EAST END EYE 1
Autumn 2009

Taking a Stand!
Margaret Jaconelli, the last resident of Ardenlea Street

As the Centre of Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) have shown, when a big new development is attached to a major sporting event, such as an Olympics or Commonwealth Games, people are often forced to move from their homes and relocate their businesses.
The Olympic Games alone has displaced over two million people from host cities around the world through demolitions, higher rents and gentrification (the displacement of poorer residents to make way for wealthier, higher tax-paying residents).
Whether the Games will bring benefits to an area over the long term is hotly disputed, but the inevitable reality is that individuals, sometimes whole communities, will be displaced to make way for new facilities. The residents of Dalmarnock (an area which has suffered from decades of under-investment) are currently bearing the brunt of this process of displacement to allow Glasgow to host the 2014 Commonwealth Games.
Recently, a Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO) was served by Glasgow City Council on remaining properties not already in Council ownership which are earmarked for demolition to make way for the building of the Athlete’s Village. This includes properties in Ardenlea Street and a number of shops in Springfield Road.
Before a CPO is served, the Council are required to `negotiate’ with property owners and come to a just and reasonable compensation for their property. In the case of Mrs Margaret Jaconelli and her family, who are long-time residents of Ardenlea Street, this has not been the case. As she watches the land across the road from her being sold for millions of pounds per hectare, Mrs Jaconelli is still waiting for a reasonable offer for her property from the Council, and for a proper negotiation to take place.
She and her family have been the only occupiers of the last remaining tenement building in Ardenlea Street for the past six years. The winters are cold and damp with empty flats and dereliction all around. The family are unable to take a holiday for fear of leaving their home vacant. Mrs Jaconelli and her family remain, not because they want to, but because the Council has failed to provide proper compensation. They would much prefer to have been settled in a new home, and for all the uncertainty to be over.
Many of the businesses around the corner in Springfield Road are facing the same problem, with long delays in compensation forthcoming and the prospect of a legal battle ahead to achieve some kind of justice.
The Council have not replied to the various letters of objection to the CPO for the Athlete’s Village site and it is difficult to say when Mrs Jaconelli and others affected by the CPO will be able to get on with their lives. Meanwhile, they have to live in a derelict area which is deteriorating day by day. The Council should play fair, and give these residents what’s due to them.

What is The East End Eye?
The East End Eye is the voice of Glasgow Games Monitor 2014,in addition to its online blog.
Glasgow Games Monitor 2014 is a group of residents, activists and campaigners who are concerned about the effects of the regeneration in the East End of Glasgow through projects such as the Commonwealth Games and the Clyde Gateway Initiative.
We aim to provide clear and critical information regarding issues which affect our neighbourhoods and communities. We aim to show that these projects filter down through society to exploit those most at risk, and we intend to hold to account those responsible for such decisions.
We are not affiliated with any political groups and are not afraid to offend when the truth needs to be told. If you know of anything which you feel should be reported in the East End Eye then please get in touch at:
[email protected]
For details about how to support the East End Eye, and to donate to future issues, please turn to the back page.

Green Games or Green Wash?
New roads will increase CO2 emissions by over 250,000 tonnes a year
The bid for the Commonwealth Games 2014 has committed the Council to a Green Games - the City council has to be seen to be green. The Commonwealth Games organizers have made much of their environmental credentials leading up to 2014, but do they really come up to scratch?
Given that Glasgow City Council is steaming ahead with yet more destructive motorway projects, their
promises looks more like ‘green-wash’ than ‘green games’ to us.
The Scottish Government recently admitted that new major roads will increase carbon dioxide emissions by more than 250,000 tonnes a year by 2025. Over half of these extra emissions will be produced by the
five-mile M74 northern extension – a key ‘legacy’ component of both CG 2014 and the Clyde Gateway Initiative.
The M74 motorway, “Britain’s most expensive road”, will cause environmental and economic havoc. Coming in at a whopping £700 million pounds, this “concrete monster on stilts”, works out at over £80,000 a metre!
All this disruption, pollution and expense will come despite the recommendation of the Scottish Government’s own independent enquiry that the road should not be built: “...this proposal should not be authorised, and...the various orders should not be confirmed”. Never mind! In an amazing ‘democratic deficit’, the Scottish Executive went ahead with road anyway!
The £80 million East End ‘degeneration’ route will only add to the problems of severance and pollution, despite vocal support against it. Forget all the ‘green-spin’, the overall context for sustainability in the East End has already been laid down in Glasgow’s notoriously outdated, environmentally noxious roads policy. It will take more than a few cycle lanes and low-carbon vehicles to make Glasgow a ‘dear green place’ again. We need a revolution in transport policy.

Commonwealth Utopia - are you in the picture?
Of 1,400 houses, 1,100 will be for private sale, 300 will be for rent. What percentage will be affordable for low income families?
Duty bound to justify the enormous expense and disruption in the East End for less than two weeks of TV spectacle, the Commonwealth Games promoters are keen to stress the importance of a Games ‘Legacy’. Much has been made of the fact that the Commonwealth Games Village, constructed as a ‘global showcase’ for athletes quarters, will later be ‘retro-fitted’ into a new riverside housing neighbourhood said to benefit the local population.
Glasgow City Council Leader, Stephen Purcell, has claimed that the Village will be one of “the greatest providers of opportunities” before and after 2014:
“After the Games, the Village area will become a vibrant neighbourhood, a flagship for the regeneration of Glasgow’s East End and a visible reminder of the legacy of the Games.”
Yet the hype requires a reality check. Of the 1400 houses, 1100 will be for private sale and only 300 (or 21%) will be for rented housing. More worrying still is that despite earlier reports that these 300 houses would be socially rented, this has now been dropped and it appears they will be for private rent.
Meanwhile, the City Council have chummily offered to subsidise the Village site for developers by making the land available at nil cost. This reduces the developers’ initial borrowing requirements, and increases their potential for profit - at our expense and our risk.
The Council has made it clear that in the current economic climate it will be ‘open for business’; ever ready with ‘flexible’ arrangements to bail out large companies and multinationals as they ‘struggle’ to make a profit – bailed out just like the banks by the UK government. This is the now familiar formula of ‘public pain, private gain’.
While Glasgow City Council subsidises developers and homes for the wealthy in one of the most disadvantaged areas in Britain, it is deeply unlikely that the 50% of the local East End population who live in socially rented housing will be able to afford to buy or rent a home at the Village. Competition will be severe.
What’s more likely is that the ‘showcase’ homes will be targeted at some of the 20,000 people the Clyde Gateway Initiative hopes to attract to the area over the next 25 years with the help of Commonwealth Games hype.
Gentrification is the name of the game.
Good public housing has never been gifted to the people of Glasgow – it has always been fought for. The time is now to build up existing and new tenants and residents networks who can fight for a quality housing deal.

