineffective.

Exposing past political views - for instance, Griffins flirting with Holocaust denial in the 90s - has suffered the same fate. Griffin simply points out that he no longer believes what he once did, that he was wrong to do so. Issue effectively neutralised, but at this point the interviewer is likely to press on regardless allowing griffin to turn the tables and ask the interviewer if they want to talk about politics. The same thing happens on a larger scale electorally. As above, if this approach of bringing up death camps or Nazi Germany was going to have any impact it would have done so in the especially favourable conditions of current fevered mass media scrutiny of the BNP by now. This approach did find success in the 3 or 4 decades post WW2 when a real folk memory of the sacrifices made by millions was kept alive - today, in different conditions, it cannot, has not and will not make any inroads.

Appealing to the status quo

These, though, are merely tactical problems, bred by past success and turned into conservative substitutes for real active intervention - but precisely as such, they can be developed into more substantive forms of exposure. (More on that later) Far more damaging on a strategical level is the second approach, calling on the electorate to ‘vote anyone but BNP’. This is a de facto status quo position that effectively calls on people to support the social conditions that have given rise to their radical discontent and to support the very same parties that have introduced and are pledged to maintain these conditions. In the bluntest terms, people will simply not vote for the parties they now blame for their situation and no amount of cajoling or mentions of the holocaust will change that. The collapse in the labour vote over last 5 years makes this patently clear (figures here). This position helps ensure that the conditions which are producing the BNP are going to remain in place and we’re back at square one. And it allows the BNP to make all the running as the anti-establishment party during a once in a lifetime time opportunity for anti-establishment parties to make a real breakthrough.

The way to undercut this is to work towards dealing with the root causes of the BNP support - the political abandonment of much of the working class in pursuit of a tiny C1/C2 swing electorate and their interests (interests that are rarely the same as those of traditional labour voting areas), the deliberate setting of parts of the same community at each others throats in the fight for resources under the name of multi-culturalism, the closing down of schools, hospitals, wages being driven down, debt, sub-standard housing, rising rent, under funded services - all the conditions of our social life being attacked and commercialised by a class that’s shown itself incapable in the most basic terms of being able to run the system for the benefit of all. This what needs to be challenged as a priority, not peoples reactions to those planned and deliberate failures know as neoliberalism

And this is where pro-status quo anti-fascism is falling down and demonstrating both a misunderstanding of where we are today and a real lack of political courage. A call to ‘Vote Anyone But BNP’ or Vote to Stop the BNP’ is, in most areas where it is raised, a disguised call to vote Labour - that is why the unions are funding the millions of leaflets delivered by Hope Not Hate. (We can dismiss the suggestion that this slogan is also a call to vote Green, the BNP and Greens are not competing for the same vote. Nor will we dwell on those areas where the slogan translates into ‘Vote Tory’ or ‘Lib-Dem’ beyond asking you to imagine how an implied call to ‘Vote Thatcher to Stop The National Front!’ would have been met?) An anti-fascism tied to support for the parties that have imposed the conditions people are protesting at is already a failing anti-fascism that is sacrificing all credibility by joining hands with the very establishment that people are fed up of and working to get rid of. In conditions where large sections of the electorate have abandoned all the mainstream parties, (combined party membership of mainstream parties has dropped from over 3 million in the late 60s to barely half a million today and is still falling, whilst the drop in labour party votes is not met with substantial rises from the lib-dems and Tories, whilst popular participation in non-formally political organisations is skyrocketing [3]) for anti-fascists not be supporting or initiating local projects that confront rather than support the labour party is to politically abandon these communities to the BNP in the same way as the Labour party already have - albeit they’re now belatedly waking up to the dangers. Being involved in those activities aside from election times does not square the circle either, the same contradictions are there writ just as large. Open participatory public confrontation with these conditions, not collaboration or lesser-evilism, is the key to re-energising the political life of working class communities on a path that logically and dynamically leads to squeezing the BNP out. Sharply put, it’s time to shit or get off the pot.

No platform?

