HMS Belfast Housing Protest (1981) and some seagulls

HMS Belfast is a 1930s built Royal Navy warship that has been permanently moored on the south bank of the Thames between London Bridge and Tower Bridge since 1971. It is managed as a tourist attraction by the Imperial War Museum. I am not a big fan of military hardware and remember a dreary trip there when I was at school, but no doubt there are interesting stories to be told about it not least its manufacture in the Harland and Woolf shipyward in Belfast -a notoriously sectarian workplace where Catholics had been violently expelled from their jobs - and its wanderings through the last days of Empire.

In  April 1981, its eyecatching properties were put to use in a short protest demanding that the nearby Hays Wharf site be converted for housing not offices. Peter Tatchell, who took part, later recalled 'We bought a group concession in the name of the East Dulwich Tennis Club and then strung huge banners from the bridge.’  Tatchell can be seen between two banners in photo below, seemingly with the slogans 'Homes not offices' and 'houses on Hays Wharf'. At the time Tatchell was secretary of Bermondsey Labour Party and was soon (1983) to face  a virulently homophobic campaign when standing in the notorious Bermondsey byelection of 1983. The Hays Wharf campaign was not successful, though as highlighted in the excellent SE1 Stories exhibition and pamphlet, community action in that period did achieve some victories which is why social housing was built close to the riverfront from Waterloo to Rotherhithe.

photo by George Nicholson

Anyway today you can meet some interesting gulls chilling out by the boat and note how the Royal Navy appropriated their colouring for camouflage.

Black headed gull - in winter plumage with a whte head

Herring Gull

 Post prompted by a couple of pleasant encounters with seagulls in January 2025 and seeing the SE1 Stories exhibition at the Castle lesiure centre in Elephant and Castle.

Children of Hiroshima - peace meetings in 1950s Lewisham and Bromley

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament was founded in 1958 and its first wave of activism peaked in the early 1960s at a time when fears of nuclear war were at their height. The movement against nuclear weapons started a few years earlier, with a key campaigner being the Methodist minister Donald Soper (1903-1998) - who incidentally went to Haberdashers school in New Cross.

In October 1955 'a ten day peace campaign by South London pacifists' included showings of the Japanese film 'Children on Hiroshima', documenting the impact of the first use of a nuclear weapon ten years previously. The film was shown 'in Bromley library and various church halls in Bellingham, Downham, Lewisham and Catford culminating in a  public meeting in Lewisham Town Hall.

Peace News 7 October 1955

Lewisham Borough News, 11 October 1955. Venues for film shows including St Dunstan's Church Hall, Bellingham; Public Library, Bromley High Street; Wesley Church Hall, Downham; St Mark's Church Hall, Lewisham; St Laurence Church Hall, Catford; St Luke's Church Hall, Downham

400 people attended the event in Lewisham Town Hall on 25 October 1955 with an extra hall being needed to accommodate demand.  As well as the film showing, Dr Soper gave a socialist and pacifist speech quoting from Joseph Rotblat (a physicist who had walked away from the Manhattan Project that developed the first nuclear bomb) 'Two of every three people don't have enough to eat. Economically we can have guns or butter but not both. The world must dedicate itself to producing necessities for the life of its increasing population or it will squander its resources in killing suddenly those who do not starve slowly'.  Also speaking was Sybil Morrison (1893-1984). Born in Sunderland Road, Forest Hill she was active in the women's suffrage movement then a lifelong peace activist.

Peace News 4 November 1955 

Save SILO SE8 Studio

Silo SE8 music collective have been operating out of a railway arch in Deptford for many years, but like many other arch users are facing increasing rents following the transfer of railway arches from National Rail to private landlord the Arch Company. Facing a big bill for a backdated rent increase they have launched a crowdfunder to raise funds. They say:

'Silo SE8 Musicians Collective is a non profit organisation that morphed out of the South East London Musicians Collective (SELMC) in the 1980s. Founding members Rabbit and The Balloons are still actively involved in the collective whilst other members have come and gone.

Over the years there has been a fairly consistent membership of about 25 musicians. The collective is run by the members on a voluntary basis and no one is paid a salary. Silo SE8 Musicians Collective offers local musicians a shared studio space in which to practice our instruments, rehearse material and store equipment.

We are active in the local community putting on concerts, reviving the centuries old May Day Jack in the Green Deptford procession and running Skronk, an improvisation night open to all at The Endeavour in Deptford. We have worked with artist Sue Lawes running the “Give us back our Bloomin’ Anchor” campaign and were successful in securing the return of our Deptford High Street landmark.