Glasgow’s Guinea Pigs: Welfare to Workfare?
Reforms to have detrimental affects on unemployed and on workers
In February 2008, City Leader, Stephen Purcell, promised to focus on tackling health and unemployment in Glasgow. But recent reports show that Glasgow has the highest real unemployment level in the UK with at least 60% unemployment in many areas of the East End.
This might seem like evidence for why the new Welfare Reform Bill is needed to push people back into employment. Yet this attitude of pushing -- but not helping -- people into work has led many anti-poverty campaigners to highlight the detrimental affects the new Bill will have on both the unemployed and on workers in Glasgow.
Steven Purcell is towing the Party line that people no longer have the right to work but have a duty to work, even if it's for a humiliating £1.50 an hour under the new US-style workfare scheme.
When presented with information exposing the levels of deprivation in the City, Purcell replied: ‘...every six months...we get another one of these reports... but the bulk of them are things we are beginning to do in the city since I took over as leader of the council two years ago.'
With Glasgow's notorious unemployment levels this begs the question: What has Purcell been doing for the last two years?
Meanwhile, from 2011, Glasgow will be a guinea pig for the government's new workfare scheme. The organisations that ‘match’ workers to jobs will be ‘incentivised’ by cash rewards, meaning that profits, as ever, will come before people regardless of whether the job is suitable or not. The new Welfare Reforms will primarily benefit the organisations and private businesses who are subsidised by cash handouts ("incentives") from the state - not the unemployed.
The proposals do not look at the suitability of the current benefits, nor do they take positive steps towards helping parents and carers back to work, such as providing child care options. Recent Labour Reform has also been independently shown to overestimate the 'supply side' (more workers, less good quality jobs) to redress the jobs shortage.
Studies also show that taking on insecure, low paid work is more damaging than worklessness itself! Wage levels are simply not high enough to ensure a "living wage". SO the Bill actively promotes a situation where disadvantaged groups are bounced between working-poverty and workless-poverty.
Workers should also remember that an attack on welfare benefits is an attack on low-paid workers too, as it increases competition in the labour market and helps to suppress wages.
This Bill will not lift people out of poverty but will instead drive them towards more hardships and increasingly desperate measures, while private companies make huge profits at our expense.

Displacement: The Name of the Game
City Council trample over Dalmarnock residents
A Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO) is a legal function that allows city councils or other bodies to obtain land or property without the owners consent. On 12 January 2010, objectors to a CPO in Dalmarnock, for the Athlete’s Village site, heard that their complaint had been rejected and that the CPO had been approved. This means that the owners of properties in Ardenlea Street and Springfield Road who objected to the CPO, are now going to lose their homes and shop premises. The objectors were arguing for the right to a fair market rate for their properties - something Glasgow City Council (GCC) are supposed to provide – but now it looks like the City Council will be able to buy them off on the cheap with the backing of the law. During the hearing, objectors talked about the City Council’s “dereliction of duty” before issu- ing the CPO. The property owners, many of whom would prefer to have moved a long time ago, had attempted to negotiate a price voluntarily with the Council. But when they contacted them, they were told there could be no negotiation. Then they heard that a CPO had been lodged. Now they have to wait again (in a site of escalating dereliction) for the Council to make an offer for their properties.
The Reporter in the hearing noted that he had ‘sympathy’ with the position of the objectors and called for the Council to take a pro- active stance to address the problem. But the alleged ‘public benefit’ of the Commonwealth Games apparently outweighs these interests. CPO’s are supposedly, or so the government guidance says, only to be used where there is a strong ‘public interest’ benefit in a public authority obtaining the land to use for the wider good. In reality, CPO’s are increasingly used as a tool to ease and legitimise land grabs and the transfer of land and property ownership from ordinary people to large development companies working on an enormous scale.
The related M74 road development is a perfect example. When the Scottish Executive’s local independent enquiry found that the road “should not proceed”, the decision was immediately overturned by the then First Minister. He argued that the ‘wider public benefits’ of the road created ‘exceptional’ circumstances which meant that the road should go ahead - despite a democratic process rejecting the road on the grounds of negative health, economic, environmental and community severance impacts on local populations.
Back in Dalmarnock, the Athletes Village will eventually create 1,200 homes for private sale and 300 for private rent (the ‘promise’ to provide 300 ‘socially rented’ homes has now fallen by the wayside). In an area marked by deep poverty, this deficit in affordable housing provision surely can’t be seen as part of the wider ‘public good’; neither can riding rough-shed over local objections to the CPO. But then then Dalmarnock isn’t Disneyland, and maybe the ‘public good’ isn’t the point after all. Time to wake up and smell the coffee?

