IWCA calls for clean sweep at community centre bar
It has been clear for some time now that something is seriously wrong at the Blackbird Leys Community Centre bar. Rumours that the venue acts as a magnet for drug dealers and violent criminals who don’t even live on the estate have been rife almost from the day that current landlord Joe Obhiozele and his wife Dolcie took over the licence.
Concerns over the running of the bar were heightened in July when a young woman was stabbed outside the community centre after a fracas in the bar spilled out onto the street. Earlier in the year a man was murdered on virtually the same spot following an argument in the centre. Blackbird Leys Labour councillor Val Smith responded by calling, rather too quickly, for all community centre bars to be closed down.
Not being prone to knee-jerk reactions, the IWCA has attempted to get a clear picture of the situation before recommending any action to be taken. Accordingly we have met with the manager of the community centre complex to discuss the situation. We have also sought, without success, an explanation from Joe and Dolcie Obhiozele, offering them an opportunity to answer residents’ concerns about the bar.
Complaints about the Blackbird Leys community centre bar include: late-night noise, broken bottles and litter left outside for others to clean up, the antisocial behaviour of customers congregating outside the premises, and a general air of malevolence directed at passers-by.
But the most serious allegation is that the bar has become a hang-out for a ‘Yardie’ gang who are using the place as a base from which to carry out their activities, including crack dealing outside the centre.
The vicious nature of this gang is indicated by the fact that two local teenage girls have made accusations to the police of rape by gang members.
While there is no evidence of illegal activity actually taking place on the premises, the IWCA believes that, as a community facility, those responsible for running the bar should be taking firm steps to discourage its use by criminal elements who have displayed utter contempt for local people, women especially.
Unfortunately Joe and Dolcie Obhiozele have done nothing to reassure residents that they are prepared to do this. Consequently, we have little choice but to call for the licence to be taken away from them and for the return of the centre to its rightful owners—the Blackbird Leys community.
Whether or not the bar should remain open is a matter for Blackbird Leys residents to decide. Rather than simply support New Labour’s blanket call for all community centre bars to be shut, the IWCA feels that the community itself should be consulted on this.
Driving a wedge
Attempting to deny any responsibility for the situation at the community centre bar, Dolcie Obhiozele used the platform of the August South East Area Committee meeting to accuse councillors of ‘driving a wedge between members of the black community.’
Referring to Val Smith as someone she ‘had a lot of respect for,’ Mrs Obhiozele reserved most of her venom for the IWCA, telling cllrs Stuart Craft and Lee Cole: ‘You don’t represent us!’
As an attempt to play the ‘race card’ it is clear that the ‘us’ referred to are the estate’s black residents. In response to this it needs to be made crystal clear that the IWCA stands up for all working class people regardless of skin colour or ethnic background—including of course those black people who have themselves suffered as a result of the violent and antisocial activities of the gang frequenting the community centre bar.
As genuine working class anti-racists, we have no hesitation in opposing those who act against the interests of the decent working class majority.
However, while Dolcie might indeed be tight with the local Labour Party hierarchy, her hostility to the IWCA is best seen in a business rather than political context. Both she and her husband Joe (a magistrate) make a lot of money out of the ‘black community’. Money taken over the bar at the community centre, along with wages from council-funded separatist schemes, such as the African-Caribbean Youth Project, has furnished a nice little life for the couple.
Dolcie may claim, as she told the IWCA at the area committee meeting, that ‘Black people have got nothing’—a situation that holds true for a substantial section of the working class in general—but this certainly doesn’t apply to her. Joe and Dolcie Obhiozele wasted no time in leaving behind the ‘black community’ and moving to the well-heeled surroundings of Wolvercote Village as soon as it was financially viable.
Conservatives in radical clothing
As with her involvement in the community centre bar, it could be argued that Dolcie’s role as head youth worker with the African-Caribbean Youth Project has also had a negative impact on the people of this estate.
While black youths may have done marginally better out of the project than their white friends, both groups have lost out from the extremely low level of funding provided by Oxfordshire County Council, which spends less per head on youth provision than almost any other local authority in Britain.
Despite her posturing as a spokesperson for the ‘black community’ Dolcie has done nothing to challenge this scandalous state of affairs.
Such phoney radicalism dovetails nicely with New Labour’s adoption of the political strategy of multiculturalism, in which different sections of the working class, defined by ethnic group, are encouraged to compete against one another for scraps of funding while wider inequalities go unchallenged.
In diverting attention away from the problems that affect everyone on Blackbird Leys, the likes of the Obhiozeles have played as vital a part in the local establishment as Labour Party worthies such as Barbara Gatehouse, or even Andrew and Val Smith.
By successfully introducing a political challenge to the local Labour elite, the IWCA has attracted working class support from black and white alike. But this encouraging state of affairs doesn’t please everyone. Those that have profited from the status quo are beginning to realise that they have been rumbled.
Leys Independent, issue 25, October 2004
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