Cover Story: The case of the Olympic missiles

Anti-aircraft missiles spark tower block row

It’s not every day somebody asks to position anti-aircraft missiles on the roof of a tower block, so when the Ministry of Defence selected two residential sites in East London it raised rather more than curious eyebrows – some residents were up in arms about the whole idea

By Mark Cantrell

First published in the June 2012 edition of Housing magazine

BY now the man’s eyes were surely rolling. Certainly, the tone of his voice suggested so, as Lieutenant Colonel Nick Short of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) sought to reassure yet another journalist that it was perfectly safe to put missiles on residential rooftops.

The rooftops in question belong to a couple of apartment blocks in East London. The first, Fred Wigg Tower, is a traditional tower block in Waltham Forest, managed by ALMO Ascham Homes. Strictly speaking, the second site is atop a water tower at the Lexington Building in the Bow Quarter, Tower Hamlets, rather than a rooftop per se, but nonetheless residents were perturbed to learn it would play host to high velocity missiles.

Apparently there’s little need to worry; it’s rather like letting off a firework from the side of a milk bottle. Nothing happens to the bottle; likewise with the missile, if the worst came to the worst and it had to be fired, then nothing would happen to the fabric of the building that might endanger residents, he explained. “The Army wouldn’t be putting dangerous stuff on buildings without thinking it through first. Strange thing that,” Lt Col Short added, with – it must be said – a certain rising exasperation.

Okay, so what about the residents’ security, you might wonder; doesn’t placing a weapons system on top of an apartment block kind of turn it into a target for the bad guys? Again, it gets short shrift from the Lieutenant Colonel, who said it wouldn’t be a “bright idea” to attack a point defended by soldiers
and police.

“In all my years in various conflicts around the world and dealing with terrorists, I’ve never really seen them go and attack a strong point – they always attack the weak point. This hasn’t been done without any thought. It’s been a long, considered process by professionals who do this all the time,” he said.

“We’ve offered our military advice and no decision’s been taken but we’ve come up with the best solution for protecting a lot of people. It’s just a shame that a few people are getting all upset about it, without any real knowledge.”

To be fair, it’s not every day that someone comes calling to say they’d like to stick a missile battery on the roof. Most of us on Civvie Street lack the Army’s ready familiarity with the technology. The most we usually have to go on are Hollywood movies and newsreel footage, neither of which tends to focus on the mundane realities, but rather seeks to emphasise the ‘wow’ factor. Doubtless many people envision missiles akin to the Rapier trailing plumes of fire as they streak skywards, rather than the kind of system that was actually deployed, but even with all the assurances, it’s bound to cause some misgivings.

A spokesperson for Waltham Forest Council confessed they were all rather “surprised” when the MoD made its approach regarding Fred Wigg Tower, though generally it’s more at ease with the prospect than some. All told, the news of the rooftop missiles has provoked a cocktail of surprise, incredulity, concern, worry, fear, and outright outraged opposition.

“It’s not the sort of thing you expect to hear, but we sat down with them and they explained why it was strategically the best place,” said Waltham Forest’s spokesperson. “It’s fair to say we were quite taken aback by the prospect of it. Yes, it was surprising, somewhat daunting, but once you sit down and go through it, you realise they’re professionals, they know what they’re doing, and you feel they’ll be able to do this without much disruption to local people at all. I suspect it will probably be one of the safest places in London to be during the Olympics.”

The missile systems were deployed as part of Exercise Olympic Guardian, what might be called a ‘dress rehearsal’ for the main event, as it put the military assets through their paces over nine days spanning the May Day bank holiday weekend. Both the ground-based Rapiers and rooftop-positioned Starstreaks are cited as the final line of defence in the event that an aerial attacker manages to evade the RAF’s Typhoon jets that are to form London’s primary defensive ring.

Fred Wigg Tower and the Lexington Building were selected as sites for the Starstreaks because of their strategic vantage point and unrestricted views over the Olympic venues and surrounding areas, according to the MoD. The exercise was as much a showcase of the Government’s determination to keep the Games safe as it was a test of the security services’ preparedness, but it’s fair to say that those missiles – only a tiny part of the exercise – pretty much stole the show. For all the wrong reasons.

“My worry is that the gun may make the [Fred Wigg] tower a target,” said John Cryer, the Labour MP for Leyton and Wanstead. “I have met most of the residents. Many of them speak English as a second language and are struggling to keep their jobs in the current economic situation. I wonder if the authorities would be foisting a piece of military hardware on a block if it was in a leafy, middle-class area and full of middle class residents.”

