Music Monday: South of the Thames - Skalah ft. Novelist

 

Skalah and Novelist at the Elephant

Great new track from up and coming Skalah with grime veteran Novelist. 

'I'm from the town, I'm from the zone, I'm from the South of the Thames...

I'm a navy boy in a navy world, I represent Brockley and Ladywell...

I'm a navy boy in a navy fit, I represent Lewisham fam that's it'

  

fabric · SKALAH Ft. Novelist - South of the Thames

Happy 35th birthday 56a Infoshop

Popped along yesterday to the 35th birthday party for 56a Infoshop, the boutique radical social centre/archive/bookshop at 56a Crampton Street SE17, just down from the Elephant and Castle. Keeping a constant presence, and keeping relevant amidst everything that has changed over this time, is an amazing achievement. Who said anarchists can't organise anything? Caught some poetry and a folk trio, sorry didn't catch their name (anyone know?)

 

Pizzeria Castello and other Elephant Spectres

'Poor Fiery Blocks: four bent perspectives of the Elephant and Castle' is the latest pamphlet in Christopher Jones's remarkable ongoing explorations of the area that he has been conducting/living for more than 30 years. One day somebody needs to publish his various related writings in a big book.

'Poor Fiery Blocks' is an attempt to come to terms with the 'new Elephant' and the psychic dislocation of being in a place which is geographically in the same spot but which bears no relation, socially or physically, to what was there before. There are older people who have experienced two cycles of this here, with the old tenement blocks and terraced housing demolished in the 1960s to make way for the Heygate Estate and shopping centre, now in turn knocked down. We experience the loss of physical landmarks on which to hang our memories, leaving behind our 'melancholic reverie for a dead past that we cannot mourn and let go of even if it appears as a phantasy of longing and a somewhat presence real enough to taste'. Yet somehow the ghosts linger: 'A Spectre is haunting the Elephant and Castle - the Spectre of deep rumination and desire of what still remains in plain view. The Spectre that goes backwards in time and destroys the present'.

For instance the Strata tower at the top of the Walworth Road replaced the demolished Castle House of which Chris writes: 'Part and parcel of the late mid-60's GLC built Draper Estate, Castle House, all offices above, below though the famous Pizzeria Castello. Never forgotten all the good nights out there. We would look for the puffed up black sacks on a Sunday morning in Castello's dumpsters at Eagle Yard full of unused pizza dough and make good good bread from it. There was also Uptown Bar for a bit there in the shop units at Castle House and funny fish in Fin King Aquatics we'd go and see. Then up the other end from pizza and fishes it larged itself Latino with The Ministry of Salsa club that was a part of Los Arrieros restaurant that had taken over the old Riley's Snooker Club in the mid-90s. Here we have heard it said that by 2005 Reggaeton was first aired and popularised in London here as a these Puerto Rican bangers were gaining favour over Salsa. Again history is wild and others claim 'La Bomba' at Ministry of Sound from 2005 as London's first Reggaeton night'.

Castle House - Pizzeria Castello at left and Ministry of Salsa at right

Ah yes the famous Pizzeria Castello at 20 Walworth Road, the Pullens anarchists, students and other locals rubbing shoulders with all sorts...  Down the Walworth Road  at number 144 was the headquarters of the Labour Party from 1980 to 1997. Later Labour MP Tom Watson started working there in 1984 as a teenage library assistant and recalled that his colleagues  'regularly took me to the legendary Pizzeria Castello restaurant, which at the time, made the best pizzas in London. They also introduced me to Frascati wine, which was supposed to be sophisticated in those days. It’s gone now, but the Pizzeria Castello rivalled the Gay Hussar for political intrigue. I would often see John Prescott and other politicians caucusing in there' (30 years ago today I started working for the Labour Party, Labour List, 2014).

Conservative prime minister John Major also ate there sometimes, though seemingly not a fan: 'In 1992 Major was heard saying that the pizzas available at the Pizzeria Castello in Elephant and Castle, run by Antonio Proietti, were 'the worst in the western world'. Evidently the changing tastes of a smarter set had passed him by. 'Proietti's restaurant has served the best pizzas in London since the early 1980s,' wrote the restaurant critic Jonathan Meades, in a state of shocked disbelief. 'They are far more Italian than the mass-produced English imitations. Perhaps this was lost on Mr Major, with his love of Little Chefs and Happy Eaters.' (Alwyn W. Turner, A Classless Society: Britain in the 1990s, 2013). I assume he spent time in the area when he was a minister, the Department of Health had several buildings nearby.

