Red Road Rage?
by Ken Gibb
It had all been going so well. While there is always a modicum of cynicism about mega events and there have been one or two specific problems in the re-development of the Dalmarnock area (such as a very public refusal to move out by one family), the run-up to the Glasgow Commonwealth Games was going smoothly. That was until the decision was taken to blow up five of the six iconic Red Road flats in the north of Glasgow during the opening ceremony.
My immediate reaction was that this was ‘what an odd thing to do’. Organisers said that this was both a commemoration and a reflection of the revival and renewal of the city – but it was all widely viewed as a rather bizarre, even gross form of entertainment. A strange image to send round the world about the city. A second element to the story was the decision to leave one of the remaining six blocks standing since it still had a job to house a proportion of Glasgow’s large asylum seeker/refugee population.
The local communities, politicians, Glaswegians and the arts community launched an effective campaign complete with media support and a 17,000 plus petition of opposition. The Deputy First Minister made the best contribution saying that she still supported the demolition but that it had to be done ‘sensitively’. This conjures up interesting images of somehow less explosive detonations.
The tide was however unstoppable and the decision was finally taken not to do the blow down during the opening ceremony. Since then there has been both a process of damage limitation by one side and further comment by both the victors and a still rather bemused audience (in which I include myself). The official response was that for safety and security reasons (i.e. there might be a protest) it was better not to go ahead.
What are to make of this episode? In the first place it would seem to show a pretty inadequate consultation process – something the protagonists have generally been pretty good at hitherto. Second, a bit like that elapsing time period when the position of a minister becomes untenable and eventually resignation becomes inevitable, there was a real sense that the decision would not hold and they would have to backtrack. Third, as far as I understand it, there is no question that the flats will not be coming down though I do not think anyone is yet suggesting that it should be co-ordinated for the closing ceremony! Fourth and perhaps more positively, it has brought the position of the asylum seekers back however briefly to the foreground of housing and city debates in Glasgow.
A final point. As I have argued in an earlier post – I do not have a problem with demolition per se and think it is a useful solution in certain circumstances, as is often the case in Glasgow and elsewhere but I also recognise that other positive outcomes are possible for the re-use of such buildings – as GHA have shown converting a multi in Ibrox into mid market rent, which is now fully let. There are also refurbished former council multi-storey flats just a stone’s throw from the opening ceremony.
I know there are commentators and academics who are profoundly critical of both the community effects of demolition/clearance (as many of the same people are of the Commonwealth Games project itself). While they had a point to say that the opening ceremony blow down was a mistake and ill-thought through, I think it is not correct to view one stage (the clearance) of a huge and lengthy regeneration programme going on across Glasgow as in some way pathologising the poor and its communities. I have been directly involved in several big regeneration programmes and well remember understandably cynical tenants not believing the promises we were making after previous failures by their former landlord. We knew these things had worked elsewhere and knew we had the resources and expertise to make it work there. It did – but they had to see it for themselves. Simply dismissing the process because of one albeit dramatic destructive bit of symbolism at a point in time in the case of Red Road is a category error. Rather: judge it by its results in terms of homes, community and the like.
Ken Gibb's 'Brick by Brick' 
Helpful blog piece. I too had a first reaction of “Odd”, but quickly followed by a sort of “Well, OK you’ve got the attention, so let’s see how this goes. It did then go remarkably badly. I’d have to say I found it a little dismaying to be reminded, along the way, that there is still a deep and widespread tendency in some of the Scottish population that’s seems entrenched in victimhood and that only becomes readily animated by any perceived slight or ‘official’ wrongdoing. Indeed, I have commented online how it seemed that some individuals got very animated and angry about the original decision to blow-down the Red Road Flats – then got very animated and angry about the decision to reverse the decision.
On my more substantial point; the entire episode is further proof positive of the inabilities and lack of true commitment on the part of institutional Glasgow when it comes to meaningful consultation or participation with communities of place or interest. (As for community empowerment, again, let’s just not waste time on that). I still ponder on whether there was a germ of a ‘good idea’ behind the blow-down proposal – around the theme of, ‘that’s the past, we are getting out of it and moving on and here’s a dramatic illustration to the world of that’.
