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Podcast Episode · Trish Wood is Critical · 16/08/2024 · 2h 17m
Trish Wood discusses the history of modern immigration with Simon Elmer [he starts talking about 18 min in]. 16 August 2024.
Podcast Episode · The Delingpod: The James Delingpole Podcast · 12/11/2024 · 1h 38m
James Delingpole discusses the history of immigration policy with Simon Elmer. 12 November 2024.
You will ask: and where are the lilacs? And the world-changing new politics? And the dreams unceasingly speaking words, embellishing them with flowers and birds? I’ll tell you everything that happened. I lived in a neighbourhood, a neighbourhood of London, with council estates, and tower blocks and trees. From there you could look out across Kensington’s gardens, like a sea of grass. My tower was called Grenfell Tower, because at its feet green fields grew: it was a good-looking tower with its families and children. Isaac, do you remember? Remember, Jeremiah? Mehdi, do you remember (from beneath the ground) do you remember my window where the June sun drowned flowers in your mouth? Brothers, O my brothers! Everything loud with children’s voices, the rumble of trains, blocks of throbbing life, homes of my ward of Notting Barns with the Westway Winding like a snake through the grass. Our prayers reached the sky, a deep heartbeat of feet and hands filled the streets, pounds and pence, the sharp measure of life, stacked up flats, the texture of metal in the cold sun from which our homes were insulated – aluminium and foam panels bolted to our sides. And one morning all that was burning, one morning the flames leaped out of the walls devouring human beings, and from then on fire, burning metal from then on, and from then on ashes. Killers with clipboards and questionnaires, murderers with laptops and masterplans, assassins in suits speaking lies came through the fire to kill children and on the streets the ashes of children fell softly, like the ashes of children. Consultants who ignore those they consult, councillors whose council the residents spat out, contractors whose cladding killed those it clad! Faced with you I have seen the smoke of Grenfell rise like a tower to devour you in one bonfire of greed and pride! Corrupt bureaucrats: see my dead home, look at Grenfell Tower: from every window burning metal springs instead of flowers, but from every ruin of London London will rise, and from every dead child a voice cries, and from every crime justice is born that will one day find the bull’s eye of your hearts! And you will ask: why does his poetry not speak to us of dreams and flowers and the gardens of this green city? Come and see the ashes in the streets. Come and see The ashes in the streets. Come and see the ashes In the streets!
Simon Elmer, Architects for Social Housing, after Pablo Neruda, from The Tower: Rewriting Grenfell
CHAT UP An open letter to my female friends by Simon Elmer, Architects for Social Housing aka ASH (with Geraldine Dening).
This blog post is a diversion from our usual writing on the subject of the social cleansing of Balfron Tower, however, we thought that it was necessary to remind people about Simon Elmer and Geraldine Dening of Architects for Social Housing and how they operate.
ASH have bullied and intimidated housing activists and those challenging gentrification again and again, bullying and attacking residents, particularly those that criticise the appalling way that Simon Elmer treats people; particularly women and homosexuals.
A somewhat delusional Simon Elmer, mocking up stories about himself in the Evening Standard, 2016.
ASH has architectural plans to sell. They are not there to help you save your community, they are there to exploit it, and exploit you. Geraldine Dening, a Cambridge graduate, and Simon Elmer, who has a PhD from UCL do not live in social housing and they never have done.
They are astroturfing our housing crisis.
Geraldine’s fashionable brutalist apartment on the Cotton Gardens Estate was bought as an ex-right to buy property. They are the problem, not the solution, which comes as no surprise however, given their elite education. These people just see you as £££ signs in their eyes. They don’t care about you or your community; they care about how much profit they can make from it. They are the same people, educated in the same tradition as the people who are trying to demolish your homes and gentrify your community.
If that doesn’t offend you, then take a read of Chat Up, an Open Letter to my Female Friends by Simon Elmer. Don’t be fooled into thinking this was youthful transgression, this was written in 2016 and only scratches the surface of a very sick individual.