Silo SE8 members were involved in the organisation of the Fordham Park festivals, as well as performing at them. We have also been involved in Lewisham People’s Day, Deptford X, Deptford Festival, Party in the Park and Lewisham: London Borough of Culture 2022. We have organised benefit shows for Survivors Poetry, ALD Life and MAD Pride. We supported the visit of the MS Stubnitz from Hamburg, Germany where it is now a permanently moored arts venue. Silo SE8 members have performed in all of these.

In 2019 the management of leases of all railway arches in London were transferred from National Rail to a private company. In 2020 that company invoked a rent review as per the lease, for all tenants. They increased the rent “in line with market rates”, which was about double what we had been paying previously. Silo SE8 entered into dialogue with our new landlord requesting a concessionary discount as we are not a commercial entity. These conversations were protracted, partially due to the COVID pandemic. In February 2024 both Silo SE8 and the landlord agreed a new rent at just under a 70% increase. All members are now paying an increased monthly rent. What we did not expect was that this increase would be backdated to the 2020 rent review date, landing us with a £12,200 bill'

You can donate to their crowdfunder here: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/silose8

You can also support them by buying compilation albums from their bandcamp: https://silo-se8.bandcamp.com

Last month David Aylward from Silo SE8 presented a special edition of the Bad Punk show on Resonance FM. He talks about its origins in the South East London Musicians Collective (SELMC) operating out of TUC unemployed centre in Catford in the 1980s/early 1990s with gigs at the Lewisham Labour Club and elsewhere. Then on to Music City in New Cross, Mumford Mills and Seagar Distillery in Deptford, and the Merryweather fire engine factory in Greenwich. Most of these places have been lost to successive waves of development, but the railway arch in Resolution Way remains as long as they can pay the rent...

Some South London Beverages

Some South London themed drinks for the festive period. Good to see Hilly Fields getting its own beer courtesy of Brockley Brewery

Then there's Myatt's Fields Cocktails whose bottles will immortalise this part of SE5 for future archaeologists.

 

Last days of Catford Homebase

The Homebase store in Catford is closing down after the company went into administration. Bad news for the staff working there and also a pain for those who will have to travel further afield in search of DIY and gardening materials. I also the think the building on corner of Bromley Road and Beckenham Hill Road SE6 is quite iconic, not sure what the plans are for its future use. I think it would be suitable for a botanic garden!

The shop sits aside a pond fed by the River Ravensbourne that once served a nearby mill. Known as Southend Pond it was also known for a period as Peter Pan's Pool, a popular post World War 2 boating lake and amusement park for children. Today its island is home to a resident heron and a statue of two lovers.

 

Deptford evictions

Renters living in Childers Street SE8 are continuing their campaign against being evicted from their homes after been issued with 'Section 21' notices. These allow landlords to kick people out without having to give a reason and are due to be abolished next year.  Thousands of people have already signed a petition against the evictions  which states:

'We, the tenants of Vive Living, Childers Street, a total of 83 homes and around 150 people, are being evicted en masse ahead of Section 21 becoming illegal in 2025.

The government are abolishing Section 21 evictions for a reason - they are inhumane and cruel - and it is clear that the landlord are using this window of time while it is still technically legal to unjustly displace a huge group of people all at once.

We have received these notices, written in intimidating legalese, less than 3 weeks before Christmas with the earliest eviction date as early as 11 February. It has left us scrambling to understand our rights and in fear of becoming homeless.

The actions of Aitch Group - run by property mogul Henry Smith - have been condemned by local Lewisham North MP Vicky Foxcroft and several local councillors.

Our local community, wider London, and all of the UK are suffering from a housing and cost of living crisis. It is virtually impossible to find suitable, affordable housing in an already flooded, overpriced market 2. The local housing market cannot accommodate over 100 more of us needing immediate rehoming.

We will not be unique in our situation. Predatory landlords can, and surely will, utilise this time before S21 is banned next summer to take away people’s homes for their own financial benefit.

This behaviour is repugnant, and we are standing together to fight it. We fight not only for our own homes and situations, but for those who will be attacked in the same way who are far more vulnerable than us'.

