Olympics 2012 gentrifying Hackney according to Iain Sinclair

The most patronising part of the government’s Olympics propaganda claims the event was brought to London to regenerate a “vast, desolate swathe of the capital’s East End.” What a load of pony. Boy do the government rabbit porkies out of their bottle sometimes.

It is true there are benefits for London hosting the Olympics, notably employment, but the regeneration of the East End is not one. It begs the question; if the region was in need of such overhaul why had there never been plans for regeneration before? The area only became “vast and desolate” when the Olympics needed a space to gut.

In less than a year of construction East London has lost historical landmarks to make way for candy-floss building plans including aquatic and media centres twice the size of the Canary Wharf tower. These things are superfluous to the needs of the poor borough.

Last summer the London Development Agency (LDA) and its body of lawyers seized the 100-year-old Manor Garden allotments and raised them to dust. The plots, which provided pastoral escape from East-Enders’ daily grind, survived industrial expansion including factories and real estate but stood no chance against the Olympian authorities. John Day, 77, went to the allotments for 33 years. Before demolition he said: “This is my summer. It is like the holidays over here. I’ve got a deckchair at home. I bring it over in my car. I sit here and watch it all growing.”

More recently a nineteenth century building on Dalston Lane, that had thrived on community first as a circus and then nightclub, was demolished to make way for a high rise block. The income generated from the block will fund a new train line, taking spectators to the Olympic park. A hundred years of history lost for 17 days of events.  

Iain Sinclair, novelist, psycho-geographer and East End historian, has been a resident in Hackney for over 40 years. He cowers before the tide of gentrification that threatens to swamp his humble home describing the liaison between government and developers as “Dr Frankenstein with a Google Earth program and a remote-control laser scalpel.”

The redevelopment of Elephant and Castle is a classic example of the government imposing superfluous multi-million pound regeneration. Although the project is not finished, a new park costing £1.3 million was opened last year to a total apathetic response from residents. When I went there the park was completely empty; a little vandalised and spotted with beer cans. The government now plans to knock down a notorious estate and replace it with luxury apartments. Residents, some of which have lived there all their lives, will be evicted and re-housed outside of the Elephant and Castle area for approximately six years. Even when that time is over it is unlikely that they could afford to move back.

Under the self-congratulatory title “Legacy” the Olympics organisers highlight the creation of 9000 new homes after the games have finished. Hackney does not need 9000 new homes that few of its 200,000 residents could ever afford. The government’s strategy is blindly focused on creating a laminated “super park” for a shipped-in “super race.” It pushes current residents to the fringe of a region whose roads and walls used to tell their unique stories.

Sinclair recalls the poet John Clare who walked beyond his knowledge only to find he no longer knew who he was because the birds and trees didn’t know him. Places are attached to a history and a people that cannot be imitated by “too green” lawns, Pret a Mangers and polly-pocket apartments. I can’t imagine John Day bringing his deck chair to the Olympic park when it’s finished and in the meantime we all have to live and breathe construction.

So yes jobs will be created but they will also be lost because of the transitional nature of the project. And along with them a culture and heritage that has always been off-beat, conspiratorial and eclectic.