1 10 12 https://nam.maydayrooms.org/files/original/aac82d5f8ce62e5e4ddb537dd07068c3.pdf 6bc8206b78090255d2a1706f8048de61 https://nam.maydayrooms.org/files/original/975acf336f42d49fb9bb87b9adc4b845.pdf bdb9116c66e73f262684d81211b1b87a Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Brian Anson/ARC pre and post Harrogate Subject The topic of the resource Various documents describing ARC ideas and activities See below Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource ARC Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1975-1976 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Brian Anson Letters and Documents 1974-1978 Subject The topic of the resource Brian Anson Letters and documents 1974-78 and AA Lecture 1974 from Albane Duvillier 4th Year AA Essay submissision 18.02.2008. Pia Arias Covent Garden Report about Brian Anson Description An account of the resource COVENT GARDEN Anglo Saxon and Early Medieval Westminster Excavations have confirmed that in the area of Covent Garden and Aldwych, there was the ex- tensive Saxon Settlement of Lundenwic: over 150 acres, with roads, lanes, houses and industrial buildings. It stretched from the contemporary wa- terfront inland of the Embankment probably to the old Roman road beneath Holborn and Oxford Street on the north, and from Aldwych in the east to Trafalgar Square. A wide range of Continental trading contacts, from Norway to France, is indica- ted by imported objects found in the site. Two ce- meteries have been found, one under what is now St. Martin-in-the-Fields, and another to the north in Covent Garden; the latter may have been included burial mounds. The Saxon town, which have gone through several phases of development, seems to have been occupied from shortly after 600 to so- metime after 850. The main excavation, at the Ro- yal Opera House, found traces of timber buildings nearly 40ft long, with lanes, industrial workshops and many signs of a thriving, congested urban spa- ce1. The Later Middle Ages Covent Garden was the name given, during the reign of King John (1199 - 1256), to a 40-acre patch in the county of Middlesex, bordered west and east by which is now St. Martin’s Lane and Drury Lane, and nor- th and south by Floral Street and a line drawn from Chandos Place, along Maiden Lane and Exeter Street to the Aldwych. An ancient footpath called Aldewichstrate (‘Old Farmstead’s Way’) issued from the west gate of the City of London at Fleet Street and Drewerie Lane branched off here to the north. In this quadrangle bordered by wall, the Abbey or Convent of St Peter, Westminster, maintained a large kitchen garden throughout the Middle Ages to provide its daily food. Directly to the north the monks also owned seven acres known as Long Acre, and to the south, roughly where the Strand Palace Hotel now stands, two smaller pieces of land known as Friars Pyes. The monks of St Peter’s Abbey cultivated orchards here, grew grain, and pastured livestock, selling the surplus to the citizens of London. These type of leases did eventually lead to property disputes throughout the kingdom, which the monarch King Henry VIII solved in 1540 when he dissolved the monasteries and appropriated their land. The next year, in exchange for some land in Devon, King Henry VIII granted both Friars Pyes to John Baron Russell, Great Admiral of England, and later the first Earl of Bedford. In fulfilment of his father’s dying wish, King Edward VI, bestowed the remainder of the convent garden in 1547 to his maternal uncle, Edward Seymour, the Duke of Somerset who began building Somerset House on the South side of the Strand the next year. By 1600 rapid growth here and outwards from the city alarmed the authorities, who made several Area Plan from the 1968 Draft Plan. (1) [1] The information about the Anglo Saxon excavation was decribed by Pevsner in his book London 6, Westminster. Pevsner Architectural Guides. attempts to halt, restrict or at least control the builders. None was properly enforced, especially when the Crown realized that fines for non-com- pliance amounted to a useful new tax. The plan- ned private developments of the C17 were able to evade these prohibitions by creating select, we- ll-built new districts that would not fill up with the disorderly and dangerous poor. In 1605, timber was prohibited for house fronts, and had to be replaced with bricks, though it was not given up for decades afterwards. Further Pro- clamations from 1615 tried to regulate floor hei- ghts and to enforce the use of vertical rather than horizontal windows.2 Planning Development The 4th Earl of Bedford decides to plan his esta- te with "buildings that would serve to ornament the town" and commissioned the Surveyor of the King's works to draw up a plan for an elegant square or piazza. During the years between 1615 and 1640, Inigo Jones (1573-1652) was the central figure in English architecture. Born in Smithfield - London, he became the Surveyor to the Kings' Works in 1614. Travelled to Italy and came back greatly influenced by Palladio, Bramante, Serlio, Scamozzi and Vitruvius. He established Palladianism as the Royal Style by dis- playing the Italian influence in the Queen's House at Greenwich, the alterations to St. Paul's Cathedral, the Banqueting House in Whitehall, the Queen's Chapel at St. James's Palace and the Piazza at Covent Garden.3 The Piazza counts as the earliest of the squares of London, laid out on the example of the Piazza at Livorno, the design made one composition with the existing mansion, Bedford house; taking charge of the side, and with streets entering at the middles of the north and east sides, and to the west side, where the center was taken by St. Paul's church. The houses had uniform façades, to make them individually inconspicuous and give them all together a palace air, a uniformity not achieved again in London housing until the C18. The owner cleared the land and laid out streets, but the houses were put up by agreements with speculating builders, who were then permitted to sell them on long fixed-terms leases. The landlord thus acquired the reversion of the properties and kept control of over the quality and design, without the cost of building them himself. Jones's plan also included London's first meows, that is streets meant for stabling and services (Maiden Lane, Floral Street): a device which encouraged the fronts of even very large houses to face directly on the street. And so, for all its quirks, Covent Garden begins the story of what we now think of as Georgian London.4 [2] LionelEsher,onhisbook“AbrokenWave:TherebuildingofEngland”,explainsthisperiodaswellasPevsneronhisseriesofArchitecturalGuides. [3] For more details on Palladianism and its references in English architecture, visit The National Trust website www.nationaltrust.org.uk [4] Inthearticle‘LondontheRing,CoventGardentheJewellofThatRing’:NewLightonCoventGarden,DianneDugganexplorestheEarl’sarchives and his intentions for the development of Covent Garden. Inigo Jones 1577 - 1652 (2) The Market The Piazza is half-filled by Charles Fowler’s Market House, built in 1828-30. Roofed over in the C19, and restored and converted into shops and restaurants by the GLC Historic Buildings Division in 1977-80. The- re were no British precedents for such an ambitious conversion and its immediate success inspired a host of imitations. Twenty years on, the market remains immensely popular, though the small independent shops of early years are less in evidence. Fowler’s structure remains almost intact, the best-preserved Late Georgian market house in England. It has three parallel east-west ranges, with external Tuscan colonnades of Aberdeen granite. The outer ranges are two-storeyed, and have at the outer angles low pyramid-roofed lodges. In the centre of each long side is a tall pedimented pavilion, curiously placed just east of the entrance passage. At the west end the central range stands free, a little set back. Above its columns a balustrade terrace and then the upper storey, pilastrered and with a big central pediment broken by a lunette. Through the middle of this range runs a glass and timber-roofed passage, with shops where herbs and flowers were sold. 5 The Piazza looking North, circa 1717-1728. (3) Their shopfronts were modified with plate glass in 1871-2. Segmental relieving arches above them, then a clerestory of rectangular openings with colonettes. Delicate produce was traded at the E end, which is different again: columns stand four deep across the whole width, making a continuous upper terrace. On the central pediment allegorical figures by R.W Sievier, of Coade Stone. The upper terrace has a glazed restaurant shelter added c.1985. Its wings evoke Fowler’s twin hothouses for the sale of potted plants, but with an obtrusive round-topped link between. The shelter first provided was modest, limited to a small area in the north court, to make it more spa- cious, twin roofs were raised over the outer courts, giving the markets its bulky external presence. In [5] “Covent Garden Market”, in Survey of London - Vol 36 The market building in the 19th century (4) 1874, W. Cubbit & Co added the iron columns and arches, and a glazed roof with an open clerestory. The offices were removed to the south court. Two oblong areas were sunk into the floor, to allow public access to the vaults running beneath. Fifty shops were created in all, some restored or replicated to Fowler’s design. Axonometric section of the Market (5) GLC Covent GArden Action Area Plan, 1978 - Covent Garden Committee St. Paul’s Church St. Paul’s Church by Thomas Homers Shepherd , 1828-31 (6) Built in 1631-5 by Inigo Jones in connection with the 4th Earl of Bedford. The first new parish church in London since before Elizabeth's time, it broke com- pletely with native architectural traditions: a new way of building, intended to suit the Protestant Church of England. The church is a perfectly plain oblong with no subdivision inside. Widely overhan- ging eaves, deep portico with two squares angle piers and two sturdy Tuscan columns between. The conceit of square piers derives from the Etrus- can temple as illustrated by Scamozzi, the rest from Palladio's Tuscan order, though with rather diffe- rent proportions. Originally there were six or seven steps up from the Piazza, so that the temple origin was more explicit. The church also points forward, to the simplicities of late C18 Neoclassicism. The Piazza lies at the east end. Contemporary evi- dence shows however that the altar was originally meant for the west end, with the entrance under the portico. The plan changed during construction, probably due to Bishop Laud's intervention.6 St. Paul’s Floor plan (7) [6] Pevsner, London 6 “Westminster” - Architectral Guide Series Though Jones’s conception can be savou- red undiluted, the church has had an unluc- ky history, and the visible fabric is mostly c18 or later c19. The red brick facing is as late as 1887-8 by A.J. Pilkington. Jones's walls, of rendered brick, were stone-faced in 1788-9 by Thomas Hardwick, but badly damaged by fire in 1795. Hardwick restored the shell up to 1798, renewing the portico. The west front has two more round-arched windows and a central doorcase with oculus over, i.e. the same arrangement as within the portico (if only because Butterfield's restoration erased lesser doorways benea- th the windows there, 1871-2). Low wings to each side: an original feature, made lower by Clutton. St. Paul’s burns on the 17th of September 1795 (8) Westminster City Council Archives Also by him, the semicircular steps and the holes cut to house the bells. The interior has a spare qua- lity that may not be far from what Jones intended, though nothing remains from his time. His ceiling is known to have been painted in false perspective. The present ceiling is compartmented plaster of 1887-8 to a more Jonesian design than Hardwick’s; it may well be Clutton’s brainchild, carried out by Pilkington. St. Paul’s Church Interior, 2007 (9) ©Steve Cadma, steve@stevecadman.me.uk The Royal Opera House Stands upon the site of the thea- tre erected by John Rich in 1731–2. It is the third theatre to occupy this site, both its predecessors were destroyed by fire. The first, designed by Edward Shepherd, was burnt in 1808, and the second, designed by Sir Robert Smirke, was destroyed in 1856. After this second fire, the present building was built in 1857–8 by E. M. Barry. After nearly two and a half cen- turies of theatrical usage 'Covent Garden' has earned many claims to fame—as a theatre still acting under the authority of letters patent granted by Charles II, as the scene of the triumphs of many great actors and musicians, and in recent years as the home of both the Royal Opera and the Royal Ballet.7 In 1983 there was an open competition to refurbish the existing auditorium and foyers, accommodation for the Royal Opera and Royal Ballet along with the rehearsal facilities and a second auditorium. Reconstruction of part of the Floral Hall and a ribbon of shops around the piazza. It was won by the architect Jeremy Dixon. The objectives of the project were: -To modernise the stage and scenery-handling facilities -To move the Royal Ballet to a permanent home at Covent Garden -To improve amenities for the public and make the theatre more accessible -To provide a decent canteen for the staff and performers -To improve rehearsal facilities -To bring the production workshops on site8 Axonometric view of the changes made by the Architect’s proposal (11) [7] Detailed information can be found in the Survey of London Vol 35 - www.british-history.gov.uk [8] The above is extracted from the Archtect’s website, www.dixonjones.co.uk/projects/royal-opera-house-covent-garden/ The Opera house and the Floral Market in 1892 (10) In the reconstructed Floral Hall, a grand pair of escalators (visible through the glass wall) to the Am- phitheatre Bar moves you to above level. Here they either remain in the upper foyer or proceed further directly onto the open loggia overlooking Covent Garden piazza. In place of the hierarchical public access of the old house – whereby the upper (i.e. cheaper) seats were reached from a separate side entrance –now this will cater to the audience from main Bow Street portico. A new public entrance from the northeast corner of the arcade that complete Inigo Jones’s square. The challenge was to meet all requirements of the Royal Opera House and at the same time to find an architectural approach that could respond to the diversity of the site context, bounded on the one hand by the implied formality of the market square and on the other by a series of typical Covent Garden streets with their ad hoc accumulation of uses and architectural styles. SOCIAL HISTORY As the eighteen century approached, the wealthy residents began moving westwards towards the newer squares of Mayfair and St. James. This produced a dramatic change in the social character of Co- vent Garden. Elegance was replaced by bohemianism as not only the poorer classes encroached on the area but also the writers and the theatre people. The theatres were re-opened and many new ones built. The Old Cockpit in Drury Lane was where the ordinary people of London flocked to see the plays of Will Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson. Running parallel to theatrical Covent Garden in the 18th and 19th century was the literary world, centred on the coffee-houses and taverns, which became fashionable overnight. By the late 18th century it was the lower class of citizens who were rapidly taking over the spacious, decaying mansions of the gentry. The mansions of the nobility were gradually converted into tenements9. In 1836, in Sketches by Boz, Dic- kens10 exposed the poverty of much of Covent Garden, of Drury Lane he wrote: Drury Lane, Seven Dials - Illustration by Gustave Doré(12) [9] Lionel Esher, “A broken Wave” [10] CharlesDickens,alongwiththeartists’movementofthattime,livedandgatheredinCoventGarden.Sohewaswellawareoftheconditionsand spirit of the place. ..."The filth and miserable appearance of this part of London can hardly be imagined...Wretched houses with broken windows patched with rags and paper; every room let out to a different family, and in many instances to two or even three - fruit and sweetstuff manufacturers in the cellars, barbers and red-herring vendors in the front parlours, cobblers in the back; a bird fancier in the first floor, three families on the second, starvation in the attics"... Conditions grew so bad that, early in the 19th century, the Duke of Bedford's Estate began a determi- ned effort to change the area from the "lower-class residential quarter" it had become, to a profitable commercial centre. Every decayed house was pulled down without any attempt to make it habitable until major new building work could begin. In 1830 the 6th Duke of Bedford had begun the process of redeveloping and transforming the place, under a Private Act of Parliament, he cleared away the old market stalls and constructed the present central market building. In 1890 the Bedford Estate surveyor recommended that: "All the courts be pulled down as a commencement of the general clearance which it is desi- rable to carry out in this neighborhood..new houses will be constructed, which as soon as they are completed will be leased to very desirable tenants... and by prohibiting without consent the whole or any portion of the houses being underlet, the objectionable class of tenants who for- merly were inhabitants of these houses are excluded..." As the 20th century began, the London County Council took over the role of property landlords of the Bedford Estate. By 1905 the great thoroughfare Kingsway had been constructed, and many streets, alleyways and courts were gone, linking the Strand and Holborn, it was a desirable improvement because it cut through a large amount of slum property. By 1961 the population was down to 4.060 and the area was a commercial jumble composed of a multitude of crafts and trades. The major industry was the fruit and vegetable market, which now occupied an area of 15 acres and was the largest in Great Britain. By that time it was under the control of the Government, who appointed the Covent Garden Market Authority to run it. Since the 19th century, traffic congestion in the market had been a problem. By the 1960s, it had reached a breaking point. Naturally, the area had been designed in the 1600s for horse cart traffic – not for lorries. The existing roads and buildings couldn’t handle the huge volume of produce being brought in for sale, so business began to decline. Because there was no room to expand, the CGMA commissioned Fantus, a firm of ma- nagement consultants, to consider the relocation and to investigate 2 sites: Seven Dials and Nine Elms. In 1966 they gained Government’s approval to move the market to Battersea. The 12 acres empty spa- ce was seen as an opportunity to redevelop the 96-acre site, defined by the five principal roads of the Strand, Kingsway, High Holborn, Shaftesbury Avenue and Charing Cross Road. In October 1965 a con- sortium of the GLC, Westminster City Council and Camden was formed, they set up a Planning team and instructed it to work under the authority of a “Steering Group” composed of the chief planning officers of the three local authorities.11 [11] Lionel Esher, “A broken Wave” The Draft Plan Covent Garden Area Draft Plan, 1968 (13) The Steering Group was chaired by Ralph Rookwood, with Geoffrey Holland, Brian Nicholls and Brian Anson as deputies. There were three main objectives in the official mind. First was the need to clear out a small amount of actual slum and a much larger amount of depressing and redundant warehousing and office space and some archetypically gloomy Victorian tenements. The second was the opportunity, at a time when such objectives seemed within reach, to improve the heavily trafficked main streets surroun- ding the area, traffic was a major preoccupation in the 60s, so new roads had to be proposed. The third and most exciting were to wrap round the historic core of Covent Garden an architectural backcloth which would rehouse and augment the indigenous population, together with the theatres, arcades, ho- tels, boutiques, bars, restaurants.12 According to Anson, the major elements of the plan itself had nothing to do with the real history and character of Covent Garden. For instance, the brief stated that they had to design a plan segregating pedestrian and vehicles, and their intention was to make the centre of the area traffic-free, but to compensate more roads had to be included and it resulted in a drastic road plan that threatened to demolish over half the area. The Market Piazza would be redeveloped as a major shopping and entertainment route, the Piazza would be revived with a national conference centre and hotels. “Multiple uses” was the prevailing wat- chword and “partnership” between the public and private sectors the technique, whereby the profits of the latter would go some (though not all) of the way to carry the burden of the former. [12] Brian Anson, “I’ll fight you for it” Shallow surveys were set on foot to discover what sort of dwellings the locals wanted, and the results were inter- preted according to what the brief required. The ragbag of tiny industries –violin makers, coppersmiths, theatrical cos- tumiers – the 34 bookshops, 26 stamp dealers and 124 pu- blishers, printers and engra- vers, not to mention the Opera House and 17 other theatres, all were happily recorded by young clipboard callers. Urban structure and visual character were analyzed after the man- ner taught by Kevin Lynch and Gordon Cullen, and pedestrian routes and habits carefully plo- tted. Anson claimed that they must have been protected, not driven out: “The interdependence of existing activities must be recogni- zed and special care is taken to avoid their accidental loss”, even if they “may need special accommoda- tion in terms of design, location and rental levels”. 13 In 1968 the Plan was introduced in the most humane way possible: “One of the most exciting prospects is the opportunity offered by the removal of the market to cultivate experimental activities and new possibilities in urban living, small laboratory theaters, new combinations of indoor entertainment, small informal galleries combined with books and the modern equivalent of old coffee houses, linked with ar- tists’ studios, experimental film units... “the residential population would increase (from 2,347 to 7,000) as would space for hotels and entertainment, while office and warehousing space would be reduced. Ve- hicular traffic of all sorts would vanish underground, pedestrian radiating freely in all directions, often un- der cover, from a 3-acre garden that would replace the grim chasm of the ironically named Floral Street.14 Proposal for Road Network (14) Covent Garden Area Draft Plan, 1968 [13] Lionel Esher, “A broken wave” [14] Brian Anson, “I’ll fight you for it” Pedestrian Spaces (15) Covent Garden Area Draft Plan, 1968 The whole project, illustrated by expressionist drawings was uninhibitedly positivist: this would be the new heart of creative London. From Branson’s point of view, public participation was not as nearly as im- portant as economic viability; and with this being a £150 million project, with the private sector providing £110million, there was no question who it had to answer to. The struggle After the project was introduced to the public, major changes were made responding solely to the developers necessities. Little was left of the original plan and so the public, with the help of the press, became aware of the major faults, such as lack of housing and increasing traffic congestion due to the new commercial approach.15 By 1970, Anson was out of the team, and he made it his business to stir up the hitherto apathetic inhabi- tants against the intentions of his colleagues, with the premise that the working class had been left out of the plan by not considering enough accommodation for them, and the proposed ones would have higher rents that eventually would lead to their displacement. The artists joined the movement worried that their cheap accommodation would be eliminated too, and without it, their activity couldn’t flourish. In the Reverend Austen Williams, Vicar of St Paul’s Church, he found a sympathetic listener, and together they unfurled the banner of the defenceless poor and old. In 1971 the Covent Garden Community Association established itself with Anson and Jim Monahan orchestrating the first meeting. Monahan was an architecture student who rallied his classmates to hand out leaflets to every single building in Covent Garden for that first meeting. The demands were clear and a public statement was drafted: “This meeting calls on the GLC to publish in clear terms, what it intends to do in Covent Garden: to guarantee that the existing residents will be accommodated in the area at rents and rates comparable to those they now pay; to guarantee to people and organizations working here that they will not be bought or priced out by the GLC or private developers and to give a promise that the GLC will preserve the community.” Metting outside St. Paul’s Church (16) Coovent GardenCommunity Association The GLC/Camden/Westminster consortium split by political tensions and the GLC assumed the strategic responsibility which had been specifically reserved for it in the London Government Act. A Covent Gar- den Committee was set up, and it was chaired by Lady Dartmouth16. Born Raine McCorquodale, served in her local government for many years. As a member of the Conser- vative Party, she became the youngest member of the Westminster City Council at the age of 23. She ma- rried the Hon. Gerald Humphry Legge on 21 July 1948, and he became Earl of Dartmouth in 1962. They had [15] The above is part of Brian Anson’s statements, from his book “Abroken Wave” [16] More details on Lady Dartmouth’s life can be found on the local press’ obituaries, www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2016/10/21/raine-countess-spencer--obituary/ four children together: William Legge, 10th Earl of Dartmouth, Hon. Rupert Legge, Lady Charlotte, and Hon. Henry Legge. They divorced in 1976, after which she married Earl Spencer, Lady Diana’s father. Soon she was at odds with the planners. Her resignation in a blaze of pu- blicity was a further blow to the beleaguered GLC team. It brought to the side of the left-wing CGCA the powerful support of right-wing aesthetes and liberal conservationists. Against such a background the result of the 1971 public inquiry was predic- table: the Secretary of State, Geoffrey Rippon, gave the GLC its compulsory powers over the area, but at the same time listed the majority of its buil- dings, a secretly prepared list of 245 buildings drafted by two architectu- ral journalists, Dan Cruickshank and Colin Amery, was approved17; and decreed that conservation was to be the central object of the operation and that “full public participation” was to be the technique18. We saw in Covent Garden the first thoroughgoing exercise in public participation and one of the most successful because of the high motivation of the participating parties. The mechanism for this was the Forum, deliberately not a GLC creation but constituted from below to represent by election all the inte- rests in the area, including the Community Association, whose chairman took charge. While the planners churned out discussion papers, slide shows and questionnaires, and organized even more meticulous house-to-house surveys, the new attitude to Covent Garden took shape. It amounted to a charge of cons- ciousness. The time-honoured notion that knocking down worn-out buildings and replacing them with something better was a useful and often a profitable occupation was ruled out. 19 Covent Garden Community Association (18) [17] Miles Glendinning in his book “The Conservation Movement: A history of Architectural Preservation” explains briefly how the struggle over Covent Garden became a trigger for the Conservationist movement in the UK. [18] Brian Anson “I’ll fight you for it” [19] www.covent-garden.co.uk/histories/histories2.html Lady Dartmouth in 1954 (17) GLC Covent Garden Action Area Plan, 1978(19) “Housing gain” had become an obsession on both sides, despite the incurable deficiencies of schooling and the almost total absence of green space in this congested area. The official target was now to raise the resident population from 2.417 to 5.274 (with 1000 children under 15)20. The inflexible CGCA position was the defence of the village against the cultural and tourist invasion. “we ask that there be no galleries or studios in the principal shopping streets...no more museums... no conference Center... no more ho- tels, with loud coachloads of singing Germans arriving at 6 am”. Covent Garden must simply “provide a living, shopping and leisure facilities for the people who work in the entertainment industry, rather than tourist attractions...Covent Garden is not part of the West End.”21 [20] Greater London Council, Covent Garden’s Moving, The Covent Garden Area Draft Plan, 1968 [21] Greater London Council. Covent Garden Action Area Plan. N.p.: Greater London Council, 1978. GLC Covent Garden Action Area Plan, 1978(20) The Plan was printed in 1978, it was affectionately received by all. Density: “Few residents express dissatisfaction with their present accommodation on grounds of lack of privacy, shortage of external space, or noise...Covent Garden residents, in common with those from other parts of the city centre, have a long tradition of urban living and the concept of density is not sig- nificant in their conception of a living environment; the value of plot ratios to control building bulk and employment density is limited”. Zoning: “The Council considers that a mixed-used approach to development control will provide the best possible way of achieving the Plan’s total aims...interpreted as flexibly as possible in order to res- pect the delicate relationships” Housing: “All residents displaced by public development will be rehoused in Covent Garden if they so wish. The GLDP states that planning permission will not normally be given for a change from residential use. The Council will encourage proposals for the rehabilitation by the private sector of existing housing, provided these are not to the disadvantage of existing residents”.22 [22] Greater London Council. Covent Garden Action Area Plan. N.p.: Greater London Council, 1978 GLC Covent Garden Action Area Plan, 1978(21) Traffic: “The most heavily trafficked of the through-routes is Monmouth Street/St. Martin’s Lane which carries 1.100 vehicles per hour through the working day”. Commercial: “It will be the normal policy to prevent a change of use from a retail shop and other uses to showroom use in shopping streets”. Offices: “Each case will be assessed considering the nature of the activity and the benefits to the com- munity such as provision of residential accommodation, provision of specific benefits in the form of buil- dings and other facilities for use of the public, conservation of historic buildings and architecture, provi- sion of small office suites”.23 The defeat of planning in Covent Garden was not primarily a conservationist victory, it was a political one, won by working people under skilled middle-class leadership. Its central theme was that people are more important than architecture.24 [23] Greater London Council. Covent Garden Action Area Plan. N.p.: Greater London Council, 1978. [24] Brian Anson’s thoughts displayed on his book “I’ll fight you for it” RECENT VIEWS By the end of the 90s, Covent Garden established itself as a The place to go for retailing high brands, the market for rental skyrocketed. This encouraged the Westminster City Council to lunch an action plan to secure and im- prove the local environment for residents, businesses and visitors. Resulting from the combination of successful approach in other parts of London, public participation and the Metropolitan Police; it addres- sed problems in traffic, transport, street environment, anti-social activity and street safety.25 The draft plan for Covent Garden includes the council working with landlords to enable shoppers to pick up large purchases by car and to encourage walking. The plans also aim to improve street lighting, reduce 'physical clutter' that detracts from the street and increase street enforcement to tac- kle busking. Council leader Simon Milton says: 'The draft action plan demonstrates our commitment but this must be seen in the light of the city council's very difficult funding situation. We do not have the resources alone to bring about the vision set out in this action plan. If we are to succeed, we are looking for a com- mitment of funding and to work with communities and busines- ses in Covent Garden.'26 Further analysis had taken place, in 2006 the City Council drafted a Planning Guidance for Entertainment uses; to determine the land uses, functions, scale and environmental quality of entertainment in Covent Garden. The purpose was to establish policies regarding existing and new entertainment use and accom- plish a balance between the mixed use character of the place. Land Uses Plan - Planning Guidance for Entertainment uses, 2006 (24) [25] www.westminster.gov.uk/archives [26] Interview for the article “Garden army.” Property Week, 5 Dec. 2003, p. 62. Business Collection, Covent Garden Action Plan,2004(22) Westminster City Council Logo for the Covent Garden Action Plan (23) The struggle in Covent Garden has definitely shaped the conser- vationist movement in London. Postmodernist interventions, such as the Comyn Ching Triangle, have a possibility to be listed be- cause of the precedents set in the 70s. According to Farrell, it stands as one of Covent Garden's land- mark restoration and new-build scheme. Best described his own words, "The Comyn Ching Trian- gle, with much of Covent Garden, was planned to be demolished in the 1970s. Then the Triangle became part of Covent Garden's wonderful regeneration story. My involvement as architect for this urban block lasted over ten years. The public space in the mi- ddle links together restoration and new buildings: shops, offices, interior and exterior details. It is still one of the best things I've been involved with”27. But the area has also grown to become an important part of London’s commercial core, and in this matter recent planning policy for the Central Activity Zone (CAZ) has established stra- tegies outlining hierarchy areas where local authorities will be expected to direct housing, so the office space in central London continues to be a key generator of economic prosperity. Journalist Colin Marrs quoted London’s major Boris Jhonson in his Architects’ Journal article to defend this premise: “The heart of the capital is the foundation of London’s reputation as best city in the world in which to do business”28 Axonometric drawing of the Comyn Ching Triangle by Terry Farrell (26) [27] Interview for the magazine Building Design [28] www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/new-planning-rules-to-protect-city-from-residential-development/10004183.article Comyn Ching Triangle by Terry Farrell (25) List of Images and drawings No Title 1 Area Plan of Covent Garden 2 Inigo Jones 3 The Piazza looking North 4 The Market Building in the 19th century 5 Axonometric Section of the Market 6 St. Paul’s Church 7 St. Paul’s Church Floor Plan 8 St. Paul’s Church burns 9 St. Paul’s Church Interior 10 The Floral Market & the Opera house 11 Axonometric view 12 Drury Lane, Seven Dials 13 Covent Garden Area Draft Plan 14 Road Network 15 Pedestrian Spaces 16 Meeting outside St. Paul’s Church 17 Lady Dartmouth 18 Covent Garden Community Association 19 Conservation Area Boundaries 20 Proposals Map 21 Vehicle Network Proposal 22 Covent Garden Action Plan 23 Westminster City Council Logo 24 Land Uses Plan 25 Comyn Ching Triangle 26 Axonometric view of the Comyn Ching Triangle Author GLC Unknown Unknown Unknown GLC Thomas Homers Shepherd Unknown Unknown Steve Cadman Unknown Dixon Jones Architects Gustave Doré CGLC & W & LBC CGLC & W & LBC CGLC & W & LBC CGCA Unknown CGCA GLC GLC GLC Westminster City Council Westminster City Council Westminster City Council Terry Farell Architects Terry Farrell Architects Type Plan Painting Drawing Photograph Drawing Painting Plan Painting Photograph Photograph Drawing Illustration Drawing Plan Drawing Photograph Photograph Photograph Plan Plan Plan Logo Logo Plan Photograph Drawing Bibliography in alphabetical order 1. Anson, B. I'll Fight You for It: Behind the Struggle for Covent Garden. Cape, 1981. 2. Bradley, Simon, and Pevsner, Nikolaus. London. 6, Westminster. Pevsner Architectural Guides. New Haven, Conn. ; London: Yale University Press, 2005. 3. Cavanagh, Elaine. "Up for renewal." Estates Gazette, 19 Oct. 2002, p. 2. Business Collection, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=GPS&sw=w&u=uokent&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA93116404&it=r&asid=- 17c76221e87cee84b155429f95d52535. Accessed 5 Dec. 2016. 4. Christie, Ian - Covent Garden: Approaches to Urban Renewal - The Town Planning Review; Jan 1, 1974; 45, 1; Periodicals Archive Online pg. 31 5. 'Covent Garden Market', in Survey of London: Volume 36, Covent Garden, ed. F H W Sheppard (Lon- don, 1970), pp. 129-150. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol36/ pp129-150 [accessed 10 November 2016]. 6. 'Covent Garden Theatre and the Royal Opera House: Management', in Survey of London: Volume 35, the theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, ed. F H W Sheppard (Lon- don, 1970), pp. 71-85. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol35/pp71- 85 [accessed 12 October 2016]. 7. Duggan, Diane - 'London the Ring, Covent Garden the Jewell of That Ring': New Light on Covent Gar- den. (Architectural History, Vol. 43, 2000), pp. 140-161 8. Esher, Lionel Gordon Balish Brett. A Broken Wave : The Rebuilding of England, 1940-1980. London: Allen Lane, 1981 9. Glendinning, Miles - "The Conservation Movement: A history of Architectural Preservation" - (New York: Routledge, 2013), 329 – 330 10."Garden army." Property Week, December 5, 2003, 62. Business Collection (accessed Decem- ber 5, 2016). http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=GPS&sw=w&u=uokent&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%- 7CA111856021&asid=ccf23c7421f25d260c50d9c64c68293f. 11. Greater London Council, Covent Garden’s Moving, The Covent Garden Area Draft Plan, 1968 12. Greater London Council. Covent Garden Action Area Plan. N.p.: Greater London Council, 1978. 13. Hall, John - 'Covent Garden Newly Marketed', The London Journal, 1980 14.Matthew, H. C. G., Harrison, Brian Howard, and British Academy. Oxford Dictionary of National Bio- graphy from the Earliest times to the Year 2000. New ed. 2004. 15.O'Donovan Teige & Cooper - 'Covent Garden: a model for protection of special character?' - Journal of Planning & Environment Law, 1998 16.Richardson, J. Covent Garden. Historical Pubns, 1979. 17. 'The Bedford Estate: From 1627 to 1641', in Survey of London: Volume 36, Covent Garden, ed. F H W Sheppard (London, 1970), pp. 25-34. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-lon- don/vol36/pp25-34 [accessed 4 December 2016]. 18.Westminster City Council - 'Draft Supplementary Planning Guidance for Entertainment Uses', July 2006. 19.http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol36/pp25-34 http://www.coventgardenmemories. org.uk/page_id__37.aspx 20. http://thespaces.com/2016/02/17/is-architect-terry-farrells-postmodern-comyn-ching-triangle-in- covent-garden-worth-listing/ 21.http://www.e-architect.co.uk/architects/terry-farrell 22.http://www.sevendials.com/about-us/patrons/item/14-sir-terry-farrell-cbe-riba-frsa-fcsd-mrtpi 23.https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/new-planning-rules-to-protect-city-from-residential-deve- lopment/10004183.article 24.https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/big-names-rally-to-save-farrells-comyn-ching-buil- ding/10005959.article 25.http://www.bdonline.co.uk/farrell-submits-comyn-ching-for-urgent-listing/5080195.article 26.https://www.westminster.gov.uk/archives 27.http://www.gustav-mahler.eu/index.php/plaatsen/228-great-britain/london-londen/1381-covent-gar- den-and-drury-theatre 28. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2016/10/21/raine-countess-spencer--obituary/ 29. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/oct/21/raine-countess-spencer-obituary 30.http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3859566/Princess-Diana-s-stepmother-Raine-Spen- cer-dies-age-87.html 31. http://royalcentral.co.uk/other/private-funeral-for-princess-dianas-stepmother-raine-spencer-71011 32. https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/features/what-is-palladianism Bibliography according to type of sources History 1. Anson, B. I’ll Fight You for It: Behind the Struggle for Covent Garden. Cape, 1981. 2. Bradley, Simon, and Pevsner, Nikolaus. London. 6, Westminster. Pevsner Architectural Guides. New Haven, Conn. ; London: Yale University Press, 2005. 3. ‘Covent Garden Market’, in Survey of London: Volume 36, Covent Garden, ed. F H W Sheppard (Lon- don, 1970), pp. 129-150. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol36/ pp129-150 [accessed 10 November 2016]. 4. ‘Covent Garden Theatre and the Royal Opera House: Management’, in Survey of London: Volume 35, the theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, ed. F H W Sheppard (Lon- don, 1970), pp. 71-85. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol35/pp71- 85 [accessed 12 October 2016]. 5. Esher, Lionel Gordon Balish Brett. A Broken Wave : The Rebuilding of England, 1940-1980. London: Allen Lane, 1981 6. Glendinning, Miles - “The Conservation Movement: A history of Architectural Preservation” - (New York: Routledge, 2013), 329 – 330 7. Richardson, J. Covent Garden. Historical Pubns, 1979. 8. ‘The Bedford Estate: From 1627 to 1641’, in Survey of London: Volume 36, Covent Garden, ed. F H W Sheppard (London, 1970), pp. 25-34. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-lon- don/vol36/pp25-34 [accessed 4 December 2016]. 9. http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol36/pp25-34 http://www.coventgardenmemories. org.uk/page_id__37.aspx Institutional Information 1. Greater London Council, Covent Garden’s Moving, The Covent Garden Area Draft Plan, 1968 2. Greater London Council. Covent Garden Action Area Plan. N.p.: Greater London Council, 1978. 3. Westminster City Council - ‘Draft Supplementary Planning Guidance for Entertainment Uses’, July 2006. 4. http://royalcentral.co.uk/other/private-funeral-for-princess-dianas-stepmother-raine-spencer-71011 5. https://www.westminster.gov.uk/archives 6. http://www.sevendials.com/about-us/patrons/item/14-sir-terry-farrell-cbe-riba-frsa-fcsd-mrtpi 7.http://www.gustav-mahler.eu/index.php/plaatsen/228-great-britain/london-londen/1381-covent-gar- den-and-drury-theatre Academic Publicactions 1. Cavanagh, Elaine. “Up for renewal.” Estates Gazette, 19 Oct. 2002, p. 2. Business Collection, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=GPS&sw=w&u=uokent&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA93116404&it=r&asid=- 17c76221e87cee84b155429f95d52535. Accessed 5 Dec. 2016. 2. Christie, Ian - Covent Garden: Approaches to Urban Renewal - The Town Planning Review; Jan 1, 1974; 45, 1; Periodicals Archive Online pg. 31 3. Duggan, Diane - ‘London the Ring, Covent Garden the Jewell of That Ring’: New Light on Covent Gar- den. (Architectural History, Vol. 43, 2000), pp. 140-161 4. Hall, John - ‘Covent Garden Newly Marketed’, The London Journal, 1980 5. O’Donovan Teige & Cooper - ‘Covent Garden: a model for protection of special character?’ - Journal of Planning & Environment Law, 1998 Specialist Press 1. “Garden army.” Property Week, December 5, 2003, 62. Business Collection (accessed December 5, 2016). http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=GPS&sw=w&u=uokent&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA111856021&asid=cc- f23c7421f25d260c50d9c64c68293f. 2. http://thespaces.com/2016/02/17/is-architect-terry-farrells-postmodern-comyn-ching-triangle-in-co- vent-garden-worth-listing/ 3. http://www.e-architect.co.uk/architects/terry-farrell 4.https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/new-planning-rules-to-protect-city-from-residential-develo- pment/10004183.article 5.https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/big-names-rally-to-save-farrells-comyn-ching-buil- ding/10005959.article 6.http://www.bdonline.co.uk/farrell-submits-comyn-ching-for-urgent-listing/5080195.article Local Press 1. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2016/10/21/raine-countess-spencer--obituary/ 2. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/oct/21/raine-countess-spencer-obituary 3.http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3859566/Princess-Diana-s-stepmother-Raine-Spen- cer-dies-age-87.html Biography 1. Matthew, H. C. G., Harrison, Brian Howard, and British Academy. Oxford Dictionary of National Bio- graphy from the Earliest times to the Year 2000. New ed. 2004. Albane Duvillier, 4th Year, dip 7, essay submission for the Brave New World Revisited/Edward Bottoms appendix Brian Anson. Letter to Edward Bottoms, NOT FOR PUBLICATION. 18 February 2008 AA Project Review 1974-75 AA Project Review 1975-76 AA Project Review 1976-77 AA Project Review 1977-78 Brian Anson. “Let’s sing the Land Song”. Lecture, Architectural Association, London: 20 November 1974 AA Project Review 1974-75 AA Project Review 1974-75 AA Project Review 1974-75 AA Project Review 1974-75 AA Project Review 1974-75 AA Project Review 1974-75 AA Project Review 1974-75 Peter Cook’s unit AA Project Review 1974-75 AA Project Review 1975-76 AA Project Review 1975-76 AA Project Review 1975-76 AA Project Review 1975-76 AA Project Review 1975-76 AA Project Review 1975-76 AA Project Review 1975-76 AA Project Review 1975-76 AA Project Review 1976-77 AA Project Review 1976-77 AA Project Review 1976-77 AA Project Review 1976-77 AA Project Review 1976-77 AA Project Review 1976-77 AA Project Review 1976-77 Fred Scott & Bob Evans AA Project Review 1977-78 AA Project Review 1977-78 AA Project Review 1977-78 AA Project Review 1977-78 AA Project Review 1976-77 AA Project Review 1976-77 Brian Anson. “Let’s sing the Land Song”. Lecture at the Architectural Association London: 20 November 1974 Paul Bower : « The paper is over 8000 words long and includes no references as it was a typed manuscript. The paper comes courtesy of George Mills, one of Brian’s former AA students at the time and eventual col- league and friend » “We should sing the Land song again” This talk is about land. Who should own it, what is the power that it contains, what traps ownership of it may hold for common people – or for that matter rich people. It is not a definitive talk – that is it does not give a simple answer – yet it is topical in view of the Government White Paper. It is something in which I have always been interested and which I believe is, if not at the core of social prob- lems, pretty near the centre. It is such a vast subject that I am bound to miss much out, and likewise I am bound to annoy some in the audi- ence more learned than I on the matter, I don’t intend to and if I learn from them I shall be well pleased. I have some facts and some instincts. The facts are mainly in the paper that follows: my instincts are in a hum- ble way those of the great man whose picture appears on the poster; Padraig Pearce – they are with the landless man against the Lord of Lords and the breadless man against the master of millions. It is one of my basic beliefs that you cannot create a just situation from a basic injustice. It is clear to me that exploitation of land for private gain has been the second major course of injustice throughout the history of man, The first exploitation of man himself. Much of the misery, death and indignity that man has endured throughout history is in one way of another connected with avaricious schemes to deprive him of his land. I am aware that at certain times in history, and perhaps today is one of them, ownership of land has not been as helpful to the cause of a better society for common people – Engels, and to an extent Marx, were totally against returning the land to the people – at least whereby they became individual freeholders, Nonetheless I believe that the sacred connection between man and his land is still valid and I treat with suspicion any attempt to ignore it as something unimportant. The ancient traveller returning to his native soil knelt and pressed the earth to his lips manifesting his link to the elemental roots he must have if he is to remain sane. An aunt of mine died recently. Her body was taken by sea to Cork. Then by car to a little village outside Gal- way. They still have a simple tradition in the West of Ireland where the villagers come out 20 miles to escort the cortege into the village. She had been away for many years but her last wish was ‘take me home’. And that’s what the villagers were doing. The instinctive relationship to a sense of place that these two events illustrate are to me still very basic. I hope too many of you are not fidgeting and wondering the relevance of old ladies being taken back to villages or travellers weeping into the soil. I know you want facts, statistics and theories. There is no shortage of them, but the sacred relationship of people to land is possibly a greater truth for we are not in perpetual and rootless motion as the mid-cult trendies with their coffee table paperbacks or mobility theories would have us believe. So before I get down to some of the facts of history, I’d like to simply state where I believe the asnwer lies. Though I can’t as yet explain that it’s achievable. I believe that land must not be exploited for private gain in anyway whatsoever. In the contest of our mixed economy that means nothing less than taking ALL economic value out of land – in fact to make it VALUE- LESS. Paradoxically, in the context of our economically dominated society, to take a sacred element out of the system is to make it PRICELESS – which is what land is in reality. To my mind the common fact of history is the way that land has been exploited for monetary gain to the det- riment of civilised society. Why should we not put it in the same category as those other elements that we now consider priceless. Finite resources such as the air we breath are not yet part of the market mechanism – although in the centre of Tokyo one can ‘buy’ oxygen from a slot machine – and I take it no sane person here would advocate such a policy. The greatest, most priceless – although ironically not finite – resource of all, the human being, is not yet freed from the market system – but I take it no-one here would bring back slavery or the use of child-labour. We are capable now of considering the human resource as priceless – yet we had to struggle for the freedom – and the greatest opponents of the abolitionists were those who argued the collapse of our economic system should slav- ery go. Let us strive, therefore, to free land from the market. This is not day dreaming for at certain times in history, land has been viewed as a sacred and priceless element – and was arguably better cared for to the benefit of all. Sean O’Faolain has pointed out that the early Celts “...shared property in common and their hold on their land was absolute and incontestable. No Chief or King had any claim on the land and he could not legally dis- possess any family in his small kingdom...” The American Indians saw land as a gift from the great spirit and knew that they didn’t own it but held it in trust for future generations – and a whole ecological concept grew out of that belief. The downfall of that whole civilisation began with an attack on the land. “...the white man made us many promises” said Red Cloud of the Oglala Sioux “and he kept but one: he promised to take our land and he did”. I don’t know whether my concept can be made to work, anymore than the economic theories of Schumacher can be, but I think it’s in the right direction and I think it’s worth a try – in any case there’s been not other solution to the land problem in this country for the past six hundred years. I used to work for a stupid architect who, thinking he was a modernist, once said to me, that he was not inter- ested in anything written yesterday. I think the exact opposite and in order to learn what little I do know about the land problem I’ve had to go back a good many centuries. And so I begin in the past. But learning from the past is not the same as living in the past – so travelling through seven centuries as rapidly as possible I’ll end up with the current Government White Paper on Land Reform. And then if you’re still interested we can discuss it. We think we have a land hunger now and we think that the great inflation in land values of 1973 was an ex- traordinary event. The only extraordinary thing about it was that the Tory party at last publicly admitted the existence of what it euphemistically called “The unacceptable face of Capitalism”. According to Toynbee’s “English Social History” as long ago as the thirteenth century there was land hunger – too many people and not enough land in cultivation – greatly to the benefit of the landlords. Then the Black death wiped out half the population and the ensuing two centuries were to the benefit of the peasant – who struggled out of serfdom during this period. But by the sixteenth century land hunger was back fr the birth rate had wiped out the rav- ages of the plague and now there was a surplus of labour – the landlord was back in business. “Hence” as Toynbee states “The economic opportunity for the landlord to do what he liked with land so much in demand”. Worst of all the hated Enclosures Acts came into being at this time and ‘Economic neces- sity’ became the Tyrants’ pleas for much oppression when the common land was taken from the people. To be fair, I suppose, the landlord was under some financial pressure as inflation was running at a pretty high rate – between 1500-1560 food prices had trebled – but this plea of economic necessity went too far and became popular wisdom in later years when as Toynbee again says “ the dismal science of Political economy bore iron rule over the minds of men”. Tragically this dismal science has survived up to the present day and economic necessity is still an excuse for land crimes against the people. I am not an historian, but from what little I do know concerning the land question from the 12th century on and particularly with regard to the Acts of Enclosure, I acknowledge the tremendous complexity of the issue. What is not denied by any historian, however, is that the Common Law of England established under Henry II was an excellent foundation to work progressively towards a most just social system in society. Indeed much of that foundation has remained intact in such things as the jury system, and the birth of Parliamentary democra- cy. But not in the case of land, despite the fact that Trevelyan maintains that: “The starting point of our modern land law” began in 1275 under Edward I through his two statutes De Donis Conditionalibus and Quia Eviptores Laws which helped bring about the downfall of feudalism by vesting land rights largely in the King. I can’t see the reality of this, as in later centuries, particularly the 17th and 18th, the parliamentary democracy was largely controlled by politicians who themselves were large landowners. But to return briefly to the land system under the Common Law of the 12th to 15th centuries. It was John Stuart Mill who pointed out “it is custom, immemorial custom, which is the most powerful protector of the weak against the strong, their sole protector where there are n laws or government adequate to the purpose. That custom which even in the most oppressed condition of mankind, tyranny is forced in some degree to respect...” If there is any one major basis on which social life of England rested during the common law period it was this one of “immemorial custom” and particularly over land and tenant rights. The Durham Halmote Rolls pub- lished by the Surtess Society at the beginning of the 19th Century gives a vivid account of community life in Medieval Northumberland: “The dry record of tenures is peopled by men and women under the various phases of village life. We see them in their tofts surrounded by their crofts with their gardens of pot herbs. We see how they ordered the affairs of the village in matters concerning the common meal of the community. We hear of how they repressed their strifes and contentions, of their attempts, not always ineffective, to grasp the principle of co-operation. Local provisions for public health and general convenience are evidenced by the watchful vigilance of the village officials over the water supplies, the care taken to prevent the fouling of useful streams, and stringent by-laws as to the common place for clothes washing and the time for emptying and cleansing ponds and mill dams. labour was lightened and the burdens of life eased by co-operation on an extensive scale. A common mill ground the corn, and the flour was baked into bread at a common oven. A common smith worked at a common forge and common shepherds and herdsmen watched the sheep and cattle of various tenants when pastured on the fields common to the whole community.” According to Cardinal Gasquet writing in the early part of the 20th century – a review of the halmote rolls “leaves no doubt that the tenants, had a recognised right in their holdings, which was ripening into a custom- ary freehold estate.” Professor Thorold Rogers in his lectures on “the Economic Interpretation of History” given at Oxford in 1887, adds further evidence when he says that: “The peasant was rarely without his patch of land and beyond the plot which he held in severalty, the peasant had more or less extensive rights of common. The common, even if it did not afford herbage for his cow, was a run for his poultry, and assured him the occasional fowl in the pot.” The key phrase is “ripening into a freehold estate”. The immemorial custom backed up the obvious advantage of co-operative working may quite easily have developed over time into a well-nigh-unshakable social system based on co-operation and Communal ownership. That was well removed from despotic state control or bu- reaucratic Communism. Even Gordon-Rattray-Taylor in his recent and pessimistic book “Rethink” describes how one of the most com- mon topics of conversation during this time was the definition of a fair profit and he suggests that an individ- ual those aim was unlimited profit would have been forwned upon by society in general. Professor Rogers sums it up when he says: “...the rate of production was small, the conditions of health unsatisfactory and the duration of life short; but on the whole there were none of those extremes of poverty and wealth which have excited the astonishment of philanthropists and are now exciting the indignation of workmen. The age it is true had its discontents, and these were expressed in a startling manner. But of poverty which premises unheeded, of willingness to do hon- est work and a lack of opportunity, there was little or none. The essence of life during the Plantagenets and the Tudors was that everyone knew his neighbour, and that everyone was his brother’s keeper. My studies lead me to conclude that though there was a hardship in this life, the hardship was a common lot and that there was hope...” Three events changed all this, and in terms of the land problem changed the course of history: the Acts of En- closure, the dissolution of the Monasteries and the birth of the Industrial Revolution. The first two were to change drastically the ownership pattern of land; whether it be legal ownership or own- ership by ‘immemorial custom’. The industrial Revolution was eventually to create, amongst other things, the industrial city and the land problems that are with us still today. All three events together were to produce a new class of people which from now on was to lie at the very heart of the land problems: the “landless labourer”. In effect the industrial working class man was born, and his increasingly desperate plight was to complicate the land issue enormously right to to the present day. In future centuries some like Proudhon, the bourgeois Socialist and Parnell, the Irish Catholic leader would try to leas him back to that co-operative wonderland of individual ownership partly described above, while others like Marx and Engels would keep him away from such ownership and petit bourgeois traps in order that he might lead the socialist revolution. It is not the purpose of this paper to discuss the religious validity of the Reformation in England. As so often in the past, and still today, religious friction has been used by the ruling class as a cloak to hide or evade real social problems. But the social upheaval caused by this event was enormous in England. Again the issue is complex with one side, such as the partisan Catholics, arguing that the Abbots, Monks and Priors were re- sponsible and benevolent landlords to their tenants, and that the dissolution of the monasteries robbed the communities of a sound and reasonably happy base for living. The passages I’ve quoted above by such as Pro- fessor Thorold suggest there is some truth in this. Others, not impressed by ‘other-worldly’ attitudes towards community structure place greater emphasis on the undoubted misuse of responsibility shown by many monastic settlements and suggest that long before Refor- mation the monasteries were being run by secular middle-men with an eye to profit. It is for the individual to make up his own mind on whether the dissolution was socially retrograde step or not. Personally I tend to agree with the Protestant Radical William Cobbett, that the event was more a social disas- ter than civilised progress. But again there is complete agreement by most historians on one significant point. Dramatic events in history are neither entirely good nor entirely bad. Henry VIII and later Edward VI having confiscated the monastic lands had a wonderful opportunity to redistribute it justly amongst the people and in fact some historians suggest that in Henry’s case this was the first intention. But as Trevelyan says in his English Social History “...the Exchequer was empty and the courtiers were greedy and the hasty sale of the lands to private purchasers was the course adopted. The dissolution of the monasteries and the confiscation of the property of the chantries and guilds resulted in the transfer of well over 2,000,000 acres of land into the hands of new proprietors. The change of ownership was disastrous for the poorer tenants although many of the stronger yeomanry class did very well out of it and their first step to becoming property owning capitalists. The new brand of owners, who had in many cases paid large sums for their land, began immediately a system of rack renting and encroaching upon common land. As regards the early acts of enclosure there are again mixed views. There is clear agreement that the very poor suffered enormously as their common land was enclosed and they were deprived of its benefits, When the Parliament, as it then became, was closed by law to anyone not a considerable owner of land it is impossible to argue the right of ownership of land by ‘immemorial custom’. And that is the only right the peasant had. Prior to the dissolution of the monasteries and the Acts of Enclosure this right was largely adequate. The vast reduction of small holdings left the peasant farmer helpless and the worthless compensation that he did, on occasion, get merely led him to the alehouse. Suddenly great numbers of people were homeless, job- less, half-starving vagrants. In connection with this Elizabeth in 1495 brought her Statute of Labourers. According to Professor Thorold the object of this celebrated or infamous act was threefold. 1.To break up the combination of labourers To secure the adequate machinery of control To make the peasant labourer the residuum of all other labour – or, in other words, to forcibly increase the supply Not long after, in 1541, the first Poor Laws came into being. So one way to look at the results of the dissolu- tion of the monasteries and the Acts of Enclosure is to see them as robbing great numbers of poor people of their customary rights in land by confiscation; creating a new rich and powerful minority owning large estates; creating in the process a new class, that of the landless labourer; the creation of poor laws and destitution on a large scale – culminating in the terrible state of the working class in the 19th century in England – and finally as being the origin of the class scars that mark our society today. Others argue that while the early acts of enclosure created social damage, the final enclosure Acts of the 17th century and early 18th century were a national necessity. England, in those days, did not yet have access to the great granaries of the world – such as Russia, and with an exploding population and the rapid growth of the cities, the country must produce much more food or starve. As the traditional small farming methods were wasteful they must be replaced by a more streamlined arrangement of land use. Whatever the merits of the latter argument, the 17th century was also the pinnacle of the landowning gentry class – and poverty amidst affluence was commonplace. The Acts of Enclosure were beneficial to sections of the population even including the yeoman class and many of the craftsmen, but a whole section of the poor were totally excluded. In contrast Denmark which proceeded with enclosure at the same time took into account the interest of all classes, even the very poorest, with excel- lent consequences in the Danish society of today. By and large I agree with first Cobbett, and finally Toynbee, the modern historian who says: “Henry VIII had been driven by financial necessity to sell most of the confiscated lands privately. The potential value of the land was much higher than the lay purchasers had paid. The ultimate beneficiary of the dissolution was not religion, not education, not the poor, not even in the end the crown, but a class of fortunate gentry whose power replaced that of the great nobles and ecclesiastics of the feudal ages and whose word was to be law in England for centuries to come...” So land hunger and its consequent exploitation is nothing new. What about rocketing land values? Again it’s all happened before as 19th century Scotland shows, to give just one example. In these islands it is the Scottish people like the Irish who know deep in their bones what land means – they suffered one of the worst indigni- ties of any nation – they were driven from their land by sheep – the Cheviot. But as John Prebble says in ‘The Highland Clearances’: “...the land owners could see no reason for complaint. Wool was making them rich. Wool had forced up the value of land all over the highlands. In five years the sale price of the Castlehill Estate had risen from £8000 to £80,000. Redcastle, which had been sold for £25,000 in 1790 was shortly to be sold (in 1817) for £135,000 and the Fairburn estate, which had yielded a rental of £700 in 1800 was now in 1817 worth £80,000 rental a year.” They had a rather quaint legal system in those days for at the trial of Patrick Sellar, one of the villains of the time who spent his time evicting poor crofters in order that his masters could make the sort of profits I have described, it was stated: “that a bed-ridden woman of 90 had been evicted from her house and died five days later in an outhouse (the cottage was in fact set on fire by Sellar while the woman still lay in her sick bed). This was not contested in court and the judge and jurors agreed that Mr Sellar could not be held responsible for the ‘natural tendency of a person to die if rendered suddenly homeless’.” This is just one of millions of examples whereby horrific and tragic death springs directly from private ex- ploitation of land. Only two weeks ago I read of how fifty square miles of this same countryside that Patrick Sellar ravaged in the early 19th century is to be sold on the international market so that Lady Sutherland may rationalise the other 100,000 acres of her ancestral estate. To rationalise means to provide a lucrative grouse shooting, salmon fishing, golf course for the multi-national oil magnates no doubt. First it was the Chevi- ot, then it was mid-century Shell-Esso man – BUT WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO THE PEOPLE? Of course they never came into it. They never did in the past and if huge profits are to be made today from land they are likewise excluded. The Scots know that history will always attempt to repeat itself. In 1973 the last Tory government was deter- mined to bring its LAND DEVELOPMENT BILL in order to expedite the oil-rush. A spokesman stated publicly “We must have the platform building sites whether the people like it or not”. WE WILL BRING THE GREAT CHEVIOT IN WHETHER THE CROFTER LIKE IT OR NOT. But one last comment on Scotland. Even bureaucracies throughout history can occasionally make a statement that has the ring of pure simple truth about it. And the final statement of the Crofters Commission of 1892 said: “...the solution of the Highland Problem is not land purchase but the resumption of the Clansman’s right to occupy the Fatherland....” No mention of economic necessity or investment or a healthy economy – but a question of human RIGHT and a RESUMPTION of that right. Just think about it for a minute and ponder on modern interpretations: “The solution of London’s housing problem is a resumption of the old communities RIGHT to occupy the city....” “The solution to the Irish problem is a resumption of the Native Irish’s RIGHT to occupy the motherland.” And what is the land story in Ireland. I must confess that it was an interest in the history of that country that led to the beginning of my interest in the land problem. Land and the so-called Irish problem are synonymous and some of the greatest agitators for land reform in the 19th century came out of that country. I have already mentioned that the old Celtic order had a system of land ownership based entirely on the com- munity. A system of land control that was ta the base of social structure extraordinarily communistic in its character and in the truest sense of the term. Amongst the many dreadful deeds that England perpetrated against that nation, it’s attack on the land was par- amount in its destruction of a way of life. They first tried to conquer the land – and failed; they then tried to plant it with aliens and only partially succeeded, then they reinforced the little bit they could hold and invent- ed “The Pale” and finally in the great tradition of all imperial powers they partitioned it. In the early 1840’s two million people starved to death in Ireland and another two million emigrated with half of those dying in the coffin ships before reaching their destination – often because they were driven from the land. Never lecture an Irishman on Genocide. Nor indeed on the economic necessities that a poor landlord has to face. For it was as a direct result of land exploitation that Ireland changed overnight form being the fastest growing population outside China to the sparsely peopled land she is today. It was at the height of that famine that starving peasants were evicted from the land and when they built SCALPEENS to protect their shrivelled bodies from the weather. a scalpeen is a ditch with a bit of a roof over it – hence the Irish saying that you can never stumble into an Irish ditch without falling down a chimney - They were evicted from the Scalpeens. When this matter was raised in the House of Lords in 1846, Lord Brougham stated: “It is the landowners inalienable right to do exactly as he pleases to do with his land, If this were not so money would no longer be invested in land.” Fortunately history is not all gloom, for 1846 brought something good to the land question in Ireland. It brought the birth of Michael Davitt. A man of high courage, moral no less than physical, a passionate man totally intolerant of cruelty and injustice, and most important of all the man who was to become the father of the LAND LEAGUE. But before Davitt a few words on James Fintan Lalov who died three years after Davitt’s birth in 1846. Where the latter was the father of the land league, Lalov is popularly seen as the prophet of revolutionary Irish land reform. The social system of 19th century Ireland gave supreme power to the landlord and no security to the tenant. The growth of the landless labourer, referred to above, was very rapid in Ireland. Lalov assumed “...the gen- eral and common right of all the people as joint and co-equal proprietors of all the land ... and no man had a right to hold one foot of Irish soil otherwise than by grant of tenancy from the people in common...” Lalov was not interested in nationalisation – but rather in co-operative ownership. He considered the posi- tion of the landless labourer to be beyond repair, and his theories have little connection with the dense urban problems of our day. Davitt’s views are more pertinent and in the end he was as suspicious of individual peasant ownership as an answer to the land problem as Engels was. The son of an evicted Mayo peasant Davitt moved into Revolutionary politics through an early five year spell in the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the Fenian forerunner of the modern IRA. In addition his foundation with Parnell of the Land League in 1879 increased his radicalism for the organisation, through technically legal, was animated by the spirit of social revolution. The battle cry of the Land League was simply the land of Ireland for the people of Ireland and its initial aim was the overthrow of an oppressive landlord class.. Davitt was eager to emphasise its universal implications and declared that “...the principles on which the land movement rests are founded on natural justice ... the cause of Ireland is the cause of humanity and labour throughout the world...” The problem arose, and still today arises, when Davitt had to consider what system would replace the landlord. The tenant farmers led by Parnell (who incidentally would never tolerate Trade Unions) were clear on the aims – their own holdings would belong to them. Davitt thought otherwise – in line with Henry George, whose