Political Geo,qaphy, Vol. 14, No. 2, pp.

W-208,1995
Copyri&t
0 1995 Elsevier Science Ltd
F’rinted in Great Britain. All rights reserved
0962-629Fm $10.00 + 0.00

Comment
‘What we are asking for is decent human life’:
SPLASH,neighbourhood demands and citizenship in
London’s docklands

School of Geography and Environmental Management, Middlesex University,Queensway,

Enfield EN3 4SF,UK

Introduction

If nothing else, this special issue on ‘citizenship’ demonstrates how contentious the term
has become. In part this may be because, as Kofman (this issue) points out, ‘the language of
rights enshrined in citizenship emerges in periods when the exercise of power is called
into question’ (following Benton, 1990). One of the reasons, according to Held (1990), that
citizenship has moved to the top of the political agenda is because of the erosion of local
democracy. Perhaps the most extreme example of this is to be found in London’s
Docklands, where the Conservative Party experimented with a new form of local
governance in order to expedite its kind of urban regeneration. In July 1981 the London
Docklands Development Corporation (LDDC) was set up under the powers of the 1980
Local Government, Planning and Land Act, which relaxed planning controls, enabled the
compulsory sale of public land, set up inducements for private capital, and controlled
public spending. The LDDC was based on the assumption that only private investment
could save Do&lands-and not state planning; so, the purpose of the LDDC was to do
everything possible to get private and institutional money into the area, while
simultaneously preventing public intervention in the redevelopment of the area.
The spectacular crash of Olympia & York, developers of Canary Wharf on the Isle of
Dogs, in May 1992 has focused national and international attention on London’s Docklands.
Docklands was once seen by the Thatcher government as the example par excellence of
the way in which Thatcherite economics should-and would-work in practice. Now,
however, everyone is asking questions about the planned di5 billion development at
Canary Wharf (Docklands Consultative Committee, 1992). The Thatcherite dream is being
condemned by most as a nightmare (see Pryke 1991; Thornley, 1992). From the beginning,
there was a high degree of conflict about the development of London’s Docklands. People
were especially annoyed about the imposition of the LDDC, which meant the removal of
local democracy. Local people had no way of representing their views to decision makers,
and the decision makers did not consult local people-so they objected.
Although there is not space to describe the complex history and geography of protest
across Do&lands-this background can be found in Ambrose (1986) and Brownill (1993,
200 Comment: SPLASH,ne@bou&ood ahands and c&km.&@

especially Ch. 6)-six important points can be summarized briefly. First, there were (and
are) specific geographies to resistance across Do&lands, people organized in different
ways, about diiferent issues, at different times, in different places. Second, some people
were actively in favour of the developments (including Canary Wharf and the Limehouse
Link) because of the benefits they would bring. Third, most people were not involved in
protesting most of the time. Fourth, protest has involved fierce arguments over tactics and
demands both between and within protest groups. This situation is further complicated by,
fifth, the changing relationships between the different protest groups and the LDDC,
various developers and government-including the local Labour and Liberal Democratic
parties (at the ward and borough scales). Last, it is important not to romanticize protest:
some demands are insidious, especially those concerning hereditary rights to social
housing, and they have led to, and/or stem from, often violent racism. Thus, in September
1993, the racist British National Party’s first councillor, Derek Beackon, was elected to a
Docklands ward (Millwall, on the Isle of Dogs) after a campaign in which the slogan ‘Rights
for Whites’ was widely used. Unfortunately, there is space only to note these complexities
here: instead, I will concentrate on the production of neighbourhood demands by a recent
protest campaign in South Poplar and Limehouse, which lie across the neck of the Isle of
Dogs.
It is often assumed that place-based politics necessarily rely on excluding ‘outsiders’ and
that the consequence of this is a distortion in the allocation of scarce resources-such as
housing-whereby ‘outsiders’ are discriminated against, often with racist under- an&or
overtones (as in the BNP’s campaign in Millwall). However, I will show that the South
Poplar and Limehouse Action for Social Housing protest group (SPLASH) mobilized its
resistance through a sense of community which is simultaneously grounded not only in a
territorialized sense of neighbourhood, but also in a flexible understanding of the
boundaries between inside and outside. This contrasts with conventional understandings
of ‘turf politics’ and hostility to outsiders which are commonly associated with Docklands’
‘traditional’ working-class politics (see for example Morgan, 1993: 524). Instead, the
relationship to ‘turf is much more like the ambivalence and ambiguity that Kofman terms
‘non-conforming territoriality’ (this issue). Still, as Kearns argues:

