Horns of Taurus over New Cross Gate

My current favourite phone app is SkyView (I have only used the free version so far). Essentially an astronomy aid if you point it at the night sky it will tell you the names of the stars, planets and constellations that you can see. But of course the stars are still there during the day, it's just too bright for us to see them - other than the sun.  And SkyView does work in the day by showing what is currently invisible to the naked eye, enabling you to create some striking montages.


Here's Virgo over the old Deptford Town Hall on Sunday afternoon...

.... and Taurus over New Cross Sainsburys.

During a dull moment at work I did actually point it at my keyboard and spot that the international space station was currently in line with the middle of it - but I'm not going to subject you to that photo!

Deptford Town Hall: commoning and history

I enjoyed the New Cross Commoners event at Deptford Town Hall last month (14 November) as part of the Being Human Festival. The aim was to host an  'an evening of open reading and discussions on the possibilities of commoning in New Cross, organised around the preparation and eating of food' with 'Bread and spreads... prepared and eaten by community groups, historians, academics and local people to explore the politics of access, place and eating together'.

The format was very simple - there was lots of delicious food cooked at the Field in Queens Road, or donated by sympathetic bakers, and people just sat around at tables eating, chatting and taking turns in saying a few words from the front.  People talked about commoning, plans for a New Cross food co-op, community energy, and about living as local residents in the streets around Goldsmiths. It was the night after the terror attacks in Paris, and a speaker from Kenya (a country no stranger to Islamist terror) pondered on how the simple fact of people from different backgrounds eating and sharing together represented the 'opposite of terror'.

I gave a quick overview of the history of Deptford Town Hall; here's my notes:

- The Metropolitan Borough of Deptford was formed in 1900 - the area having formerly been divided between the old counties of Kent and Surrey (a boundary marker survives on the green at the back of Goldsmiths).

- The Town Hall for the new Council was built between 1903 and 1905, and for much of the 20th century was at the centre of local political and social life. The building housed the Council Chamber where the Council met to make decisions, as well as offices where people would have gone to sort out housing and other issues. Many of the great and terrible events of the century echoed through this building.

- In the First World War, the Town Hall was used as an enlistment centre. In a one week period in 1915, 750 men joined up there, forming a Deptford  Brigade of the Royal Field Artillery that established its HQ at a disused Thames Ironworks site in Blackheath Road. Many of these men never came home from the war.

'From Deptford, Brockley and New Cross they came : recruits of an excellent stamp : mechanics, shopmen, clerks and labourers' - Lt.-Col. H. W. Wiebkin (1923), A  Short History of the 39th (Deptford) Divisional Artillery: 1915-1918/

 - During the mass unemployment of the 1930s, the Town Hall (then with a Labour Council) welcomed marches of the unemployed. In 1932 two thousand unemployed workers met at  Woolwich, and marched with band playing to Deptford Town Hall. The marchers ‘all wearing red rosettes in their caps’ were put up at the Borough Hall, Laurie Grove, being given dinner, a mattress for the night and free use of the public baths. 

- On 29 November 1944 the Town Hall was damaged in the V2 rocket attack which killed 168 people on the site of the Woolworths store opposite.

- As migrants from the Carribean settled in the area from the 1950s they faced racist bans from some local pubs. The Anglo-Carribean Association was established to organise inclusive social evenings and they held events in Deptford Town Hall and elsewhere.

- Deptford Council was merged with Lewisham Council in 1965, so the building was no longer used as the Council HQ although it continued to be used for Lewisham Council offices and for various events. For instance, Lewisham Irish in Britain Representation Group held events there in the 1980s, such as a meeting in October 1987 where Annie Maguire spoke, a couple of years before her nephew Gerry Conlon and the rest of the ‘Guildford Four’ had their convictions quashed.

- Alex James from Blur recalls that on his 21st birthday in 1989, when he and other band members were squatting in a semi-derelict flat at 302A New Cross Road,  Damon Albarn 'climbed on to the roof of Deptford Town Hall next door and changed the time on the big clock, which stayed at the wrong time for several years' (Bit of a Blur: the Autobiography, 2010).

- The Town Hall came under Goldsmiths management from 1998. Of course, its history didn't stop at that point - since then it has hosted many interesting conferences, meetings and cultural events as well as being periodically occupied by students.

- In 2007, on the 200th anniversary of the slavery Abolition Act, Paul Hendrich initiated a discussion on the links between Deptford and slavery as embodied in the Town Hall building – statues outside include Francis Drake (who accompanied John Hawkins in 1568 to ‘obtain’ between 400-500 West Africans and sell them in the West Indies), Robert Blake (the head of Cromwell’s navy) and Nelson (who opposed the abolition of slavery). An event at the Town Hall in June 2007 on 'Repairing the Trauma of History: What does an apology of substance look like?' featured a group of people on the Sankofa Reconciliation Walk wearing yokes and chains attempting to make reparation for the acts of the seamen carved in stone on the front of the building.

I was pleased to see that on each of the tables at the New Cross Commoners event there was a Menu with a quote from my late friend Paul Hendrich, who wrote about the history of Deptford Town Hall and the relationship of Goldsmiths to New Cross in his article 'Charting a New Course for Deptford Town Hall' (Anthropology Matters, 2008).  Today (28 December) would have been Paul's 44th birthday, but sadly he was killed while riding his bike to Goldsmiths in January 2008. Paul called for us 'to overwrite the building with a new set of memories and meanings' and it felt like the New Cross Commoners were continuing that project.

