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THE CROYDON CITIZEN

Red Dawn The coming of Westfield

January 2014Monthly news magazine

many truths - many answers

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Welcome to the first ever physical edition of The Croydon Citizen: the local news magazine written and edited by citizen journalists.

This magazine was only made possible by the support of all the loyal readers and local businesses who wanted us to reach a wider audience. To the generous citizens of Croydon who paid for this magazine, we say thank you.

This month…Croydon’s biggest news story of last month by far was that London’s third Westfield centre had been given permission to open in Croydon town centre. By any rational reckoning, it was a foregone conclusion – at the most cursory of glances, its power to change things is clear. But what does ‘Hammerfield’ (or ‘The Croydon Partnership’ to give the joint Westfield and Hammerson project its proper name) really mean for Croydon? What does that change look like? In this issue, we search for answers.

But there’s plenty more besides, including: a quasi-Marxist restaurant review, a searching interview with Croydon’s newest MP, and the festive but bittersweet reflection on all-too-real, haunting legacy of the Croydon riots, ‘Snowman in the Cronx’. Even this is only a small sample of the thought-provoking writing we’ve been publishing for just over a year online at thecroydoncitizen.com

We’re looking for more writersEverything you see in this magazine was written by ordinary people, just like you. We’re always looking for new writers. If you want to tackle the issues, highlight the things that matter or reflect on what’s really important in your community, we want to hear from you.

Perhaps your article will be here next month? Get in touch with [email protected] and it just might be.

Yours,

The Editors

James Naylor, Tom Black, Rob Mayo, Tom Lickley, and Rajdeep Sandhu

Welcome to the Croydon Citizen The news magazine where you write the stories

Did you like our cover?The image on our first ever front cover was designed by the hugely talented Sarah Davis. You can order one of her limited run of original linocuts, and see more of her work, at sarahdavisartist.blogspot.co.uk

ContentsSnowman in the Cronx Business and Economics The Interview Politics and Society The View from Croydon Tech CityCulture The Sport Citizen

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Snowman in the Cronx Liz Sheppard Jones describes how snowbrought together a wounded community

Original photo by MG Shelton. Edited by Tom Black under Creative Commons license

Snowman in the CronxIt snowed in West Croydon in January 2012 and my children ran outside to build a snowman. While grown-ups moan about icy roads and disrupted trains, snowmen are the happy, excited response of all children in all winters to the novelty and fun of the white stuff. Watching from the front window, I felt myself start to grumble a bit less and enjoy a bit more.

My community is multicultural, which is one of the best things about it. In our block there are seven children – two Tamil, three Chinese and my two English boys who are the oldest and natural ringleaders when the children play.

Pretty quickly, the Chinese family spotted what was going on and out they came – big sister, little brother and the toddler in tow, wrapped up like a parcel, shy and overwhelmed in the presence of the seniors.

Big son has no problem being leader of the pack in any situation and quickly took charge of his new posse, issuing instructions to roll a snowball head and search for twiggy arms. Next the two Tamil children, speaking very limited English, came out with their mother and asked if they could build too.

Seven children, three ethnicities, but the same garden and the same beguiling snow. Operations went up a gear and the foot-soldiers scuttled backwards and forwards, under orders now to dig out small round stones to be the snowman’s buttons.

Passers-by admired the speed of progress. A lady donated a carrot and an older boy from round the corner brought two longer sticks when the ones in our garden proved too small. I decided my blue scarf was expendable and took it outside. The spaced-out guy with the dreads from over the road – not quite in this world but amiable enough even with a can of Carling in his hand at nine in the morning – watched for a while and admired our creation.

One evening in the summer of 2011, five months before snow day, gangs of rioters with cloth-wrapped faces

came down the road which runs 100 yards from my front garden, carrying petrol and matches.

They wrecked shops, destroyed family businesses and livelihoods, and when they’d looted everything they could, there was fire – huge, terrifying flames flashing and crackling in the sky, and a black armband of choking smoke that lay over us until darkness fell and it became a darker smear of night against night.

It’s hard to describe how it feels to watch your own place burn

It’s hard to describe how it feels to watch your own place burn. It’s the hot, physical shock of fear – something not often felt in our orderly world – and the horror of uncontained violence. It’s a glimpse into a world where the forces of law and order don’t hear you, can’t reach you, or maybe just don’t care enough about you.

And anger, suffocating as the smoke itself – base-level rage that for me found release through a four-letter Facebook outburst in which I barely recognise myself .

Our Cronx snowman seemed a symbol of good things returned to the world

The riots started far away, not here, where we live together in peace. Our area was targeted because we are poor and someone knew that the cordon of protection which immediately fell around the gleaming business and retail district three-quarters of a mile down the road would not extend to us. We would not be defended, and we were not – our vulnerability was too well understood.

Then afterwards, insulting those already injured, newspapers that should have known better pushed out the line that mobs who torch

family grocers then run away with plasma TVs are the heirs-in-protest to those who stood in front of tanks in Tiananmen Square. Letters to the Editor: Dear Sir, you are having a laugh.

Snow day restored us. When our snowman was finished, all the mums took pictures. Everyone was proud of the result, and everyone was laughing.

Our Cronx snowman seemed a symbol of good things returned to the world – we had come together and his carrot nose and wonky hat had drawn smiles from everyone. West Croydon felt like our community again and we went happily inside to warm up. It’s true – it’s always true, everywhere – that most people are kind, well-intentioned and good.

We couldn’t really bear to undress Cronky – he looked so magnificent – so we left him there in his hat and scarf through the late winter afternoon. We wanted passers-by to see him and the smiles that he spread around to travel as far as they could before melting away. Night fell quickly and the curtains closed.

After dark, somebody smashed up Cronky. Someone, someone from our street, someone who most likely had walked past and seen the children build, crept across the lawn underneath our window and flattened him. They took his hat, and it was just as well I’d decided my blue scarf was expendable because they stole that too. They threw his arms across the garden, and what became of his carrot we will never know.

Some of those rioters – the people who hated and burned and seemed to have no share in this world, men and women with petrol cans and matches in their hands and no empathy in their hearts, it having been beaten out of them, or petrified in the deep inner cold of their alienation – came from West Croydon, after all.

Not all of them, but some of them did.

Liz Sheppard-Jones came to Croydon as a bride in 1997 after many peripatetic years and to her great surprise made it her lasting home. Her working life has included stints as a careers advisor, entrepreneur (failed) and telesaleswoman. Nowadays she works for the Croydon Business Improvement District with a brief to attract conference business to the Town Centre, a role she loves. Passionate about all things Croydon, Liz lives happily on the wrong side of the tracks with her boyfriend and two sons.

By Liz Sheppard-Jones

Image by Melinda Shelton. Used with permission.



Economics and Business

Croydon’s retail heart transplantWe’ve heard the soundbites and read the press releases, but how exactly will the ‘Hammerfield’ development improve the borough? Tom Lickley takes a surgical look at what it really means for Croydon

The positivity surrounding the approval of Westfield and Hammerson’s plans for the regeneration of the retail core of the town mostly focused upon the development itself. Aside from providing a pleasant place to spend a Saturday, what can both Croydon residents and businesses expect the benefits to be from the £1 billion investment?

The housing market may heat upPerhaps unsurprisingly given the addition of a major new attraction to the town centre, house prices throughout the borough can expect to increase at a quicker rate than expected. For instance, a look at how house prices in the boroughs of Hammersmith & Fulham and Newham have been affected demonstrates the impact a retail development can have. In the former, house prices in the year before and following the opening of Westfield London in October 2008 increased

at a higher rate (12.79%) than both London (3.10%) and England & Wales (-4.74%) averages (Source: Rightmove) – although of course the data is taken from the start of the financial crisis. Knight Frank research suggests the local housing market has benefited from a “Westfield effect” – with property values up 47% overall since the opening of the shopping centre. In 2012 in particular, the housing market locally saw an annual price growth rate of 9.2% – twice that of the London average.

