Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group — the Kwug Blog: Jimmy Reid

Showing posts with label Jimmy Reid. Show all posts

Monday, 26 June 2017

The Council leader and the unsafe cladding

In May, Cllr Gould's 'coronation' as Camden Council leader came with plaudits from Lord Mandelson and other local Labour Party luminaries. The Camden New Journal reported: "Town Hall boss says she will be judged on her own merits and not 'New Labour heir' tag."(1)

Yet perhaps both her backers and her 'performance on the job' betray an alienation between her 'leadership' and Camden's tower block fodder?

Glaswegian trade unionist Jimmy Reid said in his inauguration speech as Rectorof Glasgow University in 1972:

"Everything that is proposed from the establishment seems almost calculated to minimise the role of the people, to miniaturise man [sic]. I can understand how attractive this prospect must be to those at the top. Those of us who refuse to be pawns in their power game can be picked up by their bureaucratic tweezers and dropped in a filing cabinet under 'M' for malcontent or maladjusted. When you think of some of the high flats around us, it can hardly be an accident that they are as near as one could get to an architectural representation of a filing cabinet.” (2)

As a newbie council leader Georgia Gould might not be personally responsible for the Health & Safety failings of Camden's Tower blocks that came to prominence in the wake of the Grenfell Tower inferno. I would argue though that her 'swift and decisive' attempt to remedy those Health & Safety failings by means of delegated turfing out of people at unsocial hours without consultation from the tower blocks bears evidence of bureaucratic tweezers more than a friendly, “I am here to help you at this hour of danger” handshake.(3)

By Dude Swheatie of Kwug

Notes

Friday, 23 June 2017

Jimmy Reid on tower blocks as 'filing cabinets'

In the wake of the Grenfell Tower disaster, I'd say that we need to look again not just at the matter of the 'cladding' materials used, but moreover at the nature of people's living conditions,

Heed the words of the late Scottish trade unionist and Communist Jimmy Reid in his 1972 inauguration speech as Rector of Glasgow University:

"Everything that is proposed from the establishment seems almost calculated to minimise the role of the people, to miniaturise man [sic]. I can understand how attractive this prospect must be to those at the top. Those of us who refuse to be pawns in their power game can be picked up by their bureaucratic tweezers and dropped in a filing cabinet under 'M' for malcontent or maladjusted. When you think of some of the high flats around us, it can hardly be an accident that they are as near as one could get to an architectural representation of a filing cabinet.

"If modern technology requires greater and larger productive units, let's make our wealth-producing resources and potential subject to public control and to social accountability. Let's gear or society to social need, not personal greed. Given such creative re-orientation of society, there is no doubt in my mind that in a few years we could eradicate in our country the scourge of poverty, the underprivileged, slums, and insecurity...."(1)

Also from Glasgow is Matt McGinn's 'Jeely Piece Song' aka 'Height Starvation Song'.(2)

For more of how things could and should be, there is a Taxpayers Against Poverty series of blog posts about solutions to the UK's housing crisis.(3)

Blog post by Dude Swheatie of Kwug

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