New Deal for who?

On the 29th of November 2004 the well dressed predominantly bourgeoisie Liverpool Kensington New Deal for Communities NDC administrators accompanied by the their consultants, community cronies and various bourgeoisie senior city council officers held their yearly Annual Report jamboree. The meeting commenced at 5 pm and finished at 8 pm prompt. The whole venue was like a scene from Monty Pythons Flying Circus.

Two or three weeks before the venue every one of the 4,000 households in the regeneration area received a glossy card by post informing them about the meeting and what the agenda of the meeting would include. The NDC team of 36 to 40 predominantly bourgeoisie regeneration administrators hired two large halls in the expensive Devonshire Hotel. No expense is spared when this bunch of oppressors accompanied by their sub oppressor self seeking community cronies (some of whom have £25,000 per year jobs which are funded by the NDC) frantically try to make the NDC community believe that everything they are doing is wonderful.

One hall was used for the various agencies to show off their wears i.e. amongst the six or seven stalls was a young bourgeoisie representative of the Philemonic Orchestra (who have up to now received well over £50,000 in NDC and various other grants) and the new Registered Social Landlord RSL Community 7, who are really a subsidiary of the massive deceitful and oppressive Riverside Housing Group. Behind each stall was a large thick cardboard glossy picture extolling what the agency did with the usual smiling faces and sunshine event pictures carefully arranged around the centrepiece picture. The most extraordinary observation was Community 7’s stall, which had a picture of what was supposed to be a happy C7 RSL tenant who was in reality a private landlord tenant sat with his cat (which amazingly looked like it was smiling also) outside his private landlord house. This same Community 7 along with the NDC administrators and various Liberal Democrat councillors have in the past levelled all sorts of disparaging allegations at private landlords accusing them, as they always do, of being responsible for bringing the area down, when in reality the RSL’s are more to blame. Is there any end to their lies and deceit? It is rather amazing how these senior RSL and public sector service providers continually use this same format in their frantic efforts to convince the community that everything is wonderful, even when the most casual observer can see that they are making a mess of everything they touch.

The main conference was held in the larger of the two halls. As is normally the case all the board members and the various service providers sat on either side of what was a large ostentatious plastic screen, which looked as though it had been taken from a Twentieth Century Fox film set.

How many people turned up at this important conference you may ask? Well, as shocking as this may sound, out of an NDC community of 11,000 people only forty to fifty predominantly moderate diehard residents (mostly worried homeowners who are under threat of demolition) bothered to turn up. In fact there was more service providers and board members there than there was community members. The most pathetic sight was when the chair of the New Deal board and the NDC Chief Exec finished speaking the only applauds they got were from the various administrators and agency staff, and lets not forget the various opportunist community cronies who where (as they always are at these venues) carefully dispersed amongst the audience. I mean, who do these people, think they are kidding? Do they think that we cannot see through this charade? Obviously not. These incompetent bourgeoisie administrators come into our working class community and try to impose their bourgeoisie cultural perspective, art and symphony music onto us, totally oblivious to the fact that we have our own working class cultural perspective. It is pointless trying to have dialogue, especially critical dialogue, with these senior officers. As far as these middle Englanders are concerned whatever they say is sacrosanct and as such beyond any criticism.

Paulo Freire spoke about how the bourgeoisie come into a working class community and try to impose their cultural perspective onto that community he termed it as cultural invasion. He wrote: Whether urban or harsh, cultural invasion is thus always an act of violence against the persons of the invaded cultures, who lose their originality or face losing it. In cultural invasion (as in all the modalities of anti-dialogical action) the invaders are the authors of, and actors in, the process; those they invade are the objects. The invaders mould; those they invade are modelled. The invaders choose; those they invade follow that choice, or are expected to follow it. The invaders act; those they invade have only the illusion of acting, through the actions of the invader. ((Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1966).

Freire further expounded on the issue of cultural invasion: For cultural invasion to succeed, it is essential that those invaded become convinced of their intrinsic inferiority. Since everything has its opposites. If those who are invaded consider themselves inferior, they must necessarily recognise the superiority of the invaders. The values of the latter therefore become the pattern for the former. The more invasion is accentuated and those invaded are alienated from the spirit of their own culture and from themselves, the more the latter want to be like the invaders; to walk like them, dress like them, talk like them. (Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1966).

