Another episode in which The Glasgow City Council decided what the people needed, without consulting the people, and the people, by direct action and solidarity, made them change their minds and listen to the people.
This successful campaign took place in
Castlemilk, what was at one time the largest housing estate in Britain.
Community
Action – Housing; regentrification, greens into car parks, loss of
safe play spaces. Injustice/
normal channels closed / bureaucracy /desperation /solidarity with
experienced anarchist strategies/ planning direct actions/
increasing the agitation/ use the demolition workers in the struggle,
to bring the bureaucrats to the site/ impact on people as activists
John
Cooper, John Cooper - taped
and scribed by A Rice 17.7.12
I
tell it all as if it was a day but it was actually maybe 6 months or
a year of struggle.
Campaign
in Castlemilk, A group of tenants had been told that the Council are
going to build a car park in their back greens. The back greens being
the area in which they hung out their washing and where the kids
played in safety. The people in the area were all against it and they
had actually got a petition together, taken it up to the Labour club,
and handed it into the Labour Club and low and behold the Labour Club
lost the petition they said later, or they claimed they lost it. And
therefore the peoples’ thing could not be taken any further. So by
luck one of the tenants bumped into one of us and he told us about
the situation.
The
work was about to begin in the back greens. They had knocked down a
couple of the gable ends to allow bull dozers to get through into the
backs. And they were going to start digging up the drying greens and
the kids play areas to build this car park.
And
basically the people says to us ‘do you think there’s anything we
can do about this. Nobody in the area wants this. Everybody is
absolutely against the idea. We have petitioned the Labour Party
through the Labour Club – they lost the petition that we handed in
– and can it be stopped? ’.
I
gave the answer that I always give people that ask me that question
and I answered ‘How determined are you?’ And they said they were
absolutely determined about it so I asked them to get a couple of the
families together, we went up and saw them, and we talked to them. We
being a group of local community activists in Castlemilk, myself and
a couple of the others were anarchists, some of the others had no
political affiliation, there might have been one or two people in the
Labour party, or some kinda left wing groups or whatever but
generally I would describe the whole feeling of the thing as kinda
anarchistic.
We
went up and seen the people. We suggested to them that they get
another petition together – no because there any value in getting a
petition - but jist to give us an opportunity to go back round
everybody again , talk to them on their doorstep, and ask them if
they were still prepared to do something about it. We did that the
next day , it was only a quad , a really small area, everybody agreed
that they were against it. So we went up to the Labour Club, we said
that we had another petition, but we weren’t giving it them in or
whatever, and we wanted something done about it. We asked to see
somebody – they refused to let us see anybody, so we went back down
the road and we made our plans for the next day.
The
next day the bulldozers came and we decided just to block the whole
entrance to the back greens, refused to allow the bulldozers through.
And I went up and I spoke to the guy that was driving the bulldozer
and explained the situation to him and as usual when you speak to
other working class people they generally see the point, I will have
to phone my gaffer, well that’s exactly what we want you to do, and
he phoned his gaffer and he phoned his gaffer and he phoned his
gaffer and before too long we had all the relevant people down at the
site and that ultimately they sent for the council. When the
councillors arrived ( I don’t know if it was that day) but some
point in the thing, the councillors arrived in a limo, and so it went
from a situation where the councillors refused to see the people but
because of the direct action that we took they had to eventually come
to us to see us in person. And within a very short space of time they
saw that we weren’t going to allow them to build a car park in the
back green and they had to cancel the whole thing.
So
it was an outright victory for the people.
Stasia; and these are publicity photos?
This
is a wee exhibition that the tenants done at the time. After the
victory we done these sheets and people put in their comments and
pictures, newspaper cuttings, explaining how we halted the car park
and we actually used these in other struggles by putting these up and
we explained to people that this is how you can take things on and
win the situation.
List
of the material
Sheets
that you can put up on walls hand made posters (John Cooper Snr
Handwriting)
A
wee folder of all the newspaper coverage at the time
People
writing poems about it
Pictures
taken at the time by Charlie Fisher non resident photographer (who
helped with the community newspaper Castlemilk Today)
Dept
of housing official papers
Minutes
of the council meetings
MP
letters from Westminster Teddy Taylor
And
letters from Glasgow District council
Copy
of petition 2 not handed in because previous one lost.
Initially
the people went to the Labour Councillors which is the obvious way to
deal with the situation. They went to them, handed in a petition to
the Labour Club who basically ignored them and said they lost the
petition so the Labour Councillors basically refused to take up their
issue for them and they were quite happy to allow it to go ahead. And
because they were able to come to us the people that lived there, we
advised them on how to deal with the situation and we were there with
them and we managed to stop it completely and the backs were all
reinstated.
Impact
Some
of the people in the campaign for the most were delighted at the
victory, it was something that they thought they could not achieve in
view of the fact that they had already started the work so not only
did they stop the thing but they actually retrieved the thing from
the ashes so to speak. I think a lot of people felt a great sense of
empowerment, and certainly some were involved in other campaigns
after that.
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