Neil Jameson: Community Organizer In Chief
It was with deep sadness that I came to hear of the death of one of my most important political mentors, Neil Jameson. Neil Jameson was the founder and former Executive Director of Citizens UK; a pioneer who reinvented and introduced community organising to the UK shores.
I first met Neil in 2004. I had contacted London Citizens by phone, leaving a message on the organisations answering machine after reading a brochure that they had published to raise awareness about the organisations work. The next day Neil contacted me; we arranged to meet up for what he termed a “one to one”. The next day we met at a wine bar in South-West London.
As I would learn later, “one to ones”, were short, face to face, public meetings with community leaders and congregational members within the institutional membership of a broad-based organisation. Meetings were normally meant to be over within about 30 minutes; our “one to one” ran way over schedule, as we spoke for hours on a wide variety of subjects.
On my first sight of Neil, I smiled and chuckled to myself and thought that he reminded me of Xavier from X-Men. He was very calm and precise and surprisingly at ease with my revolutionary anti-capitalist posture. We shared stories; he gave me his testimony, sharing stories about radical events in 1968 and regretful struggles with his father over his radical views as a youngster. He spoke about the tradition of community organising and the importance of his Quaker faith to his work. He impressed me with stories gleaned from engaging poor communities in the UK, in the Black Country, in Bristol and East London and from engaging with African American community organisers in the US. We discussed the Black Panthers, we discussed Franz Fanon, we discussed the Civil Rights Movement and more. Through our discussion I learnt that, despite the difference in age, race and social experience, we shared an ethics and a desire for social change.
At that same first meeting, he invited me to participate in 5-day training in the Art of Politics, in Birmingham the next week. I agreed and the following week I took a trip to Birmingham for a 5-day residential training course in the Art of Politics.
I remember it very clearly. On the first night, me and my colleague decided that we’d make the experience on the residential into a proper 1960’s radical Hippie training camp and share a joint. We rolled and smoked (I didn’t inhale 😉) and the smoke alarm went off. It was 12 in the morning. People were sleeping. We frantically opened all the windows and started spraying the room with deodorant but the strong scent of cannabis was hard to get rid of. We thought we were going to be sent home the next day, we were gutted. When we awoke, Neil said he wanted to have a word with us. We thought we were going to get led of the premises but astonishingly Neil gave us that trademark grin that he used to have, he said he did not mind if we smoked cannabis but it would be better if we smoked on the balcony, so the alarm didn’t go off. I remember the whole experience as being very funny. I think Neil made a good call. He knew that you had to deal with people where they were at. If we were ushered off the premises what would we have learnt? Would I even be writing this piece today?
The 5-day residential turned out to be one of the most politically enlightening moments of my political education. I learnt about a politics that I had never heard of before. It was a politics of the people; it was not a wishy-washy politics. It was not about empowerment but about the underclass and civil society organising for power. Much of the politics was borrowed from the Industrial Areas Foundation - the US based organisation where Neil had completed his training before taking the leap into community organising in 1989 - but Neil had a persona that gave it all an extra bit of gravitas. He taught the workshops with a sense of seriousness and erudition. His voice, charisma and style of speaking set the right tone and made us feel as if we were being initiated into some new, transformative politics.
Not long after I had completed 5-day training Neil invited me to speak at the Citizens Organising Foundation Annual Lecture, alongside the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, at the London School of Economics. In 2005 he invited me to join the Board at London Citizens, an opportunity that I took. I shadowed him to many meetings with senior leaders in London and Birmingham. In 2006, Neil sent me on a fact-finding mission to the US to visit Industrial Areas Foundations community organising projects in housing. He had arranged for us to be hosted by an African American church in New York who were at the time performing an extremely moving, epic play on slavery that we viewed.
Neil made a considerable effort for me to interact with African American community organisers. Jordan Estevao, the second South London Citizens organiser, an African American, was invited over from the states to support myself and the other people of colour in our organisation. To enable us to imagine a career in community organising by seeing someone like us in the post. Through Neil, I met Ed Chambers, the leader of the Industrial Area Foundation and other African American and Jewish American community organisers that provided me with lots of inspiration.
