News Shorts & Other Busyness

Squatters And Locals Rally Against Sandwiches

Squall 7, Summer 1994, pg. 9.

A group of squatters in London Fields, Hackney, have joined with local residents and businesses to protest against the construction of a car park and sandwich making factory adjacent to London Fields Park and right on top of a road of squatted houses.

The alliance, calling itself The London Fields Renewal Partnership, is proposing a mixed usage zone for the area, better suited to the local community than the officially touted industrial plan. Their proposals, published in a document called “The Art of Hackney”, state that a factory producing sandwiches for the consumption of office workers in the City, does not significantly serve the community. It argues that the creation of a community centre and workshop space for artists, as well as some housing provision, would better suit an area where the sense of community is, unlike other areas of the capital, not a phenomenon of the past, but a living reality.