The lack of appropriate consultation or ‘piloting’ of the concept meant, however, it was probably inevitably doomed. Maybe fanciful, but real consultation might have engendered meaningful participation of the original and remaining population of the neighbourhood in the actual demolition… say with some formal ‘demolitions’ of some of the city’s institutional structures and cultures that have (and continue?) to operate in simply wrong ways.
I remain of the view that demolition of the Red Red Flats had become the only really practical way forward. The ‘city’ has already expended much on trying to turn the neighbourhood around in several ways. Perhaps the institutional incapacity on engagement has much to do with that ongoing failure – but ongoing failure it was. I’d also suggest that a little more reflection is needed on the part of some would-be community protagonists – partly with reference to the litmus test test of ‘how many people given a meaningful choice would have chosen to live there?’
Thanks Edward – I wondered what you made of the comment from Caledonian TV?
I don’t think there IS any serious doubt the Red Road MUST come down… It’s well past the point of no return. But If there IS a deep and widespread tendency in some of the Scottish population to be entrenched in victimhood then perhaps there is a very good reason for it?
I can tell you first-hand (for I grew up there) that the Red Road’s reputation for crime, disorder and deprivation was not quickly or naturally gained. Rather, it was the direct result of seeding the area with known anti-social types whilst simultaneously abdicating responsibility for proper stewardship and maintenance of the place.
The buildings were NOT in any way sub-standard. From the age of about 10 I lived in a warm, comfortable, spacious flat in Petershill Drive… When I returned from London – having completed my training as a television cameraman – it was back, by choice, to the Red Road; and a nother large spacious flat complete with carpeted foyer, Controlled CCTV access piped into every home, hall porters, private parking… I had an office and edit suite and a darkroom in my flat. And started what is now one of the longest-established video production companies in Scotland from there…
The sense of victimhood comes from a lack of control of their own destiny and the fact that – for political and financial gain – these commmunities never get the opportunity to stablise. The history of ‘regeneration’ in Glasgow is shameful… And in this particular area very much so…
I recall as a toddler being hoisted by my Grandfather up to the window of our tenement flat in Bucksburn Road – not half-a-mile from the Red Road Flats. Our Tenement was one of the post-war ones. – Not damp or lacking a bathroom or any other facilities.
“See the skyscraper son! Look!”. Papa had lived in America for a while as a youngster and was duly impressed by this latest sign of modernity in his post-war Glasgow.
In fact the war was almost two-decades past. And like most parts of war-torn Britain, Glasgow was allegedly on a journey to becoming some sort of ideal. Schemes like Red Road were seen almost as a point of completion, another step to rebuilding a city of substance. One that would settle into a calm progressive peace for hopefully centuries to come…
Certainly, as a child I was served well by the neat little primary school. A tiny but perfectly-formed library educated me in extra-curricular things like astronomy and electronics. – How television sets worked (and how to fix them) and how to develop photographs and make my own home-movies.
I was, as I say nine or ten when we moved into our clean, neat, warm, well-insulated flat in the Red Road. – We weren’t cleared from any slum or any such like nonsense. This was a move forward – and at some expense; for the rents were high in these premium homes!
I went to the library and learned about Le Corbusier and the brave new world I was now a part of. Late childhood and teenage years progressed satisfactorily. I was again well-served by All Saints Secondary school. As a seven or eight year old I’d watched that start to be built at the top of Bucksburn Road. New, shiny, bright progressive…
But far from ‘running their course’ far from ever reaching that point of completion it’s actually a case of things not-quite coming to a head… Matters being engineered so that they wouldn’t…
By the time they actually ‘finished’ the Red Road scheme properly and opened the shops that were built in the middle of it – A good seven years after the houses were let – the council were already getting rid of the old caretakers that had stewarded the place so well in its early years.
