What organisations remained outside the structures of the GHA apparatus often now become 'registered' - that's a process where the Government and the landlord accredit a tenants association, granting it the right to be consulted on certain issues. Often the fear of being 'de-registered' by the same bodies and the loss of the 500 quid grant funding has been enough to stay the tongues of a few. A couple of years ago, in Maryhill, the tenants association for the Kilmun street area, which existed for some 25 years or more was asked by the local housing manager if they might consider 'winding up'. The rationale was that the housing manager knew that shortly compulsory purchase orders would be made on a number of houses, in order to facilitate demolition. He expected some community resistance, and wanted to see the tenants association wound up so that nobody from the scheme would join it and cause problems. In the following meeting the association was duly wound up. You have to wonder... A year later we have the situation in the Cumlodden estate, where a mass meeting of tenants decided that they wanted to reject the GHA's plans to carry out less work on their houses than the landlord had previously promised. During the meeting the chair of the local tenants association, obviously embarrassed, said she would have to consult with the housing officers to see if they were technically allowed to go on record as making such a demand to their landlord. Crazy, but it follows a certain logic.

As for independent groups. Well on the whole they don't tend to exist, and it's very hard work trying to find any that are active. There is currently no body which unites the best part of them, and more groups are dying across the city than are being seeded. All-in, including community councils there are probably close to 350 bodies on paper which provide some manner of collective representation for their neighbourhoods. That sounds like a lot (although very few are in Maryhill), but when you compare it to Haringey - a borough in North London with about a third of Glasgow's population, where there is 150 odd active residents associations united into one single federation ran directly by its members which stresses independence and autonomy for its residents groups, which is fighting borough wide against hospital closures and school cuts as well as improving the borough's communities and neighbourhoods it's absolutely pathetic for such a city as Glasgow which perceives itself a bit 'right-on'.

There is however a lot of seething resentment in many areas, throughout Maryhill as a few quotes from the "Glasgow Guide" Webforum will attest:-

"it looks like a wee bit of our neighbourhood the Butney is being swallowed up by lying Glasgow city council the same is going to happen to my birthplace the Valley it will be gone forever"

"live in whats left of the valley and the talk around here is that the botany/butney "redevelopment" plans are going to be changed from back and front doors too closes ie tenement style houses."

NB:The campaign over the demolition of the Butney scheme was a long running community campaign against demolition of a local area.  Following much public pressure Patricia Ferguson made personal promises to sitting tenants of new back and front door houses.  The local newspaper, the Burgh Angel, records the situation today:-

The Botany was betrayed: Patricia Ferguson, Member of the Scottish Parliament for Maryhill, personally promised back and front door houses to Botany tenants. As a cabinet minister in the Scottish Executive she was in a position to deliver on that promise.  But chasing lucrative land deals around the canal proved more important to local politicians – private developers would pay more for a larger block of land, so decanted tenants were made to wait for other areas around the canal to be cleared and ready for sale. Then plans were hatched to remove rented housing altogether – private luxury flats are worth more if there are no social renting neighbours nearby.  Some Botany families have been left in badly overcrowded temporary decants for years, having taken smaller flats than they were entitled to because they were promised it would only be for a few months. Tenants have also been moved from one temporary decant to another, as they in turn have gone on to be scheduled for demolition over the long wait.

Gentrification in Maryhill


Apart from the obvious questions of erosions of green space, the enclosure of the public estate, and the unaccountable sell-off of public assets the Canal Regeneration Partnership raises other questions.  Development along the canal has become a big capital project (£100 million of public funds are earmarked for the Speirsgate developments alone).  It is being financed by the state, partly in the hope that the new community development company will grow legs and run on its own two private feet, but also in part because the spur of regeneration will drive private investors to do the same.

In May this year came the news that community campaigners knew had been on the cards for some years.  The Glasgow Housing Association has adopted a plan (voted on in almost complete secret) to demolish 60% of Maryhill's social housing within the next ten years to make way for exclusively private development (GHA on a citywide basis aims to demolish 30,000 homes over the next 7 years).  Further though the plan hopes to establish a regeneration agency to carry this forward, which, it hopes, will become a "social enterprise" which will trade in its own right.  It would be created by seconding staff from various government agencies, from the city council and from the GHA, to create one massive firm which would provide everything from community policing to landscaping and housing services.  The endorsed report noted ominously that this firm would, following successful regeneration, apparently, continue trading and replace local government services by bidding to supply them under Best Value competitive tendering arrangements, cheaper than the City Council.  Apparently all that's needed for this to move forward is a suitable vehicle, by which they mean the GHA is looking to do a deal with the canal partnership.

