Japan’s PM cancels overseas trip after experts issue ‘megaquake’ warning


The Japan Meteorological Agency has issued its first-ever warning of the risk of a huge earthquake along the Pacific coast


Justin McCurry in Tokyo and agencies
Fri 9 Aug 2024

Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, has cancelled a visit to central Asia this weekend after experts warned that the risk of a “megaquake” occurring off the country’s Pacific coast had increased following Thursday’s magnitude 7.1 earthquake in the south-west.

Kishida, who is battling low approval ratings and faces challenges to his leadership in a ruling party presidential election next month, announced his decision at a press conference on Friday.


Tokyo braces for another ‘big one’ on 100th anniversary of deadly quake

He had been due to hold a summit with the leaders of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan in the Kazakh capital Astana on Friday evening and to meet the Mongolian president in Ulaanbaatar on Monday, according to the Kyodo news agency.

The Japan Meteorological Agency on Thursday issued its first-ever warning of the risk of a huge earthquake along the Pacific coast after a quake on the southernmost main island of Kyushu triggered a tsunami warning. No deaths or major damage have been reported.


The agency’s warning that the risk of a huge earthquake occurring along the Nankai Trough was higher than usual does not mean that a quake will definitely occur in the coming days. Public broadcaster NHK said Kishida’s overseas trip had been cancelled so that he could prepare for any eventuality.

The meteorological agency’s megaquake advisory warned that “if a major earthquake were to occur in the future, strong shaking and large tsunamis would be generated”.

It added: “The likelihood of a new major earthquake is higher than normal, but this is not an indication that a major earthquake will definitely occur during a specific period of time.”

The advisory concerns the Nankai Trough “subduction zone” between two tectonic plates in the Pacific Ocean, where massive earthquakes have hit in the past.

The 800-kilometre (500-mile) undersea trough runs from Shizuoka, west of Tokyo, to the southern tip of Kyushu and has been the site of destructive earthquakes of magnitude 8 or 9 every 100 to 200 years.

These so-called “megathrust quakes”, which often occur in pairs, have unleashed dangerous tsunamis along the southern coast of Japan, one of the world’s most seismically active countries.

In 1707, all segments of the Nankai Trough ruptured at once, unleashing an earthquake that remains the nation’s second-most powerful on record after the March 2011 earthquake along the north-east coast.

That quake triggered a tsunami that killed more than 18,000 people and led to a triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Although it is impossible to predict the precise timing of earthquakes – apart from automated warnings that a quake could occur within seconds – government experts believe there is a 70% to 80% chance of an megaquake measuring magnitude 8 or 9 happening around the trough in the next 30 years.

In the worst-case scenario, the disaster would kill 300,000 people, with some experts estimating a financial hit as high as $13tn.

“The history of great earthquakes at Nankai is convincingly scary,” geologist Kyle Bradley and Judith A Hubbard wrote in their Earthquake Insights newsletter, but added that there was no need for the public to panic.

There was only a “small probability” that Thursday’s quake was a foreshock, Bradley and Hubbard wrote, adding: “One of the challenges is that even when the risk of a second earthquake is elevated, it is still always low.”

 

Big win in Mexico – the achievements behind the victory

6th August 2024Leave a Commenton Big win in Mexico – the achievements behind the victory

“In moves that will be of great interest to activists in Britain, government functions that had been outsourced to private and semi-private firms have been brought back in-house.”

By Tim Young, Labour Friends of Progressive Latin America

On June 2, the right-wing in Mexico suffered a historic defeat.

Claudia Sheinbaum – successor to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) of the MORENA party – won the presidential election by a landslide margin of over 32 points, becoming the first woman and first person of Jewish descent to be elected president.

The election saw Sheinbaum receiving the highest number of votes ever recorded for a candidate, surpassing López Obrador’s record of 30.1 million votes, by achieving just under 36 million votes!

The background to – and crucial to understanding – this victory is that in the last four years Mexico with ‘AMLO’ as President has made remarkable progress in social welfare, education, health, women’s rights, equality for Indigenous people and Afro-Mexicans, and in terms of the recovery of national sovereignty over resources such as petroleum, gas, electric power, water supplies and now lithium.

On the regional and global stage, it has played a leading role in the new progressive tide across Latin America.

As well as being of interest in itself, the success of this agenda also has many lessons for the Left globally.