The Aitch group are also involved in other developments locally including the Glassworks at Deptford Bridge.  Business activities previously linked to founder Henry Smith have been the subject of some less than flattering media coverage in the past including:

'The East End payday loan tycoon and his VERY glamorous girls: Lavish lifestyle of the jet-set family behind a 'parasitic' lending company' (Daily Mail 25 Sept 2016)

'Luxury jet-set lifestyle of dodgy loan clan forced to pay out £34m for its ‘parasitic abuse’ of 97,000 customers' (The Sun, 24 Sept 2016)

'Lender threatened victims while family lived high life' (The Times, 20 Sept 2016)

'Payday loan sharks who partied in Vegas and took private jets while victims suffered' (This is Money, December 2022)

Vive Living in Childers Street

A timely poster in Deptford for recent London Renters Union demonstration

London Renters Union stickers spotted in Brockley

Cat & Cucumber & Sham 69

Lunch recently at the Cat and Cucumber Cafe on Tower Bridge Road (corner of Druid Street SE1), Neil Controlled Weirdness mentioned that the very table we were sitting at features in a 1979 film focused on punk band Sham 69.

Yes indeed 'Tell us the Truth', a BBC Arena programme, does indeed include a scene filmed there. Sorry for quality of images, screenshot from grainy youtube, but you can see Cafe had the same name then and no doubt the menu of classic fry up breakfast fare hasn't changed too much either.

Check out the film, there's a few other London locations in it so let us know if you recognise any.

 

T.Rex at Lewisham Odeon (1971)

T.Rex at Lewisham Odeon July 1971 - 60p in with two shows, at 6:30 pm or 9 pm.  This was the year when Marc Bolan's band really blew up, releasing the Electric Warrior album and dominating the UK charts with singles including Hot Love and Get it On.

 The live album T.Rex in Concert, released posthumously in 1981, includes three tracks record at the Lewisham concert: Ride a White Swan, Get it On and Summertime Blues

Camberwell Communists and the Nigerian Miners Massacre (1949)

 In Nigeria in November 2024, the National Commission for Mu­seum and Monuments 'marked the 75th anniversa­ry of the massacre of 21 coal miners at Iva Valley, Enugu, by the colonial masters. It could be recalled that 21 coal miners were shot dead in Enugu on Nov. 18, 1949, by the colonial mas­ters for agitating for better working conditions and improved welfare packages'.

A monument to the massacre in Nigeria

The massacre took place at a British owned mine under British colonial rule. It sparked protests throughout the country that strengthened the movement for independence. During these protests a young Nigerian who had lived in Camberwell was among those killed, having returned to Nigeria only a couple of weeks earlier.  Odilia Asaka was a young Nigerian law student who lived in De Crespigny Park. He had given demonstrations of African songs to Peckham Secondary Girls School and was a member of the Camberwell branch of the Communist Party, and his death was announced at a CP meeting at Peckham girls school by Tom Gibson (I believe the school was on the site of what is now Harris Academy Peckham).

The Secretary of the State for the Colonies at the time was Arthur Creech Jones, the former secretary of Dulwich Independent Labour Party. When he came to speak at a Labour Party meeting at Grafton Hall, Dulwich on 24 November 1949 he was shouted down by Nigerians in the audience with cries such as .‘Our people have been shot. You live on our sweat. When we ask for money you give us bullets'.

The Labour Party blamed the Communist Party for the disruption of the meeting. For their part the Camberwell CP were happy to stand by the Nigerian protestors and passed a resolution that denounced 'the acts of brutality being committed against Nigerian miners who are striking for a better standard of living. For the Labour Government to allow such atrocities to continue is a complete negation of the principles of the British Labour movement and the Colonial Secretary is urged to take action and arrest and charge with murder those who authorised the shooting, grant workers their wage demands, give pensions to dependents of murdered miners and convene immediately a democratically elected constituent assembly  and enable them to choose the form any government of Nigeria should take' (South London Observer, 9 December 1949). Nigeria became independent in 1960.

·      

Giggs in Nunhead

Was it really ten years ago that Katy B and Ikonika were chatting online about Ayre's the Baker in Nunhead? At the time I described it as 'the number one bakers for the London post-dubstep scene'.  Not sure if there's been too much music action there since - have spotted members of Foals at the shops there in the past, though not actually in the bakers.

But today Ayre's reclaimed its crown. Giggs was not just in the shop but took it over for a day with oat milk company Oatly to promote its brand of vegan custard, much loved by the lactose intolerant Peckham raised rapper. Neighbouring pizza place Dinner for 100 managed to get a photo of hm in there with one of their pizzas.

@dinnerforonehundred

People's Habitat: a festival of Alternative Living' - Surrey Docks, 1976

Intrigued about 'People's Habitat: a festival of Alternative Living' which took place in Rotherhithe in May/June 1976. According to the magazine Undercurrents (June 1976) it was to be 'an all embracing  adventure into what the alternative society could be, given a chance'. It was intended to be a counter festival to the United Nations Habitat Conference taking place at the time in Vancouver.