In Newham too, the Daily Telegraph noted in July that ‘homeowners in the 14 postal districts closest to the Olympic Park have seen the value of their property rise by an average £92,000 in the last eight years’. Of course, whilst the Olympics themselves have helped drive this, the article cites the fact that it is the major shopping mall (Westfield Stratford City) which is serving the area over the long term, rather than the Olympic Park which, while impressive, will only create a fraction of the jobs and investment Westfield has.

Of course, some may be concerned about the effect of a hot housing market in Croydon, particularly those looking to get on to the property ladder.

Whilst it is true that Croydon may become a more expensive area to live relative to how it is now, high prices usually suggest high demand – meaning more residential developers are attracted to the town, the new development having already contributed to the building of the tower at Berkeley Homes’ Saffron Square.

Knight Frank research suggests that despite Westfield being a contributor to house price increase, sales performance among new builds is still good; 68% of the 843 units under construction in the first half of 2013 have been sold in Hammersmith and Fulham, slightly above the 62% average for inner London off plan sales.

Public transport infrastructure may improveThe work being undertaken at East Croydon station, which included the official opening of the new bridge and walkway on 5th December, will benefit the Westfield/Hammerson development. The new walkway through Lansdowne Road will cut the time taken to get between Croydon’s main transport hub and its main retail hub considerably, and also link East and West Croydon station via a 24-hour walkway through the centre. The other options considered in the East Croydon masterplan – including the building of an extra platform and the improvement of the public realm around the station – may now come to fruition with the influence of Westfield and Hammerson, as may the plans to improve West Croydon bus station and surrounding public realm.

Indeed, looking towards Westfield in Shepherd’s Bush and Stratford, the transport improvements have been considerable; White

Image by Westfield Group


The new pathway through the centre of the development promises to link Wellesley Road to North End via a 24 hour walkway

The new George Street courtyard promises an extra dimension to the street’s entrance, creating a new public square



A promising Geography student at school, Tom displayed his nous for making wise choices by studying History and Real Estate at Exeter and UCL respectively. Continuing this theme, he also has a debilitating obsession with Crystal Palace F.C, which has ruined many a weekend. Tom is Business and Marketing Manager at the Citizen, and has written for Estates Gazette and Five Year Plan.

City tube station was modernised, Wood Lane underground station was built and Shepherd’s Bush underground station was rebuilt in the former, whilst Stratford has benefited from considerable development of its train station, and even pre-Olympics saw visitor numbers in the tube station increase from 29.8 million in 2010 to 48.6 million in 2011 – an increase of over 60% (Source: TfL Consumer Metrics 2011). There will also be £10 million worth of investment in buses, and £15 million worth in the tram network.

Aside from the residual effects, the fact that Croydon is already well connected – arguably better than both Stratford and Shepherd’s Bush were before the investment by Westfield – suggests the town may be able to compete with and even better their fellow Westfield towns. The proximity of the M25 may be crucial – the shopping development in Croydon, and hence the town itself, could be a retail focal point for a significant portion of the south-east of England.

Local economy may benefitNew office developments such as the redeveloped Interchange have already cited the investment by Westfield and Hammerson in their marketing material. Since the announcement of the joint venture in January 2013, important businesses, including Trinity College Examinations Board (which has taken up a lease at AMP House), will be further attracted. As has been the case at Stratford, where Chobham Academy recently opened and University College London is interested in locating a new campus, the possibility for educational establishments to relocate to Croydon has increased.

Visitor numbers and jobs should increase too; in Westfield Stratford City for instance, 47 million visitors were attracted to the centre in the first year of operation, creating 10,000 jobs and generating £500 million worth of sales (Source: Retail Gazette). Whilst there will be understandable concern

amongst small, local businesses and retailers as to the effect of having such a large scale development on their doorstep, the outline plans for the development show that routes will direct people towards Old Town, and the residual benefits from transport – making West Croydon more user friendly – may enhance businesses in London Road.

Certainly, whilst the new development may bring extra quality, unlike in Stratford and Shepherd’s Bush it is replacing an existing shopping centre – so fears of a swathe of new shops arriving and destroying existing businesses are reduced.

In addition to this, the diverse nature of Old Town and London Road in offering a different shopping experience may indeed capitalise on the expected surge in visitor numbers – if, of course, they market themselves to new visitors correctly.

More than a shopping centreThe evidence suggests that having this scale of development can bring considerable benefits to the surrounding areas. Whilst the new development will bring a much needed boost to the town’s retail core, it is the residual benefits which will really make an impact on residents’ lives. In addition, the modernisation of the centre of town, with the demolishing of aging office buildings including Centre Tower and replacement by brand new buildings, which one can expect to be environmentally efficient and technologically advanced – but still retaining much loved facades such as Allders – will make a greater immediate impression on potential new residents and businesses than the statistics and details will.

The centre of Croydon will look fresh, attractive and appealing – certainly don’t underestimate the influence cosmetic change alone will have.





George Street will retain much of its historic facade, but the new entrance promises to add a clean element of modernity

The new entrance on Wellesley Road should increase and improve public space in the town, with the addition of Dingwall Place



Croydon’s forgotten shopping centre

One evening earlier this year I took a walk into town (after not having gone in for a couple of weeks) to see what had changed, and I found myself walking down St George’s Walk. In my youth, this was a popular shopping precinct and with a fantastic toy model shop which had a front window packed with model aircraft, tanks, cars, and figures, and when I was a boy I could see all the boxes stacked on the shelves inside the shop calling out to me.

On this particular evening, by the time I got to the Croydon College end of the walk I was in tears and had to sit down on one of the planters to compose myself.

I was upset at the neglect and wastefulness of the whole walk. This should have been Park Place, a new retail and leisure hub for the town centre with a large piazza area outside joining with the Grants Centre for people to enjoy a café culture lifestyle, and here it was after that aborted project: a bleak wind tunnel with rubbish blowing through and the clatter of skateboards punctuating the silence.

There are unattractive, shuttered, or boarded-up shopfronts punctuated by an occasional independent retailer struggling in an area of poor footfall to make ends meet. Poor St George’s Walk. Always outside any new ‘masterplan’ that the council and developers come up with.

Despite all the excitement over the Hammerson and Westfield marriage, St George’s Walk will not even be fitted with a new suit of armour for the big occasion. What a way to treat a walk named after our patron saint.

Until a new project is announced, the covered area could be Croydon’s answer to Greenwich Market or Merton Abbey Mills or Camden Lock. Imagine: an artsy, bohemian market selling original artworks, fashions and handmade jewellery, a range of food stalls, and the small shops could be cafés and art galleries. Imagine if this market expanded

and took up all of the walk, and then spread down to join up with the market in Surrey Street with more of the same on Sundays. What if the Matthews Yard piazza then caught the bug, and the whole thing linked up in to some sprawling, funky, weekday-and-weekend market that was a cool place to hang out?

What if it had live music and street acts, and if all this was easy to get to by tram, train, or bus? All the professional couples and singles lured here by Saffron Square, the Menta-Morello Tower, Ruskin Square, the Bank of America redevelopment, St George’s Tower itself, and numerous other new builds, would have another great place to hang out and be seen and spend their cash. With all the coming investment in the town, such a feature could be the real hook that has people visiting our Westfield (rather than one of the others) because Croydon has a really good market in the town.

As this kind of market tends to grow ‘organically’ rather than come about by deliberate design it would be a nice contrast to the architecturally-designed, glass, concrete, and steel facade of the new shopping centre.

