“The society which has abolished every kind of adventure makes its own abolition the only possible adventure.” Paris, May 1968


Thursday 4 September 2014

On the door at One Commercial Street.

Yesterday evening I finally managed to make it over to Aldgate for Class War's weekly "poor door" picket of One Commercial Street. It was far from being a massive turn out. It's a shame that challenging this issue has been left to a handful of anarchists but I suppose that the left are far too busy dealing with islamophobia and Ukraine to bother with such trivia. The response from passing members of the public was generally sympathetic and I had an interesting chat with a young woman who worked at a local estate agents, had recently let one of the "posh door" flats, had no idea that there were segregated entrances and seemed genuinely shocked and upset at what she had unwittingly become party to.
I have heard it suggested that without the kind of planing gain social and affordable housing such as that at One Commercial Street there would be an even worse housing crisis than there is now and that segregated apartment  blocks are a small price to pay. Perhaps the whole issue of planing gain should be looked at afresh. Perhaps local authorities should grant planing permission to those developments that will have some advantage to the community regardless of bribes in the form of planning gain. 
If developments are populated by some tenants with well paid jobs who are renting from wealthy overseas investors, and some other less affluent ones who rent from a housing association, there is no rational reason why the two groups should be kept apart. This is just another example of the increasing polarity of this country in general and London in particular.  

1 comment:

Dr Llareggub said...

You are right - far too busy.
It is unfortunate that only a handful turned up to protest against an insult to people on lower incomes. Initially I thought people were staying away from Class War, and its over centralized leadership, but left politics is nowadays more authoritarian than I have ever known. We might conclude, following insights from Rotherham and other cities, that the left have withdrawn from working class support, and now are motivated primarily with defence of multicultural segregation and Islam, covering up for rapes of working class children and sanitizing the murders carried out by ISIS and Boko Haram - with the Guardian actually explaining the latter in terms of climate change! Imagine if the poor doors where assigned to Muslim tenants. Thousands from the state financed and Cameron supported UAF and Hope not Hate, the Trots and Anarchists would be there alongside Class War, yelling racism. Cameron would issue a statement declaring that separate entrances have no place in modern Britain. As they say in politics 'lessons have to be learned' and the lesson for working people is that the left is no longer on your side. As the man with a beard said: 'the emancipation of the working class must be the task of the working class', or something like that.
PS. If any of the usuals from Class War object to my rejection of multiculturalism calling me a racist - grow up. Multiculturalism is about segregation, separate cultures and identities,authoritarian community leaders, many of which are anti working class, resting on a theory of relativism which conflicts with the universalism and absolutism of a class which - stupid as we all are - have long overcome racism and subservience to religious dogmatism