“CHAT UP An Open Letter to my Female Friends
On the weekend I tried to chat up a girl. I was in the pub, and a girl across the way was checking me out, mildly, but enough to exchange a few smiles. So I sent my girlfriend over to chat her up. Rare is the girl who can resist Geraldine’s advances, as some of you will know, but this one did. So I went over myself. She was German, which wasn’t a good start. We chatted. We compared the relative merits of Fassbinder and Herzog. I was drunk and boring, I admit, and it was rubbish. I made light of how crap I was doing, although I thought her coldness toward me a little excessive. No doubt she objected to me sending a proxy. So after a while I retired and my friends and I had a laugh about how badly I did. But – and this is the point of my story- although I had noting invested I this, although, if I had actually been interested in her, I would never have approached her like that, and although the whole thing was a laugh to me if not to her, I steal feel the bat squeak of rejection, the remembrance of what this used to be like, pierce the centre of myself. And I thought, fucking hell, this is what most men still have to go through even to get to talk to a woman, let alone have sex with her! Something very wrong has happened to the relationship between the sexes since the Neolithic. There’s a line on an Apollo 440 track I remember that goes ‘What a man has to go through for a piece of arse in the 21st Century is highly ridiculous’ – or something like that. Is there any wonder there’s so much resentment, misogyny and violence in men’s feelings towards women? I’m not saying it’s women’s fault- no woman is responsible for the violence of which she is the victim- but it’s something whose root causes they share in. I have to be careful here, as in no way do I want to offer an apology for non-consensual violence against women, which is everywhere and increasing these days. But it’s not something that is inherent in male sexuality- although I think it is, and in women’s sexuality too, if only they’d admit it. It also comes- and I can vouch for this myself- from years and years of rejection after rejection, and the desperation and resentment that builds. This is a feeling shared by every man I have ever known, including your boyfriend, brother, and the sons you may one day have- whether they admit it or not. And yet we wonder why the world is hooked on porn and women can’t live up to its gratifications. I’m not saying women are wrong to say no to drunken gits like myself trying to chat them up in pubs.- and God knows, with the little boys and wankers you’ve got to chose (sic) from I have nothing but pity for you. But I can’t help thinking it wasn’t meant to be like this, that there was meant to be some sort of reciprocity of desire between the sexes, instead of the oh-so-fucking-boring thrust and parry that characterises every attempt at seduction. If you want to now what men are like once you remove the barriers women erect around their bodies, look at gay men, who are essentially a bunch of dogs that will fuck anything, anywhere, anyhow. If men weren’t so fucking ugly I’d try it myself. But women have to start taking responsibility for the men they’ve created- because let’s face it, when it comes to heterosexual sex women hold all the cards, make all the rules. Men are just trying to get in the game. Women weren’t meant to stand guard over their cunts like they were some kind of commodity to sell, which is exactly what they have become, as every media image or night down the pub reaffirms. They were meant to have their own desires, instead of being merely the object of ours. That, for me, is what a woman is, rather than these traders in their own flesh who exist before the dark mirror of our stares. It’s one of the reasons I love my ugly girlfriend- about whom no truer words have been written than these, which I commend to the instruction of yourselves and your daughters:
Whores- My most lovely one, in such wise are called the public victims of the debauchery of men, creatures prepared at all times to surrender their persons, whether from temperament or for reward; happy and deserving creatures common opinion assails but whom license crowns and who, far more necessary to the society which they strive to serve than are prudes, forgo the esteem an unjust society denies them. All hail to those in whose eyes this title is an honor! Such are truly lovable women, the only authentic philosophers! As for myself, dear heart, I, who for twelve years have endeavored to merit the laurel, I assure you that if I do not work as a whore, I always play as one. Better still, I love thus to be named when I am fucked: ’tis a vilification that fires my brain.
-Marquis de Sade”
By Simon Elmer, Architects for Social Housing. 2016.
You can find out more about Simon Elmer and Architects for Social Housing here:
http://colouringinculture.org/blog/ash
Further public comment on Simon Elmer, of ASH, from Graham Jones, much respected and liked East London activist.