This brings us onto ‘No Platform’ - since Griffin’s egging the day after being elected it’s become evident that beyond the confines of those already politically opposed to the BNP this has very little popular support, and in a country where the myth of democracy has a great hold over public political imagination it’s potentially dangerous in a number of ways. Firstly it, via the functioning of that democratic myth, associates the left with authoritarianism, violence and telling people what they can and cannot hear/read - exactly the sort of high handed arrogance that many people are rejecting the mainstream parties for. Secondly, it acts as cover and support for top-down or state led manoeuvres such as the closure of the BNP’s bank accounts by Barclays, which led to a Palestinian Solidarity Committee’s accounts being closed as well, or the plans by the Equality and Human Rights Commission to investigate the parties constitution and membership rules. How easy to turn these initiatives against us? Already there are calls for a Berufsverbot for public sector workers, this plays directly into the hands of the establishment. Of course, a community led and supported refusal to allow the BNP to operate in their area is a very different matter, but we’re currently seeing the first two forms of ‘No Platform’ substituted for this effective one.

On a related note Love Music Hate Racism (LMHR) are an attempt to continue the cultural fight of the ANL by holding music festivals and similar type events - again, questions need to be asked. The problem being that today they simply attract those who are already against the BNP. In the past they were real arenas of conflict, battle grounds for the hearts of young people, and they were battlegrounds because the fascists, at that point, clung to their ‘control the streets’ strategy, to staging highly provocative marches that were attracting sections of young people. Today that context no longer exists and the far-right has no hold whatsoever over the young - they lost that battle years ago. Energy and resources channelled in LMHR would be better off directed at helping deal with the problems working class communities face as part and parcel of squeezing the BNP.

Missing the real danger

What the current anti-fascist approaches have in common is in missing the real danger here. It doesn’t lie in the BNP taking power, in the possibility of concentration camps or any of the other scare stories we’ve been hearing recently. It lies in them colonising the anti-mainstream parties vote and loyalty, thereby blocking the development of an independent working class politics capable of defending our conditions and of challenging neo-liberalism. Their approach is the one that is being normalised nationally at the minute with the consequent racialisation of social issues and a massive shift to the far right as the default starting position for politics. Each step they take forwards knocks the ‘left’ backwards. This situation represents an immense defeat for the left one that could take us decades to recover from and leaving us as outsiders (even more so than today) in working class communities - the very places that we all recognise as being key to real social change, unless the job of defending the needs of working class communities is seriously taken on and a counter-productive out-dated anti-fascism is discarded. And this needs to be done now whilst the BNP is till soft in many areas - although being rapidly hardened by the economic climate, a situation which is not going to go away for years yet.

So, can we tie these brief criticism together some positive suggestions?

1) The formation of ‘community unions’ not connected to labour, possibly funded by trade unions but with organisational independence assured, that work directly on helping to meet the needs of those politically abandoned working class communities where conditions are deteriorating by the day. Based around the self-identified needs and plans of those communities - which can only pit them head to head against the BNP and the rest of the political mainstream. The types of small victories than can be won on this terrain should be viewed not only as being worthwhile in themselves but also as contributing to the re-emergence of community confidence in its political self assertion, the necessary first steps towards rebuilding a meaningful change. The are already existing groups engaged in this practical activity such as LCAP, Haringey Solidarity, the IWCA and so on.

The need for these to be open membership union type organisations rather than party membership type groups is a simple practical one. People will join unions at work as they recognise collective needs that exist over and above the heads of political disagreements, and the same is true of community needs. And once there is widespread identification (even passive) of the needs of the area/workplace with the existence of the union it becomes very hard to shift, that identification becomes a power in itself. Parties are too narrow to play this role under today’s conditions - they exist on a different level - there’s no reason why they cannot play a role within these broader open groups though.

2) Developing the ‘expose them’ model into one that instead of revealing ineffective details instead concentrates on why their polices will not deal with the social problems driving people into their arms - if we cannot make this clear to those already intensely concerned with these issues then our propaganda is failing and is at best talking to those who would never vote BNP anyway. This will require a direct challenge to Searchlight/UAF and other mainstream anti-fascists as they continue to empty their publications of all but the most inane type of content we’ve criticised above. This, of course, needs to be linked to the activity of the ‘community union’ type groups mentioned above.

