Podcast: The Peoples Plan for the Royal Docks

This transcript was generated with the aid of AI and may contain errors, omissions, or inaccuracies. It has not been fully edited or verified against the original audio. If quoting or relying on the text, please check it against the recording where possible.

There’s a rich but hidden history of communities organizing around alternative plans and futures for the places in which they live. And in this podcast, we’re going to look at perhaps one of the best known examples of this, the People’s Plan for the World Docks. But what was the People’s Plan? How did it come about? Why, given it was never implemented, is it still significant today and what we can learn from it?

My name’s Sue Brownhill and to answer some of these questions I’m drawn by two people who were involved with the People’s Plan at the time, who also have a long history of involvement in alternative approaches to planning and economic development, Hilary Wainwright and Bob Colnett. We’re going to be telling the story of the People’s Plan from the early 1980s to the present day. But this story also raises some much broader questions about regeneration and urban development. And therefore its relevance is much wider than the just to the local area itself. So before we move on to look at the story of the People’s Plan, can I just ask you both to introduce yourselves, how you came to be in Docklands in the 80s and what your role in the People’s Plan was? Yeah, I’m Bob Colnett. I was working for an organization called Joint Docklands Action Group for 1979. We were supporting various action groups across Docklands. And when the closure of the Royal Docks took place, I was involved with the discussions about the People’s Plan. But my specific role really, as I remember, it was more about preparing our case against the Docklands Stoleport of more later, which was a short take off and landing airport, which was proposed by the LADC. And Hilary, so my name is Hilary Wainwright and I work for the GLC, in particular the Popular Planning Unit, rather optimistically named.

Which was part of the economic and the industry and employment committee or section of the GLC. And one of our principles was the alternatives come out of resistance that where people are saying no, they actually often have something better in mind. So when we were very near the beginning of the Popular Planning Unit and the GLC, we were thinking, where do we start? You know, London is huge, you know, and there was this strong resistance to the airport. So I would go down to the meetings against the airport and people would start saying what they’d like the area to, they could recognize there was a problem with the old Docklands, the old Port of London authority and all sorts of imperial trade that it that it’s service, which obviously was no longer in existence. So there was a problem of what should be the future and the Stoleport came along, but people in and around the old Docks did not want that. So I attended meetings and they would already start saying, well, we would like this or we so then the GLC, our brief was to not develop policies ourselves, but to unlock the resources of the GLC to support the ideas of local people consistent with the kind of manifesto commitments of the GLC or the Labour Party that then won the election.

So we’re on the GLC and that manifesto included the idea of an integrated transport system in the area, not that there was a commitment against the airport as well as a recognition that the old Docks weren’t going to live. We’ll come back to some of these ideas that became embedded in the plan and I think we’ll also come back to this idea about alternatives as well. And just also to fill in about myself, as I said, I’m Sue Brown and at the time I was working for a group called the Docklands Forum, which worked alongside JDAC that Bob was involved with and the GLC. We were also supporting communities, supporting other groups as well in Docklands. It’s all about getting people’s voices heard in terms of the regeneration. And Hillary mentioned this point about alternatives and I think we’ll be coming back to that because I think it’s one of the key things about people’s plan is that there’s nothing inevitable about regeneration and planning. There’s always an alternative.

And it’s important that we kind of keep that in mind. So just in case people don’t know what the people’s plan is, we’ve got some copies in front of us. There’ll also be a link in the description to this podcast and you can also click on related websites, our people’s plans website from the project that we’ve been doing on the history of community led planning. So you’d be able to get a copy yourself. We thought we’d just kind of talk a little bit about what actually the plan looks like and because at the time this was done in the 1980s, pre-digital, pre-everything going on the net, everything on paper put through people’s letterboxes, but it was quite original for the time. So if you look at the plan, it’s got a picture on the front of a group of people in front of an empty building in the Royal Docks, the old Spillers flour mill in the Royal Victoria Dock. The docks themselves have started closing in a locate east of the city of London. They started closing in the early 70s and by 1981, they’d all closed in 10 years. This vast area of East London, which was a thriving industrial port area had completely closed down. Thousands of jobs disappeared and there wasn’t this huge opportunity really to use this land for good or evil, so to speak. And that’s where the action groups sprung into life to say, well, we’ve got this opportunity of a lifetime. Let’s not waste it now. Let’s make sure that this land is used in the right way to create jobs for local people, housing for local people, those facilities and so on and so forth. So this huge opportunity opened up, but at the same time, the kind of forces of the market and government were also looking at this huge area and thinking this is a way in which they can shape the area in their own kind of with their own kind of vision. And effectively, there were kind of two alternative visions which were embodied in a kind of government process called the London Dockland Strategic Plan in the 1970s. And the 1970s strategic plan really posed these two alternatives, you know, either a very commercial development or what they call East End Consolidated, a rather negative way of saying the area should be developed for local people. In any case, when the Tory government came in in 1979, that whole idea of the London Dockland Strategic Plan and the local authorities having a role was completely scrapped. And instead of that, Michael Hester, the environment said we’re going to have a development corporation which would effectively take powers away from the local authorities, take the land away from the Port of London Authority and we would allow the market to develop the Dockland. So that put all the community groups and to some extent some of the local authorities in a kind of collision course about the future of this unique and vast area of land with huge costs to be involved in infrastructure and so on and so forth. But nevertheless, the opportunity was there.

In a way, also the GLC when Bob talks about the government taking away planning powers, that meant also the GLC’s strategic planning power. So in theory, in the past, before Thatcher, the GLC would have quite a sort of locus over the docks because it was a strategic resource. But with Thatcher, you know, that was all abolished. I mean, that was before the abolition of the GLC itself. And I think just to add the link between what Bob said and the People’s Plan, for us and the Popular Planning Unit, in a way, the fact that our legislative power or legal formal powers have been destroyed meant we had to think about other sources of power. And in a way, the idea of the People’s Plan partly came out of the idea of popular power. So thinking of the people themselves as having power and in a context where there was no formal council power, then mobilising that popular power was a practical priority. So just to emphasise, in a way, the People’s Plan wasn’t just about a vision. It was also about mobilising popular power.

And, you know, in Coin Street, the GLC was able to buy the sites of Coin Street. So the community plan for Coin Street was realised and is now there for everybody to see. So it wasn’t a stupid idea. It just required, you know, the kind of political power being used in the right way. Yeah. And certainly the organisation I worked for, the Docklands Forum, had been the consultative body for that London Docklands strategic plan. And then when the Docklands Development Corporation came in, all local democracy was kind of swept away. And the idea that planning would get in the way, that local people were in obstruction, that local councils were in obstruction and would turn away development. And the only way to develop the inner city was through the private sector, was through doing away with planning controls, getting away from the red tape and allowing the market to, in effect, do what it wanted. And another aspect of that was that Docklands was received by Heseltime and others as an area where nobody actually lived. So it was a free fire zone, effectively. We didn’t really have to worry about local people because there wasn’t anybody living there. It actually turned out that was totally untrue that about 50,000 people actually living within the London Docklands strategic plan area, London Docklands area. So, you know, it suited their sort of argument to present this as totally derelict land.

