No return to Brixton planning blight!

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IN JULY this year residents and traders in the Rushcroft Road/Coldharbour Lane area of Brixton received details of Lambeth Council's latest development plan for the town centre.

The planners have come up with three 'options' for the area - options which do not significantly differ from each other.

All involve the destruction of the south side of Coldharbour Lane and the entirety of Rushcroft Road to make way for a massive supermarket development with several stories of car parking and some housing units above.

Lost will be a street of potentially good housing, cafes, a pub, late níght shops, specialist Greek and West Indian grocers, and, in one option, the Ritzy Cinema and Atlantic pub.

Rundown

The plans involve the compuisory purchase of properties not already owned by the council (30% of the area affected) and road alterations - both of which, quite apart from the plan itself, will inyolve lengthy and costly public inquiries. Such formalities take many, many months, even years, to complete and, in the meantime, Brixton will become even more run down.

Planning blight is something that the people of Brixton have lived with for a long time. It is worth remembering that in 1969 the Council drew up tremendously ambitious develupment plans in which Brixton was to become a (roydontype Strategic Shopping Centre' designed to attract the middle class to the area and bring commercial prosperity to Brixton.

Ravenseft, the property company responsible for the development of the horrible Elephant and Castle complex, expressed interest in the scheme, but later withdrew in the changed economic climate of the mid-1970s.

'Barrier block'

Tarmac, the road-building firm, was given permission to build an office block on condition it helped to fund a new leisure centre (which is still unfinished today). Lambeth's chief planner (who himself lives in William Morris's historic 'Red House' in deepest Kent) designed the monstrous (and still unfinished) "barrier block' sited alongside Coldharbour Lane, which was to have been a six-lane highway as part of the ring road system planned by the GLC for London and later dropped.

Streets of terrace housing made way for developments like the Stockwell Park Estate - which rapidly turned into a "sink" estate, suttering from problems of dampness and vandalism.

Confronted with these remnants of the now-discredited planners' megalomania of the 1960s, the present Council. on its election in 1978, decided against any monolithic plans for Brixton and hoped instead that developments would take place in a piecemeal manner by existing major retailers.

So why has the Council come up with the latest set of proposals which differ only in scale from the discredited 1969 plan?

The Council say plan is necessary because of the failure of the major retailers to develop their sites as the Council hoped. Finding their present sites too small to function economically, a number of major retail chains have closed down their Brixton branches.

The Council believes that the market traders rely for their prosperity on the proximity of large retail chains to attract custom to the area. This is certainly arguable if you compare similar street markets in other parts of London.

However, the real reason behind the latest plan is that the Council are in a state of panic. With elections in May the Council are desperate to have a plan on the books to show that they are doing something about the problems of the area.

In addition, the Council loses rate revenue when large retailers move out of the town centre and a supermarket development offers the prospect of increased revenue.

Misconceived

However this is a purely speculative venture in which the Council must interest a developer: Ravenseft (again) and Wimpeys have expressed interest, and apparently several supermarket chains have said they might be interested when the site is developed.

Quite apart from the fact that we believe the plan to be misconceived, the uncertainties and delays associated with ventures of this kind, are bound to increase the problems of the area.

The Rusheroft Road Action Group (RAG) has been formed to fight the Council's plans. we want Ine streets involved rehabilitated so as to preserve not only the character of the area and the potentially sound housing, but also to foster the growing community involvement which has attracted many young people to the area and spawned activities such as the Community Arts Centre (responsible for the recent Brixton Festival), and the Vining Street Community Gardens.

Above all we want the years of blight and neglect ended, not extended. We fear that the Council may attempt to preempt the outcome of any public inquiry by the piecemeal empiying and demolition of blocks in the street.

Therefore, while we intend to make representations detailing our objections and giving our proposals for the area to the Planning Committee when it meets on October 19, we will also be making a series of interim aemanas. These are:

a) that the Coui should rehouse those v wish to move;

b) that there should no evictions, either tenants or squatters;

c) that there should no gutfing of empty flats;

d) that empty flats should be made available either to squatters or to short-life groups;

e) that basic maintenance and improvements to the properties should be continued.

