Music Monday: A-ha in Sydenham

There are lots of  80s pop hits which all the cool indie kids mocked at the time but which with hindsight sound pretty good, and which today's cool nobody-worries-about-being-indie-kids-anymore just get on and dance to. But there are other pop tracks which surely even the coolest shoegazers had to recognise at the time were destined to be classic songs, including at least a couple by some Norwegian likely lads: A-ha's 'The Sun always shines on TV' and their debut 'Take on Me'.

So what's the South East London connection? Well back in 1983, A-ha were living in London as poverty-stricken artists with dreams of pop glory, hanging out at the Camden Palace. With funds running low, they booked themselves in April 1983 into a small Sydenham studio, Rendezvous (107b Kirkdale, SE26), run by a man called John Ratcliff - an interesting character with experience of playing in bands himself, not to mention once having been a successful international athlete - the world double decathlon champion, no less.

107b Kirkdale - John Ratcliff confirms on twitter that the whole building was Rendezvous

According to the Quietus: 'Rendezvous was chosen simply because it offered equipment when they had little of their own. But, setting out to lay down three or four songs per day, they in fact only needed one before Ratcliff’s ears pricked up.  “He said, ‘That sounds really interesting. Do you have more?’ And we said, ‘Yeah, but we can’t afford to pay.’ ‘Well, why don’t you come in on off time?’ He started talking about, ‘I know people in the music industry. I can get you a singles deal’ (Talking Away: A-Ha On The Making Of Take On Me by Wyndham Wallace, 2015)

John O'Connell notes that Ratcliff's contribution went further than just offering studio time:

'A-ha had ended up at Rendezvous almost by accident, allegedly booking it because it had a Space Invaders machine. But Ratcliff proved a generous patron when the band were at a low ebb, paying for them to make additional demos of the songs he thought were strongest and renting them a flat at 221 Dartmouth Road, about 200 metres from the studio. Furuholmen and his bandmates Pal Waaktaar and Morten Harket would make the daily journey from flat to ‘work’ by jumping across the roofs of the neighbouring houses and entering Rendezvous through a rear window'.



221 Dartmouth Road, next to Mr Pizza by Sydenham School - where A-ha once stayed

Thanks to John's music industry connections, the band were soon signed to Warner Brothers with global success to follow.

One of the demo tracks recorded at Rendezvouz was called Lesson One. Before long it had been reworked into their breakthrough hit 'Take on Me' - a great song helped by a groundbreaking 1985 video combining animation and live action filmed in Battersea at Kim's Cafe (later the Savoy Cafe) at 390 Wandsworth Road, SW8 (corner of Pensbury Place). The song reached number one in the USA and number 2 in the UK.

inside the cafe in 'Take on Me' video - Bunty Bailey, the young woman in the video,
became the girlfriend of a-ha singer Morten Harkets

Bunty Bailey flees the cafe in the video and, below, the cafe today

 

Thanks to Adrian Lobb on twitter for posting a photo that set me off on this. Thanks too to Laugh Clown Laugh, who also recorded there, for confirming location of Rendezvous.

Some more Forest Hill/Sydenham music connections:

Don Letts

Peter Perrett/The Only Ones

Split Enz

Flux of Pink Indians/Crass/Bjork

Shell stations picketed in Greenpeace protests

Several Shell petrol stations in South London were among 70 fuelling stations in the UK picketed yesterday as part of an international day of solidarity with 'the 30 people who were detained on a Greenpeace International ship by armed Russian security forces and imprisoned. Next week will mark two months since the 30 were detained following a peaceful protest against Arctic drilling at a Gazprom oil platform in the Pechora Sea on September 18. On Friday, Russia’s Investigative Committee announced that it will apply for a three-month extension to the detention of the Arctic 30. They will make the applications in front of a judge at hearings next week' (Greenpeace International)

Battersea protest - photo from @mortimerabi

Shell has been targeted as the Arctic oil business partner of Russian energy giant  Gazprom who Greenpeace say have played a significant role in this situation: "The Arctic 30 were arrested and imprisoned after Gazprom asked the authorities to intervene during our peaceful protest. Now the 30 remain behind bars and Gazprom could play a key role in securing their release so they can go home to their families. If Gazprom wanted the Arctic 30 to be free, it could wield significant influence by calling for their release.”