The goal has been what movement supporters call the “4T” – a Fourth Transformation of the country through a democratic renewal to end corruption and impunity, and benefit the many, not just the few.

The main objective of the 4T agenda is to reverse decades of neoliberal policies and to promote a more equitable and people-centred economic agenda.

Key to this is prioritising social programmes, and there have been moves towards a more universal approach to welfare and social security. The effects are very real – state payments now reach 65% more people than under previous governments.

Alongside this, in an empowering move – and something it feels like we could only dream about currently in Britain – welfare programmes are now enshrined in the Constitution as entitlements rather than ‘hand-outs’.

Other new social programmes have included, but are by no means limited to:

• scholarships to students at various levels, including basic education, high school, and university, alongside vocational training opportunities
• economic support to farmers to promote sustainable rural development
• support for reconstruction efforts in areas affected by natural disasters.

In terms of seeking energy sovereignty and an end of handing over the riches of Mexico’s natural resources to multinational corporations and uber-rich oligarchs, the aim is to put people and public need before corporate greed.

Examples of progress on this front are too numerous the list, but include reining in the power of foreign mining companies through a new Hydrocarbons Law enabling permits to private firms that commit certain violations to be revoked.

Meanwhile strengthening CFE, the state-owned electricity company, has seen limiting the requirement on it to buy electricity from the private sector, meaning less loot for greedy private polluters and profiteers – something we could surely do with in terms of energy here!

This reclaiming of national wealth has helped fund vital state-led investment and infrastructure projects, including a 1,554 km-long intercity railway traversing the Yucatán Peninsula.

Also part of a more prominent role for the state and public sector, halting and reversing privatisations has been both successful and popular. In moves that will be of great interest to activists in Britain, government functions that had been outsourced to private and semi-private firms have been brought back in-house and the situation is now that the subcontracting of public services has been abolished.

Workers’ rights have also improved, starting to shift power in the workplace and economy.

The formal rights of domestic workers are now recognised for the first time, and precarious hiring practices have been eliminated, including through the banning of ‘fire-and-rehire’ style practices. Meanwhile, the process for forming new unions has been simplified.

Action has also been taken on wages and incomes. To give just one example, the largest minimum-wage increase in more than forty years saw the income of the poorest grow by 24% before COVID hit.

Finally, even statutory holidays have doubled – something I’m sure all ‘Briefing’ readers could get behind!

The lesson from Mexico then is clear – Rolling back neo-liberalism not only works, it wins for the Left too!

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• You can follow the work of the Mexico Solidarity Forum here.
• Tim Young is an organiser for Labour Friends of Progressive Latin America (LFPLA). You can follow LFPLA on Facebook and Twitter/X.
• This article was originally published in the July-August 2024 edition of Labour Briefing.

 

The powerful photography of Peter Kennard and the Art of Protest

7th August 2024Arts, Peace, Review

Leave a Commenton The powerful photography of Peter Kennard and the Art of Protest

“It is rare to find such a committed artist. Undoubtedly, he could have made a lot of money in the world of advertising or graphic design, but he has primarily remained committed to producing work that can make people think that another world is possible.”

By Dave Kellaway

Even if you have never been on a demonstration against imperialist war or nuclear weapons, it is likely that you have seen one of Peter Kennard’s hard-hitting photomontages. They have illustrated posters, books, newspapers, magazines, and pamphlets of the labour and progressive movement. If you are old enough to remember the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) or anti-Cruise Missiles demonstrations, this show will take you down memory lane. Although Kennard produced a lot of work for the anti-war and anti-nuclear weapons campaigns, he designed montages for all the big issues taken up by the Labour movement in the last five decades. You will find striking images for the miners’ strikes, anti-apartheid posters, Vietnam solidarity material, and a clever image denouncing what the US and British state have done to Julian Assange.

The gallery introduction neatly summarises Kennard’s work:

“Inspired by the work of John Heartfield (1891–1968), who pioneered montage as a political tool in the 1930s, Kennard’s montages deconstruct familiar and ubiquitous images and reimagine them through different formats and scales of publication. The works not only serve to expose the relationship between power, capital, war, and the destruction of planet Earth but also ‘to show new possibilities emerging from the cracks and splinters of the old reality“.

Heartfield did the famous photomontage agitprop against Hitler in Germany, showing the Nazis’ links to German capitalists.