And I remember also there was a sort of underlying contempt for the people insofar as they existed. Then I remember the lawyer at the inquiry around the Stalport after, I think maybe even before we presented the plan, he hadn’t got the quotes here, but he sort of, he said, you know, he’d heard about plans, but the idea of a people’s plan. It’s ridiculous. I’ve never heard of such a thing. The people. Yes, that is a good quote. But it just showed there was a sort of, you know, both a denial of their existence and then insofar as they had to recognise a sort of, you know, contempt for them as actors in the situation. And just for those of you listening, just to take you back to those days. So we’re talking about the time from the late 70s into the early 80s, the docks had closed and that meant industry was decimated. Unemployment in the area was getting close to 25% adult male unemployment in some of the areas. And the area covered a vast area from Tower Bridge down through Wapping, the Isle of Dogs, the Walled Docks on the north side of the river, the Surrey Docks and into the Greenwich Peninsula as well in the south of the river. So we’re talking about a very large area which was at the same time in an area of greatest need. So the areas that were topping the horribly named index of multiple deprivation at the time were in East London, this is nationally, but right next to the city. And the whole idea of the deregulation of the city, the expansion of the city eastwards. This is before Clary Wharfe has even thought about is the time that we’re talking about now. So it was a key, as you say, like a kind of almost like a battleground, but you know, there was very, very stark and different choices that could be made about what was going to happen there. The defence of the airport was in terms of its usefulness for a city and its nearness, you know, the kind of problems of getting to Heathrow for these poor old city. There was quite an ideological unopening to all of this as well. And most of the authorities, all of them, in East London were labour controlled. The GLC was labour controlled. It was a quite aggressive Tory government, created the London Doctrine and Development Corporation precisely to bypass those, quote, labour authorities, which were regarded as negative factors in investment, but also negative towards, you know, market forces in some way. So, you know, it really was kind of a bit of an ideological battle here, as well as a battle about community and space and everything else. There’s a wonderful bit in Michael Hazeltine’s autobiography where he talks about how he persuaded Thatcher to back the urban development corporations. And he basically said that all the councillors in Newham were communists. And the phrase in the book is, “I lit the blue touch paper and I retired.” You know, basically that was it. And then she, so he got her to support the development corporations, which again, just to underline this, took over the control of land they had land vested in them and they took over the making of decisions on what would happen on that land. And that was done by a board of appointed people. It wasn’t, there was no scrutiny. Minutes weren’t published. People couldn’t make representations. You could comment on planning applications, but you know, you didn’t know what happened to the comments. So it was basically an undermining of local democracy, which is the thing that had largely driven, you know, not always wonderfully, but anyway, that was the principle that had always underpinned what was going to happen in North Auckland. It was backed up by shared loads of government money. Yes. They tried to sell this notion. It was just a private sector led thing. It actually wasn’t, it was massive amounts of public money went in to acquire the land, to subsidise developers. They created an enterprise, lots of subsidies.

There was a heavily subsidised state driven initiative for London Auckland Development Corporation. And those private sector things like Canary Wharf simply would not have happened without the public money that was poured in. And our argument was, if there’s going to be public money, then the communities should have it. Why should it just go to people like Canary Wharf and London City Airport? So we’ve got, you know, what the plan is, it’s an alternative plan driven by the local community, driven by the need for an alternative something different. We’ve got the context at the time, the political context, how and why the People’s Plan came about. Well, I can say a bit about just my memory of those meetings and the role of the GLC. So I think the logic was something like, you know, we’ve got our ideas and local people have got our ideas. How do we collect them? And then one of the leading actors, it was really led by women, wonderful woman called Connie Hunt.

And another Lily Hopes. And both of them were very determined and very creative and very knowledgeable in detail about the local, not just local buildings and so on, but also what local people did, how they lived and the sort of flow of activity. So I think Connie had the idea of, well, why don’t we have a place where people can come and come with their ideas, like a People’s Plan Centre?

It would come out of discussion like this, wouldn’t it? And then she’d say, well, she worked in the Launderette, I think, on the- Pier Parade. Pier Parade. She said, well, you know, I think there’s a place next to the Launderette that’s gonna be empty. Why don’t we think about that? And so they’d be coming up with all these ideas related to their experience. And I’d be able to say, well, the GLC could cover the rent and could, you know, ’cause we had quite a lot of money, public money. And the point was to get it out to the public. And then they’d say, well, we’re busy, you know, ’cause they were like grandparents and they’ve got, you know, busy lives. So we can’t do all this ourselves. Why could we employ people? So, you know, the GLC said yes. And then we discussed, you must have been involved there. What kind of people to employ? So it wasn’t just like general open application, but we were looking for somebody, we wanted somebody who would know the local businesses.

Somebody who would be more home-based or community-based. And then a young person. So we got this young woman, Tracy, who I think she just left school. I think she was 16 or 17. Yes. And then we got a small businessman, Bill. Hart, wasn’t it? Bill Hart, yes. And then we had a local housewife, Annette. And then we had a young, there was a young lad, Gary, I think. Yes, Gary. Of course he played, but he was good and sort of objective. And then they discussed with the Doctrine’s Forum and JDAC and others, how to gather these ideas. And people were very imaginative. So we worked out where people were. So I remember going to a bingo session with Tracy and, you know, we arranged to go to talk about people’s plan in the middle of this bingo session. And so we just tried to get out about it, just anywhere where people were. And then we got somebody who had worked on the Docks. Maurice Foley. Yes, it was a younger guy. I can’t remember anyway. So we got everybody involved, really, in all the different sort of community groups. Yeah. And Bob, can you say a bit more about the Stollport and the campaign against it? Well, there was, I mean, the New Doctrine’s Forum, which was a kind of coalition of groups, that got very involved with it, with the people’s plan idea and so on. Connie Hamm was very involved in that. But then there was a kind of a slight offshoot of that, called the campaign against the airport, which was really driven by this person called Earl Hobbs, who, you know, had an absolutely intense passion to try and stop the airport. And what was the uptake? Well, the airport was, the airport was a sort of described as a Stoll airport, a short take off and landing airport.

And it was on a kind of key between the Royal Albert Dock and the King George V Dock. And the idea was to have this short take off and landing airport there, which would be for a very specific type of aircraft called a Dash 7, which was made in Canada, to have them Dash 7. And the concept of this was brought to the LNEDC by Molens, a construction company, who said, “Why don’t we build an airport in the Royal Docks?” And the chief executive of the LNEDC was very, very keen on this idea. Because it fitted the whole private sector led agenda and opportunistic planning. Yeah, right. And linked with the city. So it was the city. Well, it is now, yeah. So the question was, you know, how viable was this sort of idea, sort of technically? And there was a company called Breiman Airways operated, Plymouth Airport, that were using these Dash 7s on a limited runway down. And so Bill Bryce, who was the sort of brains behind Breiman Airways, got together with Molens and did a test flight into Docklands, actually into the Western New Docks, and it proved that it could be done. And so the airport planning application was submitted. So this was at the back end of 1982, I think. Yes, that’s right. And there was quite a bit of opposition to it. I’m just trying to think whether the Newham Council was actually opposed to it. They were opposed to some aspects, because, I mean, this center road on the Docks was only a few hundred yards from a primary school, residential towers, and houses, and businesses around the Docks as well. They gave all these reassurances that it would it was limited to the Dash 7 aircraft, which was just a quiet aircraft. It would only operate between certain hours. Not at weekends. Not at weekends. And there were quite a lot of restrictions imposed on it to try to kind of mollify the campaign against the airport. And this is all presented at the inquiry. Now the campaign against the airport didn’t believe any of these reassurances. So the inquiry just… Okay, there was an inquiry because the Secretary of State called in.

