Opposing the Iraq War in South London

The Iraq War started on 20 March 2003 with a massive American-led 'shock and awe' bombing campaign, followed by a land invasion of US, British and other troops. Over the next eight years more than 100,000 civilians were killed.

Early protests

There was a long build up to the war, with sanctions against Iraq dating back to the previous Iraq war in 1990/91 causing long term hardship to people living there. As a new war became increasingly likely, protests began to start. On December 14 2002 for instance, Lewisham and Greenwich CND and Lewisham Stop the War Coalition held a march and candlelit vigil in the centre of Lewisham, with about 100 people braving the cold wet weather.

The February 15th 'Don't Attack Iraq' demonstration

As the start of the war became imminent there was massive opposition across the world including the largest ever demonstration in London when on Saturday 15 February 2003 more than a million people took to the streets in a march from Embankment to  Hyde Park. I was there... who wasn't?

My son's 'peace not war' placard adorns a statue in Trafalgar Square. At his school - Edmund Waller Primary School - a group of around 20 older pupils staged an anti-war demonstration in the playground on 22 January 2003.

School students walk out

Between that day and the war actually starting there were many other protests, some of the most inspiring being led by students walking out of schools. I believe the first big schools walk out was on March 5th. The South London Press (7/3/2003) reported 'Pupils Walk Out Against War:  Hundreds of passionate anti-war teenagers abandoned their school books and disobeyed teachers to march through Sydenham on Wednesday. Eyewitnesses reported seeing about 250 girls from Sydenham School snake through the streets to Forest Hill Boys School in protest against war in Iraq. The gates there were locked but it seems some boys managed to escape to join the protest. Marchers then moved on to Sedgehill School where the gates were again locked but students apparently joined in with chanting from inside'.

Two weeks later on 19th March with war looming there was another schools strike with marchers converging on Whitehall to stage a demonstration. Some of them were interviewed in The Times (20 March 2003):

'A clutch of 14-year-old girls from Haberdashers’ Aske’s in New Cross, South London, said that teachers had refused to let them stage a protest outside the school, even though they had parental permission. “They threatened us with suspensions and detentions. Someone set off a fire alarm and the fire brigade arrived. We distracted the teachers, legged it and got the train here,” Naomi Benjamin said. “It’s important that we show Tony Blair we are against war. Our opinion matters as much as anyone’s... Sam Kinloch, 14, was one of of about 70 pupils who ran out of lessons at Langley Park School for Boys in Bromley, South London, and caught the train into town. He said: “It’s my first time on a protest, but I’ll be back when war is declared. It’s a brilliant atmosphere and there’s so many people from school here so we shouldn’t get into trouble.”'

A few of the Haberdashers students from the tie have shared memories of this with me. Alex, then aged 16, recalled: 'I remember we flyered the school to get people to walk out. I don't think people needed much encouragement. The head of sixth form implored us  to stop the younger kids from leaving, we refused and a bunch of them walked out too. It seemed like hundreds went down to catch the train at New Cross Gate into town. I think there were two walk outs around the time and on one of them we blocked the road outside parliament for a bit before being dragged off'. According to Fran and Debbie, who were in the Sixth Form:  'I remember wearing our old uniform, even though we were in sixth form, to stress the point we were students… and because of the uniforms (and being in the paper) then getting dragged into Dr Sidwell’s office' (head of school).

Haberdashers students pictured in The Times

I remember that on that night before the war started there was a protest on the (now gone) traffic island in New Cross Road by the White Hart. Between 50 and 100 of us gathered there with placards and candles.

The 185 Bus incident

The next day when the war started school students were again in the front line of the protests. But some didn't make it as far as central London as they were stopped by police in Catford.  The South London Press (21/3/2003) reported:

'Just hours after the first bombs landed on Baghdad, there was chaos across south London as protesters took to the streets. Thousands of young people walked out from schools and protesters gathered across the area to send an anti-war message to the government. 

