Uxbridge Gazette

Moyra has fought injustice for three remarkable decades

TIRELESS NORTH KENSINGTON ACTIVIST WANTS TO LEAVE A LEGACY OF HOPE AND POSITIVITY FOR THE FUTURE

- By THOMAS KINGSLEY thomas.kingsley@reachplc.com @ThomasKing­sley

BEFORE we could even sit down with Moyra Samuels to begin discussing her three decades of activism in North Kensington, she was already telling the owner of the café we met in that she’d report an unresolved leak causing puddles of water to form outside the shop.

“When we talk about where does my sense of activism come from, as in its roots – I can sniff injustice at 100 paces. Having grown up in a very unjust country, it’s just in my DNA,” Ms Samuels told our sister website, MyLondon, on her activism being born out of life in South Africa’s apartheid period.

When Kensington community activist Moyra Samuels, 64, moved to London from South Africa in 1979 in her twenties, she didn’t plan to lead protests and provide a “voice for the voiceless” in North Kensington.

“I kind of slipped into that [activism] in a natural way,” Ms Samuels said. The catalyst was watching discussion­s on the 1980s miners strike and attending different demonstrat­ions in London, she told MyLondon.

Ms Samuels said she’s been to ‘hundreds’ of protests, a large of number of those taking place after moving to North Kensington in the late 1980s, where she still lives, when the iconic Mangrove Caribbean restaurant was still open.

After the controvers­ial arrest of Frank Crichlow in the 1970s which sparked the famous Mangrove Nine case, Mr Crichlow was again arrested in 1988. Amongst the crowd of angry Kensington residents who gathered outside of Notting Hill Police station to protest his arrest was a younger but just as passionate Moyra Samuels.

Having been connected to the area mainly through Notting Hill Carnival beforehand, that was one of the first times she’d protested in the area and over 30 years on she still isn’t tired.

“I think North Kensington has a very particular history,” Ms Samuels said.

She added: “I always say we stand on the shoulders of giants in terms of actually fighting for equality and resources within the area. That goes back obviously to the murder of Kelso Cochrane.

“If you look at that generation that came from the period of Kelso, those that are still alive remember going to school in this area and remember getting regularly beaten up by white racists. Coming out of the murder of Kelso Cochrane was the formation of Notting Hill Carnival so we have a kind of cultural capital in the north that’s come out of struggle.”

Through the struggles and resulting cultural capital the area experience­d, it continued to grow into one of the most diverse parts of London with large groups of residents from Morocco, Spain, Portugal, Eritrea and Ireland. Ms Samuels said this, along with the area’s history, gave locals a sense of identity and unity which would serve them in future community campaigns.

‘We are protecting community spaces’

During the developmen­t of The Westway between 1962 and 1970, it was predominan­tly homes in North Kensington which were demolished during constructi­on. It was estimated that 5,000 families were relocated for every mile of The Westway according to a report by The Times.

As a result, the Westway Trust was founded in 1971 to ensure the 23 acres of land under The Westway is used for the benefit of the North Kensington community. However, in the last five to six years Ms Samuels said the trust has become more like “property developer than an organisati­on that protects spaces for the community,” after the closure of some community spaces and rumoured plans that the trust was planning retail developmen­t that would threaten the 23 acres of land.

In response, Ms Samuels joined a local group named Westway 23 to ensure community spaces were being protected. The group organised protests to protect the Maxilla Nursery and West London Stables - both of which were closed down in 2015.

Ms Samuels said: “Through Westway 23 we organised a protest up to Holland Park where they took the horses from the stables up to the opera and said you spent £5 million a year on opera but you can’t spend £50,000 on actually making these stables up to the standard needed.

“This is about the gentrifica­tion of the area. This is about the building of Westfield and wanting to make business links and we said no. We’re protecting community spaces.

“You can imagine in this community, the extent of anger and frustratio­n that we’re just not listened to, that the council just continue to behave like colonial masters: making decisions for us, not listening to us, our voice not being heard.”

Ms Samuels said a large driving force for protecting these community spaces is young people in the area having things to do and being able to engage with children from different background­s .

She explained a “national narrative” exists that people in council housing, such as those in North Kensington, were the “undeservin­g poor.”

However, Ms Samuels, along with other local activists, has found some wins in successful campaigns such as protests against the proposed demolition of Silchester estate and also a campaign to save North Kensington Library from privatisat­ion. And after a successful but manic campaign to see Labour Party candidate, Emma Dent Coad become Kensington MP, North Kensington residents felt like things were becoming more positive.

On the council’s strained relationsh­ip with North Kensington residents, a spokespers­on from RBKC said: “Councillor­s have made a commitment to improve all our housing stock. We are investing £300m to refurbish council housing and we are also building new homes, with extensive consultati­on with residents.

“In north Kensington specifical­ly, this includes the Grenfell Community Assembly, the Grenfell Projects Fund, North Kensington News.”

However, following Emma Dent Coad’s win, no one in Kensington could have expected what hit them next.

Ms Samuels said: “I think we really thought we were on a path to saving – all the work we done, all the going to town hall, all the protests , all the council meetings. We’ve now got a representa­tive and then five days later Grenfell – it was like we’d just got smacked to the ground and catapulted into this maelstrom of chaos, grief, trauma.

“But I think the fact that we had all these connection­s enabled us to get through that for the past three years because we had enough knowledgea­ble experience and we had links with each other.”

‘When in doubt take it to the streets’

Only a few short days after the fire, Ms Samuels used what she described as her skillset: “take it to the streets” to organise a demonstrat­ion for the victims and survivors of Grenfell. To her surprise, the Facebook event she set up with minimal former experience of the platform racked up 2,000 attendees, which even got the attention of the police.

Being part of the revolution­ary Socialist Workers Party (SWP) for 30 years, fuelled by her anger at the fire and formerly stewarding Black Lives Matter protests, Ms Samuels found no issue organising demonstrat­ions and being a voice for the community when she was most needed.

Ms Samuels contacted speakers for the demonstrat­ion as well people to come and steward as she led a group in their hundreds to Downing Street.

“My role was also to mobilise the anger,” Ms Samuels said. “I didn’t want the anger in terms of numbers to be here in the community because we had so much pain.”

As a member of Justice for Grenfell, Ms Samuels has high hopes for the future of the community she’s served for over 30 years and counting: that a legacy of change and hope would come from Kensington and what happened in Grenfell wouldn’t be allowed to happen in any other community.

Ms Samuels said: “This is a wound that will take a generation to heal. We’re trying to retain our community spaces for our young people so they can have something coming out of the fire saying this is what we did.”

“My activism is, yes, let’s take to the streets, but also let’s build things. In some way its the same tradition as the [Black] Panthers. They did breakfast clubs and carried machine guns. You have to do two things, its not enough to just shout, you actually have to build something positive.”

It’s not enough to shout, you actually have to build something positive

Moyra Samuels

 ?? PHOTO: DARREN PEPE ?? Moyra Samuels is a champion for the North Kensington community
PHOTO: DARREN PEPE Moyra Samuels is a champion for the North Kensington community

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