What's happening in Kensington?

I think it is appropriate that yu set out the remit of the group in order that people can see what the agenda is (whilst most will be able to guess, I think it is still important). You could start by saying who the officers of the group are.

My reservations lie in that it seems you are setting up a group to deliberately go against the NDC as opposed to trying to work with them. This is no particularly bad thing when it comes to certain issues as it is a bad siuation regarding the NDC in Kensington and action is needed, but I am concerned that this group:
a) Gives some false hope to tenants in Kensington and
b) Deliberately antangonises the NDC, thus further distancing them from tenants.

It is my belief that the councillors of Kensington should be doing a lot more to promote community involvement and to answer the questions on housing that are regularly rebuffed but are crucial to the people of Kensington.

This "middle-class" council officers thing is also a bit of a sweeping generalisation. It is my experiencs that a lot are no more middle class than yourself.

Also, no newsletter attached.

Mike is right to be concerned about KNDC's success or lack of it, with millions spent yet no visible sign of improvement unless you count a Mcdonalds and an assault on Newsham Park. Oh, and some big sign boards.

The only bit of graffiti I have seen cleaned up in the last year was the slogan some wag chalked on the beautiful and now boarded up Low Hill GPO building - 'New Kensington, No Post Office'. That soon got scrubbed off! Come to think of it, it wasn't the only bit - the anti council graffiti on the Academy hoardings got painted over within a fortnight too. Sadly, the mess on Boaler Street, Prescot Road, Kensington etc. seems to attract less concern from the powers that be.

But all this talk of middle class this and that as if anyone aspiring to own their own home is some kind of crytpo Rackmann themselves is counter-productive. Maybe they might WANT to escape the tyranny of landlords, council bureacracies and duplicitous RSLs he rightly campaigns against. Maybe he should be working out how to help people onto the ladder now being pulled up by outside speculators so they can take a firm stake in their community before it is demolished by RSLs and the council under the 'housing market renewal' schemes.

Edseam is right in that this hostile stuff about home owners and class discredits the good points he makes and alienates prospective supporters within New Deal, consultancies and the council - yes, the city council overall is letting Kensington down very badly, but not all its officers are sinister class warriors and some do try to help. If we are not going to let someone help us just because they own their own family house, we are setting our face against many friends and neighbours!

Thatcher understood that working class people wanted to better themselves and their families, not fight a class war in their own streets. That's why the bitch kept the left under her jack boot for what feels like decades. Good luck to Mike, but tone down the aggressive rhetoric eh?

A tenant's only group is what we need here in Kensington, our familys not going to be forced to move again within less than two years, we used to live in lewisham road area of Norris Green, our neighbour's and us were bullied into leaving, we'd lived there for 31 years, grown up there, we all helped one another on our the road. quite a few of our neighbours have been made ill, including some dying as a result of the stress caused by breaking up our community and losing our neighbours who were our friends as well, we knew of a lot of pensioners who died from the pressures being put on them by the counci staff to move out. my husband's health deteriorated as a result of the stresses of moving house and losing our neighbours who used to come in everyday have a cuppa and a chat and help us with shopping and gardening.

We were all so sad to be forced out of our community, we were betrayed by a local houseowner Jack Man, heard he's a friend of the local BNP leader was seen speaking to him recently. He bullied tenants young and old alike, even threatening women, we all heard how he persecuted this one young man in particular regular ordered out of meetings, threatened to punch him out at a couple of meetings, he even using the police to get him removed from meetings on threat of arrest. If the tenants of Norris Green had backed this young tenant campaigner in 1998 instead of being misled and lied to by this houseowner maybe we could have had our homes improved and repaired as we wanted from the start and kept our community together, everyone knew this young guy, he went on Radio Merseyside all the time to speak up for tenants get our homes improved, used stand in elections for the socialist labour people in Clubmoor.

I heard a famous phrase, those who don't learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it...

kensington tenant

Opening up a dichotomy between tenants and home owners ignores the fact that both need each other. Tenants need home owners so that they do not live amongst an itinerant population, so that the community has permanent roots and there are more people present who are willing to stand up for their area (even if they are only concerned about house prices). What needs to be shown is how much home owners need tenants. In some areas, total home ownership is a fallacy that will never occur. Therefore, home owners necessarily need to open up a good relationship with tenants, especially those that are there long term. They also need to be more responsive to tenants because it is they who can put most pressure onto RSLs and absentee landlords etc. Also, from their avaricious point of view (if they are money-worshippers), it is necessary that some people can spend a short time in the area to "test it out" almost.

