Maya Angelou in South London

So long Maya Angelou (1928-2014), who died today. The great African-American writer is featured in a mural on a wall by Brockley station, somewhat the worse for wear at the moment, with words from her poem 'Life don't frighten me at all':

'...Tough guys fight

All alone at night

Life doesn't frighten me at all.

Panthers in the park

Strangers in the dark

No, they don't frighten me at all.

That new classroom where

Boys all pull my hair

(Kissy little girls

With their hair in curls)

They don't frighten me at all.

Don't show me frogs and snakes

And listen for my scream,

If I'm afraid at all

It's only in my dreams.

I've got a magic charm

That I keep up my sleeve

I can walk the ocean floor

And never have to breathe.

Life doesn't frighten me at all

Not at all

Not at all.

Life doesn't frighten me at all.

photo by Ben Sutherland

Her words also feature on the war memorial in Kennington Park,  in memory of over 100 people who were killed when a bomb landed on their shelter there in 1940: 'History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again'.

So yes, her words are woven into the urban fabric of London. But what of her visits here?  London certainly played a part in her life. She met one of her husbands, Paul Du Feu, at a party in London in 1972 (he had previously been briefly married to Germaine Greer). Another of her significant relationships was with Vusumzi Make, a South African activist with the Pan Africanist Congress who she met in 1961, and with whom she visited London in that year where he was attending a conference in London. in 'The Heart of a Woman', Angelou says that they stayed at 'a one-room apartment which the PAC kept near Finsbury Park' and that 'London air was damp, its stone buidings old and grey. Colorfully dressed African women on the streets reminded me of tropical birds appearing suddenly in a forest of black trees'.

She also performed on a number of occasions at the Lewisham Theatre, now the Broadway Theatre, in Catford and indeed became a patron of the theatre. The BFI database includes a 1987 Thames TV programme 'Maya Angelou in Performance', a 'Show featuring poet, author, dancer and university professor Maya Angelou from the Lewisham Theatre in South London. The best selling author filled a 1,000 seat theatre for a poetry recital'. I have also found a reference to her performing at Lewisham on April 30 1988. At his blog,  Stephe Meloy recalls seeing her there twice: 'I was blessed to have seen Maya perform her one woman show in Lewisham Theatre in Catford. On stage she was everything I dreamt she would be... The auditorium was packed full of adoring fans, inspired by her message of strength, valour, love and hope'. We also know that at some point in the 1980s she visited a feminist bookshop in New Cross - Bookplus was at 27 Lewisham Way (perhaps this visit coincided with one of her Lewisham appearances).

If anyone has any stories or memories of Maya Angelou in London, please comment.

Stuart Hall (1932-2014): Jamaican 'sugar at the bottom of the English cup of tea'

Stuart Hall (1932-2014), who died today at the age of 82, was surely one of the most important British-based thinkers of the 20th century. With a few others he pretty much invented 'cultural studies' and his work on multiculturalism and identity is cited throughout the world. He was visiting professor at Goldsmiths in New Cross in the 1990s, and delivered a number of influential lectures there, most notably  his 'Race: the floating signifier' (1997) where he criticises the idea that 'race' is a 'biological' fact.

My personal favourite Stuart Hall quote is from his 1991 essay 'Old and New Identities, Old and New Ethnicities':

'People like me who came to England in the 1950s have been there for centuries; symbolically, we have been there for centuries. I was coming home. I am the sugar at the bottom of the English cup of tea.I am the sweet tooth, the sugar plantations that rotted generations of English children's teeth. There are thousands of others beside me that are, you know, the cup of tea itself. Because they don't grow it in Lancashire, you know. Not a single tea plantation exists within the United Kingdom. This is the symbolization of English identity - mean, what does anybody in the world know about an English person except that they can't get through the day without a cup of tea? Where does it come from? Ceylon - Sri Lanka, India. That is the outside history that is inside the history of the English. There is no English history without that other history'.