This issue of the magazine included a series of articles on the People's Habitat theme, claiming that in contrast to the Vancouver event. 'At People's Habitat we ordinary mortals will be coming together to work out how we can wrest control of our living and working environments away from those, both capitalist exploiters and paternalist bureaucrats, who have stolen our freedom. We will  be exploring new ways of living and working co-operatively with, and for, each other in harmony with the rest of the natural world'

Not sure how it actually went, there was a less than effusive review in Freedom anarchist paper (26 June 1976) which described its best feature as a windmill aiming 'to pump water to the allotments on the filled in Surrey Docks' 

I believe Clifford Harper designed the poster for the event.

Anyone know any more about it?

The Water Chorus/Third Revival at Acoustic Anarchy

Another great line up this weekend at Acoustic Anarchy, the regular night at waterintobeer in Brockley (209-211 Mantle Road, London SE4 2EW):

'The next acoustic anarchy on Saturday November 2nd, sees two of our favourite folk groups combine for what promises to be a special night. Third Revival take a mix of traditional songs and their own material and give it a dark edge, with vocals, guitar and fiddle.

The Water Chorus also work with traditional folk songs and have multiple instruments, giving the songs an energetic treatment with a lively dash of humour.

Each group will do a set and then combine to do a joint set, which we're really looking forward to. Regular host Martin Howard completes the bill. Starts at 7.30, music from 7.45. Suggested £5 donation entry, which all goes to the artists! No-one turned away for lack of funds'

I saw The Water Chorus there earlier in the year and think they are going to bigger places, so catch them while you can. Some great Scottish and other songs, including a version of Comin' thro' the Rye.

The Water Chorus at waterintobeer, April 2024

Update: this was great, Water Chorus' usual singer Caitlin Chalmers was away, with Ali Lawrenson and Jack Saville joined instead by Sophie Grenfell.  Nice to hear a few lines of (Scots) Gaelic, they did a version of the old fairy song 'Tha mi sgith' and also did a join set with Third Revival

The Water Chorus and Third Revival at waterintobeer, November 2024

Peckham Day of the Dead

Mexican Day of the Dead altar at Mexican Mama in Rye Lane SE15.

Also added to my collection of hot sauces from the shop that specialises in Mexican food imports.

 

Edward Said visits C.L.R. James in Brixton

Just been reading Timothy Brennan's 'Places of mind: a life of Edward Said'  in which he mentions the great Palestinian/American intellectual visiting Brixton in 1987, 'Paying his respects to an ailing C.L.R. James in Railton Road... Said had made the pilgrimage, in fact, to honor James's contributions to art and to black liberation. But even though, like Said, James had lived for a long time in the United States and praised autodidacts (and was himself one), his political experiences were starkly different. James had spent much of his life in Trotskyist parties organizing labor or battling with Caribbean nationalist leaders in a bid to create a West Indian federation. His tastes as a critic went much more in the direction of popular culture (especially Hollywood film) than Said's. More than anything, though, by the time of his visit, James's familiarity with Said's stature was limited. Only a few weeks earlier, the great civil rights activist and former Black Panther Stokely Carmichael had visited, and it was not clear James (who was not one to stand on ceremony) knew exactly who he was. Only when Said mentioned that he played piano did the two men settle in. In the hour and a half they spent together, they talked almost exclusively about Beethoven's sonatas and their dislike of Verdi and Puccini. Later, Said sent James a cassette of Gould's performance of The Goldberg Variations, to which James warmly replied 

A copy of James' letter to Said was posted on twitter by uptownberber last year 

As I've mentioned here before, James had many visitors upstairs at 165 Railton Road where he lived out the last years of his life. This visit was in the year I moved to Brixton where I spent much time in Railton Road. Nice thinking about whose paths I may have crossed in the streets

Sydenham Garden

I stumbled across Sydenham Garden  (Wynell Road SE23) last month for the first time, a community well being space with various mental health, dementia and other projects .

The day I went it was participating in the Sydenham Artists Trail, including displaying some of the banners made at the garden for their participation in the 2024 Pride parade.

I liked this banner mapping Lewisham Urban Oasis green spaces:

 

20 Years of Transpontine!

So Transpontine blog is 20 years old! On October 9th 2004 the blog was launched with a couple of posts about local bands and a notice of a talk on witch trials.  That pretty much reflects the initial impetus for the blog  - there was a sense that there was a lot of interesting stuff going on around us that was not really being documented anywhere. Specifically myself and Scott (who co-founded it with me and contributed for first few years) were involved in the South East London Folklore Society, going to lots of gigs that became known as part of the New Cross scene and also participating in the South London Radical History Group who had recently lost their base after the eviction of the Use Your Loaf social centre squat in Deptford High Street. The focus at the start was particularly on New Cross, Deptford and Brockley but over the years Transpontine has roamed over South London.