A few indifferent men were left to ‘look after’ the whole scheme; you
rarely saw them! – There was a smokey basement room where you might discover them huddled over cards if a lift broke down… But they weren’t interested in taking care of the place… Foyers were no longer washed. Children no longer warned about their misbehaviour with “ah know your mammy”. Once-gleaming windows became diffuse with dirt.
The council, as I say, also started deliberately seeding the area with known criminals and anti-social tenants; where previously housing officers had been highly selective. It now seemed they’d go out of their way to place an anti-social family next to quiet respectable people.This was the beginning of the end for Red Road – and from then on it the careful orchestration of its demise was played out…
It wasn’t even finished before they started running it down!
Likewise the old All Saints school – opened in 1972 or 73… By ’88 and the time of the Garden Festival they wanted to pull it down again! Not that there was anything REALLY wrong with it. There was just money to be made. They finally got their way, replacing it with a PFI-funded (read; financiers getting their nose into the public purse) shadow of its former self, and in the process depriving the area of what had been a well-used community play area.
My Mother remembered – as a girl in the early 50’s – playing in the foundations of the ‘modern tenements’ we had lived in. There was nothing wrong with those houses, many exist throughout the country and are refurbished as very comfortable homes. But they have been pulled down too…
The library is gone, so too is the local college that served also to provide local sports and leisure facilities… The area is much depleted from what it was 30 years ago; all in the name of ‘regeneration’ or ‘progress’… Nothing really ran its course there…
If it worked well it was taken away…
And those occupying the carefully regimented rows of stadt-controlled housing units today actually won’t even have the level of ammenity they did when the towers stood tall… Echoes of 1950s Easterhouse and Drumchapel there…
I’ve seen it pointed out that there are many parts of Glasgow in their fourth phase of ‘regeneration’ in 120 years; that ISN’T a good thing, for it reflects chronic instability, lack of substance and failure… Springburn, Barmulloch and Balornock has suffered more than most… This community has lived with the turmoil of so-called regeneration for some sixty or so years that I can trace… Never-quite ‘getting there’; never-quite achieving stability…
Having watched how some of them are thrown together (and being aware of some of the issues) I predict confidently that in 20-30 years time we’ll be reading of yet another cycle of ‘regeneration’ as the insubstantial houses currently being built in the area – at what appears to be an obscenely-inflated cost – yet again fail the people of that community.
Ask yourself what good it does for generation after generation to live with this sort of instability?
The plain truth is ‘The Regeneration Game’ benefits only the financiers, developers and the corrupt politicos that play it – ordinary folk are just the rags in the spin cycle. And for that reason it’s an indication of abject failure.
If people have a sense of victimhood, it strikes me as being quite justified.
Thanks for this detailed and heartfelt response. I understand the despair of repeated cycles of regeneration but wonder what the alternative would be. How do we break out of this cycle you so vividly describe?
Caledonian TV what an impressive and masterful commentary! As an Easterhouse survivor of the same era I fully respect and empathise with what you detail. Allow me two observations on the victimhood stuff. First is that in my experience some of the most ‘articulate’ promoters of the victimhood I have in mind are not those who ‘lived the experience’. I long ago learned from real hard life experience that there are some (not least in the field of politics, and in a certain element in the land of the third sector intermediaries) who benefit from (or even exploit) the experience of the others, the actual victims.
Second observation is with regards to the people like yourselves who did indeed ‘live the experience’. My plea is that victimhood is not enough. The periodic outbursts of protest (so beloved by a predatory and divisive elements in the popular media), the ‘humour’ of the likes of Rab C Nesbitt ‘comedy’ scripts etc. are ultimately pointless and ineffectual. In fact they persuade the true victims to remain in the victimhood trough by persuading then that’s all OK so long as they can get by by ‘having a laugh’ and railing against authority (that they recurrently vote into office).
As for your comment on the ‘Regeneration Game’, I can only add my own experience and knowledge. Couple of years back, the Scottish Government ran a national ‘consultation’ on the need for a new community regeneration strategy. The-then leading Minister Alex Neil stated that Scotland ‘had never had a community regeneration strategy worthy of the name’. I’d then ask what did that say about all that had gone before? – and I’d also observe that going by the Red Road Flats fiasco nothing has changed.
