Hither Green 1988: a strike against the far right

I guess everyone knows about the 1977 anti-fascist Battle of Lewisham, less remembered is the 1988 fight by a group of  workers against the employment of a far right activist in a local unemployment benefits office. Malcolm Skeggs had been a long term leading activist in the racist National Front (including standing for them as an election candidate) and then in the British National Party. After apparently being sacked from a job in Lewisham Council, he got a job at the Hither Green office of the Department of Health and Social Security. When workers there got wind of this they raised objections about somebody with his views working there and having access to claimants' personal records. They were threatened with disciplinary action for refusing to work alongside him.

In April 1988, members of the Civil and Public Servants Association (CPSA) at Hither Green walked out on indefinite strike. There were daily pickets of the office, and a 1,000 strong demonstration in support of the strike in May. A regional day of action called by the union saw 20,000 CPSA members go on strike at DHSS offices and job centres across the London area on 26 May 1988. The strike came to an end in June after DHSS management moved Skeggs from Hither Green to a staff training centre at Hinchley Wood in Surrey.

Here's a few contemporary reports found via Sparrows Nest archive and Marxists Internet Archive:

Linear Obsessional Festival in Deptford and Hither Green

Hither Green-based experimental/improv label Linear Obsessional Recordings (LOR) has a busy weekend coming up with a two day festival starting out on Saturday (20/5/2017) with a gig at Vinyl Deptford:

'Live Music from 5pm with

Tom Jackson, Daniel Thompson, Jacques Duerinckx & Matthieu Safatly - acoustic free improvisation from this specially assembled Anglo/Belgian quartet - clarinet, guitar,soprano sax and cello. Expect intricate flowing absorbing interaction.

Jo Thomas - astonishing electro-acoustic composer - Her music captures a combination of refined and raw sonic matter, and is utterly absorbing. Her work has won awards and been performed around the world

http://www.jothomas.me/

Stephen Shiell - Sculptor, field-recordist and environmental musician is working on a new album for Linear Obsessional - here's a rare chance to see him perform solo and in a confined space!

http://www.stephenshiell.co.uk/

Ne...t - Net is the project of Finland based composer and electronicist NE.Trethowan whose Linear Obsessional album "Grammostola" recieved extraordinary reviews. This is his UK debut and he will be working with modular synth and samples. He has new release imminent on Whitelabrecs.
http://tvei.eu/net2.htm
https://linearobsessional.bandcamp.com/album/grammostola

James Worse - writer and poet James Worse is a "master of the surreal spoken word" (the Quietus) whose melifluous, extraordinary wordplay is compelling and irrestable.He was invited after his extraordinary contribution to the LinOb "Utterances" compilation-
https://linearobsessional.bandcamp.com/track/purplethrones

Starting the evening- a first performance for a trio of three LinOb artists-
Phil Durrant, Phil S. Maguire and Richard Sanderson
(modular synth, tiny electronics and melodeon respectively) creating an enveloping slowlydeveloping wave of sound.
http://www.efi.group.shef.ac.uk/musician/mdurrant.html
https://philmaguire.com/
http://richardsanderson.weebly.com/

Admission - a donation of £5
Food, Drink, Coffee,Tea Vinyl Reords and Linear Obsessional material available'

Day Two is on Sunday when as part of the Hither Green Festival LOR will be taking over Manor Park from 12:30, starting out with a free event including interactive sound sculptures and an open access al-fresco drone from multiple musicans throughout the park. From 4 pm there will be a gig in the Arts Cafe in the park with Oren Marshall (tuba), Greta Pistaceci (theremin), Ed Lucas and Danile Kordik (sax/electronics) and Me, Claudius (avant noise dub) -£5 donaton for indoor gig in Cafe.

If you want to take part in the drone performance contact Richard Sanderson (bagrec@gmail.com) - virtuosity not required, in fact postively discouraged  - the idea is for the public to wander through a park  enlivened by long, softy played sustained tones on  all kinds of instruments mutating slowly over a two hour period down by the banks of the River Quaggy.

Linear Obsessional #6 in Manor Park tomorrow

Tomorrow, Sunday April 3rd,  in Manor Park (not to be confused with the nearby Manor House Gardens), Linear Obsessional presents another programme of interesting, experimental and improvised music at the Arts Café:

 

' Four extraordinary acts, performing in a park in Lewisham!