Kennard is one of the few artists who have carried on this tradition. Other proponents include feminists (see Guerrilla Girls) who have deconstructed sexist images and anti-corporate or ecological activists who have altered adverts to subvert their messages. The Brandalism group is an example of the latter.

In this show, we see all the old favourites:

• The cruise missiles inserted into the Constable Haywain picture,
• The egg timer with the imperialist military skull at the top and the Palestinian flag at the bottom,
• The montage of the British soldier loading the rubber bullet in his gun alongside the image of a wounded, terrified Irish demonstrator,
• The CND symbol or clenched fist breaking the missiles,
• The Earth from space topped by fossil fuel power stations,
• A soldier’s shadow across a Ukrainian flag.

Politically, Kennard has always worked with the broad movements and actively collaborated with non-Stalinist left groups. The show includes his work for the Workers Press (WRP paper) and Socialist Challenge (IMG paper). He was able to collaborate with Ken Livingstone and the leadership of the GLC in its ‘left’ heyday. His work criticised the bureaucratised dictatorships of the East as much as the US or British imperialists.

I was particularly impressed by his more recent installations that are on show here. He uses pages from the Financial Times – the bosses’ serious newspaper – as a background to charcoal images of people from the global south (World Markets), or he projects a backlit repertoire of his iconic images through the pink pages. Another installation, entitled Boardroom, uses light, glass, and projection to deconstruct the medium of photomontage. He places a line of business cards from top companies like SERCO along the light source. BP and Shell are also featured. As a Marxist, he wants to show how the markets, boardrooms, and share prices mask a reality of exploitation, extractivism, and global inequality.

It is rare to find such a committed artist. Undoubtedly, he could have made a lot of money in the world of advertising or graphic design, but he has primarily remained committed to producing work that can make people think that another world is possible. This exhibition also reflects the way he sees his art as relating to ordinary people. It is free, and there are free newspaper copies of his greatest hits that you can take home or pin up in your workplace, community hall, or college.

Let us leave Peter Kennard with the last word on his work:

“My art erupts from outrage at the fact that the search for financial profit rules every nook and cranny of our society. Profit masks poverty, racism, war, climate catastrophe and on and on… Archive of Dissent brings together fifty years of work that all attempt to express that anger by ripping through the mask by cutting, tearing, montaging, and juxtaposing imagery that we are all bombarded with daily. It shows what lies behind the mask: the victims, the resistance, the human communality saying ‘no’ to corporate and state power. It rails at the waste of lives caused by the trillions spent on manufacturing weapons and the vast profits made by arms companies.”

P.S. It is well worth catching another free exhibition on at the same time at the Whitechapel. Dominique White, a Black artist and winner of the Max Mara Woman Artist of the Year, has an exhibition called Deadweight, which shows large-scale sculptures of wood and iron inspired by shipwrecks and black people’s connection to the sea. There is a short video that explains her collaboration with Italian artists and specialists and outlines her vision.

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• Peter Kennard: Archive of Dissent is open Tuesdays to Sundays at the Whitechapel Gallery in London until 19th January 2025.
• Dave Kellaway is on the Editorial Board of Anti*Capitalist Resistance, a member of Socialist Resistance, a member of Hackney and Stoke Newington Labour Party.
• This article was originally published by Anti*Capitalist Resistance on 31st July 202

 

“British government must scrap Legacy Act and deliver on the Stormont House Agreement” – Gerry Kelly MLA

6th August 2024Leave a Commenton “British government must scrap Legacy Act and deliver on the Stormont House Agreement” – Gerry Kelly MLA

“Since the Legacy Act was first introduced, state bodies have continued to hide information from families to cover up the British government’s shameful actions in Ireland and to protect their soldiers and agents.”

Gerry Kelly, Sinn Féin MLA for Belfast North

Sinn Féin MLA Gerry Kelly said on Monday that the British government needs to deliver on its commitment to scrap the Legacy Act and implement the Stormont House Agreement legacy mechanisms.

Gerry Kelly was speaking after the British government abandoned an appeal against a High Court ruling that its Legacy Act is incompatible with the Human Rights Act.

Gerry Kelly said: “We welcome the fact that the British government has abandoned its appeal against a High Court Ruling that the Legacy Act is incompatible with the Human Rights Act. Human rights experts, churches, the US, UN, EU, the Irish government and all main political parties on this island have opposed this cynical and cruel piece of legislation. Since the Legacy Act was first introduced, state bodies have continued to hide information from families to cover up the British government’s shameful actions in Ireland and to protect their soldiers and agents. The shutting down of legacy inquests and investigations have already had a very real and human impact on families.

