Telegraph Hill Festival 2014

Telegraph Hill Festival opens this weekend, with three weeks of art, music, theatre and more, including activities for everyone from toddlers to pensioners. You can read the full programme here, so I won't labour the point.

The biggest events, in terms of size, will probably be the community production of Annie Get Your Gun, Irving Berlin's musical (No Business like Show Business etc) with a cast of hundreds this weekend.

Then on Sunday 6th April, 1 pm to 6 pm there's SKAM II - Skate, Art & Music on Sundayl in Telegraph Hill Lower Park, Erlanger Road SE14: 'You are warmly invited to come and enjoy a Skate, Art and Music event in Telegraph Hill Lower Park.  There will be a bike powered roller disco!. So grab your blades and boards and bring the whole family. Other World Arts will be running a workshop turning rubbish into art - please bring along empty plastic bottles and packaging.  Skate comps, pop up shops and pro skater displays.  Pedal Power will be back so bring a bike to plug in - the more you pedal the more music to dance to!  A fun afternoon for all ages' (free).

This event will also feature Rum BQ & Sound System: 'Trinity Music London presents another RumBQ session powered by the Unit 137 Sound System.  RumBQ is a celebration of music, food and drink, with uplifting sound system music, barbecue food and rum cocktails.  Expect warm bass and smiling faces.  This is a family friendly event, where all ages are welcome.  Weather permitting, the event will be held outside in the park, together with SKAM II.  Or, if there is a threat of rain, the event will be in the Narthex' (next to St Catherine's Church).

Their event in the park last May was a lot of fun.

Music Monday - Will Greenwood, Woodpecker Road

The funeral of Will Greenwood took place earlier this month in Glastonbury. Born Stephen Worley on 13 June 1959, he died on 10 February this year after being found ill on the canal boat he was living on.

Will Greenwood in Goddards pie and mash shop, Greenwich 2012

Will moved to Glastonbury in the mid-1980s, and as a guitarist he was very involved in the free festival/psychedelic music scene. He was one of the founders of The Space Pirates who played with bands like Here & Now, Hawkwind and indeed The Ozric Tentacles at the Crypt at St Paul's Church, Deptford at the psychedelic club there. He was part of the Peace Convoy that was infamously attacked by the police in 1985 at the Battle of the Beanfield as part of the operation to prevent the Stonehenge Free Festival taking place (Will wasn't present during the actual attack, but he was involved with the Convoy at that time).

Not sure what year this gig was - but the only Friday 14th July in the 1980s was 1989

Other bands/music projects he was involved iwth over the years included Blue Cheese From Space, Splatman, Glass Unicorn, Spannerman, Titanic Dance Band, Will Greenwood’s Impossible Stress Factor, Medicine, Kemunnos, Hubba, Indivisible, Invisible Opera, The Kaputniks and The Glissando Orchestra.

Will's roots were in South East London. His mum (Vera) and dad (Reg) actually met at the Co-op in Deptford. Later Will took some electronic music classes at Goldsmiths, and also recorded music at Music City in New Cross Road. A couple of years ago he recorded a song recalling his 1960s childhood in Woodpecker Road SE14. The road he grew up in has now been demolished, but the name lives on as a pathway through the new low-rise estate to the north of Fordham Park. The late Dewdrop Inn at the end of Woodpecker Road gets a mention (famous pub that closed in late 1990s - must do a post on it at some point). I think the lyrics are as follows:

Down on Woodpecker Road
I wander in a waking dream
Memories of childhood days
My maps and graphic overlays
reveal the lane beneath the tarmac
Helps me wander all the way back
to a time before the time I'm thinking of and that is why

I'm ambling along almost fifty years ago
Down Woodpecker Road

From the chip shop to the Dewdrop Inn,
misty memories unravelling
Time travelling is great
Allow me to elucidate
It's summer 1966
I'm flying with my building bricks
I'm running back from Newbury's
with my Zoom ice lolly from the freezer
Thunderbirds and Jetson Spacemen
World Cup Willie's won the war again
It was a simpler time, to feel that once again is why
I'm ambling along, oh so many years ago

Down Woodpecker Road
Past the old canals of Clifton Rise
Before the planners waved it all goodbye
Perhaps I must declare that Woodpecker Road's not there...