I went there a few times, also remember going into Riley's Snooker and American Pool Club at no.4. Back in the 1990s I was friends with a guy in Belfast (Turf Lodge) who had been an Irish Republican prisoner. His sister worked at Riley's and I went to her wedding party, a big Irish/Sierra Leonean booze up in tenants hall on Old Kent Road. Funnily enough around the same time I once saw Ulster Unionist MP David Trimble at a bus stop nearby. I mention this only as an example of the infinite subterranean connections linking this area to so many parts of the world. Truly all roads lead to the Elephant and its story isn't finished yet...

Anyway I found Castello's takeaway menu at flickr. It finally closed in 2006, though I think La Luna further down the Walworth Road  and still going was originally an offshoot from it.

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At one time (and certainly in the early 1970s) Castle House was the headquarters of Southwark Council Social Services. By the 1990s it was part of London South Bank University, as Brixton Hatter remembers on twitter :

You can buy 'Poor Fiery Blocks' and lots of other great stuff from the Past Tense shop on Etsy, as well as at the 56a Infoshop, 56 Crampton Street SE17 3AE

Looking History and other walks

A couple of walks coming up in the 'Looking History' series. My walk 'Peckham Against Racism and Fascism' takes place at 11 am on Sunday October 1st and will hopefully do what it says on the tin, exploring the history of anti-racist/fascist/colonialist moments and movements in the Rye Lane area.

Before that on Sunday 24th September there's 'A Kaleidoscope Walk of the Elephant and Castle' with people being encouraged to share stories about particular places with meaning to them.

One of the best things about these kind of walks is the contributions and memories of people who turn up. On the 'Dirty Walworth' walk in July there were was a nice moment where walk guide Chris passed round some sarsaparilla, a drink taken as a health tonic for many years in that area and famously sold on East Street market and at Baldwin's herbalist/health food shop on Walworth Road. That sparked off childhood memories from somebody present who also recalled being sent by her mother to pick up orange juice from Walworth health centre which was provided free to babies - she sneaked her first taste of orange.

On that same walk as we passed Husky Studios on Amelia Street I mentioned that I'd once read in South London Press that Destiny's Child had rehearsed there prior to a performance on Top of the Pops, so Beyonce had been in Walworth.  A guy who had been a regular drinker in the nearby Tankard pub for years said that lots of people using the studio had popped into the pub in the past including John Lydon and Stevie Wonder! Somebody else chimed in with the tale of Drake being spotted in Walworth Road bagel shop. Folklore or facts? Tell me more...

I also enjoyed the Radical History Faction walk around Newington Green, one of a series around Hackney and Islington. Visiting 29 Grosvenor Avenue - home to a radical commune in the early 1970s and raided by police searching for the Angry Brigade - one person on the walk remembered visiting for anarchist meetings (there was a print shop in the basement) while somebody else lived there now. They have one final walk this season coming up around Angel/Upper Street on 15th October

I also went on the Rye Lane film locations walk on 10 September, part of the Peckham and Nunhead Free Film Festival. It told some of the history of the area taking in locations from recent Rye Lane movie, including a park bench on Holly Grove, the Peckham Soul shop and the indoor market.

 

Joy Crookes - South London Songs

Joy Crookes at Queens Road, Peckham

Singer Joy Crookes has a new album out, Skin,  and very good it is too. She's been compared to Amy Winehouse, but she has a great voice of her own and her songs are rooted firmly in 2020s London. Joy grew up at Elephant and Castle and her songs reference various South London locations, notably the Elephant itself on the track '19th floor' which bemoans the changes there: 'Lost the tower where my heart is,  Cinema skylines that I don't recognise, Strip the life out of these streets,  It's a daylight robbery'. The song mentions 'Bopping down Walworth Road'

'When you were mine', a single from the album, has a Brixton setting - 'Hand in hand, Coldharbour Lane... Smile with a Brixton shine'.  The Ritzy cinema and Electric Avenue are namechecked and the video is filmed around Brixton market particularly the area near Brixton Rec.

 

Joy explored these streets on some of her earlier songs. London Mine (2019) is a kind of hymn to multicultural London with a video shot on Walworth Road featuring local faces including tailor George Dyer.  Lyrics include 'Lovers walk Old Kent Road' and Kennington Road is also mentioned.

 

There are kids playing football at Peckham Town's ground...

...and dancing in the now vanished Elephant and Castle shopping centre.