3) Searchlight need to abandon their default pro-labour position and use their existing networks and resources to get behind local campaigns, actively challenging the conditions that are breeding support for the far right. This is unlikely to happen.

4) Stop the marches/labelling/shouting etc Marching into an area that you do not know and have no continuing interest in, shouting what’s right for that area is alienating and counter-productive. People do not like being told what’s best for them and will kick back against or simply ignore this sort of activity.

All of this can be performed without capitulating to racism of any kind whatsoever and without writing off vast swathes of the population. It has to be.

Royal Mail - recently announced record profits: to be part privatised

Royal Bank of Scotland - recently announced record losses: part nationalised

The call to part (for now) privatise royal mail seems to be based entirely on its need to improve efficiency and that privatisation (in part or in whole) is the only way to do this. However, as has been seen in the privatisations of the 80’s & 90’s, the biggest increases in efficiency come not after but before public companies are actually privatised - in order to make them attractive to capital in the first place - this empirical observation immediately pulls the rug away from the claims that the only solution is privatisation, and indeed the record profits recently announced by the royal mail is testament to that dynamic which is already at work.

If it is shown that the necessary know how and expertise can be harnassed without private ownership, we will then be told that the actual finance to achieve this can only be provided by private capital, but again this claim falls at the first hurdle when it is shown that the royal mail has spent only half of a £1.2bn finance facility available to it that was provided by the state two years ago for these very purposes (again showing that large amount of efficiencies, funded by the taxpyaer, are achieved in the run up to and in preparation for privatisation and not through actual privatisation itself - this is shown by the fact that for the first time in 20 years all 4 of royal mail’s main operations were profitable) meaning at present they have access to a further £600m of finance - an amount which would no doubt dwarf whatevever money that would be brought in by selling a 30% stake in the organisation even in the rudest of financial climates, let alone in the first phase of the biggest downturn in a century. Adam Crozier the chief executive tries to cloud this issue by saying they need equity capital rather than debt capital, but this is a weak argument which serves to attract attention away from the fact that both the expertise and finance are available without the necessity of private sector ownership

A secondary claim that seems to be being made about the benefit of privatisation relates to the large pension deficit that the royal mail has - but given that most of that liability will be ring fenced and taken on by the taxpayer in order to make it attractive to capital this also seems to be another issue whose sole purpose is to cloud debate

Increased efficiency however, for the most part and whether delivered in public or private hands, results in workers and service users being screwed more and an increased surplus being appropriated by either the state or private capital so it’s not an ideal or an end in itself, however the basic point is that privatisation is neither a sufficient or even necessary condition to achieve more ‘efficiency’. This lie needs to be expossed before any kind of honest debate can be had about the continuing folly of placing more and more public services into private hands and making them increasingly subject to the impersonal forces of the market while prioritising private profit over social needs. Especially at at time when it’s now clear to even the most hardened market liberals that the belief that a mixture of self interest and competition ensures the best outcome for society as a whole has run its course - self interest and a competition, which by it’s very nature leads to either a huge waste of societal resources or a monopoly situation - neither of which benefits society, got us all into this mess so it’s highly unlikely it stands a hope in hell’s chance of getting us out of it

Tess of the downham failed to live up to her former glories picking up what in relative terms for the BNP of late must be considered a fairly poor 11% of the vote last night which saw the two liberal democrats candidates, duwayne brooks and Jenni Clutten, winning the two seats available.

just down the road however, the BNP picked up their first council seat south of the thames, coming from nowhere to take what was previously considered a safe labour seat in the swanley ward of sevenoaks in kent taking 41% of the vote - this was their first time standing in that ward and an indication of things to come perhaps in the forthcoming euro elections in June this year

2 liberal democrat councillors have been forced to stand down meaning a by-election in the downham ward on the 19th February.

It’s interesting to note that Tess Culnane will be standing for the BNP in that election

Tess was a member of the BNP for many years, standing in that same ward in May 2002 and picking up 500 odd votes and 20% of the count. She contested the same ward again in November of that year again picking up 500 odd votes and 20% of the count, but lost out to Mark Morris, one of the Lib Dems whose departure has led to this current election.