In the late 1950s, Hall worked for several years at a school at the Oval, as he recalled in 2009 in At Home and Not At Home: Stuart Hall in conversation with Les Back (from Goldsmtihs):

'when I left university I came to London, I was editing Universities & Left Review [predecessor of the New Left Review], which had an office in Soho. I lived in South London in Clapham in the house of a wonderful old Trotskyist called Jock Haston, and I wanted to stay in London until I went home - still not quite deciding when I’m going. So I thought well, what can you do? Practically, nothing! I couldn’t then drive, so I couldn’t drive a milk float. You can teach. So I got a job in a secondary school as a supply teacher, and you’re sent round to different schools, but my school was unable to retain any of its supply teachers, or  indeed its teachers. So once I’d got in there they never let me go. I was a supply teacher in a school at the Kennington Oval, for quite a while, about three or four years, and I used to leave there, get on a train, go to Soho, and edit the journal, and go back on the night bus - try to wake up in time to get to the Oval for the opening of class'.

The school was a boys secondary modern, so I think may have been Kennington Boys School. I believe the house in Clapham where he stayed with Jock Haston was at 11 Larkhall Rise SW4 (at least that was Haston's address in 1958).

I found a great film on youtube of Hall interviewing CLR James (1901-1989, I think at the latter's then flat in Brixton at 165 Railton Road, SE24 in 1986.

- John Akomfrah's, The Unfinished Conversation, is a three-screen video installation investigating cultural, ethnic and personal identity through the memories of Stuart Hall. It is being shown continuously at Tate Britain until 23 March 2014 (admission free)

A teacher remembers Mandela's visit to Brixton

Graham Jameson (on the right in above picture), who some of you may know from his time as head of Edmund Waller Primary School in New Cross, recalls the day in July 1996 when he took children from Walnut Tree Walk school in Kennington to meet Nelson Mandela on his visit to Brixton:

'The picture I was looking for showed most of Nelson Mandela rather than just the top of his head. It also showed me shaking his hand. But I can’t find that. What we do have here is Mandela bending down to speak to Fola from my then school, Walnut Tree Walk in Lambeth. It’s a shame about the other one, but actually this is a better picture because it shows how Nelson Mandela was always a man of the people and especially a man for the children. On that same morning he’d been leaving the Dorchester in the official car to take the short drive to Brixton Recreation Centre. A friend and colleague of mine had taken a group of his children, from what would now be called a PRU, up to the hotel to waive as the car passed and Mandela stopped the vehicle and got out to talk to them. I couldn’t help thinking of those long and brutal years on Robben Island where he didn’t see his own children and never heard the sounds of children’s voices.

The flowers you can see that Fola has just presented to Mandela’s daughter, Zenani, are in a bouquet in the colours of the ANC that I got made up by a florist in Kennington. The florist had asked me if they were for someone special. Fola’s mum, Benedicta, was so proud of her and she was beautifully turned out. The same couldn’t really be said for me, though the tie and waistcoat did belong to my dad, a man whose sartorial facility I failed to inherit.

When it came to my turn to shake hands I found myself saying: “Welcome to Brixton, sir” –a greeting both brief and anodyne. Frankly the emotion of that meeting was so overwhelming that I couldn’t trust myself to say anything else. After he’d spoken to the people in the line-up (lead by Heather Rabatts in the white outfit) he and Prince Charles (on the far left of the picture) proceeded into the Centre. There were other people waiting to be presented inside but to get there he had to pass a crowd corralled behind a barrier. They were wild with enthusiasm, many shouting “Madiba, Madiba.” Mandela recognised an old comrade and, again ignoring protocol, walked across and embraced him. As he got into the Centre our children were playing their batucada instruments to welcome him. Of course he went over to them to thank them. One of the children said “Why are you crying?” to me and I could only blurt out: “Don’t look at me, look at him.”

Generally I’m with Bob in Subterranean Homesick Blues and ‘Don’t follow leaders/Watch the parkin meters’ but what was so clear that day was here was a man whose moral authority came not from populism but from a sort of nobility. When I think back on a longish career, I sometimes muse on failures and disappointments and ask myself what it all meant. Then I think back to that day with its transcendent feeling of hope and human affirmation and a little light of meaning goes on in my head'.

David Shenton: Cartoons of Gay Life and Death

Space Station 65 in Kennington is currently hosting These Foolish Things, an exhibition of works by cartoonist/illustrator David Shenton. Shenton's work has been featured in the UK gay press since the late 1970s,  in publications such as Gay News and Capital Gay, as well  in a range of other papers and magazines from Positive Nation to The Guardian. 

