Let’s do politics differently | w. East Marsh United, Cooperation Hull & Our House

0:28Hey everyone and thanks for being here. a lot of that's gone away. So a lot of what they're dealing with is what happens to a place when its key industry is not there anymore. But if you want an example of how politics can be changed on the ground, it's happening in real time right here. We turn into a car park surrounded by grey terraces and 1960s blocks. But right in front of us is a mural. Wow. That's incredible. This mural, it's known locally as the Great Wall of Grimsby, depicting a vast colourful busy street full of activity that spans across history past and present. Green buses, smiling faces and carts full to the brim with fish, all hand-painted.

1:14And looking back now, this defiant explosion of colour, well it's the perfect introduction to our story in this place.

1:26In a time full of challenges, we're going to take you on a journey of the possible. We didn't know what we were doing. We had no money. We also had nothing to lose. Stories that show how ordinary people can take matters into their own hands. Don't take no for an answer anymore, so you just try and find a way around that. And create a future we all actually want to live in. One that could change our whole country. Just incredible to me. They've basically just been like, these guys aren't going to do it. We're just going to do it ourselves. I'm Marianne Pasha. And I'm Matt Golding. Join us on a road trip across the country, as each episode we hear from an ordinary community who've done something extraordinary, and then explore what the country could look like if more of us joined in.

2:07You can find links to things we mention on our website, antidote.studio, or videos on our social channels, Antidote Live. Sometimes in a world that's not always working out. It's time to say, screw this. Let's try something else.

2:27So, Matt, you went on an adventure without me. Yeah, we did. I'm sorry. Our producer Jess and I, we drove up to Grimsby and then Hull in the northeast of England. OK, I'm not going to lie. I had major FOMO on this one, but I couldn't come. So I'm really excited to hear what you found. Well, these are two places where it's no exaggeration to say loads is happening, where really big challenges are thrown up some incredible solutions and where they're thinking about how to change our politics so that ordinary people's good ideas not only get heard, but get done. OK, wow. Go big or go home. Well, I think it's fair to say the communities in this story have gone big at home.

3:07OK, I see what you did there. OK, so tell me all about it. Yeah, let's go. Hello. Hiya, I'm Josie. This is Rach. We're here to meet Josie and Rachel. They're from this organisation called East Marsh United, or EMU for short. We parked by the Great Wall of Grimsby. Great Wall's really something, isn't it? Isn't it gorgeous? Do you want to come in, get a cup of tea and sit and plan? That sounds lovely. Over the past eight years, Rachel, Josie, her husband Billy, alongside a team of other residents, have been working to give the people of Eastmarsh a real and meaningful say in their local area. There's 11 ,000 people in this ward.

3:445 ,000 homes, 11 ,000 people. Voter turnout's about 12%. There is a total disengagement with the political system. And that's because politics isn't working on behalf of ordinary people. Josie and Rachel are the kind of people who are just full to the brim with infectious energy. Billy said to me today, be fearless Josie Moon. We can be fearless. A tour de force of realism and optimism. So where are we? We are in Freeman Street Market. Amazing. And as we make our way through the market crowds towards Emu headquarters, it's clear how much they love this town, this place. And this is 150, over 150 years old now.

4:24And it used to be the absolute thriving hub of Grimsby. And we've both got fond memories of grandmothers bringing us here. And Emu moved in here into 2019? 2019. Since then we've kind of been supercharged, haven't we? I don't think anyone's had any sleep since like 2021. We find ourselves in a bustling indoor courtyard cafe, right next to Emu's offices. Around us are faux brick walls, mock Tudor beams and latticed bay windows. And as you can see, it's a Dickensian Christmas card. Everyone's got about 25 ,000 things going on because we've got Talking Tuesdays this afternoon, which is our drop-in.

5:04People can kind of come and leave their baggage at the door and come into a safe space. So Talking Tuesdays is just one of East Marsh United's initiatives. They also run a choir and a magazine. They organise days out for local kids and work in schools. They plant trees in the neighbourhood and they're buying up local houses. Wait, they're buying houses? What? Yeah, I know, right? And to push forward all of that, they're part of a nationwide movement to improve participation in our democracy. Well, OK. But in order to understand how they got here and why, we need to go back to the very start of this, to the house that Josie and husband Billy live in on Rutland Street, just around the corner.

