The first all out nurses strike in London (?): Maudsley Hospital 1988

Striking nurses are in the news, a rare occasion but not unique. There was a wave of nurses strikes in Britain in 1988, starting with a one day walkout at North Manchester Hospital in January and spreading to hospitals in London and elsewhere. Nurses at the Maudsley Hospital in Denmark Hill were the first to strike in London, walking out for the day on 2 February 1988 a day ahead of a national day of action which saw strikes and protests in many places.

Above and below - pickets at the Maudsley on 2 February 1988

Militant, 5 February 1988

 

 The day of action on 3rd February included a march called by London hospital strike committees which was blocked by police in Whitehall with four arrests. I remember the demo moving to block the traffic on Westminster Bridge.  

Two weeks later on the 16th February there was a further day of action in London in which 12,000 hospital workers took part.  The day ended up with several hundred marching to the town hall in Brixton for a rally. Nurses at the Maudsley again went on strike.

Guardian, 17/2/1988

Another day of action on 14th March saw London bus crews, dockers, miners and others taking unofficial action in support of NHS workers. I was working at Lambeth Council at the time and some of us marched to join the protests outside the Maudsley Hospital and Kings Hospital on the other side of the road. I think it was on this day that I took these two rather poor pictures!

'we care, do you?- Kings Hospital, 1988

Pickets in the rain outside the Maudsley

Guardian, 15 March 1988

 It was very much a rank and file led movement with nurses at individual hospitals organising one day strikes and days of action with limited support from national unions. Nurses were divided between three unions- NUPE (National Union of Public Employees), COHSE (Confederation of Health Service Employees) and the Royal College of Nursing. The RCN was opposed to action, though many of its members argued at the time for it to change its no strike policy; the leaderships of the other unions were decidedly lukewarm. The TUC did call a big demonstration in support of the health service on 5th March, with a crowd of up to 100,000 in Hyde Park, though some angry nurses tried to storm the stage to speak as no health workers had been invited to address the crowd

The movement was largely successful. The Government had been planning to offer a 3% pay rise and was also intending to scrap national pay bargaining. In the event a new clinical grading structure resulted in average pay increases of 15%.

Concerns about whether the pay rises would actually be implemented led to another walk out at the Maudsley in September. This was one of the the first indefinite strikes by nurses in Britain, lasting for 12 days from 5 September 1988. 

Guardian, 6 September 1988

'Maudsley Hospital Nurses Strike... the strike is aimed at forcing the government to honour its promise made in May of this year to fully fund the new Clinical Grading system'

'COHSE Maudsley 898 Branch Strike Bulletin - A massive vote of congratulations to all those COHSE members who have contributed to making the first week of the (first ever) indefinite strike by Nurses such a huge success... The sunny weather and generous donations from passers by on Denmark Hill have confirmed that the public (and God!) are behind our struggle to get nurses the rewards they deserve to protect patient services from Tory policies'

As with all strikes in the NHS, workers did not simply abandon patients. As detailed above there was an agreement in place for strikers to provide cover in emergencies or if there was 'a dangerously high proportion of staff who do not know the ward'

 [update - as stated above, the Maudsley workers believed they were the first ever nurses to stage an indefinite strike, and this was how the strike was reported at the time. However Michael Walker at the COHSE history blog records an earlier indefinite strike at Tooting Bec Hospital in 1975. That lasted for two days, so the Maudsley strikers were certainly setting some kind of record with their 12 day walkout- at the very least the first nurses strike to last continuously for more than a week]

South London Herbs - Nicholas Culpepper (1653)

The 17th century London herbalist, astrologer and radical republican Nicholas Culpepper was the author of The Complete Herbal (1653). As well as containing lots of information about herbs and their (presumed) medicinal properties, Culpepper also records places where some plants are to be found growing, including various South London locations:

Langue de Boeuf -  'It grows wild in many places of this land, and may be plentifully found near London, as between Rotherhithe and Deptford, by the ditch side.

Juniper Bush - 'They grow plentifully in divers woods in Kent, Warney Common near Brentwood in Essex, upon Finchley Common without Highgate; hard by the New-found Wells near Dulwich, upon a Common between Mitcham and Croydon, in the Highgate near Amersham in Buckinghamshire, and many other places'.

Loosestrife, 'with spiked heads of flowers':   'It is likewise called Grass-polly. It grows usually by rivers, and ditch-sides in wet ground, as about the ditches at and near Lambeth, and in many places of this land.'

Mithridate Mustard: 'They grow in sundry places in this land, as half a mile from Hatfield, by the river side, under a hedge as you go to Hatfield, and in the street of Peckham on Surrey side'.

Mallows and Marshmallows: 'The common Mallows grow in every county of this land. The common Marshmallows in most of the salt marshes, from Woolwich down to the sea, both on the Kentish and Essex shores, and in divers other places of this land...  They flower all the Summer months, even until the Winter do pull them down. Venus owns them both'.