As Graham McKerrow writes: 'Shenton's cartoons are often camp but they're not just camp, and they're not that awful apolitical offensive camp, but a light, knowing, meaningful camp; their first task is to entertain and to make the audience laugh - and often they do much more because the liberation politics that informs his work means that with the laugh there is an acerbic point - a wry observation on how we live or a satirical comment about society and a wider political context, contained in the lives and musings of plausible and likeable characters'.

David Shenton's knitted medals, featuring the lyrics of 'I Will Survive'

On a more sober note there is a series of images commemorating victims of homophobia including this one which highlights some London murders. Gerry Edwards was killed at his home in Page Heath Villas in Bromley in 2009; David Cooper was killed in Calderwood Street, Woolwich in the previous year. Edward Highwood was murdered in Hollymount Close, Greenwich. Ian Baynham (from Beckenham), was beaten to death in Trafalgar Square in 2009 by Joel Alexander (from Thornton Heath) and Ruby Thomas (from Anerley).

Space Station 65, 373 Kennington Road, SE11 

The exhibition continues until 27 July, open Thursday-Saturday 12.00–18.00 (admission free). Next week on 28th June, the artist will be giving a tour and he will also be giving a talk on the final day of the exhibition.

Music & Liberation - and a 1980s feminist bookshop in New Cross

Tomorrow (Sunday 13 January, 12 to 6 pm) is the final day for the Music and Liberation exhibition at Space Station Sixty-Five (pictured), Building One, 373 Kennington Road, London SE11 4PS

The exhibition includes material from the Women's Liberation Music Archive, with zines, posters and recordings from the 1970s and 1980s feminist movement. The closing events include:

2.00 - 3.30pm:  A conversation between Barby Asante, founder of the South London Black Music Archive, and exhibition curator Deborah Withers about community memories, generational transmission and music. Chaired by Tom Perchard, author of Lee Morgan – His Life, Music and Culture.

3.45: Screening of the trailer for Hip-Hop Hijabis, with a brief presentation from Mette Reitzel.

4-5pm : Film showing of a documentary about The Gluts, who are comprised of Hayley Newman, Gina Birch and Kaffe Matthews. ‘The Gluts resist the current dismantling of culture and our welfare state – market-led solutions, corporate greed, millionaire government types, capitalism and their roles within climate change and its ongoing effect on our world and people. We want life, not death: education not poverty: fulfillment not oppression. We want libraries with books in them, a healthy health service and a global commons for everyone to share and enjoy, now and in the future!’ The film will be followed by a Q & A, and the showing of Gluts’ pop videos.

A 1980s feminist bookshop in New Cross

Looking through the material today, I found an advert in Woman Sound magazine (May 1984) for a New Cross feminist bookshop, Bookplus, at 27 Lewisham Way 'for all your feminist book requirements'. I've come across references to this shop before - the earliest from 1979 and the last from 1988, so it was presumably there for most of the 1980s. Most adverts though give the address as 23 rather than 27, with the name 'Books Plus' rather than 'Bookplus' (e.g. in Spare Rib in 1981 it is listed as 'Books Plus, socialist feminst bookshop'). Does anyone remember this place or know any more about it?

ESOL protest on Sunday

With huge cuts planned for ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) classes, Action for ESOL have organised two protests this Sunday 19th June - one in East London and one here in South London, where a march will be leaving at 12.00 Windrush Square, Brixton to finish at Kennington Park for protest and celebration from 2pm to 5pm.

Anti-cuts March: South London Contingent

Huge turn-out on today's anti-cuts March for the Alternative in London, estimates of up to 500,000 people on the streets: more than one in a hundred of the entire adult population of Britain on one demonstration.

Anti-cuts banner on Camberwell College of Arts

Sticker on a Camberwell cashpoint

The unofficial South London feeder march started out from Kennington Park, and by the time it had reached Westminster Bridge it was at least a couple of thousand people strong. The following pictures were all taken on the South London demo.

The giant Trojan Horse was a big hit - it was later burnt at Oxford Circus

Lewisham Pensioners Forum banner. Other local banners included Lambeth Teachers Association and South London Solidarity Federation.

The South London march crosses Westminster Bridge

More on the South London march at East London Lines.

March Against Cuts: South London Feeder

Big day tomorrow, the national demonstration against cuts in central London will be the largest of the decade so far. Could be a tell your grandchildren you were there moment, like the poll tax demo in 1990 or the anti-war march in 2003.