5:45the house that Billy was born in. The East Marsh is one of those places in the UK that has been officially left behind, sort of abandoned by government and authorities and has suffered devastating economic and social decline over the last sort of 40 years, compounded by austerity on top of loss of single industry and also the sell-off of housing. So the street was in crisis, Rutland Street was in crisis and you didn't look people in the eye and Billy would say to me, just be careful, ring me when you're on your way down the street. There was a real sense that it was a fearful and frightening place.

6:22And so a public meeting was called. So Billy went to the meeting because his neighbour, Tracy, said, well, your mum would have gone, Billy. Your mum would have gone. Get yourself there. And the great and the good gathered in one of the local churches to get the community together with no clue about what they were going to do. So he went and he sat and he listened to all this, you know, blame, blame, blame, you know, shout, shout, shout. And he stood up, banged on the table and said, look, no help is coming. If we're going to sort this out, we're going to have to do it. We're the people that live here.

6:57This is our place. We are the people that can find the solutions. And he talked about broken window theory and that experiment in the 80s in New York. OK, I know about this. There were some social scientists in New York, right, who tested this theory, that if you leave a car on a street with a broken window, it will be quickly vandalised. Yeah, they actually left two cars, one that was intact but abandoned, and another with a broken window. And what it showed was when a place or a building or a car looks uncared for, it changes how people act around it. And so Billy's idea was, let's start there.

7:29He said, if anyone wants to talk about this anymore, let's meet. And 15 people showed up. And then he got our boombox thing. And some bin bags and brushes and shovels. I think the first week there was a lot of prog and jazz. Because Billy's got quite eclectic taste in music. And they went out and cleaned the street on the East March. Every single Saturday for a year. They talked to people while they were doing it. And they talked to each other once a week. And to understand what Billy and Josie found after a year of cleaning and talking. When we come out this door, we walk that way. Well, Josie and Rachel want to show us.

8:07So we're leaving the warmth and comfort of the community cafe and we're heading into East Marsh proper. So this piece of land here, through these railings, here used to be high-rise flats. Rachel's pointing to a massive fenced-off area, at least two football fields. It's a sea of abandoned concrete with trees, weeds and bushes poking up through the cracks, the only green we can see among the rows of terraced houses. In 2016 they decided to kick everybody out. They rehomed them all over the town so the community was pulled apart and they demolished them. And it's been like that ever since. And every day people will go past that and think, you know I used to live there, they've got so many beautiful memories and they've just left it to decay.

9:00For Rachel and Josie, this inaccessible site that has sat empty and unused for a full nine years is a daily reminder of the kind of politics that doesn't work. There's been a lot of people making decisions and saying, we're going to do this to you. I think that's probably true everywhere. And I think that's one of the big things that EMU is about. It's about, what about the people here? What do they think? What do they feel? What do they want? What do they know? And how much of that has to do with listening to people? Well, that's a good point. to draw attention to this building here. So this is Wielsby Academy, the school.

9:36My gran went to this school. Billy went here. And Billy went to this school. One of my favorite projects I did was we got the children to imagine what a greener East Marsh would be like. And so they were designing and imagining the future they wanted to live in. Yeah. And what's that future look like? What do the kids of the East Marsh want? It was beautiful. They want to see greenery. You know, they want to see nature and birds and hear stuff like that. And we don't want to hear the revving of engines and things. We want it to be calmer and to be able to come out and walk about. It was kind of stunning.

10:13OK, so I need to put this into context because it will become important later. OK. These streets we're walking along, there's no trees and no plants. The only green we've seen so far is in the cordoned off, inaccessible demolition site. And Josie talked about this when we were back in the covered market. That has real-life consequences. The language of climate change doesn't land. It feels very remote. But this summer, living on the East Marsh, we've been a heat island with 2 % canopy cover. There's no green at the fronts of the houses. There's no shade, no cooling. And you can feel the tension rise.

