Photograph: Standard/Rex/Shutterstock
Some good news for a change: a play, Shirleymander by Gregory Evans, is to be staged near Grenfell Tower. Good news because it will remind everyone of what Shirley Porter, leader of Westminster council, did in the 1980s. I’ve often mentioned her over the years, hoping she would be a warning from history and housing policy would improve, but no such luck, so we need this play.
Porter, heiress of the Tesco fortune, was accused of “unlawful and corrupt policy of gerrymandering the poor … and homeless out of the borough”. This time there is is no suggestion that the aim is to remove certain voters from the borough, but three months after the Grenfell fire, only 10 families had been permanently rehoused, and “the poor” are being generally jerked about, scattered and dumped anywhere, as usual. Hundreds of families face eviction since Universal Credit pushed up their rent arrears, more than 4,000 people are sleeping rough in England, and four out of 10 people in Britain live in substandard homes.
But why should councils be scared of treating the poor like rubbish? Porter’s “mean and nasty” policy was not harshly punished. Of the £26.5m the House of Lords ordered her to repay, she coughed up only £12.3m, and that took her more than a decade and a half. Now look at what Tesco is up to: paying some Christmas temps via prepaid cards that cost 50p for each withdrawal (they say it’s only when there is no alternative means of payment).
Meanwhile, at Grenfell, lots of the the tributes have gone. Fielding, who lives round there, often walks by. “We’ve done that, the emotional energy’s gone. It’s inevitable,” says he, in despair. He had just seen about 50 rough sleepers in a shopping centre in east London. It is getting colder, but Stoke-on-Trent council is considering fining the homeless £100 on the spot for putting up a tent, and criminalising them for kipping in public toilets.
It’s about 50 years since a friend and I came weeping out of Cathy Come Home. Another awful warning not heeded. Housing is even worse. But not for Porter. I hope Shirleymander is a sellout.
