A brief history of the IWCA's campaigns against Class A drug dealers in Blackbird Leys The Independent Working Class

Association (IWCA) - originally an initiative of the militant working class organisation Anti-Fascist Action, was formed in October 1995 following lengthy discussions between a dozen national and local organisations. Founding members agreed that Labour had ditched the working class and become a party for the middle class, that the existence of the Labour Movement was a myth and that the working class no longer had any genuine representation. The IWCA would strive for immediate gains in the interests of working class people. It would also be a clean break with the past, community based and democratic. In 1997, before the general election, IWCA activists leafleted council estates across the country. The leaflet, entitled Done well under a Labour Council? You Wait until Labours in Government stressed the need for working class organisation in the face of a New Labour administration which threatened to be even worse than the Tories. Two years later a number of local elections and by-elections indicated that New Labour was starting to lose its heartland vote. A branch of the IWCA was started up in Blackbird Leys, Oxford, by working class residents frustrated with conditions on the estate and fed up with the council and the local housing associations consistently failing to fulfil their responsibilities. The first issue of the Blackbird Leys IWCA newsletter, the Leys Independent, made it clear that it was up to people living on the estate to take matters into their own hands, if they wanted to see anything done about their day-to-day problems. In late 2000 and early 2001 a survey was conducted to determine residents concerns. After knocking all 5000 doors on the estate and speaking face to face to just over 1000 residents about the issues that caused them most concern, it was determined that Class A drug dealing was by far the top priority for the majority of those questioned. In response a high-profile campaign was initiated, attracting widespread attention from the local press, radio and TV. Significantly, the problem of crack and heroin dealing had been consistently ignored by New Labour and the other political parties, despite it's prevalence on Blackbird Leys. At the time, dealers were blatantly plying their trade across the estate; they were openly operating from a number of houses, on street corners, in the parks and along the main shopping area where they routinely tried to sell drugs to young mothers as they entered the local supermarket. There were also several 'crack houses' across Blackbird Leys, sited amongst otherwise decent households.

Needless to say these crack houses dragged down the tone of these areas, while the dealers and users cast fear and intimidation into the lives of hapless neighbours. To make matters worse a recently arrived gang of Jamaican 'yardies' had started to muscle in on what they obviously saw as a potentially lucrative, somewhat untapped market, only an hours drive from London. Though the police were aware of all this (apparently they had been watching some of the crack houses for around two years!) nothing was done to seriously address the problem. Even worse, the policy of containing crack and heroin dealing on Blackbird Leys was strengthened by police protection given to at least two of the most notorious indigenous dealers on the estate who were well known to be paid police informers. In response to all this, the IWCA held the first of two public meetings under the banner: 'Tackling Class A drug dealing'. The meeting was provocatively held in a local hall situated almost slap bang in the middle of the problem areas. The (well stewarded) meeting attracted the attention of the national media and when aired on BBC evening news, all those interviewed, along with all those calling in to the programme supported the IWCAs stance. Yet one person did break the consensus on tackling the dealers - Inspector Eugene Gratwohl of Oxford police. Responding to the IWCA public meeting, he issued a warning to Blackbird Leys residents, telling them they could be overstepping the mark. Inspector Gratwohl told the interviewer that residents who tried to gather their own evidence or demonstrate outside the homes of drug dealers risked contravening the human rights of those implicated. To campaigners, the statement from the local Police Inspector only served to confirm that they would be wasting their time if they waited for Thames Valley's finest to sort out the drugs problem on their estate. So at the second public meeting plans were put in place to name and shame dealers, picket their homes and to carry out community patrols of the estate in order to flush the dealers out of the parks and childrens play areas where they continued to ply their trade. These tactics left the authorities and dealers dazed and confused, but the knock out blow came with a well publicised campaign to remove the Landlord from the Blackbird Leys Community Centre and close down the bar which was being used as a base for the yardie gang (now implicated in crack dealing, murder and gang rape). The fact that the Landlord was a local magistrate and his wife the leader of the separatist 'African Caribbean Youth Project', were close friends and supporters of local New Labour politicians was something the IWCA was not shy of exposing. As a damage limitation exercise Labour councillors were forced to back the IWCA's call to oust the Community Centre management (and to add insult to injury, to support IWCA councillors successful call to refuse a bid for 7000 compensation for the early termination of their lease).

In response to the successful closure of the yardies' base and their removal from the streets of the estate through the use of IWCA anti-dealer patrols and in light of the subsequent boost in popularity of the IWCA, the police finally took action against the dealers. Arrests were made, police patrols were reintroduced and, bucking the national trend, a community police station was installed on Blackbird Leys - next door to the yardies former stronghold! Due to the IWCA's campaigns, the authorities, who had initially tried to insist that 'there is no drugs problem on Blackbird Leys' were forced to change tact and jump on the anti-dealer bandwagon (at least publicly) resulting in thousands of pounds of public money being pumped into the estate to fight the drugs problem. Much of this unsurprisingly has been wasted on hair brained schemes, but the overall effect of the campaign has been positive. It is true that it is beyond the IWCA's power to extinguish the Class A drug problem completely and it is also true that the police - though these days doing more of the job they're paid for - still pay and protect low life, parasitical dealer/touts to inform on those further on down the pecking order, but the cocky, confident open dealing is no more. Crucially this leaves more breathing space for community spirit and more crucially for radical community/political organisation. In 2002, in response to the IWCA's initial anti-dealer campaigns, City and County Councillor Val Smith, wife of the local Labour MP and former Cabinet Minister Andrew Smith, joined the local Police Sergeant to condemn the IWCA for 'exaggerating the drugs problem'. The following quote on the same subject from Mrs Smith at the South East Area Committee open meeting earlier this year, speaks volumes: 'We have come a long way since the bad old days when dealers operated openly on the estate while the police sailed by in their cars doing nothing'.