A dash of class conflict often adds a little spice to any controversy; unfortunately it’s rather spoiled by the fact that the Lexington Building, in the Bow Quarter, is a rather leafy, pleasant-looking gated community populated by, well, rather a lot of affluent middle class types. One of them, Neil Midgeley, is a journalist with The Telegraph, who blogged: “In the eight years I have lived here, this is certainly the most dramatic – and controversial – thing that has happened. The last leaflet that I received from BQRM [the management company] was about the installation of new equipment in our on-site gym.”

Not every resident was so sanguine about it all. Bow Quarter resident Brian Whelan – also a journalist – brought the matter to national attention, when he ‘tipped off’ the media. In his view, the missiles were effectively ‘foisted on’ the community.

The MoD said it had conducted extensive consultation, including “extensive talks with local authorities and landowners, briefing local MPs, discussions with community representatives, and, most recently, delivering leaflets to residents’ homes”.

Whelan disputes this, however, claiming the first he heard was the leaflet shoved through the letterbox only a few days before the exercise was to take place. He said: “It’s not been well thought-through; it’s not been well-planned, and they’ve not properly engaged with anyone in the community.”

As yet, the Government has still to make a formal decision on whether or not the missiles will be deployed during the course of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, until then residents are left in the shadow of uncertainty. It may be that the deployment of the Rapiers or the Starstreaks or both is deemed unsuitable or unnecessary for providing adequate defence. However, in an effort to pressurise Ministers and Generals into saying ‘nay’, local people in Tower Hamlets have established a campaign group called – appropriately enough – ‘Stop the Olympic Missiles’.

Councillor Rania Khan represents the Bromley-by-Bow ward on Tower Hamlets Council. Speaking at the campaign’s launch, she expressed similar concerns to Whelan and other residents.

“We all agree that protecting the Olympics from the threat of terrorist attacks is important and it is also a priority... [but] it is important to get the balance right between those attending the Games and the safety of the residents who live in the vicinity of the Games – and I am one of those residents too,” she said.

“Unfortunately, the plans of the MoD to place a missile defence system on the top of the Lexington strikes me as the wrong sort of balance. In my view, they handled this issue quite badly. They should have consulted properly with residents. I got to know about this on the day from the newspapers. So they haven’t consulted properly with residents. Instead they have tried to reassure – the council – that if they go ahead with deploying the missile system, it will be manned by professionals. I should really hope so. I would hate to think what might happen if they were operated by amateurs.”

If the Government decides against the missiles, then such concerns become moot; if they say yes, however, then they might well find they have a rowdy crowd of concerned citizens to deal with. For those of us beyond London’s borders, meanwhile, it’s a rather curious conundrum – how would we feel about it all if it was our roof? Be honest now.

Olympic security is a serious business; heaven forbid that any of the military measures deployed will be needed, but for all the MoD’s efforts to set minds at ease, it’s only natural that local people will have concerns about those missiles. After all, they’re bloody big fireworks.


This article first appeared in the June 2012 edition of Northern Midlands and Southern Housing magazine. It was subsequently re-published on the Housing Excellence website, 21 June 2012.

Interview: Jack Dromey MP, Shadow Housing Minister

Could have done better 

Shadow housing minister Jack Dromey MP is scathing about the Government’s record on housing, but admits that politicians of all parties have failed to give the issue the attention it deserves. He told Mark Cantrell it’s time that housing was taken to the centrestage of politics

First published in Housing magazine 

Jack Dromey MP

“THROUGHOUT my life a guiding principle has been to make a difference,” said Jack Dromey. For over 30 years he followed its star as a trade union activist, so he’s no stranger to fighting some tough battles, but it also took him into the political fray long before he actually stood for and won a parliamentary seat.

Today, the former deputy general secretary of the old Transport and General Workers Union (T&G) and subsequently the union Unite, represents Birmingham’s Erdington constituency, having secured the seat with a 3,277 majority at the May 2010 General Election.

Despite being a relative newcomer to the Parliamentary arena, Dromey’s involvement in politics goes back a long way. He is cited as one of two trade union modernisers active inside the Labour Party to rebuild the party in the 1980s; once again a necessary task following “what was a serious election defeat”.

Doubtless, he will be drawing upon his long experience of trade union activism and Labour Party politics in this second round of rebuilding.

“I’ve been deeply involved in politics for 20 years and more,” he said. “I served on the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party, I was its elected Treasurer for six years, and also through my work in the union, I’ve been deeply involved fighting battles in the political arena.”

Of these battles, one of his early highlights, and the one through which he rose to prominence in the trade union movement, was during the 1970s, when he led the historic Grunswick strike for union recognition.

Much more recently, his campaigning for workers’ rights saw him coordinate the coalition of support that brought the Gangmasters Licensing Bill into law, “so that never again in Britain do we have the obscenity of Morecambe Bay”.