. . the history of places, the quality of the socio-spatial environment, the

configuration of neighbourhoods, and the sense of place-attachment all influence
the citizen’s ability and willingness to contribute to local, collective endeavours.
(this issue)

SPLASH has articulated a set of neighbourhood demands both by demanding the

democratization of everyday life and the empowerment of local people and by seeking to
make itself a model of participation and inclusion in its own organization. These demands
can be contrasted with the interpretation of the Citizen’s Charter produced by the LDDC
(see Fyfe, this issue, on the politics of the Citizen’s Charter). Although SPLASH has sought
to redefine certain politically charged words-such as ‘regeneration’ and ‘partnership’-
in its own terms, it has avoided ‘citizenship’ because experience suggests that the sense of
‘becoming a citizen’ does not help strengthen citizens’ resolve.
Notions of citizenship have been praised by radical thinkers, such as Held (1990),
Parekh (1990) and Phillips (1990), because ‘citizenship’ simultaneously evokes a notion of
rights/entitlements and obligations/responsibilities. As Kofman argues, ‘citizenship is
generally defined as the rights and obligations that accrue to individuals as full members of
a community, normally the nation-state’ (this issue). This reciprocal character of
citizenship is said to be able to articulate simultaneously social and political demands and
 Cmvmnt: SPLASH,naghbourboodakma& and c&isnsb@ 201

to dissolve the distinction between public and private. From this perspective, citizenship
lies at the intersection between the state and civil society, and becomes a way of assessing
the realignments between these spheres (Smith, 1989).Emancipatory struggles become in
part struggles for citizenship and its entitlements (Held, 1990).Moreover, it stands as a
regulatory mechanism limiting the asymmetrical power of both the state and individuals
(see Kearns 1992, this issue; Fyfe, this issue). On this account, good citizens gain public
benefits in return for appropriate private behaviour: ‘the quality of citizenship is more than
ever the result of a complex and variable geometry of rights, entitlements, obligations and
responsibilities emanating from the membership of superimposed political communities’
(Kofman, this issue). The good person internalizes and incorporates the values of society
and in return is accorded the rights and entitlements of a citizen, and Fyfe (this issue)
provides clear examples of this.
Herein lies one problem: the question of whether ‘citizenship’ is a progressive
discourse depends on the relationship that individuals and groups have to the values of
culture. The problem is that some people are all too easily defined as being incapable of
holding the values of culture; those who have been excluded on these grounds are
women, the ‘mad, children, the working class, other ‘races’, ‘perverts’, criminals and so on.
In practice, these are not simply questions of the law and policing, but of the capacity of the
moral-legal system to define the limits of these values (as Bell argues, this issue). On these
terms, as Kofman points out, citizenship ‘continues to encapsulate dominant power
relations obscured by the political fictions of the decontextualized and universal citizen
operating in the public realm’ (this issue). Thus while women have most of the same basic
rights as men, they are still marginalized; and, as Bell (this issue) points out, others are
excluded by the rules of citizenship, such as those who find their pleasures in sexual
practices which are not culturally sanctioned. Another problem is geographical:
membership of a community implies that the individual lives within the limits of the
community The notion of citizenship is not just socially bounded, it also provokes a
place-based essentialism: a citizen, however abstractly the values are defined, is a citizen of
somewhere. This aspect of citizenship excludes people on the basis of their attachment to
the ‘nation’, and such people include the homeless, the traveller (new age, Gypsy, nomad
and so on) and the stateless.
The problem seems to be that the notion of ‘citizenship’ is internally related to the idea
of ‘non-citizenship’ and progressive articulations of citizenship forever bang their heads
against a series of dualisms, amongst which are inclusion/exclusion, public/private,
state/individual, rights/duties, equality/difference, active/passive, native/foreigner, subject/
object.’ These dualisms are valued high/low and are used to define the citizen; thus,
citizens are presumed to be equal and the same (at some level), while certain people are
excluded on the basis mat they do not meet the criteria of ‘citizen’. The problem is that
differences between citizens are elided, while commonalities between citizens and
non-citizens are erased (see Phillips, 1990: 81). This leaves everyday politics with a rigid set
of categories which need to be policed: the very notion of citizenship facilitates this
policing by placing people as either good (active, equal, obedient, included) citizens or
bad (passive, different, disobedient, excluded) non-citizens.*
It may be possible to decide these questions in the abstract-for example, the rhetoric
structuring of citizenship through the idea of a non-citizen could be decided in advance to
be inevitably exclusionary and unavoidably open to reactionary articulations-but I would
like to think through these issues in the context of SPLASH’sexperiences of articulating its
neighbourhood demands. The protest group, SPLASH, does not demand citizenship and I
believe that the reasons why it does not are important.
202 Comment: SPLAW, neighbourhood akmuti and cildnsbip

