On a humid Monday in central London, a group of around 40 people gathered at St Ethelburga’s Centre for Peace and Reconciliation, a bizarre oasis of quiet hidden in the midst of the financial district near Liverpool Street Staion, to participate in a discussion on London and New York as neoliberal cities, held as part of the London Social Forum. Mostly architects, students and academics, as well as those involved in grassroots campaigns in various parts of the capital, the audience listened to short talks by Kim Moody, an American academic and writer with a background in union organising, and Doreen Massey, a leading thinker in critical geography currently based at the Open University, before an audience discussion took place.

Kim Moody focused on the complete transformation of New York in the post-war era from a predominantly blue-collar city with very strong social democratic and left wing traditions, to a city almost totally dominated by finance and real estate developers, a city for the rich. New York in 1945 had been the largest manufacturing base in the United States and had a City Council which presided over a welfare system that included free health care, subsidised public housing, free universities and cheap transport.

This all came to and end by the late 1970s and ‘80s when the business elite became increasingly involved in the running of the city. Under the right-wing, free market presidency of Ronald Reagan, several pieces of pro-business legislation were passed in New York, resulting in deregulation, welfare cutbacks and a sharp rise in real estate development. This was the beginning of what has subsequently come to be termed neoliberalism: the economic and political doctrine that puts the interests of business and the rich above all else. During the 1990s, the role of New York mayor became increasingly powerful, particularly under Rudolf Giuliani, the person most responsible for handing the city over to real estate developers, while criminalising and incarcerating the poor.

Today, New York is characterised by shocking inequalities of wealth, as well as social and racial polarisation. While Manhattan bankers and developers lead luxury lives and are paid in the millions, the outer borough of the Bronx is now the poorest in the United States. This process is not taking place unchallenged, however. Moody emphasised the fact that working class New Yorkers and Latino workers in particular, are fighting back. 100,000 people are in tenants’ organisations alone. Yet the potential for mass mobilisation and resistance is held back by the fragmented nature of the various social movements.

Doreen Massey pointed to similar processes taking place in London, following the breakdown of the post-war consensus and the emergence of Margaret Thatcher at the end of the 1970s. The 1980s was a decade of intense political battles in Britain: the miners’ strikes, the emergence of radical elements within the Greater London Council, and uprisings in inner-city areas by frustrated unemployed young people, both black and white. Massey pointed out that there were also significant differences in the neoliberal transformations of the two cities. For instance, regional inequality between London and the rest of the UK is much more marked than in the US case. Also, while London has managed to maintain (relative) harmony between the myriad ethnic groups that comprise the population, the role of London as the premier cosmopolitan centre of Europe could come under threat in a city increasingly polarised between a new elite of super-rich, and low-paid workers priced out of decent housing by the ridiculous salaries of bankers and traders in the City.

The second half of the meeting focused attention on London-based initiatives to resist the complete corporate takeover of the city, such as an Eco-village project in Hackney, the campaigns to save Ward’s Corner market in Seven Sisters and Queens Market in Newham. The primary concerns of the audience were the acute shortage of cheap housing in London, and the implications of a conservative mayor for policing and crime.

Several things stand out from the meeting. Firstly, there is a need to expose the neoliberal project for what it is: a tool of class struggle by the global rich. In order to resist this, it is necessary for a radical critique that de-legitimises the dominance of major banks and corporations in all aspects of our lives, to present it not as an inevitable or ‘natural’ process, but as a deeply ideological one with clear beneficiaries and losers.

Secondly, there is a need for coordinated grassroots organising which not only shouts a defiant ‘NO!’ but also presents alternatives. Massey gave the example of the alliance under Ken Livingstone with Chavez’s Venezuela (although Livingstone is himself deeply complicit in the increasing dominance of the City in London). Kim Moody made an interesting point about the tendency of US grassroots campaigns (particularly those made up of migrant workers) to be more radical and explicitly anti-capitalist, arguing that there really is no space for genuine dissent within mainstream US party politics. In comparison, UK-based groups of this kind are sorely lacking.

Thirdly, while initiatives such as the London Social Forum are a very good idea in theory, the audience at the poorly-advertised event was not nearly representative of the diversity of London, which highlights the fact that there is an urgent need to build alternative spaces which genuinely address the needs and realities of ordinary Londoners from all social and ethnic backgrounds, spaces that begin to bridge the gap between academics, activists and the people of London who are too busy working low-paid jobs to attend conferences, but who are most at risk from being displaced from their homes by the expansion of the City.

To find out more about some of grassroots campaigns defending markets from destruction in London, check these websites:

www.friendsofqueensmarket.org.uk

www.wardscornercommunity.org

http:opendalston.blogspot.com

www.gamesmonitor.org.uk