What Does Balfron Tower Mean to You?

What Does Balfron Tower Mean to You? by Rab Harling

As its five month installation in Living with Buildings at the Wellcome Collection draws to a close on 3rd March 2019, Inversion/Reflection: What Does Balfron Tower Mean to You?, a short film by Rab Harling, is now available to watch, free of charge, here on the Balfron Social Club website.

If you are able to visit Living with Buildings at the Wellcome Collection in central London, we highly recommend a visit to the free exhibition.

Please note that this film is displayed here for personal viewing only. Commercial or educational screening of this film is unauthorised without prior consent. Please use the Contact button for all enquiries.

Find out more about Living with Buildings on the Wellcome Collection website.

Living with Buildings at the Wellcome Collection until 3rd March 2019

A Researchers Guide to Balfron Tower

Pic by @BalfronSocial

Balfron Social Club is regularly asked for help by researchers, journalists and students, so we have compiled a list of useful links and resources, for your easy reference.

This list will be updated regularly. If you have a suggestion, or have written something you would like us to include, please get in touch. This guide does not include work on the Balfron Social Club blog, so don’t forget to look at all the great content on our blog too.

Last updated 14th March 2019.

Balfron Tower: a Building Archive by David Roberts http://www.balfrontower.org/

Balfron Tower: a building archive

Balfron Tower: the Artwash of an Icon by Rab Harling http://journal.urbantranscripts.org/article/balfron-tower-artwash-icon-rab-harling/

Still from What Does Balfron Tower Mean to You? by Rab Harling

Rethinking the role of artists in urban regeneration contexts by Stephen Pritchard http://colouringinculture.org/blog/rethinkingartistsinurbanregen

SCREENSHOT FROM TEVIOT TALES BY HANNAH NICKLIN (2016)

Wayne Hemingway’s ‘pop-up’ plan sounds the death knell for the legendary Balfron Tower by Ollie Wainwright https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/architecture-design-blog/2014/sep/26/wayne-hemingways-pop-up-plan-sounds-the-death-knell-for-the-legendary-balfron-tower

Photograph: Sophia Schorr-Kon/National Trust

What Does Balfron Tower Mean to You? By Rab Harling http://rabharling.com/what-does-balfron-tower-mean-to-you/

Still from What Does Balfron Tower Mean to You? by Rab Harling

C20 Society’s fears are confirmed as the Balfron Tower’s new look is unveiled https://c20society.org.uk/news/c20-societys-fears-are-confirmed-as-the-balfron-towers-new-look-is-unveiled/

Catherine Croft, the Society’s Director, said “especially given the controversial decision to change Balfron from social housing to private flats, this outcome is a tragic missed opportunity.”

Hey Creatives, Stop Fetishising Estates by Caroline Christie https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/jm953d/balfron-tower-art-fetishising-estates-157

Ken Coleman, local resident. Image Copyright Vice Magazine.

How the Balfron Tower tenants were ‘decanted’ and lost their homes by Benjamin Mortimer http://www.eastendreview.co.uk/2015/03/24/balfron-tower-poplar-harca/

High life: The Balfron Tower. Photograph: Joe Roberts

Balfron residents: ‘Privatising the tower will segregate the community’ by Dr Vanessa Crawford https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/balfron-residents-privatising-the-tower-will-segregate-the-community/8691394.article

Image from Inversion/Reflection: Turning Balfron Tower Inside Out by Rab Harling

How ‘placemaking’ is tearing apart social housing communities by Nye Jones https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/27/london-placemaking-social-housing-communities-tenants

Photograph: Jess Hurd/reportdigital.co.uk

A delicate sense of terror by Rab Harling http://journal.urbantranscripts.org/article/second-post/

A Delicate Sense of Terror by Rab Harling

Artist squares up to Regulator over “manifestly unreasonable” fundraising investigation by Christy Romer https://www.artsprofessional.co.uk/news/exclusive-artist-squares-regulator-over-manifestly-unreasonable-fundraising-investigation

Photo: diamond geezer via VisualHunt / CC BY-NC-ND

Regulator resolute on decision to side with charity over artist by Christy Romer https://www.artsprofessional.co.uk/news/regulator-resolute-decision-side-charity-over-artist

Photo: gee on Visual Hunt / CC BY

Letter: We’re not here to defend the public – Gerald Oppenheim, CEO of the Fundraising Regulator https://www.artsprofessional.co.uk/magazine/letter/letter-were-not-here-defend-public

