MOTORWAY MADNESS

For many years Wester Hailes had FISH, for a long time now there’s been WHALE, and once upon a time there was also, albeit briefly, CRAB.

“MOTORWAY MADNESS” was the headline in the February 1979 issue of the Sentinel announcing the formation of “a brand new action group” : CRAB – the Campaign to Re-Align the By-Pass. Under the headline was a dramatic photo showing the route for the new road running only a hundred yards away from the Westburn Gardens multi-storey development and ploughing straight through the toddlers playground built only a year earlier by local residents for their kids.

The Sentinel was in no doubt that the building of the by-pass was inevitable and accepted that it was needed to cope with Edinburgh’s increasing traffic problems – the issue was the effect the proposed line of the motorway would have on the area. Not only would the road pass very close to Westburn Gardens, it was believed it was going to be built at a height equivalent to the second storey of those flats. There was expected to be a huge impact on local amenities and open space and there were concerns over the amount of extra traffic that might be channelled through Wester Hailes as a result.

The Sentinel proclaimed the call to action: “the community of Wester Hailes faces its biggest fight yet” – “The proposed line of the motorway is not the only possible one” – “WE MUST ORGANISE NOW!”

By the time the Sentinel reported on the second public meeting of CRAB in its March issue, the campaign had its own logo, petitions were being signed, the local Regional and District Councillors were in attendance and a demonstration had taken place on what was “a fairly blustery day” between Wester Hailes Drive and Baberton during which members of CRAB stood in a long line, marking out the route of the road for all to see.

The June issue carried a further report telling people that “following a well attended meeting of CRAB” in May, the local District Councillor, Neil MacCallum, was pursuing the matter and intended submitting a number of written questions to the Chairman of the District’s Planning Committee; CRAB itself had written to the Planning Department and the Region’s Highway’s Department; and, the Secretary of State for Scotland had been reviewing the proposals for the specific section of the road affecting Wester Hailes.

However, very ominously, this article was headed “THE DOZERS ARE COMING! They are already here…”. Work had started, a huge embankment was being constructed in the very spot where members of CRAB had held their demonstration a few months before. At the end of the report the date was given for the next meeting of the group – July 5th – but that’s the last we hear about CRAB in the Sentinel and it seems to disappear without further trace.

CRAB had a very short life. It may not have achieved much and some of the worst fears that had been expressed weren’t realised – the section of the bypass next to Westburn was not built high up in the air and the loss of amenity was not major. But maybe it did have some effect – the line of the road didn’t go through the toddlers playground and the Secretary of State was moved to review the proposals, an intervention no doubt unwelcome to officials in the District and Regional Councils.

But most importantly, and if nothing else, CRAB and the Sentinel ensured that a huge chunk of infrastructure works did not proceed on Wester Hailes’s doorstep without the community being at least made aware of the potential implications for the area. It’s hard to escape the feeling that there would have been little of no information that would have come the way of local people otherwise. And what’s particularly impressive is how quickly the campaign got itself into high gear and how effectively it mobilised the support of its political representatives.

APATHY IS A KILLER OF COMMUNTIES!

We’ve been banging on quite a bit recently about the distinctive and highly successful approach to community action and local representation that developed in Wester Hailes over the years. Whether it was the staff and volunteers of FISH working above and beyond the call of duty to bring help and support to vulnerable people; or a debate about the best way to represent the community (Scooby Doo or a community council); or even the above piece about CRAB – everything that was achieved was down to the commitment and energy of local individuals.

But there’s a danger in getting too misty eyed and romantic about it all. Just a couple of months before the CRAB group sprung into life, the committee of the Murrayburn Tenants Association, one of the six local constituent bodies that made up Scooby Doo, resigned en-masse. Stan Taylor, the Chairman of the group, explained to the Sentinel:

“It was the same old story, of a gradually dwindling group of people having to do more and more whilst the vast majority of residents were quite happy to let them get on with it. We felt that by resigning we would force Murrayburn residents to look seriously at whether they wanted a Tenants Association or not.”