10:47When the heat rises, tension rises, then it all kicks off. A heat island is where the sun beats down on concrete and instead of being absorbed into the earth, the heat just gets reflected back into the atmosphere. And as the climate is changing and the summers are getting hotter, this problem is obviously getting worse. So how much of a difference does it make when you do have trees and greenery around you? Well, I looked this up and trees can make temperatures a full eight degrees cooler at street level. Wow, so trees aren't just a nice to have. No, they're a damn good idea. But on the East Marsh, the challenges extend beyond summer.

11:18As soon as winter comes, the houses will go very, very cold. People can't afford their heating bills and their energy bills because they're ridiculous. And the houses just leak energy anyway. Then the damp and the mould comes back because we're built on a marsh. And one big obstacle in trying to fix any of this, well, it's something that's familiar not just to Eastmarsh, but to every city in the country. One of the things that we started to focus on was on this idea of who owns the Eastmarsh? Where are the assets? and we found out that there were lots and lots of landlords with lots and lots of houses and they've never even been here and they've bought up houses in the great housing boom of the 90s that was supposed to make us all rich.

12:01Yeah, right. And so they've maybe bought 10, 15, 20 houses and then put them through letting agents who don't give a shit really about tenants and so houses fall into disrepair. So we looked into this and getting absentee landlord numbers for the Eastmarsh is really difficult. It's just not something many people measure. But anecdotally, absenteeism is often acknowledged by the press and the council. So what could they do about it? Well, a lot of us would think about petitions, right? Council meetings, lobbying those in power for change. But not Eastmarsh United. Billy came home and said, oh, we're going to buy some houses.

12:41And I went, what? What are you talking about? And my heart was like, I don't know anything about me. Oh my God, you know, There was a real sense of terror and is this going to work? What are we going to do about this? At the heart of this idea was not just heat or high winter bills, but something much deeper, rebuilding a sense of pride, purpose and most importantly, community. Billy and I had these conversations about what do you do to stabilise a place? Well, people need a home. You need a home to live in that's safe and secure and that you feel a sense of pride in. It was that realisation that what is it that's going to make a big change?

13:19What's going to make the most impact? Well, it boils down to it. If you have a foundation of a home and it's safe and it's secure, then you can thrive. So the not-so-small aim was to buy houses. OK, but you need a tonne of money for that, which I'm assuming they didn't have. Well, yeah. So they opted for a method that's become familiar to us in this series. We put a share offer out to raise half a million pounds. OK. And so the plan was that we'd raise half a million pounds and we would then have enough to buy 10 houses. So they are asking the community to help them buy the houses by buying the shares.

13:59This is the same thing Charlotte and Ben did in Ford Hall Farm, right? In episode three, exactly, they set up a community benefit society and offered people shares. The day that the share offer went live, I was so petrified that there would be no money in it and that no one would contribute that at about seven o 'clock in the morning I bought the first share. So I was the first shareholder to buy any share. Did you have your 500 grand ready in case nobody else? No, I didn't. I had 250 pounds. Okay. And so with my 250 pounds, I bought the first shares. And by the end of that day, we had 29 grand.

14:33Wow. In a day? In a day. But then because of the share offer, And because of the growing reputation and interest, we then got funding from Esme Fairburn, Henry Smith, the Mercers, the cloth workers. And how did you learn how to... You learn to do it by swallowing your fear, going online, looking at their portal, having a cry, and then spending a year on funding bids, which is what I did. So I just sat in my front bedroom up there and wrote funding bids for a year. And now, as we walk onto Rutland Street... This is one of our houses. So you guys own this? Yep, this is one of ours. Through this mixture of community shares, council funding and philanthropy, East Marsh United now own 15 houses all on Rutland Street.

15:19That's incredible. Yeah, and these are rental properties like no other. So you're landlords to the people. And how do you behave differently as landlords? Because what we say is that the houses are not ours. We're not landlords. We are custodians of these homes as community assets in perpetuity. These homes are homes for people to build their lives from. And they are safe, they're looked after. When things go wrong, repairs get done. And to tackle those hot summers and wet winters? What we're looking at is how we can make the houses more sustainable. So we're looking at things like better windows, canopy cover, insulation, how we can make the houses so that they can be run on low energy costs.