Making a SPLASH

When it was first formed, the main aim of SPLASH was to highlight particular problems
resulting from major construction works on the Isle of Dogs-of these, the Limehouse
Link was just the straw that broke the camel’s back. The Limehouse Link was designed to
connect Canary Wharf to the City of London and the national road network. It cost &255
million and was opened on 17 May 1993 by Prime Minister John Major. And, at 5140000
per metre, it is Europe’s most expensive stretch of road. The 5000 residents of SPLASH
estates were fed up with the seemingly never-ending noise, dirt, dust and disruption
surrounding the development of Canary Wharf, the extension of the Docklands Light
Railway (see Brownill, 1993: 138-139) and the construction of the Limehouse Link (see
Brownill, 1993: 139-142). As individual tenants’ associations, they found that they could
not get either the LDDC or the London Borough of Tower Hamlets (LBTH) to listen to their
complaints, much less get them to do anything about them.
SPLASH was a compilation of five (later six) tenants’ associations-just north of Canary
Wharf and the Limehouse Link-which joined together in March 1990 to confront
common problems.3 Each of the estates has two democratically elected representatives
who sit on the SPLASH committee. These representatives feed the views and ideas of their
tenants into SPLASH and feed back reports to tenants of any decisions that have been made.
SPLASH determined to get the LDDC to listen to the tenants associations. Even after they
had united it still found it impossible to get the LDDC to reply to their requests for
meetings. As Jackie Newson (chair of Will Crooks tenants’ association) put it, ‘we had to
take ourselves as an organization, SPLASH, and almost bulldoze ourselves into the
boardroom of the LDDC, which we found most upsetting that we had to be acknowledged
in this manner’.* For three months SPLASH members picketed meetings of the Board,
forcing security guards to remove them and generally getting in the way: Fattima Saddique,
a SPLASH tenant, said, ‘they want to keep us trapped in our rooms; they don’t want us to
make noise, but we made noise and we’re about to make more’. As Bell argues,

To get angry, then, is one way to map the limits of one’s spaces of citizenship, and
thence, by the sustained action of rage, to transgress or rupture the boundaries of
those spaces. (this issue)