However no significant reaction had been provoked by this rather desperate act. Three months later, Scooby Doo had to ask a student community worker to leaflet every house in Murrayburn and then follow this up by knocking on doors to ask a single question – Would you be willing to help or support a Murrayburn Tenants Association? And, in its next issue, the Sentinel was able to report “an encouraging response” to all this effort – over 20 people had turned up to a Special Public Meeting held to revive the group.

But it was never more than a small minority of people at any one time who made things happen in Wester Hailes and there was always the consequent danger of disillusionment and burn-out if the burden had to be shouldered by the few for too long. As the first ever action group formed in the area – the Wester Hailes Association of Tenants – put it, back in the early 70s when they were trying to drum up much-needed support:

“We need your help. Apathy is a killer of communities.”

COMMUNITY COUNCIL OR NOT?

Way back in November 1978 the issue of whether or not to set up a Community Council in Wester Hailes was being debated in the pages of the Sentinel. Essentially, it came down to a choice between two quite different approaches to local democracy. On the one hand, a body comprising representatives of existing local tenants groups or, on the other, a Community Council of directly elected local individuals.

At the outset Edinburgh District Council had taken the view that Community Councils were not needed within its boundaries and then modified that to agree only that they might be appropriate in the landward areas of Currie, Balerno, Ratho, Kirkliston and South Queensferry. This stance encountered sufficient public criticism for the Secretary of State for Scotland to order a public inquiry into the matter in the summer of 1977. The result of the inquiry was that the Council was ordered to put in place a scheme to promote the establishment of Community Councils in all areas of the city.

From the earliest years, while the building of the estate was still underway, tenants groups had begun springing up in the six neighbourhood areas of Wester Hailes – Clovenstone, Park & Drive, Murrayburn, Westburn, Hailesland and Dumbryden – to tackle various issues affecting the residents, in particular the chronic lack of facilities and problems associated with poor quality housing. In 1974, funding to deal with the increasing social problems started to flow into the area under the auspices of the Social and Community Development Programme. A local advisory committee – christened Scooby Doo – was set up to help decide how the money should be spent. Scooby Doo included representatives from each of the tenant groups and this was the body which was already in place when the District Council was instructed to encourage the creation of Community Councils.

The Social and Economic Development Programme was by this time coming to an end, but the board of Scooby Doo were strongly of the opinion that the structure established by it was the best way forward to represent the interests of Wester Hailes and that, to all intents and purposes, they were already doing the job of a Community Council. The idea of a Community Council had its adherents and the debate continued in the next couple of issues of the Sentinel but by February 1979 a new organisation had come into being - the Wester Hailes Development Advisory Committee – which was structured along more or less identical lines to Scooby Doo acting as a representative body for the local tenant groups. Sentinel February 1979

This was the model of grass roots democracy which was followed and developed in Wester Hailes over the next thirty years, leading directly to the formation of the Wester Hailes Rep Council. At its height, the Rep Council functioned as an umbrella organisation for more than twenty local Neighbourhood Councils plus other local community organisations and provided a unique and powerful focus for community action until its dissolution in 2009.

Pages From The Past

Sentinel September 1893

This week we’re featuring pages from the Sentinel newspaper from September 1983. Twenty eight years ago, the headline highlighted the scandal of small locally based organisations losing out in the funding stakes.  The official response was an internal argument over which department was responsible for funding different organisations.  This may sound a familiar story to some!  Also featured in this edition:

• Length of the post office queues
• New health centre vandalised
• News from the local community groups
• Report on Ernie Palmer, veteran sprinter

You can read these stories and others by clicking here on Sentinel September 1983

Wester Hailes in sound!

Scan this code to go to the Prospect Office Story

A couple of months ago, we tagged the Prospect office and linked it to a set of images on the Tales of Things website.  People who scanned the QR code, or who accessed the site via the internet were able to see a set of photos showing what used to be in the area before the office was built. 