famous book ‘Progress and Poverty’ had appeared in 1879 – he saw nationalisation, or state ownership of all land – as the solution. According to Davitt, “Land was a unique commodity, it was no man’s creation, it was essential to all life and it was fixed in quantity. It ought therefore to be directly owned and administered by the state. Private monopoly in land meant that the landlord appropriated most of the wealth produced by labour returning only a bare liv- ing to the tenant. Under national ownership the tenant would enjoy the full product of his industry and would have a virtual freehold, paying a tax equal to the annual value of the bare land, and observing certain condi- tions. he holding must be cultivated: it should not be larger than the tenant could personally manage – and the State should have the right to authorise mines and minerals worked in it. In general terms the ultimate outcome in Ireland, peasant proprietorship, was not the solution of the land problem at which he aimed. His suspicion of this ‘solution’ was matched only by the contempt of such an aim by Engels who declared:- “...for our workers in the big cities, freedom of movement is the prime condition of existence, and land own- ership can only be a fetter to them, Give them their own houses, chain them once again tot the soil and you break their power of resistance to the wage cutting of the factory owners...” In England the land of nationalisation theories of Henry George, the American author of ‘Poverty and Prog- ress’ were advocated thirty years later by another George, Prime Minister, Lloyd George. In his budget – his Peoples’ Budget as he called it – of 1909, he introduced taxes on land values. Looking back on them they were not startling – eg. one 1/2 penny in the pound on the added value realised by the sale of land where the com- munity had made that value possible. But they caused a tremendous political storm and the House of Lords (which incidentally Davitt had referred to as that Den of Land Thieves) rejected the budget, and a constitu- tional crisis ensued. Lloyd George travelled the country presenting the land issue – and in his famous Limehouse speech he de- scribed the landowners living on unearned profits as parasites: “Who created these increments? Who made that golden swamp? Was it the Landlord? Was it his energy? His brains? It is rather hard that an old workman should have to find his way to the gates of the tomb bleeding and footsore, through the brambles and thorns of poverty. We cut a new path for him, an easier one, a pleasanter one, through fields of waving corn.” But the land taxes brought in little revenue and were abandoned n the days of the coalition. Lloyd George continued to proclaim his belief in public landownership and a total abolition of freehold. In the mid-twen- ties he was the main force behind the Green Book and Brown Book. The former called for public ownership of all agricultural land and the latter for total nationalisation of all urban land. Had these proposals been adopted our economic situation today might well be different. The Green Book proposed that the vast, and growing numbers of urban unemployed world return to a coun- tryside that belonged to them and not the large landowning farmers. Advocates of Lloyd George’s policy formed an organisation called the Land and the Nation League and toured Britain advocating land nationalisation. But the opponents of public land ownership were beginning to dig-on and eventually even the liberal party was divided. The early planning acts form 1909 through to 1932 had not proved a success – perhaps because they were too loosely drafted on such a vital issue. It proved too costly to pay compensation for development refusal, and the collection fo betterment levies provd well nigh impossible. Three major inquiries, the Barlow, Scott and Uthwatt, in the 30’s and early 40’s agreed on the need for a na- tional land system. Ultimately the 1947 Planning Act took up Ultwatt’s main idea: a transfer to the State of all development rights in land. The three major principals of the ’47 Act were: Planning Permission required for all development (this for the first time). No compensation paid for refusal Betterment would accrue to the State through Development charges paid to a CENTRAL LAND BOARD. In addition, and in retrospect fundamentally, all land was expected to change hands at existing use value. This in theory Local Authorities could buy land cheaply. Three things happened instead: Owners held land back (they hoarded it) Privately land changed hands at market value – this keeping up the price Landowners sat back expecting a future Tory Government to repeal the Act. Which is exactly what happened in 1951. The Tories kept development control and the no compensation clause – but abolished the Central Land Board. Now an absurd, but legal, two-pricing system existed. Local Authority could still buy land at a price exclusive of development value – if they could find it. But private sales took place at full market value. The Tories 1959 Planning Act reinstated the full market value for all land exchange – from now on no more cheap land for public services and amenities. The market mechanism was in top gear. From the early 60’s to the present day has been the boom period when land prices have soared and massive unearned fortunes have been made in property. Prior to this time land and property was not even quoted on the Stock Exchange; now it occupies the front page of all financial papers. One meek and mild attempt was made by the Labour administration to stop this criminal profiteering – when it set up the Land Commission in 1967. It called for a 40% flat rate tax on development gains – but noth- ing much else was done. Local authorities could still not buy land cheap enough to build desperately needed homes. In any case, the Tories abolished the Land Commission in 1970. It was during this time 1966-1972, that land values rose 228% house prices rose 113% manual earnings rose 52% During this time, according to Counter Information Services, 100 men between them shared £400 million from property and land deals. During this time – the profits of the big private architects rose 118% while the number of new commissions rose only 34%. During this time a senior official in Manchester Corporation Planning Department said – “Land means mon- ey – not just money – it’s a gold mine”. During this time I personally watched the first Chairman of the Covent Garden Development Committee dan- gle prizes of enormous profit from inflated land values before the slobbering faces of Britain’s top developers. During this time I got sick to death of the professions I was in because of the way land was handled as a mar- ketable commodity and the way the architectural and planning professions made no move to change the situa- tion. And now we are at the White Paper. I’m not going to go into great detail over the Land Nationalisation Bill – for one things it’s not a very detailed document anyway and had been criticised as such by none other than the Labour Party Home Affairs Commit- tee – but in any case I should be concluding soon. It’s important to see the Bill as just another stage in a centuries long effort to sort out the and problem in our society. This really has been the whole point of my talk. To understand the present we must understand the past – then we might have some hope of getting things right in the future. Of course it depends on your own viewpoint in the end – some would say we don’t even have a land problem, and many Marxists take this view, but when in 1974 we have 9 million families living in slums and well over a million totally homeless, yet in the last ten years 100 men have made £400 million pounds profit from land deals – I can’t see that we don’t have a land problem. The ultimate aim of the Land Bill is to take from private individuals into the community purse the wealth real- ised from values created by the community and to enable local authorities to have a more positive influence on development in accordance with public needs. This ill be done (it is said) by: Giving Local Authorities strong compulsory powers to purchase land at existing use value Charging a 100% Development Land Tax (DLT) on all developed land. This means that when land is devel- oped, the increased market value of the land springing from the development will go to the community. The argument for this is that the infrastructure which creates the increased value was provided not by the developer but by the public who thus should benefit The ultimate scheme (100% tax) will not come in for some time, say 5 years (by which time incidentally if his- tory repeats itself – and on land issues history does repeat itself, the entire Bill will be repealed by a future Tory Administration). An interim scheme will charge a flat rate of DLT of 80%. Ironically this is less than can be charged under De- velopment Gains Tax – where the maximum is 83%. I find Anthony Crossland’s (the main sponsor) reasons for delaying the ultimate scheme puzzling to say the least. He is quoted as saying the land values would drop too suddenly if the 100% tax was introduced immedi- ately. In the context of the phenomenal rise in land values during the last 5 years, I should have thought we wanted values to drop drastically. Certain land users are totally excluded from the payment of Development Tax: Owner occupiers Agricultural land Forestry land Statutory undertakers Builders and Owners with planning permission on White Paper Day (12 Aug). In basic theory the profits from the development of land will either accrue to the Local Authority or the Exchequer. The Local Authority have the option, instead of granting planning permission (whereupon the developer pays out his DLT to the Government) can acquire the land by Compulsory Purchase – net of DLT – then ease it back to the developer at the Developed Value. Crossland described this at his press conference as “money for Old Rope” and calculated that the public would profit by £750 million. Others think differently – and argue that the taxpayer will have to fork out £500 to £1000 million merely in order to fund the purchasing of the land even at existing use value. It’s a moot point – although Local Authori- ties have no money – and the Government is hardly rich. But it’s more complicated and worrying than that. Tony Crossland has in some quarters been called the Devel- opers’ Saviour because of the possible implications of the Bill. The argument goes like this:- Local Authority somehow finds the money to acquire the land by CP. Local Authority cannot afford to do much with it – and can’t allow it to remain idle – as some interest changes have to be paid. So Local Authority attempts to lease it to Developer – at increased Developed Value (remember Money for Old Rope). Developer won’t consider anything not profitable. (He’ll go into oil, or art or pornography or something in- stead) Suddenly Developer is in the driving seat again. As always he’s got the Local Authority by the curlies – and of course all his negotiating skills come to the fore. And bingo – we’re back where we started. An unwanted office block on that part of the site and a bit of expensive Local Authority Housing on the other. There are many other obvious criticisms of the Bill which unfortunately ring true. The market in development land will dry up because owners will not bring land forward unless profit is guar- anteed. They will simply hold tight hoarding the land until a future Tory administration repeals the Bill. All this has happened before. If Local Authorities have the purchase money and the expert staff (and this is a very big IF), to ‘hunt down’ the land hoarders, great social hatred will be engendered. It is argued, justifiably, that Local Authorities lack the expertise to handle such massive land-banks as would be required to solve our housing and other social problems. Furthermore Local Authorities do not have a very good reputation of looking after land. That they have acquired – a glance at any city centre will prove that. Finally the whole process can be bogged down in inter-area arguments over the definition of development land – and this is especially in the contest of the general public antagonism and mistrust felt towards Local Authority planning departments. On the bright side the Bill, as expected, really smashes the more blatant property speculators. For example if a building like Centre point is not occupied within two years after construction date – then the Local Authority can acquire it at construction date value. In the case of Harry Hyams Empire this can be the difference between £5.5 million and a market value of £42 million. But as I said this sort of Government action was expected and could well divert attention from the more complex land issue. Reactions to the White Paper are mixed. The RTPI is split – with half warning the Government to go slow on Land Nationalisation and the rest saying do it in a big way. The Association of Metropolitan Authorities are wildly enthusiastic – I presume because they will be given the power to buy land cheaply and sell it dearly. This is a very attractive idea to any group of human beings. I would call that an emotional response. On the other hand the Incorporated Society of Valuers and Auctioneers call it a blueprint for disaster – again I would think this is an emotional response – as the valuers commodity may well reduce in price – and no group of human beings like that idea. The Labour Party Home Affairs Committee chaired by Tony Beurn seems very disillusioned with the Bill – be- cause it is not strong enough or if you like not Socialist enough – you could call this an emotional response but at least it seems to pay some heed to historical truth. A final comment on the White Paper. Let me read you the paragraph on Land Disposal. ——– So what conclusions might I draw? I think the Bill will fail because it is not strong enough. I think most of the criticisms against it are valid, specifically I don’t understand why the 100% DLT could not be introduced immediately. I can’t understand some of the categories excluded from the force of the Bill – for example owners and builders already holding planning permission. I think the public’s disillusionment with the Local Authority power base (particularly in the light og recent corruption) is deeper than the Government thinks – and thus the increased powers of land purchase given to them is not so wondrous. But mainly I think the Bill will fail to solve the eternal land problem for two basic reasons: Nationalisation – or public land ownership is by itself neither here nor there – it is what one does the power of ownership that counts. And our representatives have not shown themselves responsible enough in recent years. Solving the land problem will not on its own solve the social problem – of production and power. My basic view at this stage is:- that first we must have total nationalisation of land immediately. Second: a new community-based power structure must be set up -possibly within the context of a Republic. Thirdly: public ownership of the means of production And fourthly, since none of the above have any meaning whatsoever without financial change, the Nationali- sation of the Banking System. Or if this seems too strong – the New Social Role of Money as James Robertson puts it. I have not stressed Nationalisation to such an extent because I believe in State Control – I do not – but rather because I believe more in balance as the real reality of social life – no-one can deny the existence of total im- balance on the issues I have mentioned. I am suspicious of the avalanche of books being written that pertain to be revolutionary but whose only message is: we will create a more just society if we only become good little people. Even dear old Schumacher’s book comes down to that. My view is get the balance back then we can make progress. To conclude: Land does belong to the the people – it belongs to you and to me – and thus to no-one in particular. This is not daydreaming, such a general attitude has been prevalent before in human history. That fact that our so- ciety, in terms of land-ownership, took a wrong turning somewhere in the past, and that our social system is based upon the consequences of that turning does not mean that we must forever live with it. For why should we accept that reality that has been forced upon us? The raped cities, the pollution or our environment, the millions of homeless, the hideous and unacceptable face of Capitalism, the death of Archi- tecture, the wars and the bombs and the bullets, the corruption of our representatives. We have the power to choose another reality. A reality based in co-operation, on the understanding that we can share things especially those common to all of us and vital to our existence. A reality based on past evidence – on a past when Arab and Jew did co-exist and not struggle over land – when Irish catholic and Irish Protestant did not kill each other over land. A past when the American Indian did offer to share his vast plains with the White Settlers and when the indigenous urban poor did share their land with those more well to do. I’m certainly not saying the answer is simple – I know that I personally must do much more studying of the issue. But if land does belong to the people, whether is it God-given or not, then at least I can begin from that basis and never flinch from that fundamental truth. If we wish to alienate people, make them sullen, make them desperate, and finally if we wish to experience more bombs, bloodshed and tragedy, then all history has shown the most effective way to accomplish this – cast them out, make them homeless – deprive them of their land. As I said I don’t know the full answer – I know it’s not simple – but I know that we are not going to reach it by picking ay a centuries’ old problem that came into being on the wave fo basic injustice. Out attitude must be more fundamental than that. 60% of the wealth of this country is owned by 3% of the population, and much of that wealth is in land. At the very least we must correct that situation. It may sound unhelpful but the best analysis of the situation I have come across is that which was printed in the events list. When Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries, which played some part in the Acts of Enclosure he did so by con- fiscation. Perhaps society will just have to confiscate the land back again – then we can begin solving the land problem. There are certain issues with which it is better to be angry rather than to have fashionable objectivity and kind- liness towards one’s adversaries. I think the existing power of the big land owners is such an issue. Bernadette Devlin ends her book “The Price of my Soul” in which she records her fight against the Unionist Party, with these words: “For half a century it has misgoverned us but is is on its way out. Now we are witnessing its dying convulsions. And with traditional, Irish mercy, when we’ve got it down we’ll kick it into the ground.” I have the same feeling over land ownership. I owe the title of this lecture to Dingle Foot who in a rather pessimistic article on the Land Problem as outlined in the White Paper, concluded: “We should sing the Land song again”. I agree and I’m going to. Of all people it was that old Tory Winston Churchill who led the singing of this song to vast open air meetings at the turn of the century. I’ll sing two original verses with the chorus plus three I’ve written to bring it up to date a bit. The tune is marching through Georgia. Sound a blast for freedom boys and send it far and wide March along to victory for God is on our side While the voice of nature Thunders o’er the rising tide God made the land for the people. CHORUS Hark the sound is swelling from The East and from the West Why should we beg work and let the landlord take the best Make them pay their taxes for The Land. We’ll risk the rest On the land that’s free for the people. CHORUS Why should Harry Hyams And the likes of Charlie Clore make their filthy fortunes from the homeless and the poor With their lousy architects Who are rotten to the core They all take the land from the people. CHORUS Why should Bonny Scotland Where the common folk are poor lose their homes and farmland to the oil rigs off the shore while the Multinationals just watch their profits soar from the land they took from the people. CHORUS But one day we’ll awaken with a passion that has grown to the sound of freedom boys. We’ll go and take our own And to Hell with Politicians and the lies that have sown We’ll take the land for the people. CHORUS The land, the land it’was God who made the land the ground on which we stand Why should we all be beggars boys With the ballot in our hand We’ll take the land For the people. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Albane Duvillier Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived JM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 18 February 2008 https://nam.maydayrooms.org/files/original/ad91918965a00855974aeb5e63e759b6.pdf fcf3e98c4e49e59e4b73f06bb0932a7b https://nam.maydayrooms.org/files/original/65e08e38745b8afaebfbdfdb9a80fc0c.pdf 611cb7b2cfce9dc2d969421b54257ba0 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Brian Anson/ARC pre and post Harrogate Subject The topic of the resource Various documents describing ARC ideas and activities See below Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource ARC Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1975-1976 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource From Radical to Revolutionary Subject The topic of the resource 6 page essay (2 copies) Description An account of the resource FROM RADICAL TO REVOLUTION,,aY Brian Anson The new breed of'Conceptualist'architects seem blind to the fact that in Britain thousands are still forced to live in ugly and poverty stricken environments. The architects of the authoritarian Left frequently act as though such people'live by bread alone'and have no capacity for dreaming of beautiful things outside the sphere of their existence, The radical architect who is searching for a new vision is labelled ultra political by the Conceptualists because he ignores ‘art for art's sake',Because he has the courage to'dream from -the earth up! ,the doctrinaire Left wieuere “"bourgeoise’ behind his bask. Well to hell with both factions, For me he.is the truly revolutionery architect and it is the purpose of this short essay to describe him and how he came about. Until recently we had to go back toMorris to hear an architect speak of his work in sovial terms:'...what architecture unless all can share it.We must not preduce it only for the swinish luxury of the rich.'This great gap of a hundred years;it is this lack of concern for the social side of architecture that is so largely responsible for the dilemma in which we as architects find ourselvesswhy is this so?Pevsner gives us a clue: "Ingland's activity in the preparation of the Modern Movement came to an end immediately after Morris'death,...English writers have not failed to acknowledge this,but hardly anyone has tried to explain it.One reason may be this:so been a matter which in practice concerned class England could foot the bill.As soon as the problem began to embrace the people as a whole other nations that cid not accept or did not know Ingland's EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CONTRASTS BETWSEN THE PRIVILEGED CLASSES AND THOSE IN THE SUBURBS ANS THE SLUMS. ‘(my emphasis). So the Beveridge Report of 1919 to combat the five evils of ‘Want,Disease,IgnoraSQnUAcLOeR,,andIDLENESS'(myemphasis) was acted upon.Slum clearance got under way;British Town Planning busimess have we with: long as the new style had only the wealthier nations took the lead, British architecture, for all its apologists and theorists has always been Secenmia ie, in the control of the privileged and powerful,and has had no relationship with the mass of common people except as an oppressive force to crush them in the path of grandiose civic projects.The recent property toom with its resulting physical destruction and rape of poor communities, proves that nothing has really changed since Morris's death, While the Modern Movement was blossoming on the Continent the UK had nothing to compare with the pamphlet‘ Arbeitsrat flr Kunst' of 1919:'...architecture shall no longer be the luxury ofthefew...'ThesignatBrounro’iTaeut,sA,dolfBehre,andothers, all of them in the spitbit of the age,declaring that architecture must spring from the people and be of them.But not Britain- past master at containing revobutionary ideals and expert at chanelling them into innocuous reforms,she could afford to look smugly upon such wild calls for architectural revolution.The myth of British Supremacy was not yet to-be dislodged,Britain's attempts to ° democratise the environmental process were well timed,subtle,| and above all paternalistiacs befitted an imperial power, ean tin Hogg summed it up when he told Parliament in 1918: '..eif you don't give the people social reform they are going to give you social revolution,..' 2. became'the bast in the world'.But behind all the social activity was the age old imperialistic ideaskeep the workers healthy and occupied and they will have no wish to rock the boat and alter the power structure.British architecture torfowed the forms of the Modern Movement; but ignored the'communistic'ideals of the modernists.It was cleverly worked out and beautifully simple, so much so that,as late as 1961,Kidder Smith,in his'The New Architecture of Europe',while admitting that'...for almost half a century Great Britain saw little of architectural significance ee+'could also declare that'...now intellectually the contemporary architectural situation in Britain is on one of the highest planes in Europe...'and go on to eulogise about the high rise housing and slum clearance projects which were so much a feature of architectural journals in the early 60's.The incestuous back slapping amongst architects and politicians over the'successes? of post war British architecture (the work of the LCC, the schools programmet,he new towms) may well have led Kidder Smith to proclaim of Britain Modern architecture has arrived, True to form the architectural profession was blind to what was happening around it,yet during the 50's warnings had been coming through from other sectors of society. Just as the artists and poets cleared the way for Morris and the. first modern movement,so the novelists, playwrights and thinkers of the'Angry Decade'punctured the upper class,paternalistic membrane engulfing cosy Britain and,in my view,paved the way for the post- modern movement in architecture;a movement with which we are still trying to come to grips. Yet it was to be a mere handful of years later that the British public especially those poorer communities forced to inhabit the new'visions'were to proclaim with great ferocity 'We don't like it and what's more you never asked our opinion. '! Osborne, Sillitoe,Wesker, Barstow, Shelagh Delaney, Alan Owen; the ‘Angry Young Men'(and women) of the 50's,who through their novels and plays,showed that Britain, beneath its paternalistic welfare statism and slum clearance philosophy,was still riddled by class consciousness and ruled by privilege. Parallel with the'kitchen sink'dramatists,a number of important Sociological studies emergRe“cdha.rd Hogarth's massive study of the northern working class in'Uses of Literacy'; Townsend's ‘Family Life of Old People';and Wilmott and Young's classic study of the disastrous effects of urban renewal on East End communities.All these works spelt out clearly the immense danger of architects and planners ignoring the age old community linkages, now so fragile after the destruction of war and the pulverising effects of a consumer growth economy.Yet architecture was deaf to the warnings and the hizh rise housing went up in Bethnal Green, Golden Lane,Pimlico,Park Hill,and throughout alll the local authority areas in the Britisn Isles,And the philistine architects had a field day;the Shell empire began to sprawl like a cancer over London's South Bank;the Pivadilly Circus farce began, and city centres throughout the country were being restructured in all their awful sameness. The severe problems we now face in architecture,of people's elementary right to participate in environmental decisions, were all vividly outlined by the writers of the 50's and ARCHITECTURE IGNORED THEM, 36 * In the few short years of the mad 60's British architecture laid the foundations of the hate which is now directed at it by the public and it is diffi-«lt to summ - up sympathy for the profession, Then in 1968 Community Action arrived on the scene and for the next few years appearce to offer a way forward to the radical architect, The movement was just one element in a mac larger process for change which suddenly erusted in the western world, Empires’were <: . suddenly seen to be fragmenting: students in America, France, Germany and eventually Britain,were rioting over civil liberties and the protests were put dom with police brutality (with the significant exception of Britain where the establishment was far too clever to do that}.Workers in Prance joined the popular struggle for human rights.Tho foundations for a new'Gestalt! were laid.0n the environmental front the commimities of North Kensington blocked Westway and their banners read 'Get us out of this hell'ssquatters in iclington barricaded a street and proclaimed it a ‘NO Go Area',echoing the struggle building up in Ireland.The people in Covent Garden rose up against a multi million pound plan being forced on them by the unholy alliance of an-impersonal GLC and the tycoons of the property world (with their erchitects in tow.) By 1972 the community movement had spread throughout the country 3Glasgow, Leeds, Sunderland, Liverpool, Cardiff, until virtually every hamlet in Britain had its protest group. The term'the unacceptable face of capitalism'was coined, and speculators, bureaucrats,and planners became the villains of society.Finally,as evidence of wholesale corruption was exposed in the architectural field,architecture was seen as just another link in the chain of power which viewed the environment as merely a commercial commodity to he exploited at will. The'Angry Young Men'were burnt out cases by the early 60's, Macmillan told us'we had never had it so good'; the'war Babies! had grown up with money in their pockets.A cultural vacuum was created.To those sensitive enough to discern it we were at the 'wake'of the British Empire,and like all’ good wakes it was a feast,The Pop revolution was upon us and,as one commentator put it:!...suddenly the North moved South grinning broadly~~ and cocking a snoop at every form of discrimination it Saweee! Had it been ten years earlier it could have been dramatiz, but society had had enouch of social realism for a while, In architecture the more! imaginative! (or opportunist)went into fantasy (plug-in walk-in cities) consumer graphics and the King's Road, Carnaby Street culture,while perhaps the more astute one climbed aboard the proper<y world bandwaggon which was just getting wreder way.Almost alone in the 60's Cedric Price stood out in trying to link his imagination to the realities in provincial social life (Potteries Thinkbelt). Small groups of disaffected professional archatects and students joined the movement “n preparing alternative schemes and setting up workshoptso educate the communities in the power of architecture and planning.The concept of!guerilla'architects was born and those worked within the system (until discovered and sacked ) filching confidential documents and plans to be used as weapons by the communities in their struggle against the system.Perhaps most important of all, the community profassionals came to reject their own institutions (RIBA) as not only had it rerused to come out 4e publicly on the side of the communities but on the contrary had aidcdand abetted the developers by doing their design work, During these years three times as much investment went into property development as into British industry,and the architectural profession made a bonanza,proving where its allegiance lay. Yet as a revolutionary force the community movement fizzled out’ by 1973.True most of the large destructive plans had been defeated, but this was due as much to gathering inflation and the excessive greed of the speculators (killing the goose that lays the o golden egz) as to the'power to the people , In any case,in time honoured fashion, the establishment had - effectively defused an explosive situation by establishing complicated frameworks for nominal participatiotnh,us disarming the communiti¢s which could never hope to compete with it in terms of time,money,and expertise, But the real problem,and the most radical of the community architects realised it socn after the’ movement began,was spelled out by an American advocacy architect,Robert Goodman:'...You cannot graft pluralist mechanisms, such as advocacy planning, onto existing relationships to colve problems of democratic control if the existing re. vionships are so unbalanced as to discount the. effects of the proposed reform.In order to gain acceptan”.e any reform is made to fit the status quo. and’ as a- result is disarmed as an effective mechanism for chenge...! The projects and plans against which the radical architect had fought alongcide the communities were only a manifestation of a far deeper malaise;the political and’ economc system which had spammed tne project in’the first place,It was the system which needed changing (Land, Money, Privilege) and ironically while working within the powerless’ communities might prove rewarding for the radical professional,it effectively mimimised the nesessi*y for the rules of the game to be changed to include the communities themselves, Perhaps Beatle John Lennon. summed up the tragedy when hn said in ; 1972:'.,.we all dressed up and went’ onto the streets shouting "Power to the People!.We had a ball,;but nothing changed, the same bastards are still in control.,.! So having,at least temporarily,abandoned community action,where dor does the radical architect go? Back into the system? Would it have him. back? : Into the fantasy world of the unreadable Conceptualists (Venturi, Kisenmann and latter day Cook)? Fantasy soon degenerates into total boredom, Reject architecture sltogether?Put Why should he? There is another way- Through the work which he knows best,he can join the struggle to ouild a decent architecture committed to neither Corporate Statism nor State Socialismb,ut which is part of the decentralised, community based society that many are straggling to bring about.A society in which architecture will no longer be controlled by the rith and powerful,nor out of the economic reach of most people,but which is gehorally carried out on a small scale local basis with lay people cooperating fully with the architect.Such a Society could have a locally controlled National Design Service on the lines of the NHS, oy learning from its successes and failures,Ways would need to be found to prevent the growth of architectural monopolies, but: there is no reason why this could not’ be controlledby law, as it is ih Yugoslavia where private officed cannot employ more’ than five people.Larger schemes could be handled by the amalgamation of small enterprises. solely for the duration of the project. (Evidence shows that, under our present system,as practices become more successfuli,n monetary terms,and therefore larger, the standard of design-drops as management techniques override sensitivity).In such a society all practices would be on a self-managemént basis with:all members of the firm sharing both in responsibility and decision making.Most important the - schools of architecture would become major resource centres for the local communitiesi’n which they are situated.The present system,where students work to hypothetical and increasingly «°° esoteric briefs and merely provide'fodder'for the status quo, is ‘ludicroaunsd very wasteful of resources.There are problems enough on the very doorstep of the schools to tax both the knowledge and creativity of the studonts.If the local people were éncouraged to become part of the school;and even in some cases, take. up teaching posts, then eventually, the entire architectural training system could become the major link between society and the profession, oO og : a pat How that job is to be done is outside the scope of this essay, but in the process the radical architect becomes the REVOLUTIONARY architect. Apart from the National Design Service,none of the ideas mentioned are new;they have all happened in one form or another during the past twenty years.But they are the exception not the rule.Our first job as radical architects,is to get our own’ profession to pledge itself to this new society.If,as I believe, the RIBA has too much a vested interest in th status quo to make any such pledg. chen our task is to overthrow the Institute and build a new profession dedicated to a socially responsible architecture, Some will. :rgue that before such a community architecture can be establishedth,e necessary fundamental changes will need to occur in our