At first, the LDDC and LBTH did not take SPLASH seriously. In the past, they had found it
quite easy to divide and conquer protest groups, but SPLASH turned out to be more
cohesive, forming an important resource for resistance against developments in
Do&lands. Sister Christine thought that ‘if the LDDC had had its way, we wouldn’t still be
here. We would’ve been cowed by now, made to feel even more powerless and helpless
and more importantly shut up.’ Now, however, the LDDC go to SPLASH meetings to listen
to tenants’ views. Nevertheless, in September 1991, thousands of SPLASH tenants began the
largest civil action in the history of English law. They launched a compensation claim for
2200 million against the LDDC and Olympia & York. Applications for legal aid were
presented at Easter 1992, and early in 1993 over 400 people were awarded legal aid to
proceed with the legal action.
SPLASH campaigns have been very successful at one level. They helped LBTH secure
&35 million in compensation for the disruption through using the Social Accord between
the LBTH and the LDDC, although SPLASH was actually opposed to the Social Accord
because it feared that members were being sold out (see also Brownill, 1993: 155,159). As
if to prove tenants’ fears, only about 677000 of this money was actually spent on the
SPLASH estates; it is a sign of tenants’ suspicion of local political and administrative
 Comment: SPLASH,neigbbourbood demunds and Citizenship 203

processes that it is widely believed that their estates were dispossessed of this money
because this is a Labour neighbourhood in a Liberal-Democrat-controlled borough. Worse,
SPLASH itself secured &3 million from the LDDC for house improvements such as double
glazing and decent TV reception, but this money has been channelled through the Isle of
Dogs Neighbourhood Committee and-although this is a Labour neighbourhood-little
of this money has been spent because there is no agreement between SPLASH and the Isle
of Dogs Neighbourhood Committee on how it should be spent. SPLASH wants
improvements on all of its constituent estates, while the Neighbourhood Committee want
to spend the money on a few high-profile, high-prestige projects. As a result, there are
tensions between SPLASH tenants’ associations-partly because the estates that stand to
benefit from the Neighbourhood Committee’s plans want them to go ahead; even so,
although a level of mistrust began to build up, SPLASH has held together by mobilizing
people’s sense of both place and community identity on their side of the Island.
To sum up, the SPLASH estates have forced themselves on to the political agenda. They
have had to shout just to get ‘the powers that be’ to notice that they were
there-strategically deploying new tactics, utilizing some old tactics (such as the blocking
of roads by using zebra crossings), while also taking strength from others (such as the
People’s Plan for the Royal Docks), in a guerrilla warfare with the LDDC, developers, local
authorities and even the local councillors they elected. SPLASH campaigns have deployed a
territorialized politics of spatiality: they have used their sense of their place as a resource
through which to mobilize (and this has echoes in earlier protest slogans such as ‘This
Land is Our Land’: see Keith and Pile, 1993: 11-16). This place-grounded politics is
articulated by Elizabeth Lee (chair of St Vincent’s tenants’ association): ‘I’ve seen what
they’ve done on the island, the Isle of Dogs-what money can do over there-and we
don’t want the same problem on this side of the island. This side, we want a community
that is mixed, one with decent housing, decent recreation areas, decent community
centres. Our children are our future, the future of docklands and what we are asking for is
decent human life.’ To define this ‘decent human life’, SPLASH has recently taken a more
proactive role, developing plans for the social and economic regeneration of London’s
Docklands that not only meet the self-defined needs of local people but also involve them
in the decision-making process. And this may be contrasted with the LDDC’s charter for
Docklands’ citizens.