Add to this the wranglings over Second Stage Transfer, where the holy Nirvana of Central Government is reached and the remaining assets of the GHA get handed over to seven housing associations.  This will represent a move towards the end game of doing away with social housing altogether.  The fallout from the scrambling for position though also impacts on Maryhill and th= surrounding area, particularly as the tenant controlled committees of the GHA have been packed with local rival and competitor for SST, Queens Cross Housing Association, and any discussion therefore is a question a reverse leverage between the two housing firms, and scrabbling over who gets what land.  This is painted to tenants as different groups fighting for their interests.

 

While we are discussing the role of Queens Cross Housing Association, and what they would like to get out of Hamiltonhill from the involvement of their chair and others in all aspects of the areas housing it is also interesting to note that the Exective Director of Queens Cross Housing Association, Frank MacCabe, turned up at a meeting in the Possilpark community and stated that he would like to see a model of development in Hamiltonhill similar to what has been seen in Ruchill (soon to be renamed Parkhill to encourage housing sales), where 70% of houses are bought, with the rest being given over to so-called competitive rents.  Can most people living in our areas and communities at the moment really afford to take out a mortgage for a 150k flat?   Frank certainly can.  He earns an undisclosed sum of money, lives in leafy upmarket suburbs and stands to gain a substantial pay rise if Queens Cross Housing Association win their battle to take over the mismanagement of our homes from the equally corrupt Glasgow Housing Association.

The scale of this gentrification then, is likely to be massive - indeed the work underway at the moment already is extensive by present standards.  We are dealing with a state subsidised assault on working class communities, and an attempt to do away with social housing altogether.  We have not seen planned demolitions on this scale since the Glasgow Clearances.  It's worth then taking a look at the modalities and prospects for any campaign on the scale required to combat this.

The prospects for a campaign

There are a number of factors which would influence any campaign against gentrification in the area, namely whether the ruling class, and their agencies are acting in a united fashion, or a piecemeal one and how that could be exploited, whether or not local residents groups can be built which have any staying power, the levels of occupancy in buildings throughout Maryhill, whether or not investment can be forced which will encourage people to stay in the area, whether or not there are any activists in the area who can catalyse the growth of residents organisations, what developments are taking place across the whole of the city, and so on.

Dealing with this first point, about whether the ruling class is acting in a united fashion, is quite important, for how quickly schemes which require demolition can be realised.  Under the previous Scottish Executive Glasgow City Council operated a largely independent policy to the Scottish Executive.  The Exec's plans to hand over control of GHA housing in two pilot projects, pushed through in discussion with the GHA, to Queens Cross Housing Association and North Glasgow Housing Association appeared to run directly counter to the strategy being pursued by the City Council for the near city centre (taking in the communities of Possil, Springburn and Woodside).  Should Queens Cross Housing Association and North Glasgow Housing Association be handed a lot of the stock of the GHA, they would certainly demolish it, there is no question here in relation to that.  However what they would build would be 2 bedroomed back and front door houses and tenements, mostly for sale, with 25% for social rent. 

Given the type of buildings Glasgow City Council has announced planning permission for, given the scale of the projects they are discussing and laid the grounds for, this Executive policy seems to run directly counter to the notion that central Glasgow can be laid out for the kind of 'luxury flat' developments that have been taking place down along the Clyde.  Indeed there is a specific strategy to develop the "waterfront" of the canal in a similar fashion through the canal regeneration partnership, creating a "Little Venice" at Speirs Wharf, and eight and nine storey tower blocks throughout the (presently an industrial estate) Port Dundas, and on the nature reserve at Westercommon.  Rubberstamped plans too ingress, with buildings of a similar character and social profile, onto housing estates which the Executive and the Housing Associations want to build on.  This looks set to become a point of some considerable conflict, particularly now as the new Scottish Executive is SNP controlled.