Yesterday morning Lewisham police stopped a bus in Catford and arrested and handcuffed six kids who had walked out of school to protest outside Parliament. One 14-year-old girl from Sydenham Girls School spoke to the South London Press from the bus which reportedly had 50 kids on it. She said 'the police took all our names and will not let us off. People are getting claustrophobic'. A police spokeswoman said 'police attended a demo outside Catford Town Hall where about one hundred people, mainly children aged 15 to 16 were demonstrating. After the demonstration many of them attempted to join a bus headed for central London. As they did so they caused a disturbance. Six children were arrested for public order offences and taken into custody"

One of those arrested was charged with assaulting a police officer, though he was acquitted at trial eight months later. He recalled:  'We boarded the 185 bus but before the driver could set off the police had ordered him to wait. They proceeded to take the names and telephone numbers of all school students present. When I questioned them about it they insisted on taking my name and asked me how they where supposed to know if I wasn’t a convicted criminal or paedophile...  All around students were arguing the case against the war, while the police kept accusing them of skiving off school and being truants... the order came to physically remove them. In the course of this the police used force against myself and others and arrested us... The Magistrate dismissed the case because he was not satisfied with the police evidence. The prosecution had failed to produce any proof, apart from the statements of the police themselves, that I had kicked PC Ashdown in the "groin area". No independent witnesses, no statement from the bus drivers, no records from the hospital. The police testimony was grossly overstated and in some cases entirely made up'. 

Day X

Elsewhere on that day, the South London Press (21/3/2003) reported 'Anti-war protests spread across south London yesterday including demonstrations in Peckham and Brixton... Shoppers and students joined a group of anti-war protesters outside Peckham library. Protesters from Unison handed out leaflets to passers-by and made rallying speeches in the street. Joining the walk out were staff in the library and council offices around the borough. One library worker who did not wish to be named said "as far as I'm concerned this war is just about oil. I accept Saddam Hussein is an evil dictator but I don't think this is the answer". He said most of the library staff felt the same. Southwark Unison branch secretary John Mulrenan said protesters would gather at Camberwell Green and Elephant and Castle later in the day before marching to Parliament. And outside the town hall in Brixton peace campaigners held a rally against the war.' A multifaith service for peace was held at South London Liberal Synagogue in Streatham with Jewish, Christian and Muslim representatives.

People had been planning in advance to take action on 'Day X' - whenever the war started. Like many others I headed up to Whitehall, where it was pretty chaotic, people pulling crowd control barriers across the street etc. The Guardian (21/3/2003) reported:

'Tens of thousands of anti-war protesters filled streets and squares, blocked roads, walked out of school and universities and temporarily stopped work yesterday. Trade unionists, students, hospital staff, civil servants and students joined hundreds of noisy, spontaneous demonstrations across the country.

More than 5000 gathered in Parliament Square London festooning statues with posters and stringing up a 'stop the war' banner in Whitehall. Police cordoned off the area immediately in front of Westminster but demonstrators blocked streets around Parliament. Whistles, drums, megaphones and chants penetrated the soundproofing of MPs offices. Police drew their batons to turn back a crowd of demonstrators who tried to force their way into Whitehall. Officers were pelted with bottles and sticks from banners. 20 people arrested for public order offences'.

The following Saturday there was another big demonstration in central London, with up to 500,000 marching to Hyde Park again (along with millions protesting across the world). I remember I bribed my young daughter to come with me by taking her to Hamleys toy shop on the way. 

On Saturday 29 March 2003 there were more local protests. Around 300 people marched from Lewisham shopping centre to Greenwich, and around 700 on various local feeder marchers met up for a rally in Brixton, including a contingent of Graveney School students who marched there from Clapham South (hundreds of pupils had protested at that Tooting school when the war started). After the Brixton rally some set off to try and protest at Foreign Secretary Jack Straw's house (ironically near the Imperial War Museum).

A large part of the population took part in those protests, including a lot of children who grew up through 20 years of more or less permanent war involving British forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. If the peace movement failed to stop the wars, the wars certainly failed to bring peace.

Any memories of these events? Please leave a comment.

Haberdashers, Hatcham and Slavery

[UPDATE - September 2021 - Haberdashers schools have now confirmed that they are removing the Aske part of their name, as well as dropping their archaic motto of 'serve and obey'. The New Cross school will 'seek to re-purpose the statue of Aske at Hatcham College... and aim to contextualise it in a way that ensures alignment with the Trust’s values and longer-term educational objectives' - see Haberdashers schools statement on outcome of consultation. As Reclaim EC1 notes, it is unclear whether masonic lodges historically associated with the schools will be making similar changes and it appears that the Aske charity administered by the Haberdashers Company will also be retaining its name. See also Sanjit Chudha's post on this - Sanjit did some of the early work on this, including researching and editing Aske's wikipedia entry and lobbying the school] 