David Bowie's Lambeth Murder Ballad

Tonight at at South East London Folklore Society, Paul Slade (author of 'Unprepared to Die') will be giving a talk on murder ballads

'Cheerfully vulgar and revelling in gore, murder ballads are tabloid newspapers set to music, carrying word of the latest 'orrible murders to an insatiable public. Victims are bludgeoned, stabbed or shot in every verse and killers often hanged, but the songs themselves never die. Instead, they mutate – morphing to suit local place names as they criss cross the Atlantic (often beginning life in Britain) and continue to fascinate each generation’s biggest musical stars. Journalist Paul Slade traces this fascinating genre’s history via its greatest songs Slade investigates real-life murders which inspired well-known ballads and uncovers many startling new facts about them. There will be performances of the songs by George Hoyle & renowned folk musician, Dave Arthur'

(8 pm at the Old Kings Head, off Borough High Street SE1 - further details at facebook)

I wonder whether the recently departed David Bowie will get a mention for his 1967 contribution to the genre?  Please Mr. Gravedigger is from his early career, a time of whimsical songs and novelty tunes. The track features just Bowie's voice to a background of sound effects - church bells, bird song, weather, digging. The charming child killer's lament is said in a bombed out churchyard in Lambeth. Not sure if Bowie had anywhere specific in mind.

There's a little churchyard just along the way

It used to be Lambeth's finest array

Of tombstones, epitaphs, wreaths, flowers all that jazz

Til the war come along and someone dropped a bomb on the lot

And in this little yard, there's a little old man

With a little shovel in his little bitty hand

He seems to spend all his days puffing fags and digging graves

He hates the reverend vicar and he lives all alone in his home

"Ah-choo, excuse me"

Please Mr. Gravedigger, don't feel ashamed

As you dig little holes for the dead and the maimed

Please Mr. Gravedigger, I couldn't care

If you found a golden locket full of some girl's hair

And you put it in your pocket

"God, it's pouring down"

Her mother doesn't know about your sentimental joy

She thinks it's down below with the rest of her toys

And Ma wouldn't understand, so I won't tell

So keep your golden locket all safely hid away in your pocket

Yes, Mr. GD, you see me every day

Standing in the same spot by a certain grave

Mary-Ann was only 10 and full of life and oh so gay

And I was the wicked man who took her life away

Very selfish, oh God

No, Mr. GD, you won't tell

And just to make sure that you keep it to yourself

I've started digging holes my friend

And this one here's for you...

'Violence in Brixton follows poll tax protest' (March 1990)

On 31 March 1990, one of the largest demonstrations of the 20th century set off from Kennington Park to protest against the Conservative government's planned new poll tax (officially known as the 'community charge'). The demonstration ended up in Trafalgar Square and was followed by rioting throughout the West End. By the end of the year, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had been ditched by her own party, worried at its seeping popularity.

A few weeks before the March 31st demonstration there had been lively protests at Town Halls throughout the country where Councils were setting their local poll tax rates. One of the biggest was outside Lambeth town hall in Brixton on Friday 9 March 1990.  I was on the demonstration, I remember people heading from the Town Hall, down Coldharbour Lane and along Electric Lane (which then ran down the back of Woolworths) in an attempt to get around the police. I stopped off for a drink in the Railway Tavern, others went on to Stockwell Road which I think is where a police car got turned over (pictured below).

Pat G.S. commented at a previous post here: 'After the gathering at the town hall... everyone turned and walked down Brixton Road, through the traffic. It was a happy, positive, almost celebratory event. No trouble, or even any sense that there would be trouble ... until the walkers were directed down Stockwell Road, round the back of the Academy - and straight into a wall of riot police. Immediately, all hell let loose - I had no idea that people could actually just pull up paving stones with their bare hands.  My boyfriend (now husband) and I legged it away from the trouble and towards home back up Brixton Road, which had now been closed to traffic by the police. Unbelievable how quickly they'd done that. And then, while we were walking as quickly as possible up the road, we heard this deafening - terrifying - sound behind us and, looking back, saw a line of police on horses who were stamping their hooves on the ground to make as much noise as possible. Oh yes, we felt threatened. That was a heavy day - and an exhilarating one, too. And Maggie didn't get her way'.

photo © Adrian Lord on flickr

Here's a newspaper report from the next day:

'Violence in Brixton follows poll tax protest (Independent, Saturday 10 March 1990)

Violence erupted in Brixton, south London, last night after a peaceful and good-humoured mass demonstration against the poll tax outside a Lambeth borough council budget meeting.

As the meeting began to break up, paint bombs and bottles were thrown towards speakers and police guarding the town hall. A festive atmosphere, with a band playing Caribbean music and protestors dancing and singing anti-poll tax songs, quickly evaporated.

Organisers made appeals to the 2,000 people to leave quietly, but hundreds tried to get to the centre of Brixton, and the police callled in reinforcements and repeatedly charged to clear the scene amid a hail of missiles. Two police were taken to hospital, a Panda car with a WPC inside was overturned, and six of the crowd arrested, as the skirmishing continued for half an hour or so'

'protestors in the south London borough of Lambeth hang an effigy of Margaret Thatcher from a bus shelter, before burning it and celebrating over the ashes'

(click to enlarge)

Update July 2024:

In the course of the Undercover Policing Inquiry documents have been published which are seemingly reports from a 'spycop', Mark Kerry, infiltrating the Socialist Workers Party in South London and  reporting on the activities of Lambeth Against the Poll Tax and other local groups. This includes reports relating to the March demo in Brixton.