There is however another factor in all this - the bureaucracy at the helm of the GHA.  The GHA was established as a clearing house.  It was hoped that it would last no further than ten years and that it would then be broken up.  People who advocated this process claimed it would lead to 'community ownership' where local relatively accountable housing associations would control all of the former corrupt housing authority's properties.  The idea had some appeal for people used to dealing with the massive unaccountable bureaucracy which ran the city's 82,000 council houses, however the government never had any such intention of transferring housing stock down to the level of community control, and this become abundantly clear.  From the outset the GHA behaved in the same unaccountable way as the previous housing bureaucracy - actually perhaps more so - and it acquired more and more taxpayers money, which was spent on more and more managers (well over 50% of GHA's insane running costs are now spent on management).  The organisation acquired a life of its own.  It's Chief Executive and senior officers earned very considerable salaries, and wield a great deal of power.  As the number of evictions rose, and the running costs rose, and the complaints rose, and the cost to factored homeowners rose and the number of stories in the local press decrying the landlord rose, the chances of the Scottish Executive every breaking up the GHA without a fight seemed to fall in inverse proportion.  The plan to break the GHA up into seven housing associations, as opposed to nearly 100, was announced in '05 but by '07 the minister for housing, who had completely failed to make any headway towards SST, approaching five years into the transfer, resigned over a matter of conscience regarding nuclear weapons.  That's to say he politely got the boot for making no progress on this flagship Scottish Executive policy.  It seems likely then that the GHA, which does have its own independent ideas on demolitions, now, as before, will continue to block SST.  This is turn will block plans for the SST model of redevelopment of the area, although it may not block the plans for the council to build on any land resulting from GHA demolitions.  Currently the council is at loggerheads with the Scottish Executive to change the prescriptions on land which it will own, following any demolition of GHA houses.  At present the council, according to Executive rules can only approve the building of housing association properties (for sale and rent) on any such demolished land.  The conflict, which was buried in a self-congratulatory press release this March run without edit by the city's Evening Times, was announced as the Council's "£1.5 Billion Housing Revolution."  This however is not the only source of conflict embroiling the GHA however.  As mentioned above, the GHA is in conflict with local housing association, Queens Cross Housing Association.  Queens Cross Housing Association wants to acquire the housing around the St George's Estate, Hamiltonhill, Burnbank Gardens, Cromwell Street, Trossachs Street and the Dundasvale Estate.  The GHA, for their part however, do not want to give up this stock and are refusing to sell this housing stock for the price agreed between the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations, Queens Cross Housing Association and the Scottish Executive; they are using this to block SST.  Queens Cross Housing Association has responded by gaining seats and a controlling influence on the local boards of the GHA, as tenant representatives.  This is being used as reverse leverage against the GHA, under the guise of 'fighting for local tenants'.  As time rolls on this kind of infighting is likely to increase.

In practice what this conflict will mean on the ground is that timescales for various masterplans (for example we are now two years into the Glasgow Canal, Local Development Strategy) are likely to be more fluid than their offers might have liked, as deals have to be brokered and so forth.  There is also particular space to draw attention to some of the more basic elements of corruption and conflicts of interest, all of which will have implications for how one of the squabbling parties or another is likely to fare.  Highlighting one agency's venal role publicly in other words is unlikely to strengthen their hands in boardrooms, particularly as much of the current plans rely on secrecy.  This was made obvious when the Burgh Angel newspaper broke the story about the GHA plan to demolish 60% of the area's housing, resulting in a public acknowledgement in a newsletter from Maryhill LHO that the plan existed and a climbdown in terms of the plan's final status.  That makes it clear that there is definitely some scope to exploit factional differences for any anti-gentrification campaign.
 
In terms of organised groups however which can act to resist the plans of the various agencies, task forces and general ruling class interests however, as has been stated, current organisation tends to be patchy.  In the past couple of years many residents associations have been formed from public meetings, to collapse not long afterwards.  There has been a real problem of sustaining the minutiae of organisations, but further than this most people involved in these endeavours have had no previous experience.  There are some fighting groups out there - Fingal Tenants Association, Cedar Tenants Association etc. - but these tend to be sustained by a few people who are prepared to keep initiatives running.  During campaigns and crises many people have been mobilised for meeting and discussing issues, but this does not necessarily result in any action.  There is also general confusion over what action is likely to be successful.  In part this is to do with the social profile of the participants, and the fragmentation of communities which were always poorly planned and have been mismanaged by housing officers for decades.  It is generally telling however that most groups which have been formed have collapsed shortly afterwards.  This is not a pattern that is repeated across the city.  In the West End - a middle class area - there are many active residents bodies which have organised solidly for years to improve their communities.  The issues of course are not comparable, but there are activists in those areas who have experience of building and sustaining groups over a long period of time and of achieving victories in battles over planning and so on.  By and large that experience is not being shared out across the city.

At present there are moves to establish a federation of residents associations by some to try and counteract this phenomenon.  Such a federation, if it develops a life of its own, and if it is prepared to take on a variety of issues, and take up an organising approach in areas where there are no active resident associations (there are a lot of 'ifs' here), such a federation could be an important factor in helping young groups to gain access to experience and campaigning tips and techniques.  It will however take some time to build before it is a large organisation, and the body set up to carry it out, the Glasgow Residents Network, has already been active and distributing information about this project for a year and a half now.  Similar initiatives elsewhere have taken years to establish themselves, and initially faced caustic opposition from local government and lackeys in communities hostile to independent bodies.

