Occupy The Night

On Saturday I went to the Bishopsgate Institute to listen to the documentary photographer Ed Thompson talk about photographing the Occupy London protest outside St Paul's Cathedral, an event that was part of the Photomonth East London International Photography Festival.

I love the idea of turning images into a multimedia presentation, something that Ed generously shared some suggestions about after his talk. I plan to put something together about Newham Monitoring Project's Community Legal Observer project during this summer's Olympics. Meanwhile, here is Ed's great presentation, with spoken word poetry by an occupier called J.J.

Wanstead Flats: I Hate To Say This But I Told You So

I haven't posted for a while as I've been busily preparing for admission to hospital for a serious operation this week. But if you check out my last post, you'll hardly be surprised by this news. Today, Newham council announced that the firework display on Wanstead Flats had been cancelled. A council statement says:

Newham Council is sorry to announce that Sunday evening’s free display of fireworks and music has been cancelled because of adverse weather conditions.

Heavy overnight rain has made conditions at the site in Wanstead Flats very soggy underfoot. With the forecast of more rain during the day, the council has taken the decision to cancel at the earliest opportunity to prevent people travelling to the display.

We apologise for the late notice but hope people will understand the reason. While it is disappointing, safety has to be our main concern. We are optimistic that we may be able to rearrange the display on another date. Full details will be available on the council’s website at www.newham.gov.uk 

If you look at the photos I posted on 25 October, you may get a sense of why on it is "very soggy underfoot" - the site hasn't been allowed to recover after the Metropolitan Police used it for its Olympics operations base over the summer and is unlikely to recover for months.

Common sense suggested that the decision to hold the Newham firework display on this ravaged part of Wanstead Flats - coupled with the reasonable possibility of rain in November - was always a ludicrous risk. Cancellation of the fireworks will have left lots of local people feeling disappointed this evening and many (including friends of mine) would only have found out when they turned up and were told the event was not going ahead..

The only conciliation is that perhaps now the City of London Corporation will leave Wanstead Flats alone so that can restore itself to the state that existed before the Met turned up and wrecked it. I imagine Newham council's inevitable request for a refund of costs for use of the site this evening should focus minds at the Corporation, but once again there are serious questions about its stewardship of the Flats.

With similar concerns about the failed reinstatement of Porter’s Field Meadow on Leyton Marsh, we're beginning to see that Olympic legacy talked up so often before the Games. If you worry about the care and protection of open spaces for east London residents, it's a far from positive one. It's time that the Corporation and other local authorities charged with looking after these sites recognise this aspect of the Olympic experiment was a failure - and decisions like the one that led to the damage to Wanstead Flats must never happen again.

Why Hold Firework Night On Ravaged Site of Olympic Police Base on Wanstead Flats?

The photographs above were taken this afternoon and show that, a month on from the end of the Paralympics, the site of the Olympics police operations base on Wanstead Flats is still a mess.

Some effort has been made to reseed the ground (see the previous pictures taken a few days after the Metropolitan Police left and you'll see what I mean). But it will still take months to recover. So why has Newham council been granted permission to hold its Fireworks Display on the Flats on 4 November, rather than in, say, Central Park?

One of the council's websites warns, "Display held on soft ground.", which may win the 2012 award for understatement of the year. It also reminds us - just in case there's anyone left in the borough who has missed having this message rammed down their throat - that "the event is brought to you for free by the Mayor of Newham" (out of his own pocket? Well, no, not quite), adding that it takes place "by kind permission of The City of London, Conservators of Epping Forest".

I suppose the "Conservators" got together and thought: what this site really needs is thousands of people walking all over it. Not for the first time, I'm left wonder what on earth the City of London Corporation thinks it is doing with an open space that belongs to us?

Mostly Harmless - Pictures from Saturday's TUC March

Flick here for full screen.

Newham Council Apologises For Heavyhanded Action By Its Enforcement Officers

In September I reported that campaigners trying to save the Old Spotted Dog pub on Upton Lane had been stopped from leafletting outside of Forest Gate station and given a advice warning by Newham's 'Law Enforcement' officers. After activists received legal support from a local solicitor and the issue was raised at a public meeting at Durning Hall, something surprising happened - the council actually apologised.