Another 2019 track, 'Two Nights' sings of 'runnin' through East Street with emotional baggage', and much of the video is shot in East Street market as well as at the Michael Faraday steel box memorial at the Elephant (erroneously believed by some to have once belonged to Richard James/Aphex Twin!)

'South London and Negro Emancipation' - 1863 anti-Slavery meeting at the Elephant & Castle

Events in the last few years have reminded us that there is still a lot of unfinished business from the American Civil War. The flag of the defeated Southern states is still a rallying point for racists, and since the start of the Black Lives Matters movement Confederate statues have been a  renewed focus of controversy.  Race and specifically slavery were at the heart of the rebellion of the South, something that was recognised worldwide at the time. Following President Lincoln's anti-slavery Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, Karl Marx famously drafted an Address to Lincoln on behalf of the International Workingmen's Association.

Mass meetings were held across Britain in support, including one at the Elephant and Castle, as reported in the South London Chronicle (7 February 1863) under the headline  'South London and Negro Emancipation': 'On Tuesday evening [3 February 1863]  a public meeting of the inhabitants of South London was held at Taylor's Depository, near the Elephant and Castle, for the purpose of expressing sympathy with the cause of negro emancipation in the United States. The working classes, whom the bills specially invited to attend, mustered in such large numbers that it was found necessary to hold another meeting outside'.

The meeting was chaired by a Mr W J Haynes and the Rev. Mr Barker moved the resolution 'That this meeting heartily unites in the general joy and thanksgiving which have been called forth by the proclamation issued by the President of the United States on the 1st of January 1863 declaring "then, thenceforward and forever free" more than three million slaves' and that this decree 'entitles Mr Lincoln to the sympathy and the moral support of the friends of freedom throughout the world'.

Mr G. Thompson told the meeting that 'The rebellion, which now convulsed America, was simply and exclusively a slaveholders' rebellion... all the officers of the rebel army were slaveholders, and it was for their profit that this rebellion had taken place'. The Rev. J. H. Ryland 'created a great sensation by narrating several harrowing tales of cruelty perpetrated by Southern planters on their slaves'.

Taylor's Depository was next to the Metropolitan Tabernacle on corner of St George's Road
(site today of the London College of Communication)

Taylor's Depository was a removal company and warehouse, but the building seemingly also included a lecture hall: 'In consequence of the number of people outside being fully equal to the number which had got crammed into the spacious Lecture Hall of the building, and as this immense multitude seemed determined not to separate until they heard something in respect of the question which had called them together, means were adopted to convert a portion of the lower area into a place of meeting; but, as the  space so appropriated could only contain about half the number anxious to gain admission, the other half had to listen as best they could to what was said in the open air outside the buildng'. People 'stood patiently in the open air for over two hours and a half'.

The outdoor meeting was presided over by Mr Sarrell who gave an eyewitness account of slavery in the Southern States based on his travels there. He was a vesrtyman from St George's, the church in Borough High Street.

Copies of the resolution were forwarded to Lincoln's office via the American minister (ambassador), along with similar resolutions from other meetings - the letter to Washington is included in published diplomatic correspondence.  Earlier, on 12th December 1862,  'a crowded meeting assembled at the Lambeth Baths, Westminster Road, to express sympathy with the anti-slavery party in America, the chair being occupied by the Rev. Newman Hall. The meeting was addressed by the Chairman, Mr Murphy, Mr Evans, Mr George Thompson, Mr Law, Mr Parkes, the Rev J H Rylance (who attended as a deputation from the Emancipation Society), Mr Huntingdon, Mr Maxwell, the Rev W Hawkins, Mr F W Chesson, and William Andrew Jackson, late Jefferson Davis' coachman. Resolutions in favour of the Federal Government were unanimously adopted' (Anti-Slavery Reporter, 1st January 1863). Another 'crowded meeting' was held at the same venue on the 19th of February  1863 (Anti-Slavery Reporter, March 6 1863).

The William A. Jackson referred to above had worked as a slave in the household of Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America. After escaping and fleeing to the north he was able to provide detailed information to the Union on Confederate plan, having often been present while Davis and officials were talking.

I assume the Rev J H Rylance at the Lambeth meeting was the same person as Rev J H Ryland at the Southwark meeting. Rylance was at one time the vicar of St Paul's Church in Westminster Bridge Road.

(thanks to John Levin/Anterotesis for spotting the South London Chronicle article)

No Nazis in South London 1977

This 'No Nazis in South London' poster dates from 1977. It calls for people to assemble for a demonstration on Saturday September 10th at Elephant and Castle called by the 'South London Co-ordinating Committee'.