I’ve made this suggestion before. When I presented my plan to a council officer with the word ‘regeneration’ in his job title the answer was “if I had a bulldozer, I’d flatten the lot”. Well, he didn’t have a bulldozer; St George’s Walk is still there and has been there longer than he’s walked the earth and it doesn’t seem to want to go away.


Andrew Dickinson is a long term resident of Croydon and is lucky to live and work in the borough. As a schoolboy, his proudest moments

were playing representative football for Croydon. He’s always on the lookout for any new initiatives to bring positivity to the place.

He lives on Bramley Hill with his family and has an allotment locally. A keen amateur in gardening, enviromentalism, permaculture,

photography, website design, radio presenting and blogging, he puts on the Croydon Green Fair each year.

While others dream of a Westfield-designed glass utopia, Andrew Dickinson laments the neglect of a site that was once Croydon’s reigning mall

Ash RishiJohn LickleyAnne GilesStephen BlackJonny RoseAndrew ChattertonBrendan WalshOliver ForsythDorthe BlackPaul DennisLiz Sheppard-JonesDavid WhiteCharlotte Davies

Gordon BullJohn LawlorGosbert ChagulaBrian NovittBritta LickleyJohn ClinganPaul BarnettAndrew DickinsonAndy EllisTony SkrzypczykJohn HobsonOmar Abu-SeerTom Milsom

Jean AlexanderBenjamin AustenAnn MayoCarlo NavatoBecca TaylorLouis DownsNatalie PereraMalcolm JohnElizabeth BeroudLeslie CostarTim O’DonovanGraham DaviesPaul Lydon

Mat SimsSteve PalmerMark ConstantNiall HigginsKushal BoseAlan HeyesLawrence SchmidSoumya VishnuAndrew OdigieAndrew HillNigel DiasRobert Naylor

Photo by Peter G Trimming. Used under Creative Commons license.

Thank you.This magazine was only made possible by the support of all the loyal readers and local businesses who wanted us to reach a wider audience. Without their financial support in our crowdfunding campaign, we would not have

been able to print this magazine.

To the very generous people listed here, the editors would like to say - thank you:

Image by Andrew Dickinson. Used with permission.



I have strong words for the the retail resfuseniks: your straightline projection from high-profile high-street failure to a near future without physical retail is wrong. It’s premised on a flawed (and thoroughly male) notion that shopping has only ever been about the efficient acquisition of goods, not the pleasures involved in the process of acquisition itself. It ignores the hard economic fact that while the little high street is being crushed by the internet and tax avoidance, the mega-mall is growing. Condemn the consumerism of it all. Condemn the construction of giant temples to Mammon. Don’t condemn the business model.

Yet, I have even stronger words for those that believe that salvation does lie in the mall.

The truth is that Hammerfield is not a cure for the town’s ills, and to think that it is is a grave error of judgement. It’s a needle through the chest; an adrenalin rush to kickstart a round of visible signs that things are getting better. As a spur to the development of a tangible home-grown economic culture, an ecosystem people are drawn to start business, it has huge tactical value. But if it’s just the centerpiece of a box-ticking exercise in amenity provision (cost, transport, shopping) for the least demanding functions of big business, it’s only the beginning of another fatal cycle.

How can I be sure? The evidence is literally towering around us.

Croydon’s transformation from commuter suburb to high-rise office hub in the 1960s became problematic precisely because it became a value-sell premised on these sorts of amenities. Both the council and its people came to believe that the explosive growth in employment of the 1960s, culminating in the grand opening of a state-of-the-art shopping centre, was the end, not the beginning, of a journey. They believed they’d secured Croydon’s success because they’d secured vast square footage from big city firms and government departments.

What they’d failed to see is that they hadn’t secured the firms themselves, nor even a growing core of activity centred on the borough itself. While there were many prestigious, physical imports to Croydon, there wasn’t a sufficient movement of hearts and minds. Much of what was being moved to Croydon was back-office operations, not decision-making or innovation. This grew ever more true over time. The inevitable automation and off-shoring of these functions is often blamed for our comparative economic decline, but the real reasons were more fundamental.

It was not a playground of dreamers. It was more like a giant, high-rise office park; strictly a place to work

These moves into Croydon could not, on their own, bring about the hot-core of entrepreneurship that Croydon needed for the long haul. A group of entrepreneurs, artists, and community activists passionately planning and executing the next big thing in British industry, art, and society was not to be found in the corner of every bar. It was not a playground of dreamers. It was more like a

giant, high-rise office park; strictly a place to work.

Investment in its people through education, in its culture through challenging artistic programmes, and in its business through investing in promising local firms with national ambitions, could all have turned its corporate bridgehead into an unassailable economic fortress.

But such opportunities were missed. It failed to exploit its urban landscape, its connectedness, and its very density of human minds, and thereby sealed its fate. Forever

Croydon would be seen in terms of urban function rather than urban romance.

As a result, when the ’60s monoliths began to crumble, there was literally nothing left to hold these companies down. They happily moved out to find the next characterless, cheap, and non-threatening suburb to set up. For Nestlé, the move to Crawley was a carbon-copy of its move to Croydon in the ’60s. No doubt they will happily move again when it suits them. While they might have always left (I don’t think Nestlé is, evidently, too bothered by the lack of a lively cultural scene), who knows who we’d otherwise be welcoming to the town now. Or more importantly, what global business, grown from Croydon, would we be celebrating?

There are already things going on around us that offer some hope of something with a longer lifetime potential

It’s bizarre to think about an as yet un-built mega-mall falling gradually into disrepair, with its golden years behind it. It’s strange to contemplate the disgruntlement of firms leaving Croydon that haven’t even moved here yet. But this is a cycle we are at real risk of repeating. Not long ago we learned that the CEO of Abstract Securities wasn’t looking for a corporate headquarters or a rapidly growing start-up for his shiny new building on Dingwall Road. Instead he was looking for an insurance back-office; drawn by connectivity, cost, and, presumably of course, the promise of a new shopping centre.

But there is time to change this. The cutting of the ribbon on Croydon’s Westfield (or whatever it will be called) is still four years away at the very least. Provided we can banish the complacency this huge investment is at risk of engendering, we still have time to capitalize on the huge potential momentum it grants us. Croydon Tech City, support for the creative industries, expanded higher education, local manufacturing, urban-agriculture projects: Investment in any or all of these movements, causes or projects – while the world is beginning to cast its eye on Croydon - is what’s needed now. It’s things like these that will help us build a sustainable culture of home-grown activity for the long term.

In the end, we can build something to be much more proud of than a big mall. We can build a town that is a powerhouse of prosperity for everyone.

Doubting the value of the Westfield–Hammerson mega-mall is madness. But it’s an adrenaline shot, not a cure, writes James Naylor

James grew up in Coulsdon. After a brief spell in Somerset he returned to central Croydon as a useful London base. Since then however, his enthusiasm for Croydon has slowly grown into

obsession – leading him to set up Croydon Tours and eventually The Croydon Citizen. James is interested in the power of local media to foster new ways of thinking about communities

and how to empower them. He is most interested in putting Croydon in a wider context within London, the economy and across time. During the week, he works for an advertising

technology company hailing from Silicon Valley. When he’s not working on Croydon projects, he enjoys desperately nerdy but hugely enjoyable boardgames.

‘Hammerfield’ can’t save CroydonEconomics and Business

Image by Yaniv Ben-Arie. Used under Creative Commons License



Steve Reed’s constituency office is clean, crisp and almost aggressively white. That’s a comment on the décor, not its ethnic makeup. It would be inaccurate if it was – several BME constituents are being looked after by staff while I wait for Reed.