Yeah. Which was the opportunity for the GRC and the action groups and campaign against the airport and Newham Docklands Forum to present their case against the airport. And the case was centered around the people’s plans, which we’ll discuss in a moment. But the main thing was there was this energy behind stopping the airport, because if the airport was going to go there, it would effectively freeze or affect what was happening in the rest of the Docks, for which there was no proper plan. So this would effectively kind of determine But in a way it was a bit of a sort of ritual, the inquiry, wasn’t it? Because actually government had the power to override the results, didn’t it? They did. I mean, it was always going to be difficult because the London Dockland Development Corporation, which was the planning authority, development control authority, owned the land and obviously was strongly in hoots with the government, was going to approve this thing.

We were always going uphill on this one, but we thought that it was very important kind of in terms of this sort of political consciousness raising to push this. And there was a lot of doubts about the airport. And one of the strong points made in the airport inquiry, not just in terms of people’s plan, was that we didn’t believe their promises. It would inevitably expand because they promised, I think, 100,000 passengers. London City Airport has now got 3 million passengers a year. The runway has been extended. Jets are coming in. Four engine jets are coming in. The Dash 7 doesn’t operate out of London City Airport anymore. I mean, the whole thing is completely different. It’s a major airport. And everything we said at the public inquiry about we don’t believe these promises has proved to be 100% true. Yeah. But if you read the report from the inquiry, they have to make the decision on the basis of the planning application that’s in front of them.

And that’s why the plan was important, wasn’t it? Because it was put to the inquiry. It was done. And it was done quickly to get to the inquiry, to be presented to the inquiry, and say, we don’t want the airport. And it wasn’t just, we don’t want the airport. But this is what could happen here. Yes, in a way, there’s an opportunity cost in going to the airport because all these opportunities have been ignored. And there was another public inquiry into the extension of the runway. So we’ve got the airport, we’ve got the community to put something different to the airport at the inquiry. We’ve got the GLC supporting groups through funding the People’s Plan Center with the People’s Plan Center workers that were going around asking people, so what would you like to see in the area? And so that was that intense period, wasn’t it? At the beginning of 1983, putting the plan together. Two other things. One is we did a lot of research into Bryman and into, I mean, I remember, I think I was in Canada for some reason and sort of did a lot of digging. And we discovered Bryman was actually really financially precarious. I don’t know, does it still exist? I don’t think so, no. No, so, I mean, we did look into the viability of it all. And then the other thing that the GLC, I mean, the GLC was able to both support the people, and then also use its own kind of research and sort of strategic capacity to think about the whole issue of transport and dock facilities. So part of the People’s Plan, I don’t know how it’s written up, but is that though there’d be an end to the traditional kind of Imperial dock facility, it could be used for some kind of more modest European dock facility. Correct.

That was linked, ’cause also in a way it meant that the plan wasn’t just a list of people’s ideas. There was a sort of strategic concept behind it in terms of political economy. So the idea would be that the businesses would be particularly to do with processing, but related to the kind of goods coming in from Europe. So, I mean, I don’t know that we went to Rotterdam, but we kind of thought in terms of a European facility, Yeah, I mean, if you look here on the plan, it says where the airport is now, it’s got interchange of port, road and rail. Yeah, so your point earlier about this strategic interchange, it was about getting traffic off the roads, it was about using water, I mean, all very current arguments, but of course, if there’s an airport there, it kind of stops that happening. So this whole thing about interchange for transport containers, timber depot, exhibition center, dry dock. So again, thinking about maritime history and Dave’s tour boats, Dave Glaston, who was the- And acknowledging that- The dock was for him. It wasn’t just a completely dirty taboo, there was infrastructure there, there was life, there were quite a number of businesses on the other side of the other dock, there was ship repair, there was quite a lot of stuff going on. And our approach was to kind of grow that, to nurture it, if you like, as part of the basis of this thing.

But you asked about what my memories are, and I spent an awful lot of time at that inquiry, which went on, I think, for about 53 days or something. And my particular role was partly doing kind of background research, but also actually acting as a kind of lawyer to cross-examine the London Dockland Development Corporation and Mollum’s representative and so on. And to work with the GLC’s lawyer, whose name is Tony Gifford. Tony Gifford, yes. And we spent a lot of time sort of interrogating them about all sorts of aspects of the airport, about its viability, the implications and all that kind of stuff. And I think all of that has some effect on the inspector’s sympathy towards the people’s plan, his doubts about the airport, to be frank. I mean, he did impose a lot of conditions on the airport, which might not It’s quite exhilarating, actually, being that inquiry, because you actually saw, if you like, the enemy face-to-face, which you sometimes don’t see in planning issues. And you did feel you had the people with you. I mean, I think that’s another role for the people’s plan. We can discuss it later, but is that it’s often acting like a motivator, you know, to help to unite the campaign and inspire, you know, people like the lawyer, Tony Gifford. I mean, he probably does a lot of work, which is just like going through the motion, but he was really excited. Yeah. Because the people were excited. I mean, they were very, you know, partly the design and everything linked into a sort of feeling of pride about it. So, Lillian and Molly, they were all really proud of what they’d done, you know. Yeah, yeah. There were. And, you know, we put on a good show at public opposition inquiries, a demonstration when it opened and this kind of thing.

It wasn’t just a bunch of professionals arguing, another bunch of professionals. It definitely was the people’s movement. And local people read out the plan at the inquiry. Yes. All the ideas that had come through from all those meetings with mother and toddler groups, with the unions, with the boat builders, with the local businesses, all those ideas that had come through and into the plan were read out at the inquiry. Yeah. I think sometimes we bring in the people who had the ideas like, and the boat builder, Jacob. Joe Jacob. Yeah, Joe Jacob. They’re all memorable people that you could, that performed in a way. Indeed, they did. Yeah. I mean, it has to be said that there was a campaign in favor of the airport. So we didn’t have it kind of all our own way. And there was always a doubt in the back of our mind that new encounters The council was a little bit flaky on the whole thing about the LDDC because they sat on the board of the LDDC. Well, the leader did. The leader did, but I mean, they weren’t a little bit flaky. It wasn’t, I didn’t feel at the time that Newham council was wholeheartedly behind the people’s plan. No, no, in fact they- They had their own. And they objected. I remember the council at the GLC, Mike Ward, he summoned me to his office and there was the planner from Newham. Right. And we distributed the plan to every door because it was a people’s plan. I mean, I suppose we’ve done it with the people’s plan center people. And he was absolutely furious that the people’s plan should be distributed to everybody. And without the permission of Newham council, he was really, really furious. I had to explain.

