Take a walk down south London’s Lordship Lane, past East Dulwich station and up Dog Kennel Hill, and you’ll come across a sorry sight. Tucked away next to the Sainsbury’s lies a barricaded football stadium, festooned with threatening “Trespassers will be prosecuted” signs. Until recently, this was home to one of the country’s oldest and most popular non-league clubs, Dulwich Hamlet.
Just weeks ago, games at the Hamlet’s Champion Hill stadium attracted thousands of fans to a family-friendly environment, and a club with an actively anti-racist, anti-homophobic stance and a genuine interest in the community. Yet today Dulwich find themselves evicted from their stadium – which is at the centre of a bitter battle between the property developers Meadow, who own their ground and wish to build on it, and the local council, Southwark.
Meadow’s proposal for development was rejected by Southwark because it fell short of the council’s 35% target for affordable housing. Meadow’s response was petulant. It dropped its financial support for the club, saddled Dulwich with a £121,000 rent bill and, just last week, evicted the club. For now, Dulwich play eight miles down the road at Tooting & Mitcham United, their local rivals, who have kindly offered them use of their ground. Public representatives have rallied to back Dulwich’s cause. In parliament, Helen Hayes, the local MP, will lead an adjournment debate today on Dulwich’s situation and the wider importance of football within the community. Sadiq Khan, the London mayor, and the Labour peer Lord Kennedy have also been instrumental in raising the profile of their plight and condemning Meadow’s actions.
For its part, Meadow said that the eviction “follows repeated breaches of the licence by the club, together with unwarranted personal attacks on the company, which has funded the club for a number of years and without which the club would not have survived as long as it has”.
Rio Ferdinand’s affordable housing foundation, Legacy, has made a £10m bid for the Dulwich Hamlet site. Photograph: Andrew Yates/AFP/Getty Images
Whatever the merits of the affair, it’s a situation that’s becoming all too familiar. When a football club is struggling, the property development vultures circle. What’s more worrying is that Dulwich are a genuinely well-recognised boon for the community, which has actively supported local causes such as food banks and workers’ rights campaigns. If a club such as Dulwich is allowed to fold, it could happen to anyone – and their situation is far from unique. Up and down the country clubs are in jeopardy as developers make land grabs for sites that are often in desirable locations in inner cities with good transport links.
It would be easy to blame local councils for their complacency but their hands have been tied by years of vicious budget cuts from central government. Last week the National Audit Office reported that local councils are at financial breaking point due to austerity. The lack of affordable housing is a colossal problem in the UK, and the recent furore surrounding the Haringey Development Vehicle highlights how difficult it can be to solve, even for Labour councils. It’s undoubtedly something that needs to be addressed, but without jeopardising the future of essential community assets such as football clubs.
The backbones of our communities require investment and love to do their work, be they libraries, hospitals or children’s centres. As these institutions are starved of resources, football clubs become rare social hubs where communities can congregate and organise. They have become one of the last bastions of community spirit.
It was not so long ago that Margaret Thatcher marginalised football fans, treating them as the lowest of the low. Yet many now realise the value of football. Southwark council made a bold statement on Wednesday, with a unanimous vote in favour of an application to purchase the land from Meadow and build social housing on the site of a current car park. This may not be the end of the issue – Meadow has already rejected a £10m bid from Rio Ferdinand’s affordable housing foundation, Legacy – but could ramp up enough pressure to avoid the last resort of a compulsory purchase order.
Until they can return to Champion Hill, the fight goes on for Dulwich. The fan action group Save DHFC has organised a march from nearby Goose Green to the ground tomorrow, at 12:30pm. Fans of bigger neighbours Millwall, Crystal Palace and Charlton have pledged their support, knowing that if Dulwich were to lose their ground for good, it could become the thin end of a very large wedge.
• Hugo Greenhalgh co-hosts a Dulwich Hamlet podcast, Forward the Hamlet