A police report 'from a secret and reliable source' on 23 February 1990 reported that 'On Friday 9th March  1990 at 6.30pm outside Lambeth Town Hall, Acre Lane, London SW2, Lambeth Against the Poll Tax (LAPT) has organised a lobby of Lambeth Council which will be meeting  for the first time to try and set the poll tax amount for the Borough'.  

A follow up report on 23rd March 1990 details plans for a further demo at Lambeth town hall on 29 March 1990. I don't remember if this happened or not but don't think it was a big deal if it did. Interestingly though this report does include reflections on the 9th March demo:

'

'The political left wing factions within the borough are aiming to make the demonstration at least as big as the first lobby On Friday 9th March, which was attended by approximately 1500 persons and ended in some disorder.  Indications are that this may be achieved, but it is doubted whether the event  will attract the same number of punk-type anarchists who were of the main contributors to the disorder last time . This time however , the poll tax rate will be announced and this is likely to spark an angry reaction'. 

See also:

Burning poll tax bills in Brixton, June 1990

The transpontine people in Exile (1846)

Here's some more 19th century uses of the word 'transpontine' in a South London context. Interestingly two of them feature Westminster Bridge. If the word literally means something like 'over the bridge', we should remember that Westminster Bridge was the only the third bridge to be built over the Thames in London, after London Bridge and Putney Bridge. The original Westminster Bridge, built in the 18th century, was in poor condition by the time of these articles and in fact a new bridge was built in 1862.

At the time of the first article in 1846 the Bridge was evidently closed leading Punch magazine to joke about 'the transpontine people' on the southern shore descending into 'barbarism'

'The Exiles of Lambeth

Lambeth has become a sort of Siberia since the stopping up of Westminster Bridge, for there is now literally no communication between the inhabitants of the northern shore and the transpontine people. All means of social intercourse are completely cut off, and Astley’s Amphitheatre might as well be on Salisbury Plain, as far as there is any possibility of getting to it from any part of Westminster. We have heard of vessels wrecked in sight of port, but here is a place of amusement remaining comparatively empty, with crowds walking within a stone’s throw and unable to get to it.

Lambeth is in a state of utter desolation, and the principal street reminds one of a strada in Pompeii. A civil war might break out and all be over before any one on this side of the Thames could know anything about it. The people are becoming quite isolated from the rest of their fellow subjects, and the interests of civilisation are severely suffering. Already Lambeth is a week behind us in the polite arts, and every day that the blockade continues will send them backward four-and-twenty hours towards the barbarism which it has taken centuries to get out of. We should not be at all surprised at hearing through some circuitous channel that provisional government has been established in the New-cut, and that the whole of the Marsh has thrown off its allegiance. During the stoppage of Westminster Bridge the Lambethites are aliens in geography, not in blood, and we can scarcely expect submission when protection is not afforded (Punch, reprinted in Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Chronicle - 6 September 1846)

Chartists on the bridge

The second example is from a report of the great Chartist demonstration of April 1848:

'It would be perhaps difficult to define the precise nature of the political opinions of the Jack Cades and Wat Tylers who swarmed about Trafalgar-square, Parliament-street, and Westminster Bridge, as the expression of their opinions was confined to most discordant yells and sarcastic shouts whenever a band of special constables appeared. And, as these motley groups were marshalled, they presented a somewhat quaint appearance, from the odd jumble of aristocrats and mechanics, making a sort of "Constable's Miscellany." But they, as well as the more practised policeman, did their duty manfully, and promptly silenced the lively vociferations of the rebellious rabble. Soon after one o'clock there was a slight collision, but the multitude at once discovered that they were not to be the master, and the Plebs made a retreat more precipitate than Parthian. The softer sex seemed to predominate, and it really was a marvel where all these women could have come from. They halloed and shouted and jumped about, running to and fro with the most surprising activity; and these chaste Chartists were the most resolute foes with whom the police had to deal.

Lord Frank Gordon, with Lord Adolphus Fitzclarence, and some listless Life Guardsmen, were leaning out of a window, but their uniform did not appear to excite what Horace calls the pus of the people half so much as the sight of the more sombre trappings of the police. The decrepid piles of poor old Westminster Bridge could hardly bear at one time the crowds who thronged over its crazy arches. We expected here to have found it rivalling the glories of the Pont d'Arcole; but it more resembled the Pons Asinorum, and was cleared in a most summary manner by the indefatigable heroes of Scotland-yard, who allowed none but respectable and peaceably-disposed persons to pass over; and thus the transpontine passengers soon became as select a field as after a sharp burst with the Quorn or Pytchley'  (Morning Post - Tuesday 11 April 1848)

Some other examples...