Ambling along far too many years ago
Down Woodpecker Road
From the front room to the scullery my family returns to me
My atavistic tendency means Woodpecker Road is me...

(Musically its tone reminds me of Nick Nicely's South London pyschedelic classic Hilly Fields)

Listen to Will singing the song at youtube



Read more on Will Greenwood in the Central Somerset Gazette 

Ian Wright remembers growing up on Honor Oak Estate

'Ian Wright: Nothing to Something' is a great documentary where the former Crystal Palace, Arsenal and England footballer talks about growing up in South East London. It's quite a moving film, with Wright just talking to camera about a rough and abusive childhood, rejection by football clubs as a youth player, before finally being signed by Crystal Palace as a 21 year old.

In the programme Wright says he grew up in 'Brockley and Crofton Park', specifically for much of his childhood on Honor Oak Estate. He recalls going on the Honor Oak Estate annual summer trip to the seaside, and going shopping for clothes in Peckham (looking enviously in Grants' shop window at shoes he couldn't afford). On the Estate he used to play football with David Rocastle, later his colleague at Arsenal (Wright gets very emotional over Rocastle's sad early death)

Ian Wright meets his old Primary School teacher Syd Pigden

He credits one of his primary school teachers, Mr Pigden, as having a major influence on his life as a positive male figure and a football mentor. In this programme the school isn't named, but Syd Pigden was at Turnham Primary School where Wright moved after starting out at Gordonbrock Primary. Many years later at Arsenal, Mr Pigden and Wright were reunited in another TV programme - with Wright surprized and overwhelmed at finding he was still alive

Later Wright went to Samuel Pepys Secondary School in Sprules/Wallbutton Road SE4 - now Christ the King VI Form. After leaving school, he worked at Tunnel Refineries in Greenwich before being discovered by Palace.

According to 'The Wright Stuff' by Rick Glanvill, (1995) Ian Wright was born in 1963 in the British Hospital, Samuel Street, Woolwich. His cousin Patrick Robinson was born a few days later: 'It probably never crossed the minds of the two proud mothers that the fruits of their wombs would, between them, eventually have Saturday night television stitched up: Ian Wright gracing the pastures of Match of the Day and Patrick Robinson providing the amiable beside manner as Martin 'Ash; Ashford in the popular BBC soap, Casualty'. They lived together for a while in Manor Avenue, Forest Hill

You can watch the programme for another few weeks at ITV. I saw Wright a couple of years ago in Stillness Road, think he still has some family in the area. His sons Shaun and Bradley Wright-Phillips - both also footballers - went to Haberdashers Askes school in New Cross.

Sketching New Cross

Really enjoyed the 'Sketching New Cross' exhibition at Hart's Lane Studios SE14 last weekend. People from 'London Drawing on Location Group' came down to New Cross/Deptford last month and sketched what they saw, before exhibiting their work

Lots of local landmarks featured, including New Cross Inn, Marquis of Granby, St Pauls Church etc.

My personal favourites were Sue Harding's evocative drawings of cafe life, including this one from the London Particular in New Cross Road.

Undercurrents - 1970s radical snippets

Undercurrents, 'the magazine of alternative science and technology', was published in England between 1972 and 1984. Christopher Squire was one of the editors and he has performed a great service to historians of radical movements by creating an online archive of the journal. I have had a preliminary look through for SE London content but I am sure if you have the time you could find lots more of interest there.

As explained in an article, 'How it All Got Started', early issues of the magazine were printed at the house of Ann Ward: 'Ann was a Labour councillor in Southwark who, with the aid of some money she’d inherited, had installed in the basement of her house a litho printing press, complete with plate­making and typesetting facilities, which she made available virtually free to non-profit groups. So the first Undercurrents (subtitled "the magazine of alternative science and technology”) was produced for little more than the cost of paper, with the aid of Ann Ward and of one Pat Coyne who came along to print the local community newspaper and was cajoled into helping us print Under­currents. He stayed'.

So here's a few local bits and pieces...

