Southwyck House feature
Front page, The Guardian, April 27, 1995.


'Cheap and cheerless...Southwyck House, Brixton, which Lambeth council approved in 1970 when John Major was chairman of the Conservative-controlled housing committee.'
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The house that John built
(Extract from Guardian. James Meikle/Patrick Wintour, 27 April, 1995.)

John Major's launch of a non-partisan crusade for the inner cities backfired after his attempt to blame socialist planners for creating concrete wastelands led to attacks on his own record in approving two of Britain's ugliest council estates.

In a speech to the Social Market Foundation think tank designed to put the issue of the inner cities back on the political agenda, Mr Major said: "There they stand, grey, sullen concrete wastelands, set apart from the rest of the community, robbing people of ambition and self respect."

They were, he said, "monuments to the failed history of socialist planning"

Pointing out that he was one of the few prime ministers to have been brought up in the inner cities, he said the mistakes that led to ghetto estates "stemmed from an essentially socialist approach - welfarism rather than opportunity, public sector provision rather than individual choice, working against, not with, the market"....



...However, the Prime Minister's attempt to blame Britain's alienated council estates on the patronising values of socialism led to Labour claims that Mr Major, when he was vice-chairman of Lambeth council in south London 25 years ago, had been equally enthusiastic about bulldozing communities and rehousing them in vast, now crime-ridden estates.

Mr Major's nostalgia did not extend to his role in approving construction of the Stockwell Park Estate and Southwyck House, known locally as "the Barrier Block."

Condemning Mr Major for a 'disgraceful' display of double standards, the shadow environment secretary, Frank Dobson, asked: "How many families did you trap in cheap and cheerless tower blocks, Mr Major?"



'Ideal living' for the masses
(Lawrence Donegan, The Guardian, April 27, 1995)

Southwyck House in south London is exactly the kind of "grey, sullen, concrete grey wasteland" the Prime Minister railed against yesterday.

He should know - he was the chairman of Lambeth housing committee which agreed to build it.

Council minutes from December 1970 confirm the Tory-controlled committee's backing for Southwyck House, a monolithic block of 184 two and three bedroom maisonettes just off Brixton's Coldharbour Lane.

The overriding influence on the scheme's design, according to the minutes, was the noise level from a motorway proposed but never built.

No mention of people's ambitions or self-respect or community spirit.



What was supposed to be ideal living for the masses turned out to be an urban eyesore, owing everything to Nicolae Ceausecu and nothing to do with Sir Norman Foster: long, dark dingy corridors; suffocating maisonettes piled on top of each other; few communal facilities.

The first tenants moved into Southwyck In 1982. The problems, started almost immediately: muggings, drugs, car theft, burglaries.

In recent years, the council has spent £7 million trying to put things right.

Most of the money has been invested In an elaborate security system. But it has had little effect according to residents.

"I've been mugged twice,"' Rodney Ferguson said. "Had my pelvis broken two years."

Mr Ferguson, a 30-year old barman, pays £53 a week for a two-bedroom maisonette with a 5ft by 4ft patch of soil outside his front door with a garden gnome and asthmatic rose bush.



Ian Samuda, lives on the same landing. To get to either man's home, visitors must go through three sets of security doors.

Every step is monitored on closed circuit TV. "If you go to a prison you'll see long corridors like this, rows and rows of doors, people living on top of each other," said Mr Samuda. "I used to get a lot of visitors but I don't now, it's too difficult to get into this place."

Naim Bashir and Chris Thomas, both aged 24, live downstairs, from where they can see the comings and goings of joyriders and the boarded up windows of a flat across the street which was petrol-bombed last week.

"If Mr Major says he is disgusted by places like this, I agree with him 100%," Mr Bashir said. "But why did he build it in the first place?"



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