For me at the start blogging was just a free, convenient and accessible way of publishing stuff online. During the early days of the Internet, I had a couple of websites on GeoCities. It was quite clunky to use and eventually vanished – the first of many lessons in the contingent and temporary nature of online content.

With Blogger and then Wordpress it was much easier to create posts, and I really liked the equality of access. Everybody's content looked reasonably professional and clear to read, unlike say with printed publishing where it was very difficult for do it yourself producers to compete with the quality of glossy colour magazines.

Basically, anybody with anything to say, could now get it out there to a global audience though in many cases it wasn't a mass readership people were looking for, but to connect with others sharing their niche interests. There were communities of bloggers responding in quick time to each others posts and sometimes meeting up in the 'real world'. Locally there were meet ups in the pub of Lewisham based bloggers, and some of those people have been friends ever since. I missed the night that one Lewisham blogger of a Conservative bent turned up - yes future Conservative Party leadership hopeful James Cleverly! I liked blogging so much that I've also been doing another music/politics one for quite a few years, History is Made at Night.

Music writer Simon Reynolds is one who has stuck to blogging even if it is not the social media cutting edge it once was. Writing for The Guardian last year he argued:  'Blogging, for me, is the perfect format. No restrictions when it comes to length or brevity: a post can be a considered and meticulously composed 3,000-word essay, or a spurted splat of speculation or whimsy. No rules about structure or consistency of tone. A blogpost can be half-baked and barely proved: I feel zero responsibility to “do my research” before pontificating. Purely for my own pleasure, I do often go deep. But it’s nearer the truth to say that some posts are outcomes of rambles across the archives of the internet, byproducts of the odd information trawled up and the lateral connections created'.

In recent years my blogging here has become quite sporadic; Transpontine functions for me now something like a  public diary as well as a notepad for interesting historical and other fragments I have come across. But over 20 years it has accumulated into quite a record of parts of SE London life that interest me. Ironically considering the often announced death of blogging some of the things featured 20 years ago now have barely a trace left online as the online forums, email lists and myspace sites where they once thrived have come and gone. The blog remains as a historical record and I am glad that the site is now one of those that is regularly backed up by the British Library. There's a reasonable chance that the blog will outlast Twitter and Facebook. Start your own blog it's not too late!

I am particularly proud that some of the historical posts have resurrected often undocumented places and scenes and in the process acted as strange attractors to people looking for evidence of past experiences and leaving amazing comments that enrich the original content. Also proud to have helped revive the use of the word Transpontine! In a small way I hope that blogs like this have helped redress the previous balance in London writing away from a bias towards central and north London. 

So what next? Well I often think that the time spent on blogging could have generated several books, though arguably the blog has had a much greater reach than any book I would have produced.  But I am close to finishing a book covering the social and cultural history of New Cross so watch this space for news of this shortly!

Some favourite posts....

There have been 3,111 posts on Transpontine over the last 20 years. At first these were mainly short listings, and even adding photos was tricky. Later things occasionally got more substantial. Here's a selection of some of my favourite posts.

Music has always been a big part of the blog, lots of local up and coming artists have been featured in the Music Monday slot and some more well known ones - who can forget finding out about the A-ha Sydenham connection or Marvin Gaye in Deptford? My personal favourite music post though was the one about Katy B, Ikonica and Nunhead bakers. Also important to me were Little Earthquakes.... Independent Record Labels in SE London (2017) and  No Frills Band and 20 years of South London folk sessions. I have enjoyed documenting countless musical, TV and film connections to the Rivoli Ballroom in Crofton Park.

Looking back on older scenes my speculative post on where the South London mods might have hung out in the 1960s has got some great comments over the years, as have others on the  History of the New Cross House/Goldsmiths Tavern and Last Orders at the Montague Arms.

Some times I have been able to document contemporary movements and events as they happened, like the great Save Lewisham Hospital demos in 2012,  Covid 19 Street Art (2020) and Black Lives Matter in South London (2021).

Anti-racism and anti-fascism has been a strong thread throughout including the The New Cross Fire 1981: the Bleakest Moment  and the 'Battle of Lewisham'  (see Lewisham 77: Myth and Anti-fascist history). For links to many articles on these themes see Lewisham Stands Against Racism, Again (2024). 

The history threads have led me down some interesting byways, loved discovering more about Peckham nightclubs, Catford syndicalists,  a SE London trans marriage in 1954 and occult connections at the Horniman museum.

Neil, Transpontine, October 2024