Albany Fire

In July 1978 there was a fire at the Albany Theatre in Deptford, then based in Creek Road. As Undercurrents reported, it 'was the focus of local opposition to the National Front and a regular venue for Rock Against Racism', and it was generally supposed that the fire was caused by a fascist arson attack.

Undercurrents, Oct-Nov 1978

Lewisham World Shop

This shop opened at 1 Sydenham Road SE26 in 1978, 'concentrating on world development issues' and selling 'wholefoods such as brown rice, peanuts, kidney beans' etc. It seems to have been a trailblazer in promoting 'fair trade'-  people involved with it also set up the 'Campaign Co-op' to import coffee direct from farmers co-operatives in East Africa (the address of the Co-op, in 1978, was 72 Rosendale Road, SE21).

Undercurrents, April-May 1978

Free-wheel Cycle Club

In 1977 the Free-Wheel Cycle Club was heading off to Shoreham (presumably typo in magazine) on a bike ride from Clifton Rise in New Cross. 'All anarchists/socialists' were welcome.

Undercurrent, December 1977-January 1978

Getrude/Roshi/Angelpoise at Lewisham Arthouse on Friday

Interesting gig coming up on Friday at Lewisham Arthouse:

'GERTRUDE are an alternative 4 piece band based in and around London. Formed as a collective in 1996 Gertrude soon caused a stir in many different London ‘scenes’.
They enjoy playing gigs in a wide variety of venues – such as onboard the Motorship Stubnitz or alongside ‘punk robots’ at a science/art event at the ICA. Gertrude weave electric cello, melodica, clarinet and keyboard with traditional rock instruments to create a unique sound. Live, the band is energetic, rhythmic and intense – their set often scattered with droll commentary and surreal musings. Gertrude have been influenced by punk rock’s ‘DIY’ ethos, feminist thinkers as well as numerous other bands, ideas, people and events.The band have toured Europe, Canada and the U.S. and have been asked to perform at various Ladyfest events. A new album LOVE AXE WISH LIST was released in November 2013 on their Urban Missfits label.
http://gertrude.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/Gertrude.music

ROSHI featuring PARS RADIO is the band built around Welsh-Iranian singer-writer Roshi Nasehi. Their music is a mix of sometimes radical interpretations of Iranian songs she grew up hearing alongside her own evocative and atmospheric songs. Her collaborator is Graham Dowdall who also works solo as Gagarin, is a member of Pere Ubu and former colleague of Nico, John Cale and many others. Roshi feat. Pars Radio have released several records to widespread acclaim. The most recent '3 Almonds & A Walnut' (2013) "a beguilingly unclassifiable mix of traditional roots and crunchy avant-garde sound effects and beats", The Independent (4 stars) "sophisticated cross-cultural urban art-pop... an original creative voice", Songlines
"Classic songs that transcend any "exotic" or "culture clash" boundaries..." The Quietus.
The band have gigged extensively in UK and also in Europe - live performances combining Roshi's incredible voice with keys, vocal looping as well as Graham's electronic beats, atmospheres and field recordings.
www.roshi.biz
https://www.soundcloud.com/roshi-2

)

ANGELPOISE is a new project from Jo Thomas and Charles Hayward conjuring a primitive elegance from voice, laptop and drums. Is this electronic circuitry, city traffic or blood flow? A constant play with sense of scale and dynamics invokes a visceral field of mesmeric hypnosis. Earlier they thought to both wear pinstripe suits, but that seems inappropriate now that the sound has stated its stark, stern & unequivocal demands.
https://soundcloud.com/charles-hayward-1/angelpoise-the-strange-irony
https://soundcloud.com/charles-hayward-1/angelpoise-shifty



Friday March 14: 8pm £5 bring your own refreshment
Lewisham Arthouse, 140, Lewisham Way, SE14 6PD

Music Monday: Deptford Shanty Crew

London Mayor Boris Johnson is due to make a decision this month on whether to give planning permission to the controversial proposal for a redevelopment of Convoys Wharf, the riverside site in Deptford that was once home to the Royal Dockyard. As reported here previously, Johnson announced last October that he was taking the power to make this decision away from Lewisham Council.

