Changes happen in our built environment all the time. You just don’t like it when poor people take matters into their own hands.
Over the weekend a large crowd of protestors in Bristol pulled down a statue of 18th century trader, slaver, politician and all-round Imperial geezer Edward Colston. This comes as the latest in a series of vicious far left attacks on traditional monuments and symbols across the world.
Now I could wax lyrical about what this tells us about commemoration and historical memory. Or I could talk about how this event has done a great job of starting a “national conversation” about the Imperial legacy of Britain and focused attention on what sort of people and practices we want to commemorate. Or I could take the trollish (but admittedly valid route) and write a satirical column about the tragic and thuggish vandalism of Jimmy Saville statues in spite of his immense charitable contributions. Instead though, I want to use this episode as an example of the power disparity that exists when changing where we live.
I used to live in a part of East London called Poplar, right next to a block of flats called Robin Hood Gardens. I would walk past these flats more or less every day, since they were next to the DLR station I’d use to get other, more gentrified parts of London. Robin Hood Gardens became a bit of a cause celebre for a subsection of Guardian readers, who regard brutalist architecture as an essential chapter in Britain’s architectural history. This architectural regarding is usually done through a telescope from the attic conversions of their 5 bed Edwardian townhouses in Camden or Chorlton rather than from lived experience in modernist council flats in Poplar or Hulme, but there you are. Point is that Robin Hood Gardens was regarded by some people, and it must be said some people of influence in British society, as a landmark of historic importance.
Robin Hood Gardens estate, Poplar
More importantly, hundreds of people regarded it as home. Residents were mainly ambivalent about the relative architectural merits of the complex, being much more concerned about having long term social housing options in the community they had lived in their entire lives in and recognised as their own. Some defended Robin Hood Gardens, others wanted to see it replaced by more modern, efficient and attractive housing options. No residents, and certainly no brutalist architecture fans, wanted what happened to happen.
What happened was Blackwall Reach- a new development covering the old Robin Hood Gardens site and more. The developers initially tried flogging the new development to locals, including certified young professional, me. I received a flyer through my flat’s letterbox advertising “affordable” studio apartments starting from just £450,000. Hmmm. This tale is all to familiar across London, and to be fair to the property developers (a sentence I cannot believe I am writing) they did include a fairly decent number of social houses in the new development. It still represents the destruction and gentrification of a community of course, but at least the residents aren’t getting relocated to entirely different neighbourhoods *cough* Brixton *cough*.
I use this tale as an example to demonstrate that the built environment gets changed all the time, and sometimes those changes are controversial, either for architectural, historic or aesthetic reasons, or because it literally costs livelihoods as it happens. Compared to being hurked out of a community you’ve lived in and helped build for 40 years, not being able to walk past a statue of a bloke who, if you were being honest, you didn’t know from Adam until last week, doesn’t seem so serious, does it?
And let’s be honest, the statue’s removal was not serious. Not compared to losing access to a community you’ve lived in all your life. Not compared to being under threat of losing your home. Not compared to the destruction of historically significant sites. It’s a classic hot button topic for right-wingers in that it’s a rhetorical debate with no material consequence whatsoever. Anyone angry at its removal must convince us why it was so important to keep a statue – a statue of a person whose company transported an estimated 80,000 people to a life of slavery on another continent just so he could make some money – up in the first place.
Here, finally, enters Sir Kier Starmer. Archbishop Kier used the now standard soft left/liberal refrain that while he of course will shed no tears to see the statue go, of course not, he is unhappy with the manner of the removal. See, Saint Kier reckons the statue should have been “brought down properly” with “consent,” which strikes me as a very odd thing to say as I cannot think of a more consensual way to bring down a statue than by the collective effort of protestors in front of a cheering crowd, and the actual pulling down of the statue was about as “proper” a toppling of a statue I’ve ever seen. Compare it to this lame af “toppling” of a statue of another Imperialist bastard in London. At least the community were able to celebrate it, but surely it wasn’t as cathartic as literally pulling the fucker over yourself.
Ahh, but Fleet Admiral Starmer meant through “proper” legal channels. He was condemning the fact that it happened “illegally.” So let’s go back to Blackwall Reach and other developments in London. That was all legal. That was all “proper.” Who benefitted? The developers, the investors, the speculators. They do things properly because we live in a legal system which systematically excludes working class people, especially working class people of colour. Residents get “consulted,” “heard” and “listened to” but they’re not in the driving seat. They don’t get to decide what the development will look like, who it will cater to, what services it wit will provide, even what statues it will contain. All of the decisions about the modern built environment are made for them and underpinned by a judicial system which they have limited access to.
As Labour leader, Starmer should be representing and championing working people in finally taking even the smallest measure of control about their built environment. He should not be surprised when they seek ways of doing so which circumvent institutions and means which have been proven to systemically discriminate against them. The “proper” way is the way of the developer. It is the way of the landlord. It is the way of the capitalist. It is the way of the slaveholder. Consider that the legal system which Starmer encourages protestors to channel their anger through and seek to redress grievances via, is the same one which has forced working people from homes, communities and their own personal histories through compulsory purchase orders. Is Starmer really this blind to the obvious power discrepancies at play here, or is it that he is not actually on the side of working people at all?
The positive side of all this, of course, is that working people and working people of colour are showing they’re done with being “consulted.” They want to take direct control over the communities and built environments they live in, and why shouldn’t they? If you think the pulling down of a statue if a travesty, I’m afraid to tell you, that this really is just the start.
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