Neil Jameson, founder of the activist group Citizens UK, who has died aged 76, harnessed the power of community organising to achieve social and political change – most significantly as the driving force behind the living wage campaign. Citizens UK began in 1996 as a collective of east London churches, mosques and other community institutions called Telco (the East London Citizens Organisation), committed to trying to alleviate some of the social ills facing their congregations.
An early victory of which Jameson was particularly proud was persuading a local lard factory in Canning Town to install a filter, to alleviate the stench that was blighting the lives of local residents. But after a grassroots exercise identified poverty pay as the most pressing issue facing the community, the living wage campaign began to take shape.