South London protests were held at Forest Hill (Stanstead Road), Bromley Hill (pictured below), Croydon (Whitehorse Road) and Battersea.

Bromley protest - photo from @ladyroisin at twitter

Pete Shaughnessy, ten years gone

Back in October, Alex from Past Tense Publications led a group of us on a Camberwell radical history walk. Pausing by the Maudsley hospital, he recalled the life of mental health activist Pete Shaughnessy. It is ten years this month since Pete died at the age of forty - on 15 December 2002, he stepped in front of a train at Battersea Park station. The inquest concluded that he had killed himself.  On Christmas Eve 2002, more than three hundred people packed into St Thomas More Church in East Dulwich for his funeral service.

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Pete was born in 1962 and grew up in a working class Irish family in East Dulwich. In 1990 he started work as a 36 bus driver in Peckham, and while working on the buses he also began his journey through the mental health system. Pete wrote an account of this period in a a text called  Into the Deep End, published in the book 'Mad Pride - A Celebration of Mad Culture', edited by Ted Curtis, Robert Dellar, Esther Leslie & Ben Watson (Spare Change Books, 2000).

Going through a difficult time at home and at work, Pete wrote that  'my road into 'madness' began with direct action. I worked on the buses at Peckham, south London for three years, and had to put up with some shit there. So, when the company announced longer hours and less wages to a group of drivers at my garage, enough was enough. I went on a hunger and speech strike at the bus stop outside the garage. Most drivers at the time said that this was when I went 'mad'. Others put it down to iron bar assault I experienced earlier, going to the aid of a conductress I was working with. She got kicked in the face at 10am, because a guy wouldn't show his pass, and I got cracked with an iron bar by his mate. Nice bit of sanity!! My shrink reckoned I got good value at £3,000 criminal injuries for that "nice bit of sanity". My sanity for 3K. Cheers Doc. Anyhow, back to the strike. It lasted from 4.18am to 19.30pm'.

Signed off sick for six weeks, Pete went on a journey to Glastonbury via the road protest at Twyford Down before being declared 'fit for work': 'Back at work, they made me sit around for a day before giving me my first job on the road. At 8.20am on the 4th of January 1993 I went to pick up a bus in Peckham. I spotted the brake light wasn't working, so I should've got the engineer out to fix it, but instead decided to drive the bus as far away from the garage as possible. At Harrow Road Police Station, I booted the last two remaining passengers off, told the police about the defects i..e. no brake light, no fare chart, dummy video and a cold bus, as said 'PC Harrow Road'. I rang the engineer and he choked in his tea when I said 'No fare chart.' That was the end of his career as a bus driver - though not the last time driving a bus. As a 2003 obituary in The Big Issue recalls 'Last summer, when his illness was at its most florid, Pete chanced upon a bus with its keys in, at a depot in south London. He drove it all the way to Worthing. Realising he wasn't well, he headed to the local A&E. After several hours unsuccessfully waiting see a psychiatrist, he returned to the bus and drove it back to London'.

Pete's depression was exacerbated by further violence in his life - his sister was murdered by her boyfriend in Brixton, and Pete was then sectioned in Guys after hitting a policeman.

Reclaim Bedlam and Mad Pride

In 1997, the Bethlem and Maudsley NHS Trust decided to hold a series of events to mark the Bethlem hospital's 750th anniversary. Pete and others involved with Southwark MIND felt that commemoration rather than celebration was in order, given some of the terrible experiences of mentally ill people at Bedlam through the centuries, so they launched 'Reclaim Bedlam' with a series of actions including a picnic at the Imperial War Museum (location of the original Bedlam).