As Ken here knows, I keep banging on about a main point in my responses at the time of that consultation to the Scottish Government. That was that the entire history of so-called regeneration across the UK has been marked by a singular failure. That failure was in the field of community empowerment – or of even just community engagement and consultation (again see Red Road Flats fiasco). I provided an extensive bibliography on the evidence of those failures over decades – not one reference or citation appeared in the document that the Scottish Government produced and call a ‘strategy’.
Caledonian TV, your further observations would be welcome, especially on the need for fundamental change and my suggested need move on from victimhood.
You’re very kind Edward…
The alternative Ken? – Completion. An agenda based on honestly seeking stability and building homes and communities that are more than just housing units… Places that give people the opportunity to participate in society and adopt its positive values… Both through giving people room and facilities to grow; and seeking stability. As I understand it that WAS the post-war objective; although it quite plainly DID get lost among the way.
It’s not enough to build mere shelter… People need homes they can live and breath and grow in.
And the sad thing is, we very-nearly got there at one time…
For instance; I spoke of All Saints School… ‘Red Ash’ playing fields sat at ‘a’ centre of the scheme (it had a couple). Barmulloch College, All Saints and St Catherine’s Primary all backed onto those fields… Of an evening you could (at the college) hire badmington courts, learn pottery or guitar or a dozen other things… Friday night was swimming night. The Red Ash was left open – football and other such things were expected to be contained to that and similar areas. Peaceful streets and well-exercised kids resulted.
The tiny little library… Governed by a stern, slightly-posh lady who – if you were interested in a subject would go well out of her way to source the right reading material for you. The studious, curious and just plain quiet could fill their minds at will – providing their hands and faces were washed of course!
There was a community centre too… Another Primary, a speacial needs school. Rows of shops. This wasn’t a bad place to grow up at all! Not in the slightest… It’ produced Doctors, Nurses, Police Officers, Engineers, Builders – Even an MSP!
Quite a lot of joined-up-thinking had gone into that area.
Many houses had big gardens where you could grow your own or put up a shed and indulge in some productive hobby… Radio controlled planes, model railways, vintage motorcycles, classic cars restored, pottery fired… You name it! It went on!
It worked too well! Had to be killed off!
As I sit here in a leafy village just outside Edinburgh with open fields in front of me (The Kirknewton country estate) I’m reminded of the space I had to play in… Miles and miles of old railway ground – What was the Balornock railway sheds. We have CCTV out to the yard here; and I can see the young lad next-door tinkering happily with his old banger across the way – he’ll learn…
Bangerless and (even if they could acquire one) spaceless the young lads of Springburn today congregate in corners of wasteland. Lager in hand at 11:00am… What else is there to do? Even the most trivial of ambition is as unrealistic as flying to the moon. Even if you HAD the notion of taking up a hobby – and maybe later turning it into a wee business… Or at least by dint of it keeping yourself off the street corners and out of trouble, where and how might you go about that?
For instance, the new houses that are going up… Where’s the space? Rank with stadt-dictated regimentation they have gardens; but little hope of taking up gardening… Not the space for a shed or the access for a wheelbarrow. In addition, ‘It’s not your house! it’s public property’ seems to be mentality being applied. And I’ve heard that song sung before… For some years to come the stadt will require its photo-opportunities of these new schemes; can’t have those nasty smelly weegies cluttering up the place with their chave tat now can we?
Already you see the grass growing ragged outside some of these houses. People can’t do anything to claim them, they’re subjects of the stadt occupying accomodation; not folk setting down at home. Why should they take any responsibility for them?
Rab C Nesbitt… They used to shoot that in Springburn. How, in our 20s we howled at the hapless Rab and his kind!
While we plied trades and built businesses there they were… Guys of our own background who just wouldn’t sieze the nettle. Contemptable and certainly something other than working class. At that stage in time certainly, these ‘victims’ were to some extent self-created, for they’d grown up in a period where opportunity was there. They were literally a “waste of space” simply because they HAD “wasted the space” and the opportunity granted to them…
I’m not so sure that’s been so for a couple of decades now though!
