Reflections on the #SAVEBRICKLANE campaign, two years on. And how it fits into the wider history of the Battle for Brick Lane and beyond. And the attempt to write a manifesto for it and the #Endz.
It all started on one winter day…
“All the leaves are brown (all the leaves are brown)
And the sky is gray (and the sky is gray)
I’ve been for a walk (I’ve been for a walk)
On a winter’s day (on a winter’s day)”
Mamas and Papas – California Dreaming
In the aftermath of the General Election defeat of 2019, many of us activists got together in various places to meet up, to thank each other for the collective effort. But also to make sense of the defeat and speculate as to what the future of politics has in store. How did we get here? Where should we go? What do we do now in the post-Corbyn political landscape?
It was in one of these gatherings that I met Stuart Fancy, an international chess player and political activist from Papua New Guinea. We campaigned together in City and Westminster, Parliamentary seat, for Gordon Nardell. In conversation, he told me about his activism in the 1970s in Brick Lane against the National Front and was taken in by a Bangladeshi family where he made friends. One of whom, was Rafiq. I said I knew Rafiq and then passed on the contact details and agreed to arrange a meal.
A few weeks later at the prearranged meal. I sat there mesmerised. It was amazing to watch these two, veterans of the Battle for Brick Lane in the 1970s and early 80s, talk about their experiences. The solidarity between activists and the then Bangladeshi migrant community. Despite the grinding poverty, everyone came together. Living under the same roof, eating from the same plates, and sharing the wounds and bruises of the running battles with the National Front. Fascists, whose sole purpose was to drive the then migrant communities from the area.
The conversation turned to me. I spoke from my experience grounded in grassroots activism and constituency work as a Councillor in the #Endz. It seems the same problem exists but in a different form. This time the victims are everyone who lives in the area, all demographics, the 99%. The perpetrators this time, being the 1%, are an unholy alliance of speculative global capital and public bodies forcing existing communities out of the area, through a deliberate set of policies and practices.
The men in boots (Doc Martins) have gone and have been replaced by the Men in Grey Suits. Something needs to be done.
“We’re the Cops of the World
We pick and choose as please, boys
Pick and choose as please
You’d best get down on your knees, boys”
Cops of the World – Phil Ochs
‘Now is the winter of our discontent’
Scene 1, Act 1 – Richard III – William Shakespeare
Old Wine, New Bottle: The East End Clearances
“Highland Clearances, the forced eviction of inhabitants of the Highlands and western islands of Scotland, beginning in the mid-to-late 18th century and continuing intermittently into the mid-19th century. The removals cleared the land of people, primarily to allow for the introduction of sheep pastoralism”
Encyclopedia Britannica
The meal took place nearly a month after the decision by the Secretary of State to call in the controversial planning decision to convert the 400-year-old Whitechapel Bell Foundry into a boutique hotel. I explained that residents had a general feeling that Tower Hamlets Council was working against their interests, aggravated by a sense of being forced to move out of the area. Nothing in my experience of being a councillor at Tower Hamlets has challenged that view, in fact, it has reinforced it. An ‘Alice Through the Looking Glass‘ world, where things are known by their opposite.
We departed from the meal each own ways. Subsequently, the Covid-19 pandemic hit, after the first lockdown amongst other things I prepared for the public inquiry into the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. It was due to my involvement in the Whitechapel Bell Foundry I was approached by residents who lived next to the Truman Brewery, who wanted to oppose a proposed application for corporate offices and a shopping mall. After an initial meeting, I asked for some time to quietly go into Brick Lane and find out what was happening.
What I found was shocking. I found a business community, consisting of small independent owners cowed into silence. They knew the application was bad for them, but they were scared or apathetic, or both, to speak out and object. In one instance I found a situation, where it is alleged, that the Truman Brewery sent in their Security Guards into a business, and intimidated the business into allowing them to collect signatures in support of the application from their customers under false pretences. This sense of helplessness was reinforced by well-connected individuals in the local Tower Hamlets Labour Party, visiting the businesses and stakeholders and reminding them of the official line, that what is good for the Truman Brewery is good for the community. One employee of a local business told me in despair, “Bhai, what can we do? They will force us out of here. They have money, connections and backing”.
The proposed development by the Truman Brewery will disrupt the delicate circular economy in the area. Setting a precedent for other similar developments. Riaisng speculative land prices and rents in the areas. Local independent businesses will be forced out, businesses who spend most of their income locally. In their place chain retailers will come in, who take money out of the local economy. A vicious cycle, eventually leading to the death of Brick Lane as we know it.
That summer evening, as I rode home on my bike from Brick Lane, I had a wave of deep anger burning inside me. When I got home, the emotions got to me and I just could not sleep that night. All the struggles by previous generations for human dignity have amounted to nothing. We’re back again to square one. Or have we?
“Honour is that which no man can give you and no man can take away.”
Rob Roy MacGregor
Taking on the ‘Line System’ in the East End: The #SAVEBRICKLANE Uprising
“Line System:… Was a system introduced in… Assam for the first time in 1920 under which the Muslim immigrants from East Bengal…, were required to settle in certain areas of the Brahmaputra Valley of Assam. It was a mechanism to segregate the immigrant Bengali-speaking Muslim population …”
Banglapedia
I went back to the residents and said for us to succeed then we need to create a wide coalition, the narrative of our opposition to the application must go beyond standard planning issues but should be one of social justice. With the widest possible coalition, representing the entire community. Our unstated aim is to break the unwritten rule, or ‘Line System’, which segregates demographics into silos.
