By Lily Gordon Brown

 

Every place one turns to right now in Scotland, prospects are looking grim. Child poverty is on the rise; food insecurity is on the rise; job precarity is on the rise. And perhaps most pertinently here, rents are on the rise. Since 2010, rent for a one-bed home has increased by 60.7%; the figure sits at 9.6% within the past single year. In Glasgow alone, rents have gone up by 86% since 2010; that means a flat that once cost £300 per month will now cost approximately £510. This is also while 7266 people in the city are currently surviving in temporary accommodation and 36,000 people are on the waiting list for social housing across the city.

 

The above has become a routine narrative across the wider UK and the world at large. We are living through an age of financialisation, where housing is one of, if not the, key site of capitalist activity. In the UK, the housing market is still regarded as one of the ‘safest’ sites for investors and their counterparts to inject capital and extract a profit. Unlike some other countries, the UK’s housing market was able to quickly bounce back from the 2008 Global Financial Crash. No miracle occurred; rather, this was thanks to the state’s bailout of the banks.

 

Yet, someone always loses in this zero-sum game, bringing us to the flipside of the story. Concurrently to the bank bailouts, state architects were carefully designing the austerity project which would see ordinary, working people carry the greatest burden of the crisis. One of the key terrains whereby austerity has played out is in housing. Local councils up and down the country have seen their budgets slashed, undermining their already fragile infrastructure. By 2010, mass public housing had become a relic of past times for many areas. There has, of course, been regional variance here, contingent upon the uptake of right-to-buy and the pace and intensity at which stock transfer, the alternate route to the privatisation of public housing, has occurred. But overall, processes of privatisation twinned with austerity in the sphere of housing have carried very material, everyday consequences, including the cutting of housing benefit, the steady decline of social housing and a deregulation of safety measures. Austerity can and has been understood as a process of state violence and even, in some cases, state murder.

 

Throughout the majority of the UK’s twentieth century, in no small part thanks to the women of Govan and beyond, the private rented sector was subject to intensive regulation. Feminist resistance in the sphere of social reproduction contributed heavily to the implementation of rent controls under the Rent and Mortgage Interest Restrictions Act of 1915. In the latter half of the twentieth century, the PRS had become a genuinely peripheral form of housing and by the early 1960s, around 55% of Scotland’s population resided in council housing. The figure reached 62.2% in Glasgow. Rent controls were tied to the property rather than the tenancy; rents were set by officers who actually factored in the condition of the building and froze rents at more affordable, pre-war levels, amongst other wide-ranging advantages that came out of the Act.

 

Now it feels as if we are inhabiting an entirely alternate universe. Since the 1980s, the private rented sector has once again found its dominance in Scotland and across the UK. The 1980 Housing Act precipitated the beginning of Thatcher’s aggressive stride toward a “property-owning democracy”, triggering a huge privatisation of housing stock via the Right to Buy (RtB). At its peak in 1989, 40,000 public dwellings moved into the hands of homeowners, symbolising what Christophers has marked as the ‘New Enclosure’, a mass wave of privatisation. The blame, of course, should not be laid at the feet of tenants who engaged in the RtB process. Rather, it was the state who actively ensured that those public dwellings lost to homeownership - many of which are now rented out in the private rented sector - were not replenished.

 

Often less understood, however, are the long-standing implications of the 1988 Housing Act, which pivoted legislative focus to the realms of private renting. It is well known that in the decades of welfare capitalism (1945-1970s), marked by some historians as Britain's ‘golden age’, a “deal” had been struck between capital and labour. While private capital was permitted to circulate and private business to operate, public ownership was commonplace and unions had won collective bargaining rights, in turn organising a powerful workforce cutting across myriad sectors. Until the 1980s, a sort-of deal had also been struck between tenants and landlords. Prior to the aforementioned 1988 Act, private tenancies took the form of “protected and statutory” tenancies which concurrently provided a sense of material and ontological security for those living in the already-marginalised private rented sector; alongside these regulated rents, private landlords encountered legal hurdles in repossessing their property.

 

Yet in the decades since we have seen the balance of power shift firmly in favour of landlords. Between the mid 1980s and 2021, even the most moderate of rent controls had disappeared in Scotland. The ‘crisis’ only accelerated in the nineties with the introduction of Buy to Let mortgages and again throughout the 2010s. Scotland was not granted immunity from this treacherous policy making. Devolution over policy areas such as housing did not arrive until the late 1990s, meaning that those north of the border were subjected to the same ruinous policies inflicted on Scotland by the Westminster establishment. Selective devolution has also frustrated any real process of autonomy in Scotland; for example, Westminster still reserves power over immigration and asylum law, inhibiting the actions of those working at the intersection of housing and migrant justice. The impact of this selective devolution is two-fold; though it is certainly undeniable that Westminster’s assertion of control impedes progress in Scotland, it also provides MSPs in Holyrood with a scapegoat for their inaction or indifference to change. What’s more, we are still obstructed by a political elite acting in their own interests; as The Feret reported last year, ‘15 of Scotland’s 56 MPs said they own additional properties in towns and cities across the UK and abroad, with seven declaring that they receive rental income of more than £10,000 per year.’

 

Despite these structural constraints, reform to housing legislation has been forced through in Scotland. Right to Buy and no-fault evictions (commonly known as Section 21) have both been phased out. Emergency rent caps were also won, albeit a temporary measure to address a cost of living ‘crisis’ which, in fact, has no end date. These successes can certainly be attributed to the organised tenants movement, bringing us to the key actor in our story: Living Rent. Scotland’s mass membership tenants’ union which emerged from a campaign group formed in 2014, Living Rent has been on the frontlines of housing politics through its tenacious organising efforts, direct action and community building. The union functions at varying scales, from the neighbourhood to the national. It’s day to day consists of going up against the growing landlord class and campaigning on a platform of radical demands. Rent controls form a constitutive part of this platform, a demand etched into the very fabric of the union. Members and organisers have spent years building popular sentiment for a return to a regulatory system that can too often feel consigned to history.

 

These organising efforts, though often neglected by mainstream channels and reportage, are encapsulated in the Housing Bill currently passing through Scottish Parliament. In November, the union saw a historic victory in the passage of Stage One of the Bill - which commits in writing to the (re)implementation of rent controls, amongst other not insignificant wins. In any event, the devil is in the detail. There are mounting concerns that the government will be pressured by the active landlord lobby to water down the Bill, particularly in coaxing them to tie rent controls to the tenancy rather than the property. This would see landlords granted the right to raise the rent in-between tenancies, likely leading to a surge in evictions and consequent displacement.

 

Predictably, the rallying cries of the landlord lobby can be heard across the country: “rent controls would see landlords leaving the market in droves.” And apparently in this fantastical world inhabited only by landlords (and maybe a few self-declared Yimbys), the supply of housing would also disappear with them. There is no acknowledgement of the plain fact that the bricks and mortar have and will continue to remain firmly in place, rather it is the ownership of the property which might pleasantly switch hands.

 

So lost in the parochial ideologies of rentierism, which sees wealth built upon the ownership of assets rather than the means of production, there is a failure amongst politicians and their counterparts to recognise this as a moment, an opportunity, to radically interrogate the ownership structures which have come to dominate the current malaise. What’s more, in Scotland, fully devolved powers in the sphere of housing are not being used to their maximum potential. These failings are indicative of a wider reality. That of a constructed, intentional crisis of housing. We did not arrive here by accident, by some policymaking gone wrong. No, the architects of neoliberalism, of austerity, of private property relations at large, have foreseen the outcomes of their actions, and fed off the material consequences of this zero-sum game. We should not accept this state of affairs as the norm, as the ‘way things are’. To do so would be to admit defeat.

 

Rent controls represent one step in contesting this long-standing, structural oppression which whilst serving a small minority of profiteers, has also contributed to a growing tenant consciousness. Thus, significant decisions lie ahead for Scotland over the next few months, particularly as we move toward the latter stages of the Housing Bill, determining whether the Bill becomes an Act of Parliament and passes into Law. Living Rent will continue to pressure the government to meet the demands coming not only from those in the organised tenants movement, but also from the Scottish trade union movement and organisations such as The Poverty Alliance and the Children and Young People’s Commissioner.

 

Looking across the border to England and Wales, tenants are too rallying around the call to implement rent controls. The content of Renters Right Bill, introduced to parliament by Labour back in September, certainly reflects its title. Although it is set to bring finally an end to section 21 evictions and assured shorthold tenancies (not insignificant wins), it remains largely reformist in nature. By evading a commitment to rent controls, the Bill fails to encompass the radical overhaul of the housing system required to address the crisis laid out in the words above. The urgent need for rent controls cuts across society and across borders, impacting tenants and workers, children and families. This fight belongs to all of us, and it is only just beginning.

 

 

 

Lily Gordon Brown is a tenant organiser and writer based in Scotland.

 

This article was made possible thanks to the generous support of the Lipman-Miliband Trust.

By The Anti-Racism Committee, Greater Manchester Tenants Union

Re: Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Immigration Policy Initiative, Known as ‘The Rome Process’

 

17th September 2024

 

On Monday, 16th September, Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced a significant escalation in his government’s cooperation with Italy on immigration policy, with a particular focus on managing "irregular migration" across the Mediterranean. Starmer praised Italy’s so-called “progress” in reducing migration by 60%, lauding the strengthening ties between the UK and a government that stands in direct opposition to Labour’s own founding principles. His talks with Giorgia Meloni—Italy’s far-right Prime Minister, whose Brothers of Italy party has fascist leanings—signal that Starmer’s administration is prepared to endorse the policies of a government actively engaging in exclusionary, nationalist, and racially charged practices that echo fascist tactics.

 

This initiative has been named ‘The Rome Process’.

 

Our Position on Starmer’s Stance on Immigration and ‘The Rome Process’

 

As housing campaigners dedicated to anti-racism and equitable resource distribution, we are deeply appalled by this dangerous shift in policy. Starmer’s decision to align Labour with a government that actively implements fascist-like policies is more than a contradiction—it is a profound betrayal of the Labour party’s foundational values. The Meloni government is not just ideologically extreme; it enforces policies that target migrants, undermine women’s rights, attack the LGBTQ+ community, fuel racial division, and entrench nationalist politics at the expense of basic human rights. Instead of tackling the real systemic issues—decades of privatisation, austerity, and market deregulation that have decimated public services—Starmer has opted to scapegoat migrants, echoing the rhetoric of governments that capitalise on fear and division. The housing crisis and pressure on the NHS are not the result of immigration but of decades of neglect, financialisation, and attack on public services.