The Deptford Shanty Crew have written a song for the campaign against the current Convoys Wharf plan- 'Deptford's Dockyard':

Chorus:
And it's [stamp] sell her off to a big business man
There goes Deptford's dockyard
There goes our history and our land
Way off in the hands of the London mayor

Verses:
They dug up the anchor and took it away
There goes Deptford's dockyard
Would not listen to what the people say
Now it's way off in the hands of the London mayor

Locals wanna build the Lenox again
Right there in Deptford's dockyard
Could pass on their history to the next gen
But it's way off in the hands of the London mayor

Apprentices could learn the trade
Right there in Deptford's dockyard
Our maritime history could be saved
But it's way off in the hands of the London mayor

Open up the gardens for all to see
Right there in Deptford's dockyard
We want Evelyn's vision to be free
But it's way off in the hands of the London mayor

The developers just don't get the plan
There goes Deptford's dockyard
They're gonna flush our project down the pan
They put it in the hands of the London mayor

No jobs and homes for us in their plan
Right there in Deptford's dockyard
Just lots more cash in the developers bank
Now it's way off in the hands of the London mayor

They want to sell more expensive flats
Right there in Deptford's dockyard
But people come first and that is that
And Deptford's history's worth more than cash!

So listen to us and not their dough
It's our Deptford dockyard
Boris give our project a chance to grow
Release it from the hands of the London mayor



For more on the campaign, see Deptford Is...

Deptford Shanty Crew was formed last year, here they are performing at the Deptford Lounge in December 2013 singing the 19th century sailors song 'Homeward Bound', which in some versions mentions the Dog and Bell pub in Deptford and its 1820s landlord David Archer (see Deptford Misc for more detail):

'And now we haul to the Dog and Bell
Where there's good liquor for to sell.
ln comes old Archer with a smile,
Saying: "Drink, my lads, it's worth your while."
For I see you are homeward bound,
I see you are homeward bound'.

Supporting the Miners Strike at Goldsmiths in 1984/5

It's thirty years ago this week since the start of the miners strike, a long and bitter dispute that defined the mid-1980s in Britain. Ultimately the miners lost, and their claim that there was a secret Government plan to close down coal mines en masse was soon to proved correct. Miners support groups were set up all over the country, and there were all kinds of expressions of solidarity including countless benefit gigs. I was actually living in Kent at the start of the strike and was involved in supporting miners at local pits. There were many support groups in London, and the latest issue of Goldsmiths' student paper The Leopard includes an interesting article by Colin Fancy recalling support for the miners at Goldsmiths in New Cross. Here's a few extracts:

'the first meeting of the Goldsmiths’ Miners Support Group. We rattle buckets all around college crying: “Dig deep for the miners!” We propose a solidarity motion that is debated and passed at a packed Students’ Union meeting. We paste up posters saying ‘VICTORY TO THE MINERS’ all along Lewisham Way and down Deptford High Street.

My department, Media and Communications, announces that lecturers are to be cut from the small staff team. The Student Untion calls a meeting on the College Green to begin action. Some people suggest letters to the College Dean whilst we call for an occupation. The anti-cuts campaign begins with petitions, motions and lobbying the governors but soon picks up speed. Before we know it we are occupying the Administration building (which would later be renamed Whitehead building). James Curran, the recently appointed Head of the Communications department, is known for his book, Power Without Responsibility – and with the addition of a question mark this phrase is emblazoned on a huge banner hung across the occupied building...

Richard Hoggart, the College Dean, is reaching retirement and plays a waiting game rather than call the police – not that we do much to provoke him. With summer holidays approaching we end the occupation after eight days and sit our exams. The cuts to staff are postponed and we cautiously celebrate...

Goldsmiths College Student Union banner on a miners march in Whitehall in 1985

Women from the mining communities are playing a more and more crucial role as the strike fights to sustain itself. Two women from the Shirebrook Colliery in Derbyshire come to our Union meeting. Though nervous and reluctant to speak they tell moving tales of hardship, solidarity and resilience...

