Living Wage – Match Factory

Ce n’était pas la fin, ce n’était que le début

(Ceci est une traduction de ce billet. En tant que francophone, vous êtes peut-être peu familier avec certains concepts qui n’ont pas été expliqués dans l’autre billet. N’hésitez pas à commenter pour demander des explications ou clarifications).

Il y a quelques semaines, London Citizens a organisé une “assemblée municipale” [Mayoral Assembly] à la Copper Box, enceinte sportive construite pour les JO en 2012. Le but était de rassembler 6000 citoyens pour construire des relations positives avec les deux principaux candidats à l’élection – donc le probable futur maire – et de leur faire prendre des engagements à travailler avec nous. Les deux candidats ont accepté pas mal de nos demandes. Mais cet évènement n’était pas la fin, ce n’était que le début.

Continue reading “Ce n’était pas la fin, ce n’était que le début”

This was not the end, but just the beginning

A few weeks ago, London Citizens organised the Mayoral Assembly at the Copper Box. The aim was to gather 6000 citizens to build good relationships with the candidates, thus the possible future mayor, and to ask them to take commitment to work with us. Both candidates answered positively to several of our requests. And this event was not the end, but just the beginning.

Now that Sadiq Khan has been elected as mayor, the main challenge is to start working with him and to build good relationships, characterised by accountability. This is why London Citizens decided to welcome the new Mayor and his staff, with breakfast, on his first day to work at the London City Hall!

Continue reading “This was not the end, but just the beginning”

Banding towards justice: when the band does politics and why it matters

Guest post by Paul Williams

The William Booth College band was proud to represent the college and the wider Salvation Army at the London Mayoral Assembly organised by London Citizens.

The purpose of this assembly was to get the two frontrunners in the race for London Mayor to agree to ‘asks’ outlined in the London Citizens Manifesto. These ‘asks’, which are developed from the grassroots, focussed on the living wage, citizenship and integration, training and employment prospects for young people and housing.

Live music certainly adds to the excitement of any event. The band, along with a massed children’s choir and vocal groups from other faith and community groups, performed a variety of music in the lead up to the main event.

A particularly poignant and reflective moment was a multimedia presentation about issues surrounding housing in London, including the story of Church of England priest and housing reformer Basil Jellicoe. The band accompanied this presentation with the hymn tune ‘Repton’ which added to the solemnity of the moment. A twitter comment stated that you could recognise the sound of a Salvation Army band a mile off!

It was a privilege for the band to take part in this distinctly Salvationist way. But, more to the point, we had the opportunity to show that we want to be involved with our elected representatives (and hold them to account) and that, ultimately, we are committed to justice and want everyone to experience life in all its fullness.

U2’s Bono once said that ‘Music can change the world because it can change people’. We certainly hope that we, as a band, played our part in bringing about change in London.

Pictures from the Citizens UK #MayoralAssembly last night

Citizens 3 Last night saw around 6,000 people gather at the Copper Box arena in Olympic Park in Stratford for the Citizens UK London Mayoral Assembly. Front runners in the mayoral race Zac Goldsmith and Sadiq Khan were present and made encouraging commitments on housing, refugees and the Living Wage. The night also saw a fantastic presence of London Salvationists, with nearly 200 present from William Booth College and 10 London corps: Ilford, Stepney, Raynes Park, Southwark, Nunhead, Camberwell, Bromley, Wimbledon, Woodford and Mitcham. The College band played during the assembly and Captain John Clifton negotiated with Zac Goldsmith on his reaction to Citizens’ asks on Community Land Trusts. More information and reaction will be posted in the coming days, but we thought it would be good to simply share a small selection of the pictures from the assembly to remember a wonderful night: Continue reading “Pictures from the Citizens UK #MayoralAssembly last night”

‘…no holiness, but social holiness’: my journey with the Living Wage Campaign

By Nick Coke

This week is Living Wage Week in the UK. It’s a time of celebration and action for a remarkable campaign, started by a group of church, faith and community leaders, trade unionists and cleaners in East London 15 years ago. The story is a wonderful testimony to the power of grassroots community organising – how conversations initiated in church halls and homes (civil society) have agitated and led government (state) and business leaders (market) into adopting the idea. I’ve written before about how I had the privilege in my previous appointment of being involved in the campaign for 8 years and observed first-hand how it transformed the life of families in my neighbourhood and congregation. Continue reading “‘…no holiness, but social holiness’: my journey with the Living Wage Campaign”

Today I’ll eat meatballs!

By Nick Coke

Today I’ll be celebrating a great victory with a plateful of meatballs. This afternoon I’m off to IKEA (a huge Swedish furniture chain-store) to buy some furniture for the house I’ve just moved into. I’ll be honest and admit I really dislike going to IKEA. I’m just not a shopping kind of guy. But today I go with a spring in my step because the CEO has announced they will be paying the Living Wage. Not the watered down version but the real one. When I step across the threshold I will do so with great pleasure and some pride because I’ve journeyed with Living Wage campaigners for the last 8 years. And today is a momentous occasion. Last month I snapped a selfie with Abdul Durrant, a cleaner from HSBC, who 12 years ago stood up in the shareholders meeting and challenged the CEO to pay the bank’s cleaners a living wage. He did not do this alone. Behind him was Citizens UK – at that time a fairly small alliance of unions, churches, mosques, synagogues and schools based in East London. Since then the campaign and Citizens UK has blossomed. The Living Wage Foundation has accredited over 1500 employers and ensured millions of pounds goes into the pockets of the UK’s lowest paid workers. The living wage has become a hot political topic and dominated the Chancellor’s recent budget statement. In our pamphlet, Marching Towards Justice, we relate our own living wage stories – how we identified it as a prophetic and just alternative to families forced into poverty by low wages; how we worked with poorly-paid members of our own congregations to fight for a living wage; and how we took inspiration from The Salvation Army’s living wage campaign of the 1890s in the match factory. The work goes on – look out for Salvation Army announcements later in the year. Today’s victory is so important because IKEA is the first national retailer to go living wage. Imagine what can happen if others go the same way – John Lewis, Marks and Spencer, WH Smith? Thousands of workers lifted out of poverty. Bring it on! And so, today I’ll eat IKEA meat balls with pride – I even promise not to whinge when I put the flat-packs together. Well done campaigners (every victory takes great persistance, patience and invention) and well done IKEA.