What Freire describes above is a common feature within the Liverpool KNDC Community. It is quite common to see male and female Board members and moderate community activists dressed exactly like the regeneration administrators, and as has already been mentioned, becoming actual strangers in their own community. I have on many occasions witnessed the embarrassing sight of community members dressed up in similar attire as the administrators. It is also quite apparent that these same activists and board members wish to emulate in every way the middle class administrators attire, phraseology, and mannerisms. It is as though these community members, who strive to emulate the administrators, believe it is customary to behave in the way they do.

As mentioned, the chair of the NDC Kensington Regeneration waffled on in a somewhat robotic fashion about all the marvellous things the regeneration administrators and the dwindling hand full of community cronies had achieved. As he does at every meeting he once more went on about the Kensington Sports Centre that hardly anyone in the community (especially poor people) goes to because it is too expensive. You see everything has to be sustainable now. Gone are the days when sports centres were subsidised by local government. What the chair and all of the admistrators always avoid when speaking about this sports centre is: Another ineffective regeneration partnership, which was set up ten years ago and up to now has cost millions of pound of European regeneration money and public funding to keep it afloat called Parks Partnership, had been trying to get this same sports centre built for over seven years and only managed to get the funding needed to finalise the project by asking the Kensington New Deal for Communities initiative to provide a substantial amount of the funding. If this NDC initiative had not started up in part of the area that Parks Partnership covered the sports centre would never have been built. This same Parks Partnership also managed to get local government to fund the construction of a building called the “Job Bank” to house them and another load of ineffective agencies in. The Job Bank cost £1.4m to build and was built not by a local firm but by a Welsh construction company.. The sports centre scenario gives further authenticity to the fact that Parks Partnership with its staff of ten or twenty so called community outreach workers, as well as being an oppressive force within the community, was also ineffective when it came to accessing government funding, such as Single Regeneration Budget SRB.

As previously mentioned, the new s Chief Exec of the NDC project, using a state of the art projector and lap top computer which projected all the marvellous things that her staff had achieved onto the cinema type screen using the same wording and slogan as all the other service providers use. Concluded with something like: “I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone amongst the staff and the community for all the help they have given in bringing about all the wonderful things that we have achieved”.

In their political activity, the dominant elites utilize the banking concept to encourage passivity in the oppressed, corresponding with the latter’s “submerged” state of consciousness, and take advantage of that passivity to “fill” that consciousness with slogans which create even more fear of freedom. This practice is incompatible with a truly liberating course of action, which, by presenting the oppressor’s slogans as a problem, helps the oppressed to “eject” those slogans from within themselves. After all the task of the humanists is surely not that of pitting their slogans against the slogans of the oppressors, with the oppressed as the testing ground, “housing” the slogans of first one group and then the other. On the contrary, the task of the humanists is to see that the oppressed become aware of the fact that as dual beings, “housing” the oppressors within themselves, they cannot be truly human. ((Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1966).

A couple of the community board members got up and spoke and the meeting was thrown open to the audience. The faithful bourgeoisie paternal Vicar and board member became the steward of this part of the meeting and as is always the case the same guy who always speaks at the beginning of every public meeting and who’s partner is on the NDC board interjected with his usual complicated hardly anyone can understand banter. Pointing his finger in his usual accusing manner he warned the KNDC staff that the demolition homeowners would not be messed with. Holding up the Liverpool Echo in which he had identified a Public Notice which stated:

Take Notice: Liverpool City Council acting under the provision of The Local Government and Housing Act, 1989, section 89 (as amended) intends to declare as a Renewal area” in the Kensington area of the city (Kensington New Deal for Communities area and the Elm Park neighbourhood). The declaration will provide certain statuary powers and establish a strategic framework for the designated area within which the council will promote the refurbishment or redevelopment of the existing housing as part of the total regeneration of the designated area. The council intends the declaration will be for a period of ten years.

More information concerning the location of the properties to be included in the renewal area and the city councils intentions can be obtained from the Eastern Link neighbourhood team by calling 0151-233-3018.

Any person wishing to make written representation on the comments of these proposals should write to The eastern Link Neighbourhood Team, Municipal Buildings, Dale Street, L2 2DH For representation to be considered by the council they must be received at the above address by 12 am on Thursday the 9th of December 2004.

If you try to ring up the department above to get more information there is simply no answer.