And I got the backing of Mike Ward and so on. But, you know, as you say, I think Newham council was not really happy. I think their plan was to have this center. So they wanted to, because the world dogs basically cut the community in two. So there’s North Woolwich and Silvertown, which is sandwiched between the docks and the river. And there’s the Connell road bridge is in the middle of that. Newham’s plans were to kind of widen that to have a sort of, to break that kind of island effect. So the airport would have actually stopped that. And I think my memory serves me right. Was that in their South Docklands local plan or something? And anyway, that’s the argument that they were putting to the inquiry, I think. So it was slightly separate from the people’s plan. But yeah, but also I think they wanted to accommodate this idea of opportunity. So opportunity zones in the plan. I don’t think they were fitting what the LDDC wanted in terms of different types of development, but I think their basic plan would have clashed with the airport as well. It’s just worth, I don’t know why I’m thinking of this, but the transport general workers union, which is key to the whole story about Docklands, was the dock labor scheme and the whole closure of the docks and their relationship with the PLA is absolutely crucial to the whole discussion that was going on.

That’s some quite good, very close connections to the T&G. Nicky Fenn, he was the docker that came. Was it, was it right? So having them as part of our campaign was important. And that sort of broad base of trade unions, labor party people, trades councils, if you remember, they were involved. The residence association, the campaign against the tower blocks in Newham, because they saw this an opportunity for decent housing, so there was quite a sort of broad alliance of people with different interests, employment interests, housing interests, leisure interests, childcare interests, that all could see an opportunity that could be realized if the people’s plan could be did it. Yes, and in that, there was quite an important link between, because there was a truth to this idea that Silbertown and North Woolwich were isolated. So also the campaigns that were in, those two areas were quite separated from campaigns in the rest of Newham, and then the campaign against the airport brought them together. So remember people like Pat Olie. She was a local councilman. Yeah, and she was really involved in Newham, but had little connection to Silbertown. So it was powerful because it brought together the two elements of Newham. And I remember as part of the work I did on the plan going to interview people, I think it was in the rebuilt Ronan Point. So Ronan Point was a very high systems built tower block, which there was a gas explosion, and actually it was a partial collapse, and four people died. People listening to this podcast may know of that. Yes, it sort of echoes of Grenfell. Yeah, and so they rebuilt the tower, and I interviewed a family living on the 22nd floor, and the concrete was crumbling at the top, the wind was blowing in to the kids’ bedroom, and you couldn’t open the door on the balcony because the crosswinds were so high, because it’s so high, and you could see the royal docks from the windows, and the idea that the land in Docklands could be there to get families out of the tower blocks, and looking here at the plan, and all around the Royal Victoria Dock, it says houses with gardens, and again, because that’s what people were telling us that they wanted, and as you said, fitted in with this idea of bringing people together. And I think, and also at the time, there was no secondary schools south of the A13, so in the whole of the south of Newham, there wasn’t a secondary school, so it was about using this land that was made available through the dock use changing through this. Yes, to reunite community. Reunite community to provide that kind of basic level of good quality in life that they wanted. Yeah, I mean, the people’s plan was a classic case of trying to plan an area, whereas the OEC was completely against this idea of planning. It was opportunist, you know, if a private developer came along, that was it, and it was like seizing opportunities wherever it could be found. So there was no plan for the royal docks, London City Airport was just something that popped out of wherever it came from.

Whereas, you know, we were really committed to this idea of a comprehensive plan that would link to the surrounding areas, but also would have some integration and some sort of authenticity in itself. And that sort of idea, which is actually a very sensible, it’s not even a left-wing idea, it’s just a kind of basic idea about good planning, was something that the government and the LVDC were absolutely against. So they’re sort of, idea of land development that’s completely different from ours. We’re saying, well, there should be a plan here. You know, you can’t just build an airport, you’ve got to think about what’s going to happen next to it and the implications of it. But no, they weren’t interested in anything of that kind. It was like, get it done, get it done, get it done. And there’s this idea of trickle down, isn’t it? This horrible metaphor, as somebody’s called it, that if you have something like the airport, then the benefits will trickle down.

So more jobs will come, different facilities would come. It doesn’t have to be planned for, it will just happen kind of magically. And he said before about the state putting money behind this. And obviously the LVDC was backing the airport proposal and they commissioned some consultants to do a report on the economic impact of the airport, which said there’d be 5,000 jobs. And I think this was something that was looked at in the inquiry and possibly challenged actually that number wasn’t kind of brought down, but it’s not necessarily. The quality of the jobs, you know, there’d be anything. Yeah, but also there’d be other jobs from industry kind of start. And of course, you know, for very high unemployment there, a lot of local people felt we need jobs. And you talked about there being people in favour of the airport. And there was a opinion poll taken just after this report came out about the jobs and showed a slight majority. I think it was 50 something percent of people in the area in favour of the airport. So, you know, it was, there was these arguments, these kind of debates were kind of all very live. And that’s what the plan and putting the plan to the inquiry was really, you know, part of capturing some of those arguments. So putting forward quite strongly the case for an alternative to that. Yes, because I mean, I think that the fact that people were slightly in favour was partly that jobs promise and also sort of a feeling that, you know, they were in an area that was increasingly derelict and that here was the promise of being brought back into the mainstream of the economy. And there’d be a sliding community once again. So slightly nostalgia driven. The question of an alternative was key.

We presented the plan to the inquiry. The inspector’s gone away to think about it. What happened next? Well, he came out with a decision, which is backed by the secretary of state, which was to give the airport the go ahead, subject to some restrictions on noise and so on and so forth operating on us. And that’s where we were. And this is where the role of the GLC became absolutely crucial because if they

could negotiate some kind of lease or sale of part of the raw dogs, then it would be possible to implement people’s plan. However, obviously with that planning consent having been given, it was always going to be difficult to to find a solution to purchasing the dogs. So I think if I’m right, the GLC decided to go for a kind of sort of reduced option, which was to get a lease on the north side of the Albert dog, where there was quite a lot of existing industry. And that could operate, if you like, alongside the airport and would give the GLC a foothold, a significant foothold in the dog from which they could perhaps begin to build some of these things into some things in the people’s plan in terms of future development. That proposal was rejected by the PLA. They said there was no way they were going to do a deal with the GLC, even if they had their money. And nor were they going to do a deal about reopening the dogs. In fact, I was sent by the GLC By then I’d moved on to work for the GLC. And I was sent by the GLC with George Nicholson, who was the chair of planning, around the dogs of Europe to see whether enclosed dogs, which is what the raw dogs was, you know, could be a viable proposition. So we went to Antwerp, for example, and Hamburg and Rotterdam and other places to talk to the dog. First of all, to see whether a dog could be run by local authority. And it actually could be several of those places. It’s the local authority.