In that campaign the lib dems released an anti-bnp leaflet which led Tess Culnane to sue them for libel, a case she eventually lost saddling herself and her party with legal costs of a 100 grand. During this time she had been associating with the British People’s Party (an avidly neo nazi party in favour of white separatism, criminalising homosexuality forced expulsion of non-whites and jews and holocaust deniers), a party that had been proscribed by the BNP for being too extreme. Her association with this group and the court case led to Tess Culnane leaving the BNP in November 2005, where she moved even closer to the British People’s Party

Here she is at a BPP meeting

She was in fine company at that meeting, speaking alongside her where

Eddy Morrison ‘leading’ british neo nazi

Dave Jones

Lady Michelle Renouf celebrity holocaust denier and firm supporter of the likes of David Irving

Soon after she joined the National Front where she stood as a candidate for them in the Whitefoot ward of Lewisham in November 2007 (coincidentally this election was also brought about by the departure of a lib dem ’sitting’ councilor, this time however it was even more forced due to the discovery that Sarah Kentman had been using multiple identities in relation to benefit fraud, and had also not attended a council meeting for over 6 months). Tess Culnane only picked up 95 votes at this election, but still managed to come in ahead of both the greens and the UKIP (technically she stood as an independent as the NF hadn’t filled their accounts in time with the electoral commission so they couldn’t be named on the ballot)

The following year she was busy again standing in elections for the NF, first the GLA elections in May for the Greenwich & Lewisham constituency where she picked up nearly 9,000 votes, and then again as part of the circus that was the David Davis show in Haltemprice & Howden where her paltry 544 votes still put her in 4th place in that contest

During her time as a NF member she continued to attend & speak at meetings and rallies of the British People’s Party, one such one was the BPP Nationalist Unity Rally held only a few months ago. Here’s a few snippets of the BPP’s policy manifesto that must have attracted Tess to that group

The creation of a White Workers’ State based on National Freedom, Social Justice, Duty and Responsibility

The ending of all non-European immigration and the introduction of a compulsory, phased, humane policy of repatriation

The protection of the unborn by stopping abortion on demand and allowing only it only in extreme and special circumstances

The replacement of all multi-cultural and alien art with natural, traditional British art forms

We will secure the existence of our people and a future for White children

While Tess was building up her base in the south of the borough with the NF, her former party the BNP were also hard at work there, during the GLA elections for example they’d regularly get 50 odd people out leafletting and door-stepping, despite the fact they weren’t even standing anyone in the constituency elections in that area.

With the election in February coming up the BNP and Tess appear to have kissed and made up and she will stand once again for them in that ward. It’s an odd choice on the surface for the respectability seeking euro nationalist BNP who have moved in an almost opposite way to Tess of recent years who seems far too much of an unreconstructed racist for whom the BNP were nowhere near as extreme as she would have liked them to be. No doubt the lure of her support base in the area was enough though for the true colours of the BNP, and Nick Griffin, to shine through though and accept her back into the fold - despite her firm support for the late John Tyndall in his internal battles with Griffin while Tess Culnane was still a member of that party.

No doubt in the lead up to the election we’ll see the usual round of liberal anti-fascism swoop into place, the usual impotent cries of ‘vote anyone but the BNP’ and the desperate pleas to bolster support for the various mainstream parties whose policies and actions over the last couple of decades have given rise to the conditions that lead to the ever increasing support for parties like the BNP in the first place. If this is even considered by liberal anti fascism it’s quickly forgotten and the push to return to power those who will continue to perpetuate those conditions is pursued with vigour - a defeat of the BNP at the polls is then lauded and backs are patted all round until the next time round when the whole circus starts again and no one stops to wonder why the support for the far right continues to grow.