This was a few weeks after the August 1977 anti-National Front 'Battle of Lewisham' but was not on the same scale. According to The Times (12 September 1977):

'Nine men were arrested at an anti-racist march by 1,500 people in south-east London on Saturday. Two policemen were slightly injured. It is understood that those arrested were counter-demonstrators. Two or them were juveniles.

The marchers, who included blacks and whites, passed through Walworth and Camberwell chanting : “Black and white united, will never be defeated.” About 30 young people walked alongside, taunting the marchers. The demonstration was organized by the South London Coordinating Committee for
Anti-Racist and Anti-Fascist Organizations. Speakers, who addressed a rally afterwards included the Bishop of Stepney, Dr Huddleston, the Bishop of Woolwich, the Right Rev Michael Marshall, the Bishop of Kingston upon Thames, the Right Rev Hugh Montefiore, and the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Southwark, the Most  Rev Michael Bowen'.

Anyone know any more?

There was an anti-fascist mobilisation against an NF march at Elephant and Castle in March 1980.

Ben Smith - Cityscapes

CITYSCAPES is an exhibition of paintings and drawings by Ben Smith at Xavier White’s Gallery in Blackheath:

'Ben Smith draws and paints the urban fabric of South London, drawing from life and creating paintings in his studio, aiming to portray the depth, repetition and interchangeability of the contemporary cityscape.  The works exhibited at Xavier White’s front room gallery capture a city in flux, caught in the cross currents of redevelopment, displacement and demolition.

Ben trained at Central Saint Martins in the 1990s. He has exhibited in group shows in Brick Lane, Camberwell and Peckham. This is his first London solo show.




Elephant I - Ben Smith

Elephant II - Ben Smith





View of Southwark - Ben Smith



Cityscapes is at Xavier White’s Gallery, Top Flat, 26 Vanbrugh Park, Blackheath, London SE3 7AF. Until May 6th. To view the exhibition call Xavier 07 88 99 72 374

Music Monday: Aphex Twin and legendary Elephant & Castle

Major junctions attract folklore as well as traffic, as those who pass by take their choice of the road less travelled or the road not taken, and wonder whether the guy with a stick and a dog is actually Papa Legba, guardian of the crossroads. This is even more so with a junction close to the heart of a major world city, so no surprise that the Elephant and Castle is the  location of many legends. There's the matter of its name - is it really a corruption of the  La Infanta de Castilla,  a supposed Spanish princess? (its seems not, most probably the area was just named after a local tavern). Then there's Shakespeare's Sister buried underneath the Elephant, isn't there?

And of course there's the legend of Richard James, better known as Aphex Twin. The techno/ambient pioneer's Cornish origins are well-known, but the story goes around that at one time he owned, or even lived in, the stainless steel tructure in the middle of the Elephant and Castle roundabout. Of course it isn't true, said structure is the Michael Faraday Memorial, built in 1961 and designed by the architect Rodney Gordon to commemorate the Victorian scientist who was born nearby. It houses an electricity sub-station for the London Underground.

photo from Atlas Obscura

James came up to London to study at Kingston Polytechnic in the early 1990s, and by 1994, when he was interviewed by David Toop, he was living in Stoke Newington. But not long after that he seems to have moved to somewhere near the Elephant. In 2001, he was interviewed by the Guardian in a cafe in the Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre, and in the same venue by John O'Connell in the The Face (October 2001). The latter seems to be the source of the tale: 'He's lived in Elephant & Castle for six years, in a converted bank vault. He likes it here. He's just bought the strange silver building, a 'third house' to add to the vault and his Scottish cottage, in the middle of the roundabout just down from the shopping centre. 'It used to be a sub-power station,' he explains. 'I'm exchanging contracts later this afternoon'. This is of course a classic piece of James mischievous misinformation, whether the journalist was clueless enough to believe it or in on the joke I do not know.

Of course that may mean that the bank vault story is not true either, but there's no reason to disbelieve that he lived in the area. Another interview from that period, seemingly conducted in the Italian cafe in the shopping centre, says that he lived on the top 3 floors of a converted bank, with another floor occupied by musical fellow traveller Cylob (Chris Jeffs). James is quoted as saying: '"Yeah, it's a cool neighbourhood. I like it here. It's quite not trendy here, that's why I moved here. There are no young people - nobody recognizes me here. I think in five years I only got recognized two times. Where my girlfriend lives, in East-End, it all became  pretty trendy, lots of people visit you. It's like: 'Oh, you live in a cool neighbourhood  so we'll come around and visit you.' Down here it's like this: 'Oh, you like down there?!  I never got there." He also says that the he used to be able to throw water bombs from his roof on to people queuing for the Ministry of Sound, which narrows the location down to somewhere north of the Elephant and on west side of Newington Causeway.