When it comes to housing, again he’s no stranger to the issues. He chaired the working group from 2005 that subsequently led to the 2007 Housing Green Paper and eventually the commitment to invest £8 billion to build three million new homes. He then worked with John Healey during his tenure as Housing Minister.

Now he himself holds the housing brief, albeit in a shadow capacity, and it is doubtless no surprise that he is an ardent defender of the Labour Party’s record on housing during its 13 years in office – but he admits that it could have done more.

“Labour did great things – but,” he said, letting the pause say its thing before he elaborated: “There were two million new homes, a million more mortgage holders, half a million new affordable homes, the 1.7 million homes renovated through the Decent Homes programme, and the action that we took in 2008, both to build homes and get the economy moving, but also to keep people in their homes, avoiding the terrible scourge of mortgage repossessions that scarred the 1980s. Having said that, we did not do enough, but I will defend our record any time compared to the failure of this Government’s housing and economic policies.”

When the Government launched its Housing Strategy last year, Dromey greeted it as yet another round of “false dawns, grand plans and press launches followed by broken promises and a failure to deliver”; the NewBuy Guarantee mortgage indemnity scheme launched earlier this year, was “too little too late” from a Government that has done “virtually nothing to tackle the worst housing crisis in a generation”. For good measure, in Dromey’s view, not only is David Cameron’s coalition “failing”, it’s also “out of touch” and “making the housing crisis worse not better”.

Here, he returned to the theme: “There is not yet a serious housing strategy. Some initiatives with some merit, but more often press statements and initiatives that never go anywhere. If there was a home built in England for every press statement issued by Grant Shapps, we wouldn’t have a housing crisis. So there’s a great deal of activity, and sometimes sound and fury, but the statistics speak for themselves. Housebuilding has remorselessly fallen.”

The construction of new homes is down by 11 per cent, he said, whilst homelessness is up by 14 per cent; there is a “mortgage market where people are not able to get mortgages and a private rented sector characterised by ever-increasing rents”.

“I don’t think the Government takes housing sufficiently seriously,” he added. “It’s not enough for David Cameron and Nick Clegg to don Wellington boots and visit a building site in a fanfare of publicity when they launched their housing strategy last November. You need a serious strategy driven from the top. What we do not have, given that Britain faces the biggest housing crisis in a generation, is any sense of housing getting the priority it deserves. On the contrary, Eric Pickles and Grant Shapps have lost virtually all the battles that they have fought within Government for support on housing.”

The problems he discusses as a politician with a nationally-focused brief on the Opposition benches take flesh in a more immediate and personalised sense in his capacity as MP – a role he says very much influences his presence on the national stage.

“In everything I do, I always refer back to local people, local experiences, because the first job for any Member of Parliament is to stand up for their constituents. In that context, Erdington is one of the 12 poorest constituencies in Britain, but it is rich in talent. Sadly, Erdington is suffering grievously the consequences of Government policy,” he said.

“On the housing front, there is an acute lack of affordable housing and a rapidly growing private rented sector. Yes, there are some good landlords, but there are many rogues ripping tenants off and failing to maintain the premises that they own. The scale of Birmingham’s housing crisis is demonstrated by one statistic: we’re going to need 70,000 new homes in the next 10 years to meet the growing demand.”

Dromey is supportive of the council’s creation of the Birmingham Municipal Housing Trust, which is planning to build some 1, 400 new council homes, but he’s critical of the council’s management of its stock, which he said “leaves a great deal to be desired”.

All told, the Erdington MP sees Birmingham as a microcosm for the problems caused by the housing crisis locally and nationally. It’s not just the result of the current Government’s failure on housing – it is one that relates to his admission that Labour could have done more. In his view, politicians and governments of all hues have failed to give housing sufficient priority for over 25 years. We’re paying the price for that failure now.

So, Dromey is scathing about the current administration’s record, but what has the Labour Party got to offer the country? For now, little concrete; make more use of public sector land, both local authority and central government; ensure that the freedoms gained under HRA reform are able to provide concrete results in terms of new homes; invest in affordable housebuilding; and ensure that housing finally gets the attention it deserves at the centre-stage of government policy.

Beyond that, it’s a case of watch this space. Over the next six to nine months, he said Labour will present its package of housing proposals as part of its ‘battleplan’ for the 2015 election. Whether the country can afford to wait that long is open to question, but in fairness that one is out of Dromey’s hands.

“Our first duty is to meet the immense and growing demand for affordable housing to buy and to rent,” Dromey said. “One again, we have to make housing centrestage in Britain.”


This interview was published in the May 2012 edition of Housing magazine, and subsequently re-published on the Housing Excellence website, 23 May 2012.