The invasion of the commons

One of the transformations in London over recent decades has been the opening out of the Thames embankments to the public. You can now meander from Vauxhall Bridge in the west to beyond Tower Bridge in the east, along the city’s historic riverside.

Stunning views of the Houses of Parliament, St Paul’s, the Tower of London, Tower Bridge and Tate Modern - are unobstructed by traffic. Unlike Rome and Venice, where architectural gems like the Spanish Steps and the Doge’s Palace are often spoiled by garish corporate logos, there are no jarring advertising hoarding. This entirely free pleasure in Europe’s largest city is one of the success stories of Ken Livingstone’s eight-year mayoral stint.

But now, the process is going into reverse. London’s bridges and its squares and open spaces are being appropriated and privatised. And increasingly, under the false flag of the 2012 Olympic Games, vast schemes are being devised which will subvert past gains.

So much so that architectural writer Rowan Moore has coined the words “publoid, publate, privlid” to describe the sinister process by which corporate owners convert areas once open to the public into “managed and controlled spaces with uniformed wardens”.

This is what happened in Broadgate, Canary Wharf, City Hall and Paternoster Square. “Ultimate control”, as Moore notes,“ is in the hands of private landowners”.

That’s why the protesters who sought to occupy the space outside the London stock exchange found all entrances to Paternoster Square sealed off by police cordons and they ended up at the foot of St Paul’s at the mercy of the church fathers. This was despite the redevelopment of the square being billed as a “public space”.

Now, a £50 million proposal by the Singaporean asset-management company Venus for a floating park to run from the Millennium Bridge to Tower Bridge is currently under scrutiny. Under the shiny corporate-speak it is the latest and insidious move of a widespread hybrid beast that has reared its head in the last decade. This is “the pseudo-public space, in which the City of London and its satellites are world leaders”, as Moore notes.

English Heritage and the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment are voicing disquiet. English Heritage says the view of St Paul’s would be affected by “flashy and corporate” features of what is fundamentally “a gigantic hospitality suite with a fairly nice walkway threaded through it”.

And it is not only the high property value City part of the Thames that is being threatened. Further down river in Stratford, locals are worried about a plan for an “experiential, hospitality and entertainment” venue. Former accountant Lance Forman hopes to bring 8,000 visitors a day to a tiny island on the Thames, day and night. Olympic corporate guests will be comfy on a gigantic sofa and watch the games on a 30x 7 metre screen.

Like the Olympics themselves, this proposal is promoted as “building a lasting legacy for the area”. But those who live and work there say it is a disaster waiting to happen.

The invasion of the “commons” is not a new process and not unique to London. The turbo-charged hey-day of globalisation saw the entire planet subjected to this process. With the growing resistance to the crisis, to the banks and corporate power, the state is showing the mailed fist in favour of the owners of private property. Out go security guards, in come riot police with tasers, tear gas, pepper spray and batons.

The clearing out of occupiers in New York’s Zucotti Park and the arrest of several St Paul’s activists outside the Guildhall in the last 24 hours makes it crystal clear that not only the right to protest, but simply to live, breathe and look at the world around you in a relatively free way is rapidly becoming a thing of the past.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary

Tube workers defy 'brutal' logic

The RMT rail union may have suspended the strike by a group of Tube maintenance workers while it considers a fresh offer, but not before enduring hysterical press and political attacks. What angered the London media and politicians from Ken Livingstone to Gordon Brown, was the fact that a group of workers rejected soothing words and actually dared to take action that was more than just a gesture. The London Underground network ground to a halt following the strike by staff who formerly worked for Metronet. This consortium, set up after New Labour’s partial privatisation of the network, collapsed recently, leaving it in the hands of administrators and Transport for London, which is part of the mayor’s Greater London Authority.

Union action on this scale is not supposed to happen any more. But while leaders from unions like Unison roll over like pussycats and allow the government to break up the health service, and dither about action over a pay award that is actually a pay cut, others are not so compliant. Last week the Prison Officers Association led an illegal walk-out. Then the Tube maintenance workers launched their strike over pensions and job security, both undermined by the collapse of Metronet. Led by general secretary Bob Crow, they also demanded the return of the Tube maintenance system to public ownership.

This was too much for the right-wing media and politicians. Yesterday the Evening Standard devoted page after page to an assault on the RMT and Crow in particular. One edition had a picture of Crow on the front page alongside a banner headline declaring ‘MAN WHO STOPPED LONDON ITS TRACKS’. On pages two and three, interviews with commuters ran under the headline ‘travellers forced to endure days of delay and frustration express their disgust at Tube strikers on a good wage’. Leaving aside the fact that the strike was actually nothing to do with wage demands, the barrage continued on the following pages.

Another double-page spread ran under the headline ‘Union plays politics and costs £50m a day’ and a sub-heading which carried the predictable report that business leaders condemned the RMT’s ‘pointless’ action over jobs and pensions. Underneath there was an attempted character assassination of Crow as the country’s “most hardline and notorious” union leader. It reported that he had been banned from a pub near his union HQ for singing too loudly! The report had to acknowledge, however, that he had built up the union’s membership. Further on in the paper, Mayor Livingstone had a whole page to condemn what he described as a “deeply damaging and pointless strike”, an article no doubt written by his £100,000-a-year advisers, many of whom laughingly claim to be left-wingers.

But the real issues were posed in another column, this time by financial editor Anthony Hilton. He wrote that the union was wrong to think its members had any more right to “future guarantees of their income and job security than anyone else who has worked for a company which went bust. It’s brutal, but it’s capitalism.” The logic is inescapable. Don’t bother resisting – it’s market capitalism stupid. You have to love it because there is no alternative. Well, the RMT – which is no longer affiliated to capitalist New Labour – is challenging that entirely business point of view. While prime minister Brown goes on constructing his one-party state, where confrontation and classes are declared things of the past, resistance is growing to Hilton’s “brutal” society. The RMT leaders have, in effect, said that another world is necessary and their action should be supported.

Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor