Monthly Archives: May 2021

Focus E15 campaign stands with the Palestinian people

housing crisis,

If you are neutral in situations of injustice you have chosen the side of the oppressor.
We are not neutral and we will not be silent.

Israel is again waging open warfare on the Palestinian people, dispossessing and evicting people from their homes in illegally-occupied East Jerusalem, fuelling violence against Palestinians in the West Bank and threatening a full-scale war on Gaza. Already there is mounting death toll and injury and people throughout the world are horrified to learn of Israel’s attacks on children and civilians.

Focus E15 campaign recognises that Britain, arming and funding Israel, is complicit and active in these atrocities committed against the Palestinians. We stand in solidarity with those fighting dispossession, military occupation and the onslaught by one of the world’s biggest military powers, the Israeli Apartheid State.

Since 1917, the British government has supported the Zionist project in Palestine – the settler colonial project that expelled Arab Palestinians from their land, culminating in the Nakba of 1948 when 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly removed, and the setting up of the State of Israel that continues to dispossess the Palestinians of their homes, their land, their history.

Gaza has been under a siege imposed by Israel and Egypt for 14 years which has crippled the economy and health care provision, they have been devastated by the Covid19 pandemic and denied vaccines by Israel.

As we write, the people of Gaza are being bombed with Israeli ground troops amassing at the border – Gaza where half the population are children, and the median age is 18, one of the most densely populated regions on earth.

In January this year, the prominent Israeli human rights group B’Tselem published a report declaring Israel not a democracy but overseeing an apartheid regime from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

Israel has one of the largest military arsenals in the world and points its full might at the Palestinians. Britain and the USA, fund and arm Israel. Britain is the second biggest arms exporter in the world – with £11bn worth of orders. Between 2014 and 2018, Britain increased its Single Individual Export Licenses for arms sales to Israel to a value of £361 million. In December 2020, the US Government provided Israel with $3.3 billion in ‘security assistance’ and $500 million for US-Israel missile defence cooperation.

In Britain, a rich imperialist country, the capitalist crisis is evident with increasing food bank need, homelessness and poverty. The British government that imposes this austerity at home, continues its support for Israel and its racist war against the Palestinian people.

If you can not get to the central London demo on Saturday, join Focus E15 campaign on the streets of Stratford east London on Saturday 15 May 12-2pm outside Wilko’s to raise the issue of Palestine in our communities.

No War on Gaza! No War on the West Bank!

No dispossessions and evictions from East Jerusalem!

Support the Palestinian Resistance!

Hostel accommodation – harmful to families

families, Focus E15 Campaign, gender, housing crisis, mothers, Newham council, overcrowding, personal story, single mothers, women

At a meeting with families from Brimstone House and Focus E15 campaign with the head of temporary accommodation in Newham, one of the mothers expressed what they are all going through, summarised in the powerful points below. This important piece of writing is going up on our website on 5 May. 

This is a very important day in the history of struggle in the east end, as it is the birthday of Sylvia Pankhurst, who was born in 1882, 139 years ago. Sylvia Pankhurst was a courageous fighter for human rights, for working class rights, an internationalist, a communist, an anti-racist and anti-fascist, an anti-imperialist. 100 years ago, in the east end of London, Sylvia Pankhurst was active on the streets, in the meeting rooms and organising to challenge the local council and the government about housing, healthcare, education…… 

The women of Brimstone House are continuing that fight for their rights and the rights of their children. Please read below and understand that the legacy of Sylvia Pankhurst’s fight goes on and we can still win important and inspiring victories and be part of building resistance by the solidarity of collective action and class struggle.

Long Live Sylvia Pankhurst! All strength to the women and children of Brimstone House!

This is a summary of what it is like Brimstone House, 10 Victoria Street, Newham, as expressed by the current residents:

  1. There is no welcoming process at Brimstone House and no information about how to complete relevant housing application forms in order to move on.
  1. It is not clear who the case worker is for individual families to discuss their applications or housing needs. When a case worker is finally assigned, it is near-impossible to get hold of them resulting in being bounced from one department to another, and having complaints/issues fall in between the cracks in the system.
  1. There are families living in Brimstone House for three years or more without a housing suitability assessment being completed and ongoing struggles to obtain bidding numbers. 
  1. The rent for studio rooms in Brimstone House is close to £800 per month, not including bills and council tax. A council home with two bedrooms, two storage units, a kitchen, a living/dining room, is about £500 a month.
  1. Single mothers are having to leave their work/jobs, to depend on benefits, because they are worse off working and becoming more impoverished by having to pay full rent. Universal Credit deducts 63 pence out of every £1 after the first £292.
  1. The studio flats in Brimstone House were designed for the purpose of a single person’s living accommodation, yet the council is now using them for families with three or more children, as well as partners. Families are forced to live, eat, share bunk beds/sofas, in the same living space. 
  1. It is shocking to think that anyone should be living in such squalid conditions in Britain, the fifth or sixth richest country in the world. Made worse by Newham’s slogan: ‘People at the heart of everything we do.’
  1. The flats have numerous hazards that also impact on life at Brimstone House, these include mould, bugs, rodents, and other pests (about which letters are frequently circulated). The other main hazard is the frequency with which the lift breaks down. Then single mothers, pregnant women, people with disabilities are seen carrying buggies, pushchairs, shopping, children up and down nine floors.
  1. The water boilers are often broken, faulty, or too small to provide what is needed in a British winter and often there is no answer to the request for plumbers to fix faulty showers. There are occasions when residents have been told to use buckets. Many flats have heaters that are not working, lighting is always faulty both in the corridors and the studio flats – and electricity bills are extortionate, often coming to more than £100 a month. The communal washing machine area is a health hazard with leaks and floods and inefficient machines which are known for recycling household filth.
  1. The bare flooring of wooden floors on many rooms are uneven and adults and children cannot go barefoot. Not being allowed to bring any furniture in means that families are forced to share bunkbeds and sleep on sofas, do not have enough chairs for everyone to even sit together to eat. Requests for more furniture are refused. 
  1. Children are the most affected by these living conditions, with an increase in skin allergies, eczema and respiratory infections and wheezy episodes. Their mental and physical wellbeing is compromised. There are children developing obesity because of their confined space. The restrictions being even more in the pandemic. Children’s toys and belongings often have to be left in the corridor as there is no storage space. This leaves parents in fear of possessions being thrown away as letters are circulated warning not to leave things there. 
  1. Children in Brimstone House have no space to study, to be free, and to form their own individual personalities in their own private space; Children are ashamed to have no bedroom or to say that they sleep with their mothers.
  1. The fire alarm goes off very frequently, sometimes daily at any time of day of nights. Children are dragged out again, having to negotiate flights of stairs, only to find out it is another false alarm. This causing huge anxiety. Security workers often have no knowledge how to pinpoint the fire alarm location. On 30 March 2021, an exit plan of the building in case of a fire was handed out.
  1. There are ongoing complaints about staff being disrespectful to residents and guests. Guests who are sometimes needed to look after someone who is ill or help with childcare, are often refused entry or there is the complication of an overnight form to be filled in and signed. This is supposed to be our home.

Newham Council! Brimstone House: No place for children