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Punch, Morris, Nakba & London May Queen – 2012

Punch, Morris, Nakba & London May Queen: Saturday 12th May 2012 was an unusually busy day for me, rushing from Covent Garden to Westminster and then out to Hayes Common. There were two very different events I was determined not to miss, the Nakba Day protest at Downing Street remembering the anniversary of the eviction of around 750,000 Palestinians from their homes by Israeli forces in 1948 and the crowning of London’s 100th May Queen taking place on Hayes Common on the edge of London, around a hour’s travel away. And a couple of other events I could fit in too.

I wrote all of these up on My London Diary and you can read those accounts there on the links in this post – as well as finding many more pictures, so I won’t repeat myself too much here.

Punch Celebrates 350th Birthday – Covent Garden

Punch, Morris, Nakba & London May Queen - 2012 — ‘*Professors’ had come from around the world including Uncle Shiro the only Japanese Punch*

Punch and Judy professors from around the country and around the world brought their booths to Covent Garden this weekend to celebrate 350 years since Samuel Pepys first recorded a performance there in his diary.

His was the first recorded performance of the “Italian puppet play” and though Punch was then called Pulcinella and has obvious earlier roots in Italy it is regarded as the start of Punch and Judy in England.

The fun was only just starting when I left for more serious matters in Westminster. More about the day and many more pictures at Punch Celebrates 350th Birthday

Morris Men Occupy Westminster

Pavements across Westminster were filled with gaily dressed men with bells on them leaping and dancing as twelve Morris sides performed in around twenty sets over the day in Central London on the Westminster Day of Dance.

The performances were taking place at various locations in the City of Westminster, including the Victoria Embankment, St Margarets Westminster, Westminster Cathedral and Tate Britain, with the various Morris sides rotating between them throughout the day.

I left as the morning sessions ended and the Morris Men had a break for a doubtless mainly liquid lunch (dancing really is thirsty work) before the afternoon sessions which, after a euphemistically named ‘Tea Break’ were to conclude with a mass performance south of the river in Lambeth by the National Theatre.

Nakba Day Protest at Downing St

*This was a family protest – young protesters hold a Palestinian flag and placards*

Nakba Day is generally commemorated on 15 May and remembers the eviction of around 750,000 Palestinians from their homes by Israel forces in 1948. This London protest opposite Downing St was on the nearest Saturday.

At the time of the protest around 2000 Palestinians were on hunger strike in Israeli jails in protest against ‘administrative detention’ which allows them to be detained for consequtive periods of up to six months without any charge or trial.

Israel was still displacing Palestinians from their homes – and is currently in 2025 planning to clear them entirely from Gaza, either killing them through starvation, bombing or military eviction. Back in 2012 they were planning to forcibly displace around 40,000 Palestinian Bedouin from the Naqab desert, threatening to demolish the homes of around 85,000 Palestinians in East Jerusalem and to forcibly evict 2,000 from the West Bank.

Unfortunately I had to rush away while people were still arriving for the protest as I had promised to photograph the crowning of London’s 100th May Queen and was only able to take very few pictures to accompany the text.

More at Nakba Day Protest in London.

London Crowns 100th May Queen – Hayes, Kent

*The Merrie England Children Dance around the maypole with the newly crowned Queen at its centre*

The 100th London May Queen was crowned at the Merrie England and London May Queen Festival on Hayes Common, Kent, part of an unbroken tradition stretching back to 1913. 20 other Queens and their realms took part.

The ceremonies at Hayes Common, now a part of the London Borough of Bromley, continued even during both World Wars, though they were then carried out inside the local church as it was feared the procession around the village might attract unwanted attention from the German air force.

I’ve written often here and elsewhere about the London May Queen organisation and events, including a long account in my book London’s May Queens. [You can read a little more about this book – also available much more cheaply as an e-book – on >Re:PHOTO and can read the text and see many of the pictures at the book link.]

But there is one section of my post in 2012 which adds something to the story, so I’ll repeat it here.