 

Manchester’s Proud History and Manchester City Council’s Responsibility

 

Manchester has long been a beacon of solidarity and resistance. From our City’s leadership in the anti-apartheid movement to our defiance of the Conservative government’s decades-long hostile environment, we have stood up for justice and the protection of vulnerable communities.

 

It’s worth remembering the Anti-Deportation Unit, established in 1984 in Manchester Town Hall, which offered crucial support to those facing deportation. Sadly, this unit no longer exists, but its presence in our city’s history reflects the commitment we once had to protecting the rights of migrants.

 

This concerning shift is all the more alarming as we approach significant anniversaries: the 60th anniversaries of Article 2 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) and the 1965 Race Relations Act, and the 15th anniversary of the 2010 Equality Act. These laws, supported and enacted by Labour governments, were founded on principles of protection, equality, and opposing systemic discrimination. The current policies, however, undermine these principles by misdirecting blame and failing to address real issues of inequality.

 

Yet, Manchester City Council (MCC) has a crucial role in leading on these issues. By stepping beyond the national government’s anti-immigration rhetoric and addressing the root causes of inequality and strain on public services, MCC can reinforce the City’s proud tradition.

 

Our Call to Action - Reclaim Manchester as a City of Sanctuary

 

We must reclaim Manchester’s identity as a City of Sanctuary and reject the damaging, false narrative that migration is to blame for our current crises. We must also challenge the framing of harsh immigration measures as ‘a fight against human trafficking’.
The government must be held accountable for its dangerous alignment with far-right, anti-immigrant governments like Meloni’s. Rather than following their lead, this Labour government and its associated councils must return to their founding purpose of standing up for the marginalised and defending workers and the vulnerable. Manchester deserves a council chamber that remains true to the City’s principles, not one that compromises them by collaborating with a government whose actions today reflect the divisiveness and exclusionary practices of fascism on our doorstep. Starmer’s embrace of Meloni’s approach reveals a troubling willingness to blur the lines between substantial politics and the far right, and this must be challenged. We must also challenge the framing of harsh immigration measures as ‘a fight against human trafficking’.

 

We call on Manchester City Council and those addressed above, as a whole, to reject this turn towards the far right and to champion policies that support the many, not the few. Now, more than ever, we need MCC and our government to uphold the values of justice, equality, and solidarity, rather than scapegoating the vulnerable for political gain. This is the moment to organise, resist, and fight for a future built on justice and humanity. We urge all housing campaigners, unions, and allies to speak out against these regressive policies and hold our leaders accountable. Together, we can prevent this dangerous drift to the right and reclaim our City as a place of fairness and compassion.

 

By Greater Manchester Housing Action

 

Last month we were sad to share the news of the death of one of core members, Debi Blanchard. She was at the heart of everything we did and a true champion for the marginalised in our city. Below we publish a selection of tributes from GMHA members past and present.

 

Spike:

Manchester has lost one of our most determined and ambitious housing activists. Grateful I could still go visit her and tell her news from Manchester's squat scene, she would light up and be full of joy for the community of squatters she loved and held close. On my last visit to see Debi, after a demo outside the Social Housing Awards, I left her with a placard "We want community led homes!", so she knew that we're still going to demand housing justice and community-led solutions. 

She gave so much love to everyone, leaving those who knew her heartbroken by this news. She was on the ground daily, finding people where they were and supporting them to get where they wanted to be. Debi had a lot of joy and love to share with people impacted by this on-going housing crisis. 

She knew how to channel her anger at Manchester's failing homeless policies and the politicians who use 'ending homelessness' for their own gain. She spoke out against the corruption of Manchester City Council, standing up for young homeless people in the town hall and at council meetings, gathering insights and FOI's to hold those in power to account, building evidence cases to take to the housing ombudsman.

Somehow, she also made time in her days to bring food and supplies to the squat. Debi influenced my life in profound ways. She will always hold space in my heart.

Living everyday like a land pirate ready to fight for those who have nothing, a beacon of mutual aid who knew that we all benefit from sharing resources and advocating for each others rights.

Debi held a wealth of knowledge on legal and housing rights, she was on a mission to get young people housed and would be a champion for anyone who would accept her offer of support and solidarity.

She knew that the homeless industrial complex was failing so many, and of the risks young people in particular face, not only through rough sleeping, but also within hostels and temporary accommodation. Debi knew change needs to come from the bottom up, and did her best to create an environment where people harness their power to make this happen. 

She set up Youthouse Housing Co-op with young people with lived experience of homelessness to create long term secure housing. Her legacy lives on with those who she brought together to design and build a housing future for Manchester's most marginalised.

"Housing by any means necessary" Debi, Youthouse Founder.

 

 

Ross:

I don’t think I’ve ever met someone so devoted to helping others as Debi. I feel like half of Manchester owe her a debt of gratitude for something and there are a fair few who quaked in her boots whenever she was around, bringing to bear such a depth of knowledge on housing rights and such a fire to stand up to those that undermined them. Abiding memories of Debi are her chasing a terrified Burnham, wagging her finger; the enduring battle against her nemesis ‘Tricky Dicky’ and just an immeasurable sense of warmth, joy and hope from her. Rest in solidarity Debi, you will be so so so missed.

 

Josie:

Debi was one of the biggest forces of nature I have ever met. A truly selfless person with an insane amount of care, knowledge and passion to fight for the rights and safety of young homeless people. She taught me so much. Debi was one of those people that touched everyone's lives and inspired them to take action and fight for those who needed it the most. Volunteering with her at GMHA was an experience I will be forever grateful for. Rest in power Debi, you megababe.

 

Luke:

Debi was an incredible activist and fought with her every breath to make lives better for homeless people, disabled people and others being denied dignity in our crumbling state.

It was a privilege to work alongside her on housing campaigns, and I always loved the fire in her spirit. She will be sorely missed, and deserves a heroic send-off to honour her compassion and dedication to the cause. Rest in power Debs x

 

Hannah:

Debi was an indispensable member of GMHA. She brought humour and optimism to our meetings, as well as insider knowledge from the homelessness sector; news and facts from the streets; and the outputs of her tireless research and analysis - she was the Queen of FOI requests! Her drive for justice and action on youth homelessness made her a great networker, and she brought decision makers together and forced important conversations that would not have taken place without her determination. She was truly dedicated to the young people she met and nurtured, empowering them to organise, dream and find practical solutions. It was a privilege to know Debi and see how she used her life in service of others, with such open-heartedness and generosity.

 

Tom:

Debi was a powerful force for good in Manchester and a central figure in the city’s housing movement. She dedicated herself to standing up for the rights of the disadvantaged, disenfranchised and dispossessed. Debi always approached her activism with great energy, determination, and, of course, a wicked sense of humour. She is an inspiration to us all. 

Rest in Power Debi! 

 

Rich:

Debi was utterly inspirational and fearless as a fighter for the working class. Whether sticking up for young homeless people or holding those in power to account, she never gave in and lived a life that was dedicated to helping others. She had a righteous anger against people who profited from the misery caused by Greater Manchester's shameful housing crisis, but a kindness and brilliant sense of humour that always brightened my day. She will be sorely missed and is an example for us all to follow. 

 

 

Isaac:

For several years in the late 2010s Greater Manchester Housing Action went toe to toe with some of the most powerful people in our city — and sometimes got the better of them. Some even described us as “the official opposition”. It is not an exaggeration to say that the waves we made would have been impossible without Debi’s militancy, humanity and fearless refusal to bow to the powerful. Characteristic of her was her many arrivals at one of our meetings with a heavy folder of documents — usually exposing some corruption or misdeed within the housing system, which she knew so well. She always said we “punched above our weight” and was at the core of everything we did. A powerful advocate for the most marginalised in our city, she was a huge inspiration to us all. She was someone who really mattered. Debi will be deeply missed.

 

Jon:

Debi was a fighter for a better city and a better world. She had so much love for those she cared for, supported and offered solidarity to. Above all she was passionate to make things better for those that needed it most. She also had anger for those that seemed to be happy with the status quo.  Never awed or silenced by fancy suits and fancy titles Debi offered a critique that was highly informed by everyday experiences but also a forensic knowledge of housing procedures, organisations, flows of finance etc. I’m not sure I’ve met anyone who had such expertise of housing issues in Manchester, certainly no one that gave so much to the struggle. I will miss Debi like many others, she inspired me, made me laugh with her take downs of the rich and powerful and above all gave me hope that things will get better if we all keep fighting.

 

Polly:

In 2015 I met Debi & everything changed for GMHA. It was a galvanising moment as she and many others joined forces to challenge the corrupt status quo and demand real change for all renters and social housing residents.

Debi was the most tenacious campaigner with the biggest heart. Her presence epitomised “knowledge is power” which she wielded with a courage I’ve never seen in another activist before or since.

Small in stature and a mighty force of nature, Debi knew no fear and would routinely wipe the floor with Manchester’s political elite- in the name of equity & housing access for all. 

With lived experience and professional knowledge of housing injustice, Debi was the proverbial David facing down the Goliath. GMHA and all who created this movement in Manchester owe a debt of thanks to Debi. 

Debi, your legacy and inspiration remain & we will miss you. Rest in power x x x 

 

Siobhan:

Debi was a force to be reckoned with. Her commitment to housing justice has had a profound and lasting impact upon Manchester. Alongside her campaigning she fought tirelessly to house young people, when other services had let them down - Debi was there to work with them to offer them stability and care. 

Debi weaved their experiences through her campaigning, matching it with an encyclopedic knowledge of the housing system and it's oppressive functions. Debi shaped my approach to campaigning and organising so much, and I'm sure her fire burns on in so many she fought alongside. Debi was an absolute joy to fight alongside - forever making us laugh and always extending such radical kindness to everyone. Her legacy and inspiration lives on. Rest in power Debi!