'a musical mania seems to have taken possession of the transpontine population'

(Sunday 24 August 1851,  Reynolds's Newspaper)

'The piece is wholly destitute of literary merit, and the acting is of that school which excites the enthusiasm of our transpontine public'

(Tuesday 4 November 1851,  Morning Post)

'The whole action and tone were, in the highest degree, melodramatic, and would have drawn immense applause from a transpontine pit and gallery'

(Friday 21 March 1856 , Elgin Courant and Morayshire Advertiser)

'They came in groups across Westminster-bridge, from the transpontine districts of Southwark and Lambeth” (20 April 1855,  Morning Chronicle  - describing crowds during French Emperor's visit)

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'.

Nelson Mandela House and other London anti-apartheid traces

The movement against apartheid inspired and mobilised people throughout the world. The ending of that racist system was a great victory, even if today the poor in South Africa are still facing repression (such as the massacre at Markikana mine last year). At the peak of the anti-apartheid movement in the 1980s, streets and buildings across London were named after Nelson Mandela and others involved in the struggle - mostly by Councils who were denounced at the time as 'loony left' for so doing.

So while Nelson Mandela has gone, the memory of him and the wider movement will be preserved on the streets of the capital for decades, possibly centuries, to come. In South London there is Mandela Way SE1 off the Old Kent Road, home to the post sorting office and Tate store.

photo from IanVisits

There's a Mandela Street SW9, off Brixton Road towards the Oval (Mandela famously visited Brixton in 1996). There's also Mandela House in Pendrell Street SE18 and of course (the fictional) Nelson Mandela House tower block in Peckham, home to the Trotters in 1980s TV Sitcom 'Only Fools and Horses'!

The Pelican House development in Peckham is on the site and retains the frontage of a Council building that was named for a while as Winnie Mandela House. Nelson Mandela's former wife is a more controversial figure, though you could argue that while Nelson doubtless suffered terribly in prison he was able to retain his saintly image by not having to be as involved as Winnie was in the messy and violent business of dealing with police massacres, armed resistance and informers on the streets of Soweto in the 1970s and 1980s.

There are also four UK streets named after Steve Biko, the anti-apartheid activist killed in police custody in 1977. One of these is Steve Biko Lane in Bellingham, which was visited recently by his son Nkosinathi Biko (pictured below) as part of a Phoenix Black History Month event.

South London's Migrant Majority

I sometimes feel London is a different country to the rest of the UK, certainly different from the imagined country addressed by politicians and much of the mainstream media. This is particularly the case in relation to immigration, which in this imagined country is continually framed as a problem and a source of anxiety for the 'majority'. But in London, migrants and their descendants are the majority.

Data released this week shows that just over one third (34%) of people living in the borough of Lewisham at the time of the 2011 Census were not born in the UK (in Lambeth and in Southwark the figure was 39%, and 31% in Greenwich).

Many others were the children or grandchildren of migrants. In terms of ethnicity, people defining themselves as White British (or English/Welsh/Scottish/NI) are the largest group in Lewisham (42%). But the majority (58%) are from other ethnic groups,  the most significant groups being Black African, Black Caribbean and White Other (which includes Western and Eastern European, as well as Americans, Australians etc.): 

Ethnicity in Lewisham, 2011 Census

Ethnic groups other than White UK also constitute a majority in Southwark (60%) and Lambeth (61%), as well as making up almost half (48%) of the population of Greenwich. In London as a whole, the figure is 55%. Of course many of the 'White UK' population in London are also migrants to the city from other parts of Britain, and many too are descended from previous waves of migrants from abroad, such as Jewish refugees in the 19th century - London has always been a migrant city.

How can debates around immigration continue to treat the largest part of the capital's population as if they are some kind of social problem? Far from being a problem, migrants and their descendants are at the heart of London and make it a truly World City. This week I have had a Bulgarian colleague fix my computer, listened to an African parent sing the praises of the Polish support worker for her autistic son, and heard how a Brazilian teacher has helped transform a local nursery. In other words, a typical week in London - no problem.

'Integration' doesn't happen because governments command it, but because people mostly get on with each other and mix with each other as they go about their lives in the city. Work is one place where this happens, but some migrants are banned from working, and many others are unemployed. In addition the very social spaces where people from different backgrounds encounter each other - Children's Centres, libraries, youth clubs etc. - are continually threatened by cuts, as are English classes for adult learners. In this sense, the actions of the government are more of a barrier to integration than the behaviours of migrants and their neighbours.

[Incidentally the Census estimates that the population of greater London is 8.2 million - an increase since 2001 but still less than the estimated peak population of 8.6 million in 1939]

Three young people killed in two weeks

All the UK tabloids have the story of Megan Stammers on the front page, the teenager who ran away to France with her teacher. Pleased as I am that she is safe, I can't help noticing that the lives and indeed deaths of other young people just don't seem to be deemed of national significance. Here's a few sad South London stories from the past couple of weeks:

- On Thursday night, 15 year old Junior Nkwelle was stabbed to death on the Loughborough Estate in Brixton.

- The day before, Wednesday 26 September,  a 21 year old man was stabbed to death on the Aylesbury Estate in Walworth.