The authority runs the dogs, not some, you know, strange private sector organisation. So number one. Secondly, enclosed dogs operated quite very successfully in Antwerp and Rotterdam. So there was no kind of technological reason why you couldn’t have an enclosed dog system. But the PLA was absolutely adamant that the dogs couldn’t be reopened. The only answer for them was to move down to Tilbury. They weren’t even prepared to entertain this idea of partial reopening. So we were really up against it there. So PLA is the Port of London Authority. And it’s a sort of semi, I suppose, what we’d call a quango, really, it’s a semi public body, isn’t it, that was charged with running the dogs, the Port of London. Over decades. But at the time it was really heavily in debt to the central government, linked to the decline, well, the change basically to contain on this issue. Yeah. And ships getting bigger. Yeah. So this whole whole idea that, as you say, things moved down to Tilbury. And I remember actually being on a bus with people from North Woolwich going down to the boardroom at Tilbury.

I think you were probably there, Bob, I don’t know. There was a meeting of the board and it must have been where the GLC proposal was being put. So we went down in a bus to Tilbury to try and dissuade the board members to actually lease the land to the GLC so the plan could be implemented. Because I think it’s important to say, isn’t it, that even though the decision to build an airport went ahead, the idea that that just meant the plan went out of the window was not actually kind of the case. There was still the possibilities that parts of it could be implemented. And this is what was happening, wasn’t it? And the airport at that point hadn’t happened. It was just simply planning consent. Yeah. The area is completely derelict, apart from the north side of the Albert Dock, which had these existing industries. So there was still an opportunity to do a lot of things in the people’s plan. Probably would have required the London City Airport not to have gone there. And this is where the GLC’s intervention could have been crucial. But obviously the government just put a block on it completely. And a couple of years later, the GLC issued a compulsory purchase order for the rest of the dock estate, the Royal Docks estate, didn’t it? Didn’t they? I didn’t know that actually.

I remember Connie gave evidence of that inquiry into that CPO. And so the LDDC put in the CPO in 1984 or 1985 for the rest of the dock estate. But ironically, because of the way things happened, the GLA, the Greater London Authority, the successor to the GLC, but not quite, does now own the rest of the Royal Docks. Because when the LDDC was abolished, it went to English partnerships. And then it went to the London Development Agency, which then became absorbed into the GLA. So in a twist of fate, by the time we’re talking now, the dock estate did end up in public hands through the GLA. And then a couple of years later, the City Airport has rented… No, that’s on a really, really long… I think the LDDC set up 999-year leases or something like that. So that’s on a very, very long lease, too. But the areas that hadn’t been sorted in that way, like the keys, like the north side of the Albert Dock, and ended up…

Later on in the story. So we’ve got the inquiry, which looked like a defeat in inverted commerce, but people still trying to get the plan implemented. And the GLC set up an area office down in the Royal Docks, if I remember rightly, through the economic development unit. Yes. I remember I wasn’t really involved in that. I was different from the popular planning unit. Yeah, because it was more about economic development in the sense of, I think there were actually projects that maybe the Greater London Enterprise Board, which is part of the GLC, funded. Yeah, I mean, there were… And it was a bit more… It wasn’t really just to do with Silvertown and North Woolwich. It was Newham, more generally. Yeah. And I mean, there were things that got funded, some of the training projects, the child care training projects that actually were on site in the Pier Parade as well. So some of the ideas in the plan that could make use of existing shops or buildings or whatever, but did kind of embody some of those ideas about trying to get some of the benefits for local people did actually happen. But like the big idea for Shed 4, I don’t know if you remember that one, Rob? Yeah, I do. Was that a sports? Yeah, it’s on the south side of the Victoria Dock. And it was a huge sort of hangar, a warehouse area, a bus.

And the Newham Dockland Forum, with a huge amount of energy, decided that they were going to occupy it and turn it into a kind of local sports centre. Because these buildings were just sitting there with no… There was no really kind of policing of it. People just walked in and out of the docks in those days, in the early 80s, with no, nobody stopping you or anything. So they took over Shed 4, as it was called. And it was one of the big sports events that fired aside football. Oh, really? So it was a real occupation then, then a working… Yeah. Look, it could happen. This actually could happen. We swept the floor of Amblance, which was like inches deep in soot and hadn’t been used in years at Shed 4. And it all had to be swept and swept and swept so they could play football in it. Oh, wow. It was just in the summer. It was one summer, wasn’t it?

Was it ’83? I don’t remember. ’83 or ’04. But it was a terrific day out. I mean, there was loads of people there. Yeah. And it was a great way of publicising the whole idea of a people’s club. And this chap called Eddie, he was sort of masterminding this five aside thing. And he sort of got this whole thing going. And yeah, no, we cleaned Shed 4 so it could be used in five aside. But of course, that became the public safety zone for the airport. And that structure was demolished. But it’s actually still empty now. 40 years later. Anyway. Yeah. So we seem to be saying that all the way along, the plan was putting an alternative. It was making the case for a different, but it was sorted through the planning inquiry through not being able to get hold of the land. And then in 1986, the GLC was abolished, wasn’t it? So the kind of that support for the communities and alternatives through financial and policy and strategic support, that also went. So are we talking about a story of failure here? Well, I don’t think so, because I mean, in fact, we’re talking about it, but also there’s so many. I mean, it’s been in various films. Probably Bob and I are always getting people contacting us who wanted to know more about it. And people aren’t just academics, nothing wrong with academics, but not just for their own thesis or something, but who are wanting to learn about the possibility of alternative plans. I mean, it just showed what was possible because it was very detailed because it was presented as an inquiry and it had an impact. People could just see that this type of initiative was a really useful way of actually saving land.

for the people. So I think it’s had an influence on sort of thinking about community development and alternatives and sort of helped to build up confidence that there can be alternatives. Bob? Well, I mean, a series of campaigns against the airport have continued almost up to the present day, actually, because every time it’s extended or the operating hours are made more flexible, you know, there’s a lot of opposition to it. And actually even Newham Council is now beginning to express some opposition to the operating hours of the airport with these jets flying over. I mean, they’re very, very noisy. This is nothing like a Dash 7, which wasn’t quite a quiet aircraft. This is a really noisy aircraft flying, you know, 40 an hour. I mean, there’s a lot of aircraft movements. 40 an hour is almost one a minute. It is. It’s incredible. So, I mean, it’s completely changed the whole area. So there’s still a campaign against the airport, but maybe the sort of more strategic point is, you know, what’s there in the Royal Docks now proves the point about the people’s plan. It’s a hodgepodge. It’s piecemeal. It’s depressing. It’s bleak. I mean, you see pictures of the Royal Docks in 1983. Is it that much better now? I mean, to be honest, you know, 40 years later, it’s still a mess and there is no coherent planning.