With a ‘Hegemonic’ Tower Hamlets Council and the Tower Hamlets Labour Party. In a de facto capacity, playing one group against the other, and in a de jure capacity acting as an arbitrator. A system of governance that guarantees outcomes for a chosen few, with a minimum level of scrutiny. A state of play where the East End is converted to a massive Latifundium, a large private estate. Where the vast majority of residents, independent businesses and community stakeholders are turned into serfs, with little or no influence over their built environment.
“ The starting-point of critical elaboration is the consciousness of what one really is, and is ‘knowing thyself’… “
Antonio Gramsci – Prison Notebooks, Volume 2
So the #SAVEBRICKLANE coalition came into being with a wide group of stakeholders. With Nijjor Manush taking the lead in a public-facing role. All throughout while we tried to organise, we faced interference and obstruction from members of the Tower Hamlets Labour Party establishment. I shall be eternally grateful to local councillor Shad Chowdhury and Chair of the Bricklane Business Association and BAME Forum, (Uncle) Azmol Hussain. Whenever local big wigs, including Mayor John Biggs, came to him about the campaign, his standard reply was, ‘Puru is like a son to me.’
And the rest is a roller-coaster history, of highs and lows of a two-year campaign well documented in the media. A campaign of positional warfare, from Art Exhibitions to demonstrations, to protests and press conferences. A couple of years on, I can proudly state that the #SAVEBRICKLANE campaign does not represent a community, but the community. With an inclusive narrative that all can buy into. A vision of the East End, that is for the many, not the few. But how do we articulate this vision into concrete policy and action points?
” Maulana Bhasani’s position (against the Line System) was slightly different. Being a peasant leader, he called upon all sections of the peasant communities to unite for a cause ‘ land must be available to all landless people irrespective of religious denominations and for better agricultural production.”
Banglapedia – Line System
Unity in Multiplicity: A Manifesto for Brick Lane?
“Neither flesh, nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered.”
T. S. Elliot – The Four Quartets
All throughout the #SAVEBRICKLANE campaign, all parties in the coalition acknowledged that we need to go beyond the demand of stopping the planning application by the Truman Brewery, we need to set out a positive alternative. It started off with an alternative Community Master Plan for the Truman Brewery site. But as the campaign went on, and as the conversations with residents, businesses and stakeholders grew in number. A realisation occurred that the problems in Brick Lane go beyond the controversial Truman Brewery application for a shopping mall.
A year ago I decided to write down the problems faced by communities in the area, from speculative property developers aided by the council, ‘The fight for a People’s East End and the rise of the Rebel City’. I tried to articulate the problems faced in the area as well as possible solutions.
In the piece, I talk about, “a collective community effort for the common good. In order to keep the value produced under the control of residents who produced it. What David Harvey calls the ‘right to the city’. A double-pronged political attack, forcing public institutions to supply more in the way of public goods, for public purposes, along with the self-organization of whole populations to use and supplement those goods. The goal is not some theoretical exercise, but the actual implementation of policies that have been tried and tested, known as Community Wealth Building.”
In order to address this demand, in March 2022, the #SAVEBRICKLANE Coalition organised a policy conference on Community Wealth Building, with policies and ideas co-produced by grassroots activists, residents and stakeholders attending the meeting. Policy ideas are now being put into a format, so as to act as a platform to change policies and practices by Tower Hamlets Council. The goal being to shift the bias from wealth generated by land speculation to actual wealth generated by communities and people.
Detractors of the #SAVEBRICKLANE campaign accuse it of being anti-change, or anti-development. In fact in one of the local Labour Party meeting, at the General Committee. A former Deputy Mayor accused supporters of the campaign of being luddites.
A false accusation, as the campaign actually embraces change. Change in keeping with the character and history of the East End. Brick Lane and the East End in general, have been a place for marginalised communities and marginal economic activities, for nearly 1,000 years. In fact, the word Brick Lane is derived from the polluting Brick Making guilds in medieval times, who were placed east of the city walls to carry out their marginal activities.
And ever since it has been a safe space, for marginalised communities to generate and keep wealth and enrich their urban environment, materially and culturally. From refugees of the 100 Years War to Flemish weavers in Tudor times. From Huguenots of the 18th century to Irish Catholics and East European Jews in the 19th century. Now Muslim Bengali and Somali migrants of the 20th and 21st century. Within that context, there is also the internal migration within the UK to the East End, attracted by its status as a European hub for artists and artisans.
As #SAVEBRIcKLANE Campaigner, Saif Osmani would put it, ‘A Unity through Multiplicity’ is what defines Brick Lane and the wider East End. The constant theme throughout the ages, for all demographics and communities, is a safe haven for those at the margins of society. A creative space free from the suffocating influences of the money men and their institutional paraphernalia.
Two and a half years on, I met up again with Stuart and Rafiq. We compared notes on whether things have got better, narrating what each of us got up to. Stuart mentioned his involvement in the Black Lives Matter protests in Bristol. Rafiq mentioned his collaboration with the photographer Paul Trevor. A new exhibition at the Four Corner Gallery on Roman Road. Each with our own contribution, to the Battle for Brick Lane, past, present and future. Unity through Multiplicity.
“When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”
Edmund Burke
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