- Two weeks ago, on the 14th September, 14 year old Kevin Ssali was stabbed to death after getting off a bus in Burnt Ash Road, Lee. A 17 year old from New Cross has been charged with his murder.

- On that night too, a 19 year old was stabbed and critically injured in New Cross Road.

To be fair some of these stories have had brief mentions in the national media, but the tone of 'another stabbing in London' quickly dismisses them. Three young people killed in South London in two weeks should be a national scandal, and you can't help thinking that if the victims had been pretty white girls it would be.

Second thoughts, 2 October: reading back over this a few days later I still agree with the thrust of my initial reaction, but perhaps it was a bit clumsy to bring Megan Chambers into the story. She's got her own problems which I don't want to belittle. And I certainly don't want to suggest that terrible things don't happen to 'pretty white girls'. I guess the wider point though is who gets constructed in the mainstream media as deserving of sympathy, and it does seem to be that measured simply in terms of the amount of sympathetic press coverage, the lives of young people stabbed to death (many, but not all of them, young black men) are afforded less value. Kevin Ssali had been missing from home for some time before he was murdered, his worried family weren't on the news.

I do think racism has something to do with this, even if we want to use the term 'institional racism' whereby the fact that black people end up being treated worse is the salient point, whether or not the individuals making decisions are personally prejudiced. Linked to his is an implicit notion of what kind of people it is imagined that a newspaper's audience will relate to as 'one of their own' and what kind of people are the 'others' they fear. And there is also the fact that sometimes there isn't a straightforward good vs. evil morality tale - some of the people who get stabbed might be involved in violence themselves. But even when the latter is true, we mustn't lose sight of the broader tragedy - why are young people killing each other? There is no straightforward answer or solution, but to acknowledge its importance in the first step.

May Day Horse Parades

May Day greetings everyone, looks a bit wet right now to go and wash your face in the morning dew but hopefully it will have cleared up a bit by the time the Deptford Jack in the Green procession gets going later - not in Deptford or Greenwich this year, but around north Southwark and the City. They will be starting off around noon at The Wheatsheaf (24 Southwark Street SE1) and end up around 4 pm at The Charles Dickens, 160 Union Street, London, SE1 (full route here). On the political end of May Day, there will be the usual march in Central London and a day of action against workfare targeting companies involved.

From my pamphlet 'May Days in South London' (2011), here 's some information about a largely forgotten May Day custom - horse parades.

Horse Parades

A final group of workers associated with May Day was those working with horses. May Day 1860, saw  'the decorations of horses belonging to the several railway companies and other large establishments' in South London. The annual procession from the South-Eastern Railway Company from the Bricklayers Arms on the Old Kent Road 'created some sensation in the locality' with the streets crowded and the horses 'preceded by a band of music'. In the evening 'a supper was provided for the drivers, presided over by the principal officials, at which about one hundred sat down'. However another custom had already faded away by this date: ‘The procession of mail-coaches which formerly drew such crowds to witness at the General Post-Office on May-day, no longer exists’ (South London Chronicle 5.5.1860).

An annual May Day parade of horses was held in this period at Wellington Wharf, Lambeth by Eastwood and Co. Ltd. The event had outgrown the Wharf by 1899 when it was moved to Battersea Park and featured nearly a hundred 'gaily bedecked' horse drawn vehicles. In the same year St Olaves Board of Works in Bermondsey agreed to give 5 shillings to each carman and dustman in its employ for the 'parade of horses on May 1' (South London Press, 6 May 1899).

Local Council workers also held a parade. In 1892 ‘the Bermondsey dustmen and other servants of the Vestry turned out with twenty-two teams’, and prizes were awarded to the most effective of them' (The Graphic, 7 May 1892).

Bermondsey Horse Parade 1892
(The Graphic, 7 May 1892)

This event was still taking place at the turn of the 20th century: 'On Tuesday the annual May Day parade of the horses belonging to the vestry of Bermondsey was held. Twenty four horses, with their carmen, paraded in Spa Road... at the conclusion of the judging, the parade was continued through the streets of Bermondsey until 1:30 pm, the carmen being given the remainder of the day as holiday'. Prizes were awarded for the best cared for animal (SLP, 5 May 1900). In 1920, May Day horse parades were put on in Lee by employees of Mr. A. Manchester, horse and steam contractors (based at Dacre-Park) and at the Whitbreads bottling store in Lewisham, the latter a revival of 'a popular feature before the war' (KM, 7.5.1920).

Lewisham Fuel Poverty Protest Report

I posted earlier this week on the issue of fuel poverty, noting that around 100 people die each year in the borough of Lewisham from cold-related causes. The latest available Government figures, as discussed in Parliament in November 2011, show that in 2008 an estimated 83,000 households in South East London were unable to afford to keep themselves warm in cold periods. With rising fuel prices and decreasing incomes, the position has no doubt got worse since then.

On Friday evening a protest took place at Lewisham Town Hall in Catford as part of a Fuel Poverty Action weekend of action.