[Update - in a comment the Ruinist has identified the building as located at 89-93 Newington Causeway, an old bank now demolished and replaces by The Signal Building]

At some point he seems to have relocated to Scotland, but his Elephant period would have included the recording of his Windowlicker EP and the Drukqs album. The beautiful Avril 14th from the latter has featured in a number of film soundtracks and also served as the basis for Kanye West's Blame Game. 

Update, November 2021:

The metal box features in the video for Joy Crookes' 2019 track 'Two Nights'

The World Cup in South London

As the World Cup comes to an end, here's some pictures from around South London over the last month.

The Artmongers mural on Deptford High Street redecorated in Argentinian and German colours for today's final,
by artist Patricio Forrester, who is Argentinian 

Watching the world cup at Tomi's restaurant in Deptford High Street, on night Nigeria played Iran
(photo posted by DJ Tim Westwood on Instagram)

Brazilian and Colombian flags at Restaurante Santafereno in Brixton

Brazil fans at the Coronet at Elephant and Castle
(photo by James Doleman on twitter)

Colombian fans celebrate at the Elephant and Castle after their team beat Uruguay
(photo by Instailka)

England flag at 2 Sisters Tandoori in Nunhead

French flag in Kitto Road SE14

German flag on New Cross Road

England and Italian flags in Brockley Grove

Ghana fans at the Castle Tavern in Woolwich
(see 853's report on this)

May Day Greetings - Wat Tyler's Deptford May Day 1381 (as imagined By Robert Southey in 1794)

All the best you May Day revellers... or like me dreaming of revelling on a stressful day at work.

On Monday night, I gave a talk on the history of May Day in South London at a Haunt London event at the Miller pub by Guys Hospital SE1. Sarah Crofts also spoke on the 30th anniversary of the Deptford Jack in the Green, while David Aylward introduced a film of the Jack's 2006 procession through Deptford.

I have spoken and written about all this before - and you can download my history pamphlet 'May Day in South London' for free here. I had some new material for the talk though, including something on this dandy....

The romantic poet Robert Southey (1774-1843)  wrote his dramatic poem 'Wat Tyler' in 1794, at the height of his youthful radicalism and support for the French Revolution. Later he became Poet Laureate and a staunch defender of the status quo, and he was embarrassed when his paean the 1381 peasants revolt was reprinted in 1817.

The play opens at 'A BLACKSMITH'S-SHOP, Wat Tyler at work within. A May-pole before the Door' A group of May Day revellers including Tyler's daughter sings:

'Cheerful on this holiday,
Welcome we the merry May
On ev'ry sunny hillock spread,
The pale primrose rears her head;
Rich with sweets the western gale
Sweeps along the cowslip'd dale.
Every bank with violets gay,
Smiles to welcome in the May'.

'...During the Dance, Tyler lays down his Hammer, and sits mournfully down before his Door'. His friend Hob Carter asks:

'Why so sad, neighbour?—do not these gay sports,
This revelry of youth, recall the days
When we too mingled in the revelry;
And lightly tripping in the morris dance
Welcomed the merry month?'

Tyler has other things on his mind though:

'who should pay for The luxuries and riots of the court?
Who should support the flaunting courtier's pride,
Pay for their midnight revels, their rich garments,
Did not the state enforce?—Think ye, my friend,
That I—a humble blacksmith, here at Deptford,
Would part with these six groats—earn'd by hard toil,
All that I have! To massacre the Frenchmen,
Murder as enemies men I never saw!
Did not the state compel me?

His daughter Alice admonishes him:

'Did we not dance it well to-day, my father?
You know they chose me queen, and your friend Piers
Wreath'd me this cowslip garland for my head—
Is it not simple?—you are sad, my father!
You should have rested from your work to-day,
And given a few hours up to merriment—
But you are so serious!'

Still Tyler is no mood for merriment - he's got a major insurrection to launch!