Marlo Eggplant -
From Baltimore - Marlo Eggplant is a prominent figure in a diverse and thriving international scene of female experimental music performers. She will be using amplified autoharp and contact mics.
http://www.corpuscallosumdistro.com/marlo_eggplant.html

Steven Ball -
So-called Avant Songster Steven Ball (who recording the EP "Life of Barrymore" for Linear Obsessional) will play some new songs, some short, one quite long...
http://www.steven-ball.net/

Mike Adcock & Stuart Wilding
Britain's leading improvising accordionist in a scintilating duo with mercurial and witty percussionist Stuart Wilding. As featured on the recent LinOb release... "Accord"
http://mikeadcock.com/


Dirch Blewn & Rahel Kraft
Unique UK live electronics exponent meets Swiss vocals and electronics in a fascinating and unique duo.
http://www.dirchblewn.com/
http://journal.rahelkraft.ch/

Concert starts at 4pm prompt! The ArtsCafe is a lovely heated venue in the middle of Manor Park, Lewisham. It has food, coffee, tea and soft drinks. Feel free to bring a bottle.We usually all go to the pub afterwards, feel free to join us!  Admission £5 suggested donation'.

Open the Window: soundscapes from South London to the World

For the third Christmas Eve in succession, Hither Green-based experimental/improvisational music label Linear Obsessional has released a compilation based on inviting submissions in line with a chosen theme. This year's premise was simple: 'open your window and record two minutes of what you can hear. Interacting with it live if you wish, or editing and processing the recordings later. From this concept has emerged this 85 track, 2 hour 50 minute compilation of extraordinary recordings from all over the world'.

There are many remarkable recordings on this global smorgasbord of soundscapes,  includes several recorded in South London:

Richard Sanderson - Playing - Hither Green features the Linear Obsessional founder playing melodeon over the sounds of children playing outside.

Anthony Osborne - The Story Of A Panic - Ladywell includes some rather scary sounding crows.

Steven Ball - Go From My Window - New Cross - the traditional folk song sung over the sound of the New Cross rain.

Phil Julian - 3 November 2015 - South Norwood - the familar South London sonic sweep of birdsong and airplanes.

Argument Club - Shipping Forecast - Lewisham - traffic noise and radio sounds.

Chris Jones - Drill_Byt - Peckham - processed drill noise.

Sean Dower - Taxi Argument - Bermondsey - the title says it all.

Neil Gordon​-​Orr - Gellatly Road 1940​/​1915 - New Cross - traffic, drone and the names of people killed in the street in World War Two - 'Gellatly Road is a short but busy street in London SE14. 75 years ago, bombs were landing on it. Recalling memories of those terrible times, the sound of today's traffic - usually annoying -appears vaguely heroic: the victory of the everyday over terror and horror'.

Steve Scutt - Somehow Window - Camberwell

Clare and Arthur Wood - Bedtime Background With Oompa Loompa Song- Lewisham




You can download the album, with  62 page booklet, at Linear Obsessional

Rabbit in Hither Green

Following last month's successful first foray into the world of live experimental performance in Hither Green, Linear Obsessional recordings return to promote another early evening session at the Art Cafe in Manor Park SE13. Music this time from Rabbit (David Aylward and Tom Scott-Kendrick, with guest Richard Sanderson) plus Iris Garrelfs and Oren Marsahll.

A deer jumps through a window in Lewisham

A hundred years ago today, a deer jumped through a window in Hither Green Lane:

'Deer in a Lewisham House

A deer, which had apparently escaped from some park, on Friday jumped through the window of a house in Hither Green-Lane, Lewisham, occupied by Mrs. Perren and her daughter and did considerable damage. Chairs and tables were smashed, and a good deal of glass and china broken., The police were informed, and after barricading the window a sergeant and constable, with two other men, entered the room The animal appeared be mad with fright, and it  took the men some time to secure it with a rope'.

Gloucestershire Echo, Saturday 22 May 1915

Yes, this may have been the original Lewisham Stag

Two Minutes Left

Richard Sanderson of  experimental/improvised music label Linear Obsessional Recordings put out a call recently for tracks for a compilation album with only two rules: 'that the works had to be exactly two minutes long, and that at some point in the recording process a microphone should have been used'.