'Bring down the Bills! Energy for our needs! Not corporate greed'
Banner at Lewisham Town Hall

They report: '30-40 activists and residents from Lewisham occupied and warmed-up inside Lewisham Town Hall. They staged a peoples’ forum inside, where people shared their experiences of unaffordable energy bills and expressed their anger at the profiteering energy companies and complicit government. People discussed the many examples of community controlled renewable energy projects across the country and how we might transition Lewisham and, more broadly, the UK, to a democratic energy system that works for people’s needs, not for corporate greed. After the peoples’ forum, people moved outside and got even more toasty around a bonfire of burning energy bills'.

See also report at East London Lines.

 

For information on support available from Lewisham Council see here.

'Motley Crew' riot in Camberwell on preacher's visit (1827)

Camberwell Fair, held where the Green is now situated, was a source of conflict between the authorities and fair-goers until it was eventually suppressed completely. In 1827 there were riotous scenes as the police intervened to prevent a preacher addressing a crowd on Camberwell Green. Exactly what his message was, and why the local magistrates wanted to stop him, is unclear from the following account published in The Times, 21 August 1827.

'Riot at Camberwell

On Sunday, at two o'clock, according to previous announcement, Mr Smith, of Penzance, arrived on the ground where Camberwell fair is held, in a hackney coach, attended by an immense number of persons who had followed the vehicle all the way from town. The moment he alighted, a constable stepped up and told him that the Magistrates had given directions that he should not be permitted to hold forth on the Green. On receiving this notification Mr Smith demanded the names of  the Justices who had issued such a mandate and upon being informed, he proceeded to take down their names in his note-book. He then called for a chair, intimating to the mass of people by whom he was surrounded that as soon as he was furnished with an article that would elevate him  a little above the rest, so as to he heard by all his auditors, he should then explain to them the chief causes of the opposition manifested by the Magistrates against him. Having waited for some time, during which the shouts of the crowd were deafening, a parson was seen making his way towards the preacher holding up a chair; and having placed it down, the later was about to ascend when two or three constables approached and again reiterated their directions; but no sooner had they spoken than they were attacked by the mob, who were determined that Mr Smith should be heard.

A reinforcement of police, however, having come to the assistance of the constables, a general row took place, during which broken heads were given on each side, and in the midst of the affray Smith, like a skillful General, made a hasty retreat, and escaped, leaving one if his chief supporters, a man named Perring, in custody. In appeared Smith proceeded afterwards into the parish of Lambeth, followed by a crowd of ragamuffins, and having ascended the steps of a new building in Surrey New-road, he there harangued the motley crew, exclaiming most vehemently against the magistrates, and declaring that their names and conduct towards him should be published and go forth to the world.

The neighbourhood of Camberwell was a scene of noise and confusion the whole of the day; the mob, amongst whom were numbers of pickpockets, expecting the return of the preacher. Yesterday morning, Perring, who had been apprehended the day before, was taken before the magistrates and held to bail for assaulting the officers in the execution of their duty. He was anxious to address the magistrates on the subject of Mr Smith's visit to Camberwell, but the magistrates declined hearing anything, conceiving that Mr Smith's efforts were calculated to do much more harm than good at the fair'.

I am guessing that 'Mr Smith of Penzance' is George Charles Smith (1782–1863), known as ‘Boatswain Smith'. Originally from London - he was apprentice to a bookseller in Tooley Street - he was press ganged into the Navy before becoming pastor of a baptist chapel in Penzance. In 1817 he spread his activities to London, preaching in particular to sailors, river and canal workers. He opened a floating chapel in the Thames and established charities including the the Shipwrecked and Distressed Sailors' Family Fund. The practice of open air non-conformist preaching was initially met with official opposition, though it later became common-place.

Peter Saunders

The Guardian reports the death  last month of the painter Peter Saunders (1940-2011):

'The painter Peter Saunders, who has died of cancer aged 70, presented in his work a complex local history of the last 50 years in and around London. His subjects – always painted in series – included skateboarders at the South Bank, Borough market, the bleak landscape of Dungeness, Kent, Thames-side scenes at Deptford, the open spaces and skies of Blackheath through the day and night, Brick Lane paper sellers and the Whitechapel Bell Foundry...

It is in his last works that Peter's breakthrough really came. His work started to explore in great depth the human figures in motion he saw around him: dancing at the Rivoli Ballroom in Brockley and then at the tea dances at the Royal Opera House...His most recent exhibition, Dancing at the Rivoli Ballroom (Some Enchanted Evening), for Isle of Thanet Arts, in 2004, was introduced by a comment in the catalogue by the painter Frank Auerbach: "You are as ever taking on brave and exciting subjects that others only dream of." At the end of his life, Peter felt he had finally achieved his essential, personal vision.

Peter was one of five children, born into a working-class London family evacuated during the second world war to Bicester in Oxfordshire. Returning as a young child to south London he drew and drew (paints were in short supply in the 1940s) rather than spend time playing with other children. Later, at Camberwell School of Art, he learned to pursue the tough discipline of drawing in the manner of William Coldstream from mentors such as Euan Uglow'.

Images: above, 'Some Enchanted Evening' [detail], depicting the Rivoli; below, 'Skateboarding, South Bank' from 1980 (depicting a space still used for the same purpose 30 years later). I would love to see some of his other South London paintings if you come across them.