Anyone Fancy a Kick-About ?
Where has our free football gone?
Have you ever walked by one of the many neglected urban public football pitches around Glasgow and thought it reminded you more of the news footage from a war-torn country than a local space for playing the beautiful game? The east end has its fair share of these football pitch- come-bomb sites: within a few square miles, areas such as Calton, Dalmarnock and Parkhead all exhibit signs of urban decay. Yet this stands in glaring contrast to the millions of pounds thrown at the 12-day TV extravaganza known as the 2014 Common- wealth Games (currently over budget by £81m, with four years still to go!).
This is a sad sporting irony. Basic concrete or ash playing surfaces might not compete with the stadiums of Parkhead and Ibrox, but they have played their part for generations of youngsters and oldies alike who have made use of free ‘on your doorstep’ facilities. These modest public places are not to be scoffed at; almost 1 in 3 Glaswegian households is with- out a wage earner and amidst the worst recession in years, the appeal of affordable and accessible forms of entertainment and leisure are foremost in many peoples minds. Not to mention the health benefits: Glasgow has struggled with the ‘sick man of Europe’ tag for decades and the shocking under-investment and neglect of existing public facilities by successive councils has done nothing to improve this situation.
You may have heard talk of the Commonwealth Games ‘Legacy’; a supposed ‘trickle-down’ effect for the local population and its economy in terms of jobs proposed and houses. 1,500 Yet, homes only 300 from of the the are athlete’s planned village for rental in Dalmarnock housing on the market - already backsliding from the initial ‘promise’ that these houses would be for socially rented ‘affordable’ housing (e,g. Housing Associations). And what type of jobs are on offer? Jobs to sustain communities, or just more low-paid, temporary contract and service sector jobs which are a by-product of the ‘conference city’ Glasgow has become? The question arises: whose legacy? A legacy for local people? Or a legacy for private developers and businessmen?
But it’s not all doom and gloom!
There are positive responses to council cutbacks and the corporatization of our ‘common good’ land. Across the city, in the Wyndford scheme of Maryhill, locals have been actively taking responsibility for their community by renovating the existing football pitch within the housing estate. The hard work of local School Activities Programme’ (ASAP), run by Stephen Koepplinger (who has a track record of bringing decrepit sports facilities back to life), should embarrass those councillors who make lofty promises of ‘sport for all’.
Yet, instead of investing comparatively tiny amounts of money (the Wyndford project requires only around £1,000) in existing free facilities, these same councillors are busy smoothing the progress of private business with multi-million pound contracts for ‘regeneration’ projects, which are usually just gentrification projects (land grabs led by private developers).
Instead of more privatisation and ‘elite playing fields’, why not imagine a future where our kids are out playing in our own communities, not fighting in them! Football is a game for everyone, rich or poor - and we want to keep it that way. Rangers and Celtic started from humble beginnings on Glasgow Green, a public green whose freedom of use was fought for over the years. The same grassroots activism and community involvement has to be organised now if we want a chance to give to flourish future generations – the inspiring community initiative of the Wyndford residents and Stephen Koepplinger point us towards that future.

Work and Training for Poverty
Over 40% of Glasgow households live below the poverty line. A recent report by Andrew Cumbers, Gesa Helms and Marilyn Keenan, argues that work and job training policy is ill-equipped to deal with the reality facing the unemployed and low-paid workers. The report states that the “the norm” in Glasgow is “becoming a low wage and casualised work environment, or an unregulated and degraded training system”. The report outlines the lamentable context first. Glasgow exhibits some of the worst levels of poverty and social inequality in Western Europe: over 40% of households in Glasgow live below the poverty line.
The shift from manufacturing to service sectors has been accompanied by, “the decline of full-time work and the growth of a part-time labour market”. Part- time employees typically have fewer employment and pension rights than full-time employees as well as lower union member- ship (resulting in lower wages). Employment growth recorded in the ‘boom years’ actually represented “degraded” and less well- paid work. Even the growth in female employment was typically in “low paid, part-time and casual work”. Many women now have to work two jobs to make up the difference.
The economic recession is intensifying the situation. A growing number of graduates are forced to compete for non-graduate level jobs (e.g. call centres), putting pressure on scarce employment opportunities. So called ‘welfare reforms’ will add further downward pressure on wages as poor people are thrown off benefits and forced into ‘workfare’ schemes and low-paid work. The report highlights the difficulties that young people experience in finding decent training and job opportunities: there were 2,000 applications for just 75 Modern Apprenticeship places in 2007. And the lack of training regulation means that, “young people are open to increasing exploitation and sometimes abuse by employers”.
Volunteering is seen as a positive step for young people; the 2014 Commonwealth Games, for instance, is seeking 15,000 volunteers. The report concedes that volunteering may be beneficial in some cases, but argues that these schemes, usually involving up to 15-16 hours a week on basic benefits, “in a broader sense have an exploitative aspect to them”.
The report summarises by arguing that young people need to be paid ‘living wages’ (a wage that allows an existence above the poverty line) in return for paid work, and given properly regulated training and work placements. That is the least we need to demand.

Barras Threat
Stigma a ruse for gentrification
Plans are afoot to “rebrand” the “closure-threatened” Barras Market as a “specialist destination”; with the Barrowlands music venue as the “trump card” in City Council plans to ‘regenerate’ the area. In the plans, the Barras cafes, stalls and pubs would be marketed together with the Barrowlands venue in a “Cam- den-style regeneration package”.
Councillors say that the moves could boost visitor numbers, and contribute to the expansion of the ‘Merchant City’ into the East End. Councillor Ryan - who has already put the boot into Paddy’s Market - has said that if the Barras moved away from it’s “seedy reputation” and became a “quality market”, it could be used as a “good pull for tourists”.
But we’ve heard all this before haven’t we? The City Council - with the unstinting support of the Glasgow press - are intent on stigmatising the area in order to justify property development and gentrification (the removal of poorer communities for higher rent and rate paying incomers). Running an area down brings land and property values down so that developers can buy cheap and make a tidy profit.
When Councillor Ryan talks of the Barras Market’s so-called “seedy reputation”, he is only doing the same hatchet job he did on Paddy’s Market with the despicable Councillor Matheson. Paddy’s Market was shut down to make way for gentrification and the ‘arts-led property strategy’ in the ‘Merchant City’.
Ryan said: “What we want is to create a mini-Camden Market in Glasgow city centre. We see this as a tourist destination, an arts and crafts market and a cultural venue... we will not be dragged down by a blight which detracts from our efforts to regenerate the city...Paddy’s Market does not fit with that ambition”. Meanwhile, Matheson infamously called the market a “crime-ridden midden”, and was a key force in it’s closure.
Snobbery and disdain for Glasgow’s poorer citizens was expressed most brutally by Ryan: “It is the death-knell for the anti-social element. We want to move all that out. We want to up the bar of what we expect of a market right in the heart of the city. We want to bring in a better class of retail there”.
An Evening Times editorial recently warned Barras traders that if they don’t “clean up things” at the Market, it might “go the same way as Paddy’s”. By stigmatising the Market as “criminal” and “seedy”, the intention of the City Council is the same as it was at Paddy’s Market – to get rid of the working-class from the city centre, extend the middle-class enclave of the branded “Merchant City”, sterilise the city centre for tourists and shopping, and help subsidise the property market for developers by making the area pleasant for affluent house buyers.
Divide and rule is the oldest trick in the book. In a city with 40% below the poverty line, people need cheap goods and a place to socialise and chat. The Barras is one of the few public places where working-class people still gather in the city centre. The problem is not the people who are forced to bend the rules to make a living, but the Councillors who have flogged the city centre for property development. No one is saying the Barras doesn’t need change, but Camden is an expensive yuppie market for tourists - change must come from the people who live and work in the Barras area, not from above.

