Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Had we but world enough and time this nimbyism were no crime
I do wonder at the easy use of the Nimby epithet. It's perfectly designed to hit at a certain type of angst that many people feel about being too self-absorbed and, more particularly being seen to be so. Breaking it down through what underlies that term?
At its simplest, I guess it means looking out for ourselves to the exclusion of all others. In this raw form, it seems objectionable. It's selfishness pure and simple, isn't it?
It's interesting to note that the word is used almost exclusively to describe the very small scale. It's used to refer to Colonel Blimp protecting his acres from a railway line being built, or the residents of Upper Mucklingford raging about travellers being allowed to set up a mile down the road. It's personal and local.
It also most often relates to situations where people are protecting something they see as relating to their quality of life. Most often it's something they have, or think they have, that others don't.
It's never used to talk about a national situation. No one has ever bandied the term about when Farage argues for his views on immigration or we ship our waste overseas. We may decry those actions but we don't use the word Nimby to do so.
So Nimby is much smaller scale. It's more personal and it's somehow connected to some sort of privilege. This is precisely why people take to using the term so readily. Knowingly or not they're reaching for a very sharp and very barbed tool that is intended to be damaging, but it's cloaked in respectability. Essentially in calling someone a nimby, you're saying You selfish privileged bastard, without being seen to do so. But the code is thin. We all know what is meant, not consciously always perhaps, but we know.
The epithet is used throughout the anglo-saxon world and oddly it's beginning to be embraced by some people at whom it is targeted. Some are saying Yes, I'm a Nimby and proud of it. They're not the first 'persecuted' minority to turn around an insult and use it as a badge of honour, but what's to be proud of? Where's the honour in being a nimby?
Look at the world from a nimby's point of view and you may not feel a selfish privileged rage. As a nimby you might not be standing ready to shake your doormat on to your neighbours threshold. What you might feel is a bruised sense of injustice. You may feel the zeal of the injured party campaigning for justice. These are often people who see something valuable about their life being eroded and have decided to stand up for that thing.
Nimbys are almost always 'local people'. It's difficult to say that all 'local people' standing up for some aspect of their way of life are wrong or simply selfish. Nimbys saved Covent Garden Piazza from the bulldozer in the Seventies, they've saved pubs and reversed river pollution.
So not all Nimbys are 'bad'. Sometimes they're protecting a community interest. On other occasions the interests are closer to home. They're protecting the interests of husband, wife, children or parents. When is it right and when is it wrong to protect those we love?
What would the nimby-name-callers have the nimbys do? Would they argue that the nimbys should just sit back and allow government or big business to behave as they see fit, no matter how incompetent those bodies have shown themselves to be, no matter what impact on their families' lives? Or should they stand up and be counted. I think most of us would defend the right of people to take the latter route. In effect most of us would defend the right of people to intervene where their interests are concerned. What we don’t like is where those interests impinge on those of others, very often more particularly on our own.
We’re at a pretty pass then. We don’t mind people standing up for their rights but not when to do so might have a negative impact on others, especially ourselves. What course should a ‘nimby’ steer then? Some problems may have arrived on a nimby’s doorstep through no fault of their own, very often because others’ interests have made it so. Should they just sit back and accept the status quo, or should they engage and seek agency over their lives?
Many of us would defend a person’s right to stand up and be counted. Ideally from the get-go the action would be taken as part of the wider community, where community interests are discussed and debated and a solution thrashed out. (Sounds suspiciously like a democratic society doesn’t it.) The problem is of course that only a tiny percentage of people have the time or inclination to get involved in such complex processes. So, instead they voice their opinions from their armchairs or residents' groups and ask to be heard. In other words they pick up the nimby cudgel.
Nimby causes are often hugely complex situations which warrant a thorough understanding before making a judgment call. Some nimbys are just simply bloody awful and extremely selfish. Others are only asking for their point of view to be heard and engaging informally as part of a democratic process. So next time your blood begins to boil at yet another 'nimby', rather than automatically thinking ill of them, perhaps it's worth considering taking the time to understand their viewpoint, engaging with the issues and, almost always resisting the name-calling.
The title of this post is course adapted from Andrew Marvell's wonderful 'To His Coy Mistress'. Thanks Andy. (Having written this piece for HoL, the author fears that he'll soon be thumbing through the pages looking for a poem about regret from which to take the title for his next posting!)
Tags for Forum Posts: manor house / woodberry down
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by StephenBln on
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Yes, many of that 'sort of people' were often self employed, running small businesses.
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Permalink Reply by Justin Guest on
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Did we not have the same issue here on the Ladder when it was first developed. When there was a proposal to build (what I believe are called) Board Schools (?) the middle classes who were buying and living around the Ladder were up in arms that it would encourage the lowers classes in...
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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Thanks, that's a great article with some interesting stats, but ones I'd like to understand a bit more before reaching too many firm conclusions.