A letter from Planning Enforcement Manager Christine Lyons, published on the Save the Old Spotted Dog website, says:

I understand there was an issue prior to this public meeting which left you and your group unhappy with the actions of this Council. It would seem that your campaigners were leafleting outside Forest Gate Station and received advice from the “law enforcement officer” that you were to cease this activity immediately. I am unsure as to the reasoning behind this request but have been informed that this advice was incorrect. I have spoken at length with the Service Manager for these officers Mr Al Thomas and he can only apologise for the actions of his officer and should you wish can be contacted on 02033733084 to discuss this matter.

It is of course gratifying that council has admitted its error, but it wouldn't have happened in the first place in the 'Law Enforcement' officers who intervened had actually understood the limit of their powers under the Environmental Protection Act 1990. What this points to is a lack of basic training, summed up by the fact that officers evidently had no idea what constitutes 'designated land' under the Act but arbitrarily chose to apply their sweeping powers anyway. If this had been an entirely isolated incident then perhaps it could be brushed aside as a simple mistake, but this is not the first time that there have been complaints about enforcement officers, either about the misapplication of anti-social behaviour powers or a certain high-handedness in the way they are enforced.

The council's apology, whilst welcome, means little if the same situation keeps arising again and again in the future, because officers do not recognise that enforcement powers are potentially oppressive and intimidating if not used sparingly and correctly - or if the latest talk of a 'crackdown' gives the misleading impression that, for the greater good, no-one is really going to care if a few errors occur. It really shouldn't be necessary for local people to be forced to raise complaints or seek legal advice if enforcement officers are properly trained and act with caution and common sense.

If anyone has a story about the way that anti-social behaviour powers are incorrectly enforced in the borough then please let me know - I'd like to start compiling evidence and publishing it. You can e-mail me here.

Book Event: Still Counting Sri Lanka's Hidden Dead

On Friday 16 November, former BBC foreign correspondent Frances Harrison will be discussing her book Still Counting the Dead - Survivors of Sri Lanka's Hidden War with the Sri Lankan born artist and writer.Roma Tearne, at the Trinity Community Centre in Manor Park. The event is organised by Newham Bookshop, in partnership with Newham Monitoring Project..

Harrison covered the civil war in Sri Lanka from 2000 to 2004 and has written the first account of the end of the least reported major conflict of recent times. She is one of the few foreign journalists to maintain contact with those trapped inside the war zone until the very end. In 2009, as the war between the Tamil Tiger guerrillas and the government reached its bloody climax, thousands of schoolchildren, doctors, farmers, fishermen, nuns and other civilians were caught in the crossfire. However, the Sri Lankan government maintained a strict media blackout so that the world was unaware of their suffering. A United Nations Panel of Experts has reported that estimates of up to 40,000 dead are credible and has called for war-crimes investigations. Still Counting the Dead recounts the human stories and faces behind the war.

Friday 16 November  2012
at 7 pm at The Trinity Centre, East Avenue, Manor Park E12.
Nearest tube: East Ham
Tickets are only £3 and available from Newham Bookshop: telephone 020 8552 9993 to reserve


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A Different View Of 'Successful' Olympic Policing

On Saturday, I attended a really fun celebration, at The Arches in Canning Town, of the work carried out by Community Legal Observers (CLOs) organised by Newham Monitoring Project during this summer's Olympics. It included a first look at some of the key trends that emerged from the evidence they gathered, which the organisation plans to document in more detail in a forthcoming report and resource aimed specifically at young people. The event also meant that CLOs could also receive a surprise memento of their volunteering during August and September - a medal bearing the famous 'human rights salute' protest by Tommie Smith, John Carlos and Peter Normal at the 1968 Mexico Olympic Games.

Volunteer Community Legal Observers pose with their 'Olympic' medals at Saturday's event

As Newham Monitoring Project's Director Estelle du Boulay explained on Saturday, the evidence collected by CLOs paints a very different picture to the overwhelmingly upbeat impression of Olympic policing painted by the Association of Chief Police Officers. Away from the main venues, on side streets and estates, young people in particular complained of the excessive use of stop & search powers by officers who were often rude and aggressive, as well as incidents involving illegal strip searching in the backs of police vans. A number of young people chose to avoid Stratford altogether or made sure they travelled in groups no larger than two, for fear of the dispersal zone restrictions in place. CLOs also reported consistently positive feedback from local people to the rights cards that NMP distributed and a belief that basic civil liberties still needing protecting, even when an event as huge as the Olympics was taking place. However, there were reports that people arrested were denied the right to call NMP's 24-hour emergency helpline and cases of threatening and intimidatory behaviour by individual officers towards volunteers who were observing the policing .of the Games.