View from the Ground
Interview with Billy Gold, publican of the Heilan Jessie.
What has happened historically in the East End?
The east end has been abandoned for years and years, and even from the view of commercial exploitation and tourism, the council has slipped I think. We’ve got drug rehabilitation, alcohol rehabilitation dotted all over this area. How long does it take the council to start looking and say - ‘we need practical solutions’. From Glasgow Cross to Park- head Cross there’s virtually no employment of any sort for any- body. Drive down through most of the Gallowgate; it’s just derelict shops, waste ground, horrible houses; just horrible conditions for anybody. So, I do think in the last 25 years, we’ve not moved forward an inch. We’ve not seen any tangible improvement.
What about talk of a “Camden Style” regeneration package for the area?
That sort of thing has been tried before...a couple of our councillors have been jetted to places like Italy and they’ve all come back with this talk about cafe culture. This is northern Europe! Cafe culture doesn’t work where it rains all the time and is cold all the time. Maybe it’d be nice to have a couple of nice spaces for a beer or a nice cup of coffee or whatever but it seems to me that’s all the Councillor’s want, to make things more up-market...
I think there’d be a danger if they gentrified and made the Barras kinda ‘arty-farty’; there’s a grave danger that it would alienate the vast majority of the people who work in this area if it got too gentrified. There’s also the danger, if people move into the area and start making house prices ridiculous, that local people fortunate enough to have a job can’t afford to buy a house in their own area and you have folk moving out. And that’s what hap- pens if you’ve not got a resident population with a history. You have transient people living here, folk living here cause it’s hip to live here. That could damage the area as well.
There’s been talk of extending the ‘Merchant City’ (MC) east into this area. How do local people feel about the MC?
The MC’s nice, and people - everyone in the pub - refers to this area as MC East, ‘ooh...we’re Merchant City East!’ and it’s a standing joke. I think one of the things that ordinary people in this area think is, “the MC’s no for us, its a wee bit urbane and no for us and there is a sense of alienation”. There’s a wee tiny bit of resentment that some guy has woke up one morning and has come in and stole a bit of Glasgow. Somebody has stolen a big bit of Glasgow and replaced it with a big bit of Edinburgh. I think people would resent this area becoming ‘MC East’ if they were just going to be the waiters and the sweeper up’s, where all the beautiful people will come in and colonise the place. I think there would be a dynamic there and it wouldn’t be very healthy.
What would you like to see here?
I’d like to see some of the stigma of living and working in this area taken away. I’d like to see employment; I’d like to see some of the cash that gets thrown about going towards bringing employment into this area. Not just a few extra people in McDonalds; I mean real employment in this area. If I could have one wish, I would say ‘get some employment into this area and get rid of all the big gap sites, the big overgrown gap sites’.

Battling Betty
15/01/1931 — 05/05/09
Betty McAllister was a potent mixture: formidable woman standing up for the rights of her neighbours in Calton, PR genius, and loving wife and mother. Her seafood shop, which used to be in Bain Street, was her ‘office’ from which she held court, fighting the injustices she saw in her beloved Barras and ‘The Calton’.
Betty’s work in the community started when she got involved with the regeneration of housing in the East End in the 1980’s, setting up the first resident’s association in Calton. In that role, she helped stop the authorities from putting in ‘Lego boxes’ and knocking down the existing houses that are part of the area’s history and heritage
Betty’s plans for Calton ranged from the very practical ‘Betty’s Club’ at the Calton Neighbour- hood Centre which provided after school activities and day trips for local kids, to matters of personal pride for Calton, including fiendish plans to repatriate the statue of cartoon character, Lobey Dosser, from the West end of Glasgow and return him to his ancestral home in Calton Creek!
Always ready with stunts to draw wide attention to issues; including road traffic safety, the closure of St Mary’s Primary Schools, and the deterioration of the People’s Palace, Betty’s motto is one which still rings true today: “If you shout loud enough, they’ll listen”.
Depending on where you stood on the issues, Betty was either a ‘champion’ or ‘argumentative’. In 1990, when she heckled Pat Lally – then the despised leader of Glasgow District Council - about proposed developments at Fleshers’ Haugh on Glasgow Green, she won widespread applause for speaking truth to power.
She was famous for publicly cutting down politicians who think they know more than the ordinary folk who have grown up, lived and work in their areas. Her daughter Daniella, said of her mum: “She wanted to make a difference and she didn’t want city planners telling her what they were going to do - she was going to do it”.
It was a sad day when this strong-willed, resourceful, in- dependent woman was lost to the Calton. There isn’t one born every minute who’ll go up to Thatcher and say to her face: ‘Mrs Thatcher, you can stick the poll tax where the sun don’t shine’ !!!

Whose Legacy in Dalmarnock?
The problems with ‘regeneration’ through mega-events
‘Legacy’ is the government buzz- word of sporting mega-events. The competitive tendering process involves producing a ‘legacy document’ and cities now compete against each other to claim what fantastic legacy benefits will arise from hosting Games events. The idea is that at least some of the hundreds of millions that get spent on hosting a Games event should go towards, “a lasting social, economic and sporting legacy”. But remember Thatcher’s idea of ‘”trickle-down”? No need to worry if city financiers and speculators are making millions, because it will all ‘trickle-down’ to the rest of the population, she said. We know it didn’t happen then, and it won’t happen now.
The Glasgow 2014 Games organizers admit on their website that previous Commonwealth Games events have failed to achieve their legacy claims, but that Glasgow will be different. We beg to differ. From the evidence we’ve gathered in this Dalmarnock special issue, patronage and cronyism towards businessmen and developers, and shocking mistreatment of local residents is the ‘legacy’ of the Games so far. The Jaconelli family in Dalmarnock have been evicted from their home and remain homeless and without compensation. The shopkeepers in the area have been displaced without compensation.
Meanwhile, the disabled groups and carers of the Accord Centre are being moved to make way for a car park, without adequate re- placement for their service. To add insult to injury, crony develop- ers in the area have been making millions in speculative land deals just across the road. We carry the real story of Dalmarnock inside. The only way a better deal can be made for local residents is to fight and campaign for it. The Jaconelli family and the Save the Accord group are setting an example in the East End and beyond. This is an issue about the Commonwealth Games 2014, but it is also an issue about the wider austerity cuts - the most violent attack on the condi- tions of the poor in decades.
Left alone, the Games will always be more about big business than local people; crony politics rather than grassroots democracy; and land deals rather than school meals. The residents of Dalmarnock, however, carry the ‘threat of a good example’ – we should follow them all the way.