“Tom, isn’t it?” I look up with a jolt, cancel whatever inanity I was about to tweet, and realise I am looking at the MP for Croydon North. He’s a jovial man with a firm handshake and a chatty manner. Our walk to the meeting room is smiles all round, and we’re soon deep in conversation – after the obligatory jokes about how awkward it can be to set up an iPhone to record an interview.

Reed’s manner doesn’t change throughout the interview. While the smile may fade when discussing more serious matters, he’s always sharp, poised and ready with a reply. I quickly become aware that I’m in the presence of a seasoned political operator – six years as Leader of Lambeth Council have clearly rubbed off on him. But Reed isn’t like most experienced politicians, who can come off as ‘machine’ or inflexible.

“I was Leader of Lambeth Council, yes, but before that I had twenty years in private business. I was a publisher.” What drew him to politics? “The reason I switched into politics was because I wanted to make a difference in the community. I think we did make a difference in Lambeth. Then the opportunity to serve as Croydon North’s MP came along.”

That opportunity arose just over a year ago when then-MP Malcolm Wicks died in September 2012. Wicks had first taken the seat for Labour in 1992, overturning a Conservative majority of 4,000. In Wicks’ last

election in 2010, he won a majority for Labour of 16,000.

In the ensuing by-election, Reed was selected by Labour to fight the now-safe seat, and duly won. When we meet, it’s been exactly a year and a week since his election.

“I think here in Croydon we can engage the community and start to work together to find solutions that might have a wider application than just here”

Lambeth and Croydon are not a million miles apart, but as if to shield himself from accusations of parachutism, Reed certainly knows his local history. We discuss Croydon’s history of high profile political names, including Social Security Secretary John Moore and Speaker Bernard Weatherill in the 1980s. Admitting it’s somewhat cheeky, I ask if I’m talking to a future cabinet minister.

“There’s no way I can answer that!” he laughs, but does elaborate. “You know, any other job I’ve ever been in, if you want a job you apply for it, you get interviewed and then you get offered it based on how you’ve done in your interview against other candidates. In a reshuffle you don’t apply for anything, you just do or don’t get a phone call and you get offered something. You’ve not really got any particular reason to know why you’ve been offered that over anything else.”

It’s a conundrum that Reed must have wrestled with recently – when Ed Miliband reshuffled

his frontbench team in October, Reed was made a Shadow Home Office Minister under Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper. What responsibilities does he now have?

“The areas I’m covering are anti-social behaviour, gang crime, London crime generally, people trafficking and cybercrime. I think what’s really good is that they’re all issues that are of direct relevance to people here in Croydon North.”

There might not be an epidemic of cybercrime in Thornton Heath, but Reed is keen to convince me that the other areas he’s covering are highly applicable to his constituency. “We’re seeing an increase in violent youth gangs. It seems to be spreading this way from parts of inner London, and I don’t think there is yet any concerted approach to dealing with what’s causing that or dealing with the consequences of it.” What does he aim to do about it? “I think here in Croydon we can engage the community and start to work together to find solutions that might have a wider application than just here.”

“I don’t understand why Croydon’s Conservatives won’t back [my campaign] when the Tory MP in Epsom is backing a campaign to save his hospital which has been part of the same review”

I try not to wince at the use of ‘finding solutions’, but it’s a good point. Reed clearly intends to work on his policy briefs in a manner that serves his constituents as well as

the Parliamentary Labour Party.

As if reading my mind, he goes on. “I think if you look at the surveys about what people care about and worry about, anti-social behaviour and nuisance is still right up there as a set of concerns. If you look at what the Home Secretary has been saying over the last three years, she barely mentions it.”

It’s a rare flash of criticism of the government – throughout our conversation, Reed focuses most of his fire on Croydon Council and the ruling Conservatives.

“I think there are some issues where you need to say, ‘We’ll break ranks on this and we’ll stand up for Croydon,’” he says when discussing the proposed closure of elements of Croydon’s A&E and maternity unit. “I do not understand why Croydon’s Conservatives won’t back [my campaign] when the Tory MP in Epsom is backing a campaign to save his hospital which has been part of the same review. If the Tories in Epsom can do it, why can’t the Tories in Croydon? Chris Grayling, the Epsom MP, is a cabinet minister!”

In Katharine Street’s Council Chamber, Croydon Labour are keen to praise Reed’s efforts to create a ‘co-operative council’ in Lambeth. Croydon’s Tories deride it regularly. I ask Steve to explain the big idea.

“The fundamental point to it is to empower communities, to give them control over things that they currently can’t control.” Such as? “If you’re living in social housing, you get more control over the managers that are running the housing service for you. If you’re using social care, you get more control over the decisions taken about how the money allocated to you

The Interview

“We can become what we used to be - the hub for south London.” Croydon’s newest MP meets Tom Black to discuss his first year in office - and talks Westfield, politics, and co-operation

Image by Tom Black. All rights reserved.



is being spent, so that you can get different services that meet your needs better.”

It’s a model that’s typified by Reed’s decision to create the Croydon North Streets Commission. Streets in the north of the borough are regularly described as filthy and full of litter and flytipping. “The council won’t listen to me because the council’s Conservative and I’m Labour. Well, here’s an independent commission and they can listen to the commission because it’s representing the views of hundreds if not thousands of people in Croydon North. It’s chaired by a figure of impeccable political neutrality, Nero Ughwujabo. He’s the chairman of the Croydon Black & Minority Ethnic Forum. He works with both parties and he’s a member of neither. I hope that when they make their recommendations early in the new year, both parties will listen to their recommendations and let people in Croydon North know whether they’re going to act upon them.”

“I thought I owed it to both Malcolm Wicks’ memory and to the people who voted for me to be as out and about and active and accessible as I could possibly be”

Overcrowding may be the root cause of some of the litter problems – Croydon North has been growing consistently for twenty years (my mouth falls open when Reed tells me that while an average constituency contains 70,000 people, 110,000 live in Croydon North). Does Reed feel the demographic changes in the constituency are responsible for the seat’s transformation into a Labour stronghold over the same period?

“Yes. But I also like to think that Malcolm was a very well respected MP, and he built up the Labour vote. It was probably a bit of both.”

It’s clear that Reed is aware he has big shoes to fill as Malcolm Wicks’ successor. Throughout the interview he takes various opportunities to praise Wicks’ achievements. Citing his predecessor’s local popularity, Reed tells me how he tries to maintain the level of engagement people in Croydon North have come to expect. “I thought I owed it to both his memory and to the people who voted for me to be as out and about and active and accessible as I could possibly be.”

How does he think he’s doing? Reed gives a knowing smile. “I’ll give you a number,” he says, as if he’s heard this one before. “4,000 pieces of casework.”

“That’s just a statistic,” he admits immediately, but goes on to explain what it actually means for people to be able to work with their MP and see results. He talks with genuine pride about an elderly constituent who, falling ill, was no longer able to use the stairs in their home. When the council refused to install a stairlift, Reed stepped in and successfully lobbied Katharine Street to reverse the decision.

A careful segue via what he wants to achieve next brings us to the biggest story of the year. “Westfield and Hammerson is a fantastic piece

of news for Croydon, one of the best things to have happened for decades. It means we have the opportunity to become what we used to be – the hub for south London.”

“Westfield and Hammerson need to be seen as a driver for regeneration across all parts of the borough. I think this is where a co-operative approach comes in”

That sounds good to me. I sense a ‘but’ coming, however, and I am swiftly vindicated. “But all of the town centres in the borough need to regenerate – Norbury, Thornton Heath, Selhurst, and that’s just the ones I represent. If everything is focused on the town centre, it could actually end up sucking things away from the outlying town centres in the borough, and make them even worse.”

