Just moved to hackney and am aware that all is not well, despite the fact that it is a great place to live (if you don't mind rivers of floating detritus when it rains)...does any one know what really happened to the council? Appeals for information have resulted mostly in being told that the council was taken over by the hard left in the 80s and that they fucked it up to the point where Hackneyites are forever condemned to live without public services. Now I am sure there must be more to it than that. So can anyone tell me:

What went wrong
what they think of current efforts to turn the place into london's cultural hub with the erection of the mighty Ocean venue (while simulatneously denying its residents the most basic of services, like rubbish collection..)
And, MOST IMPORTANTLY, What can be done to settle the problem...

come on, some one must be able to explain - in laymans terms - how a london borough can be bought to its knees with such style

HARD left? what, like Labour? looks like you should book yourself for quite a few of those history lessons if you really beleive that...

BTW, i have heard (unconfirmed) reports that if everyone in Hackney voted Tory it would turn into Surrey overnight. Same in Afghanistan and Somalia apparently.

Hackney workers? Surely shome mishtake?

Check out the website of the Hackney Fightback campaign for the full story and latest news. And please contact them if you want to get involved!

If you are into joining a Trot-based organisation run by the Socialist Party and the SWP, then by all means go ahead and get involved with Fightback, who knows, one of these may even try to recruit you!

On the other hand for more community-based, non party, direct action style happenings, get in touch with Hackney Not 4 Sale, at  hackneynot4sale@yahoo.com 07950 53924

Actually 'Hackney Fightback' is simply set up and dominated by the SWP (with a couple of tame friends) - Somewhat similar to 'Hackneynot4sale' also a front for a another small group of "we know what's best for you so do as we say types" - this time so-called 'anarchos'. Also similer is the hiding behind words like 'community based' and 'non party'. As far as I am aware the Socialist Party would welcome a genuinely broad based community campaign alongside the struggle of the local authority workers affected....

a "trot" (how broad minded and non party of you)

Ok, here's the requested history lesson from someone who knows a bit about Hackney from the management/councillors side.

Hackney council has been "troubled" for most of the last 20 years. But the current shit began to hit the fan in 1997.

As I recall, 97 saw two things happening. The Labour group split, plunging the council into no overall control and plenty of internecine nastiness because many of the politicians hated each other.

At the same time, the council voted through a programme called "transforming Hackney". This basically devolved power and budgets to managers down the line.

Opponents say the plans were a disaster that led to poor financial controls and overspending. Supporters say the councillors made it impossible for anything to work. Former chief executive Tony Elliston once joked that he wanted to install traffic lights in the council chamber.

So, three years on the councillors finally get their act together and form a Labour/Tory coalition to sort the mess out. The problem is that they got nowhere near the bottom of it.

The council's finance officer sounded the alarm and the audit commission came in and discovered huge overspending, and the government starting handing out loan approvals to the council to help it meet its budget.

Things looked like they might be bottoming out, when the council finally sacked its private sector housing benefits contractor ITnet and discovered more overspends and a big backlog (that's what the council said, ITnet disputes it).

Then the government finally got round to intervening in the borough, taking education out of Hackney's hands and making four other orders.

I think that brings us up to date.

Elf's pottted history is indeed from the Management/goverment angle.
The recent history of hackney is more like as follows...
hackney suffers the same problem as all poor areas. High demand for services low income. For many years places like hackney spent loadsand got given loads by the governmnet of the day. However Thathcher and the bankers changed that their attempts to slash spending and introduce privatisation. Blair and New labour in Hackney are just following this strategy through. Many in Hackney believe with a lot of evidence there is an experiment to try to run a Labour local Authority with no 'in-house' workers.
The government through Steven Byers and the DETR has 'intervened' in Hackney to make cuts and privatise. Max Caller has said he is looking for £75 million cuts from a budget 0f £150 million over 3 years. Already the education dept. has been pushed out into a Trust..
Anyway Hackney suffers a number of particular problems.
1. It has lost hundreds of millions in government support in recent years..the Borough Tresurer, i think, put it at £100 in 3 years.
2. Privatisation of Benefits to Itnet meant millions lost in uncollected Council Tax and failure to collect money (£12m) from the government.
3. Privatisation of Waste management to Serviceteam has seen an increase in cost to the council as the contractor claims for work thats not on the job-spec.
4. Hackney pays £75 million every year back to the Government in interest on its enormous Public Works loan of £750 million (yes £750,000,000.)This debt was run up mainly in the 60's and 70's when many conreate system-built estates were thrown up. Of course most of these have already been demolished so,unlike other councils who paid of their debts by Council-House-Sales, Hackney will always be in debt. Unless we manage to 'Dump the Debt'
5. Other the last few years millions has been paid out on stupid schemes 'Transforming Hackney', Total Quality Management etc, on employing consultants some on hundreds of pounds a day, to organise privatisations, employing consultants to advertise overpaid jobs..anyone for a £70 k plus expenses Assisstant Directors job? Apply to KPMG or is it PriceWaterHouse it certainly isn't the people of hackney.
Anyway you get the drift...and in all this time of couse the Council has been partof the gentrification of hackney. The privatisation of the Estates, the unneccessary demolition of so many flat most of which could have been renovated..all mostof them neededwas concierges,reliable lifts cladding and sensible allocations, the shuuting of community facilities while getting money for the Ocean etc.
But history isn't just about them! We have resisted and people have carried on with their lives. This year there has been 6 days of Strikes and numerous unofficial walkouts. There have been occupations,squats+benefits. Thereare people organising a No Rent Increase campaign.Workers and activists have stufffed tens of thousends of leaflets through doors...There have been demonstrations and er Rallies...the sole contribution of FightBack to this year of resistance (that an handing out placards to unsuspecting workers...they dont even bother to update their website).
So theres lots of bad but lots of good too.Get involved ..with your TA,your Residents group,your Union or if you wantactivity,Hackney No Sell Offs. There is a Demo at the Town Hall on November %th 6pm against the cuts and Unison is organising a Community Conference for the community not just politicos.

I was looking on the website for some information on
the campaigns and what is coming up and all i
read is whingeing..."their trots, their anarchists, i'm in
the socialist party, i'm an anarchsit, we are the
best...blah blah" for fucks sake! can we not for once in
our sad little lifes realise that there is ONE ENEMY (ie
Caller, the state, the police, the cuts, jules pipe) and
that as THE LEFT we have more in common than
seperate. by all means go off and do your own thing,
but if to do that you have to slag off everyone else then
you must be a bit insecure about what you are doing.

all i can say is if the council ever wasted their time
reading these pages they must be laughing so hard.

no wonder we are fucking loosing.
Brothers and sisters can we get on with the real fight
on for once start UNITING?

Hackney not 4 contains council workers as well as residents amongst its activists. That is why we can claim to be a community based NON PARTY POLITICAL! campaign group. Honest mate it is possible to achieve!