Eviction in Dalmarnock: The Real Story
It is a year ago now that Glasgow City Council ‘cleared’ the area around Springfield Road and Ardenlea Street in Dalmarnock for Games developers. The shop owners along Springfield Road – the general store, post office and pharmacy, and the chippy – have all been forced out by the Council’s strategy. Only Burns Pharmacy remains, setting up around the corner, with little assistance from Council. Others have lost their livelihoods – no shop, no stock, and no capital to set up again: all are still waiting on compensation. The Council is silent.
For the last residents on Arden- lea Street, this act of displacement was brutal. On 24 March 2011 the Jaconelli family - barricaded in their home protesting about their appalling treatment and the injustice of compulsory purchase orders - awoke before dawn to the sound of sledgehammers at the door. Around 80 police and 15 riot vans attended with Sheriff’s officers to forcibly evict the Jaconelli’s from their home of more than 30 years. They had simply asked to be treated fairly and with respect for bearing the brunt of hosting the Games.
But Council refused to speak with them. They fight on for compensation.
What we have seen is a local neighbourhood utterly destroyed by a multi-million pound taxpayer-funded 10 day party. While the Council has approved sweet land and property deals and payouts for its wealthy pals, it has meanwhile made a family homeless, ruined the livelihoods and lives of several others, removed vital disability ser- vices and destroyed a community. Investors and developers have made millions in land sales, backroom deals and land swaps while local people are treated with disdain.
This is not a case of greedy locals ‘holding up development’, though this is what Council want us to believe. That’s a convenient lie to hide what is really going on: the displacement of local people so the rich can get richer.
None of this has been without a fight: a national campaign called ‘The Right to Stay Put’, an anti- eviction alliance, and a number of actions to hold to account those responsible have all been kick-started. Mrs Jaconelli, through her lawyer Mike Dailly of Govan Law Centre, has also successfully passed the first test at the European Court of Human Rights in a case that seeks to expose all these issues. Margaret Jaconelli, many of the displaced shop owners and their supporters continue to fight for justice, and to expose the corruption at the root of East End ‘regeneration’.

Concern for the Most Vulnerable?
The Accord Centre Fights On
In March 2011, service users of the Accord Centre day care centre for people with learning difficulties were told the building was being demolished to make way for a bus park for the Commonwealth Games. They were then promised they would be removed to a centre including with ‘like-for-like’ the same essential facilities specialist equipment and facilities that were available at the Accord Centre.
The East End Carers group immediately arranged a meeting with members of the City Council. They were told that the Games Legacy Board would ensure they would be beneficiaries of the Games Legacy.
These same people later retracted that ‘legacy’ promise, lying that they weren’t being moved because of the Games after all; and there was “no budget” for new premises. In May, 2011, The First Minster, Alex Salmond, waded into the debate, visiting the Accord centre and lecturing City Council Leader Gordon Mathieson that it was “essential that the reputation and integrity of the Commonwealth Games is not jeopardised” by demolition of the Accord Centre for a bus park.
He also stated that Glasgow City Council should, “not stand accused of letting down the most vulnerable in the community”. Since this show of bravado, Mr.Salmond has, until recently, been conspicuous by his absence, leaving service users in limbo-land.
The Save the Accord campaigners have stressed that the closure of the Accord Centre leaves no centre for disability services in the East End of Glasgow. Their campaign is a fight for the whole East End. Yet despite two large-scale demonstrations in the area, and countless public appearances, they have been ignored by the City Council.
Meanwhile, Glasgow City Council have repeatedly attempted to shove the Accord service users into the nearby Bambury community centre - a facility which campaigners have repeatedly said is simply inadequate for people with severe learning disabilities.
A ‘feasibility study’ report was commissioned by the Scottish Government and City Council for a replacement facility at the new Tollcross Aquatic Centre. But the expensive report was an attempt to discredit the carers legitimate arguments about the Bambury Community Centre and contained no feasibility study for Tollcross.
Undeterred, Save the Accord campaigners vowed to step up their fight, and expose the lies they’ve faced.
Finally, Alex Salmond has stepped in again, saying he will “assure” an up-to-date facility within the Tollcross Aquatic Centre after the 2014 Games.
This ‘assurance’ is welcome, but this is not a time to let up pressure. The Accord centre is still set for demolition, and the service users are still being fobbed off (for at least two years) with the inadequate Bambury centre. We want to see more than just the words of a politician as a guarantee of an up to date modern facility for the Accord service users. The struggle continues for a decent disability service in the East End of Glasgow.