Pete wrote that with Reclaim Bedlam 'for the first time, we were taking the user movement out of the ghetto of smoky hospital rooms and into the mainstream'. Out of this experience, Pete went on to be one of the founders of  Mad Pride in 1999 putting on gigs and publishing texts that not only demanded better treatment for 'the mad' but argued that 'madness' was sometimes an understandable response to an intolerable situation - and that in the spectrum of human life, madness can offer insights as well as suffering.

Sadly Pete's life, like so many others in his position, ended in suicide. Mad Pride contested the idea that suicide was just a personal tragedy and saw it as a direct result of the lack of real support for people with mental health problems. A few months after Pete's death they issued a press release that argued:  '6,000 people a year in Britain are recorded as having committed suicide, though the real figure is probably far higher. New Labour is currently intent on pushing through a universally-criticised new mental health bill aimed at forcibly medicating psychiatric patients in the community and incarcerating people with "personality disorders" in case they become dangerous. This concern for public safety is based on wholly inaccurate stereotypes about the mentally ill. The fact is that violent acts by the mentally ill are extremely uncommon and we are far more likely to be dangers to ourselves. Where is the legislation that will help prevent us killing ourselves by improving our social conditions and treatment options? Mad Pride founder and media spokesman Pete Shaughnessy killed himself by jumping under a train at Battersea on December 15th last year. What is there in the new mental health bill that will protect people like Pete? F*ck all, that's what. Suicide is murder by society: we say STOP THE SUICIDE'.

Ten years after Pete's death, has anything changed?

(More about Pete Shaughnessy here, including his article about being a Dulwich Hamlet FC. supporter).

History Corner: Lord Haw Haw

I've mentioned before that William Joyce, who as 'Lord Haw Haw' was the voice of the Nazis' English language radio broadcasts during the Second World War, had once been involved in the Conservative Party in Dulwich. I've been reading more about him in 'The Meaning of Treason' by Rebecca West (1965), who attended Joyce's treason trial at the Old Bailey.

Joyce  was born in New York in 1906 to a pro-British Irish family, and moved to London in 1921 after spending most of his childhood in Galway.  West's book combines details of Joyce's life with the most incredible condescension to South London. Indeed she even implies that Joyce's South London period partly shaped his destiny as a place breeding frustrated ambition in those to whom traditional routes to power are blocked:

'He came to London before his family; and his destiny sent him down to South London, and there was significance in that. South London is not the London where England can be conquered. It is not London at all, even calling itself by a vague and elided location. 'Where do you live?' 'South the river'. The people on the other bank never speak of their landscape as "north of the river". They may go down east, or up west, but they move within London, where the Houses of Parliament are, and the Abbey, and Buckingham Palace'.

Joyce's first London home was in Longbeach Road SW11, 'in one of those streets which cover the hills round Clapham Common like a shabby striped grey counterpane'. While here Joyce began studies at Battersea Polytechnic. When his parents came to London afterwards he moved into the family home at 7 Allison Grove SE21, 'a house as delightfully situated as any in London. Allison Grove is a short road of small houses which has been hacked out from the corner of the gardens of a white Regency villa in the greenest part of Dulwich'. Ironically the house was destroyed by a German bomb early in the war: 'Nothing remained of it except a hole in the ground beside the remains of a neighbour's basement'.

Joyce was active in the Conservative Party's youth wing, the Imperial Youth League and later the Tory Party proper. He was also involved with the British Fascists from 1923 to 1925, who provided security for Conservative Party public events - Joyce prided himself on being a street-fighter and claimed to have helped the notoriously brutal Black and Tans in Ireland in their efforts to suppress Irish nationalists. It was in this physical capacity that Joyce sustained his striking scarred face during a fight while defending the platform at a 1924 Tory election meeting at Lambeth Baths in Battersea. In 1927 he married and  moved to Chelsea where he remained a Conservative Party activist until 1932 when he joined Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists. He subsequently became its Deputy Leader and Director of Propaganda.