As much as the BNP, NF and BPP are despicable extreme organisations - by far the biggest threat at the moment to the working class of all colours is those who actually have their hands on the levers of power, be they new labour or new tories - it’s their policies and behaviour that have given rise to the kind of conditions that have allowed parties like the BNP to flourish - the political abandonment by a supposedly pro working class party of their natural constituents in favour of narrow middle class middle england and the continuation and deepening of thatcherite neo-liberal policies by new labour led to a massive political vacuum as all three mainstream parties fell over themselves to ape each others policies and chase after the slither of marginal middle class middle england issues/constituencies where general elections were won & lost and delivered to the successful party the right to administer neo-liberal policies on behalf of capital

Vacuum’s, in politics, are always eventually filled - the Left in the UK proved their complete and utter incapability to do so with a parallel disengagement from what should be their natural constituency almost aping that of the mainstream parties - the issues of the working class in the UK were just not sexy or international enough for the largely academic/intellectual left who became blind to the very real issues confronting the working class in this country. The working class of this country had failed ‘The Left’ who were constantly jumping from pillar to post looking for a new agent of change whether that be students, muslims or a retreat into academic left intellectualism/ineffectualism.

The BNP however, skillfully made the most of the opportunity that had presented itself and set about reorienting itself into a trojan horse type party using an addressal of the very real issues that people are facing around housing, crime, job insecurity, education, schools, political abandonment, etc.. to improve both its standing, image and support base in communities up and down the country. The bigger that vacuum got as a result of the activities of the mainstream parties the bigger the opportunity the BNP had to get its foothold into our communities - the more this happened the more liberal anti-fascism responded by encouraging the perpetuation of those very same circumstances by their trumpeting of ‘anyone but the BNP’

The increased support for the BNP is a response to conditions - those conditions are real and cannot be rentaghosted away by a bit of extra effort on polling day for whatever party happens to be standing against the BNP. Any effective fight against the anti-working nature of both the BNP and the mainstream parties can be successful only by addressing the root cause of those conditions, not perpetuating them. Doing so, is of course far far easier to say than do, but recognition of this fact is surely the first stage.

The credit crunch has led many to believe that a corner has been turned and the excesses of the last thirty years of neo-liberalism will now be vanquished and many point to keynesian fiscal policies and ‘progessive’ or ‘redistributive’ budgets as proof of this - these measures are nothing but pragmatism designed to save the very system that got us all into this mess in the first place - keyne’s was no fan of the working class and had only one thing in mind which was to save capitalism from itself, things are no different now. We are told that the banking sector needs to be saved because it is in effect like a public utility, far too important to be allowed to be left to the ‘natural’ forces of the market - If this is the case why during a period where the losses of many large financial institutions (sorry public utilities) are being socialised through nationalisation and public support is the government pushing ahead with the privitisation, in some shape or form, of many more public utilities - the post office, defence training, schools, hospitals, the royal mint, british waterways, the met office, the land registry, ordinance survey to name just a few - surely at at time like this it should be blindingly clear that to put public services and utilities into private hands and let them be subject to the impersonal forces of the market and have profit as their primary motive is completely hatstand - yet this privatisation of profits and the eventual socialisation of risk and losses is set to continue and with it the conditions that lead to more and more support for opportunist trojan horse parties like the BNP.

It’s not hard to see why people would be attracted to a party that at least appears to be willing to listen and act on the very real concerns of the electorate - to brandish every BNP voter as racist and as some knuckle dragging goon seems to be both the mainstream and left’s response, something that’s tantamount to kicking someone while their already down - this is liberal anti-fascism at work however.

Only a credible pro working class response to the real issues brought about by the activities of the mainstream parties in relation to housing, job security, schools, education, crime, safety, political abandonment and community will have any hope of ensuring the far right do not continue to garner support in our communities - however that response should be done in and for itself as an inclusive community led working class solution to problems in our communities, not just because it offers a chance to beat the racists

I mentioned the trojan horse politics of the BNP earlier - by this I meant their supposed concern and addressing of the very real problems of communities as a way to anchor in their far right, racist and corporatist leanings - in relation to this it’s interesting to note that the Liberal Democrats are standing Duwayne Brooks as one of their candidates in the election. Duwayne was a friend of Stephen Lawrence and was with him the night he was murdered. There is a chance that this will lead to this election being made into a race thing, which will help once again to disguise the continued anti working class tendencies of all those contesting it. I can’t see the BNP winning the seat, however i’m sure they’ll get a pretty substantial chunk of the vote, but whoever wins the needle will return to the start of the song and they’ll all carry on as before - a plague on all their houses