Fundraising Regulator- a toothless regulator

Poplar parade of garages to become £4m East End fashion hub by Jonathon Prynn https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/poplar-parade-of-garages-to-become-4m-east-end-fashion-hub-a3164031.html

Image: Evening Standard

Campaigners challenge housing association’s social cleansing policy by Tower Hamlets Renters https://towerhamletsrenters.wordpress.com/2015/02/17/561/

Pic by @BalfronSocial

From sink to swank — In defence of Britain’s brutal estates by Edwin Heathcote https://www.ft.com/content/7ae5d134-bacf-11e5-bf7e-8a339b6f2164

Image: Copyright FT

Balfron Tower: Gutted east London fortress is a husk of a utopia by Jessica Mairs https://www.iconeye.com/opinion/icon-of-the-month/item/13178-balfron-tower-erno-goldfinger

Photo: WandererWandering via Flickr (cropped)

Where do Zupagrafika stand on brutal capitalism destroying London communities by Pippa Henslowe https://reclaimec1.wordpress.com/2018/03/01/where-do-zupagrafika-stand-on-brutal-capitalism-destroying-london-communities/

Image: Reclaim EC1

Bazaar Politics: Uncovering Social Cleansing In the Heart of London by Dilly Hussain https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/bazaar-politics-uncovering-social-cleansing-heart-london/

Pic: Ceasefire

The Pernicious Realities of ‘Artwashing’ by Feargus O’Sullivan https://www.citylab.com/equity/2014/06/the-pernicious-realities-of-artwashing/373289/

Wikimedia Commons/Graeme Maclean

Artists Against Artwashing: Anti-Gentrification & the Intangible Rise of the Social Capital Artist by Stephen Pritchard http://colouringinculture.org/blog/artistsagainstartwashing

Pic via colouringinculture.org

Campaigners and local residents are furious with a Labour council for ‘allowing social and ethnic cleansing’ by Nye Jones https://www.thecanary.co/trending/2018/07/25/campaigners-and-local-residents-are-furious-with-a-labour-council-for-allowing-social-and-ethnic-cleansing/

Still from The Battle of Chrisp Street by Rab Harling

East End tenants ‘booted out’ of Goldfinger’s iconic Balfron Tower’ claim by Mike Brooke https://www.eastlondonadvertiser.co.uk/news/east-end-tenants-booted-out-of-goldfinger-s-iconic-balfron-tower-claim-1-3961574

Image via East London Advertiser

‘Artwashing’ Teviot Tales – artwashing? by Hannah Nicklin http://poplarpeople.co.uk/artwashing

Image: Poplar People

Labour peer Lord Cashman discusses Poplar Harca and the social cleansing of Balfron Tower in the House of Lords https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/667e22e7-c184-4d12-a33a-07a0e9737a07?in=15:50:50

Lord Cashman of Limehouse

A new documentary shows the harsh realities of regeneration in East London by Nye Jones https://www.thecanary.co/reviews/2018/06/17/a-new-documentary-shows-the-harsh-realities-of-regeneration-in-east-london/

A still from The Battle of Chrisp Street by Rab Harling

Challenging the artwashing of social cleansing means calling out & critiquing artists involved by Stephen Pritchard http://colouringinculture.org/blog/callingoutartwashingartists

YOUR LIFE BUT ARTWASHED, STEPHEN PRITCHARD, 2017.

Interview: Bow Arts In Balfron Tower by Londonist https://londonist.com/2009/03/interview_bow_arts_in_balfron_tower

Pic: Londonist

STOP PRIVATISATION AND SOCIAL CLEANSING AT BALFRON TOWER: Change.org petition by Balfron Social Club & others. https://www.change.org/p/stephen-halsey-steve-stride-john-biggs-stop-privatisation-and-social-cleansing-at-balfron-tower

Pic by @BalfronSocial

RAB HARLING INTERVIEW: Diffusion Photography Festival 2017 https://2017.diffusionfestival.org/live/rab-harling-interview

Rab Harling speaking at Diffusion 2017

Balfron Tower Redevelopment Video by Poplar Harca https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2hVJ0_SxtI&t=2s

Making Poplar a better place to live.

