London Citizens is a diverse alliance of active citizens and community leaders organising for change. Members include faith groups, schools, student organisations, union branches and residents groups who share a commitment to action for the common good, and to nurturing leaders from all backgrounds.

London Citizens has three core community organising networks, which are supported by the Citizen Organising Foundation, a training and development institute. For more detailed network and campaign information, please click the links below to visit the relevant web site.

In East London, TELCO London Citizens has been actively organising and campaigning for over ten years. TELCO is a well established and respected force for democratic change, and last year helped East Londoner's secure a living wage commitment from the London 2012 Olympic project team. More recently TELCO launched a public enquiry into the proposed redevelopment of the Queens Market, ensuring local people and traders have a meaningful say in its future.

At South London's November 2005 Annual Assembly, members committed to campaign on housing, youth, living wages, dignity in hospital and immigration. Click here for more detail.

Last year London Citizens extended its reach even further, establishing West London Citizens, and building on the experience gained through our older networks. West London Citizens has been very active in the 2006 Local Elections, putting proposals determined by our diverse membership, to the party leaders in Ealing, Hammersmith and Fulham, and Kensington and Chelsea. The next major event is our First Anniversary Assembly at 7.30pm on 4th October 2006. For an invitation please click here

Fighting poverty wages in London, the Living Wage Campaign has had some major recent successes, with large highprofile employers agreeing to pay the £7.05 per hour London Living Wage.

The London Citizens Governance of London Campaign 2008

At the London Citizens Mayoral Accountability Assembly, all candidates, including the new Mayor, Boris Johnson, promised to work with London Citizens during their term in office.

All candidates promised to continue to fund the Living Wage Unit at City Hall.

All candidates publicly commited to the principle of including various forms of Community Land Ownership as one of the solutions to the city's affordable housing crisis.

All candidates backed a call for regularisation for 'undocumented migrants' who have lived in Britain for four years or longer.

All candidates agreed to actively support the CitySafe campaign and to work with London Citizens to develop the initiative.

Details of these commitments can be found in theCitizens’ Agenda.

Promises Made by Boris Johnson at the London Citizens Mayoral Accountability Assembly on 9th April 2008

Greener Future Campaign

Our planet is heating and the consequences are increasingly apparent. In top political and business circles sustainability is finally receiving the attention it deserves. This shift has been the achievement both of scientists and of active citizens, pressing for recognition of the problem and for change. Please click here for the London's Green Future Project Paper.

London Citizens will be holding an event at Imperial College London on Saturday 17th May 2008. For more information about the content of this event please click here

To download a flyer for the event please click here.

Housing

In beautiful sunshine 100 London Citizens families camped out by City Hall to launch the Our Homes, Our London Campaign.
Prompted by the impending action, Mayor Livingstone announced that he would work with London Citizens to provide the first Community Land Trust on a site in Bow. Construction would start in 2009 on the 100 home pilot project, to be followed by thousands more CLT homes across London.
The pledge to develop CLT homes was made by Ken in 2004 but after little progress in 3 years, TELCO decided that pressure was necessary to make the promise count. The Tent-City, one of the most creative and ambitious CITIZENS actions, paid off in a big way.

For more information about Community Land Trusts, the 'Our Homes Our London' campaign and housing action, please click here

To read the Mayor’s CLT Press Release (30/07/07) click here

Strangers Into Citizens

For the first time ever, thousands of immigrants, some of the illegal, marched from Westminster Cathedral to Trafalgar Square with the backing of faith leaders, politicians and trade unionists, to call for a “pathway into citizenship” for the 500,000-odd “undocumented migrants” in the UK who have been left in legal limbo.

Some are refused asylum-seekers, others visa overstayers. Some are in London having escaped poverty, others persecution. Many work and pay taxes (using false IDs or NI numbers); others face poverty. But what they have in common is that they have put down roots in the UK yet are not recognised by the law.

“Strangers into Citizens” – a campaign by London Citizens – has a proposal to get them out of that limbo, for their good as well as that of society. We have studied what has been done elsewhere in Europe – Spain, for example, legalised 700,000 people in 2005 – and have our own proposal: that those who have been in the UK for more than four years should be able to work legally for two years and then (subject to employer or character references, criminal record checks, an English test and so on) be given “leave to remain”. This model of “earned regularisation” has been successfully implemented in the US among other countries and we think would work well in the UK.

Why regularise? The first point is that there is no real alternative. The Greater London Authority estimates the number of irregular migrants in London to be around 380,000. Deportation – many people’s knee-jerk “solution” to illegal immigration – is simply not tenable. Forcibly removing someone is an elaborate and expensive business, which is why there are at most 20,000 deportations a year. Writing about the campaign in the Guardian recently, Polly Toynbee described the UK’s policy as “phoney” because “it claims to deport people when in truth it doesn't and it can't.”

Many migrants have been here for years, put down roots, and sudden deportations cause local outrage: armed guards marched into a Camberwell primary school last month and snatched a 10-year-old boy. Long-residing failed asylum seeking families are targeted because they don't hide from authorities and are easy to deport to make up numbers, while violent criminals roam free.

Strangers into Citizens starts from elsewhere. Given that long-term irregular migrants are net contributors to the UK economy and are part of our society, we argue that it makes sense to recognise their legal status. Migrants are taken out of a limbo of uncertainty and fear; the authorities can concentrate on deporting criminals; unscrupulous employers are exposed; the minimum wage is easier to enforce; good employers can take on the labour they need; the Government benefits from the influx of unpaid taxes; and people who belong to our society – who work in our offices and factories, who worship in our schools and mosques – are able to play a full role in it.

The main objection to the idea is that it would act as a magnet on further illegal immigration. But talk to irregular migrants – as we have been doing for months, collecting the stories here on our website – and you’ll see why in practice it doesn’t. Migrants do not come in search of citizenship but work and opportunity. Where they find it, they end up staying. No one would cross the world to the UK in the hope of becoming a citizen in six years’ time. Their needs are more immediate and pressing than that.

Following Spain’s regularisation in 2005 numbers of illegal immigrants actually dropped – and the fiscal benefits were so great the social security deficit has been cleared.

The 7 May rally put on display the breadth of support for the campaign. Church leaders – including Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster, and Bishop Tom Butler of Southwark – spoke passionately in favour of recognising the rights and dignity of all people, including the undocumented. Jon Cruddas MP and Baroness Shirley Williams added their voices to those of the trade union leaders, Jack Dromey of the TGWU and Dave Prentis of UNISON. Lewis Alsamari, the Iraq-born star of United 93, spoke of his long struggle to be legal. Billy Bragg sang Bob Marley.

The crowd was vast (the media reported 20,000) and colourful. Union Jacks jostled with banners and placards. Even as the heavens opened there was a light, carnival atmosphere. People spoke of coming out into the light, of the relief of knowing that there were faith leaders and others who understood what it was like to live in a dehumanising limbo of fear and uncertainty.

The Government has rejected the idea of an “amnesty”, but Strangers into Citizens has never proposed a general amnesty but a pathway into citizenship for long-term migrants. A motion has been laid in Parliament which has so far attracted more than 40 MPs of all parties. There is talk of a committee in the Lords to advance the campaign.

Where will it lead? It’s hard to know. But the campaign has put the issue of undocumented migrants squarely on the political table. Sooner or later, regularisation will have to be taken seriously.