Therefore, to focus only on tenants (or only on home owners) misses the point of building a community.

'Kensington Resident' is right when he/she says that Thatcher realised that the working classes aspired to certain things. Regardless of whether you despise her or not, you cannot argue that she knew what a lot of working class folk wanted (or else she would never have been returned successfully). The talk of the hard-left is for halycyon days that have never happened, that is why they have struggled. They are incapable of understanding that some people (most?) are individuals and act accordingly.

There is a need for residents of Kensington to be better heard and better consulted and the need to expand the consultation so that it is not imply the usual suspects who speak up (and generally are not speaking for themselves). Our councillors, as elected representatives, are failing in this task. The NDC, it appears, are not being made accountable for this glaring oversight. I do wonder, however, how effective a "tenants only" group will be in doing this. I rather feel it will create more barriers than it breaks down. An effective group would have all walks of life there, speaking their part without any one view over-riding others simply because of personal status/wealth/ego.

Kensington Tenant should be mindful not to judge everyone by another person's standards. One bad experience does not equate with everywhere else. I too remember a phrase: "Those who are always looking back, never look forward"

Edseam said:
"Opening up a dichotomy between tenants and home owners ignores the fact that both need each other."

WE SAY:
Tenants must fight for Tenants rights, because nobody else will, end of story!!!

*WE* are not opening up a dichotomy (not a word *WE* bother using by the way), *WE* are merely organising Tenants to defend our interests, because for too long *WE* been ignored, railroaded and betrayed. *WE* made the break just recently by forming Tenants Action Group (T.A.G.), when *WE* achieve the first aim of the T.A.G. then *WE* will move on to other issues, when our first campaign is won *WE* will write the story of it.

you said:
"Tenants need home owners..."

WE SAY:
Like the workers needs the manager? Like the slave needs the slave owner, like the youth need the youth worker - *WE* don't think so!!!
From *OUR* collective experiences as Tenants and Tenant activists *WE* have found that house-owners actually need *US* Tenants more, as there are more of *US* tenants in most neighbourhoods and communities.

Working class people young and old alike don't want or need a monkey for *OUR* backs, *WE* don't need anything other than ourselves, self reliance, self independence, standing up for ourselves, either deal with it or DEAL WITH IT!

you said:
"What needs to be shown is how much home owners need tenants."

WE SAY:
Where there is a common interest then T.A.G. and the numerous house-owner groups may form an alliance, BUT first and foremost *WE* Tenants must decide our issues for ourselves, speak for ourselves and gain/defend our rights in our neighbourhoods and communities, after all *WE* are the majority. And I say it again, house-owners DEAL WITH IT!

you said:
"Therefore, home owners necessarily need to open up a good relationship with tenants, especially those that are there long term."

WE SAY:
Well the house-owners are the ones who in Liverpool have the history of overriding Tenants, abusing Tenants, threatening, misleading Tenants and pushing for stock transfers against Tenants collective best interests. Therefore *WE* Tenants need to learn that history. It's the house-owners who've used Tenants groups to help housing associations get their dirty hands on our public property, ie council housing. Former Boot estate house-owner Robert Ousby and now Yewtree Lib-Dem' councillor lived in Broad Lane, he was involved in the house-owners conspiracy with LHT to get a Housing Action Trust (ie transfer our homes to a private landlord) behind the backs of tenants on the "Norris Green tenants & HOUSE-OWNERS Association" in 1992 and the wider community.

you said:
"Therefore, to focus only on tenants (or only on home owners) misses the point of building a community."

WE SAY:
*WE* build a community, person by person, just as *WE* build (brickies that is) a house brick by brick, the chippie makes and fits the window and door frames, the roofer lays the roofing felt and slates, the glazier fits the glass, then there is the plumber and the spark! A house just like a community has separate/independent parts that combine to form the whole.

As Tenants and Tenant activists *WE* will work together to defend *OUR* rights as Tenants firstly. *WE* need to learn the lessons of history, time and time again house-owners flood Tenants associations, they run them, they control them, they spend Tenants money (Tenants levy) they make decisions in their interest against the best interests of Tenants. Thus *WE* are building the T.A.G. in Kensington and the house-owners will have to DEAL WITH IT on Tenants terms no one elses, thus the social and political landscape has changed perceptibly!

you said:
"'Kensington Resident' is right when he/she says that Thatcher realised that the working classes aspired to certain things. Regardless of whether you despise her or not, you cannot argue that she knew what a lot of working class folk wanted (or else she would never have been returned successfully)."

