Railton Road Radical Histories Mural

The 'wall of respect for the radical histories of Railton Road' was painted  in 2021 by the RAD Mural Collective on a wall at  the 198 art space at 198 Railton Road. Designed by Jacob V Joyce and Monique Jackson, it packs in a lot of local historical detail, referencing black, queer and other radical spaces and scenes associated with the area. These are  mostly from the 1970s to 1990s, though there is a nod to more recent events with local firefighters shown taking the knee during the Black Lives Matter protests of 2021. 

According to the mural#s designers, 'Railton Road was once known as ‘The Front Line’ due to the sheer amount of anti-racist and counter hegemonic activisms which erupted on this street. A commemorative blue plaque which reads ‘The Front Line’ is painted into the top right corner of the mural. Beneath it local artist and often forgotten hero of black British LGBT history Pearl Alcock leans out of a window. Framing the scene on the left an art work by Rotimi Fani-Kayode, another LGBT icon and member of the Brixton Artist Collective, looms over a sleepy eyed Rasta opening his door in fluffy slippers. References to local organizations include the CLR James Supplementary School, radical squatted book shop 121 Books and a banner which reads ‘Black People Against State Harassment, B.A.S.H, a self defence campaign group also based on Railton Road. The Black Panthers, The Gay Liberation Front, Race Today Collective, and many other anti-racist, queer and feminist groups have been founded or run on this radical South London road'. The Front Line was the centre of the 1981 uprising, also referenced in the mural which was commissioned to mark its 40th anniversary.

I lived in Brixton for best part of ten years in some of these times so was taken aback (in a good way) walking past the mural recently to see all this so boldy and brightly represented, including the 121 Centre where I spent many a happy hour and maybe a few not so happy ones too! You could do another mural, or several, about just the things that happened there, as I summarised elseswhere:

'The 121 Centre in Brixton, variously known as an ‘anarchist centre’, ‘social centre’ and ‘squatted centre’, was a hub of international radical activity and much else throughout the 1980s and 1990s. The house at 121 Railton Road, SE24 was squatted by a group of local anarchists in 1981  (though it had previously been squatted by radical black activists) and was finally evicted in 1999. It is now private flats. Its four storeys included a bookshop, office space, printing equipment, kitchen and meeting area, and a basement for gigs and parties.

Over 18+ years it was the launchpad for numerous radical initiatives, some short-lived, others having a more lasting impact. Many groups used 121 for meetings and events, including Brixton Squatters Aid, Brixton Hunt Saboteurs, Food not Bombs, Community Resistance Against the Poll Tax, Anarchist Black Cross, the Direct Action Movement, London Socialist Film Co-op and the Troops Out Movement. Publications associated with 121 included Shocking Pink, Bad Attitude, Crowbar, Contraflow, Black Flag and Underground.

There was a regular Friday night cafe and many gigs and club nights, including the legendary mid-1990s Dead by Dawn. 121 was a venue for major events including Queeruption, the Anarchy in the UK festival and an International Infoshop Conference. It was, in short, a space where hundreds of people met, argued, danced, found places to live, fell in and out of love, ate and drank'.

 

Women in Revolt at Tate Britain

'Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970-1990' at Tate Britain features a huge amount of archive material from different 1970s/80s feminist currents alongside the art works which taken together give a strong sense of the visual culture and politics of the period. 

Lots of South London content included, here's a few I spotted:

'Shrew - Women's Liberation Workshop' (1970)- I noticed on the cover that this copy was at one time held in 'The Fawcett Collection, temporarily at 67 Barry Road SE22'. The Fawcett Collection later became the Women's Library. Barry Road in East Dulwich just across the road from Peckham Rye, where as discussed here previously one of the first London Women's Liberation groups was formed, a group that was involved in the production of Shrew.

'In Print' - newsletter of Peckham Black Women's Group, at one point ran Peckham Black Women's Centre, 69 Bellenden Road SE15

Leaflet for a demonstration from Brockwell Park called by the Groce Family Support and Community Defence Campaign. Cherry Groce was shot and seriously injured by police during a raid on a house in Brixton in 1985, sparking off a riot.

'Defend the black community! fascists off the streets' - a leaflet mobilising for the anti-National Front demonstration in New Cross/Lewisham in August 1977, that became known as the Battle of Lewisham. Would like to see the back of this leaflet to see who produced it.

The exhibition includes issues of Rock Against Racism zine 'Temporary Hoarding', one of which features this picture of Adam and the Ants playing a RAR gig at Elephant and Castle'. This was at South Bank Poly (now Uni) on 17 June 1978.

