Hitler hanged and burned: VE Day in South London 1945

The end of war in Europe was celebrated with several days of relieved VE (Victory in Europe) celebrations across Britain in May 1945. In South London as in many other areas this includes bonfires, parties and singing in the streets. On the Old Kent Road there were 'groups of people singing round pianos on the pavements'; on Rye Lane, Peckham sailors rode on the top of double decker buses; hundreds gathered at One Tree Hill.

During the events 'scores of effigies of Hitler were burned' while it was reported that in Artichoke Place, Camberwell 'another Hitler dummy is swinging from a gas lamp with a noose around his neck' (South London Observer, 11 May 1945)

 

May Day 2025: Deptford and Camberwell

'A Salute to May Day' at St Giles Church in Camberwell on Tuesday April 30th was a lovely night promoted by Broadside Hacks and Dash the Henge. It started off with the Belles of London City morris dancing in front of the church, followed by Daisy Rickman, Goblin Band and Tealeaf playing inside. Loved Goblin Band in particular with their set of May themed songs including Birds in the Spring, the First of May, May Morning Dew and a rousing version of the Padstow May Song which had people dancing in the aisles and pews with the Belles and a horse!

Goblin Band in St Giles

On May Day itself there was a big turn out for the annual Fowlers Troop Deptford Jack in the Green procession. It started out at the Dog and Bell in Deptford, heading along to the Salt Quay on the Greenwich river front then around various local drinking places.

A personal highlight for me was seeing my first swifts of the year swooping over SE14. 'You never heard so sweet as the birds in the spring'.

Pleased to see too that Past Tense Publications has reprinted my pamphlet on the history of 'May Day in South London' which you can purchase here.

See previous posts on May Day in South London

Sun Ra, Prince and Shaka in Brockley Road

Some musical legends commemorated at Lorenzo's Records Wanted shop at 260a Brockley Road, the mural painted in 2023 by Butch Attai. Those featured include Jah Shaka, Prince, Ennio Morricone, Sun Ra, Yukihiro Takahashi and Holger Czukay. Some stuff for the real heads there and an indication of the kind of music you can find inside. Just down the road from the Roy Ayers mural too - can any other street in the world boast such a line up?

Someone has defaced Sun Ra (heresy), but found earlier image at Lorenzo's instagram

The  artist has also posted their original sketch for the piece

Jah Shaka from New Cross of course some of the others may have passed briefly through South London. Sun Ra's first London gig was at the South Bank centre (Queen Elizabeth Hall) in 1970 and of course there was Prince's 2007 residency at the 02 in Greenwich.

 

South London Street Signs

 Time for another round up of messages from the streets, lampposts and toilet doors of South London, most of these spotted around New Cross/Brockley/Nunhead in last 6 months.

Unequivocal Safe Space statement in Old Nun's Head.

New Cross, near to Goldsmiths (painted mural)

Robert Smith of The Cure in Dash the Henge record shop in Camberwell
 - 'Charlotte Sometimes, Always Anti-Fascist'

Dash the Henge - 'Millwall Communist Party'

Insurrectionary anarchists busy in Deptford, next to tunnel to Fordham Park SE14 'TFL raise fares... let's raise hell'

'Brockley Anarchist Reading Club' meeting up at Skehans

'Free Luigi Mangione' in Camberwell

Toilet doors in the New Cross Inn always a treasure trove of sticker art:

Only Tears on Old Kent Road

SE15SK8 sticker on Gellatly Road sign, SE14

Palestine still rightly getting attention - these stickers proclaiming 'long live Gaza' and 'Free Palestine'-

'Free like only animals can be' - spottted on a car in Nunhead

Reclaim the Streets/Critical Mass - advertising planned event in May 2025

Lots more posts about this kind of stuff

Farewell to Andrew Logan's Glasshouse SE1

Sad to see the demolition of the Glasshouse in Melior Place SE1 (opposite the Horseshoe Inn), home to the artist Andrew Logan and his architect partner Michael Davis for many years. When they moved in in the late 1980s the site 'contained a concrete garage with a flat on top. A year later, inspired by a trip to Mexico, Davis added another floor and painted it pink. He put stairs on the outside, cut windows in the front and installed the glass roof, resulting in the huge, conservatory-like studio' (Guardian, 2008).