There's a South London feeder march meeting up at 11am at Kennington Park, in the North Field next to Kennington Park Place, with supporters including Southwark and Lambeth Save Our Services, Lewisham Anti-Cuts Alliance, Radical Workers Bloc and the Latin American Coalition Against Cuts. From there people will be marching together to the Embankment to join the main demonstration, set to start at 12 then head to Hyde Park.

If you have, or are, a puppet you could join the Puppets for Protest bloc, meeting 11 am in Jubilee Gardens on the South Ban, behind the London Eye!

The Bones go Last: Austin Osman Spare film

The Bones go Last is a blog documenting progress towards making a new film about the South London artist and visionary Austin Osman Spare (1886-1956).

Spare's South London movements were traced a few years ago by my friend Chris Jones, who organised a Austin Osman Spare pub crawl around some of his old haunts. As a child's Spare's family home was at 15 Kennington Park Gardens, and from 1916 to 1921 he lived at 298 Kennington Park Road. From 1921 to 1933 his home and studio was on the Tabard Estate at 52 Becket House, then he moved to a flat at 56a Walworth Road, near Elephant and Castle. This was destroyed in a German bombing raid in 1941. In the immediate aftermath he stayed for a while at the Newington Reform Club at 86 Walworth Road., and then moved to a Brixton basement at 5 Wynne Road.

Spare drew much of the inspiration for his portraiture from the faces of the Walworth Road and East Lane market. He also exhibited his work in local venues. As a child artist some of his drawings were exhibited in Newington Library. After WW2 he staged shows in local pubs including the Temple Bar in 1949 (286 Walworth Road), the Mansion House Tavern in 1952 (46 Kennington Park Road) and the White Bear in 1953 (138 Kennington Park Road).

106 years after his exhibition at Newington Library, there will be a major exhibition of his work next door on Walworth Road at Southwark's Cuming Museum. Austin Osman Spare: Fallen Visionary will take place from Tuesday 14 September 2010 to Saturday 13 November 2010.

The makers of the new films have put out a request for any photos or stock footage of South London Circa 1880 - 1950: 'Kennington, Walworth Road, Snow Hill [in the City], Brixton and Bourough are what we are after really, we are an amateur production and so cannot pay a fee, but the film will be shown at a Spare exhibition later in the year and will receive full credit. This would be greatly appreciated if you could help us'. If you can help contact them at info@thebonesgolast.com

In the mean time here's a short psychogeographical ramble through some of the Spare's London - Spare Places by Jamie Gregory (2006):

Spare Places from Jamie Gregory on Vimeo.

Bob Marley in South London

Robert Nesta Marley died on this day (May 11) in 1981.

Back in 1999, I was playing three-sided football in Kennington Park with the Association of Autonomous Astronauts (a long story) and somebody told me that Bob Marley had played football of the more traditional two-sided variety there.

I filed this away in my brain and then remembered it today - prompted via twitter that this was the anniversary of the great man's death. A quick google search shows that this was apparently true. In fact the wikipedia entry for Kennington Park states that in 1977 Marley frequently visited the Rastafarian Temple in St Agnes Place, next to the park, while he was in London recording the Exodus album, and that 'He also enjoyed playing football with friends in the park'.

According to Bob Marley Archive, he also played a number of South London gigs including:

1972 - July 22 - Grand Midnight Dance, Commonwealth Social Club, Croydon.
1972 - August 27 - The Telegraph, Brixton.
1973 April 29 - Mr. B's, Peckham.
1973 -May 13 - Mr. B's, Peckham.
1980 - July 07 - Crystal Palace Bowl (some photos of that below)



Can anybody out there truthfully say they were at any of these, or have any other South London Tuff Gong stories?

Brixton, Bookmongers and Black Panthers

Last weekend I wandered round my old Brixton stomping ground for the first time in ages. Pleased to report that the market arcade is as busy as ever, had a snack at Rosie's cafe and then went to a Little Bazaar craft/jumble sale at the Rest is Noise (the town centre pub run by the people behind the Amersham Arms in New Cross). Best of all, the second hand bookshop on Coldharbour Lane - Bookmongers - is still going strong. A proper second hand bookshop with piles of books everywhere, shelves of bargain paperbacks, and generally more tomes than you could possibly have time to look through on one views.