.... Surprisingly, Goldsmiths has its own local coalfield  – there are five pits less than an hour away in Kent [think there were only three left at this point  - Betteshanger, Snowdon and Tilmanstone]. One Sunday afternoon in December a coach load of students head down to Betteshanger Colliery with some Christmas presents. We have an evening in the Miners’ Social Club and are put up in miners’ family homes. We rise before dawn to join the other miners and students marching down the dark country lanes to the pit, singing: “I’d rather be a picket than a scab.” Not a single miner has crossed their picket line, but neither have they persuaded the foremen at the pit to join the strike, so the picket is a dignified but frustrating affair and we’re soon back to the social club for sausage sandwiches'.

Read the full article here. If you have any stories of the miners strike, especially as it was supported in South London, please leave a comment.

See also: Lewisham Miners Support Group/Lewisham Women Against Pit Closures 1984/85

Greenwich Peninsula Street Art

On the Thames riverfront on Greenwich peninsula, shortly before you get to the Dome if you are coming along the footpath from Greenwich, is Victoria Deep Water Terminal. One of the surviving industrial sites in the area, it is run by Hanson Heidelberg Cement, who make aggregates and other building materials.

The concrete surfaces on the path nearby have been redecorated, the most elaborate being this 2013 Nando Mambo piece (Nando Mambo is a Spanish graffiti artist I think)

The rest mainly consists of fairly colourful tagging overlooking the Thames and Canary Wharf.

Homes Under the Hammer - it's a wild Catford

BBC show 'Homes Under the Hammer' this week featured a house up for auction in Catford, to be precise on the Corbett Estate. They mentioned that the Estate was developed by a Quaker, as indeed once explained at Walking Hither Green:

'The eastern half of SE6 is all about the Corbett Estate. The street plan leaps out from the A-Z for its rigid grid pattern, a rare feature in south-east London...The estate was the dream scheme of Scottish MP Archibald Corbett, who had the notion of providing "a modern Hygeia" for hard-working and respectable families. The area would be littered with places of worship but not a single inn or tavern, and the 300 acres he purchased for the plan in 1896 are now full of north-of-the-border place names'.

More surprizing to me was the statement on the programme that Catford had been the home to Ben Elton, Spike Milligan and Cat Stevens. I knew about the first two but hadn't heard about the latter. A quick Google search suggests that the programme was relying on wikipedia, with the Catford entry stating that  Cat Stevens 'lived in a flat above a Catford furniture shop in the early sixties'. I can't find any other sources for that, but for now we'll take it. Stevens was born in 1948, and grew up in Soho (his family ran a restaurant in Shaftesbury Avenue), so if he did live in Catford it was presumably for a brief period in his early career. But if true it would mean that he once lived in the same borough as Lewisham-born reggae singer Maxi Priest, who had a big hit in 1989 with a cover of Stevens' Wild World. Priest went to the now closed Roger Manwood School in Brockley Rise, as did footballer David Rocastle.

Undercover: police spies in South London

'Undercover: the True Story of Britain's Secret Police' by Rob Evans and Paul Lewis is primarily about the work of the Special Demonstration Squad, a London-based police unit set up to infiltrate radical and not so radical movements. Of course the police Special Branch and other agencies have been using informers and undercover police officers for many years. The SDS, seemingly formed in the aftermath of the anti-Vietnam protests of the late 1960s, took this to a new level by deploying cops to live amongst activists, and indeed as activists, for long periods. During their deep cover deployments, they took a key role in organising protests and had sexual relationships, some times having children with women while pretending to be somebody else (using the identities of other, dead children). The SDS closed down in 2008, but its work has continued since in the guise of various shadowy groups such as the National Public Order Intelligence Unit.

If you've been following the authors' unfolding revelations in the Guardian and elsewhere, there probably won't be too many surprizes in this book. But gathering so much of the material together in one place does show how sustained and widespread the practice was (and presumably still is), bearing in mind that only a few undercover spies have been definitely identified out of a much larger number deployed.

Some of the South London connections mentioned in the book have been covered here before, including 'Rod Richardson', a presumed policeman involved in organising the May Day 2001 protests at the Elephant and Castle, and Jim Boyling/Jim Sutton, who lived in East Dulwich while infiltrating Reclaim the Streets.

