At the end of this post is a list of the stories I’ve done so far on the Focus E15 mothers’ campaign for social housing for all. Will be adding another tomorrow – namely, a report from the West Ham Labour International Women’s Day event where MP Lyn Brown kept screeching that I was “exploitative” because I was filming the Focus E15 mothers. The mothers, meanwhile, kept saying that they wanted me to keep filming them because they needed to have a record of this interface with their MP – because nothing else seems to hold people in power to account.

Interesting day. More on it soon.

Update Sunday March 9:

Here’s some video from the part yesterday when MP Lyn Brown kept screeching that I was “exploitative” because I was filming the Focus E15 women. “Exploitative! Exploitative!” she kept shouting as she put her hand over the camera. “Exploitative! I think we both know what I mean,”she told me. Actually, I didn’t. I really didn’t. I still have no idea and we never got to discuss it, because Brown kept shouting “exploitative! Exploitative!” and her Spad-type person kept holding a notebook up in my face. Then, the Spad person tried to box me in for a while, to tell me that Brown was actually a wonderful woman who made a great contribution. I really wanted a drink. Meanwhile the Focus E15 women told me to please keep filming them. They often ask me to film them, because, they say, they need those records to hold politicians to account. This point can’t be made often enough. As Sam Middleton, one of the Focus E15 mothers said to me yesterday (you’ll see her talking about this in the video from 0:45): “If Lyn Brown feels exploited, that’s her business, but I’m not being funny – we’re all adults here. If I want to be filmed, that’s for me. Private conversations get us nowhere. That’s the only time we’re heard, is when we’re filmed. So.”

This is important. The video and that statement should tell you all you need to know about the faith people have in the political class. It also tells you all you need to know about the political class’ belief that it can and should control people’s responses to austerity. I don’t know if Brown noticed that other people were filming and photographing our exchange on their phones. I don’t know Brown at all. I would have asked her some questions and talked to her if there’d been any way to get a word in. But there wasn’t, which was doubtless the point. That’s the local political scene for you these days. People either bar you from public meetings, which Newham council did a fortnight ago, or they yell and physically try to stop you recording the scene. I can’t see how this works to anyone’s advantage. Even MPs must know that they’re onto a hiding. They look like twats when they carry on like this and they can’t even get their rare vaguely pertinent messages across while they’re trying to shut things down. There was mention yesterday, for example, of Brown finding washing machines for the women who don’t have them in their flats (will be watching to see if she does), but the big moment was lost on me because I was being swatted away with a notebook. Still – on we go. “Exploitative” is actually one of the better names I’ve been called in the last few years. It’s certainly a refreshing change from Cunt.

Control is the thing. These people want to control something that they can’t. They want to control the austerity narrative until the people on the arse end of it go away, or are dispatched out of sight via the benefit cap, or sent out of boroughs on Asbos if they’re homeless, or whatever. But the fact that people can’t house themselves is not going to go away. Neither is the fact that the Focus E15 women, like most people who are on benefits, have been left to fight for basics like housing on their own. For months now, these women – who were all homeless and living in the temporary Focus E15 hostel with their small children – have fought Newham council for social housing. Newham had told the women they’d be sent to live miles out of London and away from the families who’d provide free childcare when the women went into training and work. After months of campaigning, some of the women have been placed in private sector rents in the area. The tenancies are largely short-term and insecure. The women are perfectly aware that in as little as a year’s time (it’s less now for some), they’ll be right back at the beginning – trying to hang onto private rentals that they can’t afford and fighting removal from London and their free childcare.

These women are certainly on their own as far as meaningful political support goes. And that is their point. They’ve got as far as they have, because they’ve made a noise about it. Their campaign for secure social housing goes on. They continue to run it alone. They’re young and they’re on benefits and nobody wants to know. I could ask why local politicians don’t turn out in droves on Saturday to help these women leaflet Stratford about the housing crisis from their Broadway stall. I could ask why local councillors and MPs didn’t all join the women when they tried to deliver their petition for social housing to Boris Johnson last month. The Focus E15 mothers are making a straightforward point. They’re demanding decent social housing for everybody and saying that the private rental sector is impossibly grim and unaffordable. You’d think persons of moment would want to get behind that banner. But they don’t. They want these women to shut up and get out.

Happy International Women’s Day anyway. Mine certainly spoke volumes.

List of articles on Focus E15 to date:

Open Democracy article: Why is middle class feminism so disinterested in women hit by austerity? (interviews with the Focus E15 mothers on their campaign to date)

Newham council runs out of meeting to avoid Focus E15 mothers’ protest

Focus E15 mothers take their petition for social housing to Boris at City Hall

Focus E15 mothers’ battle for social housing: an update

Young mothers occupy Newham council housing offices to demand social housing

Rubbish, mice and mould – good enough for young mums without money

Put this on a banknote: young mothers without money abandoned by the political class