In recent weeks the local residents’ battle to save Leyton Marsh has shifted from trying to stop the development altogether through peaceful resistance, to defending apparently escalating actions in the courts under a system of laws which subordinate communities to corporate rights and the state.
By way of background, the “Save the Leyton Marsh” community group has been organising and meeting weekly since January, when planning permission was granted by Waltham Forest Council to the Olympic Development Authority (ODA) for Leyton Marsh to be turned into a private three storey basketball training facility for Olympic athletes. The marsh is Metropolitan Open Land – which has the same status as Green Belt land and may only be developed in exceptional circumstances. Waltham Forest has designated the Olympics as such an exceptional case.
There have been various ‘irregularities’ in the planning process – including the consultation process taking place over the Christmas holiday period (which gave locals hardly any time to lodge objections), flagrant breaches of the planning conditions (including the removal of soil up to 50cm deep, according to the ODA, when planning permission was granted for 15cm only), and the omission of an Environmental Impact Assessment which would have revealed the extent of the contamination of the soil (the area has previously been used as a landfill site, contains high quantities of lead and asbestos, and an unexploded WW2 bomb was found at the site just a few weeks ago). Matters are further complicated by the numerous public authorities implicated in the case: Waltham Forest Council as the planning authority, the ODA as lessee of the land and Lee Valley Regional Park Authority which has a responsibility to manage the land and protect the ecology of the area.
Several brave Occupy London supporters who camped at the site in solidarity with the local Save the Marsh campaign found themselves prosecuted in recent weeks under the Public Order Act for obstructing the cement-carrying lorries and preventing the development. This is another example of the criminalisation of civil resistance. People are not free to assert their democratic rights, and defend the rights of nature to exist and flourish. Since their arrests, lorries have been rolling in to dump vast amounts of concrete into the site that was once the marsh, home to various rare species and a green haven for local residents and their children.
In a further worrying development, a local resident (Rowena Johnson) who was not arrested was added as a Defendant in separate civil proceedings, having been identified by the Evening Standard as a protester. Her crime was to spend a few minutes with her young son under a lorry. The ODA is pursuing her for costs of £335,000. The ODA’s aim is to put people off peaceful dissent. It has the financial resources to do so, by employing city law firms like Berwin Leighton Paisner on taxpayers’ money, and by threatening people with bankruptcy if they continue to speak out about activities harmful to their community. By contrast, the community group has to rely largely on pro bono legal support and is constantly on the back-foot by having to respond to strict timeframes and an endlessly complicated legal situation.
The legal system is not designed to give power to the people. It’s structured so as to subordinate communities and to be adversarial, pitting communities against the corporate state and against each other. The legal process is stressful, saps time, is potentially financially devastating and fosters ‘you should have run this argument differently’ in-fighting. Fortunately, this has not happened with the “Save the Leyton Marsh” group.
A better system of governance is possible. Communities need to assert their rights. A Community Bill of Rights might have given the locality more power in a situation like this. Community Bills of Rights have been adopted in the US and are successful in preventing unwanted developments and activities harmful to the community. They elevate communities vis-à-vis the rights of companies and the state. In the case of Leyton Marsh the community could, with a Community Bill of Rights, assert their inherent rights to determine the future of their neighbourhood and could act on behalf of the rights of nature (including rare bird and insect species) whose habitats are being destroyed by this development.
If our present government was genuinely concerned about creating a ‘Big Society’ and was committed to the localism agenda, it would support the concept of a Community Bill of Rights. Unfortunately, this government is taking strides in exactly the opposite direction. The Olympics and ever-present threat of terrorism provide a useful cloak for the authorities to clamp down on dissent and designate peaceful protesters as ‘domestic extremists’ or worse. We need to continue to build a movement of people willing to step outside of the legal framework and to help build a better one.
By Melanie Strickland – occupylawuk.wordpress.com