Description: On May 2nd 2002 six tenant activists are standing as independent candidates in the local election in three key Southwark wards. The film interviews them as part of their compaign for election. 00:24 caption: Tenant Aylesbury Estate, Margot Lindsay.

00:45 – caption: Tenant Aylesbury Plus Area, Piers Corbyn.

01:03 - Natalie Ajeon, Peckham Partners Tenants Forum: councillors should be questioned about what their policies are and what money is allocated to what.

01:22 - Annette Pallas, Gloucester Grove Tenant Activist: so many resources in the council are just being wasted.

01:35 - Thomas Maguire, East Dulwich Estate forum: the privatisation of the education department in Southwark is a nightmare. Power has been transferred to a road building company. What does WS Atkins know about education?

Mike Rahman, Development manager of the Peckham Partnership tenants forum: there has to be a level of scrutiny and accountability in the council. At the moment the CEO Robert Coomber is also the Finance Officer. How can the district auditor scrutinize the CEO and the Finance Officer when they are the same person?

Piers Corbyn, Tenant Aylesbury Plus Area: Labour and Liberal parties are pushing forward with privatisation policies whilst pretending they're not. Was a council member for Labour party from 1986 – 1990 but had to leave the Labour party because the new leadership was committed to privatisation;. Now answerable directly to the people as a WATT candidate. Open meetings every month where everyone could come along and tell us what we should be doing. We'd be fighting for investment in council housing and opposition to privatisation. Meetings would mobilize people. Campaigning for lift renewals, window replacement, and return of caretakers. A proper caretaking system would pay for itself because the waste and degeneration happens in the absence of care. The money is available we have to force the council to invest in it and build a programme of investment action because if we don't there will be privatisation all over this area of London which means that lower/middle income people would be pushed out of the city (05:38)

Margot Lindsay, Aylesbury Estate: wanted to get the facts about the regeneration programme; information was one-sided and wanted to give tenants the other side of the story. In the early regeneration plans there were a lot of green spaces and talk of balconies, swimming pools and meeting halls but as the meetings went on the green spaces got smaller and smaller and housing got denser and denser. The council decides something, chooses people from the local community who are not elected, they go on shadow boards the meetings are in-camera and then we are consulted but by that time it's too late, all the machinery is in place, consultants paid and what is missing is freedom of information. There has been a running down of the development programme so tenants think that the estate is so terrible we have to go to the private sector (06:53). If young people are making trouble on the estate it's because they are bored. There are not that many playgrounds and some aren't used. Some of the young people that we have spoken to want the football pitches turfed and high netting to stop the balls going over. We have to attend to the recreational needs of the young people and to attend to the physical tissue of the place; stops people turning into hooligans if there aren’t proper facilities for them (08:10). In England we make jokes about something, we criticize it and then we get rid of it; that's how you solve the problem you privatize it and then you are not accountable to the electorate (09:06). It's wrapped up with the social structure of society but it's also about love affair the prime minister has with big business. They can make millions of pounds doing deals with housing company investors because we are so near to the city of London: the money that could be made from this area is mind-boggling. I was a Labour party member, paid extra subs to help them but they have been privatising everything and this is not what I want to put my hard-earned pennies to go on. The estate represents a feeling of failure for the people living here. (10:19) People on low incomes deserve a proper quality of life and it's irresponsible of the council to let it get in to this state.