 

Her funeral donation raised funds for the grassroots homelessness charity Lifeshare. If you wish to make a donation and support their work, please head to their website here.

 

By Gareth Fearn

 

When you mention ‘the planning system’ to most people in the UK they will probably either roll their eyes or have no idea what you are talking about. Even for many of those interested and active in some form of leftist politics, the planning system itself tends to not be a particular object of concern even if the struggles that it often mediates are. And whilst these struggles, over housing, energy, environment, public space etc are continually renewed, planning system itself becomes an object of contestation in more sporadic political moments.

 

We face such a moment today. The neoliberal wings of the Conservatives and Labour and their friends in the press are attempting to drive forward land-use planning liberalisation despite their being little public demand for them to do so. The Tories have seen their planning reforms thwarted by their base, with Labour now promising to take up the baton of further liberalising planning in the name of creating economic growth and tackling the energy and housing crises.

 

The contestation over the planning system is one that could have long term impacts on political struggles and the perpetual crises we will face in the coming decades. It is imperative that progressives resist the neoliberal drive to reduce the democratic aspects of planning and its reform towards a merely technocratic system for capital accumulation. Decisions over land use are ones over the very basics of life, where we live, where we spend our time, even what we eat. Here, I briefly set out the historic and present political contestations over planning and why it is of important for progressives to fight for a democratic, public planning system.

 

From Enclosure to the 1947 Act

 

The origins of land use planning, as distinct from economic planning, is the privatisation of land by the emergent modern capitalist-colonial state. Britian was one of the first movers in this process, through a system of ‘enclosure’ which was co-developed domestically and colonially. Through the medieval period, more and more common land was enclosed by landlords but through the American and Caribbean plantations techniques of surveying and planning were developed which would then be utilised domestically. The wealth created from chattel slavery which flowed from these colonies was invested in land by not only the existing landowners but the new merchant class, and the system of parliamentary enclosure (from 1774) formally set out a process of surveying, consultation and spatial planning to create nearly full privatisation of land by the end of the 19^th century. Land privatisation, and these early planning practices, were extended to and co-developed with British colonial territories.

 

In Britain, this system of land privatisation was driven by the desire to improve the efficiency of the primarily agrarian economy. By the 19^th century though, enclosure and privatised land intersected with industrial capitalism: creating a workforce with nothing to sell but their labour as well as opportunities for slum landlords to profit from workers meagre wages. As the century wore on, it became clear that the power private property did not have the utopian characteristics envisaged by its classical liberal advocates, and that individual property owners would not magically act in the general interest. Thus, something more like the modern planning system was developed piecemeal – with liberal social reformers like the Fabians arguing for greater public intervention to reduce disease and improve housing conditions – i.e. for the state to act to ensure social reproduction. Disease control and eugenics also supported the logic of colonial planning practices, creating new avenues for accumulation by dispossession.

 

After the Second World War though, land-use planning was reformed in a more social-democratic direction at the height of the power of the labour movement. The Town and Country Planning Act in 1947 built on the piecemeal reforms on housing and public health, but instituted a more general public planning system – with local authorities more like those we have today (rather than 1000s of parishes etc) in charge of planning and shaping development and managing the growth of cities. The Act effectively nationalised the right to develop and use land, making planning policy subject to the decisions of elected Members of Parliament and the new local authorities.

 

The Act, along with the creation of National Parks in 1949, responded to workers demands for better housing and reclaiming land from the aristocracy and capitalist class – a counter movement to the system of enclosure. The Act marked a significant democratisation of land, but as with other aspects of the welfare state this brought with it an expanded technocratic, public profession of planning – who would lead the modernist urban development boom.

 

The Act also set out the basis for conservation and heritage protection, with the introduction of listed buildings selected for preservation and restoration after the second world war and the categories of heritage protection have expanded since. It made provision for local authorities to include a ‘green belt’ to limit urban expansion, something which subsequent governments further encouraged and expanded.

 

The new planning profession shaped the cities and infrastructure we know today, empowered by significant state investment particularly in public housing. By the 1970s though, critics from the left and right argues that the planning system was too top down and bureaucratic, with conservatives criticising what they saw as the weakness of heritage and conservation protections and the progressives arguing for more public participation in planning. There was also a further critique, from both left and right, that planning had become an impediment to economic growth amidst the crises of the 1970’s and global economic restructuring which followed.

 

Planning and Neoliberalism

 

As many authors have set out, the neoliberal critique of the crises of the 70s would become the dominant diagnosis and set of policy prescriptions for how to reboot capitalism. The idealogues of neoliberalism detest public planning practices and democracy. For the likes of Hayek and Thatcher, attempts to shape and replace markets with strong regulation or public ownership distort the price mechanism and created inefficiency and for them this was the root of the crisis. As part of a class project to wrestle back the gains made by labour and anti-colonial movements, neoliberals across the world argued for a strong state to create and manage markets through privatisation and the rule of law. Democracy, insofar as it was a means by which people challenged and rejected the market order, was by-passed and over-ruled with explicit violence, coercion and depoliticization as means of shifting the balance of power back towards capital from labour.

 

Within British land-use planning, it is the democratisation of land-use decisions in the 1947 Act which neoliberals abhor and which is seen as greatest impediment to capitalist growth. The principle of the Act is that it allows people to make decisions outside of a market rationality, politics to intervene in economics. Since the Thatcher government, the repeal of the Act and removal of democracy from planning has been a recurring priority. As well as privatising significant amounts of UK housing stock through ‘right to buy’, the Thatcher government attempted to more fully liberalise planning in 1986, only to be thwarted by those in the Tory base who enjoy the local powers to block developments near their rural villages and the protection of the ‘green belt’. What her government did successfully introduce though, were the use of special ‘zones’ where the planning process is effectively suspended – this was the model for the development of Canary Wharf for example – and overseen by ‘development corporations’ led by the private sector.  These zones were derived from colonial planning practices, and were also advocated in a different form by the more Fabian tendencies of the New Left. The zones and Urban Development Corporations tended to produce heavily privatised and policed spaces, tailored to the needs of capital, and continue today in the governments Freeport experiment – with the Teesside example now mired in allegations of corruption and environmental damage.

 

New Labour were arguably more successful in integrating the private sector into planning, but they did so alongside promoting forms of public participation and strategic planning. They implemented practices of ‘stakeholder engagement’ which more subtly excluded dissent to development – whilst simultaneously reshaping the planning profession through audits, targeting and the increased use of private sector consultants. That said, they did at least fund local authorities (albeit through PFIs!) and attempt to reshape de-industrialised cities with some consideration of local needs, but they did so whilst overseeing a real estate bubble, the emergence of the buy-to-let landlord class and continuing the Thatcherite rejection of social housing. The strategic planning programme was severely undermined by the public rejection of regional governments in the North East referendum, as this meant that regional planning was disconnected from representative government.

 

The austerity imposed by the Coalition government created the space to drive through further neoliberal reform to planning. Whilst they failed to fully repeal the 1947 act, the Localism Act 2011 managed to significantly reduce the amount of planning policy and guidance in England, and this combined with around 50% funding cuts to planning departments has created a confusing situation in which planning decisions are open to significant delay and ambiguity whilst also creating a free-for-all of development in areas where land values are higher as local government begs capital for investment (in London, Manchester etc). Planning departments have ben hollowed out, with private sector consultants increasingly taking on the public duties of plan-making, policy and development management.

 

As readers are likely aware, most major cities in the UK are now playgrounds of property speculation, with generic new build apartments popping up every few weeks which charge rents out of reach of more than half of the population. Thus, despite the various liberalising moves of the last decade, a housing crisis persists as rent and prices continually outstrip stagnant wages. The housing crisis, as well as the energy crisis, have led to a political moment for planning reform.

 

Never let a crisis go to waste

 

With the UK facing a housing and environmental (of energy as well as pollution) crisis, planning reform is once again on the agenda. The neoliberal wing of the Conservatives, their decrepit (invisible) hands clinging to the holy grail of liberalised planning, tried to use the pandemic as an opportunity to drive forward the same old planning reforms once more. The reforms were basically lifted from a Policy Exchange paper (along with its authors), to form the blueprint for the Planning for the Future white paper. The report argued that the capitalism has come to favour “insiders over outsiders”, though notably the ‘insiders’ are not those with actual power (capital, media, politicians) but instead those with more marginal influence such as those on ‘tenured contracts’ and those whose house prices increase through ‘land use restrictions’.

 

The Policy Exchange report and white paper target the highly discretionary nature of UK planning which comes from the 1947 Act. Despite planning systems which are more zonal, like those in the US, also facing a significant housing crisis; the focus for neoliberal reform in the white paper was to shift England towards a three-zone system. The proposed system would have had centrally defined rules and regulations, replacing the discretionary system entirely and increasing the use of algorithms and ‘PropTech’. Public participation and local democracy are cast as barriers to market efficiency, as they apparently facilitate a ‘noisy minority’ thwarting the will of the silent majority. The white paper looked to formalise trends we have seen in planning over the last decade: de-regulation through ‘permitted development’, greater executive powers for ministers, streamlined policy (which creates ambiguity).

The legislation based on the white paper was though, thwarted by a rebellion of the wealthy homeowners in Tory majority seats. The planning reforms were a central issue in the dramatic by-election loss in Chesham and Amersham, and eventually the government ditched the proposals and even went as far as giving up on housing targets entirely. What is left of planning reform has been shoe-horned into the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill, the main focus of which is deepening the trend of giving more ad-hoc decision-making powers to ministers in the absence of a public planning system which has been stripped to the bone through austerity.

 

NIMBYS, YIMBYS and the Magical Market

 

The neoliberal thinktanks and lobbyists appear to have realised the Tories are a busted flush, and have smartly re-oriented their proposals on planning reform towards Labour. A new group called Britain Remade, seemingly set up entirely for this purpose by one of Boris Johnson’s former advisors and a former Adam Smith Institute wonk, have lobbied Labour on planning liberalisation from a green energy perspective – encapsulated in their first major report launch being held at the HQ of a major energy company with Ed Miliband giving an opening speech. Rumour has it that planning policy is now being significantly overseen by Rachel Reeves’ and the Leaders office, with her and Starmer continually repeating the slogan ‘Builders not the Blockers’ to exemplify their stance on planning reform – where the ‘blockers’ are the middle class homeowners who challenge new developments – i.e. the NIMBYs. It remains to be seen whether the change from Nandy to Raynor as the Secretary of State will yield any significant challenge to this policy.