Crystal Palace

In 1933 he was back in South London, living in in Crystal Palace in 'a home which, though cheap and unfashionable, possessed its picturesque distinction. He was staying in a flat in a road clinging to the top of an escarpment in the strangest spot in the strangeness of South London. It was far south of the river, where the tameness of town overspreads hills which, though insignificant in height, are wild in contour; and if it covers them with the tame shapes of houses it has to stack them in wild steepness. But above this suburban precipice the buildings themselves were wild with the wildness sometimes found in Victorian architecture. Outside the windows of his flat in Farquhar Road, two towers ran up into the sky and between them the torso of the Crystal Palace was at one and the same time a greenhouse and a Broad Church cathedral... A little way up the road was the Crystal Palace railway station, the most fantastic in London, so allusive, particularly in its cast-iron ornamental  work, to uplifting Victorian festivity that it wold not be surprising to find its platforms thronged by a choir singing an oratorio by Parry or Stainer.. It was from this flat, on 4 July 1933, that William Joyce addressed the application for a passport which cost him his life'. It was as a holder of a British passport that Joyce was later convicted of treason. His lawyer argued in his trial that he was technically a US citizen and therefore could not be guilty of treason to the British state, but Joyce had spent years arguing that he was British with the passport application the clinching evidence.

Joyce in Germany with his wife Margaret

Joyce split with Mosley in 1937 and founded the British National Socialist League, even more rabidly anti-semitic than the BUF. He moved to Germany just before the outbreak of war in 1939, and worked for the Nazi propaganda effort all the way through to their defeat in 1945. After being captured and brought back to England, Joyce was detained in Brixton prison, Wormwood Scrubs and finally Wandsworth, 'a shabby old prison, black as a coal tip, set among the trodden commons and the discoloured villas, the railway viaducts and the long streets of little houses, which lie "south of the river". The last days of his life in London were to be spent only a mile or two from the house in Longbeach Road where it had begun'. He was hanged for treason in January 1946.

Incidentally Joyce's daughter Heather Piercey ended up teaching in Deptford, trying to atone for his anti-semitism by promoting links between Christians and Jews (see this 2005 interview).

(See also Nickel in the Machine - The Execution of Lord Haw Haw at Wandsworth Prison in 1946, from where I sourced the photos).

The 1981 Riots in South London

Previously confidential Government papers released to the National Archives this week provide some fresh insights into the 1981 riots, which swept across England in July 1981. Included in the papers is some information on events in South London, which combined with contemporary press reports gives an idea of what happened in the area at that time.

Woolwich and Lewisham

 Included in the documents is a briefing from the F4 division of the Home Office (responsible for links with security services, special branch etc) with details from the Metropolitan Police of disturbances on Thursday 9th July: ‘At 7:24 pm 100 black youths and 50 white youths were reported at Woolwich, but there was no trouble… at 8.42 pm disturbances broke out at Woolwich, with youths throwing stones and overturning vehicles. Serials had previously been deployed to the Woolwich area for the Anti-Nazi League meeting and these, supplemented by the Special Patrol Group and Urgent Response Units deployed from Operations Room, moved into the area to prevent trouble… At 10.35 pm disturbances broke out at Lewisham … During this time the disturbances at Woolwich were continuing’. Statistics from the Met’s ‘R’ district (Woolwich) showed that 37 people had been arrested in Woolwich, with four minor injuries to police, 8 windows broken and two cars overturned. ‘P’ District (Lewisham) reported 10 arrests.

The Times reported these events the next day: 'London police quickly quelled what threatened to be a riot early yesterday evening in Woolwich, south-east London. About 200 black and Asian youths ran through the town centre smashing 15 shop windows and overturning two cars. There was some looting. The youths were outnumbered by police who quickly dispersed them. 27 arrests were made… In Lewisham, eight youths were arrested after clashes in which goods were looted from Chiesman’s department store. About 100 black youths in Deptford threw bottles at a police car (Times, 10 July 1981).