Now Tales of Things have uploaded a set of photographs of Wester Hailes with sound to give an added dimension to the visual images.  The Tales of Things team were at the Learning and Information Fair on the 19^th August at the Westside Plaza to record stories of Wester Hailes.  They used images from the Sentinel to spark people’s memories and linked the stories to the photos.  If you want to hear the stories, you can access them on the Wester Hailes page by clicking here on Tales Of Things site.  Click on the photo you want to find out more about and then listen to the stories.  Do you recognise any of the voices?!

WESTER HAILES SHOWS THE WAY – MAYBE

On Wednesday 7th September we hosted a visit by a group of architectural historians and urban planners who were in Scotland to speak at a prestigious international conference in Edinburgh.

These were high powered academics, well renowned in their fields, who were particularly interested to find out about the efforts being made, here in Wester Hailes, by local organisations and residents to record the social history of the area.

We had professors and doctors from all over – from Iowa State University, the Sorbonne in Paris, the Slovakian Academy of Sciences, the Estonian Academy of Sciences, from the Czech Republic, Romania and even Scotland itself – wanting to hear what was going on in sunny Wester Hailes.

The conference they were speaking at had been organised to discuss what they called the historical ”heritage” of big housing schemes throughout Europe. In particular, how it was being recorded and preserved – or not. Their perspective was that the most important element of this was the buildings themselves, especially as many are now facing demolition as whole areas are redeveloped.

They seemed to be quite impressed with what we told them about how the various social history projects in Wester Hailes are developing - the blog, facebook, tagging using QR codes, Totem Poles, social history walks, and interactive mapping. But we had a bit of a debate as to what the true “heritage” of a place is.

Rather than buildings, we put forward the view that what was even more vital to preserve was the personal experiences and memories of the people that had lived in them and to understand the relationship between this and the changing story of their communities through the years. We won’t have changed any minds overnight but maybe we did give them some food for thought.

A decade for the Union Canal Part 3

picture by Hawkeye Aerial Photography

The opening of the Wester Hailes section of the canal marked a major milestone in The Millennium Link project.  A day of celebrations commemorated the occasion and tribute was paid in particular to the Wester Hailes community whose support for the canal was a critical element in the project’s success.  1.7km of new waterway were dug out and filled, 6 new road bridges and 3 new footbridges were constructed, roads were re-aligned and major landscaping works were completed in the process. 

 The canal has continued to play an important part in the life of Wester Hailes, forming a distinctive feature as well as attracting a variety of birds on the water.  The Sentinel featured a special report on the canal in April 2002 in conjunction with British Waterways and the Wester Hailes Partnership.  Children from Clovenstone Primary School and Dumbryden Primary School compiled reports to show what they had learnt about the canal.  The feature also included information about water safety and the dangers of walking on the canal if it iced over during the winter.  There was also news from British Waterways with details on how the canal was being maintained, both the tow path and the removal of debris from the water.  Schoolchildren had also contributed poems. 

You can read the full feature by clicking here on Sentinel Canal Report 2002.  Different events are being held to mark the 10th anniversary of the re-opening of the canal in Wester Hailes.  There’s also an exhibition in WHALE Arts Centre showing the progress of the canal’s re-opening using images and headlines from the Sentinel.  WHALE are collecting comments about the images so if you remember what it was like before the canal was re-opened or the canal work or the celebrations you could add to the information on display.  Edinburgh City Libraries have also put together an online exhibition documenting the Union Canal and its environs from Fountainbridge to Ratho. For a chance to see the exhibition locally, visit Wester Hailes Library between 1st and 30th September or Ratho Library from 1st to 31st October.

And don’t forget the Canaliversary, a day of celebration that is being held at Westside Water Front on Saturday 10th September.  Situated by the Shell garage opposite the Plaza, it will be packed with activities from 12pm to 4pm with boat rides, canoeing, music, BBQ, stalls, exhibitions, duck race, children’s activities.  For more information contact 0131 453 4617.