I think in this extract we have most of the elements of the London May Day story:  the songs and dances of Merry May, the May Queen, the maypole and the Morris Dance, the nostalgia for the good old days, the radical politics, and a South London location too. Southey sets Tyler's blacksmith workshop in Deptford - this leader of the Kent rebels in 1381 has been variously attribute to here and to Dartford and Maidstone, Southey has presumably been influenced by Thomas Paine's The Rights of Man (1791) which states that 'Wat Tyler, whose proper name was Walter, and a tiler by trade, lived at Deptford'.

Incidentally, Southey himself lived in 1797,at Prospect House in Newington Butts, by what is now the Elephant and Castle.

Music Monday: Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet

The singing voice of an anonymous South London homeless man has moved people around the world long after his death. The composer Gavin Bryars built his piece Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet around a recording made in 1971. As he recalls:

'In 1971, when I lived in London, I was working with a friend, Alan Power, on a film about people living rough in the area around Elephant and Castle and Waterloo Station. In the course of being filmed, some people broke into drunken song - sometimes bits of opera, sometimes sentimental ballads - and one, who in fact did not drink, sang a religious song "Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet". This was not ultimately used in the film and I was given all the unused sections of tape, including this one.

When I played it at home, I found that his singing was in tune with my piano, and I improvised a simple accompaniment. I noticed, too, that the first section of the song - 13 bars in length - formed an effective loop which repeated in a slightly unpredictable way. I took the tape loop to Leicester, where I was working in the Fine Art Department, and copied the loop onto a continuous reel of tape, thinking about perhaps adding an orchestrated accompaniment to this. The door of the recording room opened on to one of the large painting studios and I left the tape copying, with the door open, while I went to have a cup of coffee. When I came back I found the normally lively room unnaturally subdued. People were moving about much more slowly than usual and a few were sitting alone, quietly weeping.

I was puzzled until I realised that the tape was still playing and that they had been overcome by the old man's singing. This convinced me of the emotional power of the music and of the possibilities offered by adding a simple, though gradually evolving, orchestral accompaniment that respected the tramp's nobility and simple faith. Although he died before he could hear what I had done with his singing, the piece remains as an eloquent, but understated testimony to his spirit and optimism'.



Bryars first released a version of this on Brian Eno's Obscure label in 1975. Another version was recorded in 1993, this time with Tom Waits joining in the singing along to the original sample in the later stages of the piece.

Music Mondays: Elephants and Castles

Elephants and Castles is a newish band made up of Robin Spencer, Christopher Anderson and Adam Lucas. The band, who played in New Cross at the Hill Station Cafe earlier this month, 'Met near the Elephant, became friends, became a band. Songs of, for, about, because... Concrete gems, hot air, medal-less martyrs, knee trembling, tv off, that goal against Liverpool, my dear tattoo, trunks and turrets...'.

Here's a demo of their song, Concrete Love, 'A nod to the architect Erno Goldfinger and his importance in some of the buildings round our way'.



Oh and hear they are performing it in the Elephant and Castle subway itself:



Listen to more on Soundcloud. There's also a song about Justin Fashanu.

Walworth radical history walk

Interesting radical history/geography walk last weekend from 56a InfoShop in Crampton Street,  around the the top end of Walworth Road and the Pullens Estate SE17 courtesy of Past Tense.

How the poor die

One theme was who gets remembered and who get forgotten in the official record, with reference to Orwell's How the Poor Die. We were reminded of Ayikoe Atayi, found dead in 2006 in the cupboard where he had been living in Perronet House SE1 while working as a cleaner sending money back to his famiy in Togo.

Reminded too of Richard O'Brien, a 37 year old father of seven who 'died in April 1994 after being pinned to the ground by three officers who said they were arresting him for being drunk and disorderly... Mr O'Brien's family say that his pleas that he could not breathe were ignored, and alleged that officers shouted anti-Irish abuse at him. Mr O'Brien suffered injuries in 31 areas including 12 cuts to the face and head' (Guardian 14 May 2002)

O'Brien was arrested while waiting for a taxi outside English Martyrs Catholic Social Club and taken to Walworth police station. A jury found that he had been 'unlawfully killed' by the police, but in 1999 three police officers were found not guilty of manslaughter. Nevertheless after being found liable for his death under the Fatal Accidents Act, the police finally paid £324,000 compensation to O'Brien's family in 2002.

Walworth Working Men's Lecture and Reading Rooms

There was also some reflection on the parallels between the 56a InfoShop -  a radical bookshop and archive in the area since 1991 - and an earlier local institution, the Walworth Working Men's Lecture and Reading Rooms in Camden Street. The poster from the 19th century invited people for lectures, discussion meetings, 'all the best of the periodicals' and 'books lent from the library' - all for 'one shilling per quarter'. Though don't think we would want to advertise today 'take your Wife that is, or is to be'!

