30.10.19
One year ago yesterday, the two-month occupation of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden, a community garden in Deptford, in south east London, came to a violent end when bailiffs hired by Lewisham Council evicted the occupiers in a dawn raid.
It was a disturbing end to a long-running effort on the part of the local community to save the garden — and Reginald House, a block of structurally sound council flats next door — from destruction as part of a plan to re-develop the site of the old Tidemill primary school. The garden — a magical design of concentric circles — had been created by pupils, teachers and parents 20 years before, and the community had been given use of it after the school moved to a new site in 2012, while efforts to finalise the plans proceeded, with the housing association Family Mosaic (which later merged with Peabody) and the private developer Sherrygreen Homes.
The garden was not only a magical green space; it also helped to mitigate the worst effects of pollution on nearby Deptford Church Street, but the council weren’t interested in considering alternative plans that would have spared the garden and Reginald House, and terminated the lease on the garden on August 28 last year. However, instead of giving the keys back, the community occupied the garden instead, embarking on a two-month experiment in community resistance that resonated around the world.
A year ago yesterday, after the eviction, whose intended swift conclusion was delayed as one brave activist, high in a tree, survived efforts to bring her down that were patently dangerous and in contravention of health and safety protocols, there was a stand-off, and numerous skirmishes, between the bailiffs — 130 of them in total —- and many dozens of police officers brought in to “protect” them, and the local community and activists and campaigners who had been part of the occupation, or had been part of the longer struggle to save the garden from destruction, or who, in some cases, only got involved when the eviction took place, and were instantly radicalised by the violence on show.
The eviction cost over £100,000, and the council subsequently spent over a million pounds paying the bailiffs to guard the garden 24 hours a day, causing serious distress in the immediate neighbourhood, as the bailiffs were not always friendly, the garden was floodlit at night, and guard dogs in the garden barked all night. Eventually, after campaigners persuaded a tree services company hired to cut down the trees to withdraw from their contract, the council found a more pliable company, and that destruction took place on February 27 this year, on the same day that, with breathtaking hypocrisy, the council declared a “climate emergency.”
The campaigners, however, continued their resistance, symbolically occupying the green next to the garden and causing the council further headaches, but in May they withdrew, fearing crippling legal costs in a court case. However, although the green was soon boarded up, building works have not begun.
Instead, Sherrygreen Homes and Peabody have begun work on a second site, Amersham Vale, which was stealthily twinned with Tidemill at the planning stage, where 120 new properties are to be built, 81 of which will be for private sale, in a development marketed, without a trace of irony, as ‘The Muse.’ Once this cash cow is underway, the development of the Tidemill site — where only 51 of the proposed 209 properties are for private sale — will presumably begin, and it will be interesting to see, when this does eventually happen, what resistance there will be, as campaigners have not given up on the residents of Reginald House, whose homes shouldn’t be destroyed, and who have never been given a ballot to ask what they want, and campaigners also continue to insist that the garden should be re-planted and retained, which would actually be a significant gesture on the council’s part towards tackling the “climate emergency” that they so hollowly declared back in February.
Keep watching for updates — and do check out what’s happening at Amersham Vale — but in the meantime enjoy my photos below, of the beauty of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden, and its exhilarating two-month occupation last year.
We all still miss it every day.
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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, or you can watch it online here, via the production company Spectacle, for £2.55), and for his photo project ‘The State of London’ he publishes a photo a day from seven 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.
To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, The Complete Guantánamo Files, the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.
Please also consider joining the Close Guantánamo campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.
Investigative journalist, author, campaigner, commentator and public speaker. Recognized as an authority on Guantánamo and the “war on terror.” Co-founder, Close Guantánamo and We Stand With Shaker, singer/songwriter (The Four Fathers).
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10 Responses
Andy Worthington says...
When I posted this on Facebook, I wrote:
My latest article features 24 photos I took during the two-month occupation of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, from August 28 to October 28, 2018, which I was part of, before we were violently evicted on October 29. I hope these photos capture something of the beauty of the garden, and of the spirit of resistance that is so necessary in the many struggles we face.
Also included: a re-cap of the reasons for the occupation – to save an environmental asset and rare green community space from wanton destruction, and also to save Reginald House next door, a block of structurally sound council flats – as well as much-needed reminder of the shameful behaviour of Lewisham Council and Peabody, and the thugs they hired to show their power.
...on October 30th, 2019 at 9:03 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Jason Símon de Souza said:
I’m very much proud of the battle that we fought to save the nature reserve (and the green) from Lewisham Council and although the battle was lost, the war continues. These excellent photos by Andy stand as a memorial to what we had attempted to protect and the ecological and societal tragedy of what has been lost through greed, corruption and myopia.
...on October 31st, 2019 at 12:57 am
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks, Jason!
...on October 31st, 2019 at 12:58 am
Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden one year after eviction – Trespass says...
[…] Source and lots of fotos at Andy Worthington’s blog […]
...on November 1st, 2019 at 2:02 pm
Damo says...
Great and poignant photos the great landgrab continues.. Though be carefull on Facebook as it seems now Anyone who dares to criticise or call out right wing or anti environmental trols is reported and banned for a week as I called out a particularly spiteful trol who was relentlessly attacking Greta Thunberg this seems to be the trols new weapon
...on November 2nd, 2019 at 9:48 am
Andy Worthington says...
I’m very glad you like the photos, Damo. It was quite a labour of love going through my photos and choosing a selection that captured the garden and the occupation – and quite sad too, as the photos really brought back to life for me what it was like being in the garden, which was, genuinely, a unique environment.
Thanks also for the warning about Facebook. I’m sure you know my long-standing concerns about how Facebook’s police bots are horribly unaccountable, arbitrarily shutting people down with no opportunity to challenge the decisions. It’s completely unacceptable that they can be so aloof, and not, as they should, employ a huge customer services department.
...on November 2nd, 2019 at 2:07 pm
Damo says...
Looking at the pictures again it seems absurd that the council is declaring a climate emergency while destroying a beautiful garden to fill it with high density flats it’s like just up the road from me the old south Acton estate that used to be 1970s maisonettes with gardens and roof patios were there probably 500 people there are now huge canyons of these 10 storie buildings looming and when their full probably about 1500 people all needing power all pissing and shitting needing water that’s not very good for the environment surely.. Facebook is yes it keeps people in touch… But at a price.. It’s mainly Inane babble and visual diarrhea on Facebook.. White noise.. The trade off is our information is harvested and sold.. A trade off as most things are
...on November 3rd, 2019 at 9:00 am
Andy Worthington says...
Yes, the council’s hypocrisy regarding its climate emergency is pretty sickening, Damo – and they weren’t the only ones. Hackney Council also declared a climate emergency at the same time that they cut down 65 mature trees in Shoreditch Park: http://hackneypost.co.uk/residents-condemn-shameful-cutting-of-mature-trees-in-shoreditch-park/
I do still need to get out to Acton to see what’s happening there, although it sounds, of course, as dispiriting as redevelopments everywhere else. The saddest thing is seeing decent, well-built, well-planned housing replaced by something that is clearly inferior.
...on November 3rd, 2019 at 12:00 pm
Damo says...
Ealing council is so corrupted full of shit it’s like a banana Republic the sad thing is all those maisonettes had lovely gardens mature trees they have built on a park to build one of the blocks it’s also were they plonked the family’s in shipping containers
...on November 3rd, 2019 at 5:04 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Are those the shipping container homes in this Londonist article, Damo? https://londonist.com/london/housing/what-s-it-like-to-live-in-a-shipping-container
...on November 3rd, 2019 at 10:25 pm