What a difference a year makes – a look back at 2014
New Era campaigners on the march to Downing Street. Photograph: Glenn McMahon
What did 2014 bring for the residents of Hackney? The Citizen looks back on a year of campaigns, backlashes and blunders.
Housing, housing, housing
Whether it was rogue landlords, revenge evictions or squatters taking over a cop shop, it seemed that all roads led to home.
For residents of Hoxton’s New Era estate, 2014 will be remembered as the year that their homes came under threat from multimillion-pound American property firm Westbrook Partners, after the company bought the estate and announced rents would be trebled.
The story became a national issue, not least because the family firm of Richard Benyon, one of Britain’s richest MPs, also had bought a stake in the estate with his brother Edward acting as landlord.
A resident-led campaign gathered apace, and following intervention by human amplifier Russell Brand, the Benyon brothers pulled out of the deal, swiftly followed by Westbrook.
Just in time for Christmas, it was announced that the New Era estate was to be sold off to a charitable foundation.
New Era estate Danielle Molinari with Russell Brand at the New Era protest march. Photograph: Greg Holland
One more appeal
The New Era residents were not the only ones fighting as 2014 saw disputes aplenty.
The Chesham Arms campaigners, fighting to keep the pub as a local boozer, achieved a significant victory after they stopped its new owner from turning it into flats.
Former members of Sunstone Women gym, which went into administration in June, successfully applied for the building to become an Asset of Community Value.
Defiant: Save the Chesham Arms campaigners outside the Hackney Picturehouse. Photograph: James Watson
The year also saw the launch of More Light More Power, a campaign against the ‘Hong-Kong style’ skyscrapers in the Bishopsgate Goodsyard proposals, dubbed by campaigners as ‘the biggest thing to happen in the East End since the plague’. Tech City businesses also came out against the Goodsyard, arguing the buildings would turn Shoreditch into a ‘ghost city’.
An aerial view of the Bishopsgate Goodsyard site
Campaign group Stokey Local, still battling against the Stoke Newington Sainsbury’s and conservation campaigners OPEN Dalston, fighting to save the crumbling terraces of Dalston Lane, both suffered setbacks.
Stokey Local received a “comprehensive drubbing” in its combined judicial reviews and has been ordered to foot a hefty court bill. The pressure group is gearing up for an appeal, but can they fight on another year?
Ecologist Russell Miller leads a walk through Abney Park last month to raise awareness about the supermarket ‘threat’. Photograph: Stokey Local
The decade-long battle to save the historic terraces on Dalston Lane had a positive start but after a number of court battles a judge ruled that the council lawfully had the right to demolish the buildings and replace them with ‘heritage likenesses’, or, as campaigners called them, ‘bogus replicas’.
An appeal was lodged but it seems the builders have already started removing roof tiles.
Hapless hipsters and online backlash
It had previously been just a glint in the window of Hackney Central Foxtons, but 2014 was surely the year we reached peak ‘gentrification’.
Early in the year ‘anti-gentrification’ protesters stormed the Narrow Way, furious about the council-subsidised cafe, Hackney Heart. The Citizen pointed out the landlord of the property was none other Haydar Ulus, who is now a Labour councillor in Enfield.
Subsidised cafe Hackney Heart. Photograph: Josh Loeb
The anti-gentrification brigade were also hot on the heels of new cocktail bar The Bonneville Pub in Lower Clapton after an ill-advised tweet sparked an unprecedented collective howl of anger on social media.
Protester confronts owner of Hackney pub The Bonneville. Photograph: Russell Parton
‘Hackney heroine’ Pauline Pearce penned a piece in The Guardian asking if trendies were ‘the new rioters’ and blaming men with beards for the increase in coffee prices. Pearce questioned whether the council was doing enough to help local residents suffering from the effects of gentrification, prompting Jules Pipe to write a column in defence of the ‘hapless hipster’.
Concept cafe Death Row Dinners also stoked ire on social media, after announcing it would be starting a restaurant serving food based on idea of prisoners’ ‘last meal on earth’. Amnesty International said the idea was in “appallingly bad taste”. Death Row Dinners bit back, saying it would open “in spite of instant outrage culture” – but then did not.
Politics
It was politics as usual for another year, as Labour’s Jules Pipe was re-elected as Mayor for a fourth term in May’s local government elections. Mr Pipe won almost 59 per cent of votes, and the number of Labour councillors increased to 50.
Hackney Green party came second in 17 out of 21 wards, leaving the party criticising the ‘antiquated’ system and calling for proportional representation.
The Citizen held its inaugural Mayoral hustings at the Arcola Theatre, at which residents were given the opportunity to quiz candidates from all parties on issues such as education, housing, recycling and regeneration.
L-R: Mayor of Hackney Jules Pipe, Liberal Democrat panellist Tony Harms, Conservative panellist Amy Gray, Independent candidate Mustafa Korel and Green Party candidate Mischa Borris. Photograph: Hackney Citizen
Town Hall blunders
In May, the Council spent £11,000 on seeds to grow ‘wild’ flowers – in itself somewhat contradictory. But trouble really flared when it emerged that the council was dousing the plants with pesticides and spending £40,000 a year on weedkiller.
Environmental group Save Lea Marshes objected in January to the council’s plans to build another car park on Hackney Marshes. Things heated up in October when a gigantic advert for Adidas football boots appeared on the borough’s ‘green lung’. With a Faustian air, the council said that it was a deal so lucrative (with all proceeds to be funnelled into youth sport) that it could not be turned down.
Adidas advert on Hackney Marshes.
In January 2014 the Town Hall got a ticking off for taking to long to reply to Freedom of Information (FoI) requests. More recently, the FoI team ‘accidently’ leaked data of 12,000 Hackney residents online in a bungled request. Perhaps they were just in hurry.
In May, private details of more residents were ‘outed’ this time by way of envelopes sent by the council that clearly implied the residents were in receipt of benefits.
Back of an envelope: the offending message
Honourable mentions in the blunders category include the newly-opened Cuban restaurant fined for fly-posting on its own ad-boards and sparks flying over the cost of an ‘exclusive’ council fireworks display.
And finally…
It was also the year in which Eric Cantona supported protesters outside Hackney Picturehouse which was under fire for refusing to pay its staff the London Living Wage.
Eric Cantona with Ritzy Living Wage Campaigners outside Hackney Picturehouse Photo Credit: Marc Cowan
Jules de Vere Whiteway-Wilkinson, the founder of London Fields Brewery and previously the leader of a ‘prolific’ drugs ring was given more time to pay back ‘drugs money’ to the taxpayer. Diane Abbott MP diplomatically left the London Fields alehouse off of her tour of Hackney breweries.
A giant foam monster invaded the River Lee.
Photograph: Kriss Lee
Hackney University Technical College (UTC), one of the government’s flagship technical colleges closed down just two years after it opened its doors due to low student intake.
It will also be remembered as the year Councillor Philip Glanville married his partner, artist Giles McCrary, in Hackney’s first civil partnership conversion.
Midnight marriage: Philip Glanville and Giles McCrary sign the register. Photograph: Philip Glanville
In memoriam:
Molly Carleton
Lucas Drummond
Valerie Forde and daughter Real-Jahzarah McKoy
Miro Glaza
Buzz Johnson
Shereka Marsh
Tricia Okoruwa