It is welcome that inquests halted by the imposition of the Legacy Act will be resumed, and that families who lost loved ones during the conflict will once again have access to the criminal and civil courts. However, the ICRIR, which the current government wants to retain, does not have the confidence of most victims and survivors and it doesn’t have the powers it needs to deliver truth. The legacy mechanisms agreed at Stormont House by the two governments and political parties in 2014 provided for two separate mechanisms to conduct independent investigations and facilitate information recovery, with both bodies attracting political and public endorsement via the agreement and the subsequent public consultation. The British government should scrap its Legacy Act and implement the Stormont House Agreement mechanisms in a human rights compliant manner.”

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• Gerry Kelly is an MLA for Belfast North. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter/X and Instagram.
• This was originally published in the August 2024 Sinn Féin News Bulletin.

UK  CND

Remembering Hiroshima & Nagasaki as the world draws closer to nuclear war than ever before

Leave a Commenton Remembering Hiroshima & Nagasaki as the world draws closer to nuclear war than ever before

“As we come together to remember the destruction the atom bombs inflicted on the people of Japan, action against nuclear weapons has never been more urgent.”

Carol Turner, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), describes what happened when atom bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and reminds us how close we could be to that same fate today.

Ceremonies will be taking place in towns and cities across Britain in this coming week to remember and respect the hundreds of thousands of innocent victims of the atomic bombs that dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6th and 9th August in 1945.

At least 75,000 died in the immediate aftermath of the Hiroshima bomb; another 40,000 died when the second bomb hit Nagasaki. By the end of the year, it is estimated 210,000 were dead, which had risen to 340,000 by the end of 1950. Second and third generation Hibakusha, the survivors, still suffer severe health consequences.

London CND has estimated that over 2.3 million would die in a nuclear attack on London, and 2.6 million more would be injured. An 8-minute graphics video. What if we nuke a city, by Kurzgesagt (In a Nutshell) explains what would happen to the local population if a nuclear bomb hit their city.

As we come together to remember the destruction the atom bombs inflicted on the people of Japan, action against nuclear weapons has never been more urgent. Our world is closer to nuclear war than it has ever been:

• The war in Ukraine is escalating. The decision by the US and other NATO governments, to permit the weapons they supply to Ukraine to be deployed against military targets inside Russia is the latest in a saga of escalating threats and belligerence on both sides.

• Israel’s remorseless bombardment of the people of Gaza poses a spill-over into war across the region. Events of the past week move us even closer. Israel too is a nuclear armed state, one of nine in the world.

• All nine nuclear-armed states are capable of wielding nuclear bombs hundreds of times more powerful than those used against Japan. All nine are continuing to ‘modernise’ their nuclear arsenals.

Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki is more than an historical gesture. London Region CND’s Hiroshima Day commemoration takes place on Tuesday, 12 noon in Tavistock Square Peace Gardens, opened by the Mayor of Camden. CND General Secretary Kate Hudson will join me there for speeches, prayers, songs. and poems.

Events take place in venues across London and in others cities throughout the week. If you can’t make it, you may like to visit CND’s online exhibition or view the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum’s short testimony of a survivor.

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• Carol Turner is a Vice Chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and Chair of London Region CND. She is author of Corbyn & Trident: Labour’s continuing controversy and Walter Wolfgang: A Political Life.
• You can view a list of commemorative events here.
• You can follow the CND on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter/X.
• If you support Labour Outlook’s work amplifying the voices of left movements and struggles here and internationally, please consider becoming a supporter on Patreon.

UK

Two risks facing the labour movement – Matt Wrack, FBU

7th August 2024

Leave a Commenton Two risks facing the labour movement – Matt Wrack, FBU

“We need fighters on our side prepared to struggle, prepared to organise, prepared to think about the challenges that we face.”

The following is taken from a speech given by General Secretary of the Fire Brigades Union Matt Wrack at the eve-of-Gala rally in Durham in July.

We’ve had an election where we have driven out the spivs, the con men, and the clowns out of government, with a well-deserved eviction notice, and we should be celebrating that. I’m sure everyone had your own individual moments.