The outcome is 'Two Minutes Left', a collection of 87 tracks from all over the world, released this week. The tracks, as Richard says, 'are as diverse as it's possible to imagine- from full, immaculately produced studio works to hissy smartphone recordings- and throughout there are things to remind you that you're listening to real people in real places - birdsong, pets, breathing, conversation, and the location recordings run from the electrobabble of a Shanghai cab ride to the near silence of night on the Argentinian Pampas, to the sounds of the pub or a football match. In between are some gloriously recorded musical vignettes by some of the most extraordinary musicians around... it seems to me to be ultimately a celebration of being human, and a celebration of friendship and collaboration'.

'Two Minutes Left' is very much an international collaboration, but it also has its roots in South London, with Richard and the label based in Hither Green, and several of the tracks featuring local sound recordings. Richard's own Hither Green track, recorded in his back garden, is a reminder of the ubiquitous South London aircraft noise as well as capturing bird song. Birds - this time parakeets - also feature in Neil Gordon Orr's '120 Seconds Over Ladywell Fields', based on recordings of running round Ladywell athletics track. A music session in the Ladywell Tavern, with the Mixed Porter band playing Officers' Polka, was recorded by Kayleigh Shepherd on her

phone.

There's a recording of Blackheath Morris Men practicing at St Marks Church Hall in Greenwich, and a track from Brockley-based minimalist guitar ensemble the Broca Ensemble.

You can listen/download the whole thing here

Music Monday: Richard Sanderson

Richard Sanderson is an important figure in the London improvisational music scene, not to mention a member of the fearsome Blackheath Morris Men. For the past couple of years he has been releasing some interesting sounds on his digital label, Linear Obsessional Recordings, and he has now put out a new album of his own, Air Buttons.

He says: 'These pieces were recorded at home in Hither Green, usually on Friday afternoons when the housework was done and before the kids came back from school. As with my previous album of melodeon improvisations the instrument was recorded in three different ways – using footpedals (wah, distortion and pitch change), pushing it through contraptions made with Audiomulch software on my laptop, or augmenting it with other sounds – in this case, field recordings and a wind-up gramophone. The gramophone was recorded with a contact microphone (made by Jez Riley French) attached to the needle, or to a toothbrush. “Above The Breakers” was played on pre-WW1 one-row melodeon, all the others were played on a D/G Hohner Pokerwork. The title of “Flim Flamingo” was suggested by Gary Widdowfield.. “Velux Doppler” was created from two field recordings- one of Beckenham Parish Church Bells, the other of the rain falling on the roof window of my bedroom. The field recordings on “Shade” were made in my garden...  For my Father'.

You can download it here, choosing your own price. Other South Londonist sounds on Linear Obsessional Recordings include Hannah Marshall's album of cello improvisations, Tulse Hill.

Conrad Williams: Doing it for the South East

Yes I know there's lots of business, politics and general razzmatazz tied up with the Olympics, not to mention London becoming a militarized zone with missiles on Blackheath and at Oxleas Wood (as confirmed yesterday).

But in case you've forgotten there's also thousands of people from all over the world coming together to run, swim, play and generally push the human body to its limits. Among them is Lewisham's Conrad Williams, who has been confirmed to take part in the 400m and 4x400m relay.

Williams, who lives in Hither Green, played basketball at Blackheath Bluecoat school and got involved in running when he stumbled across a Kent Athletic Club training session at Ladywell running track..

He's also as far as I know the only Olympics hopeful who has tweeted about training to Old Skool garage and 'Love lewisham market no place like south'. Yesterday he confirmed that he will be 'doing it for the south east'. Go Conrad!

History Corner: Leslie Large of Lewisham & The Vegetarian Cyclists (1880s)

Some notes on the SE London origins of the still existing Vegetarian Cycling & Athletic Club:

'The Vegetarian Cycling & Athletic Club can trace its origins back to 1887, the year of Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee. In September of that year, Leslie Large of Lewisham, an enthusiastic worker in the Vegetarian movement and a keen cyclist, placed notices in a number of periodicals inviting other Vegetarian cyclists to contact him with a view to forming a Vegetarian Cyclist's Club.