Remembering Olive Morris

But there's always been more to Brixton that shops, another strand being its history of radical community politics. In celebration of one its past activists there 's a new exhibition just opened at Gasworks in Brixton. Do you remember Olive Morris? 'uncovers the largely untold history of Brixton-based activist Olive Morris (1952-1979)... In her short life, Olive Morris co-founded the Brixton Black Women's Group and the Organisation of Women of Asian and African Descent (OWAAD) and was part of the British Black Panther Movement. She campaigned for access to education, decent living conditions for Black communities and fought against state and police repression'. Various events are taking place alongside the exhibition, which coincides with the opening of a permanent Olive Morris collection at Lambeth Archives.

More details at the Remembering Olive Collective blog, where I also found a link to an interesting article about the Black Panther movement in London. The Black Panthers in London, 1967-72: A Diasporic Struggle Navigates the Black Atlantic by Anne-Marie Angelo (Radical History Review, Winter 2009 includes an account of the Oval House incident in August 1970 when police and Panthers clashed at a Panther-organised dance in Kennington (the slogan 'Get out, fascist fuzz' was apparently shouted!). Three people were later convicted of 'riotous assembly'.

'Police Everywhere, Justice Nowhere' meeting

A similar spirit motivates a public meeting being held this week (Tuesday 24th November, 7pm) at Brixton St Vincent's Community Centre ((off Railton Road, SW2 1AS). They say 'We are a group of Lambeth residents who believe that the problems within and between our communities can be solved by communicating with each other, and co-operating to find long-lasting solutions.We believe that the increasing powers, and abuse of powers, of the police and the authorities serves only to undermine our ability to live and work with each other' . Issues to be discussed include the 'increased presence of armed police on the streets of Lambeth'; surveillance and stop and search. More details from lambeth@riseup.net

The next night (Wednesday 25th November 2009) there's a folk-themed fundraiser in Brixton for London No Borders, a group fighting migration controls. Acts appearing at The Windmill (22 Blenheim Gardens, SW2 Niall Kelly, Emily C Smith, and Mark Ridout. Doors: 7.30pm, Suggested donation: £3.

Post Strike in SE London

Looks like the national post strike is going ahead tomorrow, with SE London expected to be one of the strongholds of strike action. In an earlier walkout in July, there were picket lines outside all 28 delivery centres in south-east London, including New Cross, Peckham, Kennington, Mandela Way and Catford. Out of a unionised work force of 1,500, only 28 people went to work (see report).

I would urge people to look a bit further than the short term inconvenience of not having mail delivered and understand some of the wider issues in this dispute - there's a good article by a postie at the London Review of Books which explains some of the context. The post office may be a dry run for the future of public services, with increased casualisation, attacks on pension rights (work till you drop), reduced services etc. All the indications are that whoever wins the election, public sector workers will be expected to pay for the cost of bailing out the banks, while top bankers continue to pay themselves big bonuses.

There's a meeting tomorrow night (Thursday 22nd October) to set up a Southwark Postal Workers Support Group - 6:30pm at the Unison Office, 1st Floor, 177-179 Walworth Road London, SE17 1RW (telephone: 020 7525 6030). Anyone know if anything similar is planned in Lewisham?

See also Uncarved 'Granny Smith Doesn't Matter Anymore'; Stroppyblog; David Semple and Dave Osler at Liberal Conspiracy.

Kennington Acoustic Night

There's a folk gig tonight (Wednesday 7th October) in Kennington. It's an acoustic fundraiser for London No Borders, a group fighting against migration controls, featuring:

* SKINNY LISTER - folk/acoustic [http://myspace.com/skinnylister]
* STEVE FERBRACHE - acoustic [http://myspace.com/steveferbrache09]
* MW BEWICK - folk [http://myspace.com/mwbewick]
* EMMA SCARR - folk/americana [http://myspace.com/emmascarr]

Upstairs at The Dog House, 293 Kennington Road, Kennington SE11 6BY(Buses: 3, 59, 159; Tubes: Kennington, Oval). 7:30 pm start.

The 'Chicago Martyrs' and South London

The sentencing to death and ultimately execution of four anarchists in Chicago in 1887 was an international cause celebre among working class and radical movements across the world. As contemporary reports in the anarchist journal Freedom make clear, this included agitation in London (with William Morris, George Bernard Shaw and Annie Besant amongst those involved) with South London meetings in Peckham and Lambeth.