I know that firefighters had a particular dislike of Penny Mordaunt, who lied in Parliament about our pensions, with two hundred firefighters watching her in their smart uniforms, and she would not look them in the eye as she gave her comments to the House of Commons. So, we’re very pleased to see the back of her and the rest of them.

The risk for our movement, I think, is two-fold. The first one is complacency, and the second one is dismissiveness.

Complacency, because if we think the job has been done by voting Labour into office, we are making a big mistake.

There will be huge pressures put on this government to water down the legislation that we want to see in place. The job of all of us, in the friendliest way we can, by the way – I’m not talking about slagging people off – but saying in a firm, determined, organised way: you’ve been elected on the pledge of delivering on workers’ rights. Your job is now to deliver on workers’ rights, and we will be watching you every step of the way.

But there’s another risk, and that risk is dismissiveness. I understand the frustrations that people have with the Labour leadership. My union did not vote for Keir Starmer. I’ve been very forthright in a polite way about the disagreements we have with Keir Starmer on Gaza and other issues – but it would be remiss of us if we didn’t see the opportunities that open up before us with the kicking out of a Tory government and the bringing in of a Labour government which will be the first in more than a generation to start with rolling back seriously some, not enough, but some, of the anti-union legislation.

The MSL [minimum service level] for my industry is a fundamental threat to our right to operate, to our right to take industrial action, and even the repeal of that will give confidence to Fire Brigades Union members. And we can then say we’ve done that, we now need to go further, and we need to demand more.

So, it’s that risk of simply dismissing it as not going far enough, it’s been watered down. We’re talking about the Labour party here for God’s sake. It’s inevitable that there is a battle about what is delivered and what’s put in manifestos and some of us were part and parcel of that. But the question is, can we use the opportunity now to rebuild our movement? To build a movement fit for the 21st century, for the new world of work, for the millions of people who aren’t even in trade unions, who frankly don’t know what a trade union is.

That’s the task in front of us and we have to face reality hard in its face. We used to have twelve million plus people in trade unions in 1979. We now have around six million people in trade unions, with a much bigger workforce. That is a significant and historic setback, and we need to face up to it- and say we’re going to use this opportunity to rebuild organisation fit for fighting back against the employers today. And that means the Amazon workers, the Uber workers, the so-called gig economy. And some people say it can’t be done.

I always point to the example of the East London women workers in the Bryant & May factory in Bow, who were some of the most downtrodden migrant workers, young women looked down on, including by trade unionists. And yet they lit a spark. Permit the pun. They lit the spark by taking strike action. These people that people thought would never join a union. They lit a spark which, the following year, led to the dock strike and to the beginnings of mass trade unionism at the end of 19th century and into the early years of 20th century.

That’s the sort of vision we need to put before people today. You can change the world of work and think about how much time we spend in work during the course of a lifetime. We can make work better by being organised.

The miners’ strike has been mentioned. Let’s remember, that was a class offensive by the British ruling class against the most determined organised and one of the most militant sections of the trade union movement. They did it for a reason, because they wanted to send a message to the entire class. You step out of line, we will come after you, and we will destroy you, and destroy your lives, and lock you up. And we need the same level of determination in our movement as she had for her class, frankly, as Thatcher had for her class.

We need fighters on our side prepared to struggle, prepared to organise, prepared to think about the challenges that we face. And the key thing for me, the key task: rebuilding workers’ power in the workplace. That’s what we have to seize, the opportunity that this election and the platform of workers’ rights and legislation, that’s what it offers us.

Rebuild workers’ power in the workplace – that’s the challenge before all of us.

• Matt Wrack is the General Secretary of the Fire Brigades Union. You can follow him on Twitter/X, and can follow the FBU on Facebook, Twitter/X and Instagram.
• The transcript of this speech was originally uploaded to Simon Fletcher’s Modern Left blog on August 2nd 2024

 

Demand real change, not empty promises or half measures – Sarah Wooley, BFAWU

6th August 2024Leave a Commenton Demand real change, not empty promises or half measures – Sarah Wooley, BFAWU

“In the wake of the election, we need to send a clear message to our newly-elected representatives: we will not accept empty promises or half measures. We demand real change, and we will not rest until we see it.”

The following is taken from a speech given by General Secretary of the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers’ Union Sarah Woolley at the eve-of-Gala rally in Durham organised by the Institute of Employment Rights and Campaign for Trade Union Freedom in July.