A couple of other people came in, but it was obvious that they did not know what was going on. I came in and spoke for about ten minutes. My primary question was centred on how many houses would be built in the clearance area for rent? I also asked what DEHENS was and why only eight people turned up at the last meeting they held. One of the board members for the Edge Hill area tried to answer but an argument broke out between us and I never got the question answered, or I didn’t hear it because I suffer with partial hearing loss. I accused her of deliberately shutting me out of the process to which she told me to shut up. I also tried to point out the fact that the tenants have no voice within the NDC community. The Vicar brought the questions to an end and a choir of about twenty people from the Philemonic Theatre came in and absurdly started to serenade the audience with a song about loving each other. Not being able to sit through the this absurdity we went outside of the meeting only to be confronted by the Edge Hill board member Norma Williams who had told me to shut up in the meeting. She immediately along with a businessman from the Wavertee Technology Park launched into a tirade of abuse directed solely at me, she also admitted that she had gone out of her way to have me excluded from the DEHENS. This disgraceful outburst included swearing and threats. This behaviour obviously proves that these people think they are beyond reproach and as such they have the right to do whatever they want. I have experienced this behaviour before from the areas MP Jane Kennedy, who during the count at the last local government elections swore at me in front of several credible witnesses, one of them being the highly respected Liberal Democrat councillor Frank Doran. This was because I had taken 257 votes off Labour thus stopping them from getting a councillor into the ward. The Kensington Fairfield ward can be a marginal ward if Richard Marbrow or Jimmy Kendrick are running. The ward can swing either way by just 150 votes. I ran for the Socialist Labour Party, which always takes votes off Labour. This same MP has also in the past had legitimate community dealings with this same businessman who swore at me. This gives further authenticity to the fact that these people are acting in an oppressive manner to people who do not agree with them. Not allowing people who have different and diverse views to speak is oppressive behaviour.

Paulo Freire stated in his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed: Any situation in which “A” objectively exploits “B” or hinders his and her pursuit of self-affirmation as a responsible person is one of oppression. Such a situation in itself constitutes violence even when sweetened by false generosity; because it interferes with the individual’s ontological and historical vocation to be more fully human. With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence? How could they be the sponsors of something whose objective inauguration called forth their existence as oppressed? There would be no oppressed had there been no prior situation of violence to establish their subjugation. Violence is initiated by those who oppress, who exploit, who fail to recognize others as persons — not by those who are oppressed, exploited, and unrecognised. It is not the unloved who initiate disaffection, but those who cannot love because they love only themselves. It is not the helpless, subject to terror, who initiate terror, but the violent, who with their power create the concrete situation which begets the “rejects of life.” It is not the tyrannized who initiate despotism, but the tyrants. It is not the despised who initiate hatred, but those who despise. It is not those whose humanity is denied them who negate humankind, but those who denied that humanity (thus negating their own as well). Force is used not by those who have become weak under the preponderance of the strong, but by the strong who have emasculated them. (Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1966).
I view most of the board members and the twenty or thirty community cronies as sub oppressors of the service provider oppressors. The behaviour of Norma Williams and the businessman gives further credence to this fact
Paulo Freire stated about the above insertion: But almost always, during the initial stage of the struggle, the oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors, or “sub-oppressors.” The very structure of their thought has been conditioned by the contradictions of the concrete, existential situation by which they were shaped. Their ideal is to be men; but for them, to be men is to be oppressors. This is their model of humanity. This phenomenon derives from the fact that the oppressed, at a certain moment of their existential experience, adopt an attitude of “adhesion” to the oppressor. Under these circumstances they cannot “consider” him sufficiently clearly to objectivize him — to discover him “outside” themselves. This does not necessarily mean that the oppressed are unaware that they are downtrodden. But their perception of themselves as oppressed is impaired by their submersion in the reality of oppression. At this level, their perception of themselves as opposites of the oppressor does not yet signify engagement in a struggle to overcome the contradiction; the one pole aspires not to liberation, but to identification with its opposite pole.
In this situation the oppressed do not see the “new man as the person to be born from the resolution of this contradiction, as oppression gives way to liberation. For them, the new man or woman themselves become oppressors. Their vision of the new man or woman is individualistic; because of their identification with the oppressor they have no consciousness of themselves as persons or as members of an oppressed class. ((Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1966).