The Woolwich events seem to have been provoked by rumours of a racist skinhead invasion to attend a gig at the Tramshed (a similar occurence had led to the riots in Southall in the previous week). According to the Deptford and Peckham Mercury (16 July 1981), people initially gathered on the streets to defend local venues thought vulnerable to racist attack - groups were reported at local Sikh temples in Calderwood Street and Masons Hill (where an Anti Nazi League meting was taking place), a mosque in Thomas Street, and the Simba project (an African-Caribbean community group). An (untrue) rumour that the skinheads were arriving on the Woolwich ferry prompted hundreds of mainly young people to run down Powis Street, and it was here that shop windows were broken and cars overturned, with a tobacconist shop being looted.

The same paper reported that on that night too, bottles were thrown at police by a crowd on Tanners Hill, Deptford (presumably the same incident referred to in The Times). In Balham High Road 'Around 35 shops were damaged in a wave of violence which started shortly after midnight when some 200 youths roamed the streets. Worst hit was the Argos Discount Store where hundreds of pounds worth of goods were stolen' (South London Press, 14 July 1981). On the following Friday night, two cars were overturned in Daneville Road, Camberwell (Mercury, 16 July 1981), while 'a 15 year old youth was arrested in Rye Lane, Peckham, for allegedly throwing a petrol bomb at police'  (South London Press, 14 July 1981).

The trouble in Lewisham seems to have been fairly sporadic, prompting some self-congratulation from the police in the South London Press: 'Lewisham has escaped almost trouble free from a week of rioting in Britain's inner cities thanks to sensitive policing and public co-operation, a police chief said yesterday. Apart from a window being smashed at Chiesman's in Lewisham High-St, and a minor stone throwing incident in Sydenham on Saturday where three people were arrested, there have been no repeats of the mass looting and rioting which has hit many areas. Although many shopkeepers have taken the precaution of boarding up their windows and police have been issued with protective clothing and headgear, P District's acting commander Dennis Rowe said that he is "delighted" the borough has remained peaceful.

'Although many of our officers have been drafted into other areas where there have been riots and the ones left behind have had to work long hours, they are still endeavouring to remain patient and to police the area sensitively... I am aware that while we have to continue to remain firm and to make those arrests that are correct, we can still keep sight of the need to be understanding. Through a concerted effort by our liaison officer and home beat constables along with a tremendous spirit of co-operation by local community groups, youth leaders and the general public we have been successful... We are even getting a feedback from a number of black and white youths who are proud of their borough saying "This is our town and we don't want to smash it up' (SLP 17 July 1981).

Many local black people probably had a less rosy view of community-police relations, particularly in the aftermath of the New Cross Fire in January 1981. Indeed there was renewed controversy in July when police warned that a planned New Cross Massacre Action Committee fundraiser couldn't go ahead for licensing reasons at the Evelyn 190 Centre in Evelyn Street, Deptford ('Clash over fire victims' disco', Mercury, 16 July 1981).

Battersea Park

Battersea was another flashpoint: 'A gang of youths attacked four policeman on Sunday afternoon [12 July], striking them to the tarmac floor of the roller skating rink in Battersea Park. Two PCs - Robert Smith and Brian Tullock - were rushed to hospital with serious head wounds. PC Smith needed 13 stitches. "It all started when we answered a call saying a car had been overturned in the park, said Det. Con. Larry Lawrence, "Four of us were in plain clothes but as soon as we identified ourselves we were attacked by about 20 youths carrying hockey sticks and wooden staves. The blows rained down on PC Smith and PC Tullock was given a severe kicking". Mr Lawrence said a crowd of 200 stood watching. "The only human touch there was a girl who took off her cardigan and wrapped it around PC Smith's head as he lay bleeding". A crowd of youths carrying hockey sticks and wooden staves ran through the park during the early evening damaging two cars and throwing petrol bombs at the police'.
 
'Later in the evening three policeman were injured in Francis Chichester Way when 35 youths hurled missiles and fire bombs at police lines. The incidents followed outbreaks of violence on Saturday night when 17 arrests were made in Queenstown Road and Falcon Road area' (South London Press, 14 July 1981).
 