The Haberdashers' Aske's school in New Cross is reported to be considering the implications of the links between Robert Aske (after whom the school is named) and slavery, with press coverage suggesting that a change of name is being considered. A statement issued by the school's sponsor, the Haberdashers Company, states:

'The Haberdashers’ Company and its Schools in Elstree and South London have become aware that Robert Aske was a shareholder in the Royal African Company (RAC).  All are clear that the role of the RAC in the slave trade was deplorable and sits in stark contrast with the values which underpin the activities and philosophy of the Company, its schools and beneficiaries today.  The schools are already engaged in comprehensive reviews of culture, values and their brands and this matter will be included.  The outcome of these fully consultative deliberations, including the future use of the Aske name, will be communicated when conclusions are reached and decisions made.  The Haberdashers’ Company is proud of its ethos of benevolence, fellowship and inclusion, and the diverse nature of its membership'.

I have been looking into slavery and the New Cross area for a while,  now seems a good time to summarise some of what we know - or ought to know.

Haberdashers and slavery

The Haberdashers' schools in South London and elsewhere have their origins in the Haberdashers' Aske's charity, established with funds bequeathed by Robert Aske (1619-1689) and managed by the Haberdashers company, one of the City of London livery companies.

The current Haberdashers' Aske's Hatcham College (as it is now known) was built on Pepys Road in New Cross in 1875 expanding on to a second site in Jerningham Road in 1889. The Haberdashers Company owned most of the land in the New Cross area at this point. A 19th century statue of Robert Aske stands in the forecourt of the school's Pepys Road site.

It is now well established that Robert Aske was one of the early investors in the Royal African Company, holding £500 of stock. According to historian William Pettigrew, the RAC 'shipped more enslaved African women, men and children to the Americas than any other single institution during the entire period of the transatlantic slave trade' (Freedom's Debt: The Royal African Company and the Politics of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1672-1752, 2013) including more than 150,000 slaves forcibly transported to the British Caribbean.

Aske was neither the first nor last member of the Haberdashers' Company to invest in slaving. For instance William Garrard (1507-1571), sometime Lord Mayor of London, helped develop the slave trade by funding the early slaving voyages of John Hawkins.

A contemporary of Aske's, Jeremy Sambrooke (died 1704) was a director of the Royal African Company as well as a member of the Haberdashers Company. In the same period at least two masters of the Haberdashers Company were also directors of the RAC:  John Lawrence (died 1692) holding £1,600 of stock and Arthur Ingram (1617-1681) holding £1500 of stock.  Both were also directors of the East India Company which was likewise involved in slavery in this period as well as beginning its colonial expansion in India which the Company was eventually to rule (see more at Reclaim EC1 on slavery and the City of London).

The Haberdashers' Company was also involved with the early 17th century Ulster Plantation, whereby land confiscated by the Crown from its Irish owners was given to City Livery Companies. Their mission was to clear Irish catholic tenants and replace them with English and Scottish protestant settlers who it was hoped could be relied upon to be loyal to the Crown - paving the way for centuries of sectarian conflict.

In short an honest assessment of the links between the Haberdashers Company, slavery and colonialism would have to look a lot wider than the technical details of Robert Aske's share holding in the Royal African Company.

Jonathan Lucas

A more recent local slaver was Jonathan Lucas II, who owned slave plantations and hundreds of slaves in South Carolina, where his father (also Jonathan Lucas) had become wealthy through his rice mill business.  'Lucas and his family were at the centre of Charleston's cosmopolitan society'  but following the suppression of a planned slave uprising there in 1822, 'Jonathan II settled his family at Hatcham Grove House in New Cross, where the family lived from 1824 to 1834' (R. Williams III & A.L. Lofton, Rice to Ruin: The Jonathan Lucas Family in South Carolina, 1783-1929). This was a mansion in its own grounds situated between what is now Erlanger Road and Pepys Road at the bottom of Telegraph Hill.  

Hatcham Grove House, sometime home of the Charleston slave plantation owner Jonathan Lucas. In the 1850s it became a school for the children of Warehousemen and Clerks 

Anti-slavery 

It is sometimes argued that it is anachronistic to criticise those involved in slavery in the past, on the grounds that we are applying modern moral standards to different times. The implication is that nobody knew that slavery was wrong at the time.