I attended many actions with Neil, at Hilton Hotel, at Tate Modern, at City Hall, Lunar House and more. I shadowed him at meetings with trusts and foundations. Neil was one of the most revolutionary, if not the most revolutionary person that I have ever been friends with or had the honour of working alongside. A true comrade of great courage. A man willing to build power for civil society to take on the state and the market in a way never seen before on the European continent. Whether it was winning a living wage, capping interest rates, taking back community land or defending the rights of refugees, Neil was willing to organise and fight.
A quiet leader. Neil was never openly and passionately angry. He possessed very little hot anger but he had mastered manifesting cold anger. One of his teachings was that leaders should possess cold anger. When pushed in interviews, you got to see his more militant side but it was rare for him to express himself in a militant way. Though, I would say and many would agree, that it was anger that moved Neil to become an organiser.
He came into community organising in 1989 on the back of a Britain that had been through years of Thatcherite neo-liberalism. Whilst Jesse Jackson was challenging Reaganite neo-liberalism in the US with the Rainbow Coalition, Neil Jameson was here responding to the same political issues that neo-liberalism created and developing Citizens.
One of my favourite stories of Neil Jameson’s heroics is the story of how he challenged HSBC, one of the biggest banks in the world, to implement a Living Wage. He and some of the community leaders of London Citizens had heard of the low pay that its cleaning staff received by one of their staff in the Citizens network. Neil and others decided to buy shares in HSBC to attend the shareholder meeting and lobby directly for a living wage pledge from the shareholders. They bought the shares and attended the shareholder meeting. In the middle of the shareholder meeting, they jumped up and began to demand that HSBC pay a living wage and commit to entering a public political relationship with London Citizens.
I had heard of that type of shareholder activism in books. I had never run into someone brave enough to do it. Especially a man who was nearing 60 years old at the time and somewhat of an unlikely revolutionary.
When I first met Neil in 2004, The East London Community Organisation (TELCO) that he launched with communities in East London, had been running for less than a decade and South London Citizens were just getting together for their founding Assembly. It had been 3 years since TELCO launched the Living Wage Campaign and Citizens UK had not reached the national prominence that it reached by 2010. When the organisation had gained enough political power to be the last campaign stop for all the leaders of the main three political parties, where prime ministerial candidates were questioned and asked to pledge to enter a political relationship with civil society through Citizens UK and to adopt the policies that the organisation had adopted from listening campaigns within their many member institutions.
When Neil initially began his organising work, he launched the Citizens Organising Foundation as a training organisation. It was a time when community organising was unheard of in the country. Today community organising is a term recognised in the political landscape. It has been part of an, albeit badly designed, programme of David Cameron’s government; a community organiser, Barack Obama, has become the President of the United States of America and there are thousands that have been trained in community organising across the UK. In 1989, when Neil introduced community organising to the UK, it was unheard of. He, without a doubt, made the right decision in taking the risk to start the work in the UK and should be remembered as a working class political hero.
After moving on to other things in 2008; I remained in contact with Neil. I attended the Assembly in 2010 which signified the peak of Citizens UK power. We discussed my critique of aspects of community organising, when I wrote my MA thesis in 2011. In 2016 I published a book on my experiences and stories derived from community organising. Neil invited me to speak to his organisations staff and supporters. He acted as the interviewer, asking me pertinent questions. As usual, Neil showed that he had a strong understanding of what I was trying to do, that he understood my perspectives, found them interesting and knew the work of the people that had inspired me.
In 2018 Neil stepped down from his role of Executive Director of Citizens UK to pursue other political interests in the Green Party. Neil sadly passed away whilst on the campaign trail for the Green Party to become a Councillor for West Devon Brough Council. I imagine that is how he would have liked to have gone out.
Neil was a man of action; he acted to change the world and made a very good attempt. I have not seen many obituaries on him thus far. Much to my amazement. The passing of such a giant figure should be a big deal.
Whilst some will be celebrating the coronation of a new King; there will be many of us that will be shedding a tear for the loss of our comrade Neil Jameson. A true man of the people. The Struggle continues...