WE SAY:
*WE* don't need a Neo-Tory telling *US* about Thatcher. The miners and working class will hold street parties the day that bitch drops dead, the mining community are waiting for such a day to celebrate and gather again! In fact *WE* the working class of Liverpool will hold street parties then too!!!

Thatcher didn't know what the working class wanted how could she... SHE WAS THE CLASS ENEMY! she gave *US* unemployment, she gave *US* poverty, she gave *US* the police militia terrorising mining communities. That bitch gave *US* the divided Britain, that bitch gave *US* the North-South divide, the yuppie, the dog-eat-dog society, the selfish individual.

The sooner she drops dead the better, imagine how better more happier Britain would have been if she'd had been killed in 1984.

you said:
"The talk of the hard-left is for halycyon days that have never happened, that is why they have struggled. They are incapable of understanding that some people (most?) are individuals and act accordingly."

WE SAY:
Again we don't need lectures from middle class Tories. The working class are founded on the *WE* of the "collective", the middle class are of the *me* of 'individualism'. Thus the pure essence of the ME-ME-ME was Thatcherism and the pure essence of the *WE* was the miners 'collective' fightback against the destruction of their communities, the 1984 strike was to defend working class mining communities!

you said:
"Our councillors, as elected representatives, are failing in this task."

WE SAY:
*Your* councillors (whether Labour or Liberal) promised to rehouse the McKay family, they heard the case numerous times at numerous places including the election count, the leader of the city council said to Mr McKay he couldn't do anything. Since the McKay family made contact with Mike Lane, myself and the SLP, things have started to move, we've offered them help, support and honestly care about getting them housed after months of eviction threats. They're working class people it's been a case of *WE* tenants supporting them as tenants. EVERYONE ELSE FAILED THEM - BUT NOT US!

you said:
"The NDC, it appears, are not being made accountable for this glaring oversight."

WE SAY:
NDCs around the country have a rotten record for over-riding working class communities, creating divisions and manipulating them for their own economic plans. As regards "...being made accountable..." that's why NDCs and numerous other QUANGO (ie non-elected, non-accountable, non-publicly scrutinised) organised have been created to sideline democracy/accountability/representation, NDCs and other such commercial agencies exist to force social/political agendas on working class communities that councils (at least outside of Liverpool) find close to difficult to do. Regeneration Companies are Tory policy and Labour Government implementation, they work in the primary interest of commercial business not the working class full stop. They also happen to override the entire community and all residents whether tenants, house-owners or local small businesses.

you said:
"I do wonder, however, how effective a "tenants only" group will be in doing this."

WE SAY:
*WE* will defend *OUR* tenant rights - then it will be effective! When we get one family rehoused successfully, then it will have been successful, it will have proved useful to *WE* tenants.

you said:
"I rather feel it will create more barriers than it breaks down."

WE SAY:
There are already barriers that *WE* the tenants DID NOT erect, *WE* are the majority in the community yet *WE* are the minority of representatives in the council and on any and all of these 'self-elected' boards, RSLs, Regeneration QUANGOs, development agencies, housing companies etc.

you said:
"An effective group would have all walks of life there, speaking their part without any one view over-riding others simply because of personal status/wealth/ego."

WE SAY:
That's ideal, but with the social, economic and class divisions in this city, again *WE* say the tenants have to form *OUR* group to gather ourselves together to defend one another as we are doing from now on.

you said:
"Kensington Tenant should be mindful not to judge everyone by another person's standards. One bad experience does not equate with everywhere else. I too remember a phrase: "Those who are always looking back, never look forward"

WE SAY:
Well we'll have to agree to disagree politically. Which of course we already do - don't we!

The success of this T.A.G. will be entirely down to how it benefits it's membership and how well regarded in the neighbourhoods and communities surely.

Kai Andersen, T.A.G. (WE SAY:)

And therein lies the problem. Incapable of seeing another side of an argument, incapable of examing what someone is saying without slanting it with your own views. I understand the need for a community voice it is just that I think creating division is not the way.

I am a tenant, I am not a Neo-Tory and I am working class myself. Your rhetoric helps no one, fails to move a situation forward and is not based in the real world.