In fact there were opponents of slavery from very early on - not least the slaves themselves of course! Deptford's John Evelyn, also connected to the slave trade, mentions a planned slave revolt in Barbados in his diary for 1692. He also discusses the ethical question of whether slaves should be baptised, something opposed by many slave masters as they feared even this recognition of their captives' humanity.

The long opposition to slavery is documented in a book largely written in New Cross more than 200 years ago. The History of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade (1808) was written by the slavery abolitionist Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846), much of it while staying as a guest of the Hardcastle family at  Hatcham House in New Cross (grounds bordered by what is now Hatcham Park Road). Clarkson was one of the founders of the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1787, and among other things had travelled to Paris after the French Revolution in an effort to persuade France to abolish slavery. Clarkson is unsparing in documenting the cruelties of slavery and denouncing 'the oppressors of the African race'. He also traces the history of opposition to slavery right back to the start of the slave trade in the 16th century. Among the arguments he quotes is an 18th century text by Humphry Primatt: 'It has pleased God to cover some men with white skins and others with black; but as there is neither merit nor demerit in complexion, the white man, notwithstanding the barbarity of custom and prejudice, can have no right by virtue of his colour to enslave and tyrannize over the black man'. Anti-racism was not invented in the 20th century!

There is a plaque on the Haberdashers' school site in Jerningham Road to the poet Robert Browning, whose family home was on the grounds of what later became the school. Browning's father, who lived there, had once been sent to St Kitts to manage a family owned plantation with slaves, though apparently he returned home unhappy with the cruelty of the plantation system (see Browning and Slavery).

The 'Black Lives Matter' movement has highlighted some of these historic connections and its supporters have been accused of wanting to rewrite history. But much of the history of slavery and its role in British society has never been written in the first place. 

Still at least in New Cross the statue of Olaudah Equiano - once forced back into slavery in Deptford - stares across Telegraph Hill Park on the other side of which stands the statue of Robert Aske. As to which of these two should be honoured by children in a 21st century multi-cultural South London school I leave that to you to judge.

Of course there's a whole lot more to be said about slavery and South London, here's a few previous pieces: 

Paul Hendrich on the statues on Deptford Town Hall in New Cross

Deptford's Runaway Slaves

'South London and Negro Emancipation' - 1863 anti-Slavery meeting at the Elephant & Castle

Edit September 2021 - an earlier version of this post suggested that the Jonathan Lucas named above was connected to the Lucas family who developed the Deptford New Town/St John's area of Lewisham and after whom Lucas Street SE8 and Lucas Vale Primary School are named. This claim is repeated in a number of publications and online sources, but further research has not substantiated this connection. Unless further evidence is found it would appear that there were two separate wealthy Lucas families living locally in the 19th century. However it does get very confusing trying to separate them in the historical record! 

New Cross Academy finance officer jailed in 'biggest ever education fraud'

Surprized that amongst UK newspapers, only The Daily Mail seems to have picked up on the jailing of an accountant for nine years for the 'biggest ever education fraud' seen in the UK. Sam Kayade was found guilty of obtaining £150,000 by theft and £3.95 million by fraud, and was sentenced at Woolwich Crown Court on 24 June.

Kayade worked for Haberdashers' Aske's school, based at two sites in Jerningham Road and Pepys Road SE14, from 1997. He continued as a finance officer during a period in which it expanded to become the Haberdashers' Aske's Academy Federation taking over other schools including Malory school in Downham (which became Knights Academy), Monson Primary School (which became Hatcham Temple Grove) and Crayford Academy in Bexley.

The court heard that Kayade began transferring money into a bank account he controlled from 2006 and continued until the fraud was discovered in 2012. It became public knowledge in 2014 when the school took civil action against Kayade which resulted in the court ordering him to pay back funds to the school. However only £800,000 has been recovered. Parents were told in 2014 that the fraud amounted to £2m, with the federation's accounts filed in March 2013 stating that £1,047,788 had been lost through "unauthorised transfers" in 2011 and £924,316 in 2012 (Guardian, 12 July 2014). Now it appears that the full amount may have been twice that. 

£4m over seven years is £570,000 a year - an amount that would comfortably pay the salaries of at least 12 teachers at the top of the salary scale. You have to wonder how any school could fail to notice such a gap in its finances, and at the irony of the Government's Academisation programme premised on the need to bring in private sector business know how to education. Haberdashers academies have been very popular with Ministers - Michael Gove famously sent students off to sleep during a visit in 2012 -  and the schools have one of the oldest business sponsors in the country - the City of London Haberdashers livery company. While sophisticated fraud can be difficult to detect,  a hole in the finances that large would put most schools in a cash flow crisis that would be impossible to ignore. Questions too for the Government's Education Funding Agency which funds academy schools and presumably monitors what they do with the money.