political system,.Taken to its logical conclusion this arguhent says that nothing can ever be done;by workers, by nurses,by miners.We might ask,how did the'revolution'in medicine ever occur if a small group of idealistic doctors didn't agitate for it first?The revolutionary architect will acknowledge that fundamental changes will be necessary to make community architecture the norm in our society,but we can at least work to START the process. There is ample evidence that the general public and many polit? ans would support such an ain. And finally,we can all work as individuals3;as teachers we can make sure we instruct our students in the social responsibility of architecturesas assistants in offices we can condem projects which are socially harmful and refuse to work on themsand in local authority offices we can tell our bureaucratic masters that we are paid as'Public Servants',and not merely there to do their bidding and that of monopoly capital, And the end result of all this could well be unemployment and a great sense of tragedy.But the struggle to build a decent architecture hav always been a tragic one.As Stephen Kurtz says ie in his beautifully poetic'WastelandTh.e Buildinogf the American Dream':'Ontlhye revolutionary transcends and escapes the tragic dilemma. In a’ terrifying even to himself and ultimate defiance of authority,he gives up hope of someday recieving what he has always been denied: and decides, cither alone or with others, to provide for himself.In this way then, revolutionaries are thé world's only adults.As Long as the primary form’ of getting what one needs is begging, cajoling, or persuadingf,or so long is the childish status preserved.Against this final impoverishment a battle is being waged, spearheaded by those who are tired of being denied and joined by those who are tired of being given. It is a’battle in which the members of the race will perhaps forever,decide whether or not they shall be called men, Can it be then, that the greatest architects of’ our age are hot those selebrated in the histories - Le Corbusier, Mies, Gropius, those oftheBauhthaeuCIAsM,theengineersandtheformgivers-but rather the architects of Algiers,who created holes where buildings had been and terror in the heart of complacency?! ns In the same spirit I draw my conclusions.I don't do so with an sense of frivolity.There jusy seems no other way. _ In my search for @ community architecture I stood one day in 1972 in the middle of free Derry.The streets all around were barricaded,some with great sophistication and ingenuity.Down the road was a machine gun post guarded with sandbags stolen from the British Army.Qutside the post stood a placard saying "You can kill a revolutionary but you can't kill the revolution'. Into this area came no specul tors,no bureaucrats;no silver tongued professionals ,nor forked tongued community activists.One of the people from the area showed me a dirty scrap of paper on which a local woman had drawn a crude plan for a community centre and some houses with gardens.'How do we build this! he said in desparation.'We've taken the land but we've no money nor materials',I couldn't answer him,but I knew my vision of the new architesture began there, Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brian Anson Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived John Allan Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource Undated https://nam.maydayrooms.org/files/original/a2eb8eb0f57c1f2667d1f289ed0b6a67.pdf 77d47bb6b926961bdbf9e451c14bfd13 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Brian Anson/ARC pre and post Harrogate Subject The topic of the resource Various documents describing ARC ideas and activities See below Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource ARC Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1975-1976 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource AA Intermediate School Unit 1 Subject The topic of the resource Review of staff & projects AA Unit 1 in Percy Street: Unit Master Brian Anson (4pp) Description An account of the resource UnitStaff EISSSOOOO'S cc ccc AA Intermediate School REVIEWS Unit 1 1974/75 PHILOSOPHY The Unit came into existence in 1971 on Unit one in the Intermediate School is re- architecture is neither used as a weapon HISTORY In the name of architecture we proclaim theworldofpeople'sarchitecture. We cannot yet put right al that is injust in our social system under which archi- tecture exists, but we can determine that The members of Unit One have always beeninterestedintheirownprofession's “figure-head’ and its attitude towards those instigating social change. The Present members of the Unit's acceler- ating disgust for the institution that Purports to advance the course of architecture has manifested itself in ARC, To learn how to direct our art and create effective change within its application and performance we must understand PROJECTS The “Onshore Impact, Study and threattothelandscape,itseems,isafar Disasterbuilding more important issue than the threat to the social structure of an area, foronly capital city of Macedonia ed bird sanctuary) are certain proposals Central area and rendering thousands of would only be available to houses with a demolished and the land redeveloped in the context of a master plan. the wave of publicity over the Covent nowned for its rejection of conventional Garden campaign, an issue with which architectural theories and practice. Since Unit Master Brian Anson, was deeply in- it came into being four years ago it has volved following his dismissal from the when development threatens a stretch of Yugoslavia. In 1963 a serious earthquake picturesque coastline (or a long establish- hit the city, destroying a major part of the Pope Street fell on one of thearbitrary border lines drawn by the LA planning G.L.C."s Covent Garden planning team So, from the very start, the Unit was in- extricably linked with community and political action, This naturally led to a deep interest in the nature of particip- ation and a fundamental belief in the throughout England, Ireland, Scotland myth and prove it is a fraud in the guise Preferably confuse into assistance, ideaofaco-operativesociety. andWalestheUnitmembershaveattempt-ofarchitecture, Infactifthereisonemajorelementin edtorelatedirectlytotheordinary GEORGEMILLS,ARC the structure of the Unit's philosophy and people in their work, not to the powers one idea that has permeated its work over that pretend to represent them. It has thelastthreeyears,itisthisideaofwhat alwaysbeenfundamentaltotheprogress impact of recent oil discoveries in the ment, which is our base, the need for a new system of values based on co- operation is urgently needed. Through working with a community abused and ignored by these agencies, and Sbscurity isadvantageous. they are an obstacle in our desire to work +The Unit Master is sort of unusual? radical reassessment of role in — education — profession so the project was established w.thin the not, be based solely on a single resource AA in 1973 and has now been built into a or demand. Clearly this lesson has yet to be learned; and at sucha price, are,ofnecessity,takingaradicalreview of the very nature of the architect and his role in society alternativeapproach tosocialproblems. In general we are engaged in the conti- nuity process of constructing a meta- language in the untried, unknown, or jobsonthenewdevelopments exceptper- haps as cleaners or gate wardens? Most of traffic-free narrow streets of the old city, The Unit has always been interested in the more equitable distribution of know- ledgeandpowerwithinSocietyand Particularly in architecture. To our knowledge we are the only Unit Perhaps in Britain to use resources to employ local community people to funct- ion as teachers of the environment. Often they are the experts. The great American organiser Saul Alinsky said: We know why this is so. What is the point ofhavingskillsthatonlyaprivilegedfew Content MACRO FRAMEWORK So what is this vital issue? Most people knowa few distorted facts. Very few haveanyknowledgeofallofwhatis really going on, except for the oil developers themselves and those with the power and wealth, And they are not concerned with the damage to coastline OF community. Only in the light of the national crisis have some of the North Sea Oil issues been seen in any form of perspective, A sad reflection on the national press and mass media, which have misinterpreted, under-rated,andinsomecases,under- played the massive changes which face the people of Scotland. But only the dramatic issues, such as the massive tax loopholes,arereportedbelatedlyata national level, while the gradual social erosionoildevelopments,whichwill eventually directly affect thousands and indirectly affect the entire nation, grind ‘on inevitably. ThousandofacresofScotlandarenow directly controlled by London and U.S. based multinational companies, while newoptionsonhundredsmorearebeing takenupalmosteveryweek.Thereare sitesofstaggeringproportions;2,000 acres and more, twice the area of central London. All this has not occured merely in the last two or three years, as some believe; the footsgobacktenyearstowhen thefirst legislationpassedthroughparliament. During this time, the U.S. and U.K. commercial sector moved in quickly. Only now, when the first physical signs of development appeer, are there any signs of public alarm. ‘Yet the concern so far has been mainly for the physical beauty of the area, The continue within the AA for at least an- other year yet despite our modest successes the task ahead isstil monu- mental.Wehavereallyjustbegun. 500 houses. Unit One continues to advise the association and recently we have acquired a building within the area which isbeingconvertedintoayouthclubtoa Unit One student's design and specification We have also been able to gather money from various charitable sources for the association. At present we are working on @ scheme to rehabilitate the area in general and to put forward design options for the improvement of the dwellings. In conjunction with this we are looking at the redevelopment sites and putting for- ward designs for new housing to replace theold.Wearedoingthisinsuchaway as to allow the residents to control the financing and rate of building. We hope to do this by extending the residents’ “The University of Chicago spends hun- dreds of thousands of dollars on socio- logistsinordertofindthelocationof people.Occasionallythefruitionofits houses of prostitution when any taxi- beliefs and philosophy manifest them- driver could tell you that in five minutes,”” selves in a physical form. More often But we must practice what we preach for than not they can be found in the defence out of asituation, itself isaprocess of nature,trulyconceptualthoughtisintheacupuncture wecanhardlyspeakofcommunitiesand of working with them if we are incapable ofgeneratingacommunal spiritwithin our own ranks. ofpeople'slife-styleandculture,orinan attack on the system that makes us both creativelyimpotentandsociallyin- adequate. {any combination PopeStreetisanexampleofanurban associationintosomesortofco-operative area which suffers from the latter form housing association which could then ofexploitation.Thestreetconsistsof26 undertakeagradualrebuildingoftheir houses which were built towards the end area. By building on small vacant sites in of the last century. They were built as ‘the area we can rehouse enough of the minimal working class accommodation to existing community to then demolish serve the Mersey docks nearby. They and redevelop their houses. The important sufferfromthedeteriorationinthe pointisthattheresidentswillbeincon- building fabric brought about by a life of trol of the development rather than the are outside the dwelling in a small back- yard. Unit One's involvement dates from the decision of the local authority to at last turn its attention to the improvement of this area. It set about this task by dectar- ing part of the area a G.1.A., meaning that houses with a 12-point standard with the aid of a grant from the L.A. This grant ways been present in schools of architect- ure. Throughout its history, in project The people in their ignorance think that this is architecture. We must destroy this lobby to communities in Scotland. Parallel fishing based communities and so Scot- of the Unit to develop and maintain the invaluable links with our real clients, and to respect their life-style, customs and cultures. Fabric suggestions MICRO to the street to assess the situation and residents led to the forming of a residents’ association. co-operation means and how it can be achieved. Society isbeginning to realise, and the young have realised it for some time now, that the new world must be based on co-operation and one of the major struggles is against the 20th century cultofindividuals looking after Members get involved deeply in the rarely expounded to prospective unit — other tutor associations theirowninterestsalone, politicsofarchitectureandgovernment, hunters,asthestudent,actingonhearsay —other cli jati more than thirty years. Even if the Prefabricated dwellings, which as well as People of Scotland do ‘prosper’ (whether Causing servicing problems threatens The Unit is always wrongly accused of being totally political. It is true the resultant direction that the members of the Unit have external to AA they wish to or not) this means that before the next century is more than a few years old. Scotland will again face widespread economic depression, as it to encroach on to the limited agricultural land on which the city is still largely dependent for food. for the people who are worthy of our attention, The discovery that one’s skills are being prostituted to be a destructive, and accept the ‘condemnation’ hapilly. architectural design isvery frustrating. looking for and if I'm seen trying to find out... inadequacies likely to corrupt an induced information flow. erchitecture acquire a level of homo- geneity. Some of us redefine ~ architecture — society — neither The participation game (MYTH) —it's a game because, when completed, the symbols can all be forgotten, the tablecleared,andlifecanresume ‘Make the bastards participate or we'll a very wide ranging study of the history of the situation, the present and future implications, the effects these are having. Itwould be far easier, no doubt, to narrow the field of investigation, an academic might argue. But this is not an academic project in any sense of the word: it does not break off during the Easter vacation, nor does it end after the leave their work camps, and who pay no tax to this government. The wrench from the academic to the real world isahorrendous one for most archi- tecture students. The much cherished There’s a lot of assumptions made in any situation, Ifwe're uncertain about any- thing we assume the facts, conditions, and consequences. If life is so complex that we require to make assumptions then it is imperative that we have a substantial framework with/in which to construct, Since the work has started the political situation inScotland has developed con- fringe, they are a large enough group not siderably. This makes our continuing to be ignored even if only by throwing contribution more important than ever. the Housing 's mul We have continued to monitor the situa- Statistics into total confusion! tion and publicise our conclusions via TV can afford? What are the reasons behind the complete divorce of our cherished skills from ordinary people's desires? same position, and can only differentiate itself gradually, in accordance with the level of development, including that of the organ of thought.” (Marx) The analysis, the ideologies, the time scale,andthechange,needyourhands, By constructing a language (semantic, analytical or practical) you are set to communicate and to progress. Anyone who has stuck with the Unit or returned to it, will tell you that it is a hard ideological constructs. By professing an and demandind existence, but well worth ideology one necessitates a change in the struggle. The Unit has never set itself society. limitations or goals, it simply responds to “Since the process of thought itself grows understand nothing environmental injustice as iteffects public relations Many people cannot live up to the fundamental unit philosophy. But the A second year architectural student, if he hasanyqualityatal,mayhavethe Position of a professor in relation toa skilled dock worker in matters pertaining tothephysicalenvironment.Likewise group, thedockworkerifhehasbeeninvolved OurphilosophyisbasicallyrespondingtoMISANTHROPYmustbeaguidelineto inlocalcommunity actionisanenviron- mental specialist in relation to his own factory manager who may never have stopped to think about the environment. People,notmanipulatingthem,being creative with them, not destroying their way of life. viewingtherespectiveinstitutionsatti- tudes to those instigating social change. As bodies they should protect their members and advance their specific sub- jects. In what manner can a subject @dvance or members be protected to- Related to this work is the more academic research. This covers al aspects of hous- ing including rents, land values, labour, materials, etc. The information and pro- cessoftheworkisrecordedwithinthe Unit and will be communicated to the The embodiments of social/political mix peoplewhohavestayedthecoursehave intheformofspecificinterestgroupsin- found it incredibly rewarding in many different ways, both individually and as a cludes the professional institutions. ACCEPTANCE ISMAINTENANCE IS a hundred years with little maintenance L.A. whose redevelopment process would fromlandlords.Theyarelackingincertain requirethemassexodusofthecommun- basicfacilitiessuchasbathrooms, ity. efficientwatersupply,etc.EventheW.C. Architecture is a powerful weapon, we AndtherecanbenoquestionoftheUnit believeitshouldbeatthedisposalofthe getherwithanadvanceinsociety?The Successive generations have lived in these housesanddespitethesediscomforts, have consolidated amongst themselves a strongcommunityspiritandadeepsocial architecturalprofessionasapleafora Personal inter-relation: Masterbeingabovethegroup.Likeevery- majority,notadministeredbyfinancial, _situationchangesconstantly,wecannot alacttoachievethegreatesteffectand One else he must at times function as teacher, student and comrade. This type of work is difficult and it takes along time to achieve any meaningful results but we can attempt it daily in our work as a Unit together. multi-national and commercial interests, CONTROL change, nor should we wish who represent the privileged section of our to — but we can DIRECT change. change the direction in which architecture is moving. Are you going to assume — or are you going to assume? . Sure, we'll bite your head off, but we'll help you mould a new one. ANDY BURRELL, ARC more sensitive approach from the pro- fessionals. The students who have been involved in the project have been intro- duced to the reality of the implications of architectural decisions and have deve- loped a more responsible awareness of their potential for society. society. In the hands of the right people architecture could once again become a socially creative element, not an ugly, economic and brutal force aimed against the ordinary people of our society. _Institutional directors, not correctors, Production platform. against large sections of the people nor its potential value denied these people. Advisory Group” is essentially con- brought to public attention. homes uninhabitable. The aim of the Even the local residents of proposed de- Project was to look at the way immediate department, which meant that houses on FRAMEWORK The intrinsic and intricate philosophy (ies) internal group discussion, consultation and first became interested in the early stages of North Sea Oil development. Since that time, development has escalated at an incredible and alarming rate and their initial and personal interest has now been forced into ful time in- did after the coal mines were run down Skopje isacity of enormous contra- street had been built at the same time, More about something The association's aim was to fight the planners’ decision and itcommissioned Unit One to act as its environmental advisors. The houses on either side of the adopted and adapted over the years are — other college associations but the Paramount reason for this is and superficial ; assumes the If. through partici i .theywereprevent- andtheshipbuildingindustrydwindled dictions.Whilemanyyoungsterpeople wereequallystructurallysound,andhad ed from continuing the work in Scotland away. An economy cannot and should show obvious enthusiams for the new equal potential for improvement. In In the sphere of architecture end environ- because our skils and principles are unkown and convinces himself that international style city centre with its bright shopping centre and tall luxury flats, the cultures of the many different enthnic groups that make up the Mace- Scotland itself, the primary area of in- who are losing their homes, theirvillages, vestigation. The first task, therefore, was their way of life, how many will be given Pursue their own way of life in spite of discussions with the P.H.1. we confirmed that the houses were to be demolished merely asaplanning convenience interms of the redevelopment site. This meant that an existingcommunity would be destroyed, merely to give the L.A, architect a ‘choice’ site for his re- development. s#ggestions ‘The framework in which we combine and never get planning permission’. {Contemporary Times). You study the problems everyday — now here's how to overcome them: understand everything and all permutations regulate information and with which we analyse and compare situations are our _—‘To direct implies understanding a situation, pushing ahead constantly. _correct To is retrospective, wasteful and damaging. the forces, the complex manipulatory Paths, and the psychological disguises that we must inevitably counteract, or seas of northern Europe and the threat To explain the above we must look at the micro-frameworkinwhichweattemptto assimilate our ideologies in practical, educational and philosophical relation- ships. Ireland, Cornwall and Norway. The over- ment rates, faces the ultimate irony of Ten years later the city has almost rebuilt disastrous blow to the tight-knit commun- allaimbeingtoestablishanetworkof massivedevelopmentwhereitisneither itself,withmanymajorchanges,many ityofthestreetandsomeoftheresidents Emotive, alittle frightening, he doesn’t dress in a ‘representative’ manner (or does varied projects he), he has nothing to do with the first = sometimes interconnected year ‘lucky-dip instant exposure machine’, = sometimes rambled he hasn't won any architectural design application of principles derived from competitions, and he doesn’t write for any magazines, except perhaps the letters page — obviously sub-standard. I've heard about the unit though, nothing One of the obvious faults in our society is that many people who have talent in various subjects are prevented from using that talent and thus gaining from it, due to accident of birth, background and location. This isnot only injust but it limits the true development of intelligence skills and principles many of them up- and in fact eventually prevents the more hold throught their education, that they priviledged amongst us from getting the have defended vehemently on occasion, intellectural stimulus needed for our own are inconsequential when they start de- development. signingtoearnaliving.Therealworldofandthatwerelegateasfaraspossiblethethelastview. summerterm, andcertainjournals.Theworkwill nowrepresentsanareainwhichthereare Clientele, which by and large doesn't have Not creative force in society, is ahard one the economic power to emply them as conventional architects, the Unit members to accept. Because of the diligence of the Where will the money go to, who will it donian population are still very much in benefit? And what of the present un- evidence. Turks, Albanians, orthodox Unit's members in seeking out the source of our environmental problems, we are eccused of meddling, agitating and being too idealistic. Say that to ex or present members of the Unit and they will smile good, so Isuppose they can't be what I'm unsure areas where social and individual tosetUpaseriesofresearchprogrammes to act as a general educational backup. These were rounded off by a tour of the Scottish coastline affected by oil deve- lopment. The group is now committed to and other imigrant labour who never the authorities’ rather vain hope that — practice Work within the Unit began in May 1973. Some members of the group were un- familiar with the situation and also with employment? How many of the locals Macedonians and gypsies still doggedly — both We see ourselves, by necessity, adopting The success of these 26 families provided the g areas which suffered from similar problems. At present the Residents’ Association constitute — powerless bodies — semi-powerful bodies pregnant with committees —aconstitution blame inflation employanarchitect{thereof opt OUT OptiNn Opt Theaboveareyourtoolsforsuccess. The process you know well. However... AGITATE EDUCATE ORGANISE This is an indication of the process in which our ideologies are finding a plat- form. We judge the situations, the levels, thetimeandthemannerinwhichwecan Gypsywomanwithchild. Pope Street, Bootle cerned with the social/environmental One side of the street would stay for 30 years while people on the other side would be moved out of the area to new houses in snother part of the city. The speculated planners line was a velopments areas do not know what lies ahead for them, and their families. Most developments are proposed in rural or Studies are also being carried out in land, with its history of high unemploy- disaster problems were overcome, how People reacted under sudden unexpected disaster conditions, and how the city has rebuilt itself since the earthquake took place, posed by the powerful oil development needed nor desired, and the continuation groupsandindividualspreparedtofight ofadepressioninareaslikeClydeor broughtaboutbytheneedtocreatesafe against the exploitation of people and Dundee, where the development could resources wherever this may occur. greatly benefit the area, little time for overall planning consider- TheGrouphasitsoriginsatDundee, 1970, where a small number of students North Sea Oil is not expected to last for spread out city of low density, mostly asked Brian Anson who had been born andbroughtupinthestreettohelpthem. tight-knit group of about 6 students. the jobs at present are filled by Italians north of the river, indicate uninterrupted Pursuit of the old Turkish way of life and commerce. Thousands of gypsies con- tinue to inhabit ‘Skopje Field’ and al- though many have moved out to the more remote settlements on the town gradual re-education can be achieved. The At all times in the campaign the residents were treated insensitively by the L.A. who branded them as a ‘political’ pressure group. The residents gained the support of a local councillor, the press, and some local students and eventually, after 12 months, managed to get the planners’ decision reversed and the houses were saved and thus the community. in Southern constantly questioned and attacked The AIBA has usurped the power of acceptedmodesofarchitectureandtheir TMchitecture. relevancetosocietyandthisincludesa Thousandsofmenandwomenareunder fashionable escapist ideas that have al- itsspell. AgroupfromtheUnitvisitedSkopje,the 30vearlife.Alotherhouseswouldbe Permanent housing at a speed which leaves Some Unit One students went with him ations.Skopjehasbecomeanenormously theresultofourdiscussionswiththe esses the average male unemployment rate rises The specific projects that |have been up to over 30%. working on this year are as follows: In the last six years of violence, Derry has 1. The Cottages and Farmhouses for the lost over 200 shops, pubs and garages due Arts Council Exhibition. to bombing, many houses have been burnt and over 50 civilians have been shot 2. A continuous 24 hour study of Covent Parallel with the needs of the Partisan Army. by the military Garden the week before and the week after the fruit and vegetable market left the area. centralised Health Service was not for many reasons possible. But the evaluation of the partisan case gave us some under- standing of medical care as such. Paul Simons, 4th Year 74/75 |have been working with Brian Anson since Unit One was formed in 1971. My role as an active unit member has de- clined over the last two years as |have concentrated my work on studying British Vernacular Architecture. However a firm understanding of the past gives backing to arguments concerning today’s environment and the functioning of the recorded partisan camouflaged hospitals, chance to work directly with architects AA/Cincinnati exchange Covent Garden Ealing Derry Derry city in the North of Ireland has one architecture profession. Our experience of the highest unemployment rates in the from studying the past and being in- U_K.; currently it is 15% but hes been as volved with community orientated pro- high as 20% in recent years. But as most jects become closely related when think- care was an ad hoc system, which grew in of the city’s employment is for women, ing of planning for the future. The majority of the housing stock is old and in very poor condition, and only since 1970 has there been any attempt at providing new housing and clearance of shire. Material is being edited in order to For example: the existing slums Derry has been nominated aStrategic Development Area and within that plan great attention has been paid to re- development of the inner city area — | believe it was the wrong kind of attention With the military in virtual control of the city, | believe that they were able to in- fluence decisions about selec’ Se- molition, changes in design and layout etc publish a booklet to create interest in this watermill’s future, 4. A design scheme to incorporate the 14th century Guesten Hall roof that has been repaired at Avoncraft Museum of Buildings. 5. A design scheme for the restoration and presentation of a timber framed gem, Tyr-Mawr, discovered in the Montgomery shire hills near Welshpool. — Centralisated versus decentralised systems 6. The recording and dismantling of Nailors Row and the Barrack St areas were timber framed structures in Watford and —community hospitals — Self Health Centres. Alongside the complex institutionalised structure of the NHS, a new network of self-help is slowly emerging, e.g. the Self Health Centre in Islington. Our seminars were rather intensive because we al had some definite interests: Ken brought to our discussions comparisons between the NHS and the demolished with a rapidity that was out of keeping with the development plan both these areas, once demolished, allowed easy access and viewing of the Bogside for the military. The original new flats in 1966 had 3 high rise blocks and flat roofed maisonettes, after the 1969 riots the plans were changed and new buildings all had pitched roofs. The stair wells had boarding that ran horizontally, which acted as a ladder to allow access to the roof, later this was re- placed with vertical boarding Car parks and open spaces were provided — missions. This is to stimulate the drift most of these were unnecessary and their back to using locally available materials. New roads, and a flyover, and excessive work concerning the newly formed Worcester and Hereford Architecture Record Group (WHARG). 9. A catalogue of available traditional building materials for technical sub- institutionalisation of services. Penny carried through the term her particular interest in the Afan Valley, a declining community in South Wales; she would like to design a community hospital for its needs. Dag concentrated on a criticism of the existing structure of NHS and is 3. A survey of Stotfold Mill in Bedford- We invited different people to our seminars to give us their views about NHS. Chalfont St Peter for reconstruction at the proposed open air museum in the Chilterns. 7, A measured survey of all the surviving monastic buildings surrounding Ely Cathedral 8. GSSU Thesis on the Recording of Vernacular Buildings, in conjunction with educational system — the problem of only function seems to be to split the At the same time a collection of tradition publishing an article “A Layman’s View community physically — like Haussman’‘s al building materials is being put together Paris. A high rise bridge that spans the River Foyle isproposed that will allow shipping into the docks — at the same time they Proposed @ motorway along the docks So we can see what part the military play in Ulster’s Town Planning, but surely if we look closely enough we will se similar things happening here. for eventual exhibition. HaSS Project In Autumn 1974 five of us started con- The Architects Revolutionary Council has published a draft manifesto calling on all architects and others involved in the built versations about National Health Services in England and we called our project HaSS: environment who believe that we should Health and Social Services, their level and cease working only for the rich and quality. The project was partly built on experience dictatorships of central and local govern- which some of us gained during the ment to offer our skills and services to summer of 1974 in Yugoslavia. There we the local communities, which have little which were built by the National Liber- ation Army during the German occupat- ion from 1941-45, The partisan medical and architecture. ARC believes that the profession, as it stands, is a luxury and that the RIBA propagates this narrow luxury characteristic and is thus directly responsible for the malaise of architecture and the state of our cities. Basically the movement isone of social ency system and 4 government controlled, concern. ARC believes that the problems A comparative study between an emerg- of architecture are al around us, but that people who suffer from them cannot affor afford architects to solve them; neither can architects afford to tackle them. ARC wishes to break this trap. It is well aware that to achieve a new framework for architecture there will have to be radical changes in our political and economic system. Nevertheless, first architects and students must demonstrate that they are Prepared to fight for a new system in their own art. In a long, prolix and rather ungrammatical explanatory note, the ARC explains that ‘the new system of architecture will need to be based on a mass movement’ but the revolutionary council does not regard itself as the embryo of the movement. ARC is,asitwere,themidwifewhichwill help to bring the movement into being, after which it will adopt the role of stern tutor to ensure that the movement does mot become a bureaucracy intent on pre- serving itself to the detriment of society. At present the movement consists of one cell in London with embryonic cells in various other countries. In the autumn, the London cell will divide to produce three new cells — on the east coast, in the north-west and in Scotland. ARC wants to build up other units of architects, technicians and students and urges anyone interested to get in touch with 11 Percy Street, London W.1: It is better to have four people who can trust each other than a loose unit of 10. A national convention is planned for the autumn. of the NHS". He hopes that the article A.J, 26th May, 1975. will bring a dialogue between medical and architectural students which would then result in exchange of practical knowledge. At the end of the term we held an Open Forum — adiscussion between thePar- ticipants of the seminars and ourselves. Our conversation did not give rise to any specifically new ideas, but it enabled us to reach an understanding between our- selves. The graphical analyses represent the development of the seminars and of our critical attitude towards NHS. They also make some recommendations. — — — The application of the re-organisation of NHS from April, 1974 The problems of District Hospitals New approaches towards community health care: ~changed role of a General Practitioner —health centres powerful minority or the bureaucratic New industry issituated on the east bank of the river — if they redraw the border the majority of the population will be left on the west bank. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource AA Project Review Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived John Murray Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1974/75 https://nam.maydayrooms.org/files/original/55c71b1dd9b2cf8279144a4c1973a0cf.pdf a46174680044505fcd15c4d9bc5e1139 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Brian Anson/ARC pre and post Harrogate Subject The topic of the resource Various documents describing ARC ideas and activities See below Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource ARC Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1975-1976 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Report Subject The topic of the resource ARC Report Argument for change (6pp). 