We are at a pivotal moment for workers’ rights in our country: after fourteen years of austerity and our rights being systematically stripped back, we have an opportunity for change.

I know there are mixed feelings around just how much change there will be under this Labour government. The election has shown us that the fight for justice and fairness in the workplace and our communities is far from over, and now more than ever, we need to unify our voices and our efforts, because seeing five Reform candidates be elected into Parliament should be much more of a concern to all of us than what Starmer is or isn’t going to do in the next one hundred days.

Our union, the Bakers Food and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU), recently conducted a comprehensive survey to understand the concerns and priorities of our members. The results highlighted the urgent need for political and economic transformation.

Whilst many would argue there is no difference in the main political parties and ask what the point is in politics, our members are actually politically engaged and determined to see change. They are not content with the status quo. The issues they face are not unique to our sector but reflect broader societal challenges. The cost-of-living crisis, which makes it difficult for families to afford basic necessities like food, energy, and housing, was, unsurpisingly, the main concern. A crisis that has been compounded by low pay, poor management practices, and insecure working conditions.

In the workplace, our members are grappling with low wages, bullying management styles, unsafe working conditions, and insufficient staffing. They are asked to do more with less, often under the strain of unsociable hours and insecure contracts.

Our survey results clearly outline what our members believe is necessary to address these challenges. Their voices have shaped the Bakers’ Dozen manifesto of 13 key demands that we will continue to advocate for tirelessly:

• £15 an Hour Minimum Wage: because every worker deserves a living wage, regardless of age. This will end the unfair youth limit on the national minimum wage.
• Abolish Zero-Hour Contracts: We demand job security and predictability for all workers- and this should be all Zero Hour contracts, because they can all be exploitative.
• Full Employment Rights from Day One: All workers should have their rights protected from the moment they start their job.
• Contractual Sick Pay at 100%: Employers must provide six weeks of sick pay at full wage to all workers.
• Repeal Anti-Union Legislation: Unions need the freedom to organise and advocate without restrictive laws.
• Maximum Workplace Temperature: Legislation is needed to ensure safe and comfortable working conditions.
• Accountability for Company Failures: Companies must not evade their financial responsibilities through administration loopholes.
• Public Ownership of Utilities: Water, energy, and Royal Mail should be publicly owned to curb excessive pricing and ensure fair access.
• Right to Food: A statutory right to food, free school meals, and a cap on supermarket profits are essential to combat food insecurity.
• Affordable Public Transport: Re-nationalise train companies, cap bus fares, and provide free public transport for young people aged 16-25.
• End Arms Sales to Israel: We must take a stand for human rights and justice globally.
• Abolish Tuition Fees: Education should be accessible to all, regardless of financial background, and they must bring back a new and improved version of the Union Learning Fund in England so everyone has the opportunity to upskill and develop themselves.
• Create a National Care Service: Providing dignity and care for the elderly and vulnerable is a societal duty.

These demands are not just aspirations; they are essential changes that will improve the lives of our members and the wider community. Our collective strength and solidarity are our greatest assets. We must continue to organise, educate, and mobilise to hold those in power accountable: just because they are now the Labour Party it does not mean we can rest on our laurels.

In the wake of the election, we need to send a clear message to our newly-elected representatives: we will not accept empty promises or half measures. We demand real change, and we will not rest until we see it.

Together, we can build a future where every worker is treated with dignity, respect, and fairness. We can’t rely on politicians to do that, we have to do it ourselves.

We can push out the far right and stop Reform gaining any more ground, but to do that we need to be able to do our jobs as trade unionists, have access to workers and work together across the movement, challenging their rhetoric and showing people that we are the ones who will support them, not Farage and his ilk.

• Sarah Woolley is General Secretary of the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union – you can follow her on Twitter/X.
• The transcript of this speech was originally uploaded to Simon Fletcher’s Modern Left blog on August 2nd 2024.

UK

Why we are occupying

 

Labour Hub Editors

By Lesnes Resistance

August 7, 2024

Currently the only protest occupation of a housing estate in the UK, the ongoing occupation at the Lesnes Estate in Thamesmead began on Sunday 7th April 2024, led by Lesnes Resistance (LesRes) in partnership with Housing Rebellion, an umbrella group of independent housing campaigns and activists. During this first weekend of the occupation, there were workshops by the Architects Climate Action Network, Public Interest Law Centre and Corporate Watch, all of whom had been supporters of LesRes. Subsequent weeks saw a further three properties being occupied, and talks on site from Nick Bano, Anna Minton and Paul Watt.