Their objective was to provide a means of contact between Vegetarian cycling enthusiasts and to seek to prove, by the yardstick of athletic competition that Vegetarians could easily hold their own against their meat eating counterparts.Through the Spring and Summer of 1888 a series of Club runs and social events were held and the membership built up steadily until over 100 names were on the roll.

The first formal meeting was held on October 9th, 1888 at the Central Vegetarian Restaurant, St. Bride Street, London and this was followed by a meeting on February 9th, 1889 at the Appletree Vegetarian Restaurant, 34 London Wall, when Leslie Large was elected as the first Secretary and Arnold F. Hills, a wealthy industrialist became the first President. The name of the Club was confirmed as the Vegetarian Cycling Club. Reports from those early days are few but it is evident that VCC racing cyclists performed competently if not outstandingly.

Henry Light, a founder member who was elected Captain in 1890 soon became the main driving force behind the Club and under his direction standards of performance of the VCC men improved steadily. 1896 saw the VCC achieve its first outstanding success when Jim Parsley of Peckham won the prestigious Catford Hill Climb, the country's top event, in record time. The VCC were cock-a-hoop at this major breakthrough and held a dinner in Parsley's honour... In 1896 the green and gold triangular badge was introduced. Sadly, the same year, Leslie Large while on a visit to Edinburgh died of diptheria just as his dreams were becoming a reality'.

More at the VCAC website. The Catford Hill Climb is an event that Catford Cycling Club have been organising since the 1880s (see their history). It is held at Yorks Hill in Kent.

(image reproduced from Classic Lightweights)

Leslie Large placed an advert in the Vegetarian Messenger, August 1888 which provides some details, including his address in Hither Green:

'Cycling. - It is proposed to from a London Vegetarian Cyclist's Club. Qualifications: Abstinence from flesh-food and riding a machine. Objects: To collect (and diffuse) information concerning the number and doings of akreophagist cyclists in all parts of the country, and to arrange runs in congenial society for local members (London. S.E.). Badge: Small silver letters, "V.C.C." It will be ready shortly; device, cost about 3d. per set. No subscription will be necessary if the editor of V.M. and other kindred journals will kindly insert notices as required. Any necessary trifling expenses are to be borne by the hon. sec. or any who voluntarily help. It is suggested to hold runs monthly on Saturday afternoons, alternately with shorter trips by moonlight on some other evening monthly. Picnicing in suitable places is recommended, with, if necessary, a tea party at some inn. The hon. sec. intends to forward on Saturday a parcel of meal bread and biscuits to some convenient station, in readiness. Fruit, &c., to be obtained in the neighbourhood as wanted. To facilitate the formation of the lists, which, if all join, will prove most valuable, all who are qualified (ladies as well as gentlemen) are requested to send without delay their addresses and any useful particulars of the kind of machine they use, the favourite distances, achievements, &c., to Leslie Large, 1 Cambridge Terrace, Hither Green, Lewisham' (this and other adverts reproduced at International Vegetarian Union website).

I love the idea of sending a parcel of vegetarian snacks ahead to make sure the cyclists can eat! Also note the word 'akreophagist' as an alternative to vegetarian - that never caught on, not sure it's even in the dictionary.

Robin Gibb and the Hither Green Disaster

Many of the obituaries for Bee Gees singer Robin Gibb, who died at the weekend, mention that he escaped death  in the Hither Green rail crash. On 5 November 1967 a  Sunday evening express train from Hastings to London derailed shortly before the train crossed the St Mildred's Road railway bridge, between Hither Green and Grove Park railway stations. Most of the carriages overturned, two of them having their sides torn off. 49 people died.

Robin Gibb was on the train, along with his fiancee Molly Hullis. They were returning from visiting her parents in Hastings. Gibb recalled 'the carriage rolled over and big stretches of railway line came crashing in straight past my face'.  At the time he was only 17, but the Bee Gees had already had their first big international hit earlier that year - New York Mining Disaster 1941. He reflected: 'If our hits were not making so much money, I would not have been able to buy first-class tickets. Most of the people who died were in the second class compartments, which had no corridor to protect them'

Recovering immediately after the crash, Gibb wrote the song 'Really and Sincerely':  'It doesn't mention anything about a train crash but it does reflect the mood I was in' (quotes from The Bee Gees: Tales of the Brothers Gibb by Andrew Hughes).