Balfron Tower: Not for the likes of us by James Walsh https://morningstaronline.co.uk/a-2a72-balfron-tower-not-for-the-likes-of-us-1

There were no pictures in the Morning Star article

Mr Goldfinger’s Tower by Steve White & the Protest Family https://stevewhiteandtheprotestfamily.bandcamp.com/track/mr-goldfingers-tower

Steve White and the Protest Family

Property chiefs caught up in Presidents Club scandal by Colin Marrs https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/property-chiefs-caught-up-in-presidents-club-scandal/10027474.article

Londonewcastle, the developers of Balfron Tower, had their own table at The Presidents Club. Is this the sort of hospitality Poplar Harca received before giving them the development contract?

Interview: Bow Arts In Balfron Tower by Londonist https://londonist.com/2009/03/interview_bow_arts_in_balfron_tower

Insert stock photo of Balfron Tower here.

Property developers Londonewcastle’s marketing website for Balfron Tower http://balfrontower.com/#

Balfron Tower: stolen social housing being marketed to the rich

Balfron Tower Redevelopment Video (July 2014) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3FMGeJ9g6Q

The Fall of Goldfinger’s Brutalist Balfron Tower and its Social Heritage

After nearly ten years of bullying the social tenants from their homes in Ernö Goldfinger’s Balfron Tower, so-called “social housing” provider Poplar Harca, with the full support & backing of Tower Hamlets Labour, who created Poplar Harca in order to transfer billions of pounds worth of property into the hands of their friends, have now gained vacant possession of the tower. Hurrah!

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Ernö Goldfinger’s icon of brutalist architecture Balfron Tower on 31st August 2016, the day its final residents left ahead of refurbishment (pic: @balfronsocial)


For an organisation that claims to be a “charity” and a “social enterprise” their motives couldn’t be seen more clearly than in their intentions for this iconic purpose built 27-storey social housing block.

Poplar Harca have engaged the services of “luxury” property developers LondoNewcastle to manage the conversion of the tower into 100% privately owned investment properties, along with developers Telford Homes and United House, who both specialise in the conversion of publicly owned social housing into private investment “units”. Figures recently released show that 93% of the homes that Telford Homes develop, most commonly on land they have acquired from Registered Social Landlords, is sold on as investments. Only 7% have been sold to owner occupiers, people who actually want to live in the area.

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The “decant” of Balfron Tower has been particularly “brutal”. Poplar Harca used all sorts of nefarious tactics to get vacant possession, including lying to tenants to remove them from their homes. Balfron Tower’s social tenants were initially told, when they were asked to vote for the NIL value stock transfer from council ownership into RSL ownership, that they would be given new windows and new kitchens. They were later told that they would need to leave their homes for the work to be carried out, but could return post-refurbishment. These were blatant lies. Many moved out having been told they could return, only to be told after they had left that they could not move back. We are in no doubt that Poplar Harca and their bible-bashing Chief Executive Steve Stride, knew exactly what they were doing. How can “street-fighting man” Stride actually have any empathy with the communities he is destroying? He is on record as saying that he plans to turn Poplar into “the New Shoreditch”, another part of London where the wealth and selfishness of the City’s rich uncomfortably co-exists with those struggling with and being ground down by poverty. Steve Stride’s salary in 2016 was £159,197, upon which he received an additional £19,000 bonus.

Poplar Harca’s intention is clear. The development of the world famous iconic Balfron Tower would serve as a flagship property, a jewel in the crown of an area with little but run-down housing stock, and bland high-density modern investment units, all uncomfortably close to the HQ of global capitalist corruption, Canary Wharf.

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Labour peer Lord Cashman debates the social cleansing of Balfron Tower in the House of Lords, November 2015 (click HERE for the full video on parliamentlive.tv)


Another tactic in the arsenal of the social cleansers was so-called “artwash”, the use of young middle-class graduates to change the demographic of the area. This may have seemed like a good idea to Poplar Harca, in their dastardly plan to dismantle this traditional working-class East end community, but things don’t always go to plan.

Artists, desperate for studio space in a city evicting them further out to the margins as their studios are developed into luxury flats, were shipped in by Bow Arts Trust, a local Arts Council funded studio provider, who then bullied and intimidated its new creative inhabitants to discourage them from speaking out about the social cleansing of the tower, threatening them with evictions if they spoke to the media, or even wrote anything at all about them on Facebook, especially if it fell foul of their “artwash” agenda, and often even when it didn’t.