Flexible democracy: the articulation of neighbourhood demands and the

democratization of everyday life

In its 1992 Corporate Plan, the LDDC specified its version of a Citizen’s Charter (LDDC,
1992: 17). In Appendix Three, a statement to the public is reproduced (p. 52). The citizen’s
charter has four commitments: (1) to ensure that information and advice about the LDDC’s
activities ‘are freely and readily available to people who live and work in the area, and to
the general public’; (2) to make staff ‘available to deal with personal and telephone
enquiries from 9 am to 5 pm’ and to make sure that they are courteous and responsive; (3)
to keep various services-such as reception services, an emergency telephone line and the
visitor centre-open; and (4) to deal with enquiries within a specified time (e.g. to answer
80 percent of telephone calls within 9 seconds or to reply to written complaints within
three working days). A telephone number (071 512 8346) is provided for those who want
to complain that the LDDC has not met its promises to citizens.
These commitments by the LDDC to citizens are of a particular kind: they are about the
ways in which their service is consumed by interested people-they are about servicing
204 Comment: SPLhSH, nei&hmbood akmands and ci&ensb@

the individual who demands information (see also Bell, this issue; Kearns, this issue).
There is no obligation, however, to involve individuals and groups in the processes of the
LDDC. There is no democratization of the LDDC bureaucracy or even involvement of
people as citizens who have rights: all the points relate to how the LDDC gives information,
none relates to how the LDDC might gain information from citizens or relinquish its
power to citizens. Despite its commitment to the people who live and work in the area,
SPLASH tenants still felt that they were not being involved in the decision-making
processes. Frustrated with their continual marginalization and by their lack of access to a
sphere either in which they could voice their demands or where people would listen to
them, SPLASH produced a video which, partly, it intended to be shown on a national
television network (see note 4). In an accompanying booklet, SPLASH’s approach to local
urban regeneration is set out as a series of demands and these can be summarized briefly.
SPLASH argues that ‘the LDDC approach to redevelopment has failed because it has
placed buildings and land before the real resource for change-people (SPLASH, nd.: 19,
emphasis in original), so its first demand is for ‘people-led development’ that stresses the
social regeneration of its community rather than a development that makes a few
individuals more wealthy. For SPLASH, people-led development is based on ‘the needs and
skills of everyone living on the SPLASH estates’ (SPLASH, nd.: 20, emphasis in original).
A further set of demands relates to the planning and implementation of projects in the
SPLASH area. SPLASHwants mechanisms installed that enable their tenants to participate in
the decision-making process and that make decision makers accessible to SPLASH tenants
(including access to information and face-to-face meetings). It argues that ‘consultation
exercises carried out in the past have been meaningless, with little notice taken of their
comments and often too little time to respond’ (SPLASH, nd.: 20) and so it would like to
see a consultation process that gives people both information that can be easily
understood and enough time to make an informed choice. These three points-
participation, accessibility and consultation-aim to involve people in the decision-
making process and provide them with the power to oversee the implementation of
projects in their area. These issues relate to what SPLASH sees as the lack of accountability
of the LDDC and the failure of the LDDC and developers to involve the community in an
equal partnership (see also Kearns, this issue):

For too long developers and the LDDChave either acted as if locai people did not
exist or are just in the way, we want to work in a spirit of partnership with the
developers and the LDDC where we are equal partners working towards the
regeneration of our area. (SPLASH,nd.: 21)

Two further demands seek to redress SPLASH’s sense of powerlessness and marginality:
enablement and empowerment. SPLASH insists that people should be enabled to take
control of their own lives and enhance their environment both for themselves and for the
whole community (SPLASH nd.: 21). Central to SPMSH’s political agenda is a feeling that
their neighbourhood has been disempowered, both by the LDDC and the local authority.
In order to reassert its ‘powerfulness’, SPLASH has not articulated a series of entitlements,
or proposed a set of duties, instead it has focused its attention not only on (what can be
termed) the constituents of a democracy (small ‘d’) of everyday life but also on what it can
offer both to regeneration and the decision-making process: people-led development,
participation, accessibility, consultation, enablement, accountability, partnership and
empowerment (Kearns, this issue, and Fyfe, this issue, note similar claims).
The ultimate aim of SPLASHis to empower me local community so that we can
take control of our own destinies and promote a regeneration that secures a
 Comment: SPLASH,nei~bourbood akmumk and citizend’ip 205

decent future for eveqbody living in the area. To achieve this we need to work
with the developers, the council and the LDDC. All we ask is that regeneration
takes as its starting point the local community, because this is the most vibrant
and dynamic resource we possess. (SPLASH,n.d.: 23)