And it proves the point that you need to have a more grassroots approach, although it seems like it’s strategic sites. How can local people be involved in a strategic site? But there can be. And, you know, a site is not just, you know, where you draw a boundary line. There’s a whole catchment area and you’ve got to make the effort. And also the relationship of activities. And some of the businesses were, you know, interconnected with the possibility of the dock development. And some of the businesses themselves were interconnected. There’s quite a lot of food processing that could have been turned into more of a sector, you know, linking to, you know, restaurants and sort of food use in London. Yes, I mean, economic activity is best when it’s coordinated. There is something called the Royal Docks team. So, as I said before, GLA, half the land now GLA and Newham have this team, because of course City Hall, GLA’s headquarters is now in Victoria Dock, was the Siemens building. They would say, we are developing the area. We do have a plan. We do have a strategy. But my feeling is that if we go back to these different ways that you can do regeneration, they are still very dependent on the private sector. So, for example, that Millennium Mills building the photograph that’s on the front cover of the People’s Plan has only just- this is 40 years later- has only just gone on site now, redeveloped by Lendlease, you know, the big international Australian-led property company. And it’s largely because they’ve been trying to parcel up these really big sites. And the only way that then you can do that regeneration is to get really big global companies and you’ve got the deep pockets. Whereas if you go to Hamburg, for example, you go to Rotterdam, they did it really differently. It was public sector led, but they did small sites, parceled it up and did a much more coordinated kind of approach like that, which meant it wasn’t so dependent then on, you know, these big companies. What are they going to do with that big building? They’re keeping the mills, they’re redeveloping all around it so they can get the usual mix of sort of luxury flats. Yeah. I mean, there is- they have got affordable homes, Homes England and the GLA have- there is some affordable homes on site there actually already. So again, that point to the idea that the view that, you know, isn’t all just kind of private sector led new councils trying to do community wealth building, they’re trying to get some kinds of local agreements. But, you know, it’s very hard because there’s still the idea that it has to be delivered through largely through the private sector. And the north side of the Albert Dock was going to be funded by a Chinese company. And this, you know, this was when Boris Johnson was mayor and there’s questions asked about how this actually happened. This deal was done, but- and that collapsed. So that site is now the one that the GLA DLC wanted to buy, or at least that site is- there’s a few empty offices on it at the moment, but the rest of it is, and I think they’re putting that out the tender again now. So, you know, the ideas in the people’s plan in that there is the idea that the public sector stops things happening or whatever, you know, and that the benefits will kind of trickle down in a way you know, that argument, the airport has not necessarily kind of supported that argument because it’s always needed the public sector there to promote it, to, in effect, subsidise it, to put in the infrastructure to make it happen. And in a way that’s kind of still happening now, although it is being done slightly more democratically than when the LDC was around.

The approaches to regeneration, the sort of policy directions have almost followed the LDC’s views because the idea that the public sector can get the land or that you can pass it up slowly or you can get community groups doing things is not seen as a kind of the way to do things. So you’ve got an artwork in the moment, just actually over the road from where Millennium Mills is kind of on site, just below the pontoon dock of the station for Dock and Sight Railway. Jesse Brennan took Connie Hunt’s copy of the people’s plan, kind of photographed it, blew it up, and you’ve got- so, you know, the people’s plan is, in effect, still on location. It’s still there in the landscape showing- It could have been different. And maybe there’s still a role for that because it’s not completely finished either. And maybe it helps a bit to shift the balance a bit more towards the public. I mean, even things like community wealth building is a sort of concept which is public led, really, public but community involved project.

Maybe things like the people’s plan centre and the people’s plan and the coin street experience has just helped to shift the balance against the idea that only the market can be dynamic. It’s almost helped to create this idea that there’s a choice between the market and democracy, both at different sources of dynamism. Whereas before the people’s plan was developed, there was a sort of idea that only the market can be dynamic, the public sector. So, as you say, seen as blocking things. So, I think we helped to shift that, people call it narrative, but, you know, kind of view have been very dominant. Yeah. Yes. Is there anything else about present day and the significance of the plan you think that’s important or what might happen in the future? What might be the continuing afterlife of the people’s plan? You got any thoughts about that? I think the people’s plan was a sort of product of its times in as much as there was quite an active community action movement in London in the 80s that the GLC was closely involved with as sort of supporting and vice versa. And that kind of quite good working relationship between community action groups, which involved housing and environment and trade unions and so on, and local government was a really, really important part of a kind of political network which made the people’s plan possible and gave it a glimmer of a chance to be delivered like it was at Coins Street on the South Bank. And I do think that that kind of community action energy is not quite so evident now. And local authorities have been significantly disempowered as well by government and by their own timidity. So, it does create a very different environment within which community plans operate. So, they’re operating in a much more kind of restricted environment. It’s not really not there. No. It’s just the environment’s much more restricted. And these kind of more strategic interventions like the people’s plan are, according to Yes. Yes. I mean, you’ve got groups in Custom House, Canning Town, Silver Town as well, getting buildings and, you know, doing their own, trying to do their own developments. But yeah, it is so much more difficult because that environment, that funding, that network, the possibilities that were possible through that are different. Yeah. It’s finding the ways through, isn’t it?

On the one hand, you could say, I mean, positively, I’d say that the idea that ordinary people, you know, not, in my opinion, ordinary, but, you know, the official sort of ordinary people idea, you know, are actually extraordinary and people have got this creativity. That idea is now much more sort of prevalent amongst ordinary people. I mean, people feel confident and there’s much more, certainly in my experience in Hackney in London, you know, people feel when something’s done, they feel they’ve got a right to say no and that they’ve got a right to, you know, insist on what they collectively want. So you have that greater confidence developing on the one hand, but on the other hand, you have had this complete decimation of local government. So it’s really, you know, where there’s no lever of power for people who’ve got this sense of agency, self-agency to pull, then it’s kind of so frustrating. People are just bashing their heads in them and you can’t really get anywhere. Cause even, I mean, you know, like community wealth building, which is, you know, the idea of using public purchasing and which is, it’s kind of like a rast resort really of, of leverage, but that’s something. So, you know, people have been searching inventively for something, but, but, you know, that’s not enough to influence the whole development of a, of a, you know, a strategic area like this.

It’s more like an idea for the future to keep pushing. I mean, sadly, the present Labour party, you know, leave a level of leadership is not of that mind. You know, it’s not really looking to involving people in thinking about policies. It’s not got that kind of creative vision. So it’s going to take, you know, new political developments, I think, to make that possible. And the ambitious plan will still remain as, you know, one of those examples that shows that those alternatives are possible. And even if they don’t necessarily happen on the ground, they can still have that influence in, in, in giving people confidence to come up with their own ideas. Well, in the custom house, they’ve got this speech plan, which is quite recent. They’ve got an ambitious plan, community wealth building sort of concept. For the renovation of the entire council estate, you know, which basically the predicated on the fact that Newham council owns quite a lot of the estate already. And they could use that power. They’ve got over ownership as a way of kind of using, working with the community to create a kind of community led regeneration of an entire estate. And they produced a plan. They did some viability work on it and so on.