Poplar Harca, then despicably evicted a large number of property guardians they had contracted to be put in place by Ad-Hoc Property Guardians, and then gave the guardian contract to Cambridge-educated Katharine Hibbert, who set up “social enterprise” Dot Dot Dot. Dot Dot Dot with the help of Poplar Harca then forced its guardian’s, mostly young middle class graduates, to volunteer in the community in order to keep their homes. Dot Dot Dot were another organisation that treated many of their residents like vermin, who along with Bow Arts, illegally refused to carry out any maintenance or repairs in the flats they were charging a considerable rent for. Dot Dot Dot, an organisation that was purposefully created in order to offer social cleansing services to Housing Associations like Poplar Harca, were funded, at the request of Poplar Harca, by another local “community” organisation (that Harca’s CEO used to be a director of), the Bromley-by-Bow Centre.

Sadly, in an age of neoliberal austerity, the funding of social cleansing of a community by an organisation like Bromley by Bow Centre, that is itself funded with public funds to support the community, doesn’t even seem to raise many eyebrow’s.

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Recent comment by a Dot Dot Dot guardian who has asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals.


Many young middle-class graduates and “socially-engaged” artists like Simon Terril and 2015’s Turner-prize “winners” Assemble Studios have shown a severe lack of social conscience and have been happy to take the money being offered to them and get involved with the social cleansing of this traditional East end working-class community. Perhaps due to the level of privilege their parents money has bought them, they have failed to relate to the people whose homes and communities they are destroying, trampling all over them, and serving their own agenda rather than those who really need their assistance, not their top-down patronising, selfish and destructive attitude.

Poplar Harca, Bow Arts and Dot Dot Dot all failed to take into account that not all of these incomers herald from elitist privilege. I believe that this is why the bullying and intimidation was so fierce. It is now easier to scare people into remaining silent, than it is to be ethical with public money, especially given that this level of brutal community destruction is sanctioned by the privileged in their well paid administrative positions, who view social housing as being wasted upon the poor.

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Some of the mess left behind in Balfron Tower following the departure of its temporary residents (pic: @balfronsocial)


Thanks to the perseverance of some artists, evicted from their homes for questioning the widespread fraud, corruption and bullying at Bow Arts, and their involvement in tax fraud and tax evasion, using public funds gained from Arts Council England, the reputation of Balfron Tower will now forever be known as “the socially-cleansed Goldfinger”.  After significant attempts to cover up the criminal behaviour of Bow Arts Trust’s directors, the authorities are currently investigating Bow Arts for their charity tax fraud and tax evasion. Meanwhile, the ethics of Poplar Harca are clearly visible in the fact they continue to engage the services of Bow Arts and Dot Dot Dot to this day.

But where is the Mayor? Where are our MP’s? (ALL Labour, incidentally). Who in authority is fighting for the rights of the people Balfron Tower was built for in the first place? The reality is that the level of collusion between those that are supposed to protect us, such as local government, the “free” press, Historic England and the National Trust, is thoroughly frightening. They have shown that the greed of the neoliberal asset-stripping generation will stop at nothing to get their way. They will destroy lives; destroy communities to line the pockets of property developers and bankers at Canary Wharf. This is not what they were set up to do, and they need to be stopped. Is there anybody in authority out there prepared to look past the glossy PR and the recent £4m Poplar Harca re-brand to see and intervene in this devastating attack on the city’s working-class communities?

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Respectable comment from @charliegilmour in London’s Evening Standard newspaper, 14th September 2016.


Balfron Tower has been one the worst examples of state-planned gentrification and social cleansing. But it is not alone. There are many examples out there, particularly in London, where property prices have forced the middle-classes to seek out homes in places that 3 years ago they would have planned a route around to avoid.

So, next time you wonder why a small flat in a social housing block is on sale for £350,000 or “affordable” 1-bed flats are being marketed for £495,000 and why this outrageous land grab and dismantlement of social housing is scarcely covered by the mainstream media in any depth, ask yourself, who benefits?

We at Balfron Social Club reiterate our demands that Balfron Tower remain at least 50% social housing after refurbishment. In the word’s of Lord Cashman, a “not too vigorous a demand”. Please help us make this happen and expose and penalise the worst offenders, like Poplar Harca, intent upon dismantling our social housing.

Balfron Social Club

Poplar, East London

15th September 2016

Thanks to KWS for inspiration.