Solar Cunt and Pissing Cock. Another insight into the mind of Simon Elmer. From 2016.
Balfron Social Club
19th April 2018
Read When We Marched for Homes by Simon Elmer
When We Marched for Homes
By Simon Elmer
When we walked the streets in the cold
FromShoreditch Church to City Hall
Having assembled at midday
On the last day of January
To demand a home to live in
In the city we were born in
Where were you when we marched for homes?
When the London Evening Standard
The night before printed two lines
About the march and two pages
About some millionaire’s wages
In the West End final issue –
Then it snowed early next morning
Where were you when we marched for homes?
When The Guardian on Friday asked
‘Are you taking part in the march?’
If only one in one hundred
Of their 200,000 readers
Answered ‘yes’ – where were the rest
When the rain fell on Saturday
Where were you when we marched for homes?
When you watched us from the café
Cradling your skinny latté
Against the cold that kept you inside
While you read about the issues
In next morning’s Sunday papers
Almost wishing you had been there
Where were you when we marched for homes?
When the Focus E15 Mothers
And the daughters without fathers
Marched through the streets with their banners
Saying ‘This is the beginning
Of the end of the housing crisis’ –
Though they have no home to live in
Where were you when we marched for homes?
When the coppers under orders
From their paymasters and owners
Stopped us marching through the City
Turned us down Spitalfields shouting
‘Social housing, not social cleansing!’ –
Past Barclays Bank and Boris Bikes
Where were you when we marched for homes?
When at One Commercial Street
We saw the poor door for the workers
And the marbled entrance lobby
For the City boys and bankers
Where Class War held up their banner
Saying ‘All Fucking Wankers!’ –
Where were you when we marched for homes?
When at Goodman’s Fields the signs said
‘Redefining City Living’
With luxurious apartments
In stunning new developments
Where they filmed us with their smart phones
From behind their plate-glass windows
Where were you when we marched for homes?
When we turned down Prescot Street
And businessmen in business suits
Stood outside under umbrellas
And doormen in silk top hats
Stood and held the umbrellas
Safe behind the lines of coppers
Where were you when we marched for homes?
When we stopped at Tower Hill
Underneath the railway bridge
And the band of women drummers
Made the whole street dance together
Chanting ‘Boris out! Boris out!’
Ringing through the iron girders
Where were you when we marched for homes?
When we crossed on Tower Bridge
Stopped the traffic over the Thames
And the East End met South London
So that our one or two thousand
Grew to three or more thousands
As we turned into City Hall
Where were you when we marched for homes?
When we passed One Tower Bridge
Where new homes are on the market
From one-and-a-half to fifteen million
For the Mayor’s future neighbours
And on their balconies we saw
Our flags and fists raised in defiance
Where were you when we marched for homes?
When we stood in Potters Fields
And saw how few of us there were
Between the shields of riot police
Beneath the dagger of the Shard
And though our banners now were sodden
Still our voices had not fallen
Where were you when we marched for homes?
When the speeches were concluded
And the leaflets were distributed
And photographs were being taken
Of the Aylesbury occupation
We turned to the absent thousands
In the flats and homes of London
In buy-to-let private investments
In property developments
In assured short-term tenancies
In uncertain rental vacancies
In ex-housing associations
In earmarked regenerations
On council housing waiting lists
On sanctioned housing benefits
In homes awaiting demolition
In rent arrears facing eviction
In newly taxed second bedrooms
On the couch of sublet front rooms
In furnished dives and in bedsits
On the street without benefits
In tower blocks they’d occupied
In council flats now privatised
In social housing left to rot
In recently illegalised squats
In empty homes of oligarchs
On sleepless benches after dark
In the doors of West-End hotels
In B&Bs and East-End hostels
In emergency night shelters
On the seats of bus shelters
On the steps of tube stations
On the floors of police stations
In homeless accommodation
In far away relocations –
And we asked our fellow Londoners
Where were you when we marched for homes?