Dodgy Land Deals
The flow of capital in Dalmarnock
Labour Councillors are paying off their chums from regeneration budgets while those they have displaced or evicted are ignored. Labour MSP Ronnie Saez, the former CEO of Glasgow East Regeneration Agency, and friend of Frank McAveety, has been made redundant from his post with a disgusting payoff of £500,000 approved by Councillors Catherine McMaster, George Redmond and James Coleman.
That’s the same George Redmond who told Margaret Jaconelli and her family to ‘take it on the chin’ when they were brutally evicted so that developers could profit from the Athlete’s Village - she has still received no compensation. And that’s the same James Coleman who promised the Accord Centre users a brand new £200,000 facility as a legacy of Glasgow 2014 ... but then lied and said he didn’t.
Budget cuts, apparently. Fortunately for Ronnie, budget cuts don’t apply to mates, so he’s sitting pretty.
Other Council pals who’ve had their pockets lined by our elected representatives. First, Mr Graham Duffy, who owned Grantly Developments (Parkhead) and had been holding onto derelict land on Millerfield Road in Dalmarnock since 1988. Once the area was named the site for the Athlete’s Village, Duffy brokered a £5.5 million deal with the Council for the land – a staggering 12,000% increase in the land value.
Then, Allan Stewart and Steve McKenna, Labour party donors, who built a property empire together, one arm of which (Stewart and McKenna Ltd) went bust in 2010 owing a massive tax bill. Stewart & McKenna Ltd bought property in Dalmarnock in 2006 for £1.6 million - just over the road from the Jaconellis. When the Athlete’s Village was announced for the site, Council paid them £1 for the land, plus £1.7m, then ‘gifted’ them another valuable parcel of land around the corner.
Another deal saw former Rangers owner David Murray’s company paid £5.1m for land bought for £375,000 a few years before.
And then there’s Charles Price, owner of the subsidiary company Springfield Properties No. 1 Ltd. Price bought property along Springfield Road in 2005-2006 for an amount believed to be around £8million, and then sold it to the Council for £17,000,000 in 2008. £9million profit: a 409% increase in the value of the land!
Compulsory Purchase Order powers (CPO’s) were used by the Council to evict the Jaconelli family and displace local shop- owners. These powers are allegedly designed to protect the public purse, and could be used to drastically limit costs in all the cases above. But there is one law for the rich, and another one for the poor in Dalmarnock. Some legacy for Glasgow.

A Housing Legacy?
Playing games with homes and lives
This special issue investigates housing conditions in the East End in a period of housing crisis. What’s happening with the Games Village?
The Clyde Gateway regeneration promises 10,000 homes, but what kind of homes and who for? What impact will ‘the bedroom tax’ and housing benefit changes have on East Enders? How are Compulsory Purchase Orders (CPOs) being used to displace the poor? Large-scale ‘mega-events’ and ‘regeneration’ are now routinely used for aggressive property development and gentrification, increasing property and tax bases, and inevitably forcing less well- off people out of ‘regenerated areas’ through land speculation, rent increases and the cost of living. All this, of course, is justified with bullshit about the ‘common good’ and ‘legacy’.
The Athletes Village in Dalmarnock, currently under phased construction for the Games 2014, is allegedly a sign of great progress in Dalmarnock and Glasgow. But is this really the case? We know that only 300 out of a total of 1,469 homes will be available as “socially rented”. Subtracting the 197 social sector homes that were lost last year through right to buy and demolition, this represents a commitment of 103 social sector homes from the Commonwealth Games - not something to be overwhelmed about when Glasgow has lost over 60,000 social rented homes since 1991.
News has also come to light that the second phase of the development – 700 homes on top of the first phase – is not guaranteed to go ahead, which may mean further cuts to social rented housing at the Village site. This makes a mockery of the claim that the Athletes Village is somehow an asset for local people and is merely “on loan” to the Games.
If you want to know what’s really happening in the East End, read on.

The Bedroom Tax
No alternative for ‘under occupiers’
Housing benefit reforms will put Glasgow residents at risk of rent arrears, eviction and potential homelessness. Social housing residents deemed to have an extra bedroom - or be “under occupying” - will be hit with a 14 to 25% reduction in housing benefit from April 2013. Local residents will either have to meet the extra costs themselves or attempt to downsize through local housing associations.
Downsizing may not be possible for many though. Research has shown that there is an insufficient stock of one-bedroom homes throughout the UK to provide for those who require them and the Scottish Government has conceded that homelessness could be a consequence of such changes. This admission further highlights the vast gulf between housing need and actual provision within Scotland - and particularly Glasgow - which has been hit with continual cuts to public housing since the 1980s.
This reduction is most noticeable in terms of the number of council houses in Scotland, which has fallen by around 48% from September 1997 to September 2011. 300,000 council houses have been lost nationally in the last 15 years (150,000 sales to sitting tenants, 100,000 to stock transfer, 50,000 demolished). Glasgow has no remaining council housing. Such statistics highlight a deficit in housing provision for Glasgow residents and also undermine recent SNP boasts about the abolition of homelessness in Scotland.
The bedroom tax will result in the majority of “under occupying” residents being expected to pay an extra £624 per year in rent. Solicitor Mike Dailly argued recently that the policy will cause “misery, stress and serious worry for many tenants, and extra administrative costs and problems for social landlords”. He highlighted how the changes will be likely to drive people into cramped and poor houses similar to nineteenth century slum conditions. Dailly was speaking at a recent meeting in Govan where the local community and others have already gathered to discuss a ‘bedroom tax’ campaign.
Similar meetings have taken place across the UK, with urgent local responses to the upcoming changes. The coalition government have implemented many controversial austerity changes. This is just another example of an unfair benefit reform targeting those with little or no alternative. The decision to cut housing benefit is not supported by a sufficient housing stock to accommodate those who will be unable to maintain rent payments and find themselves at risk of eviction from their homes. The policy is bound to force residents into the private property market, which is similarly unforgiving towards residents on low incomes. Meetings are already taking place in Glasgow, and across As Housing Charity, Shelter Scotland report, there are fewer social homes for rent in Scotland than at any time since 1959. The need for renewed campaigning on public housing is pressing.

Social Housing Deficit
False promises for social housing in the East End
Clyde Gateway Urban Regeneration Company (URC) was established in 2007, to cover the areas of Bridgeton, Dalmarnock, Farme Cross, Shawfield and Rutherglen. It is a coalition of interests comprised of city councillors from Glasgow City Council and South Lanarkshire Council, and representatives from business and construction firms.
Clyde Gateway is responsible for “spearheading” a 20 year regeneration programme which regularly makes the following claims in promotional literature: 20,000 new jobs, 10,000 new homes, 400,000 square metres of new business space, £1.5 billion of private sector investment.
We have attempted to extract more detail on the claim that 10,000 new homes will be built in East Glasgow by 2030. There is no substantive evidence available in Clyde Gateway literature on this issue. Where will those homes be? What tenure mix? How was the figure of 10,000 arrived at? Who will be able to afford these houses? Who will own the land and property, and who will eventually profit?
We have requested this information from the Board of Directors of Clyde Gateway URC. An initial response from Jim Clark, a Senior Manager, admitted the figure of 10,000 was made up to get people to sign up to the Clyde Gateway URC, and will now be subject to re-definition, and that it will take up to a year for a revised figure to be published.
This is deeply discouraging in the context of Glasgow’s housing crisis. Between 1991 and 2008, social rented housing in the city was reduced (mainly through demolition and right-to-buy) by 60,000 homes, while the private sector grew by 67,500 homes: a massive swing to private housing. By 2018 private sector housing is estimated to take up to 70% of Glasgow’s total, with social rented housing falling a further 14,000 homes. Together with housing benefits cuts, the dreaded ‘bedroom tax’, and ever-expanding waiting lists, the housing crisis is escalating.
Given the property and business interests of those on the Clyde Gateway board, we are deeply sceptical about social housing promises in the East End. Chair of the board is Neil McDonald, who is also Chair of construction firm Barr and Wray. Other members of the board have day jobs with Scottish Enterprise, Cruden Estates, UK Steel Enterprise, Namana Properties - the property and business interests are clear. With a budget approaching £2 billion, the Clyde Gateway project - lasting a projected 20 odd years - should surely address some of the massive gaps left in public housing building and maintenance following privatisation, instead we know it will only add to the property portfolio of land management and investment firms, making no significant difference to the housing crisis as working class people and the unemployed face it.