Chain Reaction at the Market Tavern in Vauxhall, 1980s women only SM/fetish club 

 


Quite a few visitors delighted in spotting images of themselves or friends, or things they had been involved with and by the end I was doing the same with pictures from the Clause 28 demonstrations and copies of Shocking Pink zine which my friend Katy Watson was involved with and which was based for a while at the 121 Centre in Brixton.



The exhibition closes on 7 April 2024.

Brixton Hill Clinic Defence Campaign - defeating anti-abortionists in 1990

The anti-abortion movement in the UK will no doubt be emboldened by recent events in the United States, and while the scope for them to challenge current laws seems to be limited there is a risk that they may step up direct action against health services. In recent years anti-abortionists have picketed St John's Medical Centre in Loampit Vale SE13 (including in 2015 and 2018) and sporadically protest in Brixton and Streatham.

These documents are from an earlier campaign that successfully stopped similar protests, at least for a while. Back in 1990, a Brixton Hill Clinic Defence Campaign was set up in response to anti-abortionists picketing the local clinic.  The Campaign was set up at a meeting at Lambeth Town Hall in July 1990. As the invite issued by the socialist group Workers Power explained:

'As you may know, anti-abortionists have been regularly picketing the Raleigh Clinic in Brixton Hill and the Leigham clinic in Leigham Court Road. Streatham. The pickets have included supporters of Operation Rescue, a US derived organisation noted for its militant and often violent tactics. The pickets take place every Saturday at Brixton Hill between 8am and 12 noon, and as far as is possible to tell, between 10am and 12 noon at Streatham on the last Saturday of the month only.

The anti-abortionists tactics have so far included leafletting and harrasing women going into the clinic.  It is vital that all those who support choice and the right of women to control their own bodies get organised against the anti- abortionists. While there are not very many of them at present, if they are left unchallenged, they will attract support and their tactics will become more and more militant. Informal counter-pickets have been happening every Saturday at Brixton Hill. Such counter-pickets need to be organised properly and built for in the Labour movement.

It has also been argued that there is a need them to be carried out with sensitivity - there is a danger that large unruly counter-picket outside a clinic would have the same deterrent effect on women seeking abortions as the anti-abortionists themselves. 

We have taken the initiative of booking a room in Lambeth Town Hall on Monday 9th July in room 121, in order to hold a meeting to discuss the way forward to defeating the anti-abortionists. We need to discuss what tactics to use and how to mobilise people against Operation Rescue. We would hope that some sort of organising committee could be constituted to organise the counter-pickets, and any other action deemed necessary. We hope everyone who is concerned about the threat that the anti-abortionists represent and wishes to organise against them will either attend or, if an organisation, send a representative'.

Invite to a meeting to 'Organise Against Operation Rescue' at Lambeth Town Hall, July 1990

In the early protests the police did not seem to have been interested and when an anti-abortionist had run towards the clinic and been stopped by a counter-demonstrator it was the latter who was arrested (though later released without charge).  

At the meeting at Lambeth Town Hall the main political difference was on how to respond - representatives attending from the alphabet soup of left/anarchist groups active in Brixton at the time. Broadly speaking the Socialist Workers Party wished to mobilise counter protestors at the clinic. Others present - the majority at the meeting - felt that having a crowd there, even a sympathetic one, would be very uncomfortable for women attending. It was agreed to have enough of a presence at the Clinic to challenge the anti-abortionists and if necessary escort women past them, but not to seek to mobilise large numbers directly outside it. Instead, efforts would be put into preventing Operation Rescue getting to the Clinic in the first place

A leaflet given out at the clinic declared 'A Woman's Right to Choose... Raleigh Nursing Home is one of the few places in Lambeth that performs abortions. We are here today outside it because we believe that every woman should have the right to control over her own body. That means she should have the right to an abortion if she wants one.

Unfortunately there are some people who seek to prevent women from exercising that right- by force, by threats and by terror. You may have seen them here too. As often as not they are the ones on their knees. You may have been given one of their glossy horror pamphlets full of photographs of "dead

babies". If we had the same vast wealth behind us as they do - and the same twisted logic - you could be reading an equally glossy pamphlet full of pictures of dead women; just some of the hundreds of thousands who die every year throughout the world whilst attempting backstreet abortion. Because that is the reality in countries without even Britain's limited legal abortion facilities.