Like the ‘Regeneration Game’ there is a lot of money in poverty. And a lot of people seem to be very interested in keeping the poor poor…
” That failure was in the field of community empowerment – or of even just community engagement and consultation (again see Red Road Flats fiasco). I provided an extensive bibliography on the evidence of those failures over decades – not one reference or citation appeared in the document that the Scottish Government produced and call a ‘strategy’.”
– Quite so… I’m unsurprised Edward. These guys aren’t interested in the truth or the reality or solving anyone’s problems. They’re simply not people of integrity… They’re not honest… They’ll do what they like, say what they like and write the history books of what went on to suit themselves…
Here’s another example from Red Road…
When I first heard of Red Road’s proposed demolition I – as a legitimate film maker and former resident – proposed to make a film about its demise. I required NOTHING by way of public funding – I own a production company; I have the kit! I only needed a little co-operation and a little access from GHA, Safedem and the other relevant city bodies.
And, as I was at the time also a lecturer in one of the City’s colleges; I even offered to try and tie-in the project with the education of Glasgow’s latest generation of film makers and turn the whole project over to the college…
At every turn I was either blocked or ignored. – Why?
Well the story I would tell you and please do remember I actually lived through it – is actually quite a bittersweet one of a good, decent community laid-low by council mismanagement. –The deliberate seeding of the area with known criminals and anti-social tenants. The deliberate down-grading of facilities and neglect of the buildings etc…
And it would have closed with a question – why did this happen?
Now – if my perception is wrong, it just won’t be possible to tell that story… If there are cogent counters to the thing I claim then out with them!
But… Such has been the paranoia of the Council that the last time I attempted to film – As, I stress I am legally entitled to do – from the public street, GHA/Safedem goons had no less than THREE Police cars despatched to interfere with me going about my legitimate business! Three! Lights flashing and horns blaring!
We might reasonably ponder the level of paranoia, not to mention the willingness and ability to abuse hard-pressed public resource that drove such an action!
The stadt has produced its own carefully fabricated version of Red Road’s history…The ‘Milngavie Mafia’ as I call them – Castle Greyskull’s ‘creative arm’ wheel in their own ‘special weans’ from time to time to write social history that they require… Ordinary folk like me – even if we ARE highly experienced – don’t get a look-in when it comes to official contracts, commissions or residencies…
I started what is now one of the longest-established video production companies in Scotland from a flat in that scheme… Do you see that fact recorded anywhere in anyone’s work? And bear in mind that ‘back in the day’ when he was just off the boat from Ireland; Mark O’Neill – now a high heid yin with Glasgow Life – lodged with a friend of my ex-wife in one of the flats; and was in-and-out of our house frequently! So it’s NOT something ‘they’ were unaware of…
Possible self-interest aside; they had the chance to engage with the colleges that are educating young Glaswegians. Not to mention the fact that the area still does have its fair share of writers, poets, artists, photographers and indeed film-makers. In fact even if the work hadn’t gone to Stow College as I’d suggested ( I was lecturing there at the time)- it could have went to North Glasgow college who also run various creative courses including a TV production one…
But no…
They just don’t want (for instance) the story of exactly how well the experiment of taking one block out of the mainstream stock, giving a building manager say over who it was let to, and providing high-quality facilities worked… My neighbours in that building included Doctors, Nurses and several other folk who were starting out in business… As well as many decent ordinary working-class folk…
It wasn’t long before the rest of the scheme started clamouring for the same facilities and level of service; had that happened it would have spread across the city, and radically altered the face of public housing… Couldn’t be allowed… So, like Salter’s duck, a perfectly good idea was killed off…
The concierge system that eventually went into to the rest of the blocks was a pale imitation of what had been put into Red Road Court… And that building itself was actually DOWNgraded as part of a so-called ‘refurbishment’… In fact all but essential-running maintenance ceased, they got rid of the building manager, and just let the place go to ruin…
Like the refusal to take on board and acknowledge the no-doubt valuable information you provided Edward, these are all just tiny grains of sand in a desert of dishonesty, corruption, self-serving…
I don’t think it’s just a perception that the politicos and Mandarins that run our councils just do what they like in their own interests – and to hell with the general public…
Democracy has failed the people – not that democracy isn’t a good thing; simply that it’s been acquired and perverted by a few for their own ends. People feel disenfranchised… People are disenfranchised! Dishonest people are at the helm; and even when they are caught there are not significant consequences.