For the Greater Good?
Displacement - by any means necessary
Compulsory purchase orders (CPOs) were established in post-war planning acts to deal with the problem of profiteering slum landlords in areas of redevelopment and new public housing construction. But socially progressive legislation to curb private landlords has been perverted to benefit land and property developers at the expense of poorer working class residents - all in the name of ‘the greater good’.
CPOs are now used systematically to dispossess and displace people from their homes and livelihoods in a direct transfer of property rights to the development industry. Dalmarnock (the site of the Commonwealth Games Village development) is a glaring example.
While the Jaconelli family and local shopkeepers have been offered desultory compensation packages, and violently evicted through compulsory purchase powers (in the case of the Jaconellis), developers and land speculators have been offered hugely overblown compensation packages with no threat of CPOs.
Example 1: Despite an independent valuation of £7.4 million, Willie Haughey - a major donor to the Scottish Labour Party - received £17 million in compensation for his business premises on the route of the M74 motorway – a key part of redevelopment in the East End.
Example 2: Developer Charles Price, bought property along Springfield Road in 2005-2006 for an amount in the region of £8 million, then sold it to the Council for £17,000,000 in 2008 for a £9 million profit! But while these developers ‘came to an agreement’ with the Council, no such delicacies were afforded the Jaconelli family who were brutally evicted by over 100 police officers through CPO for refusing to accept a paltry £30,000 for their home. This is the reason why the family remained in a derelict home on a demolished estate without services for six years.
After resourceful campaigning and wide support, the Jaconelli’s have now been offered £90,000 in compensation. This is closer to the market value of their home, but still bears no relation to the costs borne by the family to heat their home in a row of empty tenements. But being offered compensation and receiving it are two different stories - the Jaconellis remain homeless and without compensation nearly two years after being evicted.
In the knowledge that CPO’s and evictions are increasingly targeting the less well off and the less connected, Margaret Jaconelli has helped set up ‘The Anti- Eviction Alliance’, turning the campaign of one family, unfairly treated, into a deeper issue linked to the overall question of development and speculation on land and the use of CPOs as a tool for developers against working class people.

Glasgow Games Monitor 2014 is a group of residents, activists and campaigners who are concerned about the effects of the regeneration in the East End of Glasgow through projects such as the Commonwealth Games and the Clyde Gateway Initiative.
This special housing issue issue was written by Glasgow Housing Action group.
Glasgow Housing Action is a news, analysis and resource site for housing struggles in the city, pro-active in supporting grass- roots struggles for the right to space in Glasgow.
http://glasgowhousingaction.org/

Where’s our Legacy?
Open Letters to the City Leader and First Minister
For over 2 years now, the Save the Accord campaign has protested against the closure of their day care centre in the East End of Glasgow. Because of the Commonwealth Games, the Accord Centre has been demolished for a bus park for temporary use during the games. Despite promises for a new build replacement centre, the Labour-led City Council now argue that the austere ‘economic climate’ means there will be no new day care centre. Instead the carers and users of the centre have been shunted to a hired room in the Bambury community centre. This facility is not an adequate replacement for the Accord Centre. Both the Scottish Government and City Council have highlighted the importance of a ‘Games Legacy’. Alex Salmond concedes that the Accord Centre carers and users have every reason to feel “legitimately aggrieved” that legacy commitments have not been fulfilled. But despite numerous assurances, no solution has been found and the whole East end of Glasgow is left with no adequate day-care facility. The group have complained of being treated like a ‘political football’ between the Council and the SNP, when all they want is the facilities they lost and were promised would be replaced. The campaign continues to fight for these services, not just for themselves, but for the whole community. They deserve our full support.
‘Legacy’ is a much abused term with very little actual meaning for the people of the East End. Accord Centre users with severe learning needs have described the loss of vital amenities, and the friendships and security provided by the centre that are no longer available. With under a year to go until the start of the games this situation must be resolved. An adequate replacement for this service, as promised, should be a priority. Anything less is an embarrassment to both the Council and the Scottish Government, and a travesty of ‘legacy’ promises that should be shouted from the rooftops. This special edition publishes open letters from the East End Carers to Glasgow City Council Leader, Gordon Mathieson, and Scottish First Minister, Alex Salmond. Read them, circulate them, show solidarity - demand a decent legacy!

