Bermondsey Socialist Club 1890s

The Bermondsey Socialist Club was at 78 Grange Road, SE1. This notice from 1897 lists its Sunday lectures. There's Felix Volkhovsky, a prominent Russian radical exile of the tiime; John Hunter-Watts, socialist and secularist; and future Labour Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald.

The club seems to have developed alongside the Bermondsey Industrial Co-operative Society based at the same address. Established in 1881, they also put on regular lectures. This programme from 1886 includes speakers from the Social Democratic Federation (Harry Quelch, Nunhead based socialist) and the Vegetarian Society as well as a Political Economy class taught by the Fabian socialist Sidney Webb.

Number 78 Grange Road is now a vet's opposite Bermondsey Spa Gardens. It's an old building so unless the street numbering  has changed I assume this was the site of the club.

 (these flyers and many other treasures to be found in the Max Nettlau papers at the Institute for Social History online archive)

Music Monday: Haim in Deptford

Haim are the quintessential Los Angeles band, so I wasn't expecting to be able to write them into the South London Hall of Fame any time soon. But they are over in Europe on tour and seemingly found time for a trip down to Deptford to film their latest video 'All over me'. If you're familiar with the Master Shipwright's House you will no doubt recognise its distressed decor and garden.

Update 25/6/2025: it seems the Master Shipwright's House is up for sale. A very interesting building dating back to early 1700s, with ten bedrooms and a garden backing directly on to the Thames. Very handy for the Dog and Bell pub too if you have £8 million to spare. 

Cleaners protest at EY at More London SE1

Cleaners facing job cuts were protesting yesterday (12th June 2025) at the HQ of EY (Ernst & Young) at More London SE1.

'As cleaners for Ernst & Young, one of the four largest consulting and accounting firms in the world, we are outsourced to a company called MITIE. MITIE has now announced a wave of redundancies in order for them to be ‘more efficient for the client’. Currently 37% of roles are at risk at redundancy. This is an absurd amount of cuts, and is sure to leave remaining workers burdened by the excessive workload created by such a significant reduction in staff.

Ernst & Young is not beyond exploiting its most precarious workers to maximise its profit - the company declared a revenue of 40 billion GBP in just one year. In 2017, cleaners at E&Y were also facing unjust redundancies. With the support of our union IWGB, we fought back and managed to fully stop all redundancies. But now, EY is once again attempting to make a number of its workers redundant and putting our livelihoods and wellbeing at risk.

We are asking you to rally around us, raise your voices, and demand that Ernst & Young puts a stop to these extreme redundancies'.

(The cleaners are members of the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain. You can donate to IWGB Cleaners & Facilities Branch Fighting Fund)

 

William Wyld

Poet and artist William Wyld is hosting the next Yer Bard poetry night at Dash the Henge in Camberwell on June 18th 2025.

William works out of a studio at Thames-Side studios in Woolwich and I went along to their open studio this weekend. There were poetry readings from William and other poets including Erica Hesketh (also at Yer Bard this month), Jasmine Cooray,  Michaela Coplen and Mark Rodenhurst. William's diverse body of work was on display including portraits, natural landscapes from the Hebrides (including my ancestral homeland of Islay) and shamanic bird and crab masks. William's poetry has been published in 'Queer Life, Queer Love II' and elsewhere and they have been involved in the Southbank Centre New Poets Collective.

MV Royal Iris - derelict Mersey ferry at Woolwich

The MV Royal Iris, which has been laid up on the Thames at Woolwich since 2002,  is looking in an evermore sorry state after a fire in April 2025.

The ship, built on the Clyde, was one of the ferries across the Mersey from 1951 until 1991. In its hey day it included a dancehall where the Beatles, Gerry & the Pacemakers and other Merseybeat bands played. After it retired there were various plans to convert it into a floating nightclub that never materialised and it has been left getting increasingly derelict by the Thames-side Studios (Warspite Road SE18), opposite the Silvertown Tate & Lyle works.

 

RIP Colin Jerwood - SE London punk legend

Colin Jerwood, lead singer with South London anarcho-punk band Conflict, has died.  At their 1980s peak they were very influential in the punk scene and famously once played a huge gig at Brixton Academy in 1987 ('The gathering of the 5000') which ended with 52 arrests and fighting with the police in the streets outside.

I believe that Colin was born in 1962 in Nettleton Road in New Cross, but was living in the Coldharbour Estate in  Eltham in the early days of the band and as an anarchist punk having to deal with violent racist skinheads. The band played out across South London and beyond - I saw them in mid-1980s at Thames Poly and at the Old Kent Road ambulance station squat - and put on a regular punk night in the crypt of St Pauls Church in Deptford. Later in the 1980s Colin was involved with putting on acid house parties at the Harp Club in New Cross, and in 1994 at the same location (now called the Venue) recorded their live album 'Conflict in the Venue'. Through their Mortarhate record label they put out stuff by other punk bands including New Cross favourites Hagar the Womb.

Conflict announce the start of 'The Centre' on Mondays at St Pauls Church SE8 (think this must have been late 1985/early 1986)

1986 gig at the Crypt with Potential Threat, Unknown Colours, Mentacide and Under the Gun

Colin played one of his last gigs with Conflict at the New Cross Inn in November 2024

According to Mark Wallis from Liberty (another SE London anarcho-punk band) "In the early days, Colin was an anarchist living on an estate in Eltham [the estate] with John and Paco, surrounded by NF skinheads