Came across this research report on regeneration from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation - it primarily focuses on the role of public spaces in communities, but in doing so touches upon most of the unfortunate by-products (or objectives) of regeneration which further helps to lift the veil on the view that everyone benefits from this kind of activity

I’ve categorised a number of quotes from the report into three main themes - each of which raises credible doubts as to the supposed benefits of regeneration to the existing & wider communities that are subject to it. These three areas are, Impact on Existing Community, Impact on Crime and Social & Economic Exclusion - but first the couple of quotes below sum up the overall thrust of the research

Summary

Public spaces (including high streets, street markets, shopping precincts, community centres, parks, playgrounds, and neighbourhood spaces in residential areas) play a vital role in the social life of communities. They act as a ‘self-organising public service’, a shared resource in which experiences and value are created. These social advantages may not be obvious to outsiders or public policy-makers.

The success of a particular public space is not solely in the hands of the architect, urban designer or town planner; it relies also on people adopting, using and managing the space – people make places, more than places make people.

I think experience of regeneration to date shows it’s clear that the social advantages of public spaces are set aside by those behind most regeneration projects - at best it could be argued that these advantages are just not seen by outsiders/public policyholders who are too busy living in their own world and not the one they are designing for others, or at worst, they are recognised by these groups but are intentionally avoided in accordance with the very specific agenda that is in play. The JRF report seem to give those people the benefit of the doubt and credit (!) them with the former, I’d tend to be more sensationalist and go more with the later but in reality it’s obviously a mix of the two – a simple head in the sand/out of touch approach by some very clever stupid people mixed in with a more sinister single minded intent, a type of accumulation by dispossession

The key thing is ‘people make places, more than places make people’ – most regeneration projects invert that process, and focus on creating a ready made place devoid of the input of the existing community (who let’s face it, most of which will no longer be welcome in the new ‘community’) and often accompanied with a false history of the locality which gets superimposed over the real autonomous history of a place - the accumulated lived experiences that locates & situates us is replaced by instant mass produced history, designed not to appeal to, or resonate with, the sentimentalities of the existing members of the community, but those to which it aims to attract in the future. This environment no longer reflects the people who use(d) the space, who they were and what they used the space for, but instead the environment only tells us who now is supposed to use the space, and so the environment asserts its authority over people and dictates who can inhabit or make use of it.

Impact on Existing Community

The research challenges several current government policy assumptions concerning public space. The ‘urban renaissance’ agenda appears too concerned with matters of urban design, as well as being distinctly metropolitan in character. The majority of public spaces that people use are local spaces they visit regularly, often quite banal in design, or untidy in their activities or functions (such as street markets and car boot sales), but which nevertheless retain important social functions

Regeneration strategies that override or fail to take into account local attachments to existing spaces and places may undermine local communities in the longer term

In several areas studied, regeneration schemes affecting the public realm were subject to considerable local controversy. A scheme involving the demolition of a much-loved, if somewhat ugly, covered street market in Newham brought to the fore some major issues as to whose interests regeneration programmes are meant to serve. For some people in Newham, regeneration seemed to be principally about beautification, with an element of social engineering intended to attract more affluent, mobile home-buyers, rather than consolidating existing community facilities, networks and local economies. There were concerns that the social value of the market space had not been recognised in regeneration plans.

The research questions whether the government’s emphasis on crime and safety in public spaces is depriving them of their historic role as a place where differences of lifestyles and behaviour are tolerated and co-exist. What is considered ‘antisocial behaviour’ may vary from street to street, from one public situation to the next, or from one person to the next.

I think all of these points effectively show the gap between what outsiders & policymakers want or think that the members of the community want and what people who live in the community really need. An infatuation with shiny, new, superficial, contentless, and environments devoid of lived experiences seem to be seen as the holy grail and the answer to all societal ills. The existing community, its lived experiences & history and its accompanying public spaces are mercilessly torn up and cast aside in order for this alien & false fabric to be woven on top of the threadbare remnants of the community that once was.