Brixton

The main Brixton riots occurred in April 1981,  arguably setting off the whole cycle of 1981 uprisings. But in July there were two further outbreaks, first of all on Friday 10 July:

''Violence returned to the streets of Brixton this weekend, a few hours after Lord Scarman finished part one of his enquiry into the April riots. Large crowds clashed with police, cars were overturned and set alight, shops were attacked and looted only a short distance from Lambeth Town Hall where GLC leader Ken Livingstone was addressing an Anti Nazi League meeting. His audience had a grandstand view as officers fought looters... 31 officers were hurt and there were 157 arrests, mainly for looting and assaulting police.

Trouble started at about 4 pm when police arrested a Rastafarian called Maliki in Atlantic Road. A popular disc jockey and community leader Lloyd Coxsone (32) tried to intervene but was arrested for obstruction. Within minutes youths had set up barricades across Atlantic Road... Police reinforcements were quickly on the scene but at 4:30 a Panda car in Atlantic Road was overturned and set on fire. An unmarked car which came to its aid was also overturned and fired but officers escaped unhurt.

Outside the Atlantic pub [later renamed the Dogstar in the 1990s] black leaders used a loud hailer to appeal for calm. Mr Maliki told the crowd that Mr Coxsone had been released and urged them to disperse. But some youths had already taken advantage of the confrontation to start looting shops in Atlantic Road. Rattner's the jewellers were attacked at 4.30 and a mob then ran down Electric Lane to raid Curry's the electrical goods shop...

Police formed themselves up in squads of about a dozen men with a sergeant in command. They lined up along the main road, walking under cover of riot shields towards the crowds. They were apparently trying to disperse the mob along Effra Road and Brixton Hill... By 8.30 police had cleared the centre of Brixton' (Source: South London Press, 14 July 1981).

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher visited Brixton police station in the early hours of the 14 July, following a meeting at New Scotland Yard where predictably senior officers lobbied for greater police powers and more riot equipment (the National Archives papers include a report of this meeting, and of arrangements to provide riot helmets and plastic bullets from the army to the police).

Burning police car in Brixton 1981 (not sure if this was in April or July)

Railton Road raids

Then on 15 July there was further trouble in Brixton following controversial police raids on Railton Road. The Government papers in the National Archives includes a detailed report of these raids, supposedly prompted by reports that petrol bombs were being stored there. 

  

Eleven premises were raided, numbers 35, 37, 47, 52, 54 and 60 Railton Road under warrants obtained under Section 187 of the Licensing Act 1964 ‘suspected of being used for unlawful drinking’, and 50, 56, 58, 62 and 64 under section 6 of the Criminal Justice Act. Several of the properties were semi-derelict and due for demolition. 176 CID and uniformed officer were employed ‘to enter the premises and a further 391 officers were either held in reserve or employed in cordoning off the area’. The report admitted that ‘No evidence was found during the operation of the manufacture of petrol bombs or of premises being used for illegal drinking that evening. Seven people were arrested, all for minor offences’.

Details in the report do give some indication of social life on 'the frontline' (as that part of Railton Road was known) at that time: at 47 ‘a new record player and a small quantity of drugs were found’; at 54 Railton Road, there were ’25 to 30 people on the premises’; at 58 the police paid compensation for damage to a space invaders machine and a pool table; at 62 ‘The ground floor of these premises was used as a quasi-masonic temple and at the time of the raid two ceremonial swords were laid out on the floor and other items of regalia stored in a cabinet.’ (Report of Enquiry by Deputy Assistant Commissioner Dear into Police Operations in Railton Road, Brixton on Wednesday 15 July 1981).
This report downplays the extent of damage to people's homes, but locally there was intense anger at the way the raids had been conducted:

'Joseph Francis (17), who was asleep when the raid occurred, said his unlocked bedroom door was axed by two policemen. He said a woman and baby in the room were thrown to the floor when the mattress was dragged from under them and furniture was ripped open.
Mr. Gladstone McKenzie arrived at his shop, the Railton Free Off Licence, to find the door and windows smashed and the back room ransacked. He said he had always had a good relationship with the police and was shocked by the extent of the damage. Some upstairs windows looked as though they had been broken from are inside as most of the glass was lying outside.

