Sunday, October 28, 2018

An Aylesbury for the many, not the few...

I was elected as a councillor for Southwark's Faraday ward in 2014, and in four years of representing my community I've lived the radical political change minute to minute. For those of us who exist for it, breathe it & fight within it the political world of 2018 can feel like a world away from four years ago. Corbyn, Brexit, May, Trump: these realities are the twisted night-dreams of an eerily close yesterday.

I'm really proud of being part of shifting that dynamic: I was the only Labour Councillor to vote for Corbyn as Labour leader in 2016. Over Brexit I had a radical and different voice. I've supported and mentored activists and candidates to change the face of our party both locally and nationally.

Our manifestos in Southwark tell that story too: we've committed to no more estate regenerations without a ballot; never again shall we replace a Council estate with less socially rented homes than before it is pulled down; we're insourced housing maintenance to give our council homes the attention the need by workers with terms and conditions as they deserve. The wild political enthusiasm of the few, like me, has whet the palate of the many in our Labour Group who were hungry for real change.

That said, I've been left with a despair about my own community - how have we really benefitted from this turmoil? In a ward where we are embarking on one of the biggest estate regenerations in the country, restrained by the parameters of 2010, how does a new politics affect change right here?

I do not, and will not, deny the need for regeneration on Aylesbury; but I've always been clear that although the current estate is not utopia, nor are the current regen plans either. In the failed housing economy of Tory Britain, the Aylesbury proposals look bold when they deliver an unprecedented amount of social housing (with heating, hot water and an end to leaks) - but they also look uncomfortable as they straightforwardly decrease socially rented housing in the ward. To be frank, how can Labour credibly promise no future regenerations will reduce social homes, when Aylesbury sits as a shining example of compromise on numbers?

In 2015 I asked the question whether we could buy enough private homes on the new estate, those homes to be run as Council properties, so as to make up the loss of social housing. At that stage, there was not a way - or even the will - to make it work. In 2018, it's different.

As announced in the Southwark News last week, my ward colleagues and I have shifted that impasse. We've secured the ambition of the relevant cabinet members to deliver more social homes in Faraday ward in 2030 than after the completion of Aylesbury in the 1970s. This will be achieved by purchase of allocated private homes on the new estate, infill on other Council estates and new Council developments in the ward as the regeneration progresses. This commitment stands as to how the new politics is radically changing the lived reality of residents at the heart of a Labour borough in London.

As remarkable as the outcome is, how it has been achieved is just as remarkable. We now have an executive and cabinet members in Southwark emboldened by a Labour Party on the left; ward councillors united in their desire to see their politics reflected in the plans for their ward; and, most critically, a growing, dynamic and radical local party - representative of our community - who demand that policies good enough for the rest of the Borough are good enough for Faraday. As silver-tongued as my advocacy of this policy has been, it would have had no power without a branch motion or grassroots will.

This pragmatic, comradely, passionate action from grassroots members and residents has achieved more meaningful policy change than a decade of abuse from campaign groups who take their cues from scattergun slogans and astroturfing dissent. Spend time with our local party, knocking doors on an estate riddled with issues from heating and damp to a destructive built environment, and you won't deny the need for a regeneration - but you'll find socialists who want to get a better regen, and not just accept that the parameters are a movable feast. The laughable, confused commentary from Southwark Lib Dems on the subject is emblematic of how the former political 'centre' stands quiveringly confused, without so much as a valuable comment on developments let alone a credible alternative. For their leader to make a snide comment about delivery just doesn't work - cynicism has no traction when it's just a comment on your own irrelevant politics of management not a new pragmatic politics of ideology.

The hard work now continues, moving from the purely political to the pragmatic. Initial figures suggest that this means 1,000 new council homes need to be secured in a small ward and that is a nerve-racking task. The Aylesbury regen timetable is long, in order to ensure we can deliver the right to remain on the footprint of the estate for tenants and resident leaseholders in future stages - but that doesn't mean that the need to improve the levels isn't urgent.

While events at home and abroad continue to move at frightening speed and not always in ways which seem positive for radicals and socialists, this bold new plan will hopefully give everyone in our community that Labour in Faraday and Southwark are building a future which looks better than the present.

A small step for transforming our country, a massive leap for improving an already ambitious regen. I've never been prouder of anything I've done as a councillor.