Dear colleagues

In the wake of the Carillion debacle, and the Grenfell Tower catastrophe, one might have thought (hoped?) that local government agencies would begin to question the ideological assumption of private sector managerialism being superior to collective, communal modes of organising.

May I use this mail list to invite colleagues to support an initiative by a community group in north west London to challenge plans by Brent Council to sell off a community facility (Bridge Park) to General Mediterranean Holding, a financial holding company based in Luxembourg (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Mediterranean_Holding).

The community group, HPCC (Harlesden People’s Community Council), has formally registered an interest in the land, to be able to challenge Brent Council’s plans, and has engaged a firm of experienced lawyers to help present their case. HPCC is inviting support to:

         a) Give financial support for the legal costs via https://www.gofundme.com/bridgepark/

b)      b) sign the petition opposing Brent Council’s plans, at http://bridgeparkcomplex.com/

HPCC aims to get Brent Council to go back to the **founding vision** of the Bridge Park centre, of a ‘community complex’ to meet the social, economic, educational, leisure etc needs of the local community (multi-ethnic, high unemployment, mostly social housing etc). The founding vision was that the centre would be under community control and management.

The two websites above give some information about Bridge Park, but colleagues may be interested to know more, particularly as, I believe, the history of the centre raises important issues regarding organisation and management. Whilst there are many studies in management history based on 'convential' organisations, there is a paucity of studies of 'alternative' or 'radical' attempts at organising, particularly on a large scale.

The community and leisure centre was developed from a disused London Transport bus depot, in the early to mid 1980s. It was set up in 1981 following campaign mainly led by HPCC, a group of mainly young black people from the area, keen to address the economic and social problems of the area by positive developments rather than destructive rioting. HPCC was given the majority of positions on the ‘Steering Group’ (board of directors) of the company, HPCC Stonebridge Bus Garage Project, set up to manage the re-development.

I was employed at the ‘Bus Garage Project’, as Employment and Training Coordinator, from 1983 to 1985, through European Social Fund project funding. I was also, with the consent of HPCC, undertaking research for an MPhil (with later field work in another ‘radical’ organisation, Charlton Training Centre). The Project was, in my analysis, hampered from the start, and I sought to analyse and explain this by a critique of managerialism.

 I (much) later published ‘The Dominance of Management: A Participatory Critique’ (https://www.routledge.com/The-Dominance-of-Management-A-Participatory-Critique/Holmes/p/book/9780754611844)

also

'Radical Beginnings, Conventional Ends?: Organisational Transformation ‑ A Problem in the Development of Radical Organisations', (with M. Grieco), in New Forms of Ownership, eds M. Poole and G. Jenkins, Routledge, 1990

Available at http://www.re-skill.org.uk/regcom/rbce.htm

'Overt Funding, Buried Goals, and Moral Turnover: The Organizational Transformation of Radical Experiments', (with M. Grieco), Human Relations, vol 44, no.7 1991)

best wishes

Len

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Dr Leonard Holmes, PhD (London), FRSA, Chartered Fellow CIPD
Associate of Susanna Wesley Foundation, Southlands College, University of Roehampton
Independent Researcher