 

The proponents of neoliberal planning reform in both parties, thinktanks and the astroturf campaigns of ‘YIMBYs’ tell a particularly ideological tale to legitimate further liberalisation as the solution to the crises caused by liberalisation. The story goes, that despite the best efforts of the valiant neoliberal crusaders, the discretionary structure of planning in the UK means that wealthy homeowners are able to reject not just new housing sites but also infrastructure too – slowing down or stopping development. What we apparently get a planning system which supports the ‘noise minority’ of ‘NIMBYs’ to whom local and national government is too permissive. The ‘NIMBYs’ tend to be local councillors or residents opposed to a development, but in practice this can stretch to just about anyone who has reservations or critiques of development however well founded their view might be. If you aren’t blindly cheerleading for capital, chances are you are a NIMBY.

 

The growth of the housing crisis globally has led to a resurgence in accusations of NIMBYism as well as the growth of so-called YIMBY movements as a means of creating support for further deregulation and neoliberal urban development patterns. YIMBY’s, who in the US at least receive significant financial backing from capital, target local/state politicians as the blockages to housing growth and attempt to show support for just about any new development proposed.  In California, what we have seen in practice is well-funded tech-workers supporting and campaigning for planning and housing de-regulation and particular developments even if they threaten to displace existing communities. The ‘YIMBYs’ have thus found themselves in direct conflict with working class, Black and Latinx activists who have been campaigning on housing issues for decades – with the latter demanding more public and affordable housing rather than entertaining the absurd fantast that any new housing will increase affordability.

 

This is not to say that so-called NIMBY’s do not exist in the UK, just that their power is exaggerated. Clearly there are examples of middle-class homeowners limiting urban expansion particularly in the south east of England to protect their asset values. The ideological sleight of hand is to foreground the marginal power of the ‘NIMBY’, instead of the hegemonic power of landowners, developers, and finance capital – each of whom are vastly more influential on the housing and environmental crises and land use decisions. The ‘NIMBY’s’ (if we take this to mean homeowners on London’s periphery) can and do thwart further neoliberal reforms, but they are not the reason why housing is increasingly unaffordable or why we are facing delays in developing the national grid and renewable energy. Their power is not in acting as blockage to particular developments, it is in being important enough to the governemnt to limit the replacement of politics with the market in an area which would damage their particular interests.

 

Attacks on the planning system, which is portrayed as blocking economic activity by being too easy to game by the NIMBYs, are instead a form of disavowal: it is easy and comforting to pretend that we just need to liberalise planning a bit more rather than actually address the profound structural crises of neoliberalism e.g.  stagnating wages, corporate profit drive inflation, economic and political inequality. The core of this structural crisis is that, for decades, the failure to invest in the social reproductive activity and infrastructures which sustain our lives – with investment instead seeking the high returns offered by financial products and (importantly for this article) real estate speculation. Put simply: no one has been forcing the rich to give their money to the things we actually need.

 

The reality is that the root of both energy and housing crises is a lack of public investment and co-ordination, with provision of both privatised in order to facilitate tax cuts and upwards distribution of wealth as well as granting significant power to real estate and fossil capital. This is why the discretionary planning system was able to deliver home-building and infrastructure in the immediate post-war period: it did so in tandem with the state-led provision of these public goods. Low taxes and privatisation have discouraged the investment in the infrastructure the capitalist economy (and all human life) requires.  The mythology of Thatcherism is that the market would take up the space vacated by public bodies and ownership, but we now live in a world where the continuation of this myth and the consequences of adhering to it can only be delivered through authoritarian forms of government.

 

Labour’s indulgence of the YIMBY-thinktank fantasy, of the ‘blockers’ vs the ‘builders’, may simply be a cheap electoral shot on an issue that divides the Tories. Importantly, Labour do seem to want to invest in green energy and even potentially in social housing – and these are the actions that will actually make a difference if they follow through with them. The problem they will find is that, in order to invest effectively, they will likely need a strong public planning system as I and colleagues have argued for here. Further, the housing crisis is now so severe it will  likely need more than just investment into social housing –  such as rent controls, greater public involvement in housing development even by the private sector, and clear regulations on housing standards to ensure climate adaptation. Indulging the neoliberal fantasy of YIMBYism may help Labour produce some snappy slogans, but if they want to change the lives of workers than they will need to focus much more on how we invest in and plan for housing and energy rather than following the market fantasy that simply adding units will bring down prices.

 

More fundamentally, the focus on planning liberalisation is one that misdiagnoses a material problem as a political one. For those who want to perpetuate inequality and the power of capital over workers, this is a deliberate act. But for those who claim to represent the interest of labour, the misdiagnosis means indulging in reforms to a system to solve problems outside of the scope of that system alone. The over-investment in speculative finance capital and real estate, the over-accumulation of wealth in the growing billionaire class who seek safe harbour in real estate, these are global political-economic issues which drive housing and energy crises which will continue until a significant counter-hegemonic force shifts the balance of power domestically and internationally. We are at a moment where states are ramping up investment into energy in particular, the question is who will gain the most from this renewed investment.

 

Planning liberalisation is one means of ensuring that capital and some sections of the middle class take the lions share. Indeed, we could view the NIMBY/YIMBY divide as one between the established middle class and the more precarious professional class – what Dan Evans terms the ‘new petty bourgeoisie’. As in the US, the YIMBY-thinktank gambit is that enough of the new petty bourgeoisie  can be won over to the idea that deregulation and planning liberalisation will deliver them a chance to get on the property ladder, rather than doing anything crazy like taxing wealth or property. If these more neoliberal reforms are pursued by Labour in office they will most likely be a disaster for working class communities, as well as the political legitimacy of major energy projects if they are simply forced through without wider public debate. The push for planning liberalisation is a call to perpetuate a failed system, rather than to do the difficult political work of redistributing wealth and investing in the state’s capacity to make democratic and effective decisions on major projects itself rather than the present consultant driven model which produces reams of pointless bureaucracy.

 

Instead, we ought to be looking to extend the democratic aspects of land-use and strategic planning. The figure of the Oxfordshire homeowner makes an easy bogeyman as a ‘NIMBY’, but this helps to obscure the many struggles fought out in planning which would be considered more worthy and useful by the wider public. Shale gas fracking, the Haringey Development Vehicle, the Latin Village, the Trees not Cars campaign in Manchester, battles over airport and road expansions: all examples of where community and activist groups have contested decisions and plans which have detrimental ecological and social impacts governments and industry were all too willing to brush under the carpet. The planning system needs significant reform, but reform which empowers a public planning system with clear policy, resources and the capacity to make plans which can lead private development for the housing and infrastructure we need.

 

The socialist and progressive position is to argue for something more universal, not simply more homes in the shires for those who’ve made it through the London rat race but good quality housing as a right for all, the end of landlordism and the fundamental principle that the people get to decide how land is used, not the speculators and rentiers. Further planning liberalisation won’t resolve the housing and energy crises because these are crises resulting from decades of neoliberalism and austerity and which will require significant state renewal to address – not the cheap and dangerous shortcut of liberalisation. The 1947 Act was introduced to address the devastation wrought by the lack of democratic control over land use, and whilst it is imperfect, we ought to defend its basic principle that the people get to decide how land is used. The land is ours, after all.

 

 

 

Gareth Fearn is a writer and researcher with a focus on planning, politics and the authoritarian turn in the British state.

 

This article was made possible thanks to the generous support of the Lipman-Miliband Trust.

By James Varney

 

I’ve lived in Manchester since 2015. In those eight years I’ve come to learn that Manchester is a city which refuses to remain the same shape. I often tell visitors from out-of-town, ‘You can leave Manchester for two weeks and get lost when you come back.’ It’s not really a joke. In 2021, I hosted ‘Manctopia from Below’, a series of online conversations with other Manchester residents, where we chatted and responded creatively to the changing city we make home.

 

Even in the intervening 24 months, Manchester has become a massively different city, accelerating into a future equally uncertain. Still though, the city is defined by the things which came up in our conversations: rapid development which we feel no control over; a shifting cityscape eating up the sky; shifting patterns of waste ground; the stark contrast between high and low rise housing on the fringes of the city centre. Though we feel alienated from the processes that transform the physical city, the conversations we have and art we create which records it are a way of reminding ourselves that it is us who live here who make the city.

 

My own situation has changed too; as of July 2023 I’m fighting eviction from the house I’ve lived in for four years, with a great deal of support from the Hulme branch of Greater Manchester Tenants Union. I’ve become an active part of my Union in the last three years, and in the face of my and others’ struggles, have found community, solidarity, and an ever-strengthening faith in collective action’s power to change the world we share.

 

From the thinking started with those workshops in 2021, I have grown a larger community project, We Live Here, focusing on creative conversations about our right to the city and a series of workshops in Hulme over this summer. You can check out (and sign up to) our newsletter through the links at https://linktr.ee/weliveheremcr

 

We will soon be hosting a launch event for a print zine featuring writing and artwork that came out of the Manctopia from Below workshops. For now, you can see the work below, from me, Jackie Haynes, Ali Michael, and Maureen Ward. I hope that our work inspires you to reflect on your own relationship with Manchester, or a city that is familiar to you. Perhaps you could take a walk and record your experience in writing, drawing or photography.

 

If you do feel like sharing any creative responses to the city, or would like to know more about We Live Here, you can get in touch with us at weliveheremcr@gmail.com

 

You can download the PDF of 'Manctopia from Below' by following the link here.

 

James Varney is lead artist at the We Live Here project, and secretary of the Hulme Tenants Union.

By Paul O'Connell (@pmpoc)

 

It may be controversial, to some, to compare the language and policies of the British government towards refugees with the language of “1930s Germany”, but in truth there are enough parallels between the 1920s and 1930s and our present era of crisis to merit some comparison. There are also important lessons for us to learn from that period.