I went there once, with Logan giving tours as part of an Open House event. The place was joyously crammed with his sparkling mirror art work. The writing was on the wall once planning permission was granted for a block of flats  overlooking it. Who wants to live in a glasshouse when everybody can look into it from above? Logan moved out a few years ago, there was an art gallery there for a while but now it is gone for good (or bad).

Demolition site

How it used to be

The conservatory from above

Peak glasshouse

Logan can still sometimes be spotted cycling around the area, a queer legend famed for his Alternative Miss World parties and other events when he was living at Butlers Wharf in the 1970s. His warehouse space there was used for an orgy scene in Derek Jarman's film Sebastiene.

In an interview with World People Project a few years ago Logan said:  'I feel London is now in the grip of developers who are fuelled by greed. The face of London is quickly changing, a futuristic megatropolis is being built and the gap between the rich and poor is widening. Through all the changes the River Thames continues to flow.

In this particular case the issue is perhaps less gentrification - I don't think Logan was priced out - than the blandification of parts of London with more and more identikit blocks squeezing out anything quirky, interesting or unique.

Bobby Seale of the Black Panthers in Brixton (1992) - as reported by undercover police

Bobby Seale was one of the founders of the Black Panther Party in the USA and like many of its activists bore the brunt of repression from the American state. Infamously in the 1969 trial of the 'Chicago 8' Vietnam war protestors he was ordered by the judge to be bound and gagged to prevent him speaking.

In 1992 Seale came to London and spoke at a huge meeting to a mainly black crowd at Brixton Recreation Centre and I was one of the many who attended. I believe it was organised by Panther UK, a black organisation with links to Militant (later the Socialist Party)

This was a time when 1960s black radicalism was being rediscovered by a new generation. Public Enemy had adopted the Panther aesthetic and indeed recorded a track that name checked Seale (Party for your Right to Fight). They played a number of iconic gigs at Brixton Academy and I saw them there myself in 1993.  The Nation of Islam was also having a revival, I remember guys in suits and bow ties selling their paper The Final Call by Red Records in Brixton.

Not going to lie, this was a period of inspiring anti-racist mobilisation but also intense pressure (racist murders, heavy policing, political egos) which manifested itself in exhausting bad tempered arguments and splits. I recall that 'Panther UK' itself broke up into different factions, and I think Seale himself may have walked off at some point in the meeting due to the politicking. But the Brixton meeting was remarkable and certainly one of the biggest events of this kind I had ever attended. The hall was packed to capacity with many more being turned away.

As reported by Julian Kossoff in  the Independent (5 October 1992):

'The black beret and the leather jacket have given way to a woolly jumper, jeans and sensible shoes. Bobby Seale, the co-founder of the Black Panthers whose clenched-fist salute became a symbol of the late 1960s, is now 56 years old and a teacher, the pistol that once hung from his waist replaced by a paunch. But even so, a 2,000-strong audience crowded into the Brixton Recreational Centre in south London at the weekend to hear his message of black power.

The passion and anger of the Panthers endures. Mr Seale, invited to speak by a newly-formed group of black and Asian people, Panther UK, can still preach the evangelical message of black socialist unity. Stalking the platform, he expounded the movement's 'race-class line', emphasising that different peoples - black, brown and white - had similar experiences of oppression and should unite against their common oppressor, the exploitative capitalist system. 'Don't you get the connection?' he asked repeatedly. The ideology had not changed substantially since the new left hailed the Panthers as the first genuine American revolutionaries since 1776 and Herbert Hoover, the FBI chief, called them 'the number one threat to the internal security of the nation'.

When he remembered the past he preferred to recall when the Panthers had stopped snarling. Armed defence, the controversial concept that all black people have the right to bear weapons to defend themselves from the racist state, was outdated, he argued. 'We don't need guns in the USA, at the moment . . . co-operation, humanism and grass roots organisations is where it's at.'