“Whitelands College in London started its May Queen festival rather earlier in 1881 at the prompting of John Ruskin, and this still continues at the college (now part of the University of Roehampton) although since the college now admits men, some years they have a May King in place of a queen. Talking to one of the organisers of the event yesterday I learnt that Deedy had worked at Whitelands – contrary to the published information on him.”

Fortunately I arrived at Hayes Common just in time – though rather out of breath having run from Hayes Station – for the start of the procession around the village before the crowning.

Text and many more pictures at London Crowns 100th May Queen.

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Rainham and Hornchurch – 2006

Rainham and Hornchurch: On Thursday 11th May 2006 I put my Brompton folding bike on the train for the journey across London to Rainham Station. The journey, around 31 miles in a straight line, though rather longer on the ground, took me almost two hours on three trains, one Underground. As usual I took a book to read and relaxed on the journey.

Rainham is in Havering, part of Greater London and is the last station out to the east on the C2C rail service where the Travelcard I used covered. I did several rides and walks from here into Essex over the years, but I on this one stayed inside Greater London.

The first part of this bike ride followed the route of the London Loop path around the outskirts of London, which at that date came to a dead and desolate end at Coldharbour Point. The path now continues to end in Purfleet, and if you have the stamina you can continue walking on a riverside path which ends at Tilbury Docks before having to retrace your steps to Grays.

I didn’t write much about the ride back in 2006, and I didn’t ride very far. After returning from the end of the path I had a short ride west along the A13, which I don’t recommended as it is certainly not cycle friendly with much fast-moving traffic. The Mardyke Estate, where I went after that is now called ‘Orchard Village’ which at least avoids confusion with the Mardyke, a small river a few miles to the east. I continued roughly north through South Hornchurch, finally ending my ride at the District Line station of Elm Park.

The sculpture in the river facing the barges and the Tilda Rice plant is Diver: Regeneration by local sculptor John Kaufman, who died in 2002, not long after it was placed here in the mud in 2000. Some of the funding for it came from the landfill company which carried waste here to raise parts of the marshes above sea level.

*Waste Transfer Jetty – Landfill is raising much of the below sea-level marshes*

My pictures don’t reflect the nature of the area which has large areas of open with marshes and country parks and two rivers flowing through it, the Beam River and the Ingrebourne which flows into the Thames at Rainham Creek. I think it is also an area which has seen considerable regeneration since 2006 in the London Riverside area of Thames Gateway redevelopment.

*Coldharbour Point and the barbed wire where the London Loop then ended*

Here’s my account with the usual minor corrections from 2006:

Rainham is at the eastern edge of London, an area of marsh, industry, warehouses, container stacks, dereliction and landfill on the Essex (north) bank of the Thames, cut across by the elevated A13 trunk road which sweeps across the creek and on over the marshes to Purfleet, alongside the new Channel Tunnel Rail Link.

One day the Thames Path will continue past Coldharbour Point, but for the moment it’s a dead end. I eat my sandwiches and then turn back, making my way up onto the elevated roadway, but the views are disappointing.

At the next roundabout west I take a look around, leave the main road and then head north, past disused areas of the Ford Dagenham site and up through the Mardyke Estate and South Hornchurch.

At Elm Park the heat of our first hot day if the year – 25 Celsius in the shade, but I’ve been constantly in sun – gets to me and I give up and take the Underground towards home.

*One of many houses decorated for the Cup Final. Unfortunately West Ham lost to Liverpool*

The heat has buckled some of the rails and the District Line train has to crawl along, more or less at my cycling speed, but at least I can just sit and rest.

There are more pictures from the ride here.

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Rathmore Benches & Greyladies – New Charlton 1995

Rathmore Benches & Greyladies – New Charlton 1995: You can still see these mosaic decorated concrete benches on Troughton Rd and around the corner in Rathmore Rd. A short walk from Charlton Station, the building they are outside has for some years been the New Covenant Church Charlton.