'The work we need to do, then, is to overwrite the building with a new set of memories and meanings. The Town Hall retains its original jingoistic overtones, but these serve only for us to reject the imperialist nostalgia and to create a better-informed relationship with the building. The work of generating new meanings is already being done. One local resident, who wished to remain anonymous, supplied me with an alternative narrative for the figures on the front of Deptford Town Hall that plays on the legacy of sadness and regret. The resident said that, as penance for their past misdeeds, the souls of these noble seamen are trapped for eternity inside the statues. They are forced to watch the multi-culturalisation of New Cross and rue their past actions' (Paul Hendrich, 2008)

Radical New Cross: Protest and dissent 1875 – 2015

As part of the 2015 Being Human Festival of Humanities, Goldsmiths is hosting a series of events this month on the them 'Radical New Cross: Protest and dissent 1875 – 2015':

'From radical parish priests to anti-fascist resistance, New Cross has a long history of radicalism, as will be demonstrated through a series of events, all based on current research projects. Made possible by a collaboration with local community groups, these events are designed to engage the public in an open and collaborative way. Using New Cross as an anchor to explore marginalised histories, groups will be able to start conversations, reveal forgotten histories and demonstrate the relevance of research in the humanities'.

Events include:

- Saul Newman on Post anarchism (12 November);

- Women’s Art library exhibition (14-15 November) - printmaker and street artist Aida Wilde will join archivist and artist Ego Ahaiwe to produce a new poster inspired by a collection of hundreds of posters from the women’s movements of the 1970s and 80s.

 -BANK panel discussion (14 November) - discussion and materials from BANK art collective, charting the organisation’s dissident journey through the boom of the 1990’s London art scene.

- Textile networks (14 November)  - open workshop for crafters, hackers and makers based around the Embroidered digital commons project, a collective artwork initiated by artist Ele Carpenter.

- Commoning in Deptford Town Hall (14 November): For one evening only, Goldsmiths’ historic Deptford town hall will host a feast prepared and eaten by community groups, historians, academics and local people.

- New Cross data tourists (14 November) - interactive walking tour of New Cross. Participants will be given a device developed by the to try out on the streets and public spaces of New Cross.

- The battle of Lewisham: united against fascism (15 November): the history and context of anti-racist and anti-fascist resistance and protest in and around Lewisham in the 20th century.

- Not the measure of us: Black Women, New Cross, ‘New’ Human (15 November) - 'bring along a small example of black radical memorabilia and some words, thoughts and ideas to create a collective installation'.

(Full details of events in the programme here)

I hope to get along to some of this, including the New Cross Commoners event at Deptford Town Hall next Saturday - 'From 6pm food will be collectively cooked at the Field, at 385 Queens Road, New Cross. From 8 to 10pm we’ll be in the Deptford Town Hall Council Chamber, New Cross Road, SE14 6NW to eat and discuss. There would be an open mic round happening during the evening and we invite you to join and participate in the conversation and share your experience of the town hall, local area, food, and the relationship between Goldsmiths and New Cross. We are also inviting local groups and people to use the event at the end to ask for things and contacts they may need, announce local events and look for help. We look forward to seeing you there!'

Goldsmiths Occupation

Goldsmiths students are occupying the college's Deptford Town Hall building in New Cross Road, part of a wave of occupations that has also seen similar protests at Central St Martins (University of the Arts London) and the LSE, among others.

The full list of demands is as follows:

Goldsmiths occupation demands

Counselling services:

-          Recruit more counsellors to meet demand.

-          We want to see a tangible reduction in the waiting list for the service

-          Resist the planned restructure

-          Secure jobs within the service, and stop any redundancy

DSA:

-          Resist any cuts to the Disabled Students Allowance

-          Demand more investment in making the university accessible to students with disabilities

-          Bring all services in-house and put an end to all outsourcing

Sustaining Goldsmiths:

-          Establish an all union (UCU, Unison, Unite, GSU) committee to oversee the implementation of the sustaining goldsmiths plan.

-          Resist any increase in student numbers without matching it with an increase in resources.

-          Freeze Senior Management pay for five years and reduce their pay before anyone elses is.

Lack of space

-          Move the Senior Management Team to Warmington Tower to free up their spacious offices for teaching space. 

Curriculum:

-          Curriculum should be organised by students alongside academics, and not from the top-down. Open forums should be held to consider what the students want to learn

-          Transparency in the department- including better communication with students

-          The DSC system is a broken mechanism for communicating between students. The DSCs are overloaded with work, not respected by management and this leads to students to feeling alienated and disempowered from their departments 

Wider Aims:

-          A commitment to working towards a Free University of London

-          Full financial transparency

-          A radical reduction in the pay disparity of University staff, at the maximum of 6:1

-          Cut ties with unethical companies in regards to funding including those complicit in fossil fuel 

investment

-          Liberation: zero tolerance policies on all forms of prejudice, discrimination and oppression. One way we think this can be achieved is for annual funding to be provided for a full-time Women’s Officer who would be tasked with campaigning on Women and Liberation issues

-          Police not welcome on campus

-          Free Education

-          Fight marketisation and privatisation of higher education

-          Workers’ rights for everyone who works at Goldsmiths

-          All on-campus staff including security to be brought in house, receive a living wage as minimum and solidified union recognition.

-          Solidarity with LSE, UAL, University of Amsterdam  and King’s College London who are all in occupation

There's lots of talks and other events happening, check their twitter account for further details