Dear LBTH/GLL

The York Hall User group fought a long campaign to save York Hall from demolition. The campaign succeeded in saving the swimming pool, which has improved, the Hall itself, and various other community resources beloved of local people.

The Turkish and Russian Baths had been allowed to fall apart and needed repair, but the user group, who who campaigned long and hard to keep the Baths, and gathered 4000+ signatories to their petition, wanted particularly to save the social and community character of these facilities. People have been using the baths for over a hundred years as a place for social interaction and mutual support, spending whole days there, talking, sharing experiences from diverse cultural backgrounds and generally looking after each other.

I have been going to York Hall Turkish and Russian Baths for over 20 years. Women from every walk of life used the facilities, discovered friendships and sometimes engaged in political argument, especially as world events affected the country of origin of many of them. I understand the experience on men's days was similar - a paradigm of diverse and multicultural interaction and understanding... something precious we imagined Tower Hamlets Council might be keen to maintain, or even harness.

Women of every shape and size attended weekly, or even more often, to meet up with a group of people they felt at home with - and probably wouldn't recognise with their clothes on! Relaxation and pleasure was a by-product of being somewhere comfortable, performing the cleansing rituals people have engaged in for thousands of years, sharing skills and experience, so that everyone could have massage or back scrubs without payment - as part of a social exchange that helped knit together the diverse communities of East - and Greater - London.

All that is destroyed by the "Spa".

For new visitors, the new "Spa" environment will seem amazing - the refurbishment has included much needed general repairs (careless management couldn't have run it down much further). There's a bigger sauna. The old changing rooms are now an attractive hammam-style space, though without the facilities of an authentic hammam. There's an ice machine. But the two hottest steam rooms have been turned into a standard steam room - there are now two basic steam rooms, one purple, one green, both with scented steam, so those of us who have used the steam rooms to help cope with allergies may find it impossible to use them at all. The traditional mahogany benches - ideal for lying down - have been removed and replaced with narrow tiled ledges - less comfortable for sitting, and very difficult to lay on - perhaps we're not supposed to? The fitting out is very swish, and reception area and treatment rooms are full of expensive and pointless expensive brand "treatments". In the past, we always bought our mud packs and oils from friends we met in the steam, some of whom brought traditional remedies back from their foreign trips - a bag of real Dead Sea mud for 20p! Our traditional cultural exchanges, how we care for each other, are being commodified - so that GLL or LBTH can profit from them. People who've been coming to York Hall Baths for years will either not come back, or if they do find the money to come, they won't interact and share in the ways they did in the past. It's shocking, and a great shame.

The new set-up has undoubtedly improved the infrastructure - which was all the user group ever asked for. If the management had just repaired what needed fixing, local people without massive incomes could have continued to use these facilities in the way they've used them for a hundred years. The user group has been anxious about the developments since LBTH and GLL agreed to keep the Baths and started development - our voices seemed never to be heard. The development team seemed determined not to understand what was precious and important about York Hall, and what the campaign was trying to save.

Today, having seen the new "Spa", it's clear our concerns were justified. The new set-up has professionalised and commodified experiences that formerly belonged to the users, so that 'relaxation' is something we are supposed to aim for, and pay extortionate charges for, not simply what happens when the facilities and company are right. It's a bit like telling people to be happy, insiting that happiness costs money... it's about control. People have loved York Hall baths because they could be themselves there, and join in with a vibrant community. New "Spa etiquette" aims to restrict and manage people, commercialising and profiting from experiences that were previously shared, and free - in all sense of the word.

These control mechanisms include:

• Admission will cost about twice as much as before, even with the various discounts on offer
  
• Sessions are limited to 3 hours, where previously people stayed all day, or until they were ready to leave, creating a solid and supportive community, where people met each other and made friends in the steam.
  
• Prudish attitudes to naked bodies have resulted in less freedom of choice for users of both sexes. The new rules say attendees must wear swimsuits - in every other country in the world, in every steam and dry heat baths I have ever visited, swimsuits are banned for reasons of health and hygiene. No-one is asking for nudity to be a rule, simply for freedom of choice, as previously - people who wanted to cover up, did so. In any case the rule makes little sense, as people go naked in the single sex changing rooms. A general cover-up policy may be reasonable, using cotton sarongs or other loose clothing, if a majority of users object to seeing naked human bodies, but it's never been an issue in the past - where does this prudish attitude come from? Wearing swimsuits in steam also makes the steam experience pointless - steam acts on skin, not lycra!
  
• Massage exchange is now not permitted or possible. Before the closure for refurbishment, mutual (therefore free) massage and schmeissing were part of the traditional culture of the baths, and took place in open spaces. These normal cultural practices are now banned, and 'treatments' hived off into special rooms, 'provided' at considerable cost - far beyond my means, and I have an average (good) income. 
  
• The main user group before closure was men - the new timetable reduces their access from 3.5 days to 2 days. While encouraging more women is a laudable aim, not recognising or respecting who uses the baths, and how and why they used them, is arrogant in the extreme. LBTH/GLL clearly don't want the traditional users - perhaps they prefer 'ladies-who-lunch' customers who don't know what real steam and hammam culture is like.
  
• "Spa London" management seem to think it will become a tourist destination, like the Roman Spa in Bath, and is setting pricing at similar levels - tourists in London will go to Porchester, and have a day's outing to Bath in preference to coming to a generic hotel-like "Spa" in Bethnal Green, with all its character (its people) removed. During the campaign to save York Hall, the user group suggested that improvements could attract global steam bath aficionados (as many of us are) to help pay for maintenance, but we also made it clear that a costly, restrictive, prudish and anodyne 'spa' was not the way to do it. The new manager is being promoted as an experienced 'spa manager' but she is clearly not an experienced user or manager of the kind of steam baths that people travel to, in North Africa and Turkey, all over Eastern Europe, Scandinavia etc. While "Spa London" may compete effectively with commercial 'health clubs', this lack of understanding has removed the unique atmosphere and community that would have made it a tourist destination - and if local steam baths enthusiasts are angry, they're hardly likely to recommend it on the global baths circuit.
  

The target user group seems to be wealthy people who probably already have access to "spa" facilities in their private health clubs, people who might normally go to Champneys - which is where they may still go. Meanwhile, local people, traditional users of the baths who used to spend a whole day in the baths for under £8, see people come and go through the day and get a massage from a friend for nothing, will be priced out. They will dissipate, seeking other places to find the freedoms that have been removed from York Hall, or they'll go without.

Many local community of users of the baths are hurt, angry and sad. On my visit today, within 10 minutes I met two former baths users who said the same thing - they wanted to see what had happened to the old place, one last time, after a lifetime of allegiance. While admiring the plush finishes and architectural changes, they were resigned to finding some other place to go, or giving up altogether.

If the aim of GLL and LBTH is to destroy local traditional East End culture, this is exactly the way to do it.

Yours very sadly,
--
Joanna Buick
59 Senrab Street
London E1 0QF

---

Check out the All New Yahoo! Mail blog