So what does he propose? “Westfield and Hammerson need to be seen as a driver

for regeneration across all parts of the borough. I think this is where a co-operative approach comes in. If you pull together the local community and amenity organisations, including faith groups, in each of those town centres, and let them shape how they want that regeneration to look and how they want it to happen so it benefits people there, then that needs to become part of the council’s wider regeneration proposal. Where I’ve tried that idea out, it’s worked.”

Does he think this is the approach that’s currently being pursued?

“No. I think the council is entirely focused on the town centre.” The community organisations here feel they’re not engaged by the council, and people living in the north feel that the council neglects them. Now, I think the council’s got to totally change its approach. It’s got to open its decision-making processes up, it’s got to share its information more freely because without information people can’t participate.”

Freedom of information rears its head – and

Steve has a concrete proposal for how to take advantage of it. “I think you need an open data charter that says the council will publish everything that it’s not legally prevented from publishing.”

Gavin Barwell, Reed’s parliamentary neighbour to the south and a Conservative, paid tribute to Malcolm Wicks by disclosing that Wicks used to drive them both back from Westminster to Croydon at the end of each week. Relations between Barwell and Reed have appeared more strained – has that arrangement not been renewed?

“We get on really well on a personal level,” Reed laughs, “we’ve had a pint together.” Just one? “I saw him just last Friday. Our politics are different but I like the man – you’re not going to see me dissing him personally, but I will disagree with his politics when I think they’re in the wrong place.”

“In terms of legislation, we’ve probably got everything that needs to be there in terms of LGBT equality. I think the battle is now for hearts and minds”

The carpooling, however, has come to an end – but only, Reed insists, because he takes public transport to get to Parliament. “A lot of people here,” he says with a gesture to the high street, “are commuting to central London on the buses and on the trains. I think you need to experience that otherwise you become out of touch.”

“It’s also another way that people can grab hold of you, to be honest. People see me travelling around, they’ll come up and have a word. That’s quite a good thing.”

Reed is the town’s first gay MP, and gave a particularly impassioned speech in the equal marriage debate earlier this year. He made waves when he stated bluntly “if you don’t agree with gay marriage, don’t marry a gay person.” What does he think LGBT people in this country should aim for as the next milestone to equality?

“In terms of legislation,” he says, “we’ve probably got everything that needs to be there in terms of equality. I think the battle is now for hearts and minds.” He talks passionately about the high level of homophobic bullying in schools. “The use of pejorative language against the LGBT community in schools and elsewhere still needs to be tackled, and I think we need to move to a situation where, you know, whatever your sexual orientation growing up, it’s fine. If a child grows up feeling that they’re bad, and that the way they feel is somehow wrong or evil, you can develop very strong feelings of self-hatred that can be extremely damaging psychologically.”

Thankfully, Steve is able to live happily with his partner and two cats. I’ve no doubt that he wants that liberty for anyone else that desires it. As we shake hands – firmly again – I’m left to ponder what else he wants to achieve for Croydonians and their fellow Britons. Open, co-operative government that listens and acts on concerns sounds too good to be true – but I suspect we have not heard the last of Steve Reed’s efforts to make it a reality.

The Interview

Tom is a graduate in History from the University of Leeds who, apart from his three years in that great northern city, has spent his whole life in Croydon. He is a Content Editor for the

Citizen, as well as its Political Correspondent. As the son of an English teacher and a Danish bookseller, he is unsurprisingly a man of the left and a paid up member of the Labour Party.

He is fluent in Danish, but speaks no useful languages.

A Brief History of Steve Reed1963 Born 12 November

1987 Got his first job - at the Home Office

1995 Started his publishing career at Thomsons

1998 First won an election, becoming a Labour councillor in Lambeth

2002 Became leader of the Labour group on Lambeth Council

2006 Became Council Leader when Labour won back control

2009-2012 Was Deputy Chairman of the Local Government Association

2012 Elected as MP for Croydon North in November

2013 Appointed as a Shadow Home Office Minister in September

Image by Tom Black. All rights reserved.



Labour and Conservative 2014 campaigns focus on HammerfieldSince it became accepted that Hammerfield was coming to town, there’s been speculation that both parties would fight the 2014 local elections with platforms based on being trusted to manage the £1 billion Croydon Partnership investment.

At December’s full council meeting, we saw a clearer picture of these two positions – ‘we the Conservatives brought you Westfield’ versus ‘we in Labour can make sure the development is done properly’.

Cllr Phil Thomas started the ball rolling by describing the investment as being ‘brought about by this Conservative administration’. Later, Cllr Vidhi Mohan moved a motion to welcome the investment, claiming total credit for the scheme for the Conservatives. Labour were quick to respond, with Stuart Collins speaking for their amendment and saying ‘you give the impression over there that the work is done’.

Labour’s proposed amendment, Collins claimed, would have ‘praised all those involved with the securing of the development’. Cllr Toni Letts added to the impression that Labour wishes to be seen as the party who can make sure Hammerfield has a positive impact on the town. The Selhurst councillor said that it was she and Croydon Labour Opposition Leader Tony Newman, not the Conservatives, who had visited Newham.

Labour are keen to analyse the agreement that Croydon Council has made with The Croydon Partnership – and compare it with what Newham Council secured when Westfield began their Stratford development.

Gavin Barwell, MP for Croydon Central, is also placing the development at the centre of his re-election campaign. It seems Croydon’s next shopping centre is about to become its newest political football.

Chris Philp wins Croydon South Conservative selection contestCroydon South’s Conservative candidate – and next MP, assuming the seat’s 16,000 Conservative majority is not overturned – is Chris Philp. He was selected from a shortlist of four at a meeting in Coulsdon on 12 November.

The selection of Philp led to a bit of a kerfuffle in among Croydon’s political classes. Of a 75% female shortlist, the Croydon South Conservatives elected the only male candidate. This, to some, was a sign of backwardness or worse. Whatever the motivations for the

selection of Philp, it is admittedly unlikely that the voters were basing their decisions on what would make the party appear modern – particularly in Croydon South!

But it’s still a problematic ‘visual’ – after eight years of ‘Cameron the moderniser’ leading their party, the Conservative members in a safe seat have selected another white, middle class male. In the same week that David Cameron announced a permanent state of austerity while wearing white tie and stood next to a solid gold throne, one has to wonder whether the Tories’ image consultants were banging their heads against their desks.

But Mr Philp himself ought not to be taken to task about the circumstances of his election. His political positions, however, warrant some scrutiny.

In September, Philp addressed the hard-right Freedom Association (whose 1980s opposition to the cricket boycott of apartheid-era South Africa has recently put it back in the headlines) about his Taxpayers’ Alliance-funded paper Work for the Dole: A proposal to fix Welfare Dependency. In said paper he proposed a change in the law requiring people on benefits to do unpaid work and training in order to continue receiving payments – a move that will ingratiate him with Iain Duncan Smith but not, perhaps, with moderate Croydonians.

Philp’s politics may be radical, but he also has an accompanying zeal which voters may find

attractive. Having an active, outgoing MP in the south of the borough will change the political dynamic of the town. He won a 9.8% swing in Hampstead and Kilburn when he contested that seat in 2010, and is unsurprisingly reported to be a formidable campaigner. Those skills will not be particularly called upon in the safe Conservative seat of Croydon South, but in Chris Philp, the Croydon Conservatives will have gained a tool to use across the borough.

UKIP to target Addiscombe, New Addington and CoulsdonSome of Croydon’s true blue areas may turn purple in 2014, if Croydon’s UKIP leader is to be believed.

Speaking on Bieneosa Ebite’s In The Loop show on Croydon Radio, Addiscombe resident Peter Staveley revealed the target wards – including Tory strongholds Coulsdon and Purley – for the eurosceptic party, which advocates withdrawal from the European Union and “an end to the age of mass, uncontrolled immigration”.