 

In particular, for those of us concerned with protecting and improving the lives of our class in an era of ceaseless austerity and crisis; while also fighting against the siren calls of right wing reaction, that seek to scapegoat minorities for the crises of the system.

 

The violent protests outside a premises temporarily housing refugees in Knowsley in February this year was just the highest profile of a series of such protests. What it showed us, clearly, is that faced with decades of falling real wages, gutted public services, and unaffordable housing, large sections of the working class are angry - and rightly so.

But it also showed us that a small, but well funded and organised, layer of committed racists has been successful in propagating a message that pins the very real ills experienced by working class communities on refugees and racial minorities. Looking back on the 1930s, both in Britain and Germany, this is, unfortunately, nothing new.

 

The question of how we respond to this is crucial, and in that regard Phil Piratin's Our Flag Stays Red provides a crucial account of how the working class organised in the 1930s to resist the rise of Oswald Mosley and his fascists, and to fightback against the system that ground down and immiserated the working class.

 

Facing fascism in London’s East End in the 1930s

 

Piratin was a communist, trade unionist, MP (1945-50) and one of the main organisers of the “Battle of Cable Street”, where the organised working class in London prevented a major march by Mosley and his British Union of Fascists (BUF), and in Our Flag Stays Red Piratin tells the story of the years of work that went into cutting “the ground out from under the fascists’ feet”.

 

His account focuses on Stepney in London, which he notes was a deprived, working class area where life was “grim”. In this and other such areas the deepening economic crisis of the time led to much fear, resentment, and anger about a lack of adequate jobs, decent housing, or benefits.

 

As Piratin notes, Mosley and the fascists increasingly sought to scapegoat immigrant communities, in particular the Jewish community, arguing that the reasons “British workers” could not get decent jobs or housing, was because of Jewish or other migrants.

 

In this way, Mosley’s antisemitic conspiracies chimed with those of fascists in other countries, such as Germany, who mobilised a narrative shot through with false allegations and misinformation, to turn the widespread anger of the people against minority groups. There are, of course, clear parallels with the many smaller groups around the world today who share their messaging about refugees, “unvetted military aged men”, and attacks on “our women and children”, to direct anger towards refugees.

 

An important insight from Piratin's book is that to understand what was going on he attended a rally organised by the fascists in East London. While there was a hard core of Mosley’s men there, Piratin was struck by the fact that many of the 1500 strong crowd were “ordinary working class” people, some of whom he knew personally, and some were even wearing trade union badges as they marched with Mosley's men.

 

This was a decisive moment for Piratin - the conclusion he and others drew from that experience was that while it was right to confront Mosley and his people resolutely, and with force if need be, it was crucial to understand and counteract the appeal their ideas had within the wider working class. Piratin concluded that

 

“above all these people, like most in East London, were living miserable, squalid lives. Their homes were slums, many were unemployed. Those at work were often in low-paid jobs. Therefore we urged that the Communist Party should help the people to improve their conditions of life, in the course of which we could show them who was really responsible for their conditions, and get them organised to fight against their real exploiters”.

 

In short, the answer for Piratin and others was to not simply rail against the symptoms, but to work to address the root causes.

 

Tenant organising as antifascist strategy

 

A concrete example of what this meant is given in the book, when Piratin recounts how, having built a reputation for supporting tenants to defend their housing rights, he was approached about two families that were about to be evicted from their homes. When Piratin and his comrades arrived, they discovered that the heads of both families were members of the BUF and active Mosley supporters, but that the BUF had no interest in helping them with their housing issues.

 

 

Despite the political affiliation of some of the tenants, Piratin and others worked with the families and their neighbours, they barricade the buildings and successfully resisted both the bailiffs and the police, keeping the families in their homes. Piratin notes that after this successful fight, the news spread like wildfire around the area and “BUF membership cards were destroyed voluntarily and in disgust”.

 

Piratin details how he and his comrades made many mistakes during this period, and how it took time for them to identify housing as a central issue, and, just as importantly, how their work became about helping tenants to organise and mobilise for themselves. This led to the establishment, in 1937, of the Stepney Tenants Defence League (STDL), who organised against the systemic slum-landlordism of the time.

 

The STDL fought many battles with bailiffs, police, and landlords, some long and bloody, but in the end, through consistent organisation and empowerment of tenants and working class communities, they delivered a string of victories. The success of the STDL was instrumental in the establishment of the National Tenants Federation (NTF) which helped organise mass strikes around the country, including one involving 50,000 council tenants in Birmingham in 1939.

 

Piratin notes that during these years of sustained organisation, even in the midst of economic depression and with the drums of war beating, “hundreds of thousands of folk, who had mildly carried the burden placed on them, not only rebelled, but began to see who were the exploiters and their real enemies”. Through deep community organising, hundreds of people gained the confidence to organise themselves, and to fight back against landlords, and the system that produces and sustains landlords.

 

One of the lessons Piratin draws from this period is that while the Battle of Cable Street exhibited the immense unity of the working class in the face of racism and fascism, it was the hard, long-term work in working class communities that "cut the ground out from under" the fascists’ feet. This included understanding, working with and winning over people whose desperate and degraded conditions may have seen them won over, in part, to the easy answers of the right.

 

The Enduring Lesson of ‘Our Flag Stays Red’

 

There are in Piratin’s book, and the episode he so engagingly narrates, important lessons for us in Britain today. There is a wealth of official reports that confirm what each of us already knows: Britain is staggeringly unequal, with the majority of people struggling with falling real wages, substandard and unaffordable housing, public services gutted for profit, and the spiralling cost of living. At the same time, the number of billionaires in Britain has grown over the last three years, and their share of income has increased exponentially.

 

In this context of decimated living standards and insecurity, much like in the 1930s, working class people and communities are angry - and rightly so. Just like in the 1930s, there are some who will seek to direct this anger at minorities, and in this way distract attention from the system and the wealthy British who are at the root of the social problems we face. It’s for this reason that the media and all the main political parties lend support to the narratives of the far right, and bluster about “small boats” crossing the Channel, when the actual causes of our problems are much closer to hand.

 

What Piratin’s experience tells us, is that if we are to successfully tackle this rising tide of reaction, we have to break with the empty moralism, exacerbated by a culture of online politics, of dismissing people as “fascist”, simply because their misdirected anger has seen them swept up in anti-refugee sentiment - the same anti-refugee sentiment that has been expressed and validated by all the “respectable” faces of British public life, for years.

 

Instead, learning from Piratin and the generation of Cable Street, we have to be to the forefront in working class communities, confronting the systemic crimes of landlordism, resisting the repressive face of the state in the form of bailiffs and police, and fighting in work places and communities for workers’ rights and public services. We must be first to show people that the people most responsible for the horrendous conditions we, the working class, are confronted with did not arrive via small boat, but arrived via Eton, Oxbridge and Westminster.

 

In an observation that chimes with Piratin's account, the Egyptian Marxist Samir Amin noted a few years ago that in the absence of positive utopias, oppressed and marginalised peoples would turn to reactionary ones. It is the role of all of us, trade unionists, socialists, housing and community activists, to be engaged daily in our communities. To build strong, united working class communities so that the politics of reaction never takes root.

 

The appalling scenes in Knowsley in February should, then, be a wake up call. But in a very serious sense. Simply throwing the term "fascist" around or bunkering down in communities of online rage and indignation will not impact the root causes of our unfolding crisis. Instead, we need to be active organisers in our communities, making it clear that divided we will continue to sink beneath the weight of a brutal system and venal ruling class - but that a united working class can rise together.

 

 

Paul O'Connell is a socialist organiser and legal scholar at SOAS. His interests include Marxism and law, socialist strategy and popular education. He is convenor of 'The Beehive' a Manchester based political education project.

 

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Watch: Tenants In Revolt

Read: Our Flag Stays Red (pdf)

This article was made possible due to the support from the Miliband Lipman Trust.

 

By Lily Gordon-Brown (@lilygbrown)

 

On a recent trip to New York City (NYC), I hoped to gain an insight into how the deep-rooted financialisation and diminished affordability of the city compares to the happenings on this side of the Atlantic. More so, I was excited to see how the growing housing movement across the city was responding. Lucky then, that during my visit, the City Council’s Progressive Caucus was holding a rally to introduce their new agenda.

 

Crossing the Brooklyn Bridge on a surprisingly (unnervingly?) warm October morning, I headed over to City Hall to meet my friend Jakob, who sits on the board of East New York Community Land Trust. We had a brief catch-up and exchange of words regarding Truss’ short-lived premiership, the state of NYC City Council and the housing landscape across the city. Jakob also equipped me with the necessary context surrounding the Progressive Caucus and their agenda, and how they are gearing up to persuade the Council at large to pass their varied but certainly allied motions.

 

A sentiment of excitement surrounded City Hall as we arrived. Once we got through the quintessential and a little invasive NYC security system (bag in a tray, tray on conveyor belt—yes, even despite this being an outdoor rally), we joined the groups already positioned on City Hall steps, which included community land trusts, environmental and housing campaigners, the Fortune Society and the New Economy Project, to name just a few. City Council members made their way out and prepared themselves to rally the crowd around their new agenda.

 

The Agenda  

 

The agenda looks not only to reverse current trends but to transform the state of the city along the lines of ownership, incarceration, and the climate crisis. Whilst I will focus on key three acts which relate to land and property ownership (namely the Community Right of Purchase; an NYC landbank; and the disposition of City property), it is worth briefly attending to some of the other key issues of the day, and the moving words that were spoken.

 

One of the key issues occupying the agenda relates to incarceration and state violence—specifically, the severe mental and physical consequences of solitary confinement, and the need to abolish it. We heard from a woman who’d spent over 1000 days in solitary confinement, describing the intense, dehumanising nature of such violence, sombrely noting “I will never be the same again”. This agenda item directly confronts Mayor Eric Adams’ pledge to retain the use of ‘punitive segregation’ within incarceration facilities. The Mayor has come under widespread scrutiny given that “17 detainees have died this year, some of whom have been in solitary confinement”. Moreover, closely tied to the manifestation of what Angela Davis has termed the Prison Industrial Complex, the agenda also pledges to abolish the ‘criminal gang database’ created and employed by the NYPD and acts as a tool of predetermined discrimination against criminalised, marginalised communities across the city; one speaker told us, “you will likely be named on the database for just being here today and, in turn, being associated with me”.