'Just the place to go when work is over, you can see there all the news of the day'
(not sure of the date of this, though the place was certainly going in 1855)

'Mad Tracey from Croydon'

I used to love Tracey Emin. Her breakthrough exhibition at the South London Gallery in Camberwell 'I need Art like I need God' (way back in 1997) really blew me away, and I still think that she has brought some material into the art world boys club that has rarely found expression there before - young women's sexuality, abuse, abortion and growing up in unfashionable places: a 1999 documentary about her was famously titled 'Mad Tracey from Margate' (though we might note that she was actually born in Croydon May Day Hospital in 1963).

More recently she has become a bit of an embarrassing celeb, moaning about high taxes and, horror of horrors, publically admitting to voitng Tory in the last election (though she has subsequently criticised their art education policy). She has joined that select club with Morrissey and Jeanette Winterson of people whose younger selves' influence on my younger self can't be erased by their later baleful utterances - I guess you can't complain too much if you are drawn to professional contrarians and they end up acting in ways contrary to your own expectations of them.

I might not like Tracey Emin in her current guise,  but I can still admire the version of her who recalled walking through the Elephant and Castle in 1990 when Margaret Thatcher stood down as Prime Minister: 'I looked up at the buses, and people were banging on the windows and going 'Yeah!' And I noticed people were jumping up and down in the street...People looked so happy. I felt absolute jubilation' (quoted in 'Margaret Thatcher' by John Campbell, 2004).

As a homeless teenager, she ended up being  housed in Waterloo after six months of daily hassling Southwark Council . Later, she had a studio somewhere round the Elephant around 1990 though I'm not sure exactly where. In that period she worked for Southwark Council as a youth worker for a couple of years, and in 1992 she met her sometime collaborator Sarah Lucas when the latter had  an exhibition,'A penis nailed to a board', at City Racing - a former betting shop near the Oval (in a funny interview a couple of years ago, Lucas pointed out that she actually was a working class artist from a London council estate, whereas Emin's dad was a sometime businessman - not that Emin didn't have some very hard times).

 Emin has a new book out, My Photo Album, with some of the proceeds going to the no longer fashionable HIV charity The Terrence Higgins Trust. And I will also give her additional points for once donating some drawings to one of my favourite charities, Celia Hammond Animal Trust (of Lewisham Way, Canning Town and Hastings), from where we once secured two lovely cats - well nobody ever manages to come out of there with just one.

Come on Tracey, there's still time to dismiss those Cameron fan club moments as a terrible mid-life crisis and to grow old disgracefully.

Tracey Emin in her Elephant and Castle studio, 1990

Cuming Museum Fire

Devastated by the news of the fire on the Walworth Road this afternoon. The old Walworth town hall building next to the Heygate Estate houses the Cuming Museum, and that part of the building seems to have been worst hit by the fire (photo above from SE1 on twitter).

Of course it's great that none of the people working there seem to have been hurt - the fire spread very quickly - and that the same applies to the many firefighters who have helped tackle the blaze (many of them from stations threatened by Boris Johnson's fire service cuts).

But the Cuming Museum is not just a great local history museum, it also houses two irreplaceable collections, the 19th century Cuming collection of weird and wonderful global artefacts and Edward Lovett's collection of objects associated with early 20th century London folklore. I spent some happy hours researching in the latter collection a few years ago for the Folklore Society's London Lore conference.

It seems inevitable that these collections will have been severely damaged at least, if not destroyed altogether.

May Day 2001: a police spy at the Elephant & Castle?

A guest post from "La Infanta de Castilla"

The Elephant and Castle has been a bit of a hive of radical activity of late. The Self Organised London Social Space is still going a month after the initial occupation of Eileen House on Newington Causeway, a former Department of Health building scheduled for demolition. Nearby at 44-50 Lancaster Street, the empty Colorama 2 building has also been occupied as the Library Street Community Centre (though having been there since September 2012, they may soon be evicted having been in court this week). Last week there was a protest against workfare at the  London HQ of the Salvation Army also on Newington Causeway, and on March 7th activists from the Anti Raids Network disrupted UK Borders Agency checks opposite Elephant and Castle shopping centre.

Back in 2001, the Elephant was one of the gathering points for the May Day anti-capitalist protests. The theme that year was May Day Monopoly, with actions planned at sites across London.