Listeners may have wondered what such a party has to offer on a local level. Croydon’s councillors were this year lambasted for debating a withdrawal from the European Union in a full council meeting, and rightly so– they have no authority to do anything about Britain’s membership of the EU.

Staveley, however, explained what UKIP aims to do in local government. Rejecting the idea of a party ‘whip’ – a system whereby elected representatives do what their party leadership tells them to – he said that any UKIP councillors in Croydon would vote in accordance with the needs and wishes of the residents of their wards.

“I’ll be surprised,” he said, “if over the next four years people in one part of the borough don’t need to vote differently to people from another part of the borough.” A fair point, and one that will not be lost on voters in Croydon unhappy with the exceptionally ‘party line’ state of affairs in Katharine Street politics. It is this whipless form of local government that has led to UKIP in some parts of the country becoming known as little more than a loose alliance of independent councillors – culminating in the nickname ‘the UK Independents Party’.

Under Croydon’s electoral system, UKIP could prove a powerful spoiler for the Tories – where they take Tory votes but don’t win themselves, allowing Labour to win. Matters are complicated further by the facts that the European elections are on the same day as the locals, and that UKIP takes more votes from Labour than most people assume.

Tom is a graduate in History from the University of Leeds who, apart from his three years in that great northern city, has spent his whole life in Croydon. He is a Content Editor

for the Citizen, as well as its Political Correspondent. As the son of an English teacher and a Danish bookseller, he is

unsurprisingly a man of the left and a paid up member of the Labour Party. He is fluent in Danish, but speaks no useful

languages.

The Public Gallery: Monthly EditionIn his online weekly column, Tom Black provides analysis, rumour and insight from Katharine Street, Westminster and City Hall. Here’s his monthly round-up

The Croydon Political GlossaryWant to know more about how our town is run, but can’t make head or tail of it? Here’s a few common terms, and the issues they refer to.

Politics and Society

Riesco A collection of Chinese porcelain bequeathed to ‘the people of Croydon’ by Raymond Riesco in the 1960s. Recently sold by Croydon Council. Labour say they had no right to do so, the Conservatives say it was necessary to fund the refurbishment of the Fairfield halls.

Minerva Property company which owns the Allders site (now Croydon Village Outlet), along with other sites in Croydon.

Hammerfield The upcoming new shopping centre in Croydon. Cutesy portmanteau of ‘Hammerson’ and ‘Westfield’, coined in the Citizen after the two firms formed The Croydon Partnership. Has recently sort-of caught on.

CCURV A legal entity 50% owned by developers John Laing and 50% by Croydon Council. Laing provide the money, the council provides land - CCURV then builds things.

Bernard Weatherill House A big glass building that’s the replacement for Taberner House as council HQ. Named after the late Bernard Weatherill, MP for Croydon North East and Speaker of the House of Commons in the 1980s. Labour claim it cost far too much, but no definitive figure has been produced by them or the Conservatives, because it’s built by CCURV.

Katharine Street The street that Croydon Town Hall is on. It’s like saying ‘Whitehall’.

Image by Alan Laing. Used under Creative Commons license.



The View from Croydon

My mother’s dreamIn a first for the Citizen, local resident Patsy Cummings gives us ‘The View from Croydon’ and explains how a titan of the world stage inspired her and so many others

‘We salute you, Mr Mandela’ was the front page story in May 1994, when history changed forever. Nelson Mandela had become the first black president of a free South Africa. At the same time, a survey in America suggested that there was some support for a separate black political party – according to the poll, Jesse Jackson was the most likely leader. At that time it was hard to imagine that America could ever have a black president.

There were rumours that the revolutionary Cuban President Fidel Castro had suffered a stroke – those rumours had been quashed. And in London, one headline read, ‘Amnesty call for illegal immigrants’, while another was surrounding an inquiry about the death of Joy Gardner – stark contrasts.

The world was changing in 1918. WWI ended in Europe and British women over the age of 30 were given the right to vote. In July of that same year, in a very small village in Johannesburg, a child was born who was destined to change the world and become a symbol of peace and reconciliation. Rolihlahla – Madiba – Nelson Mandela. The story has been told; he was born into a country characterised by apartheid and racial hate,

and joined the African National Congress (ANC) in 1942 to fight against this oppression. Of the 27 years of imprisonment, 18 years were spent on Robben Island. In 1993 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize with F.W. de Klerk, and 1994 saw him elected president by all races in a democratic election.

He was a man who was condemned as a terrorist by some and called a freedom fighter by others. A man who was incarcerated for 27 years. A man who, after all of this, was respected, admired and loved by millions of people in every continent.

We are all born without hate or malice, but society plays a cruel game with some of us. History teaches us to learn the lessons to change the wrongs from the past for a better future, and sometimes there emerges one figure from simple origins, who epitomises so much that is good and pure, who is iconic in life and will leave a legacy for all time.

I did not get to meet Madiba; I have met his grandson Mandla and his wife Graça Machel, and even F.W. de Klerk. But I, with thousands of others, was invited by Mandela to his home in South Africa – travelling first class in his

pocket – when he spoke to us in Trafalgar Square in 1996 for Make Poverty History.

What have I learnt from my hero? The capacity to forgive, unconditionally, to be the change you want to see no matter how challenging, to believe in people and your community and together work for that change.

Just like 22nd November 1963 (JFK) and 5th April 1968 (MLK), you will remember where you were and who you were with on 5th December 2013, the day we lost Madiba. I was in Fairfield Halls for the screening and Q & A for the documentary Riot From Wrong, a film which emulated Madiba’s message of doing something positive to make a lasting change from a place of darkness, produced by young people following the 2011 riots.

I saw someone look on Twitter and bow their head. I checked and read the news of the father of our nation dying on the anniversary of the death of my own father. I put my hand

to my mouth to hold in the audible sobs and the tears rolled down my face. Minutes later I received a call from my mother. I left the room and, through tears, she told me that she had a dream the night before – my father told her that someone she knew was coming and he would meet with him very soon.

Mandela was hailed as ‘The Last Great Liberator’ by Barack Obama, and more than a hundred world leaders paid their respects at a memorial service in Johannesburg on Tuesday. At his funeral on Sunday, as it did when he passed, time stopped for another brief moment.

Patsy has a background in finance, as well as experience with the

voluntary sector and charities, commuanity

organising and working with young people. She

is a Labour candidate for council in Fairfield,

Croydon.

Image by [Duncan]. Used under Creative Commons License



Tech City

Jonny Rose, the founder of Croydon Tech City takes stock of the movement’s hugely successful first year

If you think of all the places around the world that are synonymous with ‘technology’, ‘entrepreneurialism’ and ‘innovation’, Croydon usually isn’t the first to come to mind. This has begun to change with the emergence of Croydon Tech City last year.

Croydon Tech City is a new initiative to make Croydon an attractive home for early-stage digital and technical start-ups – the ‘Silicon Valley of South London’, if you will.

The movement started back in October of last year in front of an audience of twenty, and it’s hard to believe that in less than a year that audience would grow to a vibrant community of over five hundred tech founders, venture capitalists, software developers, and miscellaneous well-wishers.

The #Croydon #TechCity community is created by the individuals and the characters that congregate and connect regularly at our weekly events at Matthews Yard. All of them are building tech companies that could one day shape the world as much as Microsoft, Google, and Facebook have.

From the Stop and Search app winning a Liberty Human Rights Award to Andrew Brackin of Bunchy winning $100,000 and a two year placement at the elite Thiel Fellowship in San Francisco, Croydon Tech City is in the business of cultivating a community of champions that restores civic pride and identity

to the borough, as well as raising its national profile positively.

Working alongside me as the core team (as we all hold down full-time jobs!) are Nigel Dias (co-founder and Head of Investment) and Sarah Luxford (Head of Relationships).

