11 April 2005
Ice cream wars
Called in at the Bishopsgate Institute, site of our mega rally last week, to book the boardroom for a press conference. What a find this place is _ I have been taking buses from outside Liverpool Street station back to Hackney for over 30 years and had never been inside it before.
It was set up in the 1890s as a philanthropic institution to provide education in an area which mark the boundary between the City of London and the East End. It still has a public reference library and teaches among other things languages.
A contrast to the prevalent ethos in the City where it really is every man for himself (and I mean man). The 1980s monument to private capital which is the Broadgate Centre opposite is full of shops selling clothes which cost more than a week's take home pay for many Londoners, restaurants where the 37p per child for school dinners wouldn't buy a glass of tap water. There are few black faces among the executives, brokers and managers, while there are few whites among the cleaners and service workers.
The Transport Workers union recently picketed the Old Vic theatre protesting at a play sponsored by the banker Morgan Stanley which refuses to pay its cleaners a living wage. That's philanthropy today _ a free advert for the millionaire philistines.
Walk five minutes in the other direction and you see some of the poorest parts of London who have lost out in Blair's Britain just as they always have. Take a tube ride to Upton Park, home of West Ham United and now the Respect Newham office, just 15 minutes away, and encounter another world of too much poor housing, overcrowded buses, underfunded schools _ and seething anger at the injustice of the world.
Today we look at our canvass returns which are tremendous and very encouraging. Then out to local primary schools to leaflet and gain support. Ghada and I have a good time with the kids who hate Bush and Blair and their parents who are fantastic. But for the under tens the main attraction is the ice cream van which has a regular stream of customers.
In the evening went to Oliur Rahman's opening of his office in Commercial Road in the Poplar and Canning Town constituency. We are mounting such a powerful campaign across the whole of East London it is causing shockwaves in the whole area. Morgan Stanley are based in Canary Wharf, where we nearly won a council seat last year. Maybe they should start paying a decent wage _ because the people they have taken for granted for so long are beginning to fight back.
It was set up in the 1890s as a philanthropic institution to provide education in an area which mark the boundary between the City of London and the East End. It still has a public reference library and teaches among other things languages.
A contrast to the prevalent ethos in the City where it really is every man for himself (and I mean man). The 1980s monument to private capital which is the Broadgate Centre opposite is full of shops selling clothes which cost more than a week's take home pay for many Londoners, restaurants where the 37p per child for school dinners wouldn't buy a glass of tap water. There are few black faces among the executives, brokers and managers, while there are few whites among the cleaners and service workers.
The Transport Workers union recently picketed the Old Vic theatre protesting at a play sponsored by the banker Morgan Stanley which refuses to pay its cleaners a living wage. That's philanthropy today _ a free advert for the millionaire philistines.
Walk five minutes in the other direction and you see some of the poorest parts of London who have lost out in Blair's Britain just as they always have. Take a tube ride to Upton Park, home of West Ham United and now the Respect Newham office, just 15 minutes away, and encounter another world of too much poor housing, overcrowded buses, underfunded schools _ and seething anger at the injustice of the world.
Today we look at our canvass returns which are tremendous and very encouraging. Then out to local primary schools to leaflet and gain support. Ghada and I have a good time with the kids who hate Bush and Blair and their parents who are fantastic. But for the under tens the main attraction is the ice cream van which has a regular stream of customers.
In the evening went to Oliur Rahman's opening of his office in Commercial Road in the Poplar and Canning Town constituency. We are mounting such a powerful campaign across the whole of East London it is causing shockwaves in the whole area. Morgan Stanley are based in Canary Wharf, where we nearly won a council seat last year. Maybe they should start paying a decent wage _ because the people they have taken for granted for so long are beginning to fight back.