*Rathmore Community Centre & Rathmore Benches (Former Good Shepherd Mission Hall), 61a, Troughton Road, New Charlton, Greenwich, 1995, 95c5-714*

The mosaic covered benches were installed here together with a mural on the walls behind in 1980. By 1995 the mural had been painted over but the benches remained, still in fairly good condition.

*Rathmore Community Centre & Rathmore Benches (Former Good Shepherd Mission Hall), 61a, Troughton Road, New Charlton, Greenwich, 1995, 95c5-713*

The benches were created as a part of a ‘Past, Present and Future of Charlton‘ project with the help of adults and children from the community centre by Greenwich Mural Workshop, who got funding to restore them in 2019 as they had suffered from wear and tear and some vandalism.

*Rathmore Community Centre & Rathmore Benches (Former Good Shepherd Mission Hall), 61a, Troughton Road, New Charlton, Greenwich, 1995, 95c5-835*

On the For Walls With Tongues web site of Greenwich Mural Workshop you can see pictures of the missing mural as well as the benches and learn more about their creation.

*Rathmore Community Centre & Rathmore Benches (Former Good Shepherd Mission Hall), 61a, Troughton Road, New Charlton, Greenwich, 1995, 95c5-834*

The centre had been built as the Good Shepherd Mission Hall and the Greenwich Local Heritage List states it is a 200-seater mission hall built 1900 to designs of architect J Rowland and was developed from Holy Trinity Mission run by Greyladies College.

*Rathmore Community Centre & Rathmore Benches (Former Good Shepherd Mission Hall), 61a, Troughton Road, New Charlton, Greenwich, 1995, 95c5-833*

Greyladies College for Women Workers was based in Dartmouth Row , in “a delightful country house, once the mansion of Lord Dartmouth, and stands on the breezy heights of Blackheath, in the midst of its own beautiful grounds, and with far-stretching views over the surrounding country to the Crystal Palace.“

“The great aim of the Greyladies’ College is to bring together lonely women working in isolation without a definite plan, and also women who are possibly daughters in a large family and find it difficult to separate themselves from social distraction in order to follow religious and philanthropic work.“

The Greyladies worked in 22 parishes in South London “helping in the work of the Church of England under the incumbents of the diocese.” The description of them in Volume 1 of Every Woman’s Encylclopaedia published in 1910-12 is fascinatingly and charmingly dated.

Three Colt Street & Limekiln Dock – 1990

Three Colt Street & Limekiln Dock: My walk in Limehouse on Sunday 6th January 1990 continued. The previous post from this walk is More from Narrow Street – 1990.

*Limekiln Wharf, Development, Three Colt St, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90-1b-34*

Limehouse gets its name from the making of quicklime here, an industry dating back here into antiquity getting its first written reference in 1335. The newly developed flats of Limekiln Wharf and Dundee Wharf on the south side of Limekiln Creek (or Limekiln Dock) are probably on the site of old lime kilns (lime oasts) where chalk (calcium carbonate) brought by boats from Swanscombe or Northfleet or other areas of North Kent was brought ashore in the Creek and roasted to give quicklime (calcium oxide) the vital ingredient for cement, mortar and concrete and with many other uses. When water is then added it forms slaked lime (calcium hydroxide.)

Along the street are the late-Victorian buildings of the Dundee, Perth, and London Shipping Co. which were used by the London Docklands Development Corporation which was responsible for the redevelopment of docklands, over-riding the normal functions of the local authorities and still have the LDDC logo as a weathercock, though this was not in place in 1990.

*Limekiln Dock, Three Colt St, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90-1b-36*

The always interesting ‘A London Inheritance‘ has a fascinating and very detailed account of the area, based on considerable research, Limekiln Dock and the Black Ditch.

The Black Ditch has been much mythologised as one of ‘London’s Lost Rivers‘ and its lower parts were after the 1855 replaced by the Limekiln Dock Sewer. I imagine the Black Ditch and this were both subsumed into Bazalgette’s grand designs in the 1860s and now flow to Beckton.