16:03All of those things really, really matter. How do people feel about that stuff? I think it's just climate change. Oh, it's just been a hot summer, mate. You know, oh, it's just rained a lot. People don't, it's a hard thing to face. It's a harsh and difficult thing to face. And people, if you haven't got food in your fridge or shoes on your kids' feet, you don't give a toss about climate action. You're just not going to do it because your head is just so full of survival. Why would you do that? So it's about how you have a sensible conversation with people and go, Would you want your energy bills to come down by£200 a year?

16:37Well, yeah, OK, well, we're going to do this then. We have a look at if we can do some insulation. Oh, yeah, that'll make it warmer in the winter and maybe a bit cooler in the summer. So it's about how things can practically impact on people in simple ways to make their lives more bearable, to make their lives easier so they're saving a bit of money, so they can go into their house and think, you know what, that draft's gone now. Oh, that's nice. But it's got to be done in a way that makes sense to people. and that they will buy into and understand and go, yeah, I'm doing that because it makes sense.

17:07And it's working. Here's Paula Graves, EMU's community-led housing manager. I've had one tenant from a housing association, and she'd had a gas and electric bill of just under£300. But she's moved into ours, and her bills now are£140 a month. So straight away, she's making a massive saving and being able to live. Wow, over 50 % cheaper. I mean, that's huge. Yeah, and on the East Marsh, like many other places in the country, that's the difference between a constant struggle and a small safety net. And what about those not just nice-to-haves? Ah, trees, yeah. Here's Carolyn Doyley in charge of greening and renewal for EMU.

17:53We planted 126 standard trees in Grant Thorough Park and in local schools. We want to eventually put trees down Rutland Street and turn it into Rutland Avenue, So you've got the wellbeing, the greening, but then you've got the energy saving and the monetary benefit as well of retrofits. And there's more magic to be had where the money side of things comes into play. Yeah, I was going to ask about that. How does that all work? Well, they keep rents in line with the housing benefit allowance and any profit they make. We can do our outreach work. We can build things like our tenants group, our choir, all the activities that we want to do.

18:29and all the nice things like taking people to the fireworks and getting the kids to see Father Christmas. You're able to take the income from that rent to fuel doing the work. Absolutely. So the money becomes a circular economy. So instead of wealth extraction, instead of the rent money going wherever it's going around the world, the money goes back into this community. And we use contractors that are local. So we try and keep everything into creating a micro-economy on the East Marsh, you know, actual community wealth building, so that the money stays here. So for a lot of residents, it's fair to say these real concrete changes make them feel heard in a political landscape that isn't known for listening.

19:08And all of this, it's making a difference to that deeper aim of making East Marsh a place people can feel safe and thrive in. One family who lived up the street, they've got a daughter who was really poorly all the time because of the mould in the house and the damp and the asthma. They moved in in 20, 21, and dad has full-time employment now, didn't have a job before. They've got a daughter who's now thriving in school, and they are settled, happy, and they've become friends. They've got a key to my house, because the trust, the friendship, the support is there. And the more houses we can have, and the more houses we can get over time, the stronger and safer and more stable that community will become.

19:50And there's been a massive shift. And now you see people talking to one another on the street and having conversations, whereas they're not, you know, hidden away behind a locked door. I'm actually finding this really emotional. I mean, to buy actual houses, it's such a big, bold thing. And then to slowly see that knit a community back together. Yeah, and that's key. I'm sure to some people this will feel like reinventing council houses, but there's key and important differences. The ownership, the decision making, the money, are all in the hands of the community and that's where the benefits all come back to.

20:25And you really feel that on the ground too. It's like that bit of pride is returning. So look at this lovely house. Look at this. I mean, that is just, it fills my heart with joy. In front of us is a classic terraced house, exploding with about 40, no joke, hanging baskets, and with a regal-looking lion statue either side of the gate, a veritable yelling of pride of place. And how much is permission important to what you're doing? Well, we do a lot of seeking forgiveness, don't we? It's permission to say, actually, we deserve better than this. So, OK, there's a couple of important things to talk about here.