The Haberdashers' Aske's girls school in Jerningham Road in 1905
- the buildings remain much the same today, though there are a few more cars and buses!

Remembering the New School for New Cross Campaign

Ten years ago the biggest local issue in New Cross was not the NHS - nobody dreamt then that Lewisham Hospital's services could one day be under threat - but education. Specifically the shortage of secondary school places had become a crisis with many local children being unable to get into local schools and only being offered places miles away from home.

Parents set up a New School for New Cross Campaign and lobbied hard in Council meetings, in the media and in the streets. There were protests and large public meetings. As well as pushing for a new secondary school, the campaign put the admissions arrangements in existing local schools under scrutiny. Haberdashers' Aske's was particularly criticised for policies which seemed designed to cream off the most able students for miles around, while preventing a genuinely comprehensive local intake. Eventually the New School for New Cross Campaign developed into the broader Local Education Action by Parents which stood six candidates in Lewisham Council elections in 2002. One councillor was elected in the Telegraph Hill Ward, with its other councillors being from the left-of-Labour Socialist Party (that made the Ward fairly unique in the UK, with none of the major parties represented).

I was reminded of all this when I came across this article about the campaign in the Independent from April 2002 (if you click on the images to enlarge you should be able to read it - if not try right clicking on picture and select 'open in new window'). It shows parents and children demonstrating outside the empty Hatcham Wood school building on Wallbutton Road SE4. Lewisham Council had scheduled it to be converted to a Sixth Form and it became Crossways Academy. As the Council closed this within ten years of opening, the parents seem to have had a point about it not being the best use of the building (though as of 1 February 2013, it has been taken over as a Sixth Form by Christ the King Sixth Form College - it is known as Christ the King Aquinas, which should please Michael Gove with his fondness for pseudo-Etonian archaic classicism).

So did the campaign have any long term impact? It failed to get a new secondary school in the New Cross area, but it did put pressure on Lewisham and existing schools to review admissions arrangements. Haberdasher's Askes changed its criteria and is probably more representative of the New Cross community than it was ten years ago, with more local children. Its proposed new primary free school could make it more socially exclusive again however, as on distance criteria its location at the top of Pepys Road is likely to pull in a disproportionate intake of better-off children from the bigger houses on Telegraph Hill, rather than the rest of New Cross. As these primary children will be guaranteed a place in the secondary school, the latter's intake could be changed accordingly

Even the youngest children in the photos below are now coming to the end of their secondary school education. In the last week the 2013 secondary intake were notified of what school places they had been offered, and many have not got a place in their school of choice. My advice to parents having been through all the stress a couple of times is that you spend all that time worrying about it and before you know it they have finished! But the uncertainty about secondary school places remains a big issue and with rising birth rates won't be going away any time soon. The question posed on one of the 2002 placards - 'Why is our education a postcode lottery?' - remains relevant.

What most parents want today is pretty much the same as ten years ago - not a lot of gimmicks like 'free schools' and academies, but a guarantee of a good inclusive local comprehensive school which their children can walk to and from with their friends.

Michael Gove bores New Cross students

Education Secretary Michale Gove was in New Cross this week at Haberdashers' Aske's Hatcham College, making a speech attacking opponents of the Government's school Academies policies.



The speech on Wednesday was clearly aimed at the national media and the political class, rather than the school students who were presumably dragged out of lessons to provide an audience and backdrop. Not surprisingly many of them were bored to the point of sleep, as shown in a clip captured by ITN news which shows young women nodding off and playing with their nails as Gove waffled on:

Still Gove can be thankful that he only faced the passive resistance of non-engagement. Students at Askes have a tradition of more radical action, with groups walking out to take part in the student protests in November 2010 and in the 2003 anti-war demonstrations.



Some entertaining comments to this on facebook, e.g. 'Not easy to keep school children engaged is it Mr Gove. Perhaps you'll have a little bit more respect for the job we teachers do now?'; ' we were there for 2 hours that's why we have a reason for being asleep or being bored'; and 'i'm one of the girls in this video... this guy is a idiot so i should not be forced to listen to his crap'