The Focus E15 campaign was born in September 2013 when a group of young mothers were served eviction notices by East Thames Housing Association after Newham Council cut its funding to the Focus E15 hostel for young homeless people. When they approached the Council for help, the mothers were advised that, due to cuts to housing benefit and the lack of affordable housing in London, they would have accept private rented accommodation as far away as Manchester, Hastings and Birmingham if they wanted rehousing.

This attempt by Newham Council to displace the mothers from London, removing them and their children from their families and local support networks, is just one example of a city-wide process of social cleansing, with low income people being forced to the fringes of London and beyond by soaring rents, benefit cuts, and a shortage of social housing.

This prompted the mothers to get organised and demand social housing, not social cleansing!

In the year since its inception, the campaign has gone from strength to strength, with a weekly stall in Stratford, an occupation of Newham Council’s housing office, and a march of several hundred supporters to Newham Town Hall all contributing towards the mothers’ growing national profile. The campaign has been a thorn in the side of unsympathetic Mayor of Newham Robin Wales, whose aggressive behaviour  was the subject of an internal investigation after a complaint was sent to the council about the way he treated Focus E15 campaigners at the Newham Mayor’s Show in July 2014.