As the report points out, strategies which override local attachments to existing spaces and places (and the lived experiences & history embedded within them) lead to an undermining of local communities in the longer term. Sure they can always claim success as they have established an isolated area of utopia - maybe even one that’s physically gated but almost certainly socially & economically gated - where those fortunate enough to have the economic means to embed themselves into that new fabric are pointed to as a sign of success of the project overall. No mention is made of the loss of society within those places and those who previously inhabited them – out of side, out of mind.

Just like elections are won and lost these days by orientating policy to a slither of middle class middle england marginal electorate and the capture of that vote is counted as an overwhelming success and a mandate for the whole country – regeneration processes are judged on the experiences & judgements of those with the economic means and social power to avail themselves of the fruits of the newly created and artificial community - the experiences of a slither of a wider community are used to judge the success of the whole. But, look there’s no crime here anymore they shout, it must therefore be a success - oblivious to the fact that crime is not reduced or ‘designed out’, but merely dispersed (offshored?), designed away or contained to some other less fortunate place.

Crime & Anti Social Behaviour

Regeneration schemes that ‘solve’ antisocial problems by displacing them to other areas may in the long term do more harm than good. The long-term stability of communities requires regeneration processes that seek to create mixed neighbourhoods of different age and social groups, and with a basic social infrastructure of schools, medical services, shops, transport connections and community facilities. Public spaces play an important role here both as sites of connection and as places in their own right that serve an important role in the community.

Regeneration strategies or policing approaches intended to ‘design out crime’ can end up ‘designing out’ people. Approaches that strip public spaces of all features vulnerable to vandalism or misuse actively discourage local distinctiveness and public amenity

The JRF are bang on in pointing out the displacement effect (rather than an actual reduction effect) that regeneration can have and the fact that by designing out people and establishing barriers to entry, physical or socio-economic, then of course crime will be less prevailant in that specific area - the out of sight out of mind approach does seem to be key in the assessment of the ‘successes’ of regeneration.

These contentless and experience free spaces that are created which snuff out local distinctiveness feed into a wider trend of creating identical communities up and down the country with a surface attempt by their new inhabitants to express how individual they are by buying lock stock and barrel into the world of commodified individuality, parcelled up and offered to them, at a price, through a relentless market that seeks to commodify all aspects of human activity & existence. Like the environment that the new comers live in, their lives themselves are filled up in bulk with shopping baskets full of mass produced ‘individuality’ procured in the marketplace – these are busy people they don’t have the time to cultivate individuality directly within themselves so instead through their ability to wield effective demand, through the cash in their pocket, enter the market place and buy it in bulk - ready made individuality, ready made places, ready made community. For some.

Social & Economic Exclusion

The commercial function of many public spaces can have negative consequences; places of exchange often favour those with spending power, with the result that some people are excluded. In shopping malls, which might be better termed ‘quasi-public space’, it was suggested that ‘commercial operators employ a policy of target marketing and seeking out premium users, thus excluding people who are deemed lower-value users’. Thus some shopping malls restrict the amount of public seating provided (often used by elderly people), or move groups of youngpeople on or out of the mall, as both groups lack spending power and the presence of groups of young people in particular is seen as a deterrent to other users.

Elderly people are frequently marginalised in public space, either for economic reasons or because they fear becoming the victim of crime. The Aylesbury study noted that, Older people are actively discouraged from fully using public spaces, especially after dark, by inadequate facilities and transport, security concerns, and a general lack of interesting activities or venues around public places geared for their preferences

It is also important for policy-makers and practitioners to recognise that so-called marginal or problem groups, such as young people, or street sex workers, are also a part of the community. Definitions of ‘community’ that exclude particular groups are of questionable legitimacy in the long term

Retailing and commercial leisure activities dominate town centres, and though public space can act as a ‘social glue’ the research found that in some places ‘the society that is being held together is a stratified one, in which some groups are routinely privileged over others’. So, for instance, young and older people are discouraged from frequenting shopping areas by lack of seating or (for groups of younger people) by being ‘moved on’.