But Kossoff wasn't the only one present filing a report. From the Undercover Policing Inquiry we can now see a report written by an undercover cop infiltrating radical groups at the time. Spycop HN78 (who went under the name of Anthony 'Bobby' Lewis) reported that 2100 had attended with 500 turned away and that Seale has held:

 'the more or less undivided attention of the audience for fifty minutes. He spoke of the reason for forming the Black Panther Party for Self Defence (BPPSD) back in the mid sixties, of its criminalization by the capitalist media and in particular of its infiltration and destruction by the FBI. He made it clear that the battle he had fought then bore little resemblance to that being fought in the USA today. The current right of activists to demonstrate peacefully had been won for the present generation by the BPP  amongst others, back in the sixties. Law books rather than guns must be their chosen weapon.

SEALE went on to stress that the BPP was a disciplined, community based movement, enthused in the belief that only self defence was permissible if black people were prevented from peacefully marching to obtain their civil rights. However,  should circumstances change and perhaps reflect those pertaining in South Africa at the present time, then he would again advocate the use of weapons. He spoke next of the part progressive whites had to play, reminding the audience of the international nature of the struggle against injustice and that racism from whatever quarter was not to be tolerated. He concluded with the words paraphrased from the title of his book published over twenty years ago 'Seize the time'' .

On a more sinister note the report went on to note the ' impassioned pleas for justice' of  speakers from contemporary campaigns including Clara Buckley of the Orville Blackwood Community Campaign and Nellie Fergus of the Ivan Fergus Campaign as well as 'George Silcott who asked people to sign the petition on behalf of his brother which was to be handed in to the Home Office during the forthcoming picket of that establishment on the 21st October'.

It is now well established that undercover police spied on family justice campaigns who posed no threat other than exposing Metropolitan police wrong doing.  Nellie Fergus was just a Peckham mum campaigning to prove the innocence of her teenage son who had been convicted of attacking somebody with very questionable evidence; Orville Blackwood was a black man who died in Broadmoor Hospital; Winston Silcott was one of the Tottenham 3 convicted of killing a policeman in the 1985 Broadwater Farm uprising, for which his conviction was ultimately quashed.

See also:

Joe Strummer, Rock Against the Rich and Spycops

Spycops report on David Bowie anti-fascist donation

Artists for Animals, The Style Council and Spycops

Deptford Literature Festival 2025

Plenty of interesting talks, workshops and other events in this year's Deptford Literature Festival including 'Lewisham Lyricists' at the Albany on 28th March. Anja Ngozi, Blakie, Belinda Zhawi and more in an night curated by music writer Emma Warren. 

Telegraph Hill Festival 2025

Lots of great events coming up in the 2025 Telegraph Hill Festival (March 29 2025 to April 13th 2025) including a whole thread of green/environmental talks and activities at The Field, Hatcham House and other venues.

Coming up on 2nd April 2025, GREEN AND PLEASANT NEW CROSS? – THE PRE-URBAN LANDSCAPE at the Earl of Derby pub:  'it's a long time since anybody could truthfully say 'I remember when it was all fields round here' but once it was. What was the New Cross/Telegraph Hill area like before it was built on from the late 19th century? This illustrated talk by Neil Gordon-Orr will look at the woods, farms and market gardens and what was grown here, the sights, sounds and smells of a rural area at the edge of London. All this and the last, partially successful fight to hold on to green public space at the top of the hill'. 

Also looking forward to the latest installment of the Nunhead & District Municipal Museum and Art Gallery which I may be participating in in some capacity.

Music Monday: Loose Talk TV (1983) - when Tom Waits, Grace Jones and Sade touched down in Deptford

Loose Talk was a short lived Channel 4 music/arts and chat show that ran for two series in 1983. It was recorded in front of a live audience at the Albany theatre in Deptford. Generally critically panned at the time it did bring a range of interesting people to touch down in SE8 with guests including Fun Boy Three, Roy Ayers, Robert Wyatt, Elvis Costello, Peter Blake, Fab 5 Freddy, Carmel and Tom Waits.  Perhaps most notably it featured what I believe was the first TV appearance of Sade Adu in an episode that also included Grace Jones and Peter Capaldi.