 

In a further effort to release the city from the stranglehold discriminatory practices prior to, during, and after incarceration, the agenda proposes the ‘Fair Chance for Housing Act’, which would remove a landlord’s right to deny housing to individuals on the basis of criminal history (a practice that has no time constraints, i.e., an arrest made 50 years prior can still be used as a mechanism for denial). Those with a criminal record or recently released from prison are far more likely to endure homelessness, echoing the homelessness crisis currently being witnessed across the UK. A report published by Crisis in Scotland found that ‘1,822 homeless applications were recorded as having been from people leaving prison in 2018/1922’. Further, it highlighted four groups which face particular barriers: ‘remand prisoners and those on very short-term sentences, women, young people, and those who were homeless on entering prison’. By drawing these parallels, we can see that such intentionally exclusionary practices embedded in the housing system are not confined inside borders but experienced globally. This only reinforces the need for a discussion around how we can move toward an abolitionist future.

 

Lay of the Land

 

The price of land, and in turn the price of housing, has skyrocketed in New York in recent decades. This has filled the pockets of real estate developers who have seen their ‘property values almost triple over the last twenty years’. Of course, like in any city, with intense development comes displacement. This is a story in New York which stretches back to the 1920s, when ‘the architects of the RPA began building office space in downtown Manhattan at breakneck speed’. Reflecting similar paradigms to urban centres in the UK throughout the second half of the twentieth century, New Yorkers experienced various phases of rezoning, deindustrialisation and subsequent social cleansing. Such trends, however, did not materialise by accident. Rather, they were engineered by the intense speculative practices that have come to dictate how once public or common land is used and valued.

 

Such developments have not come without community resistance. From tenants’ unions, to the Harlem rent strikes of 1963-4, to the direct action undertaken by groups like ACT UP, and the establishment of Community Land Trusts (CLTs), grassroots movements have employed a host of tactics in a ploy to shift the tides of exorbitant development, real-estate hegemony and community displacement. It is in this context that we can better understand the formation of the Progressive Caucus agenda. The emergence of new legislative proposals is not simply the outcome of the discriminatory practices inherent to the property boom, but the pressure put on policymakers through unwavering community resistance.

 

Specifically relevant to the agenda points I am about to discuss is the evolution of the Community Land Trust movement in New York, which I have written about extensively here. One of the key actors in recent years has been the East New York Community Land Trust, whose members were out in droves at the rally. Established in 2020, East New York CLT define their mission as:

 

To protect, stabilize and expand the stock of affordable homes, locally-owned small businesses and green spaces in East New York and Brownsville for the benefit of low- to moderate- income, black and brown residents. The CLT exerts control over the built, social and natural environment through community organizing, education, and property ownership.

 

They, alongside other radical CLTs across the city, have undoubtedly had a part to play in the establishment of the three key agenda items pertaining to landownership across the city, namely: Land Disposition, the Land Bank and Community Right to Purchase.

 

• The Land Bank:

 

This word may cause a collective quiver on the part of readers on this side of the Atlantic, given that “landbanking” in the UK usually refers to a practice whereby developers halt any actual development of the land until it appreciates in value and, therefore, the most profit can be extracted from development and subsequent sale. The fact that volume housebuilders across the UK own so much of our land, which will most likely be reserved for expensive private housing, should concern us all. However the Land Bank referred to in this agenda is somewhat different in nature.

 

The Land Bank, brought forward by Council Member Gale Brewer, proposes that NYC City Council establish its first ever Land Bank, ‘which would be tasked with acquiring, warehousing and transferring real property to develop, rehabilitate and preserve affordable housing.’ The Bank would look to use or buy available properties/vacant plots and then work with CLTs to build more genuinely affordable and accessible housing across the City (it is worth noting that 1459 vacant properties owned by the City are currently sitting empty). This would likely grant CLTs across the City access to more funding and to land which might have otherwise been left empty or unused. The institution of a land bank, following in the footsteps of other cities across the US such as Cleveland, would thus be a vital step for the CLT and community development movement, particularly for CLTs who have struggled with accessing funding for purchasing land from private developers and land-holders, who tend to charge unattainable rates. It also reflects changing nature of state intervention, looking to divert funds away from capital and into the hands of the community.

 

• Community Opportunity to Purchase

 

The next agenda item which might hold some sway when it comes to how land is distributed across the city is that brought forward by Carlina Rivera: the Community Right to Purchase Bill. This (in part) mirrors the Scottish government’s Community Right to Buy policy, enabling communities in Scotland to ‘apply to register an interest in land and the opportunity to buy that land when it comes up for sale’. In a similar vein, the Community Opportunity to Purchase would entail a Local Law which would give ‘qualified entities a first opportunity to purchase and an opportunity so submit an offer to purchase certain residential buildings up for sale.’ Furthermore, these entities would ‘have the opportunity to submit the first offer and match any competing offers for the property.’ This right of first refusal would see the likes of CLTs and other community development models acquire a rare advantage in the development process and similarly to the point above, would hopefully be tool for the advancement of genuinely affordable housing for groups such as East New York CLT, and New Yorkers more widely.

 

• Land Disposition

 

Closely aligning with the above is the ‘Disposition of Real Property in the City’ Bill, whose prime sponsor is Lincoln Restler: ‘this bill would require that when the city disposes of land for affordable housing, or for any other public use or purpose, it prioritize not-for-profit developers and community land trusts’. Once again, this is an evident shift toward a fairer distribution and ownership of land across the city, prioritising groups who are not interested in extracting profit from housing, or merely treating it as a tradable asset, but rather building a more just housing system.

 

Closing Thoughts

 

It is worth noting here that the US does not possess as strong a history of public housing as the UK. Whilst there have been various efforts to introduce more public housing across America, as well as persistent demands throughout history by the likes of the Black Panthers, the NAACP, the labour movement and women’s groups, public housing has struggled to find its place in the US. Reflecting this is the fact that the US Department of Housing and Urban Development noted that in 2020, there were 1 million public housing units in America; that compares with an estimated 4.4 million social homes in the UK. And whilst the current state of UK ‘public’ housing is nothing to shout about, given the scales of each country, the figures are somewhat surprising. In light of this, CLT models and ‘non-profit developers’, which are certainly not without their faults, are one of the few vehicles for the delivery of affordable housing in cities like NYC.

 

These three items reflect the changing position of City Council members when it comes to the distribution and ownership of land across NYC. Whilst there might be some shortcomings in the agenda, and we must await any decisions made by full Council as to whether any of the agenda items will actually be voted through and become legislation (and how legislation translates into actual change), it was certainly refreshing to see local state politicians listening to and working in solidarity with local community groups and activists. If any of these agenda items were to pass, it would certainly loosen the grip the housing crisis has over New Yorkers, 56% of which currently spend ‘more than one-third of their income on rent’.

 

The agenda is thus comprehensive in its aims, looking to instil structural change in the intersecting systems of landownership, housing, the climate crisis, and incarceration. These respective changes might occur at different speeds, with some more palatable to the public at large than others, but we must continue to demand full-scale transformation. The redistribution of ownership will be rendered redundant in future if our land becomes increasingly uninhabitable owing to the continuation of carbon-intensive, profit-driven endeavours. And with regards to punitive incarceration, as Davis tells us, the prison system evolves alongside ‘corporate involvement in construction, provision of goods and services and use of prison labour’; in fact, ‘the prison has become a black hole into which the detritus of contemporary capitalism is deposited.’

 

Thus, we must continue to acknowledge the intersecting nature of these systems and, in turn, expand our imagination to a world whereby genuine liberation and transformation is possible. This won’t merely transpire inside the walls of parliament, congress and city councils, but in our communities and out in the streets.

 

 

Lily Gordon-Brown is a graduate housing researcher, a member of Living Rent and a regular contributor to GMHA.

 

 

By Jonathan Silver (@InvisibleMapper)

 

This year, the invasion of Ukraine brought sharp focus to the global wealth that has surged into British real estate over the last few decades. Around the time of the invasion, calls from across British society to seize oligarch owned property came from what might have previously seemed like unlikely sources. Tories including Michael Gove, and newspapers such as the Daily Mail were vocal in setting out the case for state sanctioned requisition. There was also direct action by anarchists taking over 5 Belgrave Square, a £25 million London mansion owned by Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. It felt like – if only for a brief moment – we had arrived at something a national consensus.

 

Alongside sanctions on a dozen Russian oligarchs in the UK holding an estimated £800 million of property came separate UK government measures focused on Roman Abramovich controlled Chelsea Football Club. These sanctions drew attention to how sport assets have played a similar role to property assets for the international capitalist class as safe investments, status symbols and public relations tools. It’s no wonder the UK has been called the ‘playground of the super rich’. Action against Chelsea also generated questions about why authorities were more comfortable with the ownership of Newcastle United by the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) and Man City by Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG). Given the leading role of Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi in the war in Yemen, leading to humanitarian disaster and accusations of war crimes, surely the same principles could be applied to these state-capitalist actors as the Russian super-rich?

 

Elite and state owned financial vehicles from Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi, like Russian oligarchs also own huge swathes of real estate in the UK. This has been an explicit strategy of economic diversification out of the oil and gas economy into other sectors so that the petro-wealth of these states ensures control for generations into the future. According to S&P Global Ratings, Abu Dhabi generates about 90% of its income from oil and derives 50% of its $260+ billion GDP from crude. Some of the flows of finance from this extractive industry are being invested into sports and property assets not just in London but increasingly across the UK.

 

In Manchester, finance from Abu Dhabi has had a dramatic effect on the city beginning with the football club but soon flowing into property. In a report we released earlier in the year we analysed the partnership between ADUG, a private equity group with close ties to the Emirati state and the Labour run local authority to build over 1,500 apartments. The results were worrying as the partnership has effectively offshored parts of the city. This included 999-year leases of land transferred at what we assessed were significantly below good value. The partnership has also directed all the sales and rental income, estimated at £125 million and £10 per year respectively, toward the Abu Dhabi partners (the council say there is a profit-sharing agreement but this still hasn’t been disclosed). This is despite the Manchester Life company supposedly being a joint venture, and the public loans, previous investments in the area totalling tens of millions, opportunity to avoid affordable housing contributions and local expertise that were provided.

