Deja Vu? by Andrew Wastling

HOMES are as we all know far more than concrete and brickwork. Our decision makers need to get things right. Some readers may recall that for all of its issues Ashfield Valley did at least provide easy access accommodation for a generation of Rochdale's youth. Ashfield Valley it's often airbrushed out of local social housing history and despite winning a housing award in the 1967 'Summer of Love', it quickly declined and by the 1980s was a double edged sword which on one hand was a notorious haven for drug users, glue sniffers whilst on the other a vibrant safe haven for a small army of squatters , artists and writers as well as being home to a large number of families, OAP's and single people'. 'Ashy Valley' comprised just over 1,000 flats and it's eventual demolition it can be argued artificially increased rents in the private sector locally by reducing housing unit supply , along with Margaret Thatcher's who passed two pieces of major housing legislation in 1980 & 1989.

The 1980 Housing Act extended the right to buy to tenants with generous discounts following decades more than a million council homes were sold at an estimated cost in today's money of more than £60bn. The majority of sold-off homes were not replaced, leaving social housing as a residual tenure. Since 1990, a further 500,000 Council Houses have been sold off. The 2021 local housing crisis has been manufactured by generations of town planners and politicians from all political parties not arrived at by sheer chance.

Writing in the guardian in 2017, Faiza Shaheen, (Director of CLASS Centre for Labour and Social Studies) argued convincingly that thirty years of bad policy have encouraged house hoarding, avarice and the massive accumulation of wealth – to the detriment of the rest of society , pointing out that:

'The richest 1% of adults, some 488,000 people, own 14% of the nation's assets ,– worth about £11tn. At the other end of the financial scale, 15% (7.3 million people) either own no assets at all, or are in debt. And things are potentially about to get a lot worse – house prices are forecast to rise by 50% over the next eight years, according to the National Association of Estate Agents and the Association of Residential Letting Agents.'

Locally we are in danger of repeating the exact same failed solutions to the same problems on local social housing only on a much larger scale.

Despite some of the swearing mandatory viewing of the Tony Wilson narrated documentary Hard-core Valley - Ashfield Valley Flats' (1) might be advisable for those RBH / RMBC making the decisions on College Bank & Lower Falinge. Not least for the nostalgia trip some of us might have seen familiar faces admiring the spiked hair , the dreadlocks ,& colourful punk fashions & music of the time. Readers of Northern Voices will be aware that Cult 1975 novel Rule of the Night, by Rochdale author Trevor Hoyle, is largely based on the estate. (please see Greater Manchester's forgotten Punk Estate : Greater Manchester's forgotten punk estate - Manchester Evening News).

Tragically one of the well known punk squatters , Jon Rimmer, who was a familiar sight once a fortnight carrying a huge bag of spuds over his shoulder bought with his Giro from Ron Chalker 'The Potatoe Mans' warehouse on Mellor Street, walking through town barefoot accompanied by his placid natured alsatian Rebel, was his was murdered in 2019 (Rochdale News | News Headlines | Funeral fundraiser launched for Jon Rimmer - Rochdale Online) whilst the various disparate tribes making up the valley were dispersed locally to Sheffield, Hebden Bridge, Totnes and Brighton and some as far afield as to the anarchist squat in Christiania in the heart of Copenhagen. It was the end of an era for many. The start of a long journey of self-discovery for others.

In Wilson's documentary there is an unfortunate incident of camera photobombing by an unwelcome local politician ( Cyril Smith ) who was renowned for avoiding the estate & its residents like the pneumonic plague when cameras were not present and it came to doing his job as town MP. The documentary is a snap-shot in time from Rochdale's housing archive. To see this vile politician brazenly stand beside the flats and shamelessly say he's been an MP for eighteen years tells it's own story when we are mindful that his brother Norman held a Rochdale Council housing portfolio at the time.

As does some rudimentary investigation of which local establishment politicians who oversaw this social housing scandal who are still unbelievably active in local council politics well past their sell by date?

As with Ashfield Valley asbestos is reportedly present in College Bank. Lower Falinge has taken over the unenviable & undeserved mantle of a 'failed estate' from Ashy Valley - despite having wonderful community initiatives and brilliant residents who struggle to maintain a vibrant community despite being consistently failed by Rochdale Borough Housing and local politicians of all parties over the decades.

Our mainstream media frequently uses social stereotyping images of Lower Falinge when they wish to indulge their penchant for poverty safaris to illustrate numerous & serial articles on 'welfare dependency' & 'broken Britain'. Ashfield Valley was a planning & delivery disaster that could & should have been averted. It was an abject failure & scandal, a 'masterclass' in how not to run social housing. The demolition of Great Howarth by Rochdale Borough Housing and the current state of and proposals for College Bank and Lower Falinge - as well as other Rochdale Borough Housing managed properties - shows that absolutely nothing has been learned by our decision makers who seem intent on making the exact same mistakes, using failed 'solutions' to mediate what appear to be institutionally engrained repeated failures with getting to grips with social housing in Rochdale over half a century.

Proving there's nothing really new under the sun .We can see that Rochdale already has considerable form when it comes to home regeneration, redevelopment, failure & eventual demolition due to years of mismanagement of housing stock by criminal & inept local politicians.

Am I alone in getting a sickening sense of Déjà vu about RBH kamikaze plans to demolish College Bank flats?

What's the betting Rochdale's local propertied class once again trouser private rents hand over fist in the aftermath of this exercise in turbo drived gentrification?

Historical Archive:

Tony Wilson's 1990's documentary : Harcore Valley from Granada and Simon Armitages ' Xanadu from 1992 both give powerful insights into a community about to be demolished and can be seen on YouTube.

In Hardcore Valley : Tony Wilson focuses on the marginalsied voices from the Estate both old and new in Granada TV documentary made during the demolition of the infamous Ashfield Valley estate, Rochdale. early 1990s The piece now stands as a fascinating piece of social history into an era in the history of Social Housing which has been airbrushed almost completely from history by local Town Planners intent on seeing history repeats itself

In Xanadu : Simon Armitage focuses on housing problems on the notorious Ashfield Valley Estate in Rochdale, Lancashire. To the background sound of the estate being demolished, Armitage discovers that life is continuing there in gentle and surprising ways. The only remaining caretaker is a survivor of the 1956 uprising in Budapest, while a neighbour rescues local stranded cats. One couple are not looking forward to moving from their immaculate flat, and another resident is cultivating a forest in his home.

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