You can find various clips and even whole shows online, a lot of it quite cringe to watch now! 

Sade Adu sings Cherry Pie on Loose Talk from Deptford, 11 April 1983-

Ruth Ellis drama at the Rivoli

New ITV drama 'A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story' is a fictionalisation of the life and death of the last woman to be executed in Britain. She was hanged for murder in 1955.

Ellis lived for a while as a teenager at 7 Herne Hill Road, while working at the Locarno ballroom in Streatham.  

In recreating the world of 1950s nightclubs it was probably inevitable that the producers would turn to the Rivoli Ballroom in Crofton Park as a location, and so they did...

See the many previous posts about the Rivoli - featuring Kylie, Lana del Ray, Elton John, Oasis, Rihanna, Idris Elba, Ted Lasso, Florence and the Machine and many more

Music Monday: Laura Misch - Alchemy on Hilly Fields

Laura Misch might be touring internationally at the moment but but she continues to deepen her relationship with South London landscape and communities. Last month for instance she gave a listening workshop at Avalon Cafe in Surrey Canal Road SE14 while last summer she was down at the 56a Info Shop supporting a project from her collaborators Holobiont.  She's also incorporating field recordings into her musical practice, as can be seen in this short film marking the launch of her new song Alchemy featuring her in action in Hilly Fields.

Laura Misch at Hilly Fields stone circle

see previously:

Laura Misch launches 'Sample the Sky' in Peckham

Hilly Fields Songs - yes several videos have been shot there including one by Stornoway that also features J's Cafe that later became Avalon

Stealing Good Times from Bad - 80s casual fashions in Bermondsey

In the Face magazine, July 1984, Robert Elms wrote an article 'Good Times'. A follow up to his 1982 article 'Hard Times', it highlighted a shift in street fashion away from dressing down to dressing up and focused  on shops in the Bermondsey/Tower Bridge Road in particular. Here's a few extracts:

'Down the Old Kent Road they're wearing Cerruti. Gucci and Armani, spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on looking rich, and queueing up in front of anybody who can find new ways of separating them from their cash.

Amid the textbook urban decay of Tower Bridge Road there are three high-fashion, high-price clothiers, Le Pel, Platform 1 and Moda 3. In Moda 3 they sell menswear at prices that South Molton Strcet would think twice about and employ two bouncers on a Saturday afternoon to keep the kids out. That is serious business.

Hard times and suntans - the irony of recession Britain spending money like it's going out of fashion. Except that money has never been as thoroughly fashionable as it is right now. While governments tinker with redundant economics, so people, and in particular young people, have decided to buy themselves good times - whatever the price.

A Liverpool councillor said recently that despite the very real and appaling decay that his city has suffered, you'd be underestimating the resourcefulness of Liverpudlians if you thought they were bowing down and accepting Thatcher's recession - they find ways to get by. And a lot of people are getting by remarkably well. A self employed builder or plumber can earn a fair screw these days, but the standard profession in the Deep South seems to be "ducking and diving". Thatcher preaches self help. and there's plenty of helping yourself going on. There's a new euphemism for that kind of getting by: it's the one part of the economy that the Tories have been successful at boosting and it's now known as the informal sector. Considering what they're spending it on. perhaps casual might be a better word.

In Southwark there is the worst unemployment in London and among the worst housing. Yet amid the crumbling. Victorian red-brick blocks battered by the Blitz, there are half a dozen pubs on one estate alone which look like kitsch sci-fi spaceships that have landed in a barren, alien land.