DO people vote them in? Going by the turnouts not really…
Fundamental change? Well, here’s a simple idea…
1) Voting becomes compulsory…
2) Every ballot paper carries a ‘none of the above’ option.
3) In the event that a ward returns a majority of ‘none of the above’ papers all the candidates that ran in that election are barred from public office for seven years.
Here’s another…
Some mechanism is established whereby in the event of any impropriety on the part of a public servant – the matter of where they are a fit and proper person to maintain that office – is decided by a jury in a court of law… Not by a judge; but a jury of electors.
And yes… I may well be ‘deaming on’ for many years to come! 😉
We might also want to look at how contracts are awarded by public bodies… Particularly where very small contracts are involved. The current system isn’t even worth signing up to…
And in business terms the powers that be might do well to be more focused on the fact that 96% of all businesses in the UK aren’t even big enough to figure as officially ‘small’… Yet, as a factor of turnover, are twice as efficient as large companies at creating work! – In a time and place where work is one thing in short supply why does the majority of help and attention go to those who least need it and are the least efficient at creating jobs?
Regards,
Matt Quinn.
Matt,
Thanks again for this thoughtful and provocative contribution. Might also be worth looking at my former colleague Sean Damer’s piece on Red Road in today’s Scottish Review website/newsletter produced by Kenneth Roy.
Ken
Matt let me say it was not kindness on my part – rather it was respect and acknowledgement for the truth and authenticity what you posted. So much that I could, unfortunately replicate from my own experience in what you say. On the filming side, my own ambitions just now are around a re-visiting of the ‘regenerated’ people and their ‘regenerated’ communities. But that would be strongly predicted on how can we learn and do better – not a diatribe about how bad it all was/is.
Given the likely continuing condition of Scottish and UK politics I don’t share your enthusiasm for making voting compulsory – wouldn’t that simply even more legitimise a dysfunctional system? IMO when many folks comment on non-voters, they misunderstand the term ‘apathy’ ans think ikt means lazy, or uncaring or irresponsible. The proper meaning is an active decision and act to *not* do something.
I have experienced a life where it was once and inadmissible and shameful thing to admit in the pub or club that you did not vote – in my experience, more and more perfectly sensible and responsible people openly declare their non-voting and their considered reason. The most common reasons are that thye know it makes no fundamental difference and all they are doing is legitimising what is going on if they do vote. In many cases they abandon politics and turn to other forms of civic action or voluntarism. That IMO is why there is such a gap between our politics and institutions and the population at large (e.g. see: Metro-London bubble our elites inhabit; MPs’-expences-and-they-still-don’t-get-it; Britain still posing as a first order nuclear power cum policeman in the world; the Red Road Flats fiasco; and insert your own e.g).
Making it compulsory to vote does not seem convincing to me as a device in the face of all that.
My own ‘dreaming’ is for a wholesale move of resources and power over to those organisations who can demonstrate a commitment and capacity to deliver what they are resourced to deliver and do so effectively and accountability. It must be mandatory that the users of the service or product must have a *powerful* and *meaningful* role in monitoring and evaluation. Delivering economically and efficiently would have to come into the reckoning. But we have come to the situation we are in after making economics and efficiency the primary factors. That surely has demonstrated that we must now demote these factors in the order of things. One has only to anticipate the likely response to that by our institutions, not only private but also many in the public and third sectors, to know that it is indeed only ‘dreaming’.
