by Jay Coward, South East London Socialist Party
Housing in London is notoriously crooked, morbid, and exclusionary. This includes historically working-class, culture-rich areas like Brixton, Lewisham, and Peckham.
in Southwark — Photo: Berkay Kartav
South East London Socialist Party has launched a new campaign. We are building for a people’s budget in Southwark — an opportunity for the local community to decide how money is spent on in our area, to reverse cuts to services, and to make genuinely affordable housing a given, rather than a luxury.
To fight for this, we are opposing the plans by private housing firm Berkeley Homes. The company has been given consent and contract by the Labour government to develop housing in the Aylesham area of Peckham, promising to include ‘affordable’ social housing.
But Berkeley plans to build 877 homes, with only 12% ‘affordable’. So-called affordable homes are 80% of market rent, so these are often actually unaffordable for many people.
4,000 families waiting
If this wasn’t bad enough, in Peckham there are 4,000 families on the waiting list for social housing, and Berkeley Homes has already lowered their promised number of affordable homes from 270 to just 77.
There will be 13 new high-rise tower blocks, in a historically low-rise area. This would block Peckham’s skyline completely, destroy its character, displace current tenants and businesses, with no plans for relocation for them, and make Peckham High Street a wind tunnel, due to the location and height of the buildings.
But how do we fight these conditions? Well, many already are.
Housing repair workers — employed by Southwark Labour council — are fighting the good fight for better treatment for their vital work. And local group Aylesham Community Action is raising consciousness about Berkeley’s plans, and organising demonstrations against it.
How long until it happens again?
If Labour and the property developers get away with this, how long until it happens again? We cannot wait for another private housing plan to demolish another working-class area.
We need to obliterate the conditions that make this possible. Instead of the existing spineless and money-hungry Labour government, we need a new mass workers’ party — comprised of activists, workers, trade unionists, and local tenants, fighting people’s budgets, mass council housing building, and rent control.
The working class must be organised when situations like this arise to prevent and reverse them.