These pubs are all dressed in pink and lime green with awnings that beckon like false eye-lashes and names like Gillies. EJ's. Sampsons and Southsides. Inside, the bars are stainless steel and the walls are covered in mirrors. They're a graphic. almost comic illustration of the mass desire to spend away the depression. Every night they're full of girls in cashmere sweaters downing drinks of many colours and boys in clothes with Milanese labels drinking every new overpriced bottled lager they can import. In Southsides these days the favourite tipple is champagne. In a tarted-up burger bar Dom Perignon costs £30 a throw; a bottle sent to the table is the polite precursor to an attempted pull. And outside they line up their Ford Escort XR3s with gold wheels and dream of the day it's a Porsche.

Tony Yusuff runs Le Pel, and two other equally exclusive and expensive clothes shops in the Old Kent Road and Lewisham. He makes regular trips to Italy to decide what hip South London is going to be wearing next season. He sells quality clothes to boys and girls in search of the Dolce Vita. In his new ladies shop he stocked a couple of jackets that retailed for £350 just to see how they went. They went very quickly indeed.. Money it seems is no object.

Next season he's going to move away from Italian classics into the more radical British designs of the likes of Bodymap. It's a risky move among conservative casuals, but he's sure that his increasingly sophisticated clientele will go with him. Le Pel has built up a reputation and a following by treating local kids with the kind of respect they rarely get from most of the snotty, effete shop assistants in South Molton Street.

"There's a kind of local pride. they even try to buy the bags. because like the clothes they're a status symbol".

[...]  Fashion inevitably weaves in and out, reacting against itself and everything else in an always fascinating chase. But in its broader sweeps, it's one of the most accurate barometers of an age, and we're in an age when fashion has swept broader than ever before. In the Sixties fashion was a powerful force because of new-found affluence - in the Eighties it's perversely powerful because of unabated depression. The art is one of stealing good times from hard'.

Le Pel is shown briefly in the 1985 Arena documentary 'Old Kent Road'

In his autobiography 'On a Plate' (2012), chef Gregg Wallace writes of this time: 'Bermondsey became alive with smart bars, like Sampson’s and Willows, two-floor affairs, with guys tapping their sovereign rings on their glasses of champagne in time to the music. Bus drivers pretended to be gangsters at the weekends, while dustmen with shirts from Moda 3 or Le Pel claimed they were going to have someone ‘blown away’. 

[Le Pel was at 268 Old Kent Road, its Lewisham branch was in Lee High Road; I believe Moda 3 used to do a Bermondsey t-shirt; I think the Gillies he refers to was actually  Gilly's piano bar in Wild Rents, SE1, off Long Lane; Samsons, sometimes known as Samsons Castle, was a pub in Grange Road SE1]

See also: South London Casuals: White Hall Clothiers, Camberwell Road 1983

Music Monday: Peckham Blancmange

Synth duo Blancmange had a string of early 1980s hits, starting with Living on the Ceiling in 1982. Singer Neil Arthur hailed from Lancashire but at the peak of their success he was living in 'London SE15 in a huge Georgian house. It's not mine I share it with four other people'. (don't know where but Peckham Peculiar has previously mentioned that he used to get his hair cut at Georgiou’s barbers on Atwell Road).

In the same 1983 interview with weekly pop magazine No.1, Arthur tells of his love for Young Marble Giants, seeing the Human League at the Nashville with Bowie in the crowd and of his wish 'that the Conservatives don't get in again' (spoiler: they did).

No.1 magazine, May 21 1983

My personal favourite of their's is their fine 1984 cover of Abba's The Day Before You Came. Of course the original is a synth pop classic in its own right and Abba's best song. Blancmange's video cuts in scenes from Abba's own promotional film for their version, and their Stockholm rail journey is replaced with a London one including going over Hungerford bridge, so presumably on the London Bridge to Charing Cross line. Pop obsessives may spot Blancmange change one line in the song - can you spot it?*

* answer - in the Abba version they sing 'I must have read a while, The latest one by Marilyn French or something in that style'. Blancmange change the author to Barbara Cartland.  I was always thought it was cool that Abba namechecked a feminist writer though.

Update: confirmation on Twitter, that Neil Arthur lived in Choumert Road SE15