One of the houses wrecked during Wednesday's raid had just had £4,000 of Inner City Partnership money spent on it. No. 50 Railton Road is owned by Lambeth Council and leased to the Railton Youth Club...

100 youths were involved in running fights with police in Railton-rd. on Wednesday night. Petrol bombs, stones and bottles were thrown and 10 officers were injured. The trouble started just after 11 p.m. when two cars were set alight and a barricade of corrugated iron and timber set up behind them. But the police, drawn up in strength at the junction of Railton-rd. and Coldharbour-lane, made no move. Masked youths, one carrying a long stave, then charged the police lines, hurling missiles but were quickly driven back. A fire engine attempting to reach the burning cars was stoned. There was another scare when a convoy of eight powerful motorbikes ridden by white youths roared through the riot area.

At 11.45 police started cautiously moving up Railton-rd behind a wall of riot shields and sealing off side roads. Another large force was meanwhile approaching from the Herne Hill end. It was at about this time that the first petrol bombs were thrown. By 12.15 the barricade was being removed and police were in control of the area, though they remained on guard for some hours' (South London Press, 17 July 1981).

The left in Brixton

A briefing report for Ministers included in  the National Archives papers highlighted the involvement in left-wing groups, particularly in the Brixton area: ‘There is considerable evidence of activity by extremist organisations that have been hit by some of the worst of the recent violence' though it acknowledged that 'It seems unlikely that in any major case extremists have actually instigated the violence’. The report doesn't say that the radical left seems to have been too fragmented into rival groups to co-ordinate any kind of large scale effective action, but it does provide evidence of this.

The report mentions the Labour Committee for the Defence of Brixton founded following the 1981 riots at the instigation of the ‘Militant Tendency’ and operating ‘from an address in Railton Road’; ‘the Workers Revolutionary Party has a books hop in Atlantic Road and a Youth Training Centre in Stockwell’; ‘the Revolutionary Communist Group has its headquarters in Railton Road’; ‘the Revolutionary Communist Party set up a Lambeth Unemployed Workers Group shortly before the Riots, and has since formed a South London Workers Against Racism group, similar to the East London Workers Against Racism which attracted some notoriety for organising vigilante patrols’; ‘the Race Today Collective has offices in Brixton. The edition [sic] of its magazine is Darcus Howe, who has been associated with campaigning in support of the H-block hunger strikes, the New Cross Massacre Action Committee’; ‘After the riot the Socialist Workers Party circulated a leaflet in Brixton in which it said “it was a magnificent way for Brixton to fight back"’ (Brief for a Debate on Recent Outbreaks of Civil Disorder in Great Britain).

The aftermath: riot training on Greenwich peninsula

As reported at Greenwich Phantom,  following the riots the River Way Police Holding and Training Centre was created for a couple of years on Greenwich peninsula (Greenwich Council published a critical report in 1984 on 'Riot Training in Greenwich'). The map shows that this included  a mock-up street and areas for petrol bomb, CS gas, water cannon and smoke grenade training.

'Sinn Feiners' in New Cross, 1921

In June 1921 the Irish War of Independence was at its height. In May 1921 Sinn Fein, the party promoting Irish independence, won 124 of the 129 seats in the Irish parliamentary elections. The parliament was dissolved and the British government ruled Ireland directly as a colony. There were violent clashes between the Irish Republican Army and the British forces, including the notorious Black and Tans. It was in this context that sabotage of the railways was attempted in London, including a taxi hijack drama across SE London - I assume the car hired in New Cross and then hijacked in Lee was the same one that ended up in the shoot-out in Bromley. A month later a ceasefire was agreed in Ireland paving the way for most of the country to become a sovereign nation.