William Blake Again

For many years William Blake was a somewhat neglected artist and poet, but now scarcely a week goes by without something Blakean going on somewhere in London. Here's a few connected to South London:

- the Blake Society were involved in planting an 'angel oak' on Peckham Rye on September 18th, to mark the supposed scene of Blake's childhood vision of angels in a tree. Here's a report on it from Here Be Angels.

William Blake tree planting minicast by HereBeAngels

The newly planted Angel Oak on Peckham Rye,
(near the entrance opposiste Harris Boys Academy)

- as part of the Woodland Wonders event in Nunhead Cemetery in September there was a performance called 'Day of Angels and Fairies' by The Blake Poets (not sure exactly what this entailed, did anybody see it?).

- CoolTan Arts is having a Blake-themed Largactyl Shuffle guided cultural walk from Tate Modern to Bunhill Fields (where Blake is buried) - Saturday 19th November 2011, 12 noon start.

- dancers from Laban in Deptford are involved in developing a production called The Blake Diptych centred on the boyhood visions of William Blake. The company has a blog documenting their creative process.

I've explained about Blake's South London connections here before (with picture of the mural on Goose Green) - briefly the source for the Peckham visions story is a posthumous biography, but he certainly mentions Brockley and Camberwell in his poems.

In Hercules Road in Lambeth, where Blake once lived, there is now a William Blake Estate with a plaque on one of the buildings.

Burning Poll Tax Bills, Brixton 1990

Here's a slice of South London radical history, courtesy of some old photos I came across recently. They are from an event in June 1990, when people were encouraged to come down to burn their poll tax bills outside Brixton library. Inevitably effigies of Thatcher were prominent.

The event was called by the three main Lambeth anti-poll tax groups: Lambeth Against the Poll Tax (associated with SWP and various Labour leftists), Lambeth Anti Poll Tax Unions (associated with Militant, now the Socialist Party) and Community Resistance Against the Poll Tax (more direct action/anarchist oriented). At one level it was absurd that there were three separate groups, but there were political differences - notably the fact that the first two spent a lot of energy calling on Labour councillors not to implement the poll tax, whereas the latter thought that a waste of time. But all called for people to refuse to pay their poll tax, and were able to work together to the extent of calling for actions like this one.



At a very local level there were also groups which cut across these divisions. I was in a group called Tulse Hill Estate Against the Poll Tax which included various kinds of radicals (Red Action -including a member of Blaggers ITA, SWP, anarchists etc.). And on that day we marched down from the estate, stopping off by the George Canning (now Hootananny), before going on to Brixton Oval (now known as Windrush Square).


There to burn a Conservative Party flag...
... as well as Poll Tax bills:

That poll tax leaflet in full (click to enlarge). The key issue with the poll tax - officially known as the Community Charge - was that by making everybody pay the same amount to their local Council, regardless of income or house size, it was effectively shifting more of the burden of local taxes from the wealthier to the poorer.

The campaign against the poll tax was ultimately successful. The goverment was forced to withdraw it and replace it with the Council Tax - not massively better perhaps, but at least reinstating some element of people living in more expensive properties paying more. And soon afterwards the increasingly unpopular Thatcher was forced out in a palace coup by Tory MPs.

This Brixton event was just one small protest in a couple of years of determined opposition all round Britain . If you are looking for a lesson I guess it would be that it wasn't just a one off mass demonstration/riot (Trafalgar Square, 31 March 1990) that defeated the poll tax but sustained organising in workplaces and local communities over a long period.

(anyone got any other South London poll tax recollections or reflections? Must admit I don't know much about what happened in Lewisham or Greenwich)

See also: Brixton Poll Tax Demo, March 1990

Lewisham Choral Society perform Tippett

Lewisham Choral Society, a leading local amateur choir, are holding a concert in The Great Hall at Goldsmiths in New Cross on Saturday June 25th. The concert will feature spirituals by Michael Tippett, as well as other music.

Tippett was the musical director at Morley College in Lambeth from 1940 to 1951. During the Second World War he met and worked with Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears at the College. A pacifist, he was jailed for a short period as a conscientious objector. Tippett's most famous work is a Child of Our Time, prompted by events in 1938, specifically the assassination of a German diplomat in Pairs by Herschel Grynszpan, a Jewish refugee teenager in Paris. The work is structured around a number of settings of African-American spirituals, some of which will feature in the Lewisham Choral Society performance.

It's all for a good cause too, with funds being raised for the Lavender Trust at Breast Cancer Care. Ticket enquiries to 0208 309 0439 - facebook events details here.

Immigration raids in South London

Catford Central picked up late last year on the story of the immigration raid on McDonald's in Catford. In November, the UK Border Agency raided the place and 'After checking the immigration status of staff, officers found that three people were working illegally – a woman from Cameroon and a man and woman from Turkey. The Cameroonian woman and the Turkish man have been detained pending their removal. The Turkish woman has been released on immigration bail and must report regularly to the agency while steps are taken to remove her from the UK'.