Jim Boyling (real name) aka Jim Sutton of Reclaim the Streets

'Undercover' also includes other details, including the revelations from Pete Black that he took part in the violent anti-BNP protests in Welling in 1993 and that he was one of several spies deployed to try and dig dirt on the Stephen Lawrence campaign.The attempt to find information to discredit the Lawrence family supporters shows clearly that the undercover operation was not just targeting groups believed to be involved in direct action, but was used to undermine people who threatened to expose police wrong-doing.

Another revelation in the book is that at one time - and certainly in around 2001 - the clandestine HQ of the SDS was ' a rundown office block on Camberwell New Road... situated above the nondescript City Office Superstore stationers'. This was at 303-309 Camberwell New Road London SE5 0TF - now the home of the TFC Supermarket, next to St Marys Greek Orthodox Church.

TFC in Camberwell New Road - once a secret police HQ

If the practice has led to emotional abuse of activists, the strains of living a double life may not have done some of the cops any favours either. Dulwich-born Mark Kennedy seems to have ended up being abandoned by his former handlers after being exposed in 2011, as well as being deeply mistrusted by the activists who he spied on. Another case covered in the book is that of Mike Chitty/Mike Blake who infiltrated the Streatham-based South London Animal Movement in the 1980s, and continued to try and hang around with people from that scene after his police deployment had been ended.

Eight women  who were 'deceived into long term intimate relationships with undercover police officers who were infltrating environmental and social justice campaign groups' are now taking legal action against the police. Supporters from 'Police Spies Out of Lives' are calling for a picket of the Royal Courts of Justice at the next court hearing, expected to be on or about the 19th March.

Music Monday: Goldsmith Music Studios (& Thom Yorke at Laban)

Record producer Nigel Godrich, best known for his work with Radiohead, officially launched the new Goldsmiths Music Studios on New Cross Road last Thursday. According to Goldsmiths, it has 'been designed to be a creative space for research, performance and recording where musicians, both Goldsmiths students and members of the public, can make professional-level recordings using state-of-the-art equipment... The Studios, which consist of three live rooms, is available for commercial hire with an engineer or assistant engineer. Significant discounts available for Goldsmiths alumni (up to five years)'. Visit www.gold.ac.uk/music/recording-studios for more details about the facilities, equipment, engineers and how to book a session.

Also in attendance at the launch were Radiohead bassist Colin Greenwood and Travis frontman Fran Healy.

As well as producing all of the Radiohead albums and working with acts like Paul McCartney, U2 and R.E.M, Nigel Godrich is a member of Atoms for Peace along with Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke and Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea. Which reminds me, I never got round to posting about Atoms for Peace's Ingenue video. Released last year, it features Thom Yorke and dancer Fukiko Takase dancing on the stage at the Laban Theatre in Deptford in Feburary 2013, choreographed by Wayne McGregor.

A Welsh Church on Lewisham Way

St David's Day seems like a good time to document a lost local Welsh institution. The Presbyterian Church of Wales (Eglwys Bresbyteraidd Cymru) was open until recently at 289 Lewisham Way SE4. Its location suggests that at one time there must have been enough Welsh speaking presbyterians locally to sustain a congregation - or maybe they chose the site because Lewisham is an anagram of 'I Am Welsh'!

I am not sure when it closed, but the church and its neighbouring vicarage were put up for sale early last year and a nursery is opening there soon. The church building dates back to 1924, the minister's house being part of an earlier Georgian mansion.  The church had previously met (from 1901) at 2 Undercliff Road in what later became Loampit Gospel Hall.

interior of church (from Church Properties)

There are some recollections of the chapel in the comments to this thread at Brockley Central. Apparently the opera singer Geraint Evans (1922-1992) was sometimes among the congregation, and the actor Meredith Edwards (1917-1999).

photo by R.Sones at Geolocation

White Panthers in SE2 - Abbey Wood and the 1970s counter culture

The White Panther Party was a radical and anti-racist organisation originally established in the Detroit area in 1968 with the aim of bringing together white radicals to act alongside the Black Panther Party. It had its roots in the counter-culture, with one of its founders being John Sinclair - manager of the proto-punk band the MC5. Its ten point programme declared:

