Olympic Evictons: Manor Garden Allotments

[Martin Haggerty]

Date: Mon,  8 Jan 2007 16:42:29 +0100
From: info at lifeisland.org
To: info at lifeisland.org
Subject: Manor Garden Allotments Press Release

New Year Feast
16th January 3 - 8.30pm
http://www.lifeisland.org/

Moro restaurant owners Samantha and Samuel Clark will cook alongside
in house 'Food Heroes' Hassan and Reg assisted by Adile.

Please come to show the strength of support to showcase this precious
part of Lea Valley's heritage rather than the 'Green' Olympics plan to
bulldoze 100 year old Manor Garden Allotments for a screen to show
events to non-ticket holders David Mackay, Author of the original Stratford City plan and lead Architect for the Barcelona Olympic Village and Port, flagged up as the most successful Olympics for regeneration recently wrote, 'Unfortunately London has lost this opportunity by deciding to agree to cover the existing recreation facilities with the silliest architecture seen for years with no real concern for a legacy.........So far as Legacy is concerned we are being asked to look at the Emperor's New Clothes - so delicate that nobody can see them........If carried out, and with only five years to go, the Olympic legacy is more likely to be like a Hollywood set for a ghost town or an abandoned Expo site.'

The eviction date is set to be 2nd April at the latest.  The planning
application for the Olympic Park will be submitted to the ODA at the
end of January 07. The public can lodge objections for the next three
to four weeks Cleve West, garden writer for the Independent and Chelsea Gold Medal winner, wrote 'If the Olympic ideal means anything, it should apply to much more than four weeks of running, jumping and swimming. 

Friendship, tolerance, vision and healthy, sustainable living are
fanfared by Manor Garden Allotments.'

Manor Gardens, bequeathed to be allotments 'in perpetuity' by their
original owner the 'Right Hon' Major Villiers, sit in the North
central section of the Olympic Park. The LDA plan to remove them to
make a footpath to the stadia and now to house a screen, destroying in
the process a century of devoted cultivation and a close-knit
community rooted in this irreplaceable site. Old timers, Tom and
Albert, have been growing veg and keeping fit here for 54 and 58 years
respectively, taking over from their fathers. 10 year old Boris, whose
parents are members, nags them to come to the plot and wants to hand
his plot down to his son. Members trust in the permanence of the site
led one plot holder to scatter his brother's ashes on his plot.

However this diverse community of Turks Cypriots, Greeks, Jamaicans,
Africans and Brits welcome the potential for regeneration brought by
the Olympic development. Rather than being moved out of the way they
want to offer their contribution which seems to them to be entirely
consistent with the Olympic and Government ambitions. They believe to
remove the allotment gardens would be to rip out the 'healthy heart'
of the Olympic Park area as well as to fragment the community.

Even if the Manor Gardening community could be protected by relocation
there is growing opposition from people local to the relocation site
on Marsh Lane fields. If planning permission is granted it would only
be for seven years after which the Society may be moved again. Yet it
would take at least twenty years, plus the right conditions, to
re-establish our current food production levels and to create a
similarly viable community.

As plot holder Armagan and her friend Cavide said, 'We could make the
London Olympics different from all other Olympics'. 'Having the
allotments in the Olympic Park and preserving them for the Legacy Park
would send out the message world wide that the UK really does care
after all.'

But do the LDA and the Mayor care about local grown initiatives even
when they are successful examples, like Manor Garden Allotments, of
the Governments own strategies such as the London Food and the
Biodiversity Strategies?

Writer and supporter of the campaign to incorporate the allotments,
Iain Sinclair says, ?We don?t want it (the Olympic Park) imagining for
us. We don?t want it over-imagined. We want to imagine it for
ourselves. Please preserve the soul of the place as represented by the
beautiful Manor Garden Allotments.'

At the end of the day the TV will be turned on in the Community Shed
to show the broadcast of 'Disappearing London' featuring Manor Garden
Allotments on ITV at 7.30pm.

RSVP to info at lifeisland.org
Invitation and map @ www.lifeisland.org

Acting Secretary Julie Sumner 07956 890 825
www.lifeisland.org
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