Launching LOGIC: Community Organising in Grimsby
On 17 October 2024, the Common Good Foundation brought together hundreds of people from Grimsby, Immingham and Cleethorpes at a public assembly to launch their own community organisation: LOGIC (Leaders Organising Grimsby, Immingham & Cleethorpes).
Grimsby, Immingham and Cleethorpes are towns that tens of thousands of people are proud to call home. But recent decades have seen thousands of lost jobs, particularly in the once vibrant fishing industry, and a decline of the strong community that they helped sustain. Grimsby today is one of the poorest towns in Britain, and the East Marsh area by the docks has the lowest average household income of anywhere in England and Wales.
The Common Good Foundation has been organising in the town for three years, and LOGIC is the culmination of that work. Constituted of the towns’ key institutions – including the churches, the gurudwara and the mosque, trade unions, business leaders and many others - it has come together to act for the mutual good of the town.
The Assembly on 17 October was a first-of-its-kind event in Britain, with 200 people in attendance at St Mary on the Sea Church in Grimsby. There was an extraordinary feeling of goodwill and enthusiasm in the room, as communities came together to make demands of local councillors, business leaders, and each other. This is a local, democratic organisation run by and for its members, and everyone is welcome to join.
Jonathan Lange, a veteran American community organiser with over four decades experience working in communities including Baltimore, Annapolis and Chicago with the Industrial Areas Foundation, has been a mentor to the local organisers. Lange says of the project: “There are virtually no examples of strong broad-based organisations in communities like North East Lincolnshire. In many ways the leaders are breaking new ground with the advent of LOGIC.”
LOGIC, with the support of the Common Good Foundation, used the public assembly to launch its first two campaigns to improve life in the towns: tackling damp housing, and ensuring locals benefit from the major offshore windfarm projects.
Damp Housing
Reverend Kay Jones, the Priest at St John and St Stevens in the East Marsh, explained
that when her community was built 150 years ago,
“little thought was given to the long term effect of dampness on health. We are told there are three sources of the damp within the houses in the Marshes and elsewhere: incursion from leaks in windows and roofs, damp created in the home from washing and cooking, and the last and perhaps most insidious kind, damp rising from the ground through the foundation.
All of these sources can be addressed although it is often not cheap to do so. We have purchased damp meters, talked to scores of residents. Talked to health professionals and met with reputable companies that address these problems.”
One local resident and leader with LOGIC, Emma Maskell, described her experience:
“I rented a damp home from [local estate agent]. They are the oldest and perhaps the biggest estate agent in the area. In recent years more and more of our homes in Grimsby, Cleethorpes and Immingham are owned by absentee landlords and managed by estate agents. What it meant for me was a constant struggle to get my house repaired and the damp out of my house. With two growing children I was alarmed by health problems associated with damp and mould.”
Emma encouraged the room not to treat mould and damp as an individual problem, but as a systemic issue.
Professor Durka Dougall, the CEO of the Centre for Population Health was also in attendance. She underlined how serious this issue was and how it impacts children’s and babies’ health, causing lifelong conditions such as severe asthma.
LOGIC has asked the council to work with them to increase its capacity to inspect properties, and local councillors were invited onto the stage to confirm their support. Beginning on 2 November, LOGIC will be conducting ‘damp walks’, where members will go out in groups and knock on doors talking to their neighbours about their experience with damp, and measuring the levels of damp with damp metres. In time, LOGIC will gather the evidence it has collected, bring together the local community, and demand tenants’ right are enforced.
Local Jobs
Grimsby, Immingham and Cleethorpes – like so many other post-industrial British towns – suffers from a lack of good, secure jobs. We have heard of so many young people who want to stay in the area and contribute, and instead are forced to leave home for work.
The largest operator of offshore wind turbines in the world is employing hundreds of people in Grimsby off the town’s old fishing docks. Billions in investment is offshore and on land. As one leader highlighted, “While we may each know someone who works on these windfarms, too few of those jobs are done by men and women who live in our neighbourhoods, worship at our churches, send their children to our schools and pay council taxes to NEL.”
There are plans in place to create up to 10,000 additional jobs in this industry. LOGIC learned that of the 1,000 jobs listed at the local job centre, zero are listed from Orsted, the Danish company doing the hiring. Although he was not in attendance at the initial assembly, LOGIC’s goal is to talk to the CEO of Orsted and begin discussions about how more jobs, training and opportunities could be offered to local people in North East Lincolnshire.
LOGIC has sent the following letter to CEO Madds Nipper, which was signed by members at the Assembly on the 17th.
Signed Letter to Ørsted CEO, Mads Nipper
In the months and years to come, the Common Good Foundation will continue to build and support LOGIC, helping local people in working-class communities come together and exercise power for the common good. This is hard, patient work – not a gimmick or a one-off ‘project’ – and the assembly on October 17 was a significant milestone.
News of the Launch of LOGIC has spread through the town. Here is an example of reporting from the local paper.