Later in 1967, The Bee Gees played in Lewisham at  a charity show in aid of the Hither Green train disaster fund.

South London Shellac

My friend Richard Sanderson (Hither Green-based musician) shared his fine collection of 1930s records with me last week, with their sleeves historical documents of South London record shops in that era.





The Musical Box (proprietor G.H. Papworth) was at 254 High Street, Lewisham

Wallace was at 111 & 113 New Cross Road ('opposite free library')

L.R. Robin was at 96 and 98 East Street, Walworth.

Saunders & Fortescue had branches at 251 Rye Lane, Peckham and 135 High Street, Lewisham. They sold bicycles and prams as well as records.

Richard plays his records on this rather fine wind up gramophone.

He was using it as part of a sound performance at the 10th December lanch party for  issue no.4 of the surrealist journal Patricide, held at Massive Little World. This is in one of the railway arches behind the Deptford Project railway carriage cafe.

The event included 'Richard Sanderson with an amplified toothbrush and wind-up gramophone, poetry by Daniel Lehan and Jazz Poetry accompanied by improvised trumpet, bass and drums'. It was concluded by Sonic Egg, which featured an egg being boiled to an improvised soundtrack including a man playing guitar with a mannequin's foot. Or as Patricide reported it 'the Elite were soft boiled in egg form before being dashed against a wall'.



(by the way Grace Pailthorpe, later a British Surrealist painter, worked in New Cross during the First World War, as previously discussed at Transpontine).

Lost Steps: Haunted London

Transpontine contributor Scott Wood was interviewed on Resonance FM's great London show, Lost Steps, last week along with Camberwell-based artist Sarah Sparkes. The theme was Haunted London, with some South London tales including an underground ghost at Elephant & Castle; a fearsome 'thing' upstairs at the Thomas a Becket pub on the Old Kent Road; a spook that was said to get into bed with guests in a house in George Lane, Hither Green; a thirsty ghost in 1804 at St Pauls Church in Deptford said to climb out of a coffin and demand ale; and the 1948 dancing girl of One Tree Hill.

There's an interesting exchange on the significance of ghost stories, with presenter Malcolm Hopkins suggesting that 'behind every haunting there's got to be a story.... whether you believe in the haunting or not becomes irrelevant because the actual snippet of social history you get tells you a lot about London at a particular time'.

As Scott put is, 'the ghost is almost an oral memorial... a memorial that's not physical but is passed between people so they don't forget the stories of what's happened to people'. Examples include ghost stories as folk memories of World War 2 disasters, such as the haunting of the (now closed) Kings Arms on Peckham Rye said to be related to its bombing during the War, or stories related to the New Cross V2 explosion in 1944.

You can listen to the whole show at the Lost Steps website.

Check out more of Scott's London ghost and other spooky lore at the Londonist.

Scott is also hosting a Peckham ghost walk on Halloween and a London Bridge ghost walk on 27 October - details here.

Hither Green Spiritualist and Bin Laden

Why is Gordon Brown sending all those troops into danger when the 'war on terror' could have been ended years ago thanks to a Hither Green spiritualist? According to a story in this week's News Shopper (15 December 2009), Angela Bayley's prediction of where 'Bin Laden was hiding in Afghanistan was not taken seriously when she made it eight years ago. But now Angela Bayley says her prediction, exclusively reported in News Shopper in 2001, has been proved true in a US Senate report'. Back then she 'dangled an Islamic charm over a map of Afghanistan to find bin Laden and felt a strong pull to Waza Khwa, in the south-east of the country'.

Bayley has her own theory about what's really going on : 'I don’t believe they want to find him because the longer it is they can’t find him, the more they can blame on him. They have wasted billions of pounds and dollars on a war no-one wants. They are never going to find him and they know it.'

Laurence James/Mick Norman

In the 1970s there was a hugely popular genre of youthsploitation pulp fiction in the UK, with paperbacks catering to a seemingly insatiable demand for tales of sex, drugs, violence and youth subcultures (skinheads, bikers etc.). A key figure in relation into all this was Laurence James. As an editor at New English Library he was involved in publishing many of them. Then he moved on to writing his own novels themed around Hells Angels under the name Mick Norman - Angels From Hell, Angel Challenge, Guardian Angels and Angels On My Mind.