The Lesnes Estate is a small portion of the immensely ambitious 1960s plans of the Greater London Council for its utopian new town of Thamesmead, which was to include facilities for a modern, communal way of life, even including a yacht basin adjacent to the Thames. Eventually, the much-needed access roads and railway lines that were meant to connect this new part of the city to the centre failed to be built, and the project was branded a ‘failure’.

Nowadays, however, these long-awaited transport connections have finally reached the local population, with the Elizabeth Line taking only 16 minutes to Canary Wharf — a much-advertised fact on the demolition hoardings. But instead of being allowed to enjoy the improved connections to their area, the local community, now majority West African, is being torn apart and displaced.

In October 2022, Peabody Housing Association was given planning permission for a regeneration plan that proposes to demolish the existing 400 three- and four-bedroom social homes, modernist terraces with ample storage space and generous gardens, organised around car-free courtyards where children play freely as their parents keep an eye from a balcony or kitchen window. Instead of these carefully designed homes, Peabody proposes to build 1,950 new flats, of which only 61 will be social rent and 35% will be ‘affordable’, or priced at up to 80% of market rent. Peabody’s plans also aim to remove the pedestrian streets and destroy the estate’s green spaces.

Crucially, as a result of Peabody’s plans, long-standing homeowners are facing compulsory purchase of their homes at a fraction of the price of the planned new homes. They fear they will be displaced out of London and torn away from a close-knit community, as has become the customary practice of so-called ‘regeneration’ projects across London. This process of social cleansing will in time be extended beyond Lesnes by Peabody, who are in charge in 40 hectares of land in Thamesmead, in what is currently London’s largest regeneration front.

Since taking over management of the Lesnes Estate in 2014, Peabody have been boarding up hundreds of social homes, keeping them long-term empty even as the need for social housing, and especially for family homes, has reached unprecedented proportions. The housing association’s former reputation as a pro-social and charitable housing provider has been increasingly tarnished over the years, with four recent counts of “severe maladmnistration” against it by the Housing Ombudsman and findings of chronic mismanagement from two recent FT investigations into damp and mould and overcharging [paywall]. In the viability assessment for its planning proposal for Lesnes, Peabody estimated that it stood to lose £35m from the demolition and new development, and used this projected loss, as all developers do, to justify shrinking the minimum recommended provision of social housing, which is set to 50% when demolition is involved. However, the independent viability assessment carried out by Bexley Council found instead that the scheme would turn a £98m profit. Sadly even this huge discrepancy did not move the Conservative-controlled Council to seek any significant amendments to the planning proposals before stamping them through to the Mayor’s office.

The estate occupation is seeking to denormalise estate demolition and the destructive consequences it has for individuals and communities. By occupying empty homes, we also aim to draw attention to the fact that hundreds of social homes are being boarded up and kept long-term empty amid a housing crisis of unprecedented proportions. Last but not least, we are voicing the residents’ calls for Peabody to refurbish rather than demolish the estate.

Previously, the residents had been calling on the Mayor of London to hold a public hearing in which they could express their concerns surrounding the planning application, which has yet to be approved by the Mayor. Sian Berry, when at the London Assembly, raised a number of concerns about the failure to consider retrofit and the way that the resident ballot was carried out — with the word “demolition” not once being used in the ballot document for Peabody’s plan, so that residents who agreed with the proposals thought they were being offered improvements to their homes and nearby public spaces.

Currently, LesRes are working with AAB Architects and ACAN to produce a series of practical retrofit proposals to show that there are real, viable alternatives to Peabody’s destructive plans for demolition, dispossessionBy  and displacement. As Sadiq Khan has yet to approve the redevelopment plans, this work to produce community-led retrofit proposals aims to force the Mayor to consider whether it is right to sacrifice communities and climate, and the principles of his London Plan, for the sake of Peabody’s profits. You can help by supporting us to hire a Retrofit Assessor at a reduced, community rate with even the smallest donation, and also by signing the petition to protect communities and climate by saying no the demolition of Lesnes. 

Finally, the estate occupation will be featured at Open House London on September 21st, so all are welcome to come and visit us then!

Main image: Thamesmead. Source: geograph.org.uk. Author: Kenneth Yarham, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license. Inset image: c/o Les Res.