At the root of all the problems that market led regeneration brings is the exclusion effect that is necessary for regeneration to be a ‘success’. Market led regeneration isn’t a charitable act - it demands a return on its money, and anyone who isn’t able to play a part in generating that return isn’t welcome at this particular inn. The JRF report highlight both the economic exclusion and the social group exclusion that is part and parcel of regeneration, however it’s illogical to lump all old people and all young people into one big homogenous lump – those within these groups with adequate economic means will feel a lot less marginalised than those without, making the economic element the key factor in the exclusion process. Likewise it’s not only elderly people who through a fear of crime, inadequate facilities & transport are marginalised in public spaces, it’s far wider than just that particular group.

The JRF report also seems to miss the point somewhat as to which groups are impacted most through their status as ‘low value users’ and seems to contain their criticism of the impact of this to the effect it has on young people and the elderly. Although it correctly identifies the cause of this exclusion, i.e. their existence as ‘low value users’, it fails to articulate who is most effected by this cause – that is the working class of all stripes - be they young, old, middle aged, black, white, asian, muslim, atheist, male, female, etc… each of these categories is not one big homogenous lump in itself (contrary to what we get told by advocates of ‘official’ multiculturalism) with the same desires, dreams, insecurities, experiences and problems – but like society in general are stratified by their economic position within that particular category and therefore elements of all these groups will both gain and lose, will be both included & excluded, from the regeneration process.

A pertinent point is made about the redefined meaning of the word ‘community’ as a result of regeneration, what was the community is redefined - everything and everyone that is problematic, difficult, unproductive, incapable of transferring sufficient economic value, are defined out and a new slimmed down and sanitised ‘community’ emerges, all of a sudden all the community problems have been solved, not through tackling tough underlying problems that are deeply rooted in the way society is organised, but through simple redefinition of who the community now are.

The myth of regeneration success can be seen in the London borough of Islington, probably the most well known example of regeneration and gentrification is currently the 6th most deprived place in the whole of the UK, indicating just how much inequality is generated as a result of the regeneration process. If that’s what success tastes like, god help us from a regeneration failure.

Two south london court cases this week in relation to knife assaults:-

Exhibit A

A Teacher has been sentenced to five years in prison for stabbing his friend with a steak knife

Exhibit B

A crazed knifeman who believed he was the Messiah and stabbed his best friend to free him from the devil is back living just yards away from his victim

Gordon Brown on off balance sheet finance:-

I think the problem that we got to a year or two ago was that we had so much off-balance sheet not disclosed that a lot of the major banks and institutions didn’t know themselves what their liabilities were.

There’s no doubt that off-balance sheet activities by the major institutions and in the sub-prime market more spectacularly have led to problems for the big institutions

The first thing we have to agree is that the financial institutions will deal with the off-balance sheet activities,

Amount of PFI related, off balance sheet liabilities that Gordon Brown refuses to report in the transparent manner that he urges others to do - £29bn

Number of homicide victims, england & wales - 2006/2007:- 784

Number of occupational deaths at work - 2006/2007 1,400

Rate of homicides per million population - 14

Rate of occupational deaths per million workers - 38

Violent street crime consumes enormous political, media and academic energy. But, as hundreds of thousands of workers and their families know, it is the violence associated with working for a living that is most likely to kill and hospitalise.

HSE enforcement notices fell by 40% and prosecutions fell by 49% between 2001/02 and 2005/06. The collapse in HSE enforcement and prosecution sends a clear message that the government is prepared to let employers kill and maim with impunity

Male life expectancy in Rushey Green ward, Lewisham 1999 to 2003 - 72.1 years

Male life expectancy in Rushey Green ward, Lewisham 2000 to 2004 - 71.8 years

Male life expectancy in Gaza Strip, Palestine (2008 est) - 71.01 years

Male life expectancy in Queens Gate ward, Kensington & Chelsea, 2000 to 2004 - 86.8 years

London Figures Gaza Strip Figures