[...] we aren't trying to frighten anybody away. We don't even want to be here ourselves. It can be traumatic enough for women to come for an abortion without a crowd of people on the gate as they go in. We are only here because if we weren't the militant anti-abortionists - who in the United States have resorted to fire bombing clinics - will count it as a victory'

Meanwhile a crew drawn from Workers Power, Red Action, South London Direct Action Movement and other local anarchists, all of whom had a presence in the area, put in place the plan to stop Operation Rescue in their tracks. These people were in effect the backbone of Anti Fascist Action in South London and weren't mucking around. As the anti-abortionists made their way up from Brixton station they were ambushed, and as they used to say 'acquainted with the pavement'. It was a long time before they returned to Brixton Hill.

A report on the campaign from Workers Power, July 1990

 

A letter from the campaign from City Limits magazine, 2 September 1990

The following account, 'Bouncing the Bigots',  comes from Direct Action, October 1990:

'[...] In Brixton a group was formed to oppose Rescue by mounting a counter picket. Over the weeks, our tactics evolved and developed. Members of a variety of groups and organisations  (DAM, Red Action and others) formed the Clinics Defence Campaign.

Our main concern is not to add to the intimidation of women going into the clinic. A vast crowd clustered round the entrance is inherently frightening. We use what we call "them plus two": if they have five people, then we have seven and we surround them with our banners supporting a woman's right to choose. We also have back up in case of any trouble and also relief pickets for when the constant singing and praying gets too much!

Week after the were they have appeared and been met with a hostile reception. Slowly their numbers decreased as weaker souls got too scared to face up to vigorous local opposition. On one appearance due to a certain incident they left en masse (well, there were only 3 of them) in an ambulance. For almost 2 months now, they've been happily absent from Brixton'

[The address given for the Clinic Defence Campaign in this article is 121 Railton Road - the squatted anarchist centre that was used by many local groups in this period]

(updated February 2024 with addition of Direct Action article)

The Anarchist Festival in Lewisham Odeon that never was - 1986

Source: Freedom, April 1986.

Lewisham Odeon opened as the Gaumont  Palace cinema in 1932, and was renamed the Odeon in 1962. As mentioned here before it was the scene of many iconic gigs before it closed in 1981, being finally demolished in 1991 to make way for a road widening scheme in the town centre.

In 1986, the Odeon was squatted and plans made for a London Anarchist Festival, to include films, bookstalls, workshops and a performance of Dario Fo's play 'Accidental Death of an Anarchist'. But it wasn't to be. I found this report of what happened in an issue of the Christian Anarchist zine 'A Pinch of Salt' (no.3, 1986) at the interesting Sparrows Nest digitial archive:

'The outing to the London Anarchist Festival was fairly surreal and bizarre. Planned to be held in the squatted Lewisham Odeon, the police raided the place the night before with a High Court injunction banning the Festival (anarchist paranoia has a strange habit of either being justified or perhaps self-fulfilling). So it was a farily deflated, undecided bunch of anarchists sitting outside the Odeon, wondering what to do next. The inside of the cinema was wonderful - a strangely floating space which hadn't seen a film in years but still the curtains seemed expectant... Eventually some people meandered to Greenwich Park and a rambling anarchist picnic was somehow held. The warm spring sunshine was subduing... Meanwhile the forces of law and order muster and clear all the lazy sun-soaked  anarchists out of the park onto Blackheath, where there was once a peasants revolt or something. However, nothing was particularly revolting on that sunny day'.

As The Ruinist mentions, the following day 'The festival decamped to The Ambulance Station [squat on Old Kent Road] for a discussion about whether the Station should become a London Anarchist centre. All seemed well with that during the discussions until a punkette who was living there said that the meeting would have to check with some guy who was living in a caravan in the yard whether using the squat as a centre would be okay. In classic anarchoid fashion, nothing ever came of the 3-hour debate and plans'.

Update July 2025:

Thanks to the Undercover Policing Inquiry we now know that the plans for the festival were under consideration by the police for some time before. A Special Branch report filed by police infiltrator Bob Lambert outlined the plans as early as March 1986. The report mentions various groups planning to take part, including Streatham Action Group, and a planning meeting arranged at the 121 Centre in Brixton.

One factor was that the police were monitoring the potential for protests during the July 1986 Royal Wedding between Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson. Another report from Lambert mentions that the subject was likely to be raised at the proposed festival in Lewisham.

See previously on Lewisham Odeon:

Rock Around the Clock 1956

The Beatles and Ray Charles 1963

David Bowie 1973

Rod Stewart and Paul McCartney 1974

The Specials 1979

Adam and the Ants 1980

Desmond Dekker, Madness and Go Gos, 1980