In many ways SPLASH’s agenda might be seen as the standard claims of the dispossessed,
but two aspects mark SPLASH’s campaign as different. First, SPLASH has selectively taken
on the terms within which the political agenda is being framed, but seeks to redefine those
terms: in particular, regeneration and partnership are seen as people-led, participatory and
empowering. Second, in a situation where the legitimacy of those who claim to speak for
the people is constantly in question, SPLASHhas chosen to concentrate on the processes of
democratization. Its democratic process is flexible. It is prepared to move the boundaries
of inside and outside to incorporate other marginalized people in the area and to involve
people who can help achieve their sense of regeneration and partnership. SPLASH seems
to be caught in a situation where it is necessary, as Kofman argues, ‘to rethink the
relationship between civil society and the state, the public and the private, and the
mechanisms of exclusion and inclusion that regulate membership of socio-cultural and
political communities’ (this issue).
Citizenship becomes a hazardous discourse because it threatens to dissemble the
recognition of the particular grievances of individuals and groups (Young, 1986; Phillips,
1990; Fyfe, this issue). Such ‘selfish’ concerns are to be put aside while the greater public
good is prioritized. At one level, the redevelopment of Docklands raises a set of scale
questions: was Canary Wharf in the local, regional or national interest-and who should
decide? On the other hand, it also raises the question of values and the way that those
values are decided. As Parekh (1990: 193) and Phillips (1990: 77) point out, the public
realm is not neutral, but infused with multiple power relations: it assumes particular
(white, male) bodies and particular capacities (such as articulacy, literacy). It is possible to
assume ‘that the public realm belonged to the whites, that only their language and customs
were legitimate within it, and that ethnic identities were to be confined to the private
realm’ (Parekh, 1990: 193).
From the perspective of SPLASH, the values of the public realm are also bourgeois,
mediated by a political and administrative elite. While it is prepared to redefine
‘regeneration’ and ‘partnership’, ‘citizenship’ taps into values that seem to undermine
SPLASH’s sense of neighbourhood, community, family and individual struggle. The issue is
this: it is the powerless who have to conform to Ute-identified values in order to get
minimum rights, which they may lose at any point, while the powerful are better placed to
manipulate the rules of the game. As Fyfe (this issue) argues, the practices of entitlements
and rights are essentially passive. For SPLASH the issue is not playing by the rules of its
game, but of democratizing the game. The logics of democracy precede the abstract
principles of citizenry or the practices of obligation. Moreoever, in a situation without
entitlements-where these have been systematically taken away-citizenship becomes
even more of a non-starter.

Conclusion

The SPLASH estates have been excluded from local political and administrative processes
by the bypassing of the institutions of local government via the LDDC (similarly see Kearns,
this issue). SPLASH tenants are now involved in a struggle to reclaim power, and they are
prepared to use the idea of rights in their confrontation with the many faces of the state
206 Comment: SPLASH,n@hourbood akmunak and citiz&@