I've just been reading Stewart Home's interview with James, conducted several years before his death in 2000. And yes - if you read this site regularly you can probably guess where this is going - James/Norman was living in SE London at the time he wrote the Angels novels.

James originally moved to the area from Birmingham to study at Goldsmiths in New Cross: 'I came down to London at the beginning of the sixties and dropped out of college about '62... After a year, I decided teaching was not for me and I went to work in Foyles bookshop'.

Apparently his corner of SE London was not particularly swinging at the time:

'HOME: You were in London in the sixties, rumour has it there was a lot happening.
JAMES: There wasn't a lot happening in Hither Green. Not down in south London. I hung around with a lot of friends living down in New Cross. I had a girlfriend down there at the time. I don't think very much was happening outside the centre. It wasn't a drug crazed heaven at all'.

However, it was to be his time living in Hither Green that inspired the start of the first of the Angel novels: 'It was triggered by the opening episode at Hither Green station, where there's this long tunnel, because I lived in Hither Green for a time and I always thought it was really creepy, this pedestrian tunnel that ran under the railway. The tunnel was only about five or six foot wide and I always had this nightmare that you'd be walking along late at night and some guy on a motor bike would come thundering down the other way. That was what triggered the opening scene in the book. Everything else came from that' ('Angels from Hell' opens with a blind teacher dying under the wheels of bikes in the HIther Green tunnel).

Laurence James also wrote many other books under his own and other names, including some of the Deathlands series of Science Fiction novels under the name James Axler.

Folk in South East London

Folk clubs are like dog fighting clubs, they're often little known about and in more places than you think. Hither Green, Eltham, Blackheath, Borough, Woolwich, the Union Tavern in Camberwell and Deptford have, or have had, regular folk sessions.

Greenwich has the institution that is the tuesday night Greenwich Traditional Musicians Co-op  and there is the gig-based One World Club who have gigs every Thursday night.

Playing tonight are Lewisham and Greenwich (via Essex mudflats and Norwegian coast) band The Kittiwakes, a well-executed trio performing traditional English folk with a Scandinavian tickle. It's a free night at The Mitre tavern, 291 Greenwich High Road, from 8pm. The reviews of their album all seem rather positive.

Lewisham and Hither Green rail crashes

Newsreel footage of the Lewisham (1957) and Hither Green (1967) rail disasters:



The Lewisham rail crash occurred on 4th December 1957 just outside St Johns railway station. Ninety people were killed and 173 injured.



The Hither Green rail crash occurred on 5 November 1967 opposite Hither Green Traction Maintenance Depot, between Hither Green and Grove Park railway stations. A Sunday evening express train from Hastings to London derailed shortly before the train crossed the St Mildred's Road railway bridge. Most of the carriages overturned, two of them having their sides torn off. 49 people died.

Save old Hither Green Cinema

Schools, swimming pools, social clubs, ballrooms, glue factories and now...

From This is Local London. Full story there.

RESIDENTS are fighting to save a former cinema from demolition and want it turned into a community centre.

The former Park Cinema, in Hither Green Lane, Hither Green, was built in 1913 and was used as the Kids Korner nursery until two years ago.

Now the property is lying derelict and its owner is seeking planning permission to demolish the building and transform it into a four storey high block of flats with commercial space on the ground floor.

But residents are angry the building, which was used as a cinema until 1957, might be lost forever and are urging Lewisham Council to save the building.

So far more than 100 signatures have been collected for a petition and campaigners would like to see the cinema used as an arts and community centre.

Campaigner Max Calo, of Mount Pleasant, Hither Green, says there is a lack of social facilities in the area.

The 40-year-old said: “It’s a crucial site in Hither Green and a corner stone of the community. If we take that away we burn any hope of regenerating the area.

“It’s a purpose built performance place in a crucial area so why not try to rescue it?”

An application to convert the cinema into flats, preserving the building’s shell, was granted by the council in 2007 but the development was eventually abandoned.

However, acting on behalf of the building’s current owner Abdul Hamid, from Ilford, architect Jerome Lejeune, of Agenda 21 Architects, says he doesn’t think preserving the building’s architecture is appropriate in this case.

The news story give a link to the Hither Green Hall blog, which appears to be just starting out.