'OUTRAGES NEAR LONDON (Ashburton Guardian, 20 June 1921)

Sinn Feiners last night attempted to set fire to a number of railway signal boxes around London. The most serious outrage was at Clapton, where the assailants fired revolvers and wounded the signalman, who managed to telephone for assistance. He reached the next box, where he was medically attended. The criminals at Southall poured oil on the instruments and the woodwork, after binding and partially gagging the signalman, who was just able to shout for help. Workmen from the locomotive works nearby arrived just in time to prevent the fire. A similar attack was made at Barnes, where the fire was extinguished before much damage was done. A party of gunmen hired a taxicab at New Cross at midnight and told the driver to proceed to Lee. When approaching Lee the men jumped out of the taxi and surrounded the driver. They bound him and threw him on the roadside, and then disappeared with the car.

Nine arrests have been made. Scotland Yard reports that the signal-box outrages are the work of Sinn Feiners. The men arrested are all Irishmen, aged from seventeen to twenty-four years. They were armed with revolvers and carried wire-cutters and paraffin. At Bromley (Kent), the police stopped a taxi-cab from which six armed men fired. The police returned the tire, wounding a man named Robinson, who was recently acquitted on a charge of incendiarism. He, with three others, has been charged with firing at the police. with intent to murder.

Further attempts were made to damage the London railways last night, sleepers on the Brighton line at Battersea were set on fire, but the flames were extinguished before serious damage was done.

Further attempts were made to damage the London railways last night, bleepers on the Brighton line at Battersea were set on tire, but the flames were extinguished before serious damage was done'.

Rail Cuts Campaigns

Campaigns against cuts to rail services in South London are gaining momentum on at least two fronts.

The Save Our South London Line campaign is focusing on Boris Johnson's decision, as Chair of Transport for London, to close the South London Line from 2012. This service runs between Victoria and London Bridge via Battersea Park, Wandsworth Rd, Clapham High Street, Denmark Hill, Peckham Rye, Queens Rd Peckham and South Bermondsey. It is one of the few services that directly links South East and South West London without requiring a journey into town and back out again, and connects among other things the hospitals at Kings and the Maudsley at Denmark Hill with Guys at London Bridge More details of the campaign here.

The Save Our South London campaign includes Southwark Rail Users Group, Clapham Transport Users Group and Lambeth Public Transport Group. They are holding a public meeting this week, Wednesday 30th September (6.30pm for 7pm-9pm) at the Institute of Psychiatry, 16 De Crespigny Park, Camberwell, SE5.

Meanwhile the Forest Hill Society and the Sydenham Society are amongst those opposing cuts to services to London Bridge from Brockley, Honor Oak Park, Forest Hill, Sydenham and other stations on the same line. Southern Railway, who were awarded the South Central franchise this summer, intend to cut evening peak services from May 2010, resulting in a 30% reduction to trains running to these stations (from 6 trains per hour to just 4 trains per hour). Daytime off-peak services will also be cut from 6 to 4 trains per hour, and as from December 2009 there will no longer have any direct trains from Charing Cross, journeys back from the West End will always involve a change at London Bridge late at night. Campaigners have launched a petition here.

(See also the various discussions on this at 'the glass is half full actually' Brockley Central)

All over Battersea

It's been a while since I posted on South London Songs - basically the never ending effort to catalogue songs that reference a Transpontine location. Battersea is a bit far from our New Cross/Brockley/Deptford comfort zone but is undoubtedly south of the river and therefore eligible for inclusion!

So let us tip the hat to Stephen Patrick Morrissey for his song 'You're the One for Me, Fatty', the chorus of which features the immortal line 'All over Battersea, Some hope and some despair'

What is about Moz and Battersea? He played a gig at Battersea Power Station in 1997 and the place also features on the back cover of his 1990 Bona Drag album. There's also a bootleg of a 1991 Morrissey gig in Cologne with the title 'Battersea Patisserie'. Anybody know why?