2 copies Description An account of the resource ARCHITECTS, STUDENTS, TECHNICIANS & C MIiTwp oa GOs THE ARCHITECTS REVOLUTIONARY 11, PERCY STREET, LONDON W TEL. 011.636.0974 XT 27 ARC calls on all those architects and others involved in the built environment who believe that we should cease working only for the rich and powerful minority or the bureaucratic cietatorships of central and 15¢e21 government and offer our skills and services to the local communities which have little chance to work directly with architects ana architecture. ARC maintains that the profession 2s.it now stands is a luxury profession and that because of this the architect is caught in the narrow trap of economic viability and profit, ARC further maintains that the RLBA Qrspogates this narrow luxury characteristic and ig thus directly responsible for the malaise of architecture ant the state of our cities, ARC believes that their are thousands of architects who would welcome a new franework through which they could work directly for the local communities which would then become the renal clients with alk the power ana privilege of traditional clients, ARC believes that the problems of architecture are all around us, but that people who suffer from them cannot afford architects to solve then; neither can architects afford to tackle them. It is this trap we wish to break, ARC is well aware that to achieve a new framework for architecture there will have to be radical changes in our present political and econonic system. Nevertheless first architects and students must denonstrate that they are prepared to fight for a new system in their Own art. ARC specifically believes that the students in the schools of architecture ery out for a new educational systen to replace the existing one where they are trained as fodécr for the profit orientated professional systen existing now. ARC calls on all these people to join together to forn a new international movement ond through solidarity help bring about the architectural revolution, The Draft Manifesto, REMEMBER UNITY IS STRENGTH. ARCHITECTS UNITE FOR THE REVOLUTION. REJECT THE RIBA, VICTORY TO THE ARG. Sopa Seg Pn thghtasTe | PURTHER COPIES oF THE LAMPHLET(15p each) and | |POSTERS (20p each) ARE AVAILABLE FROM:— ,ARC, 1 PERCY STREET, LONDON W.1. SS What is ARC. It is a movement of architects, students and others, which believes that creative architecture should be available to all people in society, regardless of their economic circumstances. It is a movement committed to revolutionary changes within the architectural establishment and spec— ifically to the replacement of the RIBA by a new architectural systen. Why is ARC needed. The term 'crisis in architecture’ is common today and not only because of Malcolm MacEwans book; the press is constantly filled with statements of alarm, disgust and desperation over the state of architecture and the dilema in which architects find themselves. We in the movement would refer everyone to MacEwans book which soundly castigates the RIBA, for in general terms we agree with his analysis, BUT WE DO NOT AGREE WITH HIS SOLUTIONS OR CONCLUSIONS. His radical reformist policy, which accepts the continuance of the RIBA, is doomed to failure, in the context of our architectural system, because, as Afidre Gorz says!....reformism rejects those objectives and demands, however deep the need for them, which are incompatible with the preservation of the systen..". Architecture should be done in the service of society. Social ethics and justice should be pur criteria, We all know this is not so and that the architectural profession has far too frequently been motivated by anti-social values. The profession is full of the whining and wheedling of the RIBA at the moment over the disasterous slump in the professions work load. Delegations to the government, lobbying of MP's anc Pooleys recent plea to all architects to donate £10 to the RIBA; these are all signs of a panic rush to protect the status quo. The reasons for Pooleys begging are, in his own words,"....that a strong RIBA is neccessary to the survival of practices everywhere and the achievement of a stable building programme. Apart from the fact that this is not even true (greedy large practices are at least partially responsible for the dilema of the small enterprise), there is not a word about the quality of the environment, nor about the dramatie social changes trying to break through igi our society, and in which architecture must play a part if it is to’have any credibility at all. The common ownership of workplaces, the desire for local control, the semi slavery of the technicians in the profession; there is no evidence that the RIBA is stimulated by such ideals. The RIBA's yearning for a stable buildigg programme is a wistful reference to the boom years of the late sixties and early seventies, Those boon years tell the whole story and they are the prime reason why ARC maintains that only revolution will do. This graph showing the rise and fall of commissions in the world of architecture, shows clearer than any words, just where the profession and the RIBA have stood in relation to our society in recent years. This coincides exactly with the Office Boom. So we know who the friends of the RIBA were, and why the profession is bemoaning the rec:. a .. The years of 1969 to 1975 will be remembered for a long time to come. They are our generations architectural heritage. T 200 VALUE OF COMMISSIONS/LAST DECADE. aMILLION 64 ‘65 ‘68 *"7071727374 41200 4000 +1. 800 600 % 400 = & RLenene) In this period the price of building and of land,rocketed;the term ®the - unacceptable face of capitalism’ was coined; the speculator and the developer became the villains in our society and corruption in the saintly architectural profession began to break through the thin veneer of ‘creative professionalism! that the RIBA had fostered for so long.In the words of many comnentators,"it was only the tip of the iceberg". Yet during that time leading members of the profession (some now on the RIBA Council) were saying such things as; iT+ is ridiculous not to develop the site to its fullest potential.... there is no point in underdeveloping on valuable land.." Pritzroy 2tobinson. "The most successful architects are those who understand property values and the mechanics of property development". iYes we did work for the spivs(developers) and when we did we felt terrible hypocites,.... but what could we do". Anonymous architect Building Design 4/75. Of course the RIiBa did not officially endorse such views, but neither did it, during these years of physical and social rape, once cry out in protest. For those in the movement, these past years have been the final straw. Like many others we have waited to sce the profession::face up to it's social responsibility and we were willing to accept even gradual reform as long as wecould see a sign of social spirit. We now see that we could wait forever. In our view, the greatest and lest chance for the RIA came in the property boom. This is when the profession could have been the vanguard in environmental ethics and morality. Instead the RIBA showed its true character and sided with the criminals who exploited the inflation in land and construction costs. The RIBA is part of the free market system and that is why the institute is in such a turmoil now as that system is under such an attack. We all know whit that system has done to our physical and social environment. Since 1971 three times as much capital has gone into property develop- ment as into our industrial production. The RIBA cannot imagine itself outside this system, and nor has it the traditions to do so. It has, however, always had a mandate to do so, as it's charter specifically demands that it'advance civil architecture'. This can only br inter- preted as serving society, which it has never done though it takes £100,000 a year from the taxpayer in tax and rate reliefs for this purpose. Where other professions have made moves forward in terms of social service,(some tentative like Legal Aid Centres; some which embrace the whole society, like the NHS) whilst the RIB: has only become more associated with the rich and powerful. So the RIBA is not fit to govern the world of architecture, nor is it capable of any reform of lasting value to socicty. 'The institute is dead! says MacEwan, but then he goes on to say 'The institute on the other hand is alive and well', THE INSTITUE IS NOT DEAD! 80j of arch- itects belong to it and it is the mouthpiecs of architecture in our society. Owen Luder. Louis Hellman(Ad cartoonist) was certainly right when he said of the ” RIBA "... the people at the top of this keeping things the way they are..." place have a vested interest in Architecture, said Hans Meyer in the 1930's'is +imes been wielded by the ruling class in his book 'Wasteland' says 'Bhe history of those whe had the power to build. Rembrandt's accomplished in poverty and rejection. governments, churchmen, merchants and speculative would not exist....because they would not Architects have always allicd themselves No-one can deny this. But we can change a weapon that can be used for the good the cause of those who live in degrading a weapon that has as all of human society’. Stephen Kurtz of architecture is the history greatest work was But without kings, noblemen and builders, architecture otherwise have functioned. with the rich and powerful’. this, and turn architecture into of society and particularly in environments. WHY THE TIME IS RIGHT. The many critics of the RIBA call for reform,. We eall for REVOLUTION and say DO AWAY WITH THE RIBA; It is an enemy of enciety, and the dictator of the lives of the poor and underprivileged. It is in the path of progress and must be swept away, it has abused the trust of society and must now go,to allow a humane and just design profession to flourish. The ARCHITECTS REVOLUTIONARY COUNCIL sees itself in the tradition of past revolutionary movements in architecture; the Constructivists, ARSE, Atelier Populaire. These movements did not succeed because the time was not right, but they planted fertile seeds. WE BELIEVE THAT THE TIME IS RIGHT and we in ARC want to play our full part in the creation of the new mass movement in architecture. But this can only come about with your aid. There are over twenty thousand registered architects in this country. Per head of population this is more than any country in Burope. Over 80% of these registered architects are members of the RIBA. 807% of all architects are salaried;IE.they work for other architects. This alone should be unacceptable to the society that pays for their training. It is the taxpayers money that provides the grants to train architects to deal with the environmental prepblems of society. Architects do not repay this debt in any way at present,they are unaccountable and irresponsible to that society. Trained people are foreed to work in and are exploited by a bosses orgamisation;the RIBA, A large proportion of the archit—- ectural work is handled by a small proportion of the membership who have built up large practices. The RIBA has always been run by such people and thus the status quo is maintained. The tendency has been to become big and powerful with the emphasis on streamlining and management techniques. The RIBA's ethic, if it can be said to have one, is that of narrow professionalism; a service to the client. These days the client cannot be identified with the society and frequently not even with the user. All this is in direct contrast to the moves going on in our society; the themes of local autonomy and preservation, the revival of craftsmanship and e more human approach to developing the environment. Over half our urban environment is economically impoverished and environmentally deprived.The communities within these areas have helped through taxation,to train the profession. This profession returns none of this aid and where it does not ignore these areas (commissions do not come from the poor areas)it helps in the rape of them through development or subtle gentrification. The RIBiA upholds a 19th century elitist position and deliderately keeps lay people out of its club. This is particularly true as regards the yawning gulf between the profession and the working classes. The RIBA has a code that seeks to cushion its members from adverse eritisism;it is more important to the RIBA that members should be loyal to each other and to the institute, than to the society that it is supposed to serve. It refuses openly to condemn aparthied and therefore has no regard for civil justice. If it cannot have such principles fron 4000 miles how can we expect justice from it on the home front. It has never developed even such esoteric concepts as the competmtion systen, because the ruling elite wish to keep the rewards for themselves. But the RIBA and its ruling establishment, has worked itself into a trap from which it cannot escape. It's greed, especially over the last decade, and its narrow objectives have put it in such bad repute, that i it is fighting a last ditch battle to try +o build an acceptable image. It will not succeed. The 3000 unattached architects have already co clained in a recent survey that the RIBA has done nothing for architec— ture. Members of Parliament attack it for its social sins. The public and especially those in the poorer areas, now See along with the local bureaucrats and speculators who have ruined their lives, environments and communities, the subtle villian of the piece is the RIBA. « The people living ig. these communities are particularly incensed because the professiom passed itself off as being socially conscious. * But the tables are turning because of the massive number of redund- ant architects who will soon condemn the RIB for not building a firm social working base for architecture. Over a thousand architects will be out of work by Christmas and more than 60% of graduates will not. find employment this sumuier. These unenployed architects can blame, with some justification, world inflation and recession for their plight, but the main problem is the Brcedy inflexible char-cter of the profession. And as the redundancies occur who will be hit first? Not the powerful principles who run the big practices and back up the elitism of the RIBA, It will be the salaricd architects and technicians, the people who do the real work in architects offices. 411 those soon to be redundant should know that there has never been a lack of work. A large part of our environment is a slum and getting worse. But the RIBA has never taken the trouble to-ferge the professicn into.an organiser capable of tackling these problems. The first prerequisite of such capability is thw desire to do sonething about it; this presupposes a social conscience,,. Sonething the RIBA has never had. For Teasons such as greed and aloof-— ness the RIBA is incapable of dirtying itself at the level of the problen. The RIBA has no meaning fbr our siciety; a society that requires connit-— ment to a cause. It has no meaning for architecture students iciomelat continues to control their destiny. It has meaning to many purely as an enticement to letters after ones name, as a path to commissions or jobs. Soon there will be no jobs left. THE PRESENT SITUATION IN aRc. : ? The movement began sone eighteen months ago, when two architects, one English and one dugoslavian, decided that an international movenent was needed to take the profession out of its elittst and capitalistic franewrk and make it responsible to society. There was particular need to deliberately align the profession with the poorer areas of our environment were connection with architecture is non-existant. eSLL__e a_ But useless as it is the RIBA will not relinquish. power voluntarily. The status quo will not easily abdicate in the face of reason said Harold Laski. He was right. A strong architectural revolutionary movenent must keep attacking the RIBA, until the power is rested from them an@ a new order established. Prior t5 this, hope only “iny with the few. architects and students deeply commited to an architecture for all people Now many more will comnait themselves, because they are left with no other option. The new systen of architecture will need to be based on & mass movement just as the RIBA is, otherwise there can be no progressive and creat— ive attack on the environmental problems of our society. That is why the ARCHITECTS REVOLUTIONARY COUNGTT, does not pretend to’ be the new movenent, nor indeed itts embryo. ARC has constantly seen itself as 2 stall commited hovement totally opposed to the present setup. It wpuld also oppose the new movenent should it show tendencies +o beconing a bureaucracy intent -oh precerving - itself’ to the deteriment of society. ARC sees itself as helping to bring the new movenmnt abou and ciets nessessary acting as its vanguard. To this end it is organising a national convention in the Autumn ,of all erchitects, technicians, students and others who wish to see revolutionary changes within the profession. Seperate literature will be published shortly concerning this convent- ion. As regards ARC itself there is still much to be done to build the group into an effective architectural guerilla force, What follows is a brief history of the trovenent so far and ways in which you maybe able to help if you feel yourself committed. For as Malcolm X once said "...if you're not part of the solution your part of the problen". - Sorts ane wokeEERE) instincts of the founders was that there already , isted many hundreds, if noy thousands, of architects who are a part of th a novel ent in spirit; what was needed was to forge them into a ; Llective and formidable force for revolutionary change in the profe- ion. Commonsense demanded that national move nents be constructed first, i this penDnlet refers only to the English group. However it is known at there are embryonic cells in eight other countries so far; USA, rentina, Italy, Jugoslavia, France, Norway, Ireland and Scotland. In > course, perhaps within two years, the first ARC INTERNATIONAL will sur. 2 main core of the English movement is in London, and contains, in lition to architects and students, eae eee and lawyers. All the core ibers have worked extenisively in conmunity action and believe that, lid though that method ae it will not achieve total freedom in the fironnental field on its own. The profession themselves neve to be 7olusionised to aid community action. During the ee year the movement 3 been building strength based on commitment (for exareple one or two ve left because they could not live up to the idea which denanés tting the cause of the revolution before conventional success in arch—- scture. Others have joined after long and serious thought.) 2 core members have lectured at colleges in England, Ireland and Scot-— id, In addition a small group recently travelled throughout jimerica aking at colleges in Boston, New York, Chaoe San Frensisceo, Los and many other cities. One of the founder members recently essed the conference of the ¥oung Liberals. (We do not align with this ty but we will proclaim ARC anywhere) . sause eventually we will need parliamentary backing, the niovement is the process of naking contact with appropriate IP's Our contazvts th the unions are also developing and at the right t e we expect full oport fron*then, > moverient is drafting ideas for a new system of educathon; for the new 1ancial structure. (how architects would be paid under the new soc-— lly orientated system) and for the other ideas. These will be put to > Autumn convention as ARC's contribution to the mass movement. July the main core of the English movement(in LOndon) will have split, produce at least three new cells om units, in the Provinces; on the st coast, in the North West and in Scotland. Because these cells will constructed by totally committed ARC members we will be certsin of ar healthy cells by summer. iT CAN YOU DO. thin in,your practice, college or locality you can try to build up a it that would strive for the establishment of a new system of architectu re, based on the draft manifesto. It is better to have four people 9 can trust each other than a loose unit of ten. Remember unity is rength, and you will not te alone. Contact the main movement to let us ow you are attempting to build a cell then keep us in contact and let know your views. have a fairly extensive network of people throughout Britain and we ybe able to put you in touch with others in your locality. Your help 11 be needec in setting up the Autumn convention and to th@s end the C main group will be calling a meeting of all the British members rly in Summer. nally always remember that the reason that the status quo is preserved because peopel think they are alone. The minute two people get sether and say ew can do something, then a movement is born. This is wha at we said and a movement has been born and we shall win, because the me is right. chitects unite for revolution TORY TO THE ARC. cS Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource ARC Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived John Murray Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource undated https://nam.maydayrooms.org/files/original/59fe7299ad1f94f55513a53ba33092c9.pdf 82afade476dd9ab8a61903b1b091eeb4 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Brian Anson/ARC pre and post Harrogate Subject The topic of the resource Various documents describing ARC ideas and activities See below Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource ARC Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1975-1976 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Start the New Architectural Movement Subject The topic of the resource 2 sided Flyer. Start the New Architectural Movement. Description An account of the resource ¢c£Ia Tn i nteoceebeona functionsoraotaticind.Stopsupportinga. 2°‘ Commence spiesmllge gave se cities, offices, colleges er ee les eae to uw 3 Fooegocanaycomittmtehenrttotsheeit and weee Souren Savi sonnen OtTnnoGtE screwing it for all itRiceeecen Come together and begin to organize a system of z design education which we can implement through Bay golgtecuni cep ste cesses tthe reeee universities, and polytechn to plac the present archaic Work ‘for auakmentien wes in a national Sonvention aueCCeCbeny teae tone eee eett en Ene ene ng i We see the establishment of these as paramount if we are going to have aworthwhile « neanen tes The present ,for the reasons stated,is incapable of the radical change ‘neccessary to ressurect architecture from its oe eeaeSao Councilisescalatingits activities to bring about the radical changes it envisages. We need committed people to make the architecturel revolution.Ifyourequirefurtherinformoraatssisotance oeetieoerganization,contact the following people at the ARC > ) 2843 JO OBNQe aN3 mo" *<tpucooS Donoeesaes,ewte%TaTSoSUT‘MoUSTTTa go} rx oe 9 46U U3 Gpauvacy pua zOz Supy1om ooumuso0o puu agouetoouoo azouy ie a03ouyow youn uoye o = |~- OB138qYPuaB,oBo tastrond per ge Mma mary SSHCHUAONTBT 0} guoT t x 4 83Gon ood mane | weanoge’sitecan soto | doony 30 L942. u obsFuosYsonar © nayep , 9u3 UNI Ta pua wewaguanasp HOO3 ; Om 2042 ‘osunod uoTZ00 ArUmZad ao oF JESTISAQ Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource ARC Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived John Murray Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource undated https://nam.maydayrooms.org/files/original/3a9f502870f65ee28d77a21263a93530.pdf 88e26df8d5133fce3cb39d0d9c0d6592 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Brian Anson/ARC pre and post Harrogate Subject The topic of the resource Various documents describing ARC ideas and activities See below Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource ARC Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1975-1976 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource ARC Subject The topic of the resource Single page introduction to ARC Description An account of the resource Over the past few weeks the Architects Revolutionary Council has been publ icising its aims in the press and media and pamphletting schools, papers and magazines. Certain MP's have also been given copies of our literature. This pamphlet expands our views and puts forward our strategy to bring about the architectural revolution. We see architecture today as criminal, in as much as it is practiced against the general welfare of ordinary people in Britain. These are the people ARC members see as their peers, not the present controllers and manipulators of our environment. Because of the injustice and chaos caused by architecture and its practitioners, we feel that though our approach is similar to other revolutionary groups, our enemy is slightly different. True, architecture is oppressive, exploitive, manipulative and ignorant of peoples desires, but in its present form it is also archaic, totally archaic. .: The practitioners and bosses of architecture are virtually unaware that they are so inadequate and i1]1 educated in terms of the directions that our society is trying to progress. Unlike unwanted governments, monarchies| or military Oppressors, they are unable to conmand physical force to directly implement their dictates. These two factors, unawareness and ill-equippedness make our enemy, the architectural establishment? vulnerable, yet unpredictable. We do not know how aware our eneny is of iteelf, or of the strength and versatility of ite opponents. The RIBA has resisted any real efforts to change this situstion, openly unwilling to ednit its social insdequacy and allow the emerging social forcee to influence its dictates. A more sensitive and socially responsive Overleaf is e primary action course, that we see as the foundeticn to the newarchitecturemovementcomingtofruition.heOeeaeeOecones tecChnicians, drsusguhgthetmeemnen aand studenetsn wiSatnheingetheourparosfessrions to Gscrarec,! SOCIAL HOMICIDE REV reason behind a structure manifesting itself, in the physical form was because it was croritenie. In terms of the scale of this manifestetion the equation is simple, the bigger the practice, the bigger the building, the greater. the profit and inevitebly the greater the social disruption and destruction. OLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE The Architects Revolutionary Council is not a populist movement. Unlike a total social revolutionary group, we are primarily concerned witn radical change within our *ield of work, that being architecture and How have we managed to achieve a total reversal in the eccepted reason for the existance of architects? 4 planning. Having said that, 1t would be naive to think that our writings and activities will not effect social change, we will have failed if they ao not. We are initially concerned with the heightening of the awareness, of our colleagues, the creation of a real empathy with the users of our designs, then producing a solidarity based on whst we see as a just cause. Our cause is a just one and we are committed to instigating our policies and strategies to bring about architectural revolution. A complete evaluation of almost any building erected in the vast two or three decsdes will show,in social terms, firstly how vowerful architecture has become and secondly, how the abuse cf that power has brought sbout a destruction of our culture. Architecture has ceased to function fcr the good of people, it now functions to satisfy profits, ego's end abstract aes thetics. That is the shameful cafession architecture has to make to society, now. ARCHITECTURAL SUICIDE Public sector architecture has pernetrated a syate of ugly, dominating and vast developments in the neme oF society,in the vretence thet it is 1 *the power structure, based on the economic infrastructure, yropned un end reinforced by the media and supported by the educations] couses. The architectural profession has been instrumental in the destruction of the physical rabviec of society, when its major purpore should have been the exact opposite. Collectively the architects, technicians, draushtemen and students in the profession have either eagerly participated or silently carried cut a systematic annihilation of our great citics and many of their cultures and sub cultures‘,In many ways architecture has created more havec and destruction than the Lurtwaffe in World War Two. The only difference being that architecture has hidden behind the viel of redevelorment or rehabilitation. The war was destructive in many obvious and clearly definatle ways. Architecture has been a ict more subtle.... but make no mistake the result has been precisely the same. Germanys motives in that war were also easily identifiable ond we found them very easy to hate; their succinct eggressive nature was plain to see. Yhe reasons for the architectural force taking over the aggressors rele is not as clear, yet in the vrivate sector the answer is simply profit. Though actual. building fascades varied, irrespective of purpose or locetion, the At peony ARC is uncertsin what grounds the establishment will submit on; what its greatest weaknesses ara Also we are uncertain of its potential | towards the areas of society that need our aseistance. The RIBA is too severity in repressing the indictments we are going to make, and ite i committedto the wealthy to change its direction,without loosing Sauce and capactty to resist a real attack on its very foundation, As well e2 cur j Jeapordizing ite professional status with that section of society. This manifesto, which basically states our beliefs, it is imperative that we dependance unon architecture being profitable is ruining cur environment, riot limproving it. Architecture in ites existing form is far too svorerveent lay down certain ground rules. On achievement of the mass movement which i we are striving for, theee ground rules can be used as a future basis oF : etarting point for the new architecture movement. It is our belief, in i® pefering te the RIBA and its members as the enemy or the establishment, to the economic structure to assert its real social responsibility. Therefore we are committed to its destruction and the replecement of it with » syetem of enviromental design that takes people as its peers, not money. that there exists a distinct 'us and them’ situation in architecture and Lanning. There are those who wield the power and those who are subject o it. The wielders are the RIBA, the principles in private ‘practice and the heads of lccal government denartment:. Avle recruits for these posit- ions are always in the pipeline thanks to the educationalists who constantly feed this archaic, yet, powerful group. Obviously we are aware - thede consciences and commence wor thet this nower structure is cubscrviant te finenciers, cornoraticns and rich clients, anc cf course develomers and syecalators. This heirerchy has always been eble to rely on the technicians, partially qualified designere end drevcatemen,who make un the bulk of people in tie offices, to carry out their dictates unquestioningly. They are guilty of silent ecquiesenct, working without a »rincipled mind, ebusing their conrciences, end foregoing eny rocial morale they may heave had. The resui+ of this power abuse ond cocial disregurd, is a lousy environment, Uroun chacs, rural decay, cocinl disruption, psychological disorders...architectural suicide. : solying housing and educational problems. Most of these prcviems are partially inFated by architects and planners thinking they can disgnose a society without even coming into contact with that society. In all honesty all that architects really need to know about people is that they are mostly between four and six feet high and take up varicus amounts of space, dependant on the activity they are involved in, That has been elmost the sum totel of expertise architects have applied to their buildings in distinct human terms. Architecture has successfully reduced people to the status of a design element, to be taken into account with all the cther elements such as lighting, plumbing, car parking etc. architectural order must remove them and begin to redirect our exnertise Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource ARC Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived John Allan Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource Undated https://nam.maydayrooms.org/files/original/b17e9882fc785f1a53cd1bd0b18b7d1f.pdf a6b3f14148108b20c6fffb32ef552b73 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Brian Anson/ARC pre and post Harrogate Subject The topic of the resource Various documents describing ARC ideas and activities See below Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource ARC Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1975-1976 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Red House Issue No 1 Subject The topic of the resource Monthly magazine of Architects Revolutionary Council Description An account of the resource RD, THE MONTHLY MAGAZINE OF THE ARCHITECTS REVOLUTIONARY < = a (UTA Perhaps most contemptible of all the RIBA has killed the idealism of architect- ural youth by its stranglehold on education. The students are herded like so many cattle into an ever-narrowing architectural conveyor belt of the future modelled on the values of management and big business. We believe that there isindeed acrisisin architecture but one far deeper than that about which McEwen writes, Itisa spiritual, a moral crisis and the answer cannot be found within the usual narrow confines of right versus left. Nor has the RIBA any wish to tackle that crisis as its very position depends on preserving the status quo. Only byavoiding the real social p sur i i can the RIBA retain its monopoly; retain its fee scale which puts our profession out of the reach of most people and keep its stranglehold on education and thus the future of architecture. Thousands of our colleagues in the profession ‘live on their knees’ doing work which they despise; work that kills. The second-class citizens of hi the hnici do the same destructive work, and the ' students are manipulated by the dictators of Portland Place. In ‘Wasteland. The building of the American Dream’, architect Stephen Kurtz says: “As long as the primary form of getting what one needs is begging, cajoling, or persuading, for so long is the childish status preserved... Only the revolutionary transcends and escapes the tragic dilemma. Ina terrifying (even to himself) and ultimate defiance of authority, he gives up hope of seome day receiving what he has always been denied and decides, either alone or with others, to provide for himself. In this way then revolutionaries are this world’s only adults..”” RED HOUSE isacall to al such reyo- lutionary architects, Let us come together to create an architecture of life, and over- throw the profession that kills, Of what do we have to be proud being architects? WhentheRIBAjoinswithothersin ripping the heart out of aneighbourhood against the wishes of its inhabitants it isa killer no matter what fancy words it may use to justify its actions. When, inleague with bureaucrats, it brutalises people’s t lives through the design of certain types , of local authority housing, it kills ki people’s sensitivity. When it ignores the, i still vast, twilight areas of our country } because there is no money nor commis- { sions in them, then it is a destroyer, by Hy default, of the hopes of the inhabitants | that they will ever have a decent environ- { ment. And when such areas are ‘dis- i covered’ by the professional ‘gentrifiers’ the RIBA is a destroyer because it allows its members to plunder such areas and drive out the inhabitants. RIBATE NEWS FROM No. 66 The squeals of protest emitting from Portland Place in the face of the Monopolies Commision’s investigation are truly sickening to the stomach. The Royal Institute of Boss Architect’s whining defense of its price fixing and closed-shop operations isthat “The introduction of price bargaining... would concentrate attention on price rather than the qualitative aspects of the service”, What else has the RIBA stood for over the last ten decades but architecture as a business, stripped of any ethical or social responsibility? What “qualitative aspects’ of the service did the people of Covent Garden, Ealing, Dockland or a thousand other communities over the country get from their RIBA sponsored oppressors? How is it possible for the RIBA to descend any lower into cynical commercialism? “To identify and analyse the client’s needs” says the RIBA, “‘an architect must build upa close relationship with his client”. Yes, agreed! Private partners colluding and conspiring with speculators and the scum of society, principals in public authorities locked in secret, if not corrupt, intrigue with bureaucrat elites against the people. This close relation- ship would be “subjected to intolerable pressures as the parties sought to safe- guard their own interests” if fee bargain- ing was allowed squeal the RIBA. But how could they safeguard their “interests” of profit and power any more than at present? Then comes the bare- faced, hypocritical appeal to ‘the wider public interests” which the RIBA is at present supposed to “reconcile” with those of the client. Who the hell are they trying to kid with these pious, hollow, two-faced sentiments? This is the same RIBA which has been run by (openly or indirectly) those very environmental criminals who have ground their money grasping or politically sycophantic