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Reclaim Brixton movement - meetings and April 25th protest planned

newbie said:
ok thanks for that. I agree with you, it's obvious to see and hasn't changed hugely over the years. The threat to social housing goes back to at least RTB, smaller shops have been squeezed locally for a good few years now, as the phone shops and other chains have moved in, though it's all gathering pace as the local state, via the council, proves ever more utterly ineffective at regulating and managing capital. So yes, I'd agree with all of that.

It doesn't, however, address what was actually said, which was that there's only a difference between the chants "our streets" and "our Brixton" for those without a class analysis. That is what I'd like someone to address.....

some of those chanting were black, some were white, some were local, some, well, I dunno. It's not who chanted, but what was chanted that made me feel uncomfortable. The claim that Brixton is 'Ours'. It's snappy for sure, snappier than something about how Brixton is for the people that live here and not just a cashcow for Lexadon, Network Rail, or Foxtons, or the so called co-operative Labour council. But both the slogan and the insults and putdowns on this thread say quite clearly to me that "Our Brixton" is pretty exclusive. Which is a shame, because that wasn't the general feel of the protest (which was inclusive), wasn't what was being said over the PA and isn't the basis for an effective campaign.
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I think it is their Brixton, but its your Brixton and my Brixton too.
I think we need to remind Lambeth, the police and the govt, that they are here to represent us - they do not 'own' the place.
 
boohoo said:
mwareing1

Brixton/Stockwell was a speculative development at a time when house building went bonkers (the Victorian period) Grumbles about over building in Stockwell were aired in 1844 in the Builders News as much of Stockwell had fine empty houses with lots of too let signs. They were built for the reclusive middle classes to have their suburban retreats but as the railway came (and lots of poor people were displaced then) this started to affect the demographic. This was happening anyway as the rich rented (this is an important point) and so would regularly move to the next trendy point (occasionally settling for longer than a few years). As time went on, the type of people living in these 'posh' houses changed - as London in parts was over stocked with housing, builders and house owners struggled to fill some places and some houses were divided and room rented individually.

These places didn't tend to get repaired as much as they could do and this led to them being in a poor condition. Add to that the fact they completely went out of fashion (as CH1 mentioned) and the mansions style apartments were built.

History goes around in circles. The poorer people with lack of choice have always been displaced when it is convenient.
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I think some people on here need to read this. As I said it is just a circle of history repeating its self! Sad but true
 
mwareing1 said:
So its just one big circle. The Victorians thought it had potential and now in 2015 the potential has come again. The one thing you can't change about Brixton is its position on the map. This is what is driving the wheel
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Trite shite. If it were dependent on "position on the map", then Brixton would have gentrified prior to many other more outlying and less transport-rich parts of southwest and southeast London.
 
ViolentPanda said:
I know what it was like - my great-gran and her family (2 adults, 6 kids) lived in 2 rooms in a "worker's terrace" on Mayall Rd in the late '20s/early '30s, with my nan working as a "maid" in one of the large houses on Water Lane. It was like most other places - prosperous enough on the main drags, but with the back streets crammed with the working class, and with some of the older (mid-Victorian) properties sub-divided and let a family to a room. Affluence in most areas with a mixed demographic was and is generally a partial thing, with pockets of wealth, larger stretches of people getting by in various states of security and insecurity, and a significant minority just about getting by, or just about failing to. Now and 85 years ago have a lot in common, including exploitative landlords. Plus ça change...
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Very interesting. So what your saying we've been here before. How very sad that still we are in the same predicament nearly 100 years on....so it's not Reclaim at all as what date are we reclaiming ???????
 
299 old timer said:
It took time, but it was inevitable. The Victoria Line was the first "gentrifier" of recent decades imho, allowing folk quick passage to central London and back. It's not that Brixton exists in it's own little bubble either, just go and check property prices in Streatham...
A work colleague can't find a place to rent / buy in his home town of Beckenham, and is looking outside of London now. The "Reclaim Brixton" issue just mirrors what a mess property is all over the London area, question is: which political party has the cajones to tackle it?
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The problems here are London problems. I fear the govt, the councils and the property developers are all far to close.
Is it the old boys network, business connections or corruption?
 
mwareing1 said:
It matters completly because i think as much as you push the fact a way Brixton was gentrifide many many years ago. This is why I find the word 'gentrification / reclaim ' so stupid because Brixton was for the affluent. It has just done a full circle.
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Brixton wasn't "for the affluent". Back then developers had a little more sense than nowadays insofar as they built workers' housing as well as homes for the posh. As has been emphasised over and over again, PARTS of Brixton were for the affluent, not all of it. Streets were built to house rail workers, to house those who worked in the posh shops etc etc.
The only stupid thing here is your wilful ignorance.
 
mwareing1 said:
I think some people on here need to read this. As I said it is just a circle of history repeating its self! Sad but true
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It's not quite that simple. It's a bit more complex than that. And would be nice to think that some efforts to challenge aspects of this change might have some impact. We are in a much better position than the Victorian poor were.

The problem is this movement of those who can't afford it isn't just in Brixton but across London so even if people look to settle in new spaces unless they can buy somewhere they will be moved on.
 
