27 January 2025

Nimby Watch: Londoners against opportunity

By

‘Nimby Watch’ is back with a new author, and in this week’s edition we’re off to Camberwell in south-east London, where Sadiq Khan is trying to extend the Bakerloo line…

Where are we this time, then? Burgess Park, Deptford, and a few other areas of south-east London not currently served by the underground.

So, we’re trying to build trainlines? For a start, yes. South-east London has among the worst public transport accessibility in the capital, and an extension of the Bakerloo line from its current terminus at Elephant & Castle could fix that – taking pressure off the overcrowded railway lines and boosting local connectivity.

Sounds good to me, I’m assuming the locals are all hugely in favour? Oh, my sweet summer child, you must be new here.

Well…yes. We both are. Nimby Watch has a new writer now. Thanks for the reminder. It’s safe to say that this extension of the Bakerloo line has taken a while – it was first floated as in idea more than a century ago, and the first formal proposal was in the 1940s. 

And everyone is angry that it’s somehow taken more than a century to start building five miles of train tracks? It’s certainly ticked me off. But the Mayor’s office has bigger plans to go alongside the new stations – he’s designated the areas around them as ‘opportunity areas’.

‘Opportunity’ sounds good. Seems that way. The London Plan identifies them as ‘key locations with potential for new homes, jobs and infrastructure of all types’ which are ‘linked to existing or potential public transport improvements and typically have capacity for at least 2,500 new homes or 5,000 new jobs, or a combination of the two’.

Given one of the big complaints when new homes are built is that there’s not enough jobs for the new residents, or infrastructure for them to travel, this all seems sensible enough, no? I agree! And London’s housing shortage isn’t going to get any better on its own.

There’s a ‘but’ coming, isn’t there? There absolutely is. Turns out that ‘opportunity areas’ sound a lot like gentrification to some existing residents on the Left, and as a result they’re organising to oppose building the new Tube stations. No new infrastructure, no ‘opportunity areas’, or so they figure.

What’s their argument? In flyers titled ‘Let’s Derail The Trainline Extensions! We Can Break The Development!’ it’s set forth in direct terms. The problem is that south-east London has been ‘carved up’ in ‘the spreadsheets and boardrooms of the powerful’.

‘Spreadsheets and boardrooms’? I know, I know. But this is Nimby Watch, not bad writing watch.

Sorry. Their argument continues on these lines: ‘TfL and local councils are preparing the way for the biggest ever wave of property speculation. We intend to fight it.’ The plan to build new stations, homes and encourage new businesses into the area is a ‘plague of construction turbo-charged by proposed new tube stations’, so to fight ‘against the terrorism of money, displacement and misery’ a ‘proposal will be made for creating self-organised struggle groups’ to resist the development.

How could they be so cynical? I’m sure all the developers and investors only have the existing locals’ very best interests at heart. No need to be sarcastic. Obviously the private developers involved here won’t be doing this out of altruism, but the core of the plan is for public bodies to build publicly-owned infrastructure for new public transport. Isn’t this what the Left is supposed to want?

Not if it helps developers make a hefty profit. This is the tricky bit, isn’t it – almost anything could help someone make profit. An initiative to reduce crime in your local area could boost house prices by making it more desirable to live in. A public park could gentrify the neighbourhood and boost house prices. On this logic, anything that makes life better must be opposed, in case it helps the ‘wrong’ people.

It’s almost as if these left-wing radicals have arrived at the same conclusion as right-wing rural conservatives who don’t want anything in their local village to change. Almost like politics can loop around, making a shape like a… Let’s leave that there, shall we? It’s only our first outing here.

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James Ball is an award winning journalist, broadcaster and author.

Columns are the author's own opinion and do not necessarily reflect the views of CapX.