In November 1887, Freedom, A Journal of Anarchist Socialism reported:

'A succession of meetings have been held during the past month to protest against the infamous sentences of death and imprisonment passed upon the Chicago Anarchists. The largest of these meetings, held at South Place [Red Lion Square], Oct. 14 was organised by a representative committee of English Socialists- Anarchist and Democratic. A resolution declaring our comrades' condemnation to be an attack upon freedom of speech and public meeting, of vital concern to the working classes all over the world, was enthusiastically and unanimously passed by a crowded audience of English workers. The speakers were the Rev. Stewart Headlam chairman of the Guild of St. Matthew, William Morris of the Socialist League, J. Blackwell of the Social Democratic Federation, Annie Besant of the National Secular Society, G. B. Shaw of the Fabian Society, G. Standring of the Radical Federation, Tarleton of the Hammersmith Radical Club, H. George, one of the unemployed workers of London, "Stepniak," the well-known Russian author and revolutionist, and P. Kropotkine and C. M. Wilson of the Freedom Group. A cablegram of sympathy with the agitation of the American workers was despatched to the Leader, New York, during the meeting. Messages of sympathy were received from the Sheffleld Socialists and many Radical clubs and workmen's associations.

Other meetings, smaller but no less enthusiastic, have been held by the London Anarchist Groups and Socialist League at the Hall of the Communist Club, by the Hackney Branch of the S. D. F., by the Tower Hamlets Radical Club and Peckham Reform Club, and in the open air at Hoxton, by the Sheffleld Socialists the Clay Cross Socialists, the Scandinavian Workmen's Clubs of London, and by the Dublin Labour League Resolutions of protest against the sentence and of sympathy with the condemned men have also been passed at the London and country branches of the Socialist League and S. D. F., and at the London Radical Clubs.

Meetings continued to be held in the aftermath of the executions. In October 1890, Freedom advertised another public meeting scheduled for November 10th at South Place Institute (Conway Hall, Red Lion Square) to commemorate the executions, with speakers including Louise Michel (sometime East Dulwich resident), Peter Kropotkin (sometime Bromley resident - Transpontine)and Henri Malatesta. It also reported that The Freedom Group had arranged related local meetings as follows:

Thursday Nov. 6, Scandinavian Club, Rathbone Place, Oxford Street, W.
Friday Nov. 7, Gleicheit Club, Old Street, St. Lukes Saturday Nov. 8, International Workingmen's Club, Berners Street, Commercial Road, E.
Sunday Nov. 9, Autonomie Club, 6 Windmill Street, Tottenham Court Road.
Sunday Nov. 9, Lambeth Progressive Club, 122 Kennington Road, S.E.

The same issue also advertised a series of forthcoming anarchist meetings in London, including further meetings at the Lambeth Progressive Club and one at the Lewisham and Lee Liberal Club:

- Freedom Group holds meetings on Saturdays in Hyde Park, at 4 p.m., and on Sundays at Hampstead Heath, at 11.30 am.
- St. Pancras Communist-Anarchist Group holds meetings on Wednesdays at 8 p.m., in Prince of Wales Road, Kentish Town, near "Mother Shipton"; and on Sundays in Regent's Park, at 3 p.m.
- Blast London Communist-Anarchist Group holds open-air meetings on Sundays at 11.30 a.m. outside Hoxton Church (bottom of New North Road) and at 3.30 p.m. in Victoria Park. Comrades are earnestly invited to roll up and support.
- Lewisham and Lee Liberal Club, Camden House, 170 High Street, Lewisham. On Sunday October 26th, at 8 p.m., J. E. Barlas, "Principle v. Expediency."
- Lambeth Progressive Club, 122 Kennington Road, S.E.-Sunday October 12th, at 8. p.m., Peter Kropotkine, "Anarchist Communism." Sunday October 26th, at 8 p.m, Tom Pearson, "Organisation Free and Unfree."
- Anarchist League (Individualist) holds open-air meetings on Sundays in Victoria Park, at 11.30 am.; Hyde Park, at 4.30p.m.; and discussions in the hall of the Autonomie Club, 6, Windmill Street, Tottenham Court Road, at 8.30 p.m.
- The Cosmopolitan Research Association meet every Wednesday, at 8.30, at Temperance Bar, 46, Wharfdale Road, King's Cross, for the discussion of all questions which affect the working men's interest. All inquiries, address Secretary, C. Grason, 22, Middlesex Street, Euston Road.

