The Battle for Queen’s Market
Arthur Daley | 11.02.2006 16:40 | Social Struggles | Workers' Movements | London
Newham Council are trying to sell off a thriving hundred year old market to developers St Modwens, who will sub-let to supermarket chain Asda. local campainers "friends of queens Market" have been fighting the plans, and have a lot of local support.
The Battle for Queen’s Market
Queen’s Market in Newham, East London, is next to Upton Park underground station and is open Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. The market has eighty stalls and sixty shops. It is a lifeline to people on low income, selling fresh fruit and vegetables: oranges and lemons at ten pence each instead of the supermarket’s twenty five, a head of garlic for five pence. The market is a hundred years old and it caters for the area’s diverse ethnic populations.
All this is threatened by Newham Council’s plan to long-lease the market to developers St Modwens. St Modwens’ plans are to replace existing shops and housing with an Asda and other shopping units; updates to the plans also include a library and service centre. The plans suggest that current social housing will be demolished. 200 flats would be built on which Newham residents would get the first option to buy, but with the flats sold at “market value” rather than constitute social/affordable housing, in a low-income area. The Council has stated its commitment to the market, yet refuses to give measurements, and their stated view is that the market “suffers from a proliferation of certain uses such as meat sales and fruit and vegetables”!
Nobody believes their promises that the traders will be protected: high service charges and the long disruption while building work is going on will drive the stallholders into the ground. This has happened at Edmonton Green, a nearby market in the hands of St Modwen. Meanwhile the existing shopkeepers will be competing with national chains for unit space.
When concerned residents saw a full page colour ad in the Estates Gazette in February 2003 offering the Market site for sale as a ‘development opportunity,’ they started up the Friends of Queen’s Market campaigning group. The group holds open committee meetings attracting a mixed bunch of campaigners including local shoppers and traders of varied religions, ages, and political beliefs, and all walks of life including teachers, students, pensioners and one opposition councillor. The campaign has held four demonstrations at the Town Hall with numbers ranging from sixty to a hundred and twenty (on a freezing February evening!) It has set up stalls in the market where we collected 12,000 signatures for a petition against the sale of a market. Now we have a newsletter, beautifully produced by one of our members.
The campaign has had good coverage in local press, the Evening Standard, the Guardian, the Times magazine and Time Out , also on BBC, Asian and African radio stations.
Friends of Queen’s Market has published alternative proposals for the future of the market, full of imaginative ideas for low-cost improvements which the Council clearly has not the political will to engage with - so we suggest it should be run as a trust with charitable status and a management committee consisting of traders, public and Council officials.
Meanwhile the East London Community Organisation (TELCO) of local trades unions, churches, mosques etc held a month long consultation with over 5000 Newham people – their findings were that a large majority of people did not want an Asda in their market!
BUT our mayor still says he wants to give the market to St Modwens. Incredibly he points to the public consultation on 10 December – two weeks from a major holiday period. No crèches were provided for busy mums, people were given fixed appointments between 10 and 2 pm, and many of the 9000 invites were just delivered the day before. Friends of Queens Market’s most generous estimate is that 30 people attended!
Please give us any help you can – we are up against very powerful vested interests. Can you help us with publicity, or by emailing Newham’s mayor or his New Labour political bosses to protest against his plans to sell and ‘redevelop’ the market, at
mayor@newham.gov.uk. (and please copy to Info@new.labour.org.uk and to us at friendsofqueensmarket@yahoo.co.uk).
If you are anywhere in East London, you can come to our meetings, help us with our campaign and perhaps with suggestions for campaigning.
For any further information, please contact:
Jan 0208 418 0927
Sasha 08956 649 696
Pauline 07903 374 009
Or write to us at friendsofqueensmarket@yahoo.co.uk or
Friends of Queens Market, PO Box 48124, London E6 4WD
Top tips from Friends of Queen’s Market:
- have regular open planning meetings so everyone is in the picture
- don’t expect everyone to have an email address: be prepared to pay for calls to mobiles to contact your supporters and build the campaign
- use the local press
- don’t dismiss wacky ideas for action: it’s better to let campaign members be creative, they will lose heart if you pour cold water on them
- be patient with fellow campaigners because the bigger the campaign gets the more likely that some of them will drive you crazy!