There is also the question that groups which are set up to fight for their neighbourhoods which are facing gentrification will be worn out and defeated as demolitions are driven forward.  Certainly this is the story of the North West Communities Alliance, which was set up in 1999 to fight for a number of communities, many of which have now been cleared and demolished.  As any anti-gentrification campaign takes place this is likely to become more and more of an issue.  It is a particular problem because it can be very difficult to sustain opposition to governmental and landlord policies in communities when those policies have vague timetables, and annual projections.  The Save Our Homes Campaign suffered badly from this factor.  The campaign, which from '03/'04 to '06 operated as a top down mini-federation of local organisations, was unable to sustain local neighbourhood groups which were opposed to demolitions over an indefinite period of time.  Some of these groups dealt with this by becoming full blown residents associations in their own right (Sighthill and Carntyne/Riddrie) but others lost the will to fight against a policy which had no immediate, or acute implications at any one time.  The same developmental pattern would be likely to damage the strength of any sustained anti-demolition, anti-gentrification campaign, and will tend towards making organisation around this issue piecemeal and sectional.  Organisation over a sustained period of time will need to be both captivating and sustaining - it will need to be fun.  That is a major challenge and it will require dedicated organisers.  It will also need to be built on small successes, gained to improve the quality of life of people in the area.

At the moment one major barrier to demolitions across Maryhill is the high levels of occupancy of GHA houses, both locally and across the city.  Shelter Scotland estimate that in fact across Scotland there is a need to build a further 30,000 council houses to meet demands for social housing, Glasgow apparently would require a building programme to meet demand as well currently.  That places great immediate problems on the GHA and other authorities to come up with decant houses.  With enough money and political will this is perhaps not an intractable problem, but it is one that will create a significant problem for planners and is a boon to campaigners.

On that question then, given the lie of the land - without an organised intervention of some kind - Maryhill, despite a widespread deep feeling of unease and anger about the plans set in motion for the area's future, is unlikely to erupt in spontaneous acts of resistance.  However, as we have seen, the path is not set up clearly for a total victory for the planners over the people.  Who then are the immediate actors who can help catalyse and facilitate organisation for the resistance?

- Burgh Angel group: This is a small collective of people involved in producing a (currently monthly) community newspaper.  Its mission is to promote residents' self-organisation and provide a forum for a questioning of council and housing policies locally, as well as provide a space for investigative journalism into issues locally impacting on the neighbourhood.  The Burgh Angel came out of the George's X Chalkboard social centre, and attempts last year to organise resistance to gentrification and build community cohesion as well as fight for improvements to the local area in the here and now.  The Chalkboard, which is to be the subject of a retrospective essay looking into the brief history of this organising effort, operated along the lines of a community tendency, and the Burgh Angel, although largely a local newspaper, continues in this tradition.

- The SSP:  At its height the SSP maintained three large branches throughout Maryhill, and a number in the areas directly surrounding the area.  Many of these people are what could be termed core activists for the SSP.  The SSP (an examination in detail of the politics of the SSP is beyond the scope of this essay) regularly carry out stalls throughout the neighbourhood and consequently will be well placed to have a network of contacts who could be said to oppose gentrification.  Currently however the SSP is not active locally in building residents bodies, although it is known to be supportive.

- The SNP: Maryhill SNP is known to be on the left of the party.  The left wing SNP councillors and MSPs Billy McAllister, Bob Doris, Bill Kidd etc. hail from this area.  The SNP locally has been involved, at least initially, in attempts to form a number of residents bodies.  The SNP however is in government at Holyrood and national policy in respect of housing may hinder their involvement locally in terms of what the party will sanction.

- A (future) Federation of Residents Associations: A body which united residents groups which was also capable of organising campaigns could be a very powerful catalyst for change in the neighbourhood.

Summary

On the face of it then the groups most likely to be active, at least in the short term are likely to be individual SSP members and the Burgh Angel group, as a federation is established.  Their success of failure in these early stages of resistance to a full scale gentrification assault on Maryhill and its environs is likely to set the scene for the future involvement of a federation body, and will impact on the leverage available to local communities as the plans under consideration start to mushroom in size and significance.  On that basis then, and the subject of the next part of this discussion, it is worth taking a brief look at the history of these bodies in relation to organisation in the area, to see if lessons can be drawn for the struggles ahead.  However a brief overview of what is currently underway in the Burgh has hopefully begun in this contribution to be examined and can hopefully compare with the experience of other communities and similarities can be drawn and learnt from.