21:06One is that East Marsh United aren't alone. There are several schemes like this popping up all over the country, like this one in Red Hills, Durham. Yeah, and you know, there's a housing estate in Paddington in London that's been community-owned for 40 years. So in the middle of a massive rental crisis, this approach could help a lot of us. I mean, I just looked this up, and according to the Office of National Statistics, nearly 40 % of UK homes are rented. If people can come together as communities and start making demands and saying, actually what we really want to do is have some common ownership.

21:40If that is ethical, socially managed, collaborative, shared, and the asset grows in order to keep replenishing itself, then it's a sensible model. And so I think this camp is replicable. And people don't know that you can do that. No, they don't. So let's tell them. What is the potential if we all did that in this country? What would this country be like? This country would be a very happy and healthy place. People would be looking out for each other. The fact that their homes are stable, that they're cared for, that it's not just about the bricks and the mortar and the rent, it's about them as human beings and what are they interested in?

22:16What do they like to do? What do they care about? What are their aspirations? And as we're thinking about this positive vision... I think we might be giving a... Here he is! Hello! Hello. I'm Matt. Hello, Matt. I'm Billy. Nice to meet you, mate. We run into the person who banged his fist on the table all those years ago. Emu's co-founder, Josie's husband, Billy. How's your tour going, Matt? Amazing. Right outside the house they live in. The one, if you remember, that Billy was born in. This is Loki. Dear old Loki. Absolutely gorgeous dog. With guest appearance from their beautiful dog, Loki. The dog of mischief.

22:58So this is your new window? A lot of changes happened. How does it make you feel? I've got a picture of me across the road there in my pram in 1962 and you can just see grainy little flower pots all the way down. A few years ago we were being called the left behind. Well you know we didn't leave ourselves behind for nobody. Local councillors, local institutions have had no idea what to do but actually we've found a way of starting to make the change. So what we need to do more than anything else is buy as many houses as possible because we know that we can make the change around here by building those initial units that people build their lives from to create that stability create that stability we're building strength with our neighbours and you know giving people that care and time and support they have then got the capacity to go and give somebody else a bit of care and time and support who then will go and give and it's so it so it builds love will multiply it's the one resource we have that is not finite and it has that multiplier effect and then everybody benefits everybody feels happy we raise the national spirit amazing he's good i think yeah

24:20a love multiplier that is amazing and you know i feel like the success of all the stories we've heard comes out of a really strong vision for a better future, a better way to do things. And in turn, that vision is often created by this really simple act, which is just to listen to people. Yeah, sounds like how democracy should work, right? When you meaningfully listen to people, you just tend to get some really good ideas. But this is where it gets exciting, because Eastmarsh have plans to take their approach national. Let's us sort it out where Here we are, in our locales, let's make our own decisions.

24:56So we're looking at Eastmarsh People's Charter as well. So the people themselves around here, which is us as well, you know, can actually make those decisions and understand how this works because it's their lives, it's their place. Right, so hold up, they're considering a People's Charter. What is that and how does it fit into all of this? Well, that gets to the heart of how good ideas like the ones from Eastmarsh could start to happen more easily everywhere. I talked to someone who Josie, Billy and the gang are working closely with. So a People's Charter is a set of demands that don't come around any single issues, but change how the country works, who has power and how do they make decisions and where those decisions are made.

25:41This is Ollie Whittington. He's the founder of an organisation called Our House. When I talked to him, we had some problems with his mic, so you'll hear it chop and change a bit. And there's been lots of charters that have been written across history, from the Magna Carta, which took power away from the king, to the People's Charter in the 1800s, which set out the right for all men to vote for secret ballots, for constituencies of equal size. So a refresher on that bit of Chartist's history Olly just mentioned. Chartism was a movement that took root across the country in the 1830s and was initially seen as a real threat to the nation with their wacky ideas dreamed up in pubs and working clubs across the land.