Here, I think is they key information in the article you link to:
Although no detailed census of the resident population had been taken, the (London County Council) Valuer estimated that approximately 1,200 persons were resident in the area of which probably less than 200 were 'persons of the working class
Herbert Morrison's supporters at London County Council's (LCC) argued the case for the acquisition of Woodberry Down from the Church Commissioners by saying that many of the houses were in multiple occupation and others were 'rotten property' .
It's also interesting to note that the LCC's powers under Part V of the Housing Act, 1936, were restricted to the provision of dwellings for the working classes.
The whole notion of housing for 'classes' had stirred up much debate since the passing of the Housing for the Working Classes Act in 1885. Many of the objections concerned issues with the definition of the term working class. The 1885 act still had great influence on both current thinking of the time and the 1936 Act.
So there are four key areas of questioning I have with the data provided by the article:
1. It says that there was "no detailed census of the resident population had been taken" yet a very definite social classification was ascribed to the residents.
2. The LCC valuer concluded that "approximately 1,200 persons were resident in the area of which probably less than 200 were 'persons of the working class" and yet they were also arguing that many of the houses were in multiple occupation and others were 'rotten property'.
3. What precise characteristics were required to be a member of the working class within the LCC meaning anyway? How would they compare with thinking just a few decades later and today?
For example, author Norman Lewis spent some time in the thirties living in rooms at 14 Woodberry Down. In one of his autobiographical works, he wrote:
Woodberry Down, we soon discovered had been colonised by Russians escaping the severities of the Stalinist regime .....They were tribal people, Ingushes, Chechens and Kazakhs....Several families had joined forces to take a lease on a house a few yards down the road, has installed English stoves and converted tham so as to ne able to sleep on top of them in Russian style in winter, and had pitched their black tents in the enormous Victorian rooms.
I wonder how the LCC Valuer would have classified this group?
4. The pre-war LCC housing administration was a very mission-led one, bent on righting the many wrongs of past years. Their powers under Part V of the Housing Act, 1936, were restricted to the provision of dwellings for the working classes. Given the somewhat conflicting information in points 1 and 2 above, one would be obliged to wonder if there had been any political desire to ascribe the social characteristics to the existing population that best supported their case for compulsory purchase.
A fascinating article, Stuart, one that certainly adds to my understanding about Woodberry Down. So, thank you for that.
Along with other publications from the time, the article does also include references to nearby residents objecting to the development. Some might write this off as just ugly nimbyism. However, putting things in context, the building of Woodberry Down represented a huge change. It was the biggest public housing project in the country and represented a huge change for the area. This brings me back to the point in my original post and I suggest that we consider the complete context before making judgments.
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Permalink Reply by 0n59eal4meshz on
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The objectors were clearly unanimous in their belief that the estate would "alter the character" of northern Stoke Newington, which sort of supports the valuer's assessment.
And note also the classic Nimby suggestion that it 'might' have been acceptable to build in the southern end of the borough!
However, it strikes me that the minutes of the Public Inquiry would answer some of your queries, if anyone was minded to find them and wade through them!!!!
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You'll have to point me to where you get that sense of unanimity from, Stuart.
I think the objections came in the main from the homeowners of Brownswood Park and the area to the south of Finsbury Park. So it probably says little about the pre-estate make-up of Woodberry Down itself.
As to their motivations, there's a strong likelihood that the objections were indeed at least in part class-based. This was after all the 1930s. But we should also understand that the LCC were adding 12,000 to 15,000 people to the neighbourhood. The scale of change was no doubt also a key driver here and it was all being imposed on them from above. Stoke Newington Borough objected strongly. There had been no consultation whatsoever with the local people, let alone with the local council. This was a non-local body wielding newly acquired and unprecedented powers. It's little surprise that it was a bit of a shock to the system.
I'm assuming that this complete absence of local democracy is something that most people wouldn't support.
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Permalink Reply by EMC2 on
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And here's some nimbyism from a genuine friend of Finsbury Park, allegedly...
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Permalink Reply by Penny A on
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Um, "sweat the assets" does not bode well... a friend indeed, not.
Chief Exec of Wireless on FoFP: "They have jumped on a bandwagon to try and prevent Haringey Council doing what the government insists every local authority does, which is to sweat the assets that they have so the burden on the taxpayer does not have to be increased".
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Permalink Reply by Pat on
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So, if the 'friends' get their way, will they put hands in pockets to make up for the budget shortfall and cost of legal fees. Of course, the council could close more vital services.
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Permalink Reply by Robin2 on
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There's other ways of making more revenue from a park without allowing it to be trashed and in the process taken away from local people for weeks at a time.
And who's to say a clean open space isn't a 'vital service' to a family squashed together in a small flat with no garden?
'Nimbyism' is a throwaway insult that's easily handed out by those wanting to railroad through a project, but the fact is that if local people didn't object, that would very quickly be cited as tacit approval...
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Also, I'm interested to know what happened to the park to warrant Wireless making good to the tune of £90,000 last year? Does anyone know? We can see the grass damage that remained but what else got damaged that needed that much spent on it, unless I've misread the information.
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Permalink Reply by John D on
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No, I think prostituting the park is probably the most lucrative activity possible.
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