We urge local readers to support both our long and short-term aims to preserve these streets by raising the matter at Labour Party ward meetings, trying to get your councillors to support us and by attending the Planning Committee meeting on 19 October.

*The Rushcroft Road Action Group can be contacted, care of 2 Hereford House, Rushcroft Road, London SW2.

After the riots, the rebuild?

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Socialist Organiser, Thursday 24 September 1981 Page 12 Iranian workers need ıdependent organisation pen the books at JOHN McILROY and Noel Hibbert [Socialist Organiser no.51] aré correct to call for a labour movement inquiry into the affairs of Laurence Scott and its allied companies.

Such an inquiry could be a useful means of bringing clearly before the whole working class the precise detailed way in which the workings of the capitalist system take no account whatsoever of their interests and livelihood.

Among the questions such an inquiry might ask • Why is a merchant bank like Hambros prepared to finance projects it knew almost certainly were illegal?

• Why and how do 'dawn raids' on rival companies' shares operate?

• Why does a nationalisWriteback to list Organiser Middle Lane London N8 It shows that there are splits among the full-timers in terms of politics, function, and level in the apparatus. Full time officials are open not merely to oressures, material and ideological, from the state and employers, but also from the workers that they are supposed to serve.

Some officials are far to the left of some shop stewards. Elected officials may be more amenable to pressures from below than those appointed by the Executive.

District officials are obviously closer to the workers than general secretaries.

We must taken these differences into account in our analysis. They are often tactically important.

We must avoid the idea that the rank and file are FIRST OF all, apart from any ideological and political differences that probably there are between us and your organisation, we would like to express our full support to Socialist Aroanicar in ito atmiran surroue against WRP (which in our opinion stands for 'Worthless renegade rarty. ). 1m-D-- ._ J- П..1_11 It is a shame for WRP to use the bourgeois courts against a socialist organisation.

As probably you know, due to the happenings in Iran we are under tremendous financial pressure (e.g. a lot of communist literature from Iran which Bani-Sadr has been translated into English lies on our desks because there is no money to publish it). But we would like to send £2 as a symbolic financial support for Socialist Organiser in its fight against the WRP.

Secondly, we read and discussed your article about Iran in Socialist Organiser no 511/2 dral 1u a11 10 sep.).

You are right to say that, "So the working. class... needs to organise independently to join the struggle against IRP tyranny but also to fight for its own solution for the crisis" This is what we can rarely find in the British Left Literature.

Most of the analysis we have seen so far has taken a side with one of the bour+-= that/ geois and petty-bourgeois blocks, i.e. Khomeini, IRP, Tudeh Party and the majority group on the one hand, and Bani-Sadr; the Mojahedeen, and the army on the other, implicitly or exorking can in bran to 1L -rally behind its present or tuture oppressors.

While forces like the CP and WRP are flagrantly supported their Imam Khomeini and shedding tears for the assassinated top dogs of the IRP, organisations like IMG and RCG seek the liberators of the working class in the BaniSadr/Mojahedeen block.

.arcingrin What was absent in your article was the practical implication of your own stand - i.e. you have ignored the petty-bourgeois nature of the Mojahedeen and have not exposed their political alliance with Bani Sadr, whose natural and obvious alliance with the American-trained army of Iran has been rightly singed out in your article.

Furthermore, you have given the impression that by promoting terrorism, the Mojahedeen aim to tachitate a popular uprising. In this respect you are right to say that the way to fight the present regime is by mobilising a popular resistance rather than resorting to terrorism.

But the point is that the Mojahedeen do not want a mass uprising to topple this regime, and prefer to substitute Khomeini and IRP with a block of Bani-Sadr and themselves, using the opportunity of present conditions, which are characterised by the lack of a leading united working-class party.

Otherwise they would have sought alliance with the existing revolutionary Marxist forces like 'Komala', 'Peykar' , and 'Unity of Communist Militants' Indeed, the vacillating social forces - i.e. petty bourgeoisie - must make a choice day, between the revolution and the

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