Mon 23 Jul 2018, 07:42 AM | Posted by editor
Letter from Mark Langabeer
A documentary on the BBC last week, Before Grenfell, A hidden History, gave an excellent account of the Borough of Chelsea and Kensington. In South Kensington, the average income is over £150,000. In North Kensington, a third of residents earn £16,000 or less annually. Many properties sell for £8 million, while child poverty is amongst the highest in the UK.
A wall was built over 150 years ago, separating the Nottingdale residents from their wealthy neighbours in Notting Hill. It still stands today and the gap between the rich and poor is as great today as it was in 1850.The number of those working in domestic service today are the same as it was over 70 years ago.
The war years changed a lot. Over 30,000 homes were destroyed and the war affected rich and poor alike. A resident remembered his mum saying that Hitler did us a favour, by bombing the slum that they lived in.
The rich never returned to Notting Hill and instead the properties were subdivided and with the scrapping of rent controls, notorious landlords, such as Peter Rackman, exploited those who relied on renting.
During the 1950s, people from the Caribbean arrived to plug Britain’s staffing shortages. The White Defence League’s Headquarters were in the Borough and they had the aim of exploiting the rising tensions within the Notting Hill area. The shortage of social housing was being used by the fascists to incite violence against black people.
At one time, around 300 white youths assembled to launch attacks on the West Indian community and the violence only ended when a young black carpenter was murdered. At his funeral a sense of solidarity developed, even from some of those who had previously held bigoted opinions.
During the 1960s, a slum clearance programme began, with the development of new council estates in Nottingdale. The original plan included a shopping centre, a swimming pool, workplaces and shared gardens, but the original proposals were scaled down by the local council and remains only a residential area.
By the 1970s many professional people bought the old rundown Victorian homes in Notting Hill and restored them to their former beauty. By the 1990s, Notting Hill became the ‘in-place’ to be. The estate in which Grenfell stood, was increasingly seen as a place that was valuable because of Its postcode. In 2015, a former two-bedroom council flat was sold for £250,000.
Many of the residents in the Grenfell estate generally believe that the Council have neglected and ignored social housing residents and that this ultimately led to worst fire since WW2. Many residents expressed the hope that the fire would bring fundamental change in social housing. As my political mentor use to say; ‘out of evil comes good’.