1. Full endorsement and support of the Black Panther Party's 10-point program and platform.
2. Total assault on the culture by any means necessary, including rock and roll, dope, and f***ing in the streets.
3. Free exchange of energy and materials—we demand the end of money!
4. Free food, clothes, housing, dope, music, bodies, medical care—everything free for every body!
5. Free access to information media—free the technology from the greed creeps!
6. Free time & space for all humans—dissolve all unnatural boundaries!
7. Free all schools and all structures from corporate rule—turn the buildings over to the people at once!
8. Free all prisoners everywhere—they are our comrades!
9. Free all soldiers at once—no more conscripted armies!
10. Free the people from their phony "leaders"—everyone must be a leader—freedom means free every one! All Power to the People!'

Inspired by this example, Mick Farren and others established The White Panther Party UK. Some of its exploits were featured in the International Times, now available in a great online archive. Interestingly, its 'Central Co-ordination Chapter' was based in Abbey Wood, with the address given as 1 Conference Road, SE2. As well as the Abbey Wood chapter (which later became the Greenwich chapter), there were South London groups in Croydon and Bromley.

International Times, 1972

In March 1972, they staged a protest in Woolwich, as reported in IT (24 March 1972): 'On Saturday 11 March approximately 40 members of the White Panther Party- from Abbey Wood, Ilford, West London and Croydon and Bromley Chapters - took to the streets of Woolwich in SE London. The reason was to protest about the distortion and lies that appear in a local paper, the Kentish Independent. Incidents of the day were the surrounding of a police car by angry Panthers, forcing the pig to freak and drive away at high speed, and a visit to the local police station by brothers and sisters where all were ejected by the pigs within five minutes. During the rest of the afternoon the Panthers were followed by plain-clothes pigs. Copies of a handbill distributed on the day—"This paper is an enemy of

the people"—are-available from Abbey Wood Chapter, White Panther Party'

The Abbey Wood group was involved in squatting and ran a food programme, activities that seem to have led plenty of conflict with the police. IT reported on 6 April 1972:

'One of the main functions of the Party is to awaken the people and to teach them strategic methods of resisting the power structure, this has caused Party members/Chapters to come into conflict with the pigs, the principle confrontations being in Glasgow and Abbey Wood (South East London). In Glasgow the Panthers have been hassled by the pigs continuously, mainly due to the effectiveness of their legal-aid programme, which brought legal-aid to the kids on the streets. (Glasgow CID have the Party's 10-Point Programme on their office wall). In Abbey Wood most of the confrontation occurred during a series of squats last year, where on a number of occasions brothers and sisters were violently assaulted and threatened by the pigs. The Party has also done a good deal of community work—trying to provide viable alternatives to the present pig system. Chapters have their own local programmes: in West London, Abbey Wood and (soon) Glasgow, free food programmes operate; Glasgow Panthers have many of the street gangs as members and they recently got a rent strike together in Easterhouse; most Chapters have as part of their local programmes, drug education- pro life drugs like marijuana, hashish, peyote, pure LSD and mescalin, and anti death drugs like phony THC, downers, speed and smack that threaten our nation like a plague'.

A report by John Carding in International Times, issue 142, 17 November 1972, gave further details: 'The White Panther Party is committed individually and organisationally to the struggle of ALL people for liberation and self-determination, by any means necessary, and is prepared to accept whatever consequences that commitment brings… The main thing to be said is that essentially the Party is composed of freaks off the street like anybody else in the community, without any experience of political work except that gained from plunging ahead the best way possible...

Greenwich Branch (ex-Abbey Wood). Weekly free food programme is still operating after two years. Members are involved in local community TV station, Cablevision, and in the formation of a 24 hour Advice Centre in the near future. Croydon and Bromley Branch: Involved mainly with squatting activity at the moment, which has brought them into conflict with the local pigs. All of the London Branches have been participating in the formation of a self-defence programme'.

I have come across one issue of 'Chapter?', a magazine produced by the Abbey Wood White Panthers, seemingly in 1971. It's a remarkable 60 page zine with articles on a wide range of movements including the Gay Liberation Front, People not Psychiatry, the Black Unity and Freedom Party, the Schools Action Union and more. 