 

 

Crucial to the operation of the partnership has been the use of a string of companies controlled by the Abu Dhabi investors in the Crown dependency tax haven of Jersey. Locating control offshore has also allowed the partners to avoid transparency about where the millions made in rental and sales income ultimately flow. What seems clear though is that Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, one of the most powerful and richest figures in the UAE is set to benefit financially from new housing development in Manchester. This was a deal negotiated by the chief executive at the council, with UK government encouragement who then went on to work for the City Football Group. Given what one rival developer called a ‘sweetheart deal’ it left us questioning in whose interest Manchester City Council have been working for, the Abu Dhabi state or local communities?

 

Economic considerations are not the only reason why Gulf state elites are investing in British cities and buying up sports and real estate assets. As I’ve previously argued entities such as ADUG and the Saudi PIF are involved in sports and city-washing, laundering international images of authoritarian regimes through entanglements into public institutions to shape positive public relations. In Manchester this has involved not only the football club and the local authority, but also the university, the Co-operative Group (who sponsor a part ADUG owned arena), and a housing association. In the report we call this a soft power strategy that is intentionally aimed at gaining public support and access to local power brokers; so that local institutions yield to their interests.

 

The UK government remains unlikely to appropriate the assets of the Gulf elites, as they have threatened to do with the Russian oligarchs. What can we do then about these worrying investments in our cities that seem to serve both economic and geo-political objectives? In our report we don’t just document the workings of the ADUG/council partnership and its implications for places such as Manchester and Newcastle. We also think about how we might move beyond this pattern of extractive investment to seize back the city.

 

One initiative we recommend is to establish Public Transparency Boards (PTB’s) made up of financial procurement and public interest experts in the voluntary, corporate and academic sectors. PTB’s could bring some level of democratic control and public transparency into the investments into our built environment. These PTB’s would be particularly powerful in scrutinising the increasing turn by local authorities to the finance sector and how this has enabled an assortment of global actors to become involved in urban development. In order for this new transparency to be effective beyond direct local authority partnerships, such as the Manchester-Abu Dhabi deal, the planning system would also have to be restructured. We suggested that local planning decisions could now be predicated on ‘fit and proper tests’ undertaken by the PTBs that have power to stop urban development in its tracks if owners do not pass agreed public standards incorporating both financial and ethical concerns.

 

If the PTB’s and changes to the planning system can stop future flows of finance into new urban development it is through the tax system that we must increase pressure on the existing assets owned by the global super rich. A new property tax could be levied on international real estate holdings at a high level. In the short term this would raise massive income for the state to be reinvested into addressing the housing crisis. In the longer term this levy would deter those that have used property in cities such as London as safety deposit boxes. Changes to the tax system would also require closing down of Crown dependency tax havens such as Jersey to further shift UK cities away from being spaces of extraction for global capital rather than producers of local value.

 

Targeting the wealth of the Russian oligarchs should just be the start of attempts to address the money that has long flowed through the built environment and the British politicians and policymakers that have encouraged it. As the Manchester Life deal shows our cities are intimately entwined in global real estate networks and elite and powerful figures such as those in Abu Dhabi. We need a public conversation about how to seize back our cities. Our work shows both why this is necessary and recommendations to opening up transparency and shifting away from this extractive, troubling model across the urban development process.

 

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Read the Centripetal Cities Report, 'Manchester Offshored' here.

 

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Jonathan Silver is Senior Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield.

 

 

By Jacob Stringer

 

A recent visit to Berlin has given me much cause to reflect on the thorny topic of how to win better housing for everyone. I have been part of the London Renters Union for 5 years and while little in housing has improved in that time, we have always been able to comfort ourselves with the idea that if we can organise more people we’ll get there eventually. To go to Berlin is to encounter a city that has organised more people for better housing. The Deutsche Wohnen Expropriation campaign recently called a city-level referendum on taking back into public ownership 240,000 flats owned by big landlords. Amazingly, after much organising that involved many people who had never before campaigned on housing, they won the referendum.

 

Unfortunately the Social Democratic Party in power hates the idea of expropriation - far too radical for a party that wants to be seen as a prudent manager of capitalism - and has shunted the decision on whether to implement the referendum into a committee. Whether or not that particular battle is finally won - and most people think the SDP sent it to committee in order to stop it happening - what is happening across most of Berlin is the same thing happening in London and countless other big cities across Europe. Capital is pouring into property like a never-ending waterfall. House prices are sky-high, rents creep ever higher despite rent controls, and people are pushed out of their neighbourhoods. Most of the big squats that used to form nodes in a network of politicised people have been evicted. Bland blocks of flats sprout from every plot of land. Berlin housing campaigners have won a few battles but they are not winning the war. Some admitted to me feeling helpless before the vast influx of money ruining their city.

 

So let’s take a moment to dwell on the negative here: London (or Manchester, or Glasgow), might in 10 years time, eventually get to be as organised as Berlin. Maybe in 20 years time we can be as organised as Barcelona. We might even win some form of rent control. But even with rent control, good, affordable housing for all may still remain elusive, as it does in Berlin, as it does in Barcelona. Perhaps in that time Berlin and Barcelona, the two cities in Europe with the most organising around housing, may have become even better organised, and be finally winning. But that is speculation. We cannot be sure. It could be that they will still be making heroic yet largely futile stands against the floods of capital seeking return on investment. Some wins will no doubt happen, a few blocks brought into public ownership here, a few thousand new publicly owned houses there, but this will be small beans if property is still largely under control of capital rather than controlled by the people who use it as their homes.

 

So what would winning really look like? And I mean really winning. It’s nice to see Wandsworth or even Southwark councils adopting better housing policies than previously, but councils in the UK are so disempowered that they can only tinker around the edges. What would it look like to really win good housing for all? Let’s be clear about the fundamental problem. It is not corrupt councils or young professionals moving into new areas or new coffee shops pushing out old - these are more like symptoms. On the systemic level the problem is the vast streams of capital flowing into property that have taken it out of our hands. So those streams have to be either stopped or redirected. The capital flowing from liberalised banking regimes and easy credit would have to be either stopped by legislation, or scared out of the sector. The investments from rich people would have to be stopped either by taxation or by legislation to discourage ownership except when occupying. The investments going into developments would have to be redirected, through taxation or other means, towards new public housing controlled by those who live in it. Capital would need to be redirected away from assets towards productive, green industry. This all looks like, at the very least, strong social democracy in Westminster. It means the end of the neo-liberal era, and the defeat of the rich who have successfully argued for decades that their investments are more important than our homes. Crucially we can see that it would require radical re-alignments of the political landscape on more than just housing issues.

 

How likely does this feel right now? In the UK the left have been pushed out of parliament, but then it felt like that just before the Corbyn moment too. Things can change quickly. But on the other hand, we saw how well a hostile media can block anyone perceived to be socialist. Even if people do vote for a real answer to the housing crisis, can we really trust those in power to carry out the plan, what with the billionaire press and capital markets trying to sabotage them against the democratic mandate? It’s hard to see, frankly, this path being allowed to happen except perhaps under the cover of a state of emergency - whether that be climate, war or finance. This route, I believe, requires things to get really much worse before they get better. I respect people working towards it, but it doesn’t feel like it will change the housing situation for us in the near future.

 

Okay, so let’s draw out a more in-between kind of scenario. A fairly middle of the road Labour-ish or populist Tory government that is being pressured from below (by tenant unions and others) to solve the housing crisis. Maybe they promise housing changes in their manifesto, maybe they don’t. The point is not to trust them, but to force them to do what we want. We could perhaps win minor changes fairly easily, even limited in-tenancy rent controls. But the change required to actually win is more radical than that, so what, truly, are the levers of power we can pull to win radical change? Rent strikes by people in social housing could be helpful perhaps (and this tactic should never be discounted), but these are only likely to happen in defence of what already exists, not to create new futures. Meanwhile it’s hard to know what those in the private sector could do. I’ve written elsewhere about why rent strikes in the private sector in England and Wales are so difficult and I don’t see that changing unless and until we have big corporate landlords dominating the sector - not something I exactly look forward to. So at present we don’t have the equivalent of the killer tactic of labour unions, the strike either by workplace or sector. Without a killer tactic - the cross tenure, geographically widespread rent strike - and without a parliamentary left, what are we left with?

 

If we look back to the Glasgow rent strikes we can get a clue as to what might work. The government intervened in housing markets at this point in history not so much because of the suffering of landlords from rent being withheld. Rather it was scared of the civil unrest that was breaking out on the streets of Glasgow as tenants fought bailiffs and protesters fought police. Then it saw the strikes spreading to other cities and realised it could get out of hand. The government didn’t want anything to undermine its stupid and catastrophic war efforts. So it did what it had to do to calm down the civil unrest. The Swedish tenant movement also won significant victories - decades of rent control and secure tenancies - by highly disruptive ‘blockades’ of properties where the landlord had put up rents too much, calling on trade unions to stand in solidarity to blockade businesses too.

 

This all fits with the thesis of Piven and Cloward in their classic book ‘Poor People’s Movements: why they succeed, how they fail.’ They claim that efforts by the poor to organise up to state level are inevitably co-opted, and so the best method for movements of the poor to get what they need is to be ungovernable, to make everyday life difficult until they get what they want. At the time I read this it seemed to me rather fatalistic, and to not fit with the UK’s history of social democracy. Yet the UK situation now, with almost no parliamentary left, looks much more like the US looked in the 70s. Their thesis rings more true to me now. Civil unrest in the form of highly organised disruptive actions will, under some circumstances, force the hand of government to redirect capital in significant ways. At this point, I’m honestly not sure what else will.

 

So what are the circumstances and what might it look like? Governments fully in control, with a large mandate behind them, are often able to respond to civil unrest with force, and can ignore the screams of those who don’t like it. So we need to imagine a government that is tottering, that needs to win over a new section of the population in order to shore it up, that fears that one more thing going wrong could rob it of all legitimacy. Yet it would still need enough of a parliamentary majority that it could push through big changes to the housing and finance systems. A government with a majority, but feeling weak and worried about legitimacy, will do anything to avoid the appearance of things going wrong, and civil unrest looks very like things going wrong. They would potentially introduce very large policy changes, and perhaps annoy some of their financial backers, in order to head off the unrest.