Lumping the "working class" together or the "middle class" together actually perpetuates this class divide (or dichotomy depending on which language you feel comfortable with - has anyone ever seen anything so petty?!). People are divided differently than on simply 'class' issues. They see things individually; they have individual aspirations. You fail to understand human thought when you think you can simply impose your utopian vision on people. Anyone would think you should realise this when you claimed to have huge support in Norris Green yet it didn't materialise.

The working class are not founded on a "We the collective", that is just working class-based groups and parties. For years the working class in Liverpool voted overwhelmingly Conservative, then Liberal and now they vote Lib Dem. Any of them choices sound like a call for collectivism? Didn't think so. Labelling everyone who fits your socio-economic profile of working class with the same things just doesn't work. When are you gonna wake up and smell that? People want a sense of belonging, a sense of pride in their community but they want it for very selfish reasons, not as part of some grand vision.

Since when has anyone thought creating more divides ever got people any closer? That's what you are doing in Kensington by trying to separate the tenant from the home-owner when in life they are often best friends and live next door to each other.

I am no Thatcher supporter, far from it, but one must see that she did know how to manipulate the working classes OTHERWISE she would not have been successful!! There's no disputing that. In fact, a successful enemy always knows the oppositions weak points - that's why they are successful!

As for Mr McKay, have you ever considered the fact that it was other councillors working with other agencies (however much they may be despised) that actually got things rolling? It is fairly naive to think that shouting about things actually makes a difference compared to those who are in a position of power using that to go through the appropriate channels to affect change!

You problem is that you like to scream and shout about injustices, making all the right noises but fail to realise that those who have a position of influence or of power are turned off listening to you. Then the public realise that so turn off from you too.

I am a Kensington Resident and I am proudly Working Class and after living in rented flats for years my partner and I OWN our terraced house (OK, the building society does) and we are very proud of making it a nice piece of the big jigsaw that is our neighbourhood.

We have not suddenly become tories or stopped giving a damn about our neighbours. Last time I looked we don't own any slaves and neither of us work as evil neo-Thatherite managers, yuppies etc. Neither of us have campaigned to rid the area of people who pay rent - just as well, as many of them are our own family and friends.

We would happily support a Tenants' Action Group for people looking to take more control of their housing conditions - and that means we would also want to help any member of it that wanted to escape a bullying public or private landlord and take a stake in their property, as lots of them would undoubtedly like to do.

Where is the dichotomy or ideological thought crime in that?

Who thinks people stop being neighbourly once they escape from landlord ownership? Who thinks their group would be better off without such people? Who can define what is working class and middle class in an area like Kensington?

Who thinks an individual should be judged by their rent book or lack of it rather than their outlook and actions?

Kai's heart is in the right place but Edseam is using their head - until we all recognise the enemy is the council establishment and not each other, it is them who will go on and on having the last laugh.

I'm sorry but what we need is a KLF - Kensington Liberation Front! Yes, a Front - tenants, residents, local businesses and sympathetic outsiders, anyone with a passion for the people and the area who sees what is needed is real investment and improvement, not a glossy asset stripping exercise that undermines the lives of all, whatever the tenure of their home.

Good luck to TAG - but please don't play into the hands of the enemy by helping their divide and rule agenda.

"helping their divide and rule agenda."

Which is what I was saying. You rarely get anywhere behaving as if everything is a for or against battle, especially when you don't have the power.

Many people I know in Kensington bought their home through the Right to Buy scheme - set up by Thatcher. That is what I mean when I say she knew what the working class wanted! Just because someone owns a home doesn't mean they absolve themselves of concerns about their tenant neighbours.

A TAG is doomed to fail if all it wants to do is set tenants against the rest. It is typical SLP to believe that to identify themselves with a romanticised notion of what constitutes working class and then wonder why their hard-left views are not replicated across the area.

As the last post said, family and friends may not own their homes like yourself, but you have a stake in their future happiness and they in yours. An Action Group that sets itself up as dividing these close relationships based purely on the ownership status of someone's home is narrow-minded and doomed to fail.

Far better that all residents (I repeat, residents) who are concerned about the area and want to see real change get involved more to pressurise the NDC into making progress in the interest of all, not just one group (either home owner or tenant). In the hands of the many not the few.

Kensington has seemed to have had a raw deal in Liverpool for a long time, and, and I am being completely honest and frank here, it has also been run-down for decades. It is the place that time forgot in many senses. Kensington, and other areas like it, are left out of the equation and effectively ignored, for many reasons; economic, social, the view certainly that people in Kensington are either the very bottom rung of the social class system, have very little in terms of material wealth, or are transient, like students who are here today and gone tomorrow. So, Kensington is viewed as trouble, even untouchable.