A full report with case studies will be published by Newham Monitoring Project shortly and I'll try and summarise it as soon as it is available. Meanwhile, I too am now a proud recipient of one of the incredibly rare CLO medals, which look like this:

Open House Weekend: Around Newham

It has been such a manic week that this is the first opportunity I've had to post a few photos (more ehere) from last weekend's Open House visits to the Old Stratford Town Hall and to Cody Dock in Canning Town.

Every year, the opening of parts of public buildings that are usually inaccessible (and some private homes) takes place near the end of September and has meant that I was able to see inside the very grand former St Pancras Hotel in Kings Cross when it was still a building site, before it was transformed into the luxury St Pancras Renaissance. This year, I chose to stay closer to home and although I've been inside Stratford Town Hall many times, I've never made it up into its bell tower - or down into its former cells.

One of the former holding cells beneath Stratford's Old Town Hall

Then it was on to Abbey Lane DLR and Cody Dock, for a tour organised by the Gasworks Dock Partnership. This is a community project that has carried out some amazing work in transforming a derelict site into a open space for local people. The tour took in a memorial garden in the shadow of the former gasworks, but one that is largely inaccessible to visitors as it is now in the middle of Twelvetrees Business Park. Try walking in and you run the risk of security guards turning you back.

Next year's Open House London Weekend takes place on 21 and 22 September 2012. For information visit www.londonopenhouse.org

Newham's Enforcement Officers Stop Forest Gate Campaigners From Handing Out Leaflets

As regular visitors to this site will know, I have a few disagreements with over-zealous anti-social behaviour officers in the past (in Newham and Redbridge) but today, I heard from campaigners trying to save the Old Spotted Dog pub on Upton Lane (above) that they had been stopped from leafletting outside of Forest Gate station and given a advice warning by Newham's 'Law Enforcement' officers.

Next Tuesday at 7.30pm, the new campaign has a public meeting at Durning Hall Community Centre about the appalling state of the former pub, which is a seventeenth century Grade II listed building and the borough's oldest secular building. Campaigners were giving out flyers today to encourage people to attend when council 'Law Enforcement' officers intervened, saying they were committing the offence of "distribution of free printed matter on designated land" under Schedule 3A of the Environmental Protection Act 1990. As the leaflets were given out on the public footpath, the enforcement officers were asked what 'designated land' meant and they replied that it probably meant the whole of Newham.

Forest Gate railway station is outside of the Woodgrange Conservation Area, which may well be 'designated land', but I'd be very surprised if the whole of the borough had been designated by the local authority. It was evident that the 'Law Enforcement' officer wasn't sure. Anyway, paragraph 1(4) of the Schedule says there is an exemption for the distribution of printed materials in the following circumstances:

(a) by or on behalf of a charity within the meaning of the Charities Act 1993, where the printed matter relates to or is intended for the benefit of the charity;

(b) where the distribution is for political purposes or for the purposes of a religion or belief.

Promoting a campaign meeting to preserve a 400 year old building strikes me as both charitable and political, so what is Newham council playing at?

The campaign is now seeking legal advice. This kind of petty officiousness has to be stopped.For more on the public meeting, see below.

Scar On Wanstead Flats As Olympic Fortress Departs

I was away over the weekend in Warwickshire: Saturday would have been the 42nd birthday my old friend Gilly Mundy, who passed away in 2007, so I went to spend time with his family. I therefore missed the removal of the Great Wall that surrounded Fortress Wanstead Flats, the Olympic police base that has been so bitterly opposed by local people (more from me on Wanstead Flats here)

So this evening, I popped over to take a look and to photograph the impact of the base on a much loved piece of public land. Sadly, as predicted, the destruction is huge - it may take months to recover and parts of the site are covered by gravel and hardstanding.

The dark scar on previously protected open land is a real test for the City of London Corporation, who are the nominal 'custodians' of Wanstead Flats as part of Epping Forest. Failing to completely restore the Flats to its condition before the base was constructed will undoubtedly fuel concerns - ones I share - that the site has been earmarked for future use as a "temporary" security space. With the Evening Standard reporting today that it may cost as much as £160 million to turn the Olympic stadium into a football arena, the worry is that the stadium will become the venue for more high-profile, high security events in order to recoup some of its vast costs. High security means a 'convenient' space for basing security operations - convenient for the police and the security industry that is, not for local people.

Here are a few photos of the sheer scale of the destruction - you can find more on Flickr.