In terms of local activities they were clearly very busy. An article on the free food programmes describes twice weekly deliveries to 60 old people on Abbey Wood and Thamesmead estates, as well as a Christmas visit to Bexley Psychiatric Hospital. The article was written by Stephen Lemanowicz, grandly titled 'Minister of Welfare, Abbey Wood Chapter'.

Other Abbey Wood committee members included John Carding (Co-ordinator), Bob Brown, Ray Carne and Tom X. At this time there address was 18 Openshaw Road, SE2

They had arts and drama/street theatre groups that met at St Michael's Church Hall in Abbey Wood Road. They were involved in organising a Schools Liberation Front with pupils from Abbey Wood, Roan Boys, Crown Woods, Bloomfield and Picardy Schools, and their squatting activities included briefly occupying an empty building at 55 Raglan Road in Woolwich - reported in local press as 'hippies struggle with police in Plumsted eviction scene'. Several member were also arrested fly posting the footbridge on Bostal Manor Way.

Their social HQ seems to have been the (now demolished) Harrow Inn in Abbey Wood 'where yer local Panthers hang out'. There was a Deja Vu club there with 'live groups every Friday' and 'Head Disco Show' on Sundays.

The Harrow Inn was where the White Panthers put on some benefit gigs, including underground legends Hawkwind and Pink Fairies on 12 February 1971 - packed with 700 people - and Clarke/Hutchinson and Mighty Baby in April 1971

This sympathetic report of one of the gigs at Harrow Inn (seemingly from local paper, but can't find details) mentions that Clark/Hutchison were also supported by The Blackheath Foot and Death Men, 'a crowd of Hells Angels and Hippies from the Blackheath area' who enjoyed morris dancing and drinking. They still exist today as the Blackheath Morris Men.

Image below comes from article about White Panthers in International Times no.127, 6 April 1972 - it seems to have been taken on Plumstead High Street, corner of Riverdale Road - compare with picture below of scene today, police station has been rebuilt but houses opposite largely unchanged. John Carding, who wrote this article in IT, is the guy with round glasses.

Further update, 8 October 2021:

Courtesy of Richard Alexander on facebook we now have some images from issue number two of Chapter! (now with exclamation mark rather than question mark), seemingly from early 1972. The fine front cover photo shows members of the group with the Viet Cong flag flying outside their squat. Inside there is a detailed account of their squatting which states that they had a White Panther commune at 1 Conduit Street, Woolwich/Plumstead SE18 'with about 15 sister and brothers'. Running out of space they opened a second commune house at Griffen Road, Plumstead before moving on to Ennis Road and then a squattted 'mansion' in Burrage Road, and on to Plum Lane with various eviction dramas along the way. A quick google maps search shows that the cover photo was taken at Conduit Road SE18, the house still standing.

Left to right: Sean O'Brien, Keith Bailey, Ray Carne, Rob Wilton and John Carding

Conduit Road today

From Chapter no. 2 (1972) - thanks to various bands for playing benefits for White Panthers, in addition to those mentioned above this includes Steve Peregrine Took (founder member of T.Rex with Marc Bolan), Brinsley Schwarz (who played at the Harrow Inn) and the White Panther Street Band.

Would love to hear any memories/stories about this scene...

(interestingly Pink Floyd played a free concert in Abbey Wood park in 1967)

New January 2025 - in this episode of 'Drifting through the streets' we revisit Abbey Wood and talk to Sean who lived in the White Panther commune in Conduit Street and has some great memories of early 70s radical outlaw life:

New Cross Fire Memorial in Fordham Park

In Fordham Park, New Cross (Childeric Road end), there's a memorial to the victims of the 1981 New Cross Fire, with a bench set opposite it for people to sit and contemplate the memorial.

The memorial stone was installed in 2012 and lists the 14 young people who died as a result of the terrible fire on 18th January 1981 in New Cross Road. Fordham Park was where thousands of people gathered in March 1981 to head into central London on the Black People's Day of Action in response to the fire.

For more on the New Cross Fire see previous posts:

New Cross Fire: the Bleakest Moment

New Cross Fire: remembered at the Albany

New Cross Fire plaque in New Cross Road