There was the usual triumphalist press release from the UKBA - 'Simon Shutte, who heads up the UK Border Agency’s Lewisham and Bromley local immigration team, said:
"Any employer who takes on a foreign national without permission to work in the UK is undermining law-abiding businesses and faces a big fine. This successful operation shows that our officers will find immigration offenders wherever they are in the Lewisham and Bromley area"'.

I don't see how anyone can take such pleasure in rounding up people just trying to make a living. Behind the rhetoric about fighting crime is the reality of people going out to work in the morning, leaving behind friends and loved ones, and then ending the day in a detention centre or on a forced flight out of the country. The fact that McDonalds was involved in this case just highlights another contradiction of the age of globalisation - capital can go where it likes, but labour can't. Or as the asylum-seeker narrator puts it in Chris Cleave's fine novel 'The Other Hand': 'Most days I wish I was a British pound coin instead of an African girl... A pound is free to travel to safety and we are free to watch it go. This is the human triumph. This is called, globalisation. A girl likes me gets stopped at immigration, but a pound can leap the turnstiles, and dodge the tackles of those big men with their uniform caps, and jump straight into a waiting airport taxi'.

Another series of raids have occurred recently at Guy's and St Thomas' Hospitals in South London. Campaigners have issued the following statement:

'Where are the St Thomas’ disappeared? Where are our workmates?

Last month 72 workers disappeared from Guy’s and St Thomas’ hospitals. They were part of the hospitals’ ancillary staff. They are migrants. Where did they disappear to? The economic crisis means their cheap labour is not as useful anymore – at least for the moment. So the UK Border Agency was called in to get rid of them. The NHS trust complied. The workers were either arrested or deported.

The workers who clean the hospital and feed the patients earn around the minimum wage. And due to the UKBA the workers are not even always paid for their hard work. Isn’t this slavery?

As hospital users, workers, trade unionists, migrants’ rights activists we cannot stay silent in the face of this brutality. Exactly when cuts and privatisation are threatening our public health service the exploitation of migrant labour increases. This is an attack on all workers.

We call for solidarity with the disappeared, with all migrants, with all workers, on Friday 18th February 5pm to 7pm outside St Thomas main entrance (Westminster Bridge Road London SE1 7EH). Called by the Cleaners Defence Committee, No One Is Illegal, Hands off my Workmate, Latin American Workers’ Association.

E-mail cdclondon@gmail.com or call 07971719797 for details'.

Three of those arrested were jailed for obtaining money by fraud on the day after the raids took place in January 2011 - it's hardly fraud/theft to work and get paid for it. And what kind of legal representation did they have in this show trial - arrested one day, jailed the next?

SE London Anti-Cuts Diary

Various anti-cuts stuff coming up in next few weeks locally, including:

Southwark Save Our Services (against Council budget cuts) Tuesday 25th January, assemble 3 pm at Southwark Town Hall, Peckham Road SE15. The protest will then continue throughout the Council meeting which starts at 4 pm.

Wednesday 26th January: in support of the day of action against cuts to Further Education and scrapping of Education Maintenance Allowance, there will be a protest in New Cross, 12-3pm - meet outside Goldsmiths Library - BRING POTS AND PANS!!

Saturday 29th January: Students from South Bank University are organising a morning protest on before going up to central London for the national demonstration against fees and cuts. Everyone is welcome to join them at the LSBU students' union, Thomas Doyle St, SE1, for breakfast between 10-11:30 am to join the wider march about 12pm.

Lambeth Save Our Services: demonstration against Council cuts planned at Lambeth Town Hall on February 7th.

Greenwich Save Our Services: demonstration against Council cuts called for 12th Feburary 2011, assemble 11.30 outside Riverside House, Creton Street, Woolwich SE18.

Lewisham Carnvial Against Cuts, 19th February, meet 1 pm at Lewisham Town Hall (Catford) to march to Lewisham Library.

South London Dissenters in Bunhill Fields

I visited Bunhill Fields cemetery this week, the burial ground for protestant dissenters on City Road (near Old Street station). The most famous grave with a South London connection is that of William Blake and his wife Catherine, who of course lived in Lambeth for some of their lives.



A grave with a New Cross connection is that of Joseph Hardcastle (1752-1819). His stone reads 'He was a founder of the British and Foreign Bible Society and First Treasurer of the London Missionary Society and was associated with William Wilberforce in the campaign to abolish slavery'. Hardcastle lived at Hatcham House in what is now New Cross Gate.

The grave of Thomas Rosewell (1630-1692) tells us that he was 'a Most Distinguished Divine' and that in 1662 he was 'appointed pastor of the church at Rotherhithe near London in the County of Surrey'. Rosewell was sentenced to death for treason in 1684, but was subsequently pardoned.
The Rev. Joseph Swain 'of Walworth' - who's stone is next to the Blakes'- died on April 14 1796 at the age of 35. He was the pastor of the Baptist church in East Street, and published a collection of 192 'Walworth Hymns' in 1794 - I will have to track these down for the South London Songs project.
There's also a William Bousefield who died in 1802 'late of the Parish of St Olaves, Southwark', buried with other members of his family.