developments into the faces of “the public”. The RIBA plea that fee bargaining would increasebuildingcostsislittlemorethan blackmail. If the monopolies commission smashes the price fixing, RIBA members will cut down on their design services resulting in more maintainance costs. But lousy design service is rife under the present system. Talk about “quality of service” to al those tower block ghetto dwellers, to al those people who have had their lives and environments ripped apart and replaced by hideous tracks of mind- less “functionalist” dogma — al by RIBA members of course. The whole fee scale debate is irrelevant unless you look on the 6% fix as sacred. Who cares whether an architect charges tuppence or 90% for his services. Dedicated and committed architects are prepared to work for nothing for the Join the RIBA brutalise our environment and mar the and Kill There are many ways in which to kill and there is more than one way to die. *...We were as men who through a fen of filthy darkness grope... something was dead in each of us and what was dead was hope...” wrote Oscar Wilde in his “Ballad of Reading Gaol’. The spirit can be killed as can faith; it is possible to kil trust and destroy dreams. All those who conspire to subyert the struggle for freedom are potential killers for, should they succeed, they destroy more than the body; they wipe out the vision of a better future. To the sensitive nature physical death is not always the worst prospect as the Spanish Republicans proclaimed through their slogan, ‘It is better to die on your feet than to liye on your knees’. The struggle for freedom is universal and to be found in al walks of life Architecture is no exception. The community movements struggling against oppressive architecture schemes were, in a very real sense, waging a freedom fight to defend their homes, their land, their culture. One freedom fighter dies by a bullet, another succumbs to weariness, to hopelessness in the unending struggle against a power system which holds al the cards; the bureaucrats, the politicians, the planners and THE ARCHITECTS. Even as we write this journal we mourn thedeathofSamDriscoll,ayoungman of 65 who, for seven years, struggled valiantly in his home community of Covent Garden against oppressive archi- tectural schemes. Some might say it was the developers’ greed, the machinations of politicans and bureaucrats against which Sam Driscoll struggled and which, in the end, broke him, but how can our own profession be absolved? We indict the RIBA for complicity in his death. The RIBA is the official voice of archi- tecture in Britain; governments seek its advice, the media pays special attention to its views on environmental matters, it controls education in the profession. Yet al the time it is in league with those who lives of that 80% of our society which has no economic control over its physical environment. During the speculation boom, the RIBA, when it could have offered support to the many millions of people who were powerless, instead threw the weight ot its authority behind the environmental rapists. Many of its top members who control the profession made fortunes out of the-brutalising of our country. Now in a recession they scuttle like rats from a sinking ship to the money- wells of the OPEC countries. For such reasons many architects, and particularly the students, have come to despise the RIBA and some of us have grown to even hate it, as we hate al traitors to a noble cause. For architecture could be a cause for great good in our society. In an urbanised country such as ours it is nothing less than the physical backcloth against which we live out our lives. Though society is far from ideal, were we doctors we would at least be thankful that good health was no longer denied people because they were poor. Were we labourers we would be glad that no. longer did we have to wait each day at the gates of the dock, the factory and the mill for a decent days work. The right to health, the right to work, these were moral and noble causes; and so the architectural issue is a moral one. The tight of people to a decent environment and to feel secure in their home, no matter what their station in life. Some might plead that the profession has nocontroloversuchissues,thatitmust work within the socio-economic system of the time; that is to abide by the rules of big-business, monopoly capital and State bureaucracy. But did the small group of doctors who initiated the Health Service have control, or the workers who struggled for union- isation? They acted because the way in which they were forced to practise their craft was based on a fundamental in- justice. There has always been more than enough environmental injustice in this country to give the RIBA ample scope to show which side it is on; the privileged and powerful minority which controls the construction of our environment, or the communities and individuals so frequently oppressed by it. ments foisted on people, by the developers, 7 and b of the last two decades. The members of the group knew that the RIBA, having always preserved architecture as a luxury profession, could not possibly adhere or respond to society as a whole. It had perfected a practice and education system geared specifically to the rich and powerful and could not even begin to late any other clientel In terms of strategy, the ARC knew that, unless there was a more popular (albeit, less radical) movement of designers committed primarily to change within architecture, then there could be no revolution, merely reactive reforms. Throughout 1974-75, ARC built up a larger group of sympathetic followers, who responded to the cal for radical change. Synonymous with this the London based core were working on community architecture. In the West London Borough of Ealing, ARC members were working closely with the local people, whose whole way of life was directly threatened, through the oppres- sive designs of architects and planners within the mainstream of the profession. The congress ended with a small nominated body mandated to begin the process of expansion through further conferences and seminars. The New Architecture Movement and ARC former- ly split, to pursue their action early in 1976, each gaining token support and confidence from the others’ activity. At this time ARC regrouped as a body. Some people who had been members, joined NAM and vice versa; others, having long contemplated the ARC’s activity, realized its serious and committeed approach to architecture and joined the group. The strategy for the next phase of ARC’s campaign was evolved, part of that strategy was the production of ‘Redhouse’ as the radical broadsheet of our group. The ARC, through its many talks, designs, writings and publications, over the past three years, has begun the process of identifying the dimensions architecture has criminally ignored for so long — the primary dimensions of culture, affinity, self respect, dignity and community in the lives of the people we design with. It has attempted to work in meaningful and realistic ways with the people who live and work in buildings we design. It has received no encouragement for its activity from the institute that purports to represent architecture. The major reason being that ARC’s motivation is people notprofit,community notcommerce. The ARChas no illusions, the RIBA and the architects who financially and spiritually support it are our enemy. Architecture has no need of this old boys’ network that has colluded in the bastard- isation and destruction of the towns and cities of this country. The Architects Revolutionary Council will, through its work, philosophy and commitment, and through the pages of *Redhouse’, rupture, dismantle and expose Britain’s most archaic organization and its members, in the name of a people’s architecture. IF [FRIME DOESAT PRY...LUHERE DI ARCHITELTS GET ALL THEIA MaOney7 Early Campaign’s poster In the spring and summer of 1975, the major campaign aimed at spreading a radical affinity with ARC, achieved great Success; so much so that ARC was confident that it could organize its projected Autumn Congress to create the solid radical base within the profession specific courses of Continued page 6 ARCheology ARCHITECTS REVOLUTIONARY COUNCIL Since its formation in 1973, the Architects Revolutionary Council has been the only truly radical voice within the architectural profession; the only group whichutterly refutes any claims that architecture at Present isasocially responsible discipline. ARC developed out of many community struggles, against the inhuman environ- A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE which itknew must exist before any change could occur in the future direction of architecture. The New Architecture Movement Congress was held inHarrogate in November 1975. The people who attended that congress came from al areas of the profession, technicians, students, planners, graduate andpracti- cing architects, each united in the urge to seek a more social and just base for architecture. it htectute “\ If only the architectural profession as a whole could operate in the manner in which ARC has done in Ealing then, we believe, our towns and cities would be better places in which to live. We consider itisshocking that ARC has to struggle not only against the financial and bureaucratic interests which control and lay waste our environment but also against its own professional body, the RIBA, which seems more intent on preserving tradi- tional privileges than in backing ARC's fight for community architecture..."" Sybil McRobie, Ealing Alliance Group Ealing Town Centre Introductory note What follows is a brief record of ARC’s involvement in the planning affairs of the London Borough of Ealing over the past year. The conclusions are the important part of this very encapsulated history of a year’s action. We in ARC have no desire to fool either ourselves or our readers with false claims of success. We are more interested in our failures at community level, for only by understanding these can we move closer to that revolutionary situation in which a true community architecture can arise. The first time we spoke to the fEaling at a public meeting we n defeating this plan we may go some way to making our kind of action unnecessary; we may succeed in letting governments know that they cannot rail- road their plans through, irrespective of the wishes of indigenous communities. If our colleagues in the architecture and planning professions had any morality, none of us need be in this room tonight. We feel a specific responsibility because these plans were done in our name, in the name of our art. That makes us angry and that is why we are architectural revolutionaries...” The Problem (Therewilbeadetailedhistoryof planning in Ealing in future issues). In 1968 the town council presented its plan for the central area, in conjunction with developers Grovenor EMI —our old friends from Covent Garden and else- where —and architects HALPERN ASSOCIATES. Itwasoneoftheworst examples of the sort of profit-orientated development that communities al over the country have been fighting against for the past decade. A massive road plan that would tear a great hole through the town centre; agreat covered shopping mall suitable for only the multiple stores ARC iscalled in In April 1975 we were asked to help. The request came not from the communities directly affected, but from representatives of other associations on the fringe of the area, ARC was then building up its National campaign and had turned away from local action. We agreed to spend only a specific amount of time, and to prepare alternatives for the vacant sites as ‘ammunition’ only (ultimately the plans must arise from the people) to help them organise a local action group and to arrange apublic meeting. We surveyed the area, we found out the facts and through numerous small meetings tested the ‘spirit’ of the local people. For strategic reasons we designed the latern- ative quite oblivious to the people; our plan was not the ultimate answer but it was a means of getting a response from the people. Our central concept was a medium sized town square, very under- designed so that the people could use it in Covent Garden, Bootle, Donegal and other places). But we are professionals doing this for nothing so we are limited. Given a fraction of the resources the enemy has (the local council, the establishment of this country), we could blow this plan to kingdomcome in a week. But we have no resources except you, the people. Ultimately the struggle isnot about rationality, Ultimately it’sabout power. There are only two kinds of power; money and people. The enemy has al the money (our money), we have the people. You and those you collect must constitute our power. The enemy has already decimated the community in the central area, so we must reinforce it. without such unity you don’t stand a snowballs chance in hell...” “Whatever one may think of ARC's revolutionary rhetoric, this sort of exercise and advice by professionals experienced in community action is desperately needed by those commun- ities still under the threat of large-scale developments. The humanity and obvious quality of ARC’s alternative approach, involving rehab and infill, and preserving the scale of the old residential area, won the meeting over and gave it new hope that such an alternative was not only feasible but quicker, cheaper and better than the council’s plan. Planning with the people We set out to demystify the planning and design process by proving that the elementary firstconcepts ofaplanning scheme could better come from them (the people) than from the so-called ‘experts’ of the local authority. We held meetings in ARC’s studio where we began tentative- ly to design together. Our varied projects for the core area were based on small scale spaces, on the traditional concept of streets; on flexibility and extensive rehabilitation. In the situation which we have today, where truly there are no real experts in urban design, it is logical to avoid large scale design projects, if only because the mistakes which are inevitably made can more easily be rectified. One of our schemes was costed and was found to be not only cheaper and quicker to construct, but (ironically) produced a better rateable value for the borough. The Ealing Alliance (of action groups) organised a large public meeting on February 10th. at which we outlined our ideastoanaudienceof400.Thisgather- ing by a massive majority of 383 passed a yote of no confidence in the council’s technical services department (the planning office) and declared the Council incompetent in planning matters. The aftermath Big articles appeared in the press picking up particularly the accusation of in- ~ Mpetence against the council. There is a major rule of radicals that says that action springs from reaction; the strongest weapon of the system in an oppressive ‘democracy’ is to ignore those who struggle against it. Once the system starts to react then you are in business for changing it. This is exactly what began to happen in the Ealing struggle. Threats First a member of the Alliance was subjected to verbal threats from a senior council official who declared “You people are in alot of trouble. We are going to sue you for a lot of money for your libellous attack on our competence.” The community people were worried they had gone too far in their public condemn- ation of the authorities, til ARC’s lawyer assured them there was nothing slanderous in their actions. Then the Council wrote a threatening lettertotheAlliance,butbynowthe people had their own legal advice and they treated the threat with the contempt itdeserved even considering action against the council for harrassment. A bartering system ARC receives no payment for the work it does, but it does seek the aid of local communities in its national fight against the profession and specifically the RIBA. Our message to communities is: “We'll help you fight oppressive plans. You help us defeat the RIBA”. Conclusions sess ** NTE? WED ¢ GREENHIGHion Ae which would wipe out traditional shop- keepers, and to cap it all, the usual multi- storey office blocks. Developers scheme Over the years, though the building has not begun, the central area of close-knit working class communities has been raped almost beyond repair. Where houses once stood, the distasteful National Car Parks and their permanent residents—RATS now exist. You might wonder how things have come to such a pass when community- action became such a common-place event during the early seventies. We can only believe that this indigenous community was slaughtered overnight by compulsory purchase, evictions and promises of a better life in council tower blocks; whatever it was, little fight appearstohavetakenplace. thenewformswouldbecomplimented by extensive rehabilitation. The raped central area 1eo HellmansupportstheEulingrevolution. gs anyway they wished. Eventually total support was given to this idea. No further demolition of the area was necessary and ARC concept First major event A public meeting was held on July 2nd at which 350 people assembled. We made some basic statements to the people; we said: “...Youdon’tknowusyet. Firstly we are not amateurs; if you once get that idea into your head and begin to live with it, then we will all have a mill- stone round our necks from which we'll Developers shopping mall ARC did not try to fool the people, to mystify them or make grand promises about design schemes. We told them the truth. We were right to do so. 350 people cheered ARC that night and the Ealing Town Centre Action Group (ETCAG) was formed to represent the central community. Publicity for the struggle followed imme- diately. Four Ealing Residents Associations publicly praised ARC. TheEalingTradesCouncilwassplit bitterly over the issue. never escape. We are professionals and here is the evidence (we showed some of our actions OE Hellman Federation ARC found that itcould not walk quietly away from this situation even though we had an urgent national campaign to get off the ground. So in the summer of 75 we were instrumental in founding the EALING ALLIANCE, acollective body of seven residents associations. Phase two It was under the direction of this body that we began to work in greater detail in October 1975. Wesetourtargetforamassivepublic meeting in February 1976, and this time we were to consider the wider area of Ealing town centre, not just the core area. Our work inyolved the production of several architectural schemes with models for the core area, anda critique of the Council’s planning proposals for the entire town centre. Ss An ARC project based on infill and rehab We found that the council’s plan was based ona ludicrous 800% increase in off: street car-parking; a situation that would mean the destruction of the entire town centre putting the cars at one level. In short we showed how the Council had designed a plan which haditself created the problems it would have to solve. This is a circular argument which occurs in nearly all large scale developments based onthecombinationofprofitmotiveand the worship of the private car. — \6FLL-THAT TARE CARE OF THE CAR PARKING PROBLEM was Mest? A.J. July 1975 EALING: CONCLUSION We mean the conclusions at this stage: ARC isn’t finished in Ealing, but the next move must come from the people and they must indicate they wish to carry on the fight at a more intense level. There has been too much so-called ‘community action’ where the activists hay have done al the work of the people; this merely puts another layer of mystification between the grass-roots and the system. Our campaign in Ealing proved to us that we had learnt lessons from previous actions in Covent Garden, Bootle etc. In Ealing the local residents took on an increasing amount of the organisational work and thus left us free to get on with technical problems In addition we al made a deliberate attempt to cross the boundariesofclassandpartypoliticsso that we could develop as a team with a ‘cause’, the defeat of an oppressive plan and the creation ofa more just planning and decision-making process. Doing things this way can prove very beneficial; people are treated as people and not put into some doctrinaire box. We could create a situation where we could discuss revo- lutionary processes with middle-class people, and wherewe could learn that the ‘working-class’ are not necessarily ‘God’s gift to creation’. So our successes, apart from creating panic in the local council bureaucracy, have been the creation ofa relationship with people based on trust, integrity and mutual respect. Our failures are connected with the mixed working-class and squatter community in the core area. We did our best to rally them at the first major meeting and they formed the majority on the Twon Centre Action Group. But then they drifted away. We appealed again. Still no Tesponse, so we worked with the fringe communities who were more middle-class, though not entirely, and developed plans and techniques of action. Furthermore, even the fringe communities who have everything going for them, appear not to have the true sense of fight. We believe that the British people are really more oppressed (in the most invidious manner) than almost anyone. That is why planning bureaucracies and the architectural profession can beat them in the long run. Does this depress us? Certainly. Will we give up? Never. We will only fight harder to revolutionise the communities so that they fight for their own decent environ- ment. OTHER PROFESSIONS Newham Rights Centre is one of the 15 neighbourhood law centres in this country. It is funded by the Nuffield Foundation whose grant expires at the endofAugust 1976whenitishopedthat the Government will fund the Centre directly. Like several other Centres, Newham Rights Centre does not undertake individual cases, although two evening advice sessions are organised by the Centre and staffed by volunteer lawyers each week in the Borough. The Centre concentrates its resources on test cases, cases for tenants’ associations and similar organisations, and education and inform- ation on legal rights, The Centre is staffed by two barristers, one solicitor, two community workers and three administrator secretaries. The Centre deals largely with housing, employment and social security matters. In the housing field a lot of work is done with tenants’s associations. Apart from major problems over repairs, public health and so on, much time is taken up with redevelopment. It is in this area that the Centre’s contact with architect is most vital. The situation is familiar. The tenants of a very run-down part of a run-down borough havehadpromisesofbetter things for the last ten or fifteen years. Their loyalties are torn between a deep affection for the area and the community spirit which has survived the privations of decades on the one hand, and on the other, a traditional east-end desire to get out and move further up the District line. The Council put forward unimaginative and insensitive plans for total redevelop- ment with the absolute minimum of public consultation, let alone participation. The plans are delayed year by year because of costs. The residents get hopelessly dis- illusioned in their desolate and half demolished surroundings. It is at this stage that the local Law Centre often gets involved. Its resources provide community workers to invigorate the tenants associations. The lawyers press for full compensation for residents whose houses are demolished and advise on other incidental legal problems. But community architects are the real key to the situation. They can provide the expertise to fight the Council’s planning department on its own ground. They have the authority to say to the tenants’ association that the word of the Council’s planners is not gospel. They have the sensitivity to translate into architecture the inarticulated aspirations of people who have no experience and little knowledge of what is possible. They can take into account the social, cultural, economic and other complex needs and wishes of the people in the area. Most. importantly, they can involve the residents in decisions that will affect their lives so deeply. There are other ways too, in which the architects and the Law Centres can work together, in the presentation of tenants’ cases against landlords to Court, and so on. But it is through community organ- isations such as tenants associations in situations like the one above, that law centresandarchitectscanreallyputtheir skills to the service of the people. John Hendy Barrister at Law Legal Adviser to ARC RIBATE (Continued) community and for the values they believe in. What has fee fixing to do with the true cause of architectural ideals that the RIBA pretends to espouse? 80% of architects have no clients or fees and yet the Architects Journal has the cheek to say that over this the RIBA is ‘the voice of the whole profession’. 95% of the community have no architects or access to fees and yet the RIBA has the gall to refer to the “public interest”. What really scares the RIBA mandarins isthe thought that under competition dedicated architects would start providing better services for less fees, especially if they had no expensive offices or over- heads to maintain. More frightening — they might actually get their just share of work based on ability by competing in thiswayinsteadofbeingexploitedby their pseudo architect bosses. Even worse, communities might be able to afford their own architects more and more; these would both combat the RIBA stranglehold and work for the people’s own interests. People are waking up to the fact that architecture as practised by the RIBA minority is irrelevant. Capitalism is also having its doubts. Ifthe Monopolies Commission’s investigation helps to loosen the privi- leged grip of the RIBA on the profession, then we support it. Why Red House?” We’re sorry to disappoint the categorisers, labellers and dismissers, but ‘Red House’ has nothing to do with the Kremlin. We are not Syndicalists, Marxists, Maoists nor indeedCapitalistsbut,ifwemusttalkin ‘ists’, then artists, revolutionists, human- ists and anti-dogmatists. The Red House was the first building designed by Philip Webb and William Morris in 1860 when they were in their mid 20s and symbolises for us the welding together of art and revolution, architect- lure and social responsibility, style and commitment that we aim to revive in our profession. We follow the traditions of English radicalism — the Levellers, the Diggers, the 18th century revolutionaries $well as Ruskin and Morris. Like Morris have arrived at revolution through our .In fact the Red House was designed before Webb and Mortis became radical- ised politically. Its title refers to the red of indigenous English brick and tile, not the tricolor. Ruskin and Morris were dater affected by the second wave of olutionary change in Europe and the dea that artists should serve the emanci- pation of the people and not “the winish luxury of the rich”, for “the chitect iscarefully guarded from the ommon troubles of the common man, wilding for ignorant, purse proud igesting machines”. (Morris). architectural terms Morris had the great revolutionary insight to see that the inspiration for a people’s architecture must come neither from foreign neo- lassical monuments nor from the equally monumental engineering structures ofthe new capitalist class but from the people’s own buildings — the vernacular dwellings to be seen in every village and amlet. This was as worthy of the name “architecture” as the monuments of the ling elites of the past — more so since itwas the democratic expression of the architecture of the future when “society... ilproduce to live, and not live to produce as we do, under such conditions, architecture, as a part of the life of the people in general, will again become possible...itwillhaveanewbirth.Ihave ahope that it will be from such necessary, npretentious buildings that the new and enuine architecture will spring, rather ‘an from our experiments in concious le.” Morris has consequently received unjust historical treatment by the bourgeois apologists for machine age “functional- ism”. Like Pevsner because he did not ioningly revere the hine and had the effrontery to be a romantic. We believe that Morris’ ideals could not be realised because they were far ahead of his time and perhaps because he looked too far back to the Middle Ages for solutions. But today the conditions that prompted Morris in his artistic/political revolutionism exist once more, only augmented and accelerated a hundred fold. What would Morris think ifhe were alive today about the destruction of our cities and towns for profit, about the third rate ghettos erected by indifferent committees of public authorities in the name of housing, about the desecration of our countryside and towns by motor- ways, airports and polluti 5 and what oh what, citizens, would be his opinion of the RIBA? Would he have any reason to alter his verdicts: “Is money to be gathered? Cut down the pleasant trees among the houses, pull down ancient and venerable buildings for the money that a few square yards of London dirt will fetch; blacken rivers, hide the sun and poison the air with smoke and worse. And it’s nobody’s business to see it and mend it.” But the difference is that today communities have started to make it their business; to fight back against the regressiveanddestructiveenvironments of the money grubbers and bureaucrats and their RIBA condoned lackeys. They are forcing the profession (or those in it who care) to question its basic precepts and to find them wanting ifnot down- right irrelevant. Our fight today is not Or architecture for a few. Thus “Red House”. Message from Jamaica Within the under-developed countries, the RIBA has abrogated to itself the “burden’ of setting standards of education and professional conduct for societies quite different from its own. To maintain the status quo, the RIBA has supervised the education of, and maintain- ed strong links with a generation of architects within the oppressed Third World. These professionals serve the interest of domestic and international capital, and are therefore against the aspirations of the workers and peasants of their Tespective countries. They represent the culture of imperialism and give it form in their b i “inter- national” style. The RIBA, together with its alter ego the Commonwealth Association of Architects, Organise conferences and jamborees to strengthen and refuel this parasitic native elite. The RIBA has very strong links with racist South Africa! Where then are the morals and professicn- alstandardsof the RIBA itself?! What right does the RIBA have to set our standards?! Progressive architects every- where must identify with ARC! Together... “Our force is irresistible, Away with al pests!” VIVA ARC!! Death of a Patriot for Community Architecture Sam Driscoll, the ‘King of Covent Garden’ as we called him, died on Thursday 29th April. He had been il for a year and at times had suffered great pain. Sam Driscoll created the Covent Garden Community Association many months before it became public, and to those of us who knew him throughout the struggle he always represented the true ideal of community action, no matter how much international fame Covent Garden achieved. Despite al the jargon that came to surround the community struggles, Sam clung to his basic belief that people hadarighttotheirhomes.Covent Garden was his home and he struggled for it. It is not melodramatic to say that he died for it. The unbelievable amount of work and energy that he put into Covent Garden affairs over the last seven years gradually took their tol. The Red House was the first iously designed building to take itsinspiration from peasant architecture — local materials used untreated, aformal planning from the inside out, an eclectic mix of elements, care for the natural environment and free expression for native craftsmanship. against corrupt classicism but mindless “functionalism” and it i tendencies, Our style isonce again the people’s own architecture — but urban rather than rural, those urban villages where ‘people’ and ‘buildings’ are inseparable, where the place is as much about community telationships as about space, and which planners, developers care welder... But Morris saw that the struggle for a dignified and egalitarian society which and architects treat with the same contempt they had for the vernacular in levelled up not down could not be effected by art and design alone, and he Morris’ time. But this style must not be confused with combined his revolutionary ideas on art with direct political action. the thin veneer of ‘vernacular’ architect- ure with which some local authorities use Thearchitecturalideasdevelopedinto daeee Uoaradae athaedlEingvleitshnnyFreeanaArecshiteactnuraeemsovement n n structiures. The peoSpaleast’ anrchitecteure will only really emerge when the people themselves have the power to appoint their own architects and advisors and not have these thrust upon them, “a taste imposed on the top as part of a subtle movements in this country was smother- ed and emasculateidn the fashionable middle class for their own ends, and later purloined by continental capitalism whose bureaucracy distorted and recast it as scheme for dividing off gentility from servitity”. Like Morris we “do not want machine age functionalism” — or the ‘moder’ architecture that has become art for a few anymore than education for the hated symbol of such regimes every- a few or freedom for a few”, where today. reviews A Short History of the Architectural Profession by Adam Purser Price 10p “Why me? Why pick on me?” I said when asked to write this review. Well, I mean, “A Short History of the Architectural Profession’ didn’t really hit me as some- thing Ishouldn’t miss, there were no tasty graphics for a kick-off. But suddenly it clicked. Could this really be a caricature of Eric Lyons on the cover? And if so this particular ‘History’ might have an interesting angle to it. And indeed it has. Adam Purser’s thesis can be split into two parts, the first dealing with the actual history of the profession, and the second being used by the author as a platform for his own ideas and ideals. The devolution of the ‘architect’ from the ‘master-craftsman’ is clearly illustrated and can be taken as the true starting point of the thesis and from here onwards the evolution of the profession can easily be followed, through the forming of the Institute of British Architects, through the granting of the Royal Charter, the setting up of the examination system in 1889 which is still the basis of archi- tectural education today as Adam Purser so rightly states, carrying on up to the immediate issues of the R.I.B.A. report to the Monopolies Commission. This thesis is good. It is clear, informative, and will no doubt be controversial. The front cover isby Hellman, the inside photos courtesy of the Architects Revo- lutionary Council, and on the inside of the back cover even an advert for the “Morning Star’. Irecommend that you buy this booklet, read it, and then think really hard about the validity of the R.1.B.A. existing in the society of both the present and the future. Rob Thompson The Rape and Plunder of the Shankill by Ron Wiener Notaems Press, 76 Shankill Rd. Belfast 13 Price £1.70 The British have a way of switching off when confronted by anything touching on Irish politics, particularly now that public opinion no doubt considers that saturation point has long since been passed as regards media coverage of the ‘troubles’. My instinct is that, because of this, many people will ignore ‘The Rape and Plunder of the Shankill’. class community struggled for survival, and clearly illustrates how power comes from the point of a gun...”". Unnecessary histrionics? Not in this case. In the final resort most genuine community activists will admit that the fundamental issue is oneof power; that despite al the technical and social arguments, the status quo, as Harold Laski put it, *...does not abdicate in the face of logic...’ Power is transferred by other means, The com- munity activists of Britain have just had to live with this frustrating fact and direct action has reached no greater heights than the occasional squat or temporary occupation of a building. But Wiener’s book isabout Belfast and, as the world now knows, threats made there are not idle. When such communities warn the politicians and planners to desist from smashing their BUM (Belfast Urban Motorway) through close-knit working- class neighbourhoods, the civil servants sit up and listen. In Britain threats result in marchers mouthing inane slogans like ‘Power to the People’; in Belfast they result in gelignite. The book deals specifically with one area of Belfast, the famous Shankill Road, the Loyalist counterpart to the equally well- known Falls Road, spiritual centre of the Belfast Republicans. Wiener has docu- mented the Shankill’s struggle against the planners with exceptional thoroughness and has placed his critique neatly in the context of the peculiarly complex local politics of Northern Ireland. With fascinating detail he describes how the ruling Unionist Party in conjunction with the ancient Orange Order, manipulated and deceived the Protestant working-class into accepting (at least initially) the decentralised, growth-centre planning policy which meant the destruction of the Shankill, by the old myth that the Catholic (IRA dominated) working-class were their true enemy. But through his book (which Wiener describes as ‘a horror story which just ran and ran’) he shows how the ‘troubles’ finally smashed al the tidy visions of the planners. The climax came with the total strike of June 1974 organised by the UWC (Ulster Workers Council) and backed by the para-military group, the UDA. After years of being deceived by the establishment the Shankill had an indigenous power-base to which it could turn. In 1968 the plans for the Shankill were based on 15 storey tower blocks, and 60% of al dwellings were to be flats, The community had persistently demanded 2- storey terraced houses. Once they obtained the help of the para-military groups overnight they got exactly what they wanted, and that ishow the plan stands today. Brian Anson |COMMUNITY ACTION IN EUROPE Sol lentunaholm Sweden, [5 - 21 August, 1976 lOrganised by the }INTERNATIONAL YOUTH FEDERATION FOR ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES AND ICONSERVATION IFEE, including full board for six Inights and including one trip to Stockholm £30.00 iApplication forms from Xaver Monbailliu 30 Rue Sadi Carnot 192 Vauves, Paris. Civil Engineer Thomas Morrison was acquitted recently at the Old Bailey of charges of theft and arson. He was brought to court for stealing plans and documents (in some cases burning them) from the GLC where he worked. His aim was to help his local residents association fight road improvements on the Kingston-by-pass. Though Morrison was acquitted, he no longer works at the GLC and the fact that he was brought to court at al (especially to the Old Bailey) re-emphasises the tremendous struggle communities have against bureaucratic planners. What price freedom? SUBSCRIPTIONS Membership of ARC There are two rules in ARC: To practise, where possible, community architecture and, Synonymous with this, to work for the overthrow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, If you accept these rules we would be interested to hear from you. Anyone really interested in the struggle of communities against oppressiveplanning schemes will wish this book as wide a circulation as possible, but I doubt it will happen for, in a very real sense, TheRape and Plunder of the Shankill is dynamite. This would be a tragedy, as in my opinion, Ron Wiener’s book is arguably the most important yet written on community action and the planning process. It is in the same tradition as that other milestone in the genre After the Planners, and indeed takes Robert Goodmans critique further. The pre-publicity describes it as “...giving a blow by blow account of how a working- Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource ARC Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived John Murray Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource undated https://nam.maydayrooms.org/files/original/51a6a6bfef61c7e6c12fab2b17c84b65.pdf 8e3764da03130a9a4c3befd4ff10576f Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Brian Anson/ARC pre and post Harrogate Subject The topic of the resource Various documents describing ARC ideas and activities See below Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource ARC Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1975-1976 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Colne Valley Future Subject The topic of the resource Report on situation in Colne Valley Yorkshire and how to stabilise employment Description An account of the resource COLNE WALLEY FUTURE. Society will accept the consequences ot such phenomena for the sake of ‘economic growth’, but to recognize the social irresponsibility in doing so. ‘The Welfare State has developed as a buffer to administer social aneasthetic in the wake of such is in this humanely undignified state its part in the‘national interest* and reacned a stage where both publie and private enterprise Scale, supnort the ‘spent’ lifestyle or its indigenous lation. Concurrent with this there is the populations indecisiveness, fostered by two centuries of paternalistic and benevolent employers. The few the valley are predominantly using rial accommodation as a sprinboard my. this practice 1s socially negative ions to such areas problems; 1t 1s not the evolvmng saviour ot tne community it is perported to be in most quarters. cont/ it is blatantly unwilling disruntion. the Volne Valley at present, it has played will not actively, on any popu- small industries going into the areas now cheap indust— into the capitalist econo- in finding real solut-— 1ARCHITECTS 16th MSee : “{REVOLUTIONARY COUNCIL ay nyi. The Colne Valley which runs west from Huddersfield to the foot of the Pennines, was at the very heart of the industrial revolution; the veritable womb of the economic expansion of Britain. For over two hundred years it has been sending fabrics to every corner of the globe. Lt grew from a primarily domestic weaving area, into a factory based, multi- disciplinary textile industry, that encompassed every fascet of woolen and worsted fabric production. It has predominantly flourished on the high quality of these products. Because of the Tapid growth and high concentration of fabric production in the Colne Valley, older,established fabric producing areas, Oxford, Norfolk and Devon in particular, © were sent into a rapid decline, socially and economically, towards the end of the 18th Century. The complaint today is that Korea, Taiwan, Isreal and the Eactern European States are, through their more modern and economic production methods, putting the Colne Valley industry, into the same kind of decline. une could be capitalistically negative and accept this kind of situation to be all part of a spectrum of continued world growth and market expansion and accept the social consequences as inevitable. The vain attempts to impose import limits and hign taritfs on foriegn fabrics are no solution to the stable industry of the Colne Valley, the odds against any stringent limitation being imposed, are nign. Such areas are expected to flounder within a capitalist economy, sooner or later in the market cycle, society being conceited enough to believe itself eo diverse and highly developed that things Will readjust without any adverse effects. The fact that the indigenous population, young, old, industrially active or socially sedated, all suffer in some way,seems irrelevant. The fact tnat social reLationships, networks and activities © are all diversidy affected by such economic decline appears unimportant. Forced migration and fremily rupture in the ensuing depopulation, is readily accepted and budgetted for. C Il PERCY STREET LONDON WI. Ol. 636-0974 -EXT 27 At a time when everyone is beginning to realize the pitraiis of mass urbanization, such delicately balanced semi-rural settiements as exist in the destroyed. the piignt of such areas is only too well known , yet society seems content degenerate and become satellites devoid of the randamental affinitys for any human settlement. valley must not have their cultures to encourage them to socially for our large urpan centres, that are the primary vase Because of their location, Ee CereD ey and climate the small towns and villages of the Colne Valley are ideaity situated, with some assistance, to firmly dictate their own aestiny. The answer does not lie with the Tourist Board, the CBi, the Champers of Commerce or the Trade Unions. It lies witn the indigenous popuiation. It is not anticipated that this pop- ulation, to gain social justice, will need to barricade the A62 Trunk Road, or aynamite the Huddersfield=— Manchester Railway. but an awareness of their own potential and precarious future couid prove powerful enough for such measures to be contempbted ana inaeea seriously worked out, should the need arise. ‘thougn nara neaaed and basically conservative in nature tne Colne Valiey peuple know the meaning of the word justice. In the few attempts to identify or stud the are the usual solutions such as ‘stimlate Lnventnanerinn cee machinery,(politicians/financiers) or ‘attract new light industries, (anti pollution brigade) or develop it as a tourist area (conservationists) have all been quoated from varying sources. These are not solutions, they are stop gaps/ e€go—boosters/ and self interested activists token gestures, steeped in patronizing and charitable cliches about tne ‘character and social history" of the area. The plain facts are that the Colne Valley, its resources and its people, have been exploited, and that unless a humane interest is shown in the lives and lifestyles of its people, further exploitation will take place. The outward signs of a more subtle exploitation are now manifesting themselves in the area, Many of the houses in the older attractive areas or valley, such as Golcar, are becoming cheap commuter havens. People who have no respect tor the'peoples history’ are busily conserving everything with a smattering ot sentiment or quaintness. A gradual beautufication of the area is seen by the middle class activista as being of ‘real benefit to the villagers’. E Capitalism, entreprenaur speculation and mass industrializa- tion, have bred a imowlng tenacity amongst the population, wno are not unaware of the negative social changes at present occurring. The primary satisfaction most people found an aff- inity in throughout the area, was the pride of imowing that the fabrics the area produced were of the highest quality. The acute division of labour in tne textile industry is at last begining to erode this singular motivation, 1t 1S mostly manifest in the attitude of the young toward the textile mils. No public or private agency able to regenerate employment for the valley snows any concern for the migration of the Natives, the ensuing industrial and domestic blight or the Spirit of the people. The primary course of action is the creation of a diverse and rich workbase to stabilize the population in the five main viilages in the valley. cont/ In planning, the kind of approach which gives primary credance to existing social orders, has been totally mutilated by the conservationists and ‘rehabilitate everything brigade’. The protection of the physical environment in the name of character, history or national heritage has been universally adopted by the liberal minded, directionless band of builders, financiers and designers, who,having reaped a thirty year harvest from the modern movemant phase, are now seeking fortunes from nostalgia design. The protection of the physical environ- ment pure and simple, is socially meaningless, the networks and habits that exist within these environments are the life blood, the buildings mere skeletons. The consequence of overt conserv-— ation is social disruption, building values become highly inflated and social values are increasingly ignored. In the villages of the Colne Valley that means an absolute dissemin- ation of the indigenous populations life style. So the Colne Valley lifestyle is under threat from two fronts, one from the exponents of extreme nostalgia, the other from the people who control private and state coffers. if the villages become mothballed commuter havens for the urban refugees, the human coexistance that is predominant in the existing population will fracture and the word ‘commmity' will no longer be applicable to Slaithwaite, Golcar or Marsden, So the living/working/learning networks that now form the social matrix must form the basis for any future planning, unadulterated by economic zoning or conservation area sterilization. many new and varied socially(as opposed to economical baseaindustries,andoccupationscouldevolveifSete as posed to enterprises, were entrusted with a regeneration ob tgea8s a stimulation of society, directed and controlled ocally. Although many people see the changes affecting the Colne Valley as inevitable, and in most cases acceptable, these changes are totally uncoordinated and devoid of any referance point within the valley. That is not to say that the Colne Valley needs a Total Solution working out for it, but instaed of crying every time a mill closes or waving a flag when a small firm passes through tne valley, a humane direction firmly associated Wwitn the aspirations and desires of the natives could be sought. Instead of allowing the highly substantial mill buildings to remain empty or be demolished, could they form the physical basis for a new industrial direction within the valley? In stead of miniscule parts of these buildings being used by small enterprises attracted by cheap leases and rents, could they all be analysed individually, or in groups where they occur, with a view to being the embrios of an alternative answer to the valleys future industrial and social progress? The variety of physical location of these buildings is unending. They would lend themselves intact, or ina reorganized form, to many domestic, educatinnal and recreational as well as industrial uses, in ways that would integrate easily and harmoniisly into the existing social orders, enhancing, not destroying them. cont/ As designers contemplating such social planning, we must beware of being toutopian. We obviously have ideals, utopian or otherwise, but we must beware of simplistic solutions, which will only afford us and emotional or intellectual cop-out. The idea that designers can ignore the realities of cultural and economic relationships and change society through the nature of the environments they design (one of the fundamental motivations of the modern movement) is obviously wishing away the majority of social realities. For once the planner sees himself working towards his own solution for the environment as an independant body, then people and relationships, the ultimate criteria, are open to manipulation to suit the designers ideals. So taking the solid reality of the old mill buildings as a physical anchor, we should succeed in staying within the tenets of Saul Alinsky's rule of ‘working within the experience of your people’. Though there exists a great affinity with the mills, there is also a mild hostility amongst Colne Valley peuple to the théngs that the mills historieally represent. The reluctance of the young people to enter the mills as textile workers, is a fairly recent occurance in the valley, which will not be - counteracted until a more human way of producing fabrics is evolved. The factory system employed by most fabric producers has reduced the human being to a very inadeaate portion of the production process. So much so that the pride in work mentioned previously is being eroded also by the incres#ingly more complex production methods, most of them too efficient to warrant the existance of a human operative. Yet the dormant buildings which housed the once rapidly growing textile industry, themselves could hold a key to the regeneration of the area. Taking as our premise, that employment within the valley for most of the indigapus population, will stabilize the existing social structures, we can begin to look at the location and uses to be matte of redundant structures. There are seven areas which immediately offer themselves as places where a new industrial and domestic base could generate from. They are all in fairly specific locations and have special qualities of their own. 1) Milnsbridge- 5 or 6 Mills (all empty) off Brittania Road straddling the RIver Colne and bordered by the Narrows Canal. A very dense built up area along the valley bottom 2) Copley Bank/ Four buildings in a steeply sloping valley in Gcican a roughly linear pattern, starting at the head of the small valley off the Colne, with Heath House Mill, down through Victoria Mill and Contrary to some popular activists theories some planning must take plave. As long as that planning is locally controlled and not inflicted by external agencies it can be good planning. Locally controlled, small scale planning using the valleys Many resources, natural, human and man made as the basis could give the villages an effervesence undeniably founded in the predominant culture, not in some modified idea of how things have been plamned elsewhere. The funding for such planning could initially be found through many of the existing cooperative setups functioning in the valley, Albion Mill onto the Golcar Baptist Church. A very rural and undulating landscape with many resources. 3) Titanic Mill A vast structure in 18 acres of arable lana Linthwaite close to the A62 and bordered by the River Colne 4) Crimble Bank Two Mills north of Slaithwaite, Crimble and Slaithwaite. Brook, in the heart of the village, a very tight 5) Slaithwaite The area in and around and including Bank Mill a collection of small buildings arounf the built up loaction adjoining the Slaithwaite Golear Road. ; main Mill. In the valley bottom sandwiched bet— ween the Colne and the Canal. 6) Clough House Mill A small, partially demolished mill in an isolated rural setting, 1 mile west of Slaithwaite. 7) Holme Mill/Ce llars clough- Lingards Two substantial Mills % mile east of Marsden, vast areas of water and considerable land between the two. These seven areas are by no means the only ones where it is possible to begin some positive t by Richard Wa inwright, could begin through these or many other small areas up and down the valley. Copley Bank/Golcar with four virtually empty major structures within imile of each other provides a good area to study, as it four very differnt buildings with infinite possibilities.It lends itself perfectly to the sound social concept of the industrial village which historically dominated the physical form of all the oledr settlements in the valley. In the begiming the ARC group are working on a very tentative economic Sootines once the footing is securer and the small office in Slaithwaite id set up, the long term strategy work will continue alongside bread and butter alteration and extens— ion work. No work outside the valley will be accepted, no speculative work will be undertaken. There are enough architects reaping a rich harvest from those spheres and performing social | homicide in the process. George Mills Huddersfield. ARC West Yorkshire Group. | work. The tonic effect referred Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource George Mills ARC Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived John Murray Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 16-May-76 https://nam.maydayrooms.org/files/original/d71c513167e0526d581aa25166d60e94.pdf 43d832d7b171549938f0f6746dda75ec Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Brian Anson/ARC pre and post Harrogate Subject The topic of the resource Various documents describing ARC ideas and activities See below Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource ARC Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1975-1976 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Colne Valley News Subject The topic of the resource ARC promoted the conversion of redundant mills into small work units or flats (8pp) Description An account of the resource October 1976 "SINCE THE DEMISE OF THE COLNE VALLEY GUARDIAN EARLIER THIS YEAR, THE VALLEY AREA HAS NOT HAD ANYTHING LIKE THE PUBLIS- ~HED REPRESENTATION IT’S PROBLEMS WARRANT. THIS FIRST ISSUE IS_INTENDED TO EXPRESS ONE PARTICULAR VIEW, IDEALLY THE NEXT ISSUE WILL CARRY A WIDE VARIETY OF LOCAL OPINION. WE ONLY HOPE THAT THE PAPER WILL ALWAYS SPEAK OUT STRONGLY ABOUT IMPORTANT LOCAL ISSUES. THE MAJOR THEME OF THIS ISSUE IS POTENTIAL, NOT GRUMBLES ABOUT THE PRESENT OR NOSTALGIA FOR THE PAST, BUT IDEAS & POSSIBILITIES IN THE FUTURE. . Dy COLNE VALLEY NEWS. OCTOBER 1976 WHO AND WHY An introduction to the Colne Valley News and the Community Architecture Team BY GEORGE MILLS This newsheet is hopefully the first of many. Through it we hope thatalively, locally initiat- ed debate will begin, which may inspire people to act regarding their own futures in the Colne Valley. This first issue has been put to- gether by a group of planners and architects from the Comm- unity Architecture Team, who have worked as designers for local tenant and resident groups up and down the country. On the strength of our work we were given a grant to work in the Colne Valley. From past exper- ience we realize the value of hav- ing a good pamphlet or newsheet circulating in the areas we work in. Hopefully the subsequent issues of this newsheet will be written, produced and distribut- ed by local people from up and down the valley. We have in our grant a small sum of money allocated for that purpose. EXPERIENCE The communities we have worked with have mainly been in areas threat- ened by demolition, redevelopment or extinction by cumbersome and insen- sitive planning. We basically believe that the people who live and work in a particular area should have the major say when it comes to debating that areas future, not faceless local govern- ment departments or profit minded developers. Our work has been al over the country, in Liverpool, South Wales, Covent Garden and most rec- ently in the London Borough of Eal- Ing, working with the residents of these areas trying to prevent the destruction of their homes and work places. We realize that the situation in the Colne Valley is a little different, but no planning can be just as dest- ructive as too much planning, part- icularly when an area is subject to the kind of problems that seem to be affl- icting the Colne Valley. A very familiar sight. LOCAL GOVERNMENT The recently published information about West Yorkshires forthcoming publicity exercise to find out what people in the area want in the future is a typical example of so called ‘Public Participation in Planning’. This part- icipation usually consists of specific- ally prepared questions which some how manage to avoid the contentious issues in an area. The Colne Valley does not just need more industry, ora better bus service, or a cleaned up environment. The proposed public mectings being held up and down the county will tell the planners nothing - the questions they will ask will not get right to the root of the areas problems. They will not be considering the dignity, self respect or aspirations of the people of the areas, because most planners and bureaucrats are incapable of working at that level. Until they come down from their ivory towers to the street level and see reality, they have no right to plan for any area It is the people in the villages of the Colne Valley that should deter- mine its future directly, not local governments who are notorious for misrepresenting the aspirations and desires of people in their areas. HOPES We hope we can work with the res- idents of Marsden, Linthwaite Slaith- waite, Milnsbridge and Golcar to try and revitalize some local industry and activity which will prevent the depop- ulation of the area and hopefully give the Colne Valley some of the vigour the declining textile industry seems to be sapping from it. We sense that the valley has many qualities and resources as yet untapped, which though not at first obvious,still exist. These can only be found in areas that have not been swallowed up by urban sprawl from nearby towns and cities. Unlike most planners and architects we are very aware of the real qualities of such places as exist in the Colne Valley. Through our work in other parts of the country we have learned that these qualities are never catered for in the grand master plans, local and central governments usually produce. Over the page are just a few initial ideas which might start the ball rolling, they are not proposals, just sketches which can be used to talk about the possibilities. CONTENTS FREE FIRST ISSUES There are five hundred copies of this first issue. With a subsid rom our grant, subsequent issues should work Out around four or five pence each. WHO AND WHY PEOPLE OR PAWNS PAGE 2 PAGE 3 WHO HOLDS THEY KEY? THE CARDS STACKED AGAINST THE VALLEY PAGE & INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS WITH A HUMANE CAUSE PAGE 5 TAKE ONE EMPTY MILL PAGE 6 A DISMANTLED MILL BUILDING VILLAGES ARE NOT PURPOSE-MADE SUBURBS PAGE 8 PAWNS: An Editorial appraisal of the Colne Valley and its future Crimble Mil, Slaithwaite,-any takers ? In appearance the Colne Valley has not altered drastically for nearly a hundred years. Its main villages have had a few bits tack- ed on to them, a few more roads, a few more houses and the odd new factory. The main commun- ication routes are still the same, road, canal and railway, though through dereliction or transport policy these are nowhere near as busy as they were in the past. The stable industry in the valley is still what it has been for nearly two centuries, basically woollen and worsted fabric production, though no one in the area needs reminding what is happening to that basic industry. ADVERSE CHANGES Whenavast jndustry isrunning down at the rate that textiles are in the Colne Valley, or at the rate that the coal mining industry ran down in the South Wales valleys, it has a great effect on the people indigenous to those areas. It is always the older established communities that feel the harsher effects of industrial and economic change. This is the only certain thing that can be said about the valley, it is in the process of change. We are starting our work in the valley with the assumption that with the right conditions prevailing, most of the indigenous population, the people who live and work in the area now, would like to stay here. be capable.of sustaining the popul- ation, and which will provide a future firmly established in the roots and origins, the character and nature of the people from the Colne Valley area. Successive governments have seen no social detriment tn unemployed men and women with their families having to move sometimes hundreds of miles to get employment. Only the people directly affected by these wrenches Know the adverse change and disrup- tion involved in such a move. People who are caught in this tight economic trap have only two choices open to them, move, leaving friends, relatives and familiar things, or stay and remain unemployed or underemployed. In the Colne Valley many people over the past few years must have been con- fronted with this choice, or those that haven't, must be aware that they are likely to be within the next few years. Family and community break up from choice is part of accepted human nature, the young and restless have always fled the nest, but when people are forced by circumstances beyond thetr control into leaving their homes Britannia Mils Milnsbridge, rotting for and familiar areas, it is a social in- the last fow years. GOOD RIDDANCE ? Some people will be glad to be rid of the textile industry for once and for all, others will mourn its continuing decline. Those with first hand exper ience of mill working and its related social and domestic lifestyle, know that there were good times and bad times, good decades and bad ones. Their instincts may tell them that the present decline is for good, and that the industry has to decline even further, before it reaches a size where itcan stabilize itself. At the moment there seems to be a great many people with unwanted skills and a kind of pride that doesn’t seem relevant or valuable to new ways and methods of present day indust- rialization. Many factors affect people who find themselves unemployed or employed in a job that they are not really suited to, which may also entail commuting out of the area where al there roots and ties are. justice. If industry in the area con- tinues to be slow in evolving to a sub- stantial level, not only will the young be unemployed, they will be left with little or no choice regarding their own futures. If no industry takes the place of the very large gaps left by the mills, then sadly, it will not only be the young who will be forced to leave. INFORMATION NEEDED Wehavesomeplansofmilsand other derelict land and buildin- gs, but any kind ofdocuments, plans, gossip etc., that people think could be useful in the work,wouldbegreatlyappre- ciated. GEORGE MILLS. COLNE VALLEY NEWS. OCTOBER 1976 3 One of these prevailing conditions, in fact THE prevailing condition must be that they can AFFORD to stay here, which means there must be work in the area for both the old and young, men and women. There must be a type of industrial development which must 4 COLNE VALLEY NEWS. OCTOBER 1976 WHO HOLDS THE KEY TO THE FUTURE OF THE VALLEY? BY PETE MOLONEY When an area has a good deal of redun- dant buildings and plots, the easy way out for the people who own the land and buildings is try and get them designated for housing use. When a spate of il thought out estates start to spring up al over the place, the local authority can then start collect- ing rates again. This haphazard, juggl- ing of land and buildings has never bettered the lives of people living in an area. The people who work in the sphere of ‘community architecture’ have totally the opposite view to this, belicving that the people who live and work in an area should be the major concern when planning, and they should not Marsden Mills have inflicted upon them the second rate solutions designed with only profit or prestige motives in mind. THE CONSEQUENCES FOR THE PEOPLE OF THE COLNE VALLEY IF ITS COMMUNITIES ARE NOT SEEN AS ITS PRIMARY VALUE, COULD BE SOCIALLY DISASTER- OUS! COMMUNITY | ARCHITECTS OFFICE ; 1,NED LANE SLAITHWAITE So, how do such communities dictate their own futures? The solutions to many of the problems can start from the people up and down the valley, we believe it is they who hold the key to their own future. Small things which do not require a great deal of finance could be started fairly quickly, more ambitious schemes could follow, but we believe that without that initial spirit from the communities being the prime motivator, none of them would be worthwhile. There are ways and means by which owners of some of the derelict prop- erties and land could be approached, and through the formation of assoc- lations, societies, cooperatives or com- panies, groups of people in one form or another may be able to acquire the use of land and buildings in the area. The initial small scale ideas could indicate the potential of the area and inspire other people to get inyolv- ed. Some ideas will flounder for various reasons, others could be very successful, they could begin to decis- ively affect the development of the valley’s future in a way that brings out its dormant qualities. access to the motorways present a much more viable proposition to investors. Local and regional reports on the area refer to the Colne Valley’s potential as a dormitory area, which apart from being an insult to the people living and working in the area, is an extremely cynical and pessimistic way to view a place with such a vibrant history. The fact that the valley was at the very heart of Britain's industrial expansion in the 19th and 20th Century seems to have nd bearing on the way it isbeing ignored in the 1970's. The term dormitory means just what it infers, a place where nobody works, they just live there and go elsewhere to work. Through our office in Slaith- waite, any groups or individuals who want to seriously begin to discuss ideas and schemes can get together. People interested in NATIONAL CARDS ARE STACKED Working out solutions to the Colne Valley's problems is by no means easy. The fact the area has a good record for industrial industrial or commercial invest- relations is, in itself, not good NEXT ISSUE Itishardateat tosayif the paper wil published ona monthly, fortnightly or.every week basis. Whatever itwil need layout people, feature, sports, events and opinion writers. Plus cartoons, cross- words etc. ANYBODY INTERESTED IN THE PRODUCTION OF THE NEXT ISSUE CAN MEET THROUGH OUR OFFICE IN SLAITHWAITE. ment. Contrary to popular belief it seems highly unlikely that the government will ever impose tough enough import restrictions to prevent the closure of further mills. In short, at the present time the Colne Valley does not have a great deal going for it. By Rob Thompson enough to attract the necessary Though the valley runs parallel to the M62 Motorway, there is difficult terrain to Cross to get to it in harsh weather conditions. There does not seem to be any chance of an improved local or regional train service. The extinct mills present many problems to would-be industrialists, unwilling to invest the required amount of continuing and improving the money into buildings in an area, which for them, appears to have a very unpredictable future. The sites on the eastern side of Huddersfield with easier, flatter terrain and better newsheet can contact others through the office too. Nothing will happen unless people really Start taking an active part in their own futures. THE REGIONAL AND AGAINST THE VALLEY WITHOUT THE EXPLOITATION OF RESOURCES OR PEOPLE. EXISTING HOUSIN east HI agg BeULytsSs COULD BECOME A REALLY PLEASANT HOUSING BLOCK WITH ever GARMENT MAKING S KIDS PLAY CENTRE ETC. ~ COURTYARDS ON EACH PEOOR | EXISTING INDUSTRY :a FTOHRE KWIHDOSL:E RIVER AND CAMAL SIDE COLLD BE AND3 STOREY B S$ igs AND WAREHOUS/ THE EMPTY AREAS The river below Golcar-ill used land. (cont on page 7) COLNE VALLEY NEWS. OCTOBER 1976 5 OGRESS WITH AHUMANE CAUSE The Colne Valley’s own rise and fall highlights some of the effects mass industrialization can have on aplace. When the area began its boom in the 18th Century it destroyed the old established textile industry inNorfolk, Devon and Oxfordshire, At present the industries of the Far East are threaten- ing to destroy the industry in the West Riding. The economic market cycle keeps turning, irrespective of social consequences, and the one-industry areas such as the Colne Valley are very vulnerable, because all their eggs are in one very flimsy basket. In reality the Colne Valley today is the product of two very socially destruc- tive forces, one being that it developed around very big factory units, the mills, and the other that there were a great many of these concentrated in a relatively small area. So in local and national terms it would be suicidal to try and reinstate textile production in large mills and consequently it would be just as disasterous to find one industry of equivalent size to replace it. INDUSTRIAL PR Even though the part the Colne Valley played in Britain’s mass industrialization was significant, that growth must be viewed in the light of what we know about its effects today. The type of in- dustrial growth which we as a nation fostered all over the world, is being seen today as the major culprit behind the pollu- tion of nature’s systems and the ensuing scarcity of the earth’s raw materials. So it would be de- trimental to just say that indust- ry in the valley must get-back into full swing, without consid- ering the wider implications of the effects of large scale industry on the lives of people and the places they live in. On the global scale we are now exper- iencing shortages of most raw mater- ials. When textiles first began in the area it was because the wool from the local sheep was particularly suited to making the fabrics for which the valley became noted and because the water in the River Colne was particul- arly good for dyeing and bleaching that material. That was a long time ago, if the industry had stabilized at a size where it could supply itself locally, it would not have grown so cumbersome and virtually reliant for al its raw materials on importation. It would be fatal, in a radically changing world, to build up any new industries on a base that relies so heavily on imported material. Scarcity and cost would soon destroy such an industry today. LOUIS HELLMAN & GEORGE MILLS EVEMING ACTIVITIES COULD INCLUDE PRA SPORTS FACILITIES, MIGHT CLASSES. MILLS IN THE VALLEY BOTTOM-MILNSBRIDGE ONE IDEA Ste, MILL. | Metalworking 6 COLNE VALLEY NEWS. OCTOBER 1976 OUSES, SCHOOLS THEVARIOUSSKILLSINTHE <> AREA COULD COMBINE _<o= “AHorticulture -4Fish farming TO ALTER, THEN WORK FROM THE | CONVERTED 5 _4Waste pulping Recycling of { fabrics SHOPS OR STORES. Aa ++seeIFAGROUP OF PEOPLE CGULD RAISE THE CASH TO ACQUIRE ONE OF EMPTY MILLS IN THe VALLEY, TarndtSAN naetGov Se : USING THE RIGHT TECHNOLOGY, COULD FROM). { possible uses. HUMBLE BEGINNINGS GROW INTG GOOD Size|j CONCERNS. MODIFICATION OF THE MILLS FOR|. Woodworkin TEMPORARYUSESCOULDBEMADECHEAPLY| Plasticmouling 4 PLUS ALL THE 4ANCILLARY USES FROM THE MAJOR INDUSTRIES. WATER AND LAND WITH ldings.... -».WELL SUITED FOR CONVERS- 1ON INTO H bui AED dangig, METEH Xe oz =m “sE ice ow Be Z x - £ & ae Yj)»_off lo es us CS ae WS SSCS weds Popeater os 9 te ee yee Oore TAKE ONE EMPTY MILL CLA>,SeLaOgeerTHROARTIC ESKPON.OTMmill_ ponds°-WITH AFAIRLY ZED pek7 4,FL TU. SONS © MODEST OFTLAYASUBSTANTIAL INCOME EXCEL ROQROTHe OOK YONTM CAN BE OBTAINED eRe. FISH FARMING. BEN. PRo~ GREOULD v7 THIS INCOME COULD FINANCE MORE COSTLY NEarp OUC BRENKo, BE ACTIVITIES AROUND THE MAIN BUILDINGS. \,OTHER POSS- Pa. IBLE USES. “=< POTENTIAL STONES SE OF\SLAT IN THE br COLNE VALLEY NEWS OCTOBER 1976 7 OF E VALL INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS A HUMANE WITH CAUSE (continued from page5) LIED BY THE NUMBER MPTY MILLS The future industrial base of the Colne Valley must be very diverse, therefore because of the area we are talking about, just a six mile