Open Letter to City Leader Gordon Matheson
Dear Mr. Matheson,
We are writing this open letter to you because a suitable Day Care replacement Centre has still not been found since the Accord Centre was demolished for a Commonwealth Games bus park. This means there is now no purpose-built day centre in the whole East End of Glasgow. That the Accord centre was closed down by the City Council because of the Games is indisputable, as letters to carers from Labour Party Councillor, Euan MacLeod (08.03.2011), and SNP Social Care spokesperson, David McDonald (17.03.2011), confirm.
The relocation of users and carers from the Accord Centre to the Bambury centre in Barrowfield is unsuitable and inappropriate as we have expressed many times and as the First Minister, Alex Salmond agrees. The Accord Centre provided a vital sense of community and ‘home’ to service-users with highly specialised needs, because of the availability of specialist equipment for the learning disabled and because of the exclusive use of the building during the day. The Bambury Community Centre, for the many reasons outlined in the East Carers response to the Joint Improvement Team (JIT) report on Accord Centre re-provisioning, does not provide a substitute for the security and comfort to service-users that a purpose- built learning disability centre, such as the Accord centre, can bring.
What must be emphasized again and again is that East Carers were offered a “new centre” to replace the Accord Centre - not an inadequate room in a community facility. This is evidenced by meeting minutes from an East Glasgow Community Health Care Partnership meeting (ECHCP) on 30th May, 2008. At this meeting Labour Councillor, Jim Coleman and Mark Feinmann, then East Glasgow CHCP Director, acknowledged the need for either a “new centre” or “new build centre” several times, with Mr. Coleman also making a “guarantee” that if the carers need a new centre then service will continue.
Users and carers of the Accord Centre had every reason to take this “guarantee” in good faith, even becoming involved in design and planning for the new build centre, as suggested by Mark Feinmann at the meeting on 30th May 2008. In a letter to Labour Councillor George Redmond, David Crawford, former Executive Director of Social Care Services, accepted that Councillor Coleman and Mark Feinmann had given a “strong message” to the East End Carers group “that a legacy development was possible”. He further stated that Raymond Bell, head of Mental Health, had confirmed Councillor Coleman and Mark Feinmann’s “commitment” to the carers was “genuine”.
In the same letter, however, David Crawford outlined a contrary position that Glasgow City Council have more recently adopted, arguing that events have changed “given the financial crisis” and thus there is “no prospect of the Council having capital to build a new centre”. We do not accept this position. We ask the City Council to make good on its guarantee to people with severe learning disabilities as a matter of urgency. We further note that a lack of money did not prevent David Crawford himself receiving an exorbitant severance package of nearly £600,000 from his job as Director of Social Work in Glasgow, while budget cuts decimate social services for the rest of us.
A further open letter has been sent to First Minister Alex Salmond. We have no interest in a ‘political football’ game between the Labour Party and the SNP over this issue. We simply ask that a proper solution is found for the needs of people with severe learning disabilities in the East End as promised. We assure you that the ‘legacy’ ideal of the Games will forever be tainted if commitments made by both the City Council and Scottish Government are not ensured.
East End Carers Group, August, 21st, 2013

Open Letter to First Minister Alex Salmond
Dear Mr. Salmond,
We are writing this open public letter to you because a solution has still not been found to what you have described, in a letter to City Council leader Gordon Matheson, as our “legitimate concerns” over the closure of The Accord day centre in Dalmarnock for people with severe learning disabilities. In the letter, you said you were “very concerned” about the closure of the centre, stressing that “no group should feel dispossessed” as a result of the Commonwealth Games. Previously, when you visited the users and carers at the Accord centre in May 2011, you emphasised the fact that the Scottish Government - “all of us [...] every taxpayer in Scotland” - is paying 80% of the costs of the Games and you therefore have a “locus” on the issue. You also said that people in Scotland should have a “good feeling” about the Games. We assure you that we do not have a ‘good feeling’ about the Games at present.
In the same meeting you said that if it could be established that a ‘like-for-like’ facility was promised on the basis that the Accord centre was being removed because of the Games, then you had “locus” to see that promise fulfilled. The evidence that the Accord centre was closed because of the Games is indisputable. The use of the term ‘like-for-like’ is your own. In fact what was offered was a “new centre”. This is evidenced by meeting minutes from an East Glasgow Community Health Care Partnership meeting (ECHCP) on 30th May, 2008. At the meeting, Labour Councillor Jim Coleman, and Mark Feinmann, then East Glasgow CHCP Director, acknowledged the need for either a “new centre” or “new build centre” several times, with Mr. Coleman making a “guarantee” that if the carers need a new centre then service will continue. Since then, of course, there has been much vacillation and denial, but as you yourself have pointed out, indications, if not absolute cast-iron commitments, were made which users and carers at the Accord centre had reason to take in good faith. The care of those with severe learning disabilities is at stake after all. The carers were even involved in helping to design and plan the new build centre - as suggested by Mark Feinmann at the meeting on 30th May 2008.
In a letter to Labour Councillor George Redmond, David Crawford, former Executive Director of Social Care Services, accepted that Councillor Coleman and Mark Feinmann had given a “strong message” to the East End carers group “that a legacy development was possible”. He further stated that Raymond Bell, head of Mental Health, had confirmed Councillor Coleman and Mark Feinmann’s “commitment” to the carers was “genuine”.
As your letter to Council leader Matheson states, the carers and users of the Accord Centre have every reason to feel “legitimately aggrieved” that legacy commitments have not been fulfilled. You also said that the ‘ideal’ of showcasing this city to the world “cannot be sustained” with such a tawdry outcome for some of the most vulnerable people in Glasgow on the site of the Games.
In a letter to the East carers group you said you were “committed” to “ensuring” that the legacy of the Commonwealth Games includes recognition of the needs of people with a learning disability. You proposed that the new Tollcross Aquatic Centre could be adapted for use after the Games to “ensure” that a modern facility similar to the excellent Harry Smith Complex in South Lanarkshire be made available for people with learning disabilities. That assurance filled users and carers of the Accord Day Centre with great hope. Yet the commitment remains unfulfilled. Meanwhile, the inadequate Bambury Centre, as you yourself acknowledged in a letter to Council Leader Gordon Matheson, provides an impoverished solution to the specialised needs of people with a learning disability.
When you visited the Accord Centre you had just been elected First Minister of Scotland. It was perhaps easy to make commitments in that moment, but reality bites for people with disabilities in the East of Glasgow. We have become accustomed to being used as a ‘political football’ between the SNP and the Glasgow Labour Party. We ask you now to follow through on your previous commitment, to use your self-declared “locus” to ensure that the Commonwealth Games 2014 does in fact contain a ‘legacy’ for people with a learning disability in Glasgow.
A further open letter has been sent to City Leader Gordon Matheson. We ask you both to resolve this issue immediately. We assure you that the ‘legacy’ ideal of the Games will forever be tainted if the commitments made by both the City Council and Scottish Government are not ensured.
East End Carers group, August 21st, 2013

About this issue:
This special issue on the Accord Centre was written by the East End Carers group with Glasgow Games Monitor 2014. You can find online versions, with complete references, at:
http://gamesmonitor2014.org/
Check out the great Save the Accord facebook site here:
http://bit.ly/18QC7M5