You assert Matt that democracy has failed the people. I’d certainly agree that the institutions of democracy in the UK, starting with the political system have and are failing. No matter what the exact diagnoses, we are in dangerous times. History teaches us that in such circumstances ‘A Strong Man’ arises from the extremes promising the solutions, before delivering catastrophe.
I do agree wholeheartedly with your sentiments on the need for a return to a clear and sacrosanct apartness between politicians, our civil servants and anything that is to do with business, commerce or procurement etc. The corrosion of the apartness from the early 1980s onwards has been IMO a major driver in the decline of public ethics and morality, and faith in the political system, in the UK. Finally, just an example on that. The Minister with responsibility for infrastructure at the UK Coalition Cabinet level, was a seriously wealthy, unelected Lord. He spent a short period of some months raising expectations of a huge (never delivered) increase in infrastructure delivery. Along the way he promised to make public infrastructure work much ‘more attractive to the private sector’…. he then left for a lucrative senior post… in the private sector… in infrastructure. As that awful pundit in the Sunday Post used to say “’nuff said”.
Thank you Kenn and Matt for a stimulating instigation of this exchange.
The reason I think a bit of a diatribe is necessary is that if we are ever to learn the lessons of history, it’s important that history has not been so distorted by having been written by the victors that the lessons it carries are lost… There should be no face-saving easy-out. The record should not bear false-witness.
And bear in mind I’m saying that actually it wasn’t bad! It was just made so!
On voting… I’ve often made the futile gesture of entering a spoilt paper. As you suggest, very often the decision not to vote is wrongly dismissed as apathy. But where are we really without some way of actively indicating our disapproval on the ballot paper?
The element of compulsion? With such a broken political system in play for so many generations how else would you get past many folk’s natural cynicism? Bear in mind it’s not just the intelligent, educated and articulate that need to be re-engaged with the democratic process.
I agree with what you say with respect to a shift of resource and power. My fear is though that all that emerges is yet more quangos and the like, as the entrenched seek to hold onto their privileged positions. How do we bring about the change that’s needed?
… I read you friend’s piece Ken. He’s incorrect on a couple of points – many of those tenants DIDN’T come from grotesquely overcrowded or slum tenement housing with outside toilets! Personally, I don’t know anyone who did! Although I do know many of the older people were aggrieved at being forced out of their good sandstone tenements – complete with much bigger bathrooms than we had; many of whom had been owner-occupiers!
And it wasn’t the brutalism of the design, and the frequent breakdown of the lifts that destroyed the community… It was the fact that once the Corporation was done sending officials round to have their photaes taken, once the novelty wore off, they got rid of the men who had looked after the place properly – and started to use it as a dumping ground for anti-social types! Those that could moved into Barrat hutches as encouraged by the warm ones of the redoubtable Patrick Alllen… Those that couldn’t suffered! – The lifts were never that bad; till they cut down on the maintenance of those too!
The apologists for the demolition have actually being trying to demonise the building, the architect, the residents…
As for the asbestos… I’m aware only of the tragedy of the ‘White Mice’ – I don’t know of a single former resident who has contracted asbestosis… I’d be interested to hear of any! Personally I do suffer from lung problems; and am closely monitored – I’ve often asked if the asbestos in the flats might have been a factor, and that’s been specifically tested for… The answer is no, there is no sign of that at all… I hope there never is!
His closing comments though – I cannot fault or dispute at all.
Matt.
By sheer happenstance I picked this up in another context but it reflects my view that our democratic institutions have failed us:
“Human beings are resilient, inventive, and passionate, but our organizations mostly aren’t. Our bureaucracy-infused management models have left us with organizations that are less capable than the people who work within them. Therein lies the imperative and the opportunity: creating organizations that are fit for the future, by creating organizations that are fit for human beings.”
If you swap ‘politicians’ and ‘politics’ for managers and management, that’s my take. It was recently written by Gary Hamel, a well known and much respected writer and teacher on organisational strategy.
He sees the web, Internet and social media as the revolutionary and irresistible driver for change in management… what the driver is or could be for political change I know not.