As a result of the team’s work, we are now an organisation that provides free city-quality legal, financial, and technical one-to-one advice and services on a weekly basis to Croydon’s tech startup community, and organises a strong roster of social and educational events, with support from such illustrious companies as Kilburn & Strode, Kingston Smith, Bryden Johnson, and DotMailer.

Beyond servicing needs of the tech start-up community, Croydon Tech City is also starting to tangibly impact other parts of Croydon’s community. Perhaps the best example of this has been the Code Club project. Thanks to the efforts of the Croydon Tech City: Code Club group there are now twelve Code Clubs in Croydon’s primary schools,with more planned over the next academic year. This is the first of several Croydon Tech City initiatives to make sure the borough’s young are guaranteed a secure and rewarding place in the workforce of the future.

Croydon Tech City was set up to do four things:

• The promote the borough of Croydon• To champion digital and tech start-ups in the borough• To provide advice and support for digital and tech start-ups in the borough• To build a robust network of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and developers in the borough

There is no doubt that in just twelve short months we have not only laid the groundwork for these goals, but achieved them in full. However, there is still much work to be done.

As a credible alternative to ever more retail development, it is my hope that Croydon Tech City will become the chief vehicle through which these glaring deficits can be ameliorated

Whilst Croydon is experiencing an incredible renaissance and frisson of bottom-up regenerative community activity, it continues to be a borough that is socially, economically, and culturally inert.

This is not helped by a political class – of every ideology and creed – that is profoundly underprepared for guiding London’s most populous borough through the seismic economic and infrastructure trials for the next decade(s), nor by a wider population that is criminally underskilled and unprepared to withstand the rigours of the ‘knowledge economy’ and increasing global competition. As a credible alternative to ever more retail development, it is my hope that Croydon Tech City will become the chief vehicle through which these glaring deficits can be ameliorated.

We have Croydon Tech City ambassadors are on the ground in the city, San Francisco, and New York, regular enquiries from tech start-ups looking to relocate, and a plethora of on-going conversations with central government and speculative investors – needless to say, 2014 promises to be equally, if not more, exciting!

Jonny Rose is a committed Christian who has lived in the Croydon area for nearly twenty years. He is an active

participant in his local community; serving at Grace Vineyard Church, organising Purley Breakfast Club (Cafe

Nino, Purley - last Saturday of each month) and patronising Purley’s KFC on a near-daily basis. He currently works as

‘Product Evangelist’ for software company, Idio, and is the founder of the Croydon Tech City movement.

Code Club is a nationwide network of free, volunteer-led after-school coding clubs in primary schools for children aged 9-11.

The Code Club founding team has an internally set target to see a code club in 25% UK primary schools by 2014. Croydon Tech City – ever one to think big – is aiming to get a Code Club into every Croydon primary school by 2015.

To find out more about how you can help, please get in touch with [email protected]

The next Croydon Tech City events take place in Matthews Yard on Thursday December 19th at 7:30pm and Thursday January 23rd at 7:30pm. Email [email protected] to book your place.

Welcome to Croydon Tech City

Image by Mike Beecham. Used with permission.





Culture

Is the key to a good dinner the connection between base and superstructure? Does the economic relationship of the workers to the enterprise determine the quality of the outcome?

It was a friend’s birthday. All she’d told us about the venue was that we were going somewhere that was ‘like someone’s front room’ and the lobster bisque had been ‘divine’. This was The Alchemist.

The Alchemist is a friendly, unpretentious establishment that serves friendly, unpretentious food, ‘6pm till very late’ every day, with breakfast and lunch available at weekends.

It has the spirit of a pop-up business, though in conversation I learned that this part-charity, part-co-operative social enterprise has a seven-year lease on its premises in Morland Road: so they are there for the medium term, if not the long.

Coeliacs and vegans in our number were admirably catered-for

I’d quickly noted the warmth of the welcome (warm, but never intrusive) before I’d learned that everyone working there had a stake in the enterprise.

Outside there’s a sofa, chairs and table; inside there are simple tables and chairs, and rugs and pictures on the walls. Throughout there’s an improvised air which I found incredibly appealing.

The Savoy Grill it ain’t; which is just as well, as Richard Harris is said to have

made his final earthly journey on a stretcher past the Savoy Grill, bellowing ‘it was the food’ at the diners.

Food started with good quality olives and robust bread, augmented by delicious home-made (an epithet which could’ve been applied to almost everything served) relishes. Then ‘Arabian crudités’ arrived, followed by dishes of chicken and crustacean couscous. The seafood was particularly satisfying: but it was all tasty, social eating.

I’m a simple soul and believe that one indicator to the quality of a kitchen is the quality of its staples. Indifferent meals have been saved for me by fine bread, potatoes, rice, pasta, and so on. Although in this meal nothing was indifferent, I can report that the couscous was cooked to fluffy perfection.

Our party was discriminating and varied; but coeliacs and vegans in our number were admirably catered-for with oil- and gluten-free vegan dishes of hummus, pitta bread, okra, artichokes and spinach, gherkins and olives, peppers, corn crisp bread, salad, two different bean salads, a salad with bean stew, brown rice with the tomato-based dishes with aubergines, carrots, olives. All ‘beautiful’.

Dessert was home-made Egyptian ice cream, and followed by a fine section of fresh fruit, simply cut and served on ice. A delicious end to a memorable dinner. The remains of the pomegranates, peaches, apples, grapes et al were boxed-up, wrapped and distributed to us in case we felt peckish on the way home.

I left with my wallet a mere £20 lighter.

It’s a BYOB venue (with a number of off-licences nearby), which means a real treat on a budget is not hard to manage. I should add that the feast we enjoyed was a bespoke menu for the birthday group; but looking at the menu, one need not spend a lot of money on the daily-changing menu, drawn from their ‘1000 dish repertoire’.

The Alchemist is a very strong argument for co-operatives, if not the full collectivisation of the restaurant sector

This is a straightforward, ‘what-you-see-is-what-you-get’ place – no cover or service charges; all food well-sourced, well-prepared and deliciously cooked, and served with a generous, light touch that is unusual anywhere. At no point were we made to feel rushed – even at the end of a long evening.

In fact, I felt a touch guilty as I scampered off to get the 00:16 tram, leaving several of our number to enjoy their BYOBs.

The Alchemist deserves to do very well for its co-operators: locals from Addiscombe and Woodside should make it their own, and those from further afield can arrive on the 312, 197 or 130 buses, or take the tram to Blackhorse Lane and make the short walk. It serves ‘snacks and nibbles’ to ‘casual munchers’, though ‘serious diners’ are advised to book.

To return to my opening questions, if Marx is right to say that an economic system determines outcomes, The Alchemist is a very strong argument for co-operatives, if not the full collectivisation of the restaurant sector.

Stephen arrived in Croydon from Nottingham, via Portsmouth, Leeds and north London. He’s taught English in secondary schools since 1990, after enjoying five years in the central London book trade during which he glimpsed the last throes of a Golden Age and shared a very small lift with Michael Foot (having joined the Labour Party under his predecessor) where they discussed Maynard Mack’s biography of Alexander Pope.

Restaurant review: The Alchemist273 Morland Road, CR0 6HE

«««««

Telephone 07564 036977Time from East Croydon: 11 minutes

(via tram to Blackhorse Lane)Cash only

Stephen Black uncovers a local restaurant that’s friendly to coeliacs, vegans, and your wallet

All images by Stephen Black. Used with permission.



Continued from back page

“We want to put some of that Premier League money aside to do proper improvement works; not just small cosmetic things but to really build a stand or two stands. It would help if we had another two years worth of Premier League money. Jeremy Hosking’s son and Steve Parish went to Germany recently to look at a new stadium that is being built [and explore ideas]. It’s something that is being looked into and probably at Selhurst Park.”

