Tower Hamlets council is re-building several of its schools. This is a good thing. The fly in the ointment is that they are doing it using the Private Finance Initiative. So Balfour Beatty has really surprised everyone and has decided to pull down a grimy but quite good looking Victorian school about a hundred yards from my back door. They are going to replace it with luxury flats. Gosh! Who could have predicted that?

A lot of the people who live on this estate attended the school. Respect took the initiative and called a series of demonstrations against the demolition. Tonight’s was attended by about fifty people, which isn’t bad. George Galloway spoke and was well received. The only councillor who turned up was Abjol Miah, leader of the Respect group.

These types of PFI re-developments are a form of class warfare and in this area Respect is the only organisation leading mass struggles against them.

I had hoped to put up a couple of photos with this posting but Blogger hasn’t been working properly for a couple of weeks and the free program I’m using doesn’t seem to let me put up images.