Building Power on the Ground- RS21's Workers Enquiry
SNCK recently took part in RS21’s worker’s enquiry RS21 are a revolutionary socialist collective for the twenty first century.
Shirley M reports on how South Norwood Community Kitchen is building mutual aid power from the ground up.
Earlier this year, members of rs21’s South London branch met with Emma, the full-time project lead at South Norwood Community Kitchen, and Michael, a volunteer at the kitchen, as part of the third series of worker’s inquiry sessions led by the branch. These sessions have involved the branch seeking connection with, and understanding of, local worker struggles within South London. With the kitchen’s roots in mutual aid, solidarity, and justice, in a Croydon borough marked by austerity and growing privatisation, the importance of these worker’s inquiry sessions is once again reinforced.
Not your average ‘community caff’
In the last decade, the Croydon borough has maintained an inequality divide, with North Croydon’s South Norwood area having 35 per cent of households classified as deprived, in contrast to South Croydon’s Sanderstead area, where the figure is 25 per cent. The borough has also faced the cost-of-living crisis, an increased level of surveillance, and continued privatisation of public space.
South Norwood Community Kitchen emerged in 2017 as a grassroots mutual aid project, now operating five days a week to create a public space of belonging and care within South Norwood. The kitchen provides more than 300 free meals a week through its “community caff,” with a key focus on repurposing over 90 per cent of ingredients that would otherwise have gone to waste. In addition, the kitchen redistributes donated clothing, books and toiletries. It also offers free one-to-one support with housing, benefits and immigration through its partnership with South West London Law Centres. This redistribution of resources and support is the kitchen’s mechanism not only to meet basic needs, but also to build the collective power and community connection required to challenge today’s oppressive conditions.
Diverging from the structure of the usual charitable organisation, there is no assessment of eligibility to get involved or to be served at the kitchen. The kitchen is run for and by the community within the framework of mutual aid. With approximately 40 per cent of Croydon borough residents likely to have physical or mental health conditions, such acts of collective care for attendees nurture, as Michael puts it, ‘the presence of respect and love that allows them to be seen as human again’.
From the kitchen to the streets
The kitchen’s foundation of trust provides a pathway for deeper political mutual aid organising. In their efforts to remain uncompromised in community trust and organising, Emma states that the kitchen receives no funding from the local authority and is highly selective in its choice of independent grant funding. This approach reflects a broader scepticism of “charitable” funding, where the criteria for funding use can be shaped by the funder’s beliefs about the roots of social issues and the “acceptable” solutions. Such conditions can limit the potential of community power in addressing the problems of the current system, with organisations instead often finding themselves reinforcing that very system.
Although, for South Norwood Community Kitchen, toeing the line between challenging the system and reinforcing it has been complex, it has involved the consistent navigation of contradictions. Emma highlights that the kitchen must make constant decisions about ‘whether we sit within the system and make changes or sit outside of it at the cost of some of the smaller wins’. This tension was evident in one of their most significant organising interventions, the Regina Road campaign.
The Regina Road campaign involved the formation of a residents’ support group, created by the kitchen, which campaigned for better quality housing for Regina Road residents. The need for this campaign arose when the kitchen heard reports of unsatisfactory housing conditions while delivering food parcels to local estates, and it was launched following the ITV journalist Daniel Hewitt’s report on the housing conditions at Regina Road.
As with any class struggle, this campaign was not without difficulty. It exposed residents’ scepticism, hardened by years of neglect, about their potential to effect change. Door-knocking efforts were often met with rude encounters and requests for anonymity due to fear of retaliation. Furthermore, the campaign highlighted the complex and fraught relationship between residents and the local authority: some residents expressed complete disdain for the council, while others within the association acted as informants. Councillors also engaged in door-knocking to elicit information about the campaign and scheduled housing meetings to coincide with the residents’ group activities. Even in interactions with the council, such as an MP stating they shouldn’t ask for people to be moved because “it’s not realistic,” the residents’ support group had to decide whether to “sit within the system” or remain uncompromised.
However, from the mothers of the estate to the ‘absolute legend anarchists’ as Emma affectionately calls them, community mobilisation remained steadfast, uncompromised and united across differences. The key focus of the Regina Road campaign for the rehousing of residents was successfully achieved, with 88 per cent of Regina Road residents voting in favour of demolishing the estate and rehousing its residents. In addition, the campaign ensured that residents’ concerns were addressed by securing a fair landlord offer within the ballot and legal representation, which helped residents obtain compensation from Croydon Council.
The kitchen’s political organising has not stopped there; it still serves as a regular space for political discussion. One recent topic has been the council’s implementation and upcoming renewal consultation of the Public Space Protection Order (PSPO) in Croydon’s town centre. This order, under the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, grants police increased discretionary power to determine and address anti-social behaviour. Examples of such behaviour include public urination, public consumption of alcohol in certain premises, and actions “likely” to cause distress or harassment. Croydon’s Business Improvement District, an independent business-funded organisation operating within the town centre, works closely with Croydon’s Metropolitan Police to administer these policing powers.
While the order is framed as a tool to protect public safety and quality of life, there was “overwhelming opposition to the PSPO”, Emma says, with a view that it is simply another instrument to further privatise public space. With PSPO renewal consultations looming, the kitchen aims to move discussion, already highlighting concerns about increased policing powers, towards campaigning efforts aimed at preventing its reinstatement.
Navigating the political landscape
Emma and Michael believe that mutual aid and political work go hand in hand. Michael explained that the kitchen collaborates with Croydon Community Action and hopes to work with the Croydon Trade Union Congress. However, he added that the kitchen has encountered some limitations in connecting with the political left and renters’ unions.
In another left-wing organisation I was part of, I noticed a false equivalence in defining mutual aid organising as charity, which often led to the dismissal of mutual aid as a tool to sustain collective power entirely. This dismissal leaves a crucial link missing between socialists and organisers, limiting the scalability of collective power across racial and class lines. It reinforces the disillusionment of the masses with the political left, which Emma describes as ‘felt very saviour-ish and patronising to a lot of people’.
To the members of rs21’s South London branch and beyond, South Norwood Community Kitchen serves as a lesson that the power of collective resistance is shaped not only by political theory but also by infrastructures of care that actively challenge the conditions of our daily reality.
Find out more about RS21 here: https://revsoc21.uk/2025/07/14/building-power-on-the-ground/