It’s not got very far because they need enormous amount of confidence from the local authority to get behind it. And the local authority is saying, yeah, we own this land, but we’re not going to give you the way to give it to you. So it’s the last thing you want to do. So, you know, it’s part of these local authority restrictions, you know, if we’ve got land, we’re going to hold on to it. Yes, they’re very possessive. They’re very, very possessive about it. And when you think the GRC of the Corn Street site, very, very cheaply to the Corn Street community builders. I mean, that’s quite extraordinary. And they’ve done a great job with the Corn Street community builders, but that sort of trust, you know, my experience with local government, labor run of government anyway, not just exclusively, but they don’t seem to really have that level of trust, which means actually saying to government two things to you about your strict rules. We’re going to try and be creative. So we need creativity, which is on the community side being matched by creativity on the local government side, a bit more courageous. You know, we don’t see a lot of that. And so that is the magic. If it can be done, you might get somewhere. Yeah. OK, so let’s leave it there and let’s hope that there’ll be more plans. There’ll be more plans coming through. OK. OK.

Thank you. Thank you both very much. Well, thank you for organizing it. Is there anything you’d like to say that you didn’t have time to say? I actually went out to Toronto to the, I can’t remember who paid for it, to talk to the people who made the Dash 7. Right. And to talk to the editor of the Toronto Star, who was also standing to be mayor of Toronto. And they had a Stalport airport in an island. Yes, near the lake.

Sorry, I’m in Lake Ontario. They had a Stalport there. And there was quite a lot of community opposition to it, including by this new aspiring mayor, who I kind of spoke to. So, you know, a lot of background work went into thinking about this. This was not just knocked off the back of a bag packet. There was a lot of work went into it, thinking quite deeply about, you know, could the docks be reopened?

You know, what was the Stalport airport thing all about? Is it really viable? What are the issues here? So now I think, courtesy of the GLC, and it was possible to do that kind of work, which I don’t think would have been possible without the GLC there to say, you go over to Rotterdam and find out what’s going on there. I thought that was really helpful because it gave some of the politicians at the GLC the confidence to say, there’s no problem with using the docks. And having it run by the property. We’ve seen it. We’ve talked to the people. So I was very, very interested in our feedback from those visits to Antwerp and so on and so forth. Yes, I think, you know, that’s something to hold on to that combination of, you know, a political authority that’s got quite a broad remit and local people who have got kind of their very immediate local interests that drive them to want an alternative and to be able to think about, you know, how life could be better, but who maybe themselves haven’t got the, you know, they’re working full time, they haven’t got the knowledge, haven’t got the time to do the research to sort of get the broader view. And so to be able to combine that sort of creative pressure and potential power and legitimacy from the community, with this sort of strategic, both power and sort of knowledge that a local authority has or a political authority has is crucial. And it’s just very, well, very problematic and sort of really almost alarming that that idea that local government can be a kind of key factor in a new, in a different Britain is kind of lost, is being just completely killed.

So do you think that gets around the criticism as well that can be made of the People’s Plan that it wasn’t really a People’s Plan, it was more some groups with some local authorities and unions kind of plan? I think it’s a combination that’s crucial. I mean, there’s absolutely no doubt it was driven by the people. I mean, Bob and I were like on the ground all the time. And if, you know, we wouldn’t have been able, we and sort of other professionals could never have come up with that. You know, there was a sort of, you know, even getting the professionals sort of motivated and activated to think in a different way needed that sort of challenge. I mean, the local people were not, you know, they weren’t just deferential to the DLC. You know, they were, they began by being really hostile, you know, because the DLC was their landlord for some reason. Yes, yes, and a really, you know, not good landlord. Shat on them to use the language. But, you know, have been really bad.

They were like the DLC. I mean, I remember being, you know, the object of suspicion, you know. And you have to win the trust to have a real relationship. And then they shaped, okay, we gave money and resources, but they shaped how they were used. You know, if a DLC official had just come down and said, we’ll give some money to, you know, I don’t know, develop this peer parade or something like that, you know, a strange thing that, you know, a planner might have said, oh, well, you know, we’ll keep the people happy by kind of improving their shopping parade. You know, but it just wasn’t done like that. The money was like there, but to be used in a way that was driven by local people. So I’ve got no doubt it was a partnership rather than a kind of done by professionals. I mean, yeah, it’s a really important question, because I’ve heard that before about people’s plan and other plans, similar plan.

And I always push back on it because, partly because the activists who are involved with these things, the professionals, are themselves actually personally committed to make things happen and also got skills that they want to kind of make available to community groups to use those skills. So it is co-production really, a fancy term, but it means sharing skills. But also I think that if you do share skills, then there is kind of respect and acceptance because people are necessarily going to be a little bit suspicious about middle-class professionals. But I mean, you’ve got to prove yourself that you’re actually useful. As this friend of mine used to say in America, you are either useful or useless. And if you’re useful, then people will say, great, that’s just what we want, you know. And if you deliver, because that’s the other thing, their experience of political authorities is that people promise, you know, but they don’t deliver. And so, you know, you did feel, you know, you’d go to a meeting and you’d say, well, the GLC could do that, but then you had to do stuff like getting it through committees and things. But unless you knew that there’d be little hopes, probably sort of ringing you up saying, you know, so what’s happening? You know, you wouldn’t be driven to do it. And the people who are most skeptical and say it’s the GLC behind this are people who are in favour of the airport anyway.

And they’ve sort of got sights sympathetic towards the LVDC. So, I mean, I’m sorry, but that’s not entirely an objective position. No, I think it shows how ambiguous the word community is, doesn’t it? Because we can all say, yeah, community-led plans really, but actually they’re normally unaligned, as you say, Hilary, because the community doesn’t have the land, doesn’t have the finances. Absolutely. And I suppose it’s about power, but it also goes back to these things about choices, about who is regeneration for, you know, what type of regeneration, who is it for? I mean, good local authorities are not separate from the community. They’re part of it. Those that are separate from the community are probably bad local authorities. But, you know, I think there’s a rather false distinction between, you know, local government and communities, because actually most community organisations work very, very closely with local councils, local council officers, spend a huge amount of time down the town hall and so on and so forth, and sometimes vice versa. So, you know, they’re part of the community. They’re local councillors in a good local authority, part of the community. So, I don’t accept this division. It’s inevitable. Sometimes that’s happened, but it needn’t happen. And that’s why, you know, good choice of councillors and engagement is always crucial. And I think particularly at that moment of history, you know, we had really good, I mean, councillors like George Mickelson and Mike Ward and probably others who’d worked, you know, who’d been shaped by community campaigns in Wandsworth or in Southwark. North Southwark, yeah. And so, you know, those councillors, you know, they weren’t just sort of politicians who spoke in terms of rhetoric and sort of blah, blah, blah. Yeah. They knew, they kind of understood. So, they were really driving it, and then they appointed people like Bob and me who’d had some experience of, you know, organising and campaigning around alternatives. So, in a way, there was a sort of relationship, and one symbol of it was the council committee. It normally met in county hall, but there was one moment when the feeling was the relationship was so close with the people and the Docklands Forum and so on, that they should come and meet in Docklands. And then, I don’t know if you remember it. Yeah, we did, yeah. They did. And that was just sort of symbolic of that relationship. And now, the city hall is in Docklands. Yeah, it’s a quirk of fate. What do you think about that question about GLC having too much influence? Did this be a GLC plan? Because I think we’ve had some slight discussions about this in the past, you and I. When I was involved at the time, it’s interesting how things change over time. So, I do remember, at the time, really questioning my role, actually, working for the Docklands Forum. This was a Docklands-wide group. I mean, it was, and I remember it being a really exciting time. I mean, you know, like going down to all the meetings, all the discussions, putting those ideas into, you know, helping the broader development of this alternative framework.

