Austin Mitchell: TV fails to bring home Tower Block realities

Love Productions said it would show the world the council house

experience. As I've been campaigning for years for a better deal for council tenants, for more money to regenerate the estates and for a big new build programme to provide decent affordable housing for that fifth of the population who can't afford to buy, I was happy to take part. I did so, however, on the proviso that Linda and I should live in a flat as residents to share the experience of other tenants, rather than going as guests in other people's houses as Love wanted. I'm too old to sleep on sofas and only living normally could really bring home the reality of multi-storey life and allow the neighbours to talk to us.

Vain hope. Between conception and production the MPs' expenses scandal burst. Love imposed conditions they'd not revealed before.

I was asked to live on 100 a week. We couldn't have done that and do up a pig-sty flat and entertain our neighbours and friends. I refused. I was also required to dress in "estate uniform" of "tracky" bottoms and hoodie. I didn't see any other pensioners on the estate dressed like hooligans. So I refused that, too.

In the first edit of the dinner party I gave to introduce residents to the delights of Grimsby Fish Pie (and to their real MP) so we could discuss the estate and its problems, the only bit used was a long denunciation of me for not living on 100 a week.

Endless interviews were filmed, much of which had nothing to do with Orchard Park. Nor was there anything in the programme about the all-night door ringing of entry bells as druggies tried to get in, or anything about the bloke riding a motorbike round the inner corridors at 2am.

The better side of the story was not shown, like the new Sure Start Children's Centre, the new medical centre and the great improvement of the schools, although none of this offset the closure of shops, pubs

and churches or the lack of facilities for young people or the older, long-term residents.

Tower blocks cram together an incompatible mix of old residents, who've been there a long time, children who shouldn't be there in the first place, the homeless and young addicts and tearaways who make life miserable for everyone else, all without the supervision and control of a concierge living in each block. That went unsaid. So did my

criticisms of Government spending priorities which meant the flats had untackled damp problems, the communal television aerials didn't work, and they weren't up to the Decent Homes Standard. But to show that was less fun than having kids denounce Mark Oaten for a sex scandal more than three years forgotten.

Grumbling ex post facto is the resort of the frustrated failure. So I won't go on. The basic problem was that the programmes were the waste of a great opportunity. I liked the challenge of making a pig-sty habitable but was annoyed that when we went round to friends to borrow their garden furniture, and had a meal with them because our oven didn't work, we were portrayed as running away from the estate.

I'll submit to jokes provided I can put over my point. This was that council estates are being turned into ghettos, instead of the mixed communities they were intended to be. Urgent cases, people in need, addicts and the homeless are being sent there to take it out on each other, and on the decent majority, all away from the mainstream of life, entertainment, jobs and prospects. I said that to camera many times. None of it appeared.

By episode three the programmes had got better in response to the endless complaints of myself and the other MPs and I must admit that the others did better than I. They just got on with it instead of trying to preach sermons. But Tower Blocks still didn't do justice to the social problems.

I met lots of good and interesting people in Orchard Park. They're certainly in the majority. But perhaps it would have needed Charles Dickens, a great chronicler of the lives of the poor, to bring over the reality of tower blocks, whether in Hull, Birmingham or London. He did it brilliantly in the 19th century without having to wear a hoodie.

Austin Mitchell, MP for Grimsby, was one of four MPs who took part in the Channel Four programme Tower Block of Commons.