ViolentPanda said:
Brixton wasn't "for the affluent". Back then developers had a little more sense than nowadays insofar as they built workers' housing as well as homes for the posh. As has been emphasised over and over again, PARTS of Brixton were for the affluent, not all of it. Streets were built to house rail workers, to house those who worked in the posh shops etc etc.
The only stupid thing here is your wilful ignorance.
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No need to be rude at the end!!! never going to convince someone of your argument if you call them a fool at the end!! :)
 
mwareing1 said:
Very interesting. So what your saying we've been here before. How very sad that still we are in the same predicament nearly 100 years on....so it's not Reclaim at all as what date are we reclaiming ???????
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No, I'm not saying that we've been here before, I'm saying that the class demographic of those times was considerably broader, and that currently it's narrowing.
 
ViolentPanda said:
Brixton wasn't "for the affluent". Back then developers had a little more sense than nowadays insofar as they built workers' housing as well as homes for the posh. As has been emphasised over and over again, PARTS of Brixton were for the affluent, not all of it. Streets were built to house rail workers, to house those who worked in the posh shops etc etc.
The only stupid thing here is your wilful ignorance.
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There was a reason why they built those houses for the rich. Selfish reasons
 
ViolentPanda said:
Brixton wasn't "for the affluent". Back then developers had a little more sense than nowadays insofar as they built workers' housing as well as homes for the posh. As has been emphasised over and over again, PARTS of Brixton were for the affluent, not all of it. Streets were built to house rail workers, to house those who worked in the posh shops etc etc.
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Online booth maps are really interesting and his comments ( if you can read the handwriting)
 
mwareing1 said:
There was a reason why they built those houses for the rich. Selfish reasons
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Again that simplifies it too. A lot of people building in the Victorian period were trying their luck . Some did alright but many only built one of two places and a lot of people lost a lot of money. And it wasn't necessarily rich/middle class people but those who could buy up a little plot and build on it.
 
boohoo said:
It's not quite that simple. It's a bit more complex than that. And would be nice to think that some efforts to challenge aspects of this change might have some impact. We are in a much better position than the Victorian poor were.

The problem is this movement of those who can't afford it isn't just in Brixton but across London so even if people look to settle in new spaces unless they can buy somewhere they will be moved on.
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I wonder in the Victorian era it would take over 7 months to repair 2 escalators?
 
boohoo said:
Again that simplifies it too. A lot of people building in the Victorian period were trying their luck . Some did alright but many only built one of two places and a lot of people lost a lot of money. And it wasn't necessarily rich/middle class people but those who could buy up a little plot and build on it.
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Sorry I meant poor
 
CH1 said:
Two reasons:
1. The houses were old - 1840s to 1870s
2. They were multi occupied and the landlords were maximising their return.

From the autobiography of Canon Charles Walker, who was a Catholic priest at Corpus Christi, Brixton Hill:

"In the late 1960s, the housing situation in Brixton was excruciating. Much of the housing stock was sub-standard; the was a chronic shortage of accommodation and lamentable over-crowding. Somerleyton Road and its adjacent streets were the horror story of the time. These streets were lined with big Victorian family houses on four floors with basement. All were in multiple occupation and in recent times many of the basements had been drinking dives. Most of the basements had been bricked up by the council by the time I got to Brixton. I estimated that one of these houses accommodated 40 souls. The landings commonly featured a cooker and piles of household impedimenta. I talked to a black lady on one of these landings during a visit to the house. She was trying to do some washing up in a bowl of water with two wide-eyed children clinging to her skirts. White and black people shared each other's poverty. I was called one night to an Irishman I knew who had died in a nearby room."
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Some of them were already like that in the '30s - one of the drivers for some of the Brixton bourgeoisie to form a branch of the BUF - they didn't object to the wealthy Jews who lived in some of the suburban villas, but they really didn't like the proximity of all those Paddies and Kikes and other povs who provided the workforce.
 
mwareing1 said:
Enlighten me
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I suggest you get some books out about local history, look on urban, talk to the Brixton society, visit the archives. You clearly have a passion for this investigation into history. I recommend Dyos' book on the Victorian suburb about Camberwell. An excellent account of how London developed certainly in one area.

Then come back and tell us what you have learned.
 
mwareing1 said:
Enlighten me
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I've already mentioned (twice!) that there were already sub-divided homes in Brixton in the '20s and '30s, ergo your point that "this all came about with the influx of west indies population etc" is a load of shite. Windrush was post-war, slum housing in Brixton came long before the Empire Windrush did.
 
friendofdorothy said:
The problems here are London problems. I fear the govt, the councils and the property developers are all far to close.
Is it the old boys network, business connections or corruption?
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It's all three, plus the 4 decade-old problem of the gutting of local authority powers and the centralisation of much of their remit (which has facilitated town hall corruption because scrutiny too is centralised).
 
The daily mash has it about right:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE Guardian has condemned the middle-class gentrification of Brixton by its own readers.

The paper has backed the Reclaim Brixton campaign to stop working-class, ethnic minority groups being priced out of the London borough by white, liberal, middle-class people who work in the media.

Nikki Hollis, a Guardian columnist who lives in Brixton, said: “I’m having all my dreadful friends over for supper so we can discuss what to do about ourselves.

“We’ll probably force one of the local delis out of business, which would make the area five percent less desirable.”

Guardian reader Tom Logan said: “Brixton has changed so much since I moved here from Guildford six months ago to the flat my parents bought me on Coldharbour Lane.

“The African-Caribbean community is being forced out by whiteGuardian readers who want to live here because it’s associated with riots and reggae.”

He added: “I live here because The Clash once wrote a song about it, which is totally different.”

Donna Sheridan, 61, who moved to Brixton from Trinidad in 1965, said: “I think the Guardian readers are quite nice. Completely full of shit, but nice.”

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/...m-brixton-from-guardian-readers-2015042797754
 
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