I was also feeling uncomfortable because did all the ideas get in and the key things that came out, like the idea for the interchange. So, that was kind of in line with GLC policy. So, at the time, I think I felt a little bit more uncomfortable about that. I think over time now, looking back, that’s maybe less the issue. I mean, these things will always be the case. It is a question about power. It’s always a question about power with community, these kinds of community organizations and plans. And there will always be a relationship between the community and local authority and central government and, you know, where it’s really hard to measure, but, you know, who is pushing those decisions?

And that kind of actually does happen. So, you know, I think if you look at it from that point of view, rather than saying, oh, it’s the community or the GLC, it’s like, what was, as you were saying, what were the relationships at the time? How were the decisions kind of coming through? Also, I think of it in terms of different sources of power, different kinds of knowledge. So, you needed the power of the people. That’s sort of legitimacy. But you also needed the power of a strategic authority, which, you know, at the time, we didn’t have because that should have effectively abolished it. But also in terms of knowledge, you know, we needed the knowledge, the overview of London, which the GLC could develop. And we needed the on the ground knowledge of the people. And it’s recognizing, you know, that in the past, there’s been a notion that the state knows it’s good for us. Or, you know, that only the market, you know, the individual entrepreneur can sort of know what’s good for us, or at least, you know, can have that practical knowledge. And so in a way, it’s challenging both those ideas. You know, yeah, the state does have important knowledge that can’t be sort of second guessed by local people. But on the other hand, you know, the local people have a practical knowledge that the state can’t second guess. It’s less those, either this or that, either the state or the community. I think that’s how I look at it now. But I think, but it’s also about that idea about what kind of regeneration, what kind of planning and who’s in for. And I do think that because of the situation in in Docklands, we did, we were saying local people want this, which, you know, yes, some local people did, but it was, it was the putting, it was, you know, this was an alternative to what, what was coming. It was, you know, it was hard. It was, it was, it was a way of saying there’s a different way of doing this. And I think it’s those, I think it’s those alternatives that are really important and that we always have to remember that there’s nothing inevitable. There’s nothing inevitable.

There’s always an alternative. There’s nothing inevitable about what has to happen in the area. Really important to be always making those arguments. And I suppose how, how they may be labelled about, as they can the community or from here or from whatever. I think that’s somehow, sometimes how they have to be packaged, branded to be able to really get, get traction. You could say that was a public good. And in a way to define that public good, you need both direct input from the people, from the public, and you need a view that’s representative, you know, that is recognising you can’t have all the people in the room at the same time. So there has to be some representative government and that can, that can lead to a wider view within which the views and knowledge of people in particular areas who can get together in the room. feeds in. It’s all for the same idea of a public good. But language is, you know, is important, but at some point you have to come down and say, this is where we are, you know, and we know that people are against favour the RVDC didn’t want to hear the word people’s plan and rubbish it for all sorts of reasons. But we just have to come down and say, well, sorry, this is where we are.

It’s a matter of political choices. Yes. Yeah. And the way it was very, very tense. I mean, in tolerance, the conflict in the RVDC and the local groups and many local people was really, really fierce. I mean, there was no, you know, kind of like middle ground, you know, where you could say, well, actually, quite a few people. It was like, definitely they were on the other side. That’s the context. That’s really, they were completely on the other side here and they were openly on the other side and they hesitating and others were openly saying all these people are just not important. It did change towards the end of the RVDC’s life. You know, they, they did have that community services division. They did, yeah. They were, and I think that you got a different kind of consensus. And I think the people’s plan was important in that it shifted that, that you don’t involve people. It’s all about the market. And, and then the RVDC shifted towards the end of its life about trying to get some more, you know, like in the World Docs, they did this World Docs agreement, didn’t they? Beams that never happened, but anyway, they were about housing, about local jobs or whatever. And that was in what, ’86, ’87. So, you know, there was that kind of shift and then you had the 1987 general election when London did get in and the local authorities, the labour local authorities then thought, well, we’re going to have to really start negotiating with Dina. And then I think you’ve got the whole of regeneration shifting towards this model of it’s largely the private sector, but we’ll do some consultation and we’ll do some community benefit around it. But it is, you know, this is, and this is that state. Well, I think we can’t really run the argument because the Labour government came in 1997, did not proceed with development corporations. And they started talking about labour renewal and that kind of thing. Oh, but they didn’t have that in the timescale, really. Did they? Yeah. Well, most of the other development corporations- But they were not democratic. Most, yeah. Yeah. They were not in favour of a big expansion of development corporations.

In the same way that the Thatcher and major government, at least major tolerated. So, I mean, I felt at the time that some of these arguments we’ve been making about community participation, residence plans and everything, was beginning to kind of filter through to some of the more, you know, progressive politicians. Yeah, because in a way that, as you said, the new labour, what was it called? New Deal for communities. Yeah. It was like a sort of- Yes, that was- It was like a big, Yes. Part of the- Yeah. New Labour platform. I mean, I felt it was limited because it was trying to kind of actually bypass local government. It wasn’t recognising this partnership. It was sort of- Yeah. Trying to bypass local government to bring in private businesses, actually. But, you know, local people in many places treated it otherwise and involved local council and also showed that they got some real power. So it did influence, there were quite a few I mean, I knew one in Luton then. Yeah. There was- Yeah. There’s one in Dolphins, wasn’t there? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No. Well, I don’t know about Dolphins. There’s one nearby. Yeah. I didn’t bet he worked for one. Oh, you mean the Stratford Development Partnership or whatever? No, that was different. No, there was one in… Ethnic Green, I think. But it was definitely a sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah, no, no, yeah. And that meant participation was like a part of government. Yeah.

No, and that lasted for 10 years. It was quite a long term thing and communities were on board. They had to have board members from the community and it was all open. Yeah, it was, you know, that was seen. I mean, West North Amsterdam Corporation, I was quite involved with the Edge Group. I mean, they were a completely different kind of body. Yeah. Because they were set up as part of the Sustainable Communities Plan. Yes, they were. Yeah. So things did shift. They shifted more towards a little bit on democracy. I felt, which is a product of all these campaigns that had taken place. It had gone into the DNA to some extent. Yeah. You know, I’m quite confident that something did shift over that period, that people had had enough of this development corporation. It’s totally attacked outside. Yeah. And, you know, there was a kind of reaction to that. And this played a part. He had heard about it. He definitely did.

Yeah.