“Everyone is doing their best, particularly when it [came] to choosing a new manager. It’s better to take your time and do it in the painstaking way that Steve Parish [did it] but he looked at 20 or 30 people at least and asked the opinion of everyone he knows in football. We’ve employed Iain Moody who is an expert in football recruitment. It’s far better to take your time and get it right than do it quickly and get it wrong.”

“I think getting promoted at Wembley. It was one of the best Palace atmospheres ever. The game was exciting, but it also meant financial security for the next five years”

“I’m devastated that we are putting out a team without an academy player in it, but that’s nobody’s fault. You can’t expect to make three or four debuts every year. Ian Holloway would have loved to bring players through but there

just didn’t happen to be any ready at that particular time. We are immensely proud of the Palace academy and it’s a really important part of the club. It’s fantastic that we’ve had the continuity of Gary Issott being there, and he’s one of the main reasons the academy is so successful.”

When it comes to choosing a favourite ever match, Browett pauses for a second before replying:

“I think getting promoted at Wembley. It was one of the best Palace atmospheres ever. The game was exciting, but also to know that it meant financial security for the next five

years. It meant a major change for the future of the club. The best Palace game ever was the 4-3 against Liverpool at Villa Park, the semi-final against Brighton at the AMEX was probably a greater experience.”

“Sometimes you think ‘wouldn’t it have been nice if I’d just been an Arsenal fan and I could have a moan once a year because we’ve just lost a game’”

Attention then turns to the rivalry with Brighton and his thoughts on Palace’s arch

rivals. “I think it’s nice to have a rival club where you can have a laugh with your mates about how their team’s rubbish and our team is great but I don’t understand that some people hate, really hate Brighton. I don’t hate anyone or anything. I quite admire Brighton; they’re one of the few clubs like us who are owned by fans. Hating people because of where they come from is ridiculous. Rivalry is fun when it’s good natured. You should be able to go and have a drink with each other after the game.”

“Sometimes you think ‘wouldn’t it have been nice if I’d just been an Arsenal fan and I could have a moan once a year because we’ve just lost a game’. But I wouldn’t change it at all; it’s great to be a Palace fan and even better to be involved.”

“Palace is my total hobby, it’s what I do and look forward to every weekend: being able to see my club play football and bring my kids there. I’ve got four sons who have had season tickets since they were five year olds and my eldest is 20 now, he’s at university and never misses a game home or away. I’ve passed something onto them that they will have for the rest of their lives.”

THE SPORT CITIZENPhoto by Tom Black. All rights reserved

Matt Woosnam is a Kingston University student in his final year as a Politics & International Relations undergraduate. A campaigner on mental health he is the founder of @Talk_Out, as well as part of the TalkEasyTrust, and seeks to break down stigma by encouraging talking out. Matt is also an avid Crystal Palace fan and the online editor of Five Year Plan Fanzine, as well as a regular contributor to the Croydon Guardian.



THE SPORT CITIZENmany goals - many wickets

In January 2010, Stephen Browett was a season ticket holder at Crystal Palace. By summer that year, he had purchased a new, very expensive season ticket in the form of 25% ownership of the club. Browett maintains that he and the other three owners had no choice but to invest in the club they love. Sat in the office of his wine merchant business, Farr Vintners, he looks back at three and a half years of owning part of the football club he has supported since he was just nine years old.

“People say it’s a dream come true but I never dreamt it, it just kind of happened. We didn’t really have a choice at the time; it was either buy the club or not have a club. If we hadn’t done it there was nobody else. There were no other serious buyers and the club would have gone bust. It was a monumental effort on Steve [Parish’s] part [to strike a deal to buy the club].”

“I went to my first Palace match when I was nine years old in 1969; I was brought up in Crystal Palace in SE19”

“It was an incredibly stupid thing to do to put all that money in… the only way you can get your money back is to sell the club or get to the Premier League. I think it was a surprise to every single Palace fan that we got promoted to the Premier League.”

“The club is now financially safe for this season and the next four seasons, so the club won’t lose money for the next five seasons.”

Talking about how the CPFC2010 consortium was formed, Browett smiles as he admires the passion of Jeremy Hosking, the man he describes as almost a philanthropist.

“Martin [Long] was on board [with the consortium], and there’s a bloke called Jeremy Hosking who nobody knows who he is… I said ‘fine, I’m in’, met Martin and we went round to see Jeremy who turns out to be the nicest bloke you ever meet. He’s just a philanthropist almost. He buys steam trains! The hotel he went to on his wedding night was in administration at the same time as Palace, which loses a fortune but he bought it and yet he says that Palace is his least bad investment.”

Tongue in cheek we joke about the co-chairman being a glory hunter after the revelation that he became a Palace fan because they were on the crest of a wave, although Palace is a far cry from supporting the likes of Manchester United, Arsenal or Chelsea. His links to the South London area are evident.

“I went to my first Palace match when I was nine years old in 1969; I was brought up in Crystal Palace in SE19. There was an older boy in my school who was a Palace fan and his girlfriend was our babysitter. I went with him for my first game and it coincided with Palace getting promoted in 1969 to the old first division for the first time ever. I think a lot of people become fans of the club when they are doing well. My first away game was in 1976 against Chelsea in the quarter final of the FA Cup when Peter Taylor scored a hat-trick.”

“When I was 13/14/15 Don Rogers was my hero. He had the ability to run round players

and score goals. Alan Whittle and Don Rogers were my first Palace heroes. But Bright and Wright? You can’t look past that combination.

“They always say don’t meet your heroes but with Mark Bright you think ‘Wow - he still supports Palace and he’s a really nice guy’. Then later on I used to love Andy Johnson for scoring goals all the time.”

“Once I became an adult and could go to football when I wanted, I got a season ticket in my early 20s and have had one for all of my adult life. My brief time not being a Palace fan coincided with when we were really awful, as I lived in France in ‘79/’80 and was at college in west London so I didn’t get to Palace much.”

”I went to the Liverpool vs. Juventus game at Heysel and it was appalling”

The discussion turns to what Palace brings to the local area, and how the club has a real sense of community.

“I think the feeling of belonging epitomises Palace. Their roots are in South London. A lot of people who started their life in South London have an affinity for Palace because it represents where they come from.

“South London has little else to be proud of and Palace binds me to the area more than anything else because it is - for me - the best thing about South London.”

“It’s not just another football club, if you have the choice of the team you support and you’re from London why would you choose Palace?

You’d choose Palace because someone took you there and it’s near where you live, it belongs to you. There’s a spirit about Palace. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the matches and the atmosphere every week this season. You don’t support Palace because you want to see winning football.”

Part of that community feels that contemporary football lacks some of the spark it previously did, and attempt to ignite it with a particular emphasis on standing. Attempts to change the law are supported by the club.

“I’m totally in favour of safe standing, someone once told me it’s a well known fact that you can’t sing sitting down. As long as you can make it safe I don’t see why on earth people can’t stand at a football match; I went to the Liverpool vs. Juventus game at Heysel and it was appalling. The FSF know that we support them on this but it’s not really down to us, it’s down to changing the law.”

“Jeremy Hosking’s son and Steve Parish went to Germany recently to look at a new stadium that is being built”

“At Palace we look at having a high quality product to keep the fans happy. It shows that we care, it’s a hassle but it’s worth it. We’re looking at all aspects of improving the football club, including Wi-Fi around the stadium, whilst on the other hand not spending money on things that in a few years will just be wasted.”

Continued overleaf

“It was an incredibly stupid thing to do, to put all that money in”

After a vintage year for the club, Matt Woosnam speaks to Crystal Palace co-chairman Stephen Browett about Heysel, ownership, and the legacy a local football club can leave Photo by Tom Black. All rights reserved

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