(see also Benton, 1990: 161). But they have not declared themselves to be
citizens-instead they have strategically deployed new tactics (such as the legal action),
utilizing some old tactics (such as the blocking of roads by using zebra crossings) and
taking strength from others (such as the People’s Plan for the Royal Docks) in a flexible,
strategic, guerrilla warfare with the LDDC, developers, local authorities and even the local
councillors they elected. Their demands are reminiscent of Held’s call for the ‘double
democratization’ of both the state and civil society, but they avoid notions of citizenship.
Instead, their claims are articulated through a flexible democracy-an insatiable desire for
more control and more participation, grounded in a non-essentialized notion of place.5
SPLASH tenants do not want to fix entitlements or rights in stone nor do they want to be
entangled in obligations or responsibilities not of their own making. The discourse of
citizenship is a discourse of self-regulation; they do not want this. They want democracy,
not as a right to vote once every four or so years, but as a participatory, empowering
process. Citizenship involves individuals and the state, and this is not the ground on which
SPLASH wishes to demarcate its politics-its members are too suspicious. They do not
trust either ‘the powers that be’ or the political process enough to sacrifice themselves on
the altar of abstract, universal notions such as citizenship. They demand concrete benefits,
but in a situation where they control the resources and the process of implementation.
They want more than the political and administrative system is prepared give them, so why
should they become citizens? Why should SPLASH members be afraid of alienating the
powerful, when the powerful pay them no respect? Such questions arise out of, and
condemn, the rights/duties reciprocality of ‘citizenship’, in a situation of asymmetrical
relations of power-as both Bell (this issue) and Kofman (this issue) argue.
Citizenship can only act as a way of mediating between conflicting groups if it is assumed
that each group is equal: i.e. that each group deserves the same entitlements, or that each
group has the same capacity to deploy the resources of citizenship. This is a particular
version of equality, one where each individual’s location is ‘flat’ in relation to anyone
else’s, But, as Watney (1990: 177) argues, such an evaluation must--at Zea.st-be placed in
an ethical context: i.e. where it is known that not all locations are the same. For SPLASH,
such an idea is articulated by identifying the components needed to democratize everyday
life, involving a participatory process through which groups and individuals can raise their
needs, desires and demands in a situation of mutual recognition. SPLASH has articulated a
set of principles that allow the assertion of collective and individual demands, but this
contrasts with the LDDC’s sense of citizenship, which is based on the citizen as an
individual consumer who is only interested in getting information from the LDDC.
SPLASH wants to participate. It wants to be a partner in the decision-making process. Its
members want to have me power and resources to define and control ‘regeneration’. And
they reserve the right to demand a decent human life.

Acknowlegements
I would like to thank all the people who have spared the time to talk to me over the last three years.
Two deserve special thanks: Penny Bernstock and Bob Colenutt, whose activism and clarity of insight
are always resolute and thought-provoking. Sue Brownill and Bob Colenutt provided constructive
and perceptive comments on an earlier draft-unfortunately I have been unable to address all of the
issues they raised.

Notes
1. For a discussion of dualisms, see Sayer (1991) and Pile (19%).
2. In a different theoretical register, it is possible to argue that protest groups like SPLASHexist in the
 Comment: SPLASH,neighbourbood dernunckand citizmsbl~ 207

(simultaneously real, imaginary and symbolic) space between these dualisms and, because they
operate in this ‘outlawed’ non-space, this renders the discourse of citizenship ineffective for them.
From such a perspective, SPLASHmight occupy a third space, which is neither in the centre nor on
the margin, but where it continually presents its marginality at the centre (following Pile, 1994).
Nor do SPLASH politics fit into a conventional public/private dichotomy-as Kofman argues (this
issue), both need to be assessed together, as SPZASH’sdemands make the private political and the
political personal. There are parallels here with Bell’s argument concerning sexual citizenship
(this issue).
SPLASH initially included Birchfield, Robin Hood Gardens, St Mathias, St Vincent and Will Crooks
tenants’ associations and these were later joined by Bazeley Street tenants’ association. These are
working-class estates and racially mixed, having mainly British, Irish, Afro-Caribbean and
Bangladeshi tenants. Like many other tenant-based groups, women tend to form the majority of
activists, but men disproportionately tend to take the positions of ‘responsibility’ within the group.
Most friction has been generated between the different interests and priorities of various
estates-in particular, the tenants of Robin Hood Gardens have felt marginal within SPLASH,partly
because this estate is furthest from Canary Wharf and the Limehouse Link, partly because it is
geographically isolated from the other SPLASH estates and partly because tenants feel they will
gain nothing from protest even if SPLASH itself succeeds.
I have taken these observations from a video, 7&e Other Side of Dockkmds, which was made by
SPLASH with the help of Penny Bernstock of Docklands Forum; it was shown at the original
conference session. The video is available from Do&lands Forum, Brady Centre, 192 Hanbury
Street, London El 5HU. Although I have used this video as publicly available evidence, it should be
remembered that it is also a piece of rhetoric constructed within and against different modes of
signification (for an analysis of community videos, see Rose, 1994).
This argument is elaborated in Keith and Pile (1993, Ch. 1).