I haven't found out much more about the Lewisham and Lee Liberal Club. The Liberal and Radical Year Book 1887 gives its address as The Clarendon Rooms, Lee Bridge, with its President a J.Glode Stapleton of 47 Lee Terrace and its Honorary Secretary F.E. Marshall Steele. Stapleton seems to have become an early member of The Fabian Society, demonstrating that Radical, Progressive and Liberal Clubs in this period covered a fluid spectrum of opinion - anarchists, socialists and liberals.

No Border Folk

NO BORDER FOLK is an acoustic fundraiser tomorrow night (Wednesday 5th August) for London No Borders, a group fighting against migration controls.

It features Mondesir, Trent Miller & The Skeleton Jive, Jessica Grace and Luke Rosier and takes places upstairs at The Dog House, 293 Kennington Road, Kennington, SE11 6BY (nearest tubes: Kennington, Oval). Suggested donation: £4 waged, £3 unwaged., 7.30pm-11pm.

New Cross resumes BNP-free status?

Another twist in the BNP 'membership list' saga. As mentioned in comments on this site, the only listed member for SE14 was found to be a person who stood for the Greens in Telegraph Hill ward in 2006 council elections. Lewisham Greens put out a statement saying that he was no longer a member of their party and that "The policies of the Green Party and the BNP could not be further apart. The Green Party has long fought for equality for all and there is no room for anyone in the Green Party who holds racist views."

But in yesterday's South London Press, the man 'denied supporting the BNP despite his name appearing on the leaked membership list'. He claimed that 'There were plenty of BNP sympathisers where I once worked and they could have put me on the mailing list as a joke. I am not a member of the BNP nor am I a sympathiser of their policies. I still support the Green Party and although my membership has lapsed, I may well rejoin the party in the future.'

This is certainly plausible - I know of left wing activists who have received mail from fascist organisations because somebody mischievously sent their contact details saying they were interested in joining. I certainly hope this is true as it would mean that New Cross can join Deptford and Kennington in the South East London roll of honour of areas without a single BNP member.

In the mean time Bob from Brockley has picked up on this with a post on Fascism Watch: (South) London highlighting some of the apparent weirdoes on the BNP list and the fact that this undercuts the party's claims to be just a bunch of ordinary white folks. I agree with him about the obvious German military history obsessives, but I wouldn't make a big deal of the few self-proclaimed pagans on the list. Most pagans I know are firmly anti-racist and I have known some militantly anti-fascist witches and even odinists. Same goes for Christians on the list, hardly representative of the position of most church-goers.

At Harry's Place, contributor Brett (who obviously lives locally) bemoans the fact that he may have 'voted for a nazi by mistake' in the Telegraph Hill election. Well Brett, maybe you didn't...

BNP in South East London Update

Last night's post about the BNP membership list underestimated the number of members across South East London - the original version of the list was in lots of different sections and I missed some. Various other versions are out there now which are easier to search.

It now seems that there are 102 BNP members in the SE postcodes areas, a worrying number but my earlier point about their lack of significant presence in London remains. Yes Deptford is a BNP free zone, and there is only 1 each in New Cross and Walworth. Further out there are larger clusters though - particularly in Eltham. Complete breakdown is as folows:

SE1 (Bermondsey) - 5
SE2 (Abbey Wood) – 1
SE3 (Blackheath) - 6
SE4 (Brockley) -4
SE5 (Camberwell) – 6
SE6 (Catford) - 3
SE7 (Charlton) -2
SE8 (Deptford) – 0
SE9 (Eltham) – 17
SE10 (Greenwich) - 2
SE11 (Kennington) – 0
SE12 (Lee) – 1
SE13 (Lewisham) – 2
SE14 (New Cross) -1
SE15 (Peckham) – 5
SE16 (Rotherhithe) - 5
SE17 (Walworth) -1
SE18 (Woolwich/Plumstead) - 7
SE19 (Upper Norwood/Crystal Palace) - 4
SE20 (Anerley/Penge) - 6
SE21 (Dulwich) – 1
SE22 (East Dulwich) -2
SE23 (Forest Hill) – 6

SE24 (Herne Hill) – 3

SE25 (South Norwood) -5

SE26 (Sydenham) – 3

SE27 (West Norwood) -1

SE28 (Thamesmead) - 4

Not a lot of interesting detail in the list of local members, other than the fact that one SE18 member is Sean Pearson, who stood for the Conservatives in a 2006 local election in Greenwich Glyndon Ward and was until last year chair of the Swinton Circle - a group on the far right of the Tory Party (Malcolm Redfellow has more on this as well as some hilarious extracts from the list).