 

It can’t just be any unrest of course. It has to be highly disruptive but with a strong moral narrative behind it that can be accepted by large numbers of people. So for example, a mass squatting movement to occupy empty new-build properties in London, driven by outrage that so many are living in squalor while thousands of flats lie empty. Or perhaps a mass disruption of estate agents’ business, on the grounds that they are parasites making things worse for renters. Or even a mass campaign to prevent evictions, should there ever be evictions on a mass scale. It’s hard to predict exactly what might hit the right note at the right time, but we need to be on the look-out for it, and we need to be aware that the moral message must resonate beyond just renters. It will also require national coordination around messaging, or at least a message so strong that it gets picked up across the country. With some luck and all the stars aligning this could all happen in one burst of activity, but it’s more likely we’ll have to work towards this over time, slowly building the intensity of activity and cooperation between tenant unions. Often it will feel like two steps forward one step back as initial efforts falter, as we don’t quite get it right, and try to correct the errors for the next wave of disruptive activity.

 

On a final note, and because I don’t want people to mock my prophetic skills in a few years time, there may be some third way of winning that we cannot guess at now: a new movement arising that can’t yet be imagined, an emergency that results in the state feeling responsible for housing people, the sudden demise of zombie neo-liberalism as global trade systems crash and burn, even - and I know this is a stretch - a government open to rational persuasion (more persuasive than the punishment by financial markets) that housing everyone well will make society better for everyone. But these are black swan events that cannot be planned for, and there is little point in placing hope in them right now. A final possibility with a slightly more sympathetic government would take a less disruptive route: a slow build to tenant unions as a widespread and respectable part of the landscape, much as they are in Sweden or Denmark, providing services to members and with a small voice in government. But the price of that is likely to be the giving up of radical dreams. It will make the housing system more bearable, but it will not transform it.

 

So here is my answer to the question of how we really win: either we follow the long road of winning large-scale social democratic (or even more radical) government, or we stir up widespread disruption when a government is feeling weak. The first method is hard to imagine right now and I have not yet seen a convincing strategy to achieve it. The second only involves waiting for the right moment, and being organised already for the government’s moment of weakness. The tough thing about this for tenant unions is that it is not easy to honestly tell people that we have a path laid out to success. Most unions make do with telling people that the more people we have organised the greater the chance of winning what we need. This is, of course, true. At the risk of being the bearer of bad news, I don’t believe it is sufficient - Berlin today shows us that. But in the end it is not such bad news. What we need to do is grow, prepare our members for disruptive actions, wait for the right moment, then make life for the government hell until they give us what we want.

 

 

Jacob Stringer is a social movement researcher and member of London Renters Union.

 

Cover image, 'Flying', Josef Albers, 1931.

 

 

by Lilly Hill

 

A report from the frontlines of the battle to save Ryebank Fields.

 

Walking through the football fields of Longford Park in south Manchester, with their striking view of the city’s ever expanding skyline in the mid distance, through a gap in the blackberry bushes, you suddenly find yourself submerged in a wild paradise that brims with ecological activity.

 

This is Ryebank Fields: 4.6 hectares of land rewilded over the last 30 years with the love, care and commitment of the local community.

 

Once clay pits, which were then filled in with waste, rubble, and a layer of topsoil, the green space is now home to over 1,400 trees — including ten black poplar hybrids, which are among the UK’s rarest species — an aspen grove, two community gardens and a wildlife corridor.

 

Ryebank exists as an exceptional pocket of natural beauty amongst Manchester’s built environment and provides an inspiring example of the power of collective care of people and land.

 

But it's currently under threat.

 

Manchester Metropolitan University, the land’s legal owners, is currently negotiating the sell-off of the land for housing development. This decision, which has come from ‘the UK’s Number 1 Sustainable University’, provides some perspective on how seriously institutions are taking the climate and ecological emergency.

 

In response, on the 24th of April last year, a day which celebrates a victory in the history of trespass and land access, climate activists occupied the site and set up a community camp in support of the campaign to Save Ryebank Fields.

 

Whilst the camp began as a smattering of tents, over the year three fixed structures — a ‘watch tower’, an ‘eco-house’ and an ‘arts space’ — have gone up, all adorned with protest art made by supporters of the campaign (including MMU students!).

 

Campers alert passers-by to the threat the land is under, signposting positive actions to take in its defence and, most importantly, to unite the local community.

 

On a day-to-day basis, there are normally between four and six people camping on the fields, most of whom live locally to Manchester, but some who have travelled from further afield specifically to aid this campaign.

Ordinary, caring people

 

I moved to Manchester from Bristol in summer last year and felt isolated from the radical communities I had been involved with there.

 

So when I heard about the existence of Ryebank Fields Community Camp, I was keen to offer my support.

 

When I first showed up in November, I was absolutely awe-struck. A handful of young adults were midway through constructing the eco-house out of scrap wood sourced from local skips. Honestly, I was a little intimidated! I wanted to help out, but I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, and everyone else seemed pretty competent using a drill and a saw.

 

Pretty soon, though, my nerves subsided as I realised that these people weren’t any more qualified to build a house than I was. They were just ordinary, caring people who were doing their best to help the campaign along.

 

Unlike other protest camps and activist spaces I’d visited, which I have sometimes found to be hostile and stressful environments, I was relieved to find that everyone was welcoming and grateful for my presence, despite my lack of experience in manual labour. I actually remember thinking to myself: ‘I guess it is true that people are friendlier up north!’

 

Throughout the day, dog walkers came in and had a chat and a cup of tea with us, and we were all snacking on bread, which a local resident had baked for the campers.

 

Here I’d finally found what I’d been looking for: an intergenerational community, united by a common desire to have a good relationship with the natural world.

Affordable for who?

 

Whilst we worked, the practical issues of building upon Ryebank Fields became increasingly apparent. The eco-house had to be built upon multiple pallets, in anticipation of the whole structure sinking; the land itself was like a bog, with large puddles caused by the recent rain.

 

Development here would inevitably result in the felling of trees around the main fields to make room for new houses, which locals worry would increase the likelihood of the site flooding entirely.

 

It’s only thanks to one committed resident planting dozens of oak trees around the millennium that Ryebank Fields no longer floods yearly and, to my knowledge, even our latest developments in engineering can’t match the efficiency of mature trees to mitigate flood risks.

 

MMU claims that its development plans will result in an 'overall net biodiversity gain for the site'. Unfortunately, this is doubtful. The felling of trees would remove the homes for the birds which give Ryebank its signature wild chorus, including the tawny owl, blackcap and chiffchaff. This would have a knock on effect on the rest of the ecosystem dwelling here.

 

One might wonder where MMU’s motivations lie. MMU says it’s selling the land to ‘meet the need for high quality and affordable housing’ in the area.

 

However, in an area like Chorlton, which has been undergoing a rapid process of gentrification over the past decade, any house with a market value of up to £432,800 can be considered ‘affordable’ — which hardly falls within the average person’s budget.

 

Even then, under the university's current proposal, only 20% of the 120 proposed new homes are required to fall into this category.

A wider story about land

 

I visited the camp more and more often and eventually fully moved in January, staying for around six months.

 

There were elements of camp life which were indescribably lovely, like being woken by the dawn chorus in the mornings, or sitting around a fire and sharing songs together in the evenings.

 

To be sure, my time on camp wasn't all sunshine. In the winter months there were few of us occupying the camp, so it was challenging to ensure we had 24/7 cover, especially as we have to leave for basic things like running water, a shower and a toilet.

 

But the longer I stayed, the more difficult I found it to switch off from the campaign. I felt I had become a part of the fields and their fate became deeply intertwined with my own. The constant threat of developers turning up on site, or indeed the police, as happened on occasion, became a personal threat to my own safety and respite was difficult to come by.

 

As well as the general challenges that came with living as part of a transient community, the knowledge that the place I’d come to call home was under threat was really difficult to live with.

 

When you connect with a place so deeply, when you’ve fallen in love with the trees or the flowers or the community there, the grief of knowing someone who has no connection to the place might come in at any minute and decimate it becomes overwhelming.

 

Since I’d only lived there for less than a year and I already feel this strongly, I can’t even begin to imagine the pain inflicted on indigenous peoples when their ancestral lands, which they’ve held such strong reciprocal relationships with for thousands of years, are under threat or stolen.

 

The battle to save Ryebank Fields is a microcosm of a much wider story of land found throughout the world. Although local residents have been maintaining and cultivating a community around the land since MMU abandoned it in the '90s, MMU still feels entitled to sell the land for profit due to its legal status as the ‘owners’ of the space.

 

This, to me, reflects two conflicting attitudes toward land which have existed at least since the beginning of early modern European colonialism: one which sees land as a living ecosystem with which people can form relationships; the other sees land as an asset to ‘own’, a resource from which a small number of people can make a large profit.

 

At this point in time, when the latter narrative which dominates our capitalist society is hurtling us all towards extinction, it has never been more imperative that ordinary people take collective action to ensure their perspectives are heard, and that all green space is saved.

 

Seeking some more stability (and some more exciting cooking equipment), I’ve now left camp. But the campaign is only going to intensify now MMU has appointed its preferred developer. In this crucial stage, we will need everyone’s help to avoid Ryebank Fields becoming a paradise lost.

 

Lilly Hill is a queer creative, workshop facilitator and youth mental health advocate based in Manchester. They are passionate about amplifying indigenous and youth voices in the struggle for climate justice. Her areas of interest include deep ecology, permaculture and eco-psychology.

 

Feature image: Ryebank Fields Community Camp.

 

To let the developers know your thoughts on their proposal, email ryebankfieldsconsultation@havingyoursay.co.uk or call 0333 358 0502.

 

To receive email updates about the consultation on Ryebank Fields, add your name and email address here.

 

Join the Friends of Ryebank Fields Facebook group, and follow the campaign on Twitter and Instagram.

 

22 October 2022