References

P. (1986). whatever Happened to Planning, London: London University Press.

AMBROSE,
BENTON,
S. (1990). Gender, sexuality and citizenship. In C&&n.&@ (G. Andrew ed.) pp. 151-163. London:
Lawrence and Wishart.
S. (1993). Developing London’s Dockkmdc Another Great Planning D&aster?,updated version. London:
BROWNILL,
Paul Chapman.
DOCKLANDS CONSLILTATNE COMMITIEE(1992). All Z%al GIittersis Not Goti: a Critical A.wsmem ofcLmaryW
(copies available from the Docldands Consultative Committee, Room 306, Barking Town Hall, Barking IGll
7LU).
HOD, D. (1990). Between state and civil society. In Cirizensh@(G. Andrews ed.) pp. 19-25. London: Lawrence and
Wishan.
Kuuws, A. (1992). Active citizenship and urban governance. Tranxzctions of the institute of British Geogr~
17(l), 20-34.
KEI~, M. ANDPOE, S. (1993). Introduction, Part 1: The politics of place. In Place and the Politicsof ia’emity (M.
Keith and S. Pile eds) pp. 1-21. London: Routledge.
LDDC (1992). 1!992 Corporate Plan. London: London Docklands Development Corporation.
MORGAN, G. (1993). Frustrated respectability: local culture and politics in London’s do&lands. Eruhmmr and
Planning D: Society and Space 11, 523-541.
PAREKH, B. (1990). British citizenship and cultural difference. In Ci&ensb@ (G. Andrews ed.) pp 183-204. London:
Lawrence and Wishan.
PHILLIPS A (1990). Citizenship and feminist theory. In Cti.zensb@ (G. Andrew ed.) pp. 76-88. London: Lawrence
and Wishart.
PILE,S. (1994). Masculinism, the use of dualistic epistemologies and third spaces. Ant@&? 26(3), 255-277.
PRYKE,M. (1991). An international city going ‘global’: spatial change in the City of London. Entinment and
Planning D: Society and Space 9, 197-222.
ROSE,G. (1994). The cultural politics of place: some notes on resistance after watching two films. Transacrions of
the Institue of British Geogr@ers.
208 comment:sP~,~*~urbood- andc&kmbip

SAYER,
A (1991). Behind the locality debate: deconstructing geography’s duahsms. Erzvimnm and Pkmming A
23, 283-308.
SMITH,S. (1989). Society, space and citizenship: a human geography for the ‘new times’. Transacrions of the
Institwe of Bri#&bGeom 14(2), 144-156.
SPLASH(n.d). l’Ew Other Side of Ekxkkamir. London: Docklands Forum (see note 4 for further details).
THOFNLEY A ED. (1992). The Cr&k of London. London: Routledge.
WATNEY, S. (1990). Citizenship in an age of AIDS. In C&izer.&$ (G. Andrew ed) pp. 164-182. London: Lawrence
and Wishan.
YOUNG,I. M. (1986). Impartiality and the civic sphere: some implications of feminist critiques of moral and political
theory. In Fen&km a.r Cririque: on the Politics of Gender (S. Benhabib and D. Cornell eds) pp. 56-76.
Minneapolis: University of MiMeSOta Press.