long strip of valley, there must be agreat number of small industries producing a great varicty of commodities. Loc- ally this means a great choice of work, which will act as a magnet for the young and restless in the valley, and greater financial stability. Greater stability because in a period of decline only specific kinds of industry will be affected, others will continue to flourish, which means only a few people will be affected, not the whole population of the valley as it is now. The drudgery and sheer inhumanity of the conveyor belt/factory system which we have developed through large industries, is at present under very severe scrutiny. People are now at last beginning to realize that the greatest resource on the planet, people themselves, should not be subjected to the sheer monotony and degrad- ation of most of our factories, they should be valued much more highly. The more humane methods of pro- duction and technology now being developed, which give workers a great deal more satisfaction than the factory system ever did and at the same time are much more aware of the scarcity COMFORTABLE AND PRODUCTIVE WORKSHOPS __ADISMANTLED MILL BUILDIN Small industries can change and adapt much more quickly, in real terms be more economic, and have historically meant a much more satisfying and rewarding life for the people working in them. rt Unlike the situation with textiles, where change meant large scale invest- ment because of the sheer size of the concern, small scale concerns are much more flexible and can adapt quickly to the ever changing methods of production. of the earth’s resources could be applied quickly to new small industr- ies. Cheap and long lasting forms of technology could be the life blood needed by the Colne Valley to get some small industries off the ground. An awareness of the real potential of the vacant land and buildings in the valley coupled with these new meth- ods, could give people a sustained and rewarding future in the area. To the average eye the Colne Valley may appear to be destined for a grim future, or it may be ripe for a tourist industry or a national industrial mus- eum six miles long! But a long hard look beneath this surface reveals a great potential which must not be undervalued, a potential of people, land and buildings which, if it were tapped could provide an extremely rewarding, even exciting next few decades. BY PAUL GORKA & BRIAN ANSON GOLCAR evolved and the nature and character of its other reason than convenience. At a time when everyone is be- ginning to realize the pitfalls of living and working in large cities, or in the sprawling New Towns where most new industry is tem- pted to go, it seems ironic that places such as Golcar or Marsden are being allowed to deteriorate through lack of investment in industry, agriculture and hous- ing. The size and character of If an old industrial area begins to get a second lease of life from being merely a retreat from city life, the place, with- in a very short space of time loses its fundamental quality, becomes as root- less and sterile as a new town or spraw- ling estate. If the people of the Colne Valley do not begin to take a real interest in its future, the local and regional govern- ments will get their way, and the area will become just another suburb. Social change take time, good or bad, but if the warning signs up and down the valley are not heeded soon, the process of deterioration could begin to accelerate. Many areas in towns, cities and villages all over Britian have | STOP PRESS settlements like these provide that delicate balance between town and country, urban and rural. The small towns and villages around most industrial areas have this quality. When it becomes uneconomic for the indigenous population to remain in their area, on leaving, their places for the most part, are taken by the more affluent rumoured redevelopment which makes never really got soing commuters wishing to get away from nearby conurbation or city, preferring the more pleasant environment offered by the small town or village. This in itself is not a bad thing, but when it begins to disturb the social/ economic balance of a place, the overall quality of that place begins to deteriorate socially. people panic and move, or because new development nearby acts as a magnet for people, industry and cash, leaving the other area with few attr- ibutes to make people want to stay there. The absolute pity about the Colne Valley is that it has so much potential as a good place to live and work, that no one seems prepared to recognize. People may consider it romantic to think of the Colne Valley as a good place to live, you could ask what is good about steep paths and roads, The vague and wooley attitude of the people running the meeting made it very difficult for the real issues to be discussed. They expressed concern for every problem, but hed no real policy to tackle any of them. Areas like the valley need some action, not sympathy. in Just a few short years changed from being vibrant and lively places into blighted and run down slums. This is because areas get some kind of curse on them. Either in the form of a The Public Meeting at Huddersfield Town Hall held on the 25th Oct, to discuss the West Yorks ‘Structure Plan' -MADE SUBURBS VILLAGES ARE NOT P THE VALUE OF VALLEY SETTLEMENTS COLNE VALLEY NEWS OCTOBER 1976 inhabitants evolved with it. Today we expect kinships to flower in estates planted in the middle of nowhere for na URPOSE back to back houses and old mills. Well in all honesty in themselves as Scparate entities, there is nothing good about them. The important thing is THAT IF A POPULATION HAS GROWN UP IN A PARTICULAR ENVIRONMENT, THEY CREATE IN AND AMONGST IT, PATTERNS, HABITS, AFFINITIES AND WAYS WHICH GIVE IT A UNIQUE QUAL- ITY. A quality which may be only in the eye of the bcholder, BUT A QUALITY WHICH MUST BE REC- OGNIZED AS BEING AN INCR- EASINGLY MORE IMPORTANT PART OF A SATISFYING EVERY- DAY LIFE. The buildings, together with the settlements they make up, would be totally dead without the corresponding nature and character of the people who have lived and worked amongst them. The two are insepar- able, Slaithwaite would be a totally different place filled with people from Leeds, just as Slaithwaite people would feel uneasy and out of place living in Leeds. This is not to say that Slaithwaite should surround itself with barbed wire and keep out allcomers, BUT IF THE DOMINANT NATURE CEASES TO DICTATE THE VILLAGE'S CHAR- ACTER, IT WILL SOON LOSE OF SLAITHWAITERS THOSE QUALITIES WHICH MAKE IT A GOOD PLACE TO LIVE. This applies to every settlement in the valley. It is up to the people living in the different villages to start working out ways of enhancing cach one, regretting their decline is not enough. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Editor George Mills ARC Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived John Murray Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource Oct-76 https://nam.maydayrooms.org/files/original/cc8b1ab9d50d3db5e0c6bb9aa1c7231e.pdf 9825b4c750514a575affe22a6991784b Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Brian Anson/ARC pre and post Harrogate Subject The topic of the resource Various documents describing ARC ideas and activities See below Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource ARC Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1975-1976 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Untitled Subject The topic of the resource 8 page paper including analysis of profession and 'Rules for Radicals' Description An account of the resource This is a rough draft of a peper which I'd like to have circulated generally. INTRODUCTION My whole approach, both analysis of problems and outline of tactics, is based upon the following: The profession of architecture is an integral part of our social and political system and thus any real change to the profession must make some alteration in the social and political system. There are two basic ways to look at the problem; either we can wait for the political Changes to occur that will have the desired effect on the profession, in which case we can'do our best' within the existing profession and put most of our energy into conventional politics, playing our part in speeding up the change. Or we can, as it were, look at the problem "the other way round': by seeing that the profession, like other group- ings, influence the society. In a strict philosophical sense you cannot have one without the other, its a type of ‘chicken and egg’ situation. I rejcct the first approach because taken to its logical conclusion, it’ says that no group, no individual can ever redg¢grect society and that instead we must all wait until the political system (whatever that mysterious force is) directs us. This is absurd, and history is our evidence. I came to the decision some time ago, that I would take the second approach, and the ramifications to me as an architect, were momentous; at once the problem was clarified and the solution, though difficult, at least presented itself, and I could build a reasonably solid foundation for my beliefs. My struggle as an erchitect was thereby much simplified. First of all I was able to be quite precise about my aim. I could consider a segment in society (my own profession) through the eyes of an expert; thus, to repeat, I could be more precise: did I want bits ef reform in this seqment? Did I want very radical change? or did I consider more was necessary? One of the natural aims in life is to get closer and closer to the truth of things. As regards society, unless you are a mature political theoretician, this can be very confusing especially in a society as comolex and subtle as ours. This has always been the dilemma of the citizen (and possibly explains why democraciys more often a word than a reality: "Suffrage gives you the right to vote but not the power". Lenin). But the citizen has another personality he is an ‘expert in his work. He spends most of his life at doing his work, and as he gets more and more experience he can become quite precise about what should, or should not, be done to improve the situation. And, taking this position, another opportunity presents itself: he can view his work role as being part of a society within a society. His profession, his trade, his job is like a miniature society reflecting in many ways the larger socicty of which he is a citizen. This is exactly the way I have come to view the profession of architect~- ure, while at all times realising that it is an analogy. Having done that, the similarities are striking: we have a government (RIBA). We have a community (20.000 registered architects and 8000 students) We have an educational system (38 schools of architecture) we have a system of laws and codes (registration and the code of conduct) we have a tradition and a history. So we have the striking similarities with our larger society, with one major difference which I shall come to shortly. But the analogy is with the worst aspects of our larger system: the ultra capitalism of the Tories and the extreme bureaucracy of Labour. Our educational system (with a single exception is state (RIBA) controlled. Our laws are | b ~Vfoinee topasi wae aziw Bors its‘Limde @MrEALIZ2 ai vp: ad2 tof .yisrode o3 figics: somoys a = % Signo SYgig <oCs me: a 49FO at0ace6 Madeye GefILoubS 2G. .iHOdst 3 ne ME ERA MSHS KS 995 ewei two .bslic wo £ ATS ai soiESsOcSqesxc hetsinorio evant of eAlll 6°T dotde zeegr se Yo 32: MpuCT & £L eBiat »vilatansp yoTRoudOR THI .82ig083 20 enilave Bor amaidotq Io cisvisns djod ,dosoteds efonw yi saqiwollot ort aoa boead et bas feiooe 1y0o to 31ag latpssai «cs zi stapsostiricous Io avieastorg odT else Jaum molsasiota oft o3 epasdo {sox vas enmid bas moteya [entsilog a2a ows SYS SieiT ,metey fax¢ Ome istooe e's ai noitstotis amos iszisziiog efit xot tisv aso ow wmoidozg efit ts dool oF aeyew olesd ,fOLeectiorg od¢ moO inotto Serteeh oft oved Lliw tad’ auoo0 oF espasio has aoiecsieiq patielxe ofd atrdiw ‘teed syo ob'as. ow saso dotdy at ni o2aqg ivo eniveta ,enisifod faaoitmevane osnit ypreite m0O to seom Jug maidoyd ofa jn doo] ,exsw Jf 6 .n69 ow 1D «+opmerin ofa gu epniboode “GROED 3— ouil .moksestorea off tedt oniseae yi :'bapoxr yaw tedto ofz’ tonuso yoy samoe isoldqoeolidg tolage s aI .ydslooe sda oomoullai ,apnat 2 "pepo 5n& qedoirio’ jo sqysy # esi ,terito ont suonsiw seao oved aoe? tsotpol a3i oF Gadtsd ocysood dosotags serit ais sootex Tt Jo2908 tpetebest x6 > f60 Leunbivibat on ,.cuorp of 2502 eyse =4 +SORSGRAVS Snosee ody ot63 Sirow I tadd ,ors omit amore solietosh of3 of oma 1 ,ayosmomom Stow ,Footinetws an eA om ot eaottroitiapy saz Bras ,fosorqgs s2iUoIIITIG deuods ,moitpioe aft Sas Bettiusio eaw aaideae aft some 36 oLssbawol Sifoe yidsnoes 2 2 bliscd Sivoo I bra ,}isett besnescuq tesef 35 »ootitiqnie foun ydotcHt? eew Jootl.o1s ap ee olppuqte ys .etctiad ya 12 Hbivoo I. .wis ym dyods eticste situn od of sids eaw I fis to Janda 20 @eyo od dpboudds (moisestor: mo ym) vtciovoe ai aAaompoe 5 sobienco esid gace I &r5 soaisure ose od Bios I yIsoqs4 ot ,aurs :;s3eguS as % bib xo fopasdo isoihss view tage I SiG ‘tanompoe cof st wr0etsy Io top oF ai otif ak amis isavgen ait te on $yxseeagosn os stom sasbicenos sesing yvtotooe a2buape1 24 ~sepatds to dturt eft of tozofs bas tosols onieuyInod yrov ad meso side ,asioidezosls Isoltifed oxetsa 6 ste vor avewic esd eid? .@xyo es oltdye bas xelemeo es ytiotvee 6s ai yilinioegrs ef yoriupoce, ydw enicioxe vidierod Ons) assitio sdf Io smmielib afd asod . azov a3 gapia ofg woy eovip spsxtine siydiisou s asd? Brow5 saetio stom vitisaeeton iteddoun and nesttic oy spa viniaod .*xowoy sdt gon tod eid patobh $5 o%if eitl to teo7 evrecs of .atoW atin omopod nso of GOMOEE GRO o¥om GAA ox ea9 ovyotdwmi of ond6b ed ,jon biivoie IO iD 8DOf:tLonstSo Yosansteg7o “2H .wisitooe «4 — "a sF9D2 aitoosacy 3Jood thos to “HO paige pao Pe etet vraektio fm, et at yin £ sd sre $i 4 t +1 g0rK is ei on ep of eb bas ,#tow tedw gyoda selosoite sHOLSansfe leer 2 O85 sabe Pialdute iS fpoe 000.98) yiiowemoo ¢ “eteaye Innoljysoubo as 3 ag ftetsatesy) 2 mo Bas awet Fo yuoteid 5 Sas aelsissz2 as -,CASIS}) taompusavon s eved cw } (@¢nobete COCe har esgostinor toteyea BR svi. ow iors To a VE ow f > aboo off Ss atid th are MOG oo, Uh oe a 4 pe ter i € 3 aR < vs a Che th at feu tacSensemogevefeoltsiinoyongItanutiswlisJeuqowSessent mo el yiogelr bas .GSaveds af eiaT .sy afoestib (ef sp4pt evroltseseyn BRIAN ANSON ARC The political power structure with the silent support of his own profession, persecutes him and throws him out. The monopoly blacklists not based upon the right to work but devised to perpetuate the government (RIBA) The general principle of our government is excessive free enterprise. Our privilege. The one major difference in the analogy is that our larger society, with all its imperfections, at least has an organised OPPOSITION. In our architectural society we do not and that is why at Harrogate, I described our profession as a one-party, Migtalitarian” State. The description is not inaccurate. The RIBA Nas Virtually supreme power over British architecture and it controls the most history is based solely upon important element of all, the schools. If it did not many of the schools would question its moral right to assess them. As it is they meekly submit to its decisions. Having taken the analogy this far, I can now look at change in the same manner. What have people done throughout history when faced with totalitarian regimes? I begin to suggest answers to this question in the section on tactics, but brief- ly the historic answer has been to form a tight-knit guerrilla group Then eventually initiate a mass movement, then the revolution is begun. This is exactly what ARC has done so far. We have the situation where all the outward statements concerning intention and the general aims of education point to a ‘creative’ art - in fact to THE creative art, but where the reality is a jungle which is controlled by a monopoly. We, like the rest of society, are forced to live within the physical environment which (1) we often detest, (11) which we have been trained to look at differently, (111) but which we are powerless to alter, even though we are the holders of a ‘certificate’, given to us by the public, which proclaims us an expert in the matter. It is this'monopolistic' situation which is at the root of our dilemma, and to which we should give our attention. It is as if, being trained as doctors we are then let loose in society to be driven mad by the sight of people being neglected and left to die, or being butchered by our own professional colleagues (the few who gained the power to practice) who quite frequently perform such butchery for money alone. There we stand, with knowledge of the disease and sound idea of how to treat it but everything prevents us acting. Yet some of us can't stand idly by and though lacking equipment and money we try to act: out of our efforts come some new answers and again we are beaten as our privileged colleagues take the fruits of our labour and use them to further strengthen their monopolistic position. There are many examples ©f this situation in our field. An experienced architect planner helps to design a project which out- wardly is progressive and for the social exterior it is the usual butchery. good. Beneath its glamourous He revolts against his own work and using it as a reference point begins to build up a power base amongst the local community. HOW THE PRESENT SYSTEM IN THE ARCHITECTURAL PROFESSION IS ABSURD At very great expense the state (through public taxes) trains us to become architects, then throw us into the system lacking the power to practice. ae vee $89pt 54 oid” 2 “Be 5. £5; i i alo gnedroget -binow aLlooros ger dive yLuoom $.#00L woa aso d tueodpyordt fe:aieoe PRSoeeee ‘ ve OF aU anisits (eoxuns cee ee e es : = : ‘ | wit ans peecapeen os ‘ oaks ea! se |. | } 7 entoed Iniog somoteIsy s es $2 gaden bast dsow fie tek qi are oF * stEris: aIOD pa root ot ‘Stdnoc 8 a ton -{ASER) Fnomesovop Sons priaaco%: fT. -epeiier= oe futo5d frioan He r+ixa ue own amo rgue GNF Staute-: i Sut] coatJ3oTae | ie oe olidue .Apunt) ‘aside a4 ay t or Yiov 3A HO 2. Te gotaporaell 2 Words . aody (etoosinons SmQood : e (24 SoReosta oF ees ~*~ ei o2 So. . ‘od baer BEOFOOD = es iggtee-todote Loo. ‘Peacieseiare wo ain0 SiPTIEoe t stiup odw feoisoric siz Sypodt $k $8933 aaa Yibl 9tta20 to :hooncixsatsaA “"p0mGg al yibtaw + ek SL AOLTSIRS a isau3 $25 oad rit Roc: age | fe 2gritcovedOW 2. ae Baten bbegeases ‘silitzeuew sia . | | | pe ee ftotsudovexodd $3. Pe "‘'.083a8nob2”’: aswog oat ebtoed mosaye “2 (tt. Ggai ay’ ! si CaS ais Lo Jmougue jtelie edd Wie suutoutte solicits teiiyiiiiibamn ail ateiivtosid yloqonom er? .tyo mic evorts Sie mtA us¥uscemise VAOk: isotayigq«isatdtiwoviiofpeorob"ballvysotsos"to‘devs.oe‘eatloH bontsitt need. over sw airy (£0) 48328" 933 sow tt) aaidy avnsninoy ivas .. , ove ceed te. og adoitowed -or4 3¥ Asiae dud (LEU) -yyismous?ihb jie Acol of yi ae ; ont ye au ot tov bir .igtenitisras’ = to te“Bilord eae >is ow sport Se oe jdaaoffatdxoqgroaeanaminipepack)dokdy him and he is jobless. Things are worse,not better. will-thia bring into the organisation? Still he continues and a great people's movement emerges to struggle against the political and professional power base. This power base fights savagely for several years against the people's movement until it has to admit defeat. The power-base submits to this defeat and uses all it's iniative to find ways to still keep essential control. The architect is by now worn out with the struggle and forgotten. Both the political and professicnal power-base now useS, 45 a foundation for their respective philosophies, the very concepts for which the architect was pilloried in the first place. The end result is threefold: The people's movement has been given a ‘sedative’ a sleeping-pill to calm it down. The powerbase is still there, much strengthened and with it's individuals holding higher office. The avehitect is still blacklisted, THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ARC AND NAM SHOULD BE BASICALLY IN NAME ONLY - AND IN CERTAIN MINOR VARIATIONS IN TERMINOLOGY. Bs The aim is to build a mass power base ~- to provide an alternative | to the status quo - at this stage there can be no other aim and everything must be subordinated to that end. Until we have developed that base we can confront no major issues in architecture we have nothing with which to confront anything. Until we have constructed that base our tactics will be quite different tc power 2 tactics . Thus every decision at this stage must be subcrdinated 3 to one point: how may recruits from the offices, the schools, etc., We are not spending our time here, in order to create an escteric ‘club' to discuss the malaise of architecture. We will not produce change in that manner: No, I repeat, we are here to build an ALTERNATIVE POWER BASE in architecture. Zs What prevents us having that base? Of course the RIBA - The only effective power base - (though we should pay attention to the fact that the ACA is moving up pretty fast - it was surely a master tactic on ACA's part to get one of it's past presidents elected "Chief-of-Staff" at Portland Place) We have a far greater need to 'capture’ the minds and hearts of the architectural body than have RIBA or ACA. Both these bodies have need of the mass support, but both also have tremendous (to us at this moment seemingly unshakeable) backing from the establish- ment, from historical precedent and from those who control the schools. SO WE ARE NOT HERE TO PLAY GAMES. The task is massive - but difficulty of task can, ironically, force us to think ef our strategy in the right manner. Remember that a handful cf people (ARC) faced this task - and the results are us here now. Tactics without 2 FPARGET are pointless - and a target which is mere idealism and scme woclly vision of the future - will not draw in the recruits necessary to form the POWER BASE. (opuyse eet ARES Lint OF ASttaGies ££ ee a262 2nwW agit oicoabsd“En i ae ae} %VROT SOU. i 2 ee ‘ehtmokad td astt tisiw tyo mtdw ~ ¥dHoO aM Au BHi YEIAOISAS SG escic -“YSOcOuIMISTureaeae“iM7 ASDWIaus Mise a t<atees er St: ioF @£ mis ed? ~ o8p eussde os oF over oy ifetre shivestq of 2. si JRBM- prt: aytave eonearaa.ontnox3aenar5D.owoeadtaedabeaolevss ti6 .enintyas tuoxines oF datdy Ags eatiup ed iLiw aottos ‘ge. rm oerte stat $= note toc 2a0l2to OCF Moai atic: Sao igreiaspzo: ereseb gw dake. White oven ow mtt33e5 iaof + fisy as 36 opision| ou Sone $543 me OBHEaD soubor ao ke i aIqHe 3 ain ‘Sag a ;' ithaacge: ton s1s..98 aonorie Sead ATI0F GVITAVAR dA fe g5woq sid? Psa thomevon bas tsstsh +LORSHOD coe vira HEAPS eg. ‘duis’ ‘+ab Wootsise eins ne eed (BSA) <298u won sesd-19 wor lshiabessto: a bas isot#ifoa ods soa 202 stqo> aon yitev. 6dt (soinggeen: aa avitosdest tisht 102 SAT 208% tetit oft at. itoliiea esw tSootidors ». 08 4£be~pe: geole f ‘ovisEioa' &foviy assd earl Ms : @'glqesgq sit es <iwobFialo eispbsarthrk ‘i ctiw bas bemordtonoiste. doum-.orscts [Lisa cs >f bt Bee a boseLL: J ei Amadtouog Sit isin’ onkblod jootidozs sit S Serpe i we. ig mM & re ie uw * ~se Action comes from REACTION and so the process starts until we have the existing powerbase (RIBA} actually working at PROVING to it's mass base, The Profession, that it is dedicated to the right things in architecture - As soon as this happens then we really are in business for creating an alternative ~ an opposition. The point is that the RIPA has never felt it NECESSARY to prove it4s existence - it has been so supreme it could literally take it for granted. To take the political analogy further: if the RIBA actually did represent the totalitarian government of a complete state (and in the narrow confines cf cur 'professional' society - that is exactly what it is). Then all ARC members would be arrested and incarcerated; some NAM members would be treated in a similar fashion and the rest would be watched. Both ARC and NAM would be proscribed organisations. The logic is that we have the freedom to create an architectural opposition - yet there has been no Overt reaction from the establishment (RIBA) because it realises that NAM has not yet devised the MEANS to elicit such a REACTION - In short we only TALK about our alternative =< «se do nothing. I have always accepted the fact, (though it worries me, as it implies a fear of our own language) That ARC's title and openly declared aims, might prove a stumbling block to the building cf a MASS movement. That is why ARC initiated NAM (which incidentally is not the same as controliing it or manipulating 1) but, to repeat, . ARC and NAM should be different in name only - the FUTURE VISION of the two movements may well be quite different, but their IMMEDIATE aims must be identical - otherwise why collaborate. It is my considered opinion that ARC has the right approach and further that the RIBA is more concerned about the Revolutionary Council than about The New Movement. This brings me to a final point before laying out some tactics for achieving AIMS: I would be frankly dead against our next Congress becoming a platform for discussing the actual work we do - What I mean by this is that I don't want to waste my time (nor, I believe, the Congress's) by relating what I have learnt from my community work in Donegal, Covent Garden, Bootle, Ealing or the Yorkshire Mill Valleys, nor the work any group has done on Scottish Olt, On Community Health, or the nation-wide research study on Local Authorities Power in Planning (LAPP) I DO NOT RELATE THIS GREAT VOLUME OF WORK TO IMPRESS YOU BUT TO HAMMER HOME at this stage that what we have done is NOT TEE POINT For neither do I wish to hear at the Congress (except of course in passing) what Rob Shelton has done in Leicester, what ASSIST has done in GOVAN or indeed what any of our community architect colleagues has done. Of course I wish to hear what they have leernt and to exchange notes with them but in a different context : perhaps reading their books or papers or over a drink with them. To organise the next Congress on these lines would turn it into a conference on Professional Community Activism. And that is not the problem - nor would we be anywhere near the first to organise Such an event. That is why I am also against inviting speakers, except from our own ranks or from those on our own contact list. t re-emphasise; at the next Congress I see myself as pert of 4 group trying to organise an ARMY to WAGE a STRUGGLE against an ENEMY. So I want to see us combining our vast joint experiences - x.. vnpia.-z i 7.* r ieee apes Bay .= ‘:.ag , .re¥2*.:s : 3as s> we; 5 “i é “ © . f or Gate ’ 3 etsy2 ; oe ot - . , f: sh -4. e,~.-“se2 ts oe < vs2r:é:fy,te3 ¥ qed ‘ a * eyaeee «; iito ‘.i ’ , 3 e s :=i2 <ie aoe> t f. = . sapbik :a irT:&. a:SchOMG, _wedgsm on rawMESS:yA 4f‘2: .; *< met bas. Solita o ee ea cWAR,By: i '. {eg : Roni ia 3 i273 . 4 &a, 5 - + =ae3 31 . P: peal f4 ‘je.,z- : e ialal ' j‘i: ce 2.7 ems odw' a2 Voge’ asdit~2patiscomta,spend0128235 :‘ xa "39f 3 ‘ i; a a od du = »x&t* eS * i <: 5 s‘ * - . si Frets ve ie as 2 cooy: a ‘ ye yak. £ . <<. ome <5: P voae ;=¢ . ‘9 2 : L * e " m8 : a c& : 4 ‘ os :x5a5 . f t as . 3 3;: ec eer oe asoe «= , -e =~ 5 « I have studied the nature cf struggle and been involved in community struggle for toc long, not to realise the far, far greater value of these qualities than something called ‘expertise’. Rule 2 ‘Power is not what you have, but what the enemy thinks you_have' When I was a war-time child in Boctle, we had one anti-aircraft gun in the town. This was mounted on a lorry, which was then @riven at high speed up and down the main road, giving = greater image of strength. Alinksy says, take the gyes, ears and nose. If you have a lot of people parade them before the enemy: if not, work on the and make a lot of noise: if you have neither then ‘stink the place up’. In the early ARC campaigns, though we weren't brilliant, we did have a certain boastful verve and the RIBA certainly thought we were much stronger than we were: it was this, I feel, that made Eric Lyons whom I had never met before, literally rush across a room at a functicn to speak (in most friendly terms) to me. I can think of no: other reason than that I was a member of ARC. We must devise ways to make our voice heard and to publicly to discuss TACTICS and STRATEGY. Now this would be a unique gathering. A body of professionals (and others) joining together; some with experience in the field, some without but wanting to act in the community fashicn. I feel a greater respect for and confidence in, 211 those who came to Harrogate and who I have met at the subsequent meetings, than for any ‘expert’ community activist, no matter how publicised they have been. And this is because the former hav e SINCERITY? DEDICATION & COMMITMENT, and it was these qualities that brought them to Harrogate, and which brings them still tc London £or the Committee meetings. I assure you that these are not emotive sentiments of mine, but highly rational. Just think for a while when it is that a struggle really is alive: when the 'people' begin to move. In this revolutionary struggle for a new architecture WE ARE TRE PEOPLE. SOME NOTES ON SAUL ALINE R¥Y'S 13 RULES FOR RADICALS WITH REFERENCE TO OUR OWN STRUGGLE Rute 1 'Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it’. I have outlined that, at this stage, our target must be the profession and specifically the RIBA. Doing this we will escape any woolly thinking regarding the political system of our society at large, though make reference to that society, Quite rightly we will not avoid this issue as cur overriding community architecture’. But moment is our detestation of places obstacles in cur way Again, as I have stressed, aim is to conceive a system what holds us together at the can collaborate in mcre expert we terms, and thus be far more precise about our struggle political system. This will, ‘professional’, in contrast waged in the larger political to the many ‘amateur’ campaigns arena. certainly we will continually the fact that our own profession to achieving community architecture. choosing to fight the RIBA, than if we were discussing literally make our struggle of an overall :o ‘”ay e oS: fwh76 JE : 1: ja,; .;- - ; 5 bei gen f pa ( ‘ io:. '; i " F ss oe~ es .ce 4 aig 3 _ ‘wi43 x:ce 3 }io : : : : -& ‘ i‘1‘4;f es ; 7 oe i:;F;eae. + :ne+: : ‘ bie2 F 5s a7oe } ae : 2) tow is ce ; et “ } wid . . : - . ’ a a id <:‘: hiss : ‘ +n i°a :aie : : tO oeee3 — ‘ aad : ‘ 33 | :4oe ‘ef ,- :. or Rule 3 Rule 4 Rule 5 Rule 6 -§= professional establishment. John Allen's reply to Clive Fleury's article in BD was partly right and partly disastrous. Right because it was to the point and humourous, disastrous because a letter containing over a dozen signature was slipped in at the bottom of a page and, I'm sure, hardly read by anyone. At this stage (our infancy) we must ba brash, bold, vulgar, petulant and angry. We must also be defiant, destructive and anarchistic. We know that many of these things we are not: on the contrary we are unified and rational. Don't be worried that this approach will be counter-productive: at this stage, and so long as the outsider thinks we are many, then on the contrary it will be a most productive strategy. One of the truths about our architectural community is that many of them yearn for something to brighten their dull lives....I can see that I am now leading into the third rule. I have already stated that our people (at this stage anyway: should we ever get close to a community architecture - our people would then include the public) and the architects and students who make up the profession. We must. not force our major political views on our fellows - though we should in no way deny them. If our aim is to get the salaried architects On our side then we should at all times, appeal to them through their position as assistants in offices: we must talk about things which they will recognise in their everyday work. Similarly, with students, we must spell cut their future, or lack cf it, under the present system. We can bring individuals to our side by appealing to-a sense of idealism, but we would be foolish to try to build a mass movement on that basis. "Never go outside the experience of your people’ sAlways_ try to go outside the experience of your enemy ' ‘Make the enemy live up to it's own book of rules! In every way this rule is the opposite of rule 3. Here we must use the principle of idealism at all times. It is some- thing which the power holders cannot handle. We know that, aS a generality. to have become a successful architect context of the monopclistic RIBR, means that idoalism (if they ever had any) has been ‘ditched! along the way by the Simply because it has been an obstacle to success. trying to do is mobilise the latent potential idealism existing even within the power-hase of the RIBA. In fact tc confuse the establishment, which knows only too well that we who oppose them always have the pessibility of exploiting the idealism existing within the general society. This rule is connected with the next. The RIBA can no more live up to it's own public statements (no matter how bland they are) than the christian church can live up to the inessage of Christianity - or, if you wish, the general run of British Marxists can live up to the message of Karl Marx. Alinksy states that ‘you can crucify tge enemy with this fuie', Ridicule is man's most potent weapon’ The enemy cannot stand ridicule especially if its developed to a high standard (The British Government's curtaig£ing of the early satirical TV shows is an example cf this). This in the successful, What we are - JT- rule has ‘spun-off' advantages - in that it also makes the struggle a little easier through laughter and convinces the public that we revolutionaries are ‘human’ and see the lighter “Side of lite, . Rule 7 "A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag‘ This is pure common sense - Our struggle against a powerful historically based professional monopely is really so massive, that unless we keep our senses ‘alive’ we will be worn out in no time at all. Any psychologist will tell us that we need such variety in our strategy. Furthermore an added advantage of a variety cf tactics, is that we will have a kind cf 'thermometer' to test our ‘health' from time to time. We cannot accept degrees of success and failure in our operations, and say.... all right we did that wrong; now on this next job we'll operate differently’, Rule & ‘A Good tactic is one that your people enjoy' This is a common sense rule again. Rule 9 "Keep the pressure on’ This rule relates to rule 7. We must create a situation where the RIBA just doesn't know what were going to do next - (or where we're going to do it). Keep them guessing and, most important of all, keep them ‘stretched’ in reacting to events. A basic tenet of radicalism is that action springs from re-action weees and SO -On;, Rule 10 The threat is usually more errifying than the action itself’ Alinsky gives many (some very humourous) examples of this rule. I'm sure there's a lot of potential in it for owr campaign. I recall writing and getting published in BD, a long and violent letter just prior to the RIBA celebrations for Architectural Heritage Year centred around The Festival Hell (Prince Philip and all that). I said I had some plans to do something at the event: several people, some rather urgently, tried to find out my. intentions though in fact, I had no plans. Another time in an article in BD, I stated quite clearly that by the end of the year ARC would have a cell in every school of architecture in this country. That provoked quite a’lot of reaction especially from ‘ex-colonel' type architects accusing me of being an urban guerrilla, and suggesting that mothers who paid fees to have their children taught by me at the AA, should look into my backgreund. If we put our heads together, we could really think up some threats to help our struggle. 2 Rule 11 'The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressSsure upon the opposition’ This seems just a repeat of rule 7, yet its worth repeating over and over again, as, in some ways, it's the most crucial rule. So long as there is pressure, there is action, so long as action, reaction, then more action and thus a sense of 'Life'. Without this our struggle is doomed. We will collapse through boredom furstration and apathy. On the other hand the enemy (RIBA) will continue to flourish on boredom and apathy. ea ah Lats Scaltilancerict ae? “3+ e e Bhasin 3;é = we ti« Sy rs a . Se : A et etae . Be ae a mud x etal coo bpd Pow SON. +s * Rule 12 Rule 13 Alinksy gives an an example Ghandi' technique of passive rrsistance, but I can't see how thi rule relates to our problem (Any suggestions?) 'The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative’ « what would you do?" >03 'If you push a negative hard enough, it will break through into e's counternart” This rule is crucial. Having got the establishment to concede something - we must then have some answers when they say "Now ohms A” sy ge ee Oa¢ ha wate Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brian Anson Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived John Allan Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource c Nov 1975