Mourning the Channel Dead on the Thames by Deptford Creek

Cycling by the Thames yesterday we came across this impromptu memorial by Deptford Creek to the 27 people who died attempting to cross the Channel from France to England on 24 November 2021.

'It is a disgrace that we cared so little that we let you drown.
Let's hope our children have more humanity'

Imagine if it had been 27 English people drowned, say a group of people helping out with a cross-channel swim. Would people have more or less stopped talking about it a week later, would their names have been forgotten? If they had called for help, as seems to have happened here, would the authorities have quibbled about whether they were in English or French waters and left them to drown, or would they have mobilised every resource available to save them?

Thinking here of Judith Butler's question of' 'whose lives are considered valuable, whose lives are mourned, and whose lives are considered ungrievable...  An ungrievable life is one that cannot be mourned because it has never lived, that is, it has never counted as a life at all' (Frames of War: When is Life Grievable?, 2009).  Of course these lives are grieved by friends and families, but to many others they are merely migrants whose life or death is a matter of indifference. People attempting to block lifeboats, as happened recently in Hastings,  are basically saying that they would rather people drown than be rescued.   

So well done to the anonymous mourners of Deptford Creek, and let us not forget these names and faces-

Twana Mamand Muhammed

Khazal Ahmed, right, with her son Mubin Rezgar, older daughter Hadia Rezgar and younger daughter Hasti Rezgar

Maryam Nuri Muhamadamin

Harem Pirot

Donate to RNLI (lifeboats)

Support Channel Rescue (monitoring and support): 'We will not sit back and allow the English Channel to become a mass graveyard, like the waters of the Mediterranean'

Music Monday: Down on Deptford Creek by The Alan Tyler Show

Alan Tyler was the lead singer of The Rockingbirds, who in their early 1990s indie/country rock hey day put out a couple of albumns and a series of singles and EPs on Heavenly then Cooking Vinyl records.

A couple of years ago the Alan Tyler Show recorded their song 'Down on Deptford Creek':

The water’s rising with the tide
That comes in twice a day
The city streets are always near
But now we drift away

From muddy beds we’re lifted up
In boats that crack and creak
It’s time to strain the ropes again
Down on Deptford Creek

And though the wind is blowing low
And though my light is weak
I’ll see a moving picture show
Down on Deptford Creek

And when the tide begins to turn
And go back to the sea
A mossy wall shows velvet green
That used to be the quay

Where bigger boats had once come to
When Ha’penny Bridge was raised
Unloading cargo from afar
Back in the older days

Below the rumbling dockland train
Down in the waters bleak
I see the ages ebb and flow
Down on Deptford Creek

And when the sea has left the scene
It leaves a shallow flow
Where duck and wader, gull and grebe
And heron come and go

To pick among the rank remains
For filthy foraged fare
In tangled twine a Christmas tree
A broken office chair

Up on a rung my fisher-king
Above the sea-birds’ shriek
Surveys the silver in the stream
That swims in Deptford Creek

A flash of blue, a dip, a dive
A tiddler’s in its beak
I hope that I’ll see you again
Down on Deptford Creek
I hope that I’ll see you again
Down on Deptford Creek

from The Alan Tyler Show, released March 17, 2015
Words and music by Alan Tyler (published by Bucks Music

Definitely one more for the South London aongbook

Tales from the Riverbank with London Dreamtime + Irish tales at South East London Folklore Society

Really enjoyed 'Faeries of the Minesweeper' on 22 August from London Dreamtime. A tale of the fairies in a mill at Deptford Creek from Vanessa Woolf was interspersed with songs from Nigel of Bermondsey; costumes and settings were designed by Lucy Williams. Starting out by St Pauls Church we wound our way to a railway arch by Crossfields Estate and then across the Creek to finish up on the Minesweeper Boat.

Vanessa and Nigel on the Minesweeper, sadly didn't manage to get a good picture of them
with the many twilight ducks flying over.

They are back in action on another boat on Sunday 21 September (3:30 pm - 5:00 pm) with 'A Trip down the Thames in Story and Song' on HMS President, the 1918 ship redecorated as Dazzle Ship London by  artist Tobias Rehberger.The event is sponsored by the Londonist and is part of this months's Totally Thames season of events on and around the river. HMS President is moored at  Victoria Embankment, London EC4Y 0HJ.

Nigel is also busy next Thursday 11 September (8 pm) - hosting South East London Folklore Society at the Old Kings Head in Borough High Street. Guest this time is Thomas McCarthy, the Irish Traveller, Folk Singer & Storyteller. He has a repertoire of over 200 traditional songs that he sings unaccompanied. He also has an extensive story repertoire from which he shall be drawing from at SELFS. Expect to meet fairies, hunchbacks, banshees, druids, Finn McCool and Cuchulain (Facebook event details)  I've caught Tom singing a few times, including at Kit & Cutter, and he's a great talent.

Thomas McCarthy

Faeries of the Minesweeper

Planning to go to this on Friday 22 August, London Dreamtime in collaboration with designer Lucy Williams present 'Faeries of the Minesweeper'- 'music and supernatural tales of ships, waters and the beautiful Others' in Deptford Creek where the Minesweeper is moored. Email neckingernell@yahoo.com to reserve a place.