Well as everyone knows Old Kent Road is the only South London location on the Monopoly board, so clearly the Elephant and Castle just had to be the South London focus.



The South London Mayday Collective met to plan for the event, calling on people to gather at the E&C roundabout from noon on Tuesday May 1st 2001. Several hundred people did so and there was a bit of a picnic on the roundabout with the Rinky Dink cycle powered sound system, before people headed off towards Kennington and then into town, dodging round side streets to get around police blockades.

In Central London a large part of the 5,000 crowd ended up being 'kettled' by the police for 8 hours by Oxford Circus. There were 92 arrests on the day, and plenty of bruises as police made free use of their batons.

But perhaps not everybody who was at the Elephant on May Day 2001 had straightforward motives. As part of its ongoing investigations into police infiltration, The Guardian last month identified 'Rod Richardson' as a possible undercover police agent, seemingly using the identity of a dead child ('Rod Richardson: the mystery of the protester who was not who he claimed', Guardian 6 February 2013).  Richardson is also discussed in another Guardian article by his former friend Laura Oldfield Ford:

'It was April 2001, and I was walking across the complicated system of roundabouts at Elephant and Castle in south London to meet a group of fellow activists in a bar at the Southbank. We were a group of anarchists, environmentalists and anti-capitalist protesters who were having a planning meeting for a May Day demonstration which was only days away. It was a balmy spring evening, and the sense of mounting excitement was palpable. At these big meetings you'd see a group of your friends and gravitate towards them. These were people you shared a strong affinity with – people you'd been on big European protests with, who you'd put yourself at risk with, maybe even been arrested and beaten up with. These were people you trusted implicitly, and with whom you shared a strong bond.

When I arrived, one of the first people who grabbed me in an embrace was Rod. We had only been friends for a year or so but in that time shared a lot of intense experiences, living as we did in an environment of strong camaraderie and full-time activism. We had both been around various anti-capitalist groups where we had occupied buildings, worked together on actions, travelled around the country together and enjoyed long drinking sessions after protests. He would come and visit and we would have meals together; he would sit at the table with us discussing ideas and strategies. It wasn't until after he vanished without a trace in 2003 that I became suspicious that "Rod" wasn't whom he claimed to be, and that he may have been an undercover police officer...

In 2001 we begun small meetings in my flat to discuss the logistics of blocking the Elephant and Castle roundabout to clog up a main artery into the City. Rod was a regular visitor, and even stayed the night there on occasion, most notably the night before the May Day 2001 protests. His reason for doing this was that he lived up in Hertfordshire and wanted to be in central London for the first actions of the day. Around this time, my flat was raided by the police – this seemed disproportionate when what we were actually arrested for was flyposting. We were held overnight in police cells, where even the duty sergeant expressed surprise that someone being held for "graffiti" would have their home raided.

Ten years on, "Rod" is now suspected to have been an undercover police officer. It is a disturbing thing to read about, to know that the name we called him may actually have belonged to a baby who died at two days old. Such an infiltration affects you psychologically, and impacts on your relationships with other people. It makes it more difficult to welcome new people into your friendship group. Politically, it's easy to see how damaging it is: the movement can't function if trust between activists is eroded. When a network is riven by accusations and suspicions, organisation and practical actions become an impossibility.

The weirdest thing of all is that I liked Rod a lot – he was such a nice bloke, always smiling and a good laugh in the pub. He appeared to be a committed activist, not afraid of breaking the law, challenging police lines and subjecting himself to, and in some cases instigating, difficult and dangerous situations for the sake of our collective principles. He never, to my knowledge, tried to initiate any kind of intimate relationship with anyone in the scene, but came across as genuinely decent and friendly. He left behind an odd floating feeling akin to grief, with questions left unanswered and a sense of betrayal and loss.

from Indymedia

If I saw him now, I would for an instant expect the smile and the warm embrace, because I haven't adjusted to the idea that the entire friendship may have been fake. I am still deeply confused by the whole episode. There is an element of me that wonders if he experienced confusion as well. It's hard to accept that all those feelings of kinship and affection, those familial bonds that form through full-time activism, were perhaps a sham. If Rod was indeed misguiding us all along, surely feelings of revulsion and guilt must have shivered across him when we called out to him in that stolen name'

As discussed here before, another infiltrator of radical movements - 'Jim Sutton' - lived undercover in East Dulwich around this period. Not that the practice is anything new - during the 1926 General Strike the Lewisham Council of Action was believed to have been infiltrated by a man called Johnstone.