Lewisham Council Still Mired in Controversy Six Months After the Violent Eviction of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford

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Exactly six months ago, the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, a beautiful community space and environmental asset, which had been occupied for two months by members of the local community (the Save Reginald Save Tidemill campaign) to prevent its destruction by Lewisham Council for a housing scheme, was violently evicted by bailiffs working for the notoriously aggressive — and, historically, union-busting — company County Enforcement.

The garden was part of the old Tidemill primary school, which closed in 2012 and moved to a new site nearby, and the council’s plans are to hand over the site to the housing association Peabody to build new housing for sale on the old school site, and housing for rent or shared ownership where the garden stood, and where Reginald House, a block of 16 council flats, still stands. 

The garden, sadly, was completely destroyed two months ago, by SDL Services, a tree services company from Gloucestershire — in the same week that the council, with no sense of shame or irony, declared a climate emergency! — but building work has still not begun, and campaigners are still calling for the scheme to be scrapped, and for a new plan to be created with the local community, which reinstates the garden and saves Reginald House.

In the meantime, the council has not been winning hearts and minds. The eviction, which involved 130 bailiffs, protected by dozens of police, cost over a million pounds, and the council has since spent at least another half a million pounds guarding the empty garden from the local community. After much criticism, County Enforcement were eventually removed from Tidemill, but they remain employed elsewhere in the borough, and, at Tidemill, tens of thousands of pounds a week is still being spent on guards from a new company, whose identity has not been disclosed. 

In addition, the council has spent over a million pounds to have the old Tidemill school site next to the garden guarded 24 hours a day over the last few years, meaning that, in total, the council has spent at least two and a half million pounds at Tidemill with nothing to show for it.

Moreover, although, in March, the council confidently went to Bromley County Court to seek possession of the green next to the garden (which is also intended to be part of the building site), under sweeping legislation that prohibits illegal encampments, and is aimed at the homeless, they failed to recognise that it was actually a protest camp, and that therefore those involved in it — continuing the campaign that involved the occupation of the garden — were able to claim that the camp’s existence should be protected under Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects freedom of expression and freedom of assembly. 

A court date has been set for May 23, when the council’s lawyers, and barristers representing the campaign, will present their arguments to the court. 

In the meantime, a number of events have taken place on the green, including the creation of 74 white crosses to commemorate the 74 trees killed in the garden’s destruction, and a pedal-powered screening of short films about the garden. 

Another film screening is taking place this Thursday, May 2, at 7.30 pm, so please come along if you can. It’s part of the New Cross and Deptford Free Film Festival, and there’ll be a short introduction from campaigners, and snacks and drinks.

As the campaign continues, it’s also worth bearing in mind that the council remains embroiled in numerous other contentious developments across the borough: to name just a few, Amersham Vale, the former site of Deptford Green school, secretly twinned with Tidemill, where the homes could be built that would spare the Tidemill garden and Reginald House; and Besson Street, another potential replacement for Tidemill, where, instead, the council is entering into a partnership with Grainger plc, one of the country’s biggest companies making private homes for rent, which, shamefully, will involve it, for the first time ever, putting its name to homes at full market rent.

The most shameful recent development, however, is No. 1 Creekside, across Deptford Church Street from Tidemill, and next to the Birds Nest pub, where a private development was recently approved by the council, even though it had been well flagged-up in advance that it involves the destruction of trees by the side of the heavily polluted Deptford Church Street (whose pollution the trees at Tidemill had helped to mitigate until their destruction), and, in particular, that the developers had conceded that people living in the development would need to be advised to keep their windows shut at peak traffic hours, because of the pollution, and also that the development, insultingly, involves ‘poor doors’, separate entrances for owner-occupiers and those renting. 

After these facts were exposed by local journalists, including Crosswhatfelds and the Deptford Dame, the story was picked up on by the mainstream media, including the Guardian, the Times, the Daily Mail, Sky News and the Independent, whose coverage added to the council’s humiliation. 

And finally, as we mark six months since the violent eviction of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden, we’d also like to welcome some new players to the debate about questions relating to the environment, sustainability and social justice in Lewisham — namely, Extinction Rebellion, whose Lewisham branch secured a big boost in membership after the extraordinary central London occupations that began two weeks ago. 

We’re anticipating that they may well want to get involved in some creative campaigning, but for now, as we remember the violence of six months ago, and the council’s subsequent shambolic behaviour, it seems to me that a moment’s silence is appropriate to remember the beautiful green space and social space that was the Tidemill garden, and to reflect on how badly we are served by the councillors — and the unelected officials who actually take the decisions about how the council operates — who have an unaccountable Mayor and Cabinet system, and 100% of the available council seats, even though only around 20% of the registered electorate vote for them.

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Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer, film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (and see the latest photo campaign here) and the successful We Stand With Shaker campaign of 2014-15, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (click on the following for Amazon in the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here — or here for the US), and for his photo project ‘The State of London’ he publishes a photo a day from six years of bike rides around the 120 postcodes of the capital.

In 2017, Andy became very involved in housing issues. He is the narrator of a new documentary film, ‘Concrete Soldiers UK’, about the destruction of council estates, and the inspiring resistance of residents, he wrote a song ‘Grenfell’, in the aftermath of the entirely preventable fire in June 2017 that killed over 70 people, and he also set up ‘No Social Cleansing in Lewisham’ as a focal point for resistance to estate destruction and the loss of community space in his home borough in south east London. For two months, from August to October 2018, he was part of the occupation of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, to prevent its destruction — and that of 16 structurally sound council flats next door — by Lewisham Council and Peabody. Although the garden was violently evicted by bailiffs on October 29, 2018, and the trees were cut down on February 27, 2019, the resistance continues.

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