Then we come to political realities, and perhaps even closer to this, economic realities. Within this mix, there are social and class realities, but I feel that politics and economics are at the centre of what is happening in Kensington, and in general in the regeneration of Liverpool. I don't need to point out, but will, that most people feel that Regeneration is papering over the huge cracks, and that it is about big money making even bigger money. That is a highly cynical view, but also a completely honest one. Perhaps some Liverpudlians will make something from it, who can say? It may even be a good thing for Liverpool people? But, what is happening in Kensington, is symbolic of what has always happened to what are perceived as working class communities; we are usually always the last to know, the last to benefit, the last in any equation, and the first to lose jobs, livelihoods and the like. This is reality, and part of the social fabric and structure of British society. It is implicitly accepted, and acted on, by many people within this society. It is unjust, archaic, and ultimately detrimental to our whole society, but truly bad for working class communities.

Fighting for Kensington, in great part really means fighting for those who live, work, pay rates and taxes in Kensington, whether they are tenants, houseowners, students or what have you. Keep your eyes on what you want, which, really boils down to some justice, in whatever form that takes. Attacking each other over moot points is merely a way for those who wish to divide and conquer, to do so with much greater ease. If there are 'sinister' forces trying to get their own way in Liverpool, we as Liverpool people are probably helping them by fighting amongst ourselves, and being, in the main, isolated individuals howling in the wilderness.

If there is a class issue, and I believe there is, it is far more complex than saying all working class people are huddled and oppressed, and all middle class are scheming selfish oppressors. Life is not so black and white, merely many many shades of grey. The truth of the matter is that, for many years, local Liverpool people HAVE been sidelined, were more middle class and privileged people have flourished here, and got the better housing, better educational opportunities and so on. This is something that has been changing recently. Instead of condemning middle class people for getting on, even if there are double standards sometimes involved, it is far better to fight, in general and on more personal levels, for working class rights and social inclusion; this begins with accepting that you as an individual have the right to a decent life, irrespective of class, colour, creed, religion and so on. It is challenging hypocrisy, by talking about it, writing about it, debating it and bringing it into the public arena, that also sees injustice diminish; we have all been far too silent for far too long. Equally, we should all be honest, ruthlessly honest, in what is truly just and fair.

It is also being certain about what you want, because I always believe that half of wanting something, is knowing what you want! This goes for material as well as less tangible things.

I wish the TAG group well, and salute those like Kai, Edseam and others, who are vociferous and intelligent as they are honest in their quest.

Very wise words from Tim, and sincere passion from Edseam and Kai too. Despite rhetorical differneces, I think we all see a pretty similar version of the big picture:

a cynical council establishment in thrall to BIG property interests (not individual homeowners, who are barely less powerless than individual tenants).

Land is power in this neo-fuedal country - (as Tony Benn says, 'England is the last colony'), and in Liverpool the manor is still very much owned and abused by the corporation, the RSLs and their (secretly) selected developers.

Just think how much of Kensington and the land all around it is owned by these interests, and you will see the absurdity of picking on the local folk who have chipped a bit off that power block and bought their own humble home.

We should be encouraging local ownership, not disparaging it as class traitorship. Let's recalim Kenny from the absentee landlords and speculators!

Thank you Kenny resident! Wise words yourself, and a dose of realism too.

Just for your info the KNDC 6 weekly public meetings are this week, Fairfield's is tonight (Wednesday) in the Devonshire at 6.30

Just so that the Newsham thread doesn't get clogged up with the SLP ranting I thought I would respond to the SLP's comments here because they are about Kensington. I am fully aware that IMC do not want party politics on here but I woudl like to say that I am not part of a party anyway and just want to expose some truth distortions (news if ever there was any!).

The "housing victory" in Kensington spouted by the SLP as their great triumph amounts to them turning up in a removal van plastered with their logo to help someone who was being chucked out of their home by an unscrupulous landlord. They say they helped get this family rehoused but I fail to see how. Yes they shouted a lot but to whom? And they completely forget the fact that other parties were involved in sorting out the mess this family were in. In fact, one Cllr, as a member of an RSL, played an integral part in helping. But then, why let the truth get in the way of a piece of propaganda (exactly the argument they put forward about the other parties).

They bang on about how they are starting this revolution in Kenny but they are just smoke and mirrors, believing that the louder you shout the better it is. A bunch of no marks who do no one any good, least of all the people of Kensington.