Queen’s Market in Newham, East London, is next to Upton Park underground station and is open Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. The market has eighty stalls and sixty shops. It is a lifeline to people on low income, selling fresh fruit and vegetables: oranges and lemons at ten pence each instead of the supermarket’s twenty five, a head of garlic for five pence. The market is a hundred years old and it caters for the area’s diverse ethnic populations.
All this is threatened by Newham Council’s plan to long-lease the market to developers St Modwens. St Modwens’ plans are to replace existing shops and housing with an Asda and other shopping units; updates to the plans also include a library and service centre. The plans suggest that current social housing will be demolished. 200 flats would be built on which Newham residents would get the first option to buy, but with the flats sold at “market value” rather than constitute social/affordable housing, in a low-income area. The Council has stated its commitment to the market, yet refuses to give measurements, and their stated view is that the market “suffers from a proliferation of certain uses such as meat sales and fruit and vegetables”!
Nobody believes their promises that the traders will be protected: high service charges and the long disruption while building work is going on will drive the stallholders into the ground. This has happened at Edmonton Green, a nearby market in the hands of St Modwen. Meanwhile the existing shopkeepers will be competing with national chains for unit space.
When concerned residents saw a full page colour ad in the Estates Gazette in February 2003 offering the Market site for sale as a ‘development opportunity,’ they started up the Friends of Queen’s Market campaigning group. The group holds open committee meetings attracting a mixed bunch of campaigners including local shoppers and traders of varied religions, ages, and political beliefs, and all walks of life including teachers, students, pensioners and one opposition councillor. The campaign has held four demonstrations at the Town Hall with numbers ranging from sixty to a hundred and twenty (on a freezing February evening!) It has set up stalls in the market where we collected 12,000 signatures for a petition against the sale of a market. Now we have a newsletter, beautifully produced by one of our members.
The campaign has had good coverage in local press, the Evening Standard, the Guardian, the Times magazine and Time Out , also on BBC, Asian and African radio stations.
Friends of Queen’s Market has published alternative proposals for the future of the market, full of imaginative ideas for low-cost improvements which the Council clearly has not the political will to engage with - so we suggest it should be run as a trust with charitable status and a management committee consisting of traders, public and Council officials.
Meanwhile the East London Community Organisation (TELCO) of local trades unions, churches, mosques etc held a month long consultation with over 5000 Newham people – their findings were that a large majority of people did not want an Asda in their market!
BUT our mayor still says he wants to give the market to St Modwens. Incredibly he points to the public consultation on 10 December – two weeks from a major holiday period. No crèches were provided for busy mums, people were given fixed appointments between 10 and 2 pm, and many of the 9000 invites were just delivered the day before. Friends of Queens Market’s most generous estimate is that 30 people attended!
Please give us any help you can – we are up against very powerful vested interests. Can you help us with publicity, or by emailing Newham’s mayor or his New Labour political bosses to protest against his plans to sell and ‘redevelop’ the market, at
mayor@newham.gov.uk. (and please copy to Info@new.labour.org.uk and to us at friendsofqueensmarket@yahoo.co.uk). If you are anywhere in East London, you can come to our meetings, help us with our campaign and perhaps with suggestions for campaigning.
For any further information, please contact:
Jan 0208 418 0927
Sasha 08956 649 696
Pauline 07903 374 009
Or write to us at
friendsofqueensmarket@yahoo.co.uk or Friends of Queens Market, PO Box 48124, London E6 4WD
Top tips from Friends of Queen’s Market:
- have regular open planning meetings so everyone is in the picture
- don’t expect everyone to have an email address: be prepared to pay for calls to mobiles to contact your supporters and build the campaign
- use the local press
- don’t dismiss wacky ideas for action: it’s better to let campaign members be creative, they will lose heart if you pour cold water on them
- be patient with fellow campaigners because the bigger the campaign gets the more likely that some of them will drive you crazy!
Arthur Daley