Some interesting as well as dubious comments to earlier post and also over at Brockley Central. One suggestion is that after the initial turmoil, the BNP might benefit from the fuss if they can present themselves as victims - there was a member on the news complaining about living in a 'fascist state' (oh my aching sides - read some history) - never mind the fact that it seems likely that the list was originally published by one of their own in a faction fight between wannabe fuhrers. The BNP are also getting lots of publicity, and will try and use the stories about teachers, police officers etc. to show that they are full of upright members of the community (actually there are only a handful of members named for any particular job).

There is some risk of this, and we certainly can't rely on the BNP continually shooting themselves in the foot. Still at least their opponents now know where to look out for them.

Come on Eileen

The video for the famous 1982 Dexy's Midnight Runners track, Come on Eileen, was filmed in Kennington. After the initial Johnnie Ray section, most of the video features the band singing and playing in the streets just to the west of the Elephant and Castle, particularly in Brook Drive, SE11 (the road sign is visible in the film). The pub in the background in some shots - the Two Eagles - was later replaced with flats.

The corner where they stand by a shop is at the junction of Brook Drive and Hayles Street.

A semi-derelict house on Holyoak Road also features.

I love Dexys, and had the pleasure of shaking Kevin Rowland by the hand when he was DJing at How Does it Feel? in Brixton last year.

Pre-Raphaelite South London (1): Elizabeth Siddal

Who is the most famous female face from South London? Most people would probably answer Kate Moss, but there is another contender whose face has been seen by millions staring out from paintings and their poster and postcard reproductions.

Elizabeth Siddal (1829 -1862) was the model for many of the most famous Pre-Raphaelite paintings. Millais painted her as Ophelia (above), for which she had to lay in a bath of cold water while he painted. Her lover (and eventually) husband Dante Gabriel Rossetti painted her many times, perhaps most notably after her death in Beata Beatrix (below).

Siddal was born in Holborn but lived in South London from an early age, at Upper Ground in Lambeth and then 8 Kent Place (this no longer exists, but was on the Old Kent Road, close to the present day flyover). Her father ran an ironmonger's business from their home at the latter address. Siddal recalled that one of her family's landlords was James Greenacre, executed at Newgate, 2nd of May, 1837, for murdering and mutilating a woman. Greenacre was arrested in his lodgings at St Alban's Place, Kennington Road, and convicted of killing Hannah Brown. Her torso had been found in Edgware Road, and later her legs in a ditch in Coldharbour Lane, Camberwell.

Siddal was living in Kent Place and working in a hat shop when she started modelling. She was also a painter and a poet in her own right, and was taken up by John Ruskin who acted as her patron. She visited him at his home in Camberwell (Denmark Hill). Siddal and Rossetti were also regular visitors to the Red House, the home of William Morris in Bexleyheath.

Siddal died of a laudanum overdose in 1862, at her and Rossetti's home in Chatham Place, next to the River Thames by Blackfriars.

Source: Lizzie Siddal - The Tragedy of a Pre-Raphaelite Supermodel by Lucinda Hawksley.

Kelly: South London is the Place to Be

Last Tuesday's South London Press mentioned that Kelly Rowland (Destiny's Child) had cut the ribbon at the opening of St Aubyn's Holistic Centre in Cleaver Street, Kennington. What's more she said "I'm told South London is the place to be and I am considering Battersea" (how about considering New Cross? There's a house for sale on my road that would suit a global r'n'b superstar).

I remember reading that Destiny's Child once rehearsed at the Husky studios in Amelia Street (up by the Elephant) - think they were getting ready for a TV appearance. In years of wandering up and down the Walworth Road though I have never bumped in Beyonce, Michelle or Kelly.