Tensions rise as Deptford secessionists launch petition

With the world's media focused on the crisis in Ukraine and the possibility of regions breaking away, a secessionist threat closer to home has so far gone largely unnoticed, except in the pages of the Newshopper and local blogs. Some settlers in the far East of Deptford are attempting to break up the integrity of the historic area by declaring that they do in fact live in Greenwich! They've even launched a petition to have their postcode changed from SE8 (Deptford) to SE10 (Greenwich). They say:

'The border between Deptford and Greenwich runs along Watergate street (crossing Creek Road). The border of the SE8/SE10 postcode runs along Deptford Creek. Citizens in this area are consistently effected by late / missing deliveries, higher insurance premiums etc. We all pay a higher rate of Council Tax to Greenwich, yet we are treated by the world as Deptford because of the power of the postcode. In addition to this our property prices are held at artificially low levels due to this confusion'.

This statue on the Peter the Great monument at Millennium Quay
was making its feelings clear today, wearing a 'Welcome to Deptford SE8' placard.

I must admit I thought with its reference to 'property prices' this was actually a satire on estate agents' hype, especially when I read the comment by somebody in the Newshopper that "Everything about the area is Greenwich, except the post code." I was going to write a long withering critique of this absurdity, but luckily 853 blog has saved me the time and done so there. The short version is that for historical reasons Deptford has been split for over a hundred years between being administered by two Councils - now Lewisham Council and Greenwich Council. The complainants presumably live in the Greenwich Council-adminstered side, but that no more means that they live 'in Greenwich' than people who live in Plumstead, Eltham or Woolwich - which are also within the so-called Royal Borough of Greenwich.

Deptford militia prepare to repel Greenwich incursion

The boundary between Greenwich and Deptford is Deptford Creek (the clue's in the name) and despite the efforts of estate agents to suggest otherwise, developments like Millennium Quay on the west side of the Creek are firmly in Deptford FULL STOP. That estate is actually on the site of the old Deptford Power Station, and other bits of Deptford in the Greenwich Council area include Deptford Green and the ancient parish church of St Nicholas Church, Deptford. I don't see them being renamed anytime soon. 

A far more obvious solution to avoid future confusion would be to redraw the borough boundaries so that Greenwich Council's area finishes at Deptford Creek. As 853 shows, this was what was originally proposed last time boundaries were reviewed in the 1990s. The reason it didn't go ahead was that Greenwich wanted all of Blackheath, so as a compromise Lewisham and Greenwich Councils split both Blackheath and Deptford between them - in both cases with little or no regard to the coherence of these areas.

Update Sunday 23 February: easy as it is to knock the people behind this ill-considered petition, the real villains are arguably developers Telford Homes who have been marketing their development on Copperas Street SE8 (next to the Laban) as 'Greenwich Creekside'. The website repeatedly refers to Greenwich rather than Deptford, saying for instance 'Greenwich is one of South London's most fascinating and vibrant districts. Our Greenwich properties lie just minutes from some of the city's most significant historical buildings - and you don't just have to take our word for that, as UNESCO has listed Maritime Greenwich as an official World Heritage Site due to the historical importance of the area'. It seems that the petition was started by people living there, rather than Millennium Quay. The same facts apply - whatever the developer might say this side of Deptford Creek is Deptford. Where does the Laban Centre think it is? Its website gives its address as 'Creekside, Deptford, SE8'. Correct.

Telford Homes website advertises Greenwich Creekside development - yes, its in the London Borough of Greenwich
but it is also very definitely in Deptford SE8

A little more on the Peter the Great statue...

I used to share the disdain some local people have for the  Peter the Great statue, but have changed my mind after reading an appreciation at Doilum blog and realizing that it is supposed to be subversively absurd:

'into this came Mihail Chemiakin, a Russian sculptor relatively unknown inside the UK, to jolly up this vapid development with a statue of Peter the Great. Peter the Great lived by the dockyard for four months as a young man in the seventeenth century at the home of the writer John Evelyn, where he studied shipbuilding and other new technologies coming out of England at the time.

The resulting work, unveiled in 2001, is a bizarre and ugly piece of art. There are three separate pieces on the municipal plinth: an empty throne to the right, a fat, squat dwarf to the left, and in the centre Peter the Great himself, his booming chest comical in juxtaposition to a tiny, disproportioned head. This sculpture does not flatter its subject matter - it holds it in contempt.

Chemiakin was a dissident artist in Soviet Russia and was exiled to the United States in 1971. Upon Russia's return to artisitic freedom Chemiakin went back to his homeland, and apparently his comical, disrespectful effigies of public figures are everywhere. He expresses a very Russian attitude to authority that sneers at, debases and takes the piss out of those that have repeatedly driven his country to despair. There is no measured critique in the Deptford statue of Peter the Great; instead an off-hand disdain that makes a laughing stock of its subject. Its main point that the everyday passer-by feels superior to the silly figures that stand above them. It is informed by a Russian sense of humour that celebrates the collective, downtrodden self against authority'.