The view here is looking out towards the River Thames. Since 1996 there has been a swing bridge taking the Thames Path across the mouth of the creek. It had to be built as a swing bridge because of the ancient rights of navigation into the dock, though I would be surprised to find that it has ever needed to be swung to allow this.

*Limekiln Dock, Three Colt St, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90-1b-25*

There seemed to be quite a lot of rubbish in the dock in 1990, but in earlier years things were much worse. The post in ‘A London Inheritance’ quotes a court case from 1893 where it is described as “the common receptacle for the sewerage of part of Fore-street, and also being a harbour for a large portion of the animal refuse of the Thames.”

*J R Wilson, Ship Stores, Limekiln Dock, Three Colt St, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90-1b-26*

J R Wilson, Ship Stores at Limehouse Wharf has a frontage on Narrow Street and its back faces Limekiln Dock. I think the area from which I took this and the other pictures is no longer open to the public, but gave access to the Thames Path before the footbridge across the dock was built. In the foreground is the white-painted flood wall which was built around the Thames in London in the 1970s. Together with the Thames Barrier this has protected London from the serious floods of earlier years, but with rising sea levels will soon become inadequate.

*110, Three Colt St, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90-1b-11*

The late-Victorian buildings of the Dundee, Perth, and London Shipping Co were in 1990 in use by D D Repro Limited, ‘Plain Paper & Dyeline Specialists. Their board on the building depicts the rough outline of the Thames from Tower Bridge around the Isle of Dogs and on to Beckton.

*The Enterprise, pub, Milligan St, 145, Three Colt St, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90-1b-12*

The sign on the pub shows a three-masted ship caught in ice. The ships on Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 search for the North-West Passage were last seen by the whaler ‘Enterprise’, and I think this picture may be a depiction of one of his two ships, which were abandoned after being ice-bound for over a year. It was a story that very much caught the Victorian imagination.

The pub is said to have closed in 1963, but was open again in 1990, It closed in 2001, the pub became an Indian restaurant but is now an estate agents with another floor added in recent years.

Still more to come from my Limehouse walk in 1990.

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Long Live Mayday! London 2015

Long Live Mayday! London 2015: I don’t often post recent work I’ve taken on this site but I am still covering events in London though not on the scale I used to. I no longer post regularly on My London Diary as there are almost the maximum possible number of files on that site and I would have to delete older work to continue posting there. But all my new work – or at least my selection of it – now gets posted on Facebook – and you can follow me there.

As well as albums of new work I also post one of my earlier images every morning – currently colour images from around 1986.

I’m still working on putting a large selection of my earlier work on film on Flickr, both black and white and colour images, mainly of buildings and events in London but also pictures from Paris, Hull and elsewhere. Currently I’ve uploaded almost 40,000 images, mainly from 1974 to 1987, probably around a quarter of those I took. It’s now one of the largest archives of images of London, including many of its less well known parts.

But on Thursday 1st of May, International Workers Day, I was out again on the streets of London, meeting friends and taking pictures at the start of the London May Day March at Clerkenwell Green.

It was London’s hottest May Day since records began, and I couldn’t walk the whole length of the march taking pictures now. So I started with the marchers and then stopped for the whole long march to go past me, photographing people and banners. Then I walked down the shaded side of Farringdon Road to Farringdon Station to catch the Elizabeth Line – cool in several ways – the one stop to Tottenham Court Road where I changed to the rather warmer Northern Line, arriving at Charing Cross well before the march.

I walked along Strand and sat down at a bus stop. Traffic had already been stopped along the road ahead of the march, but the TfL indicator board was still showing buses due which would not arrive until after the march had passed and I passed on the news to those waiting so they could find other transport – or stay to watch the march.

Sitting at the bus stop I was able to eat my sandwich lunch before the march drew close and I walked towards it, continuing moving slowly east as it came past me taking more pictures. I was on my way to the Indian High Commission where I had heard another protest was taking place.

*London, UK, 1 May 2025. Sikhs protest opposite the Indian High Commission against Modi over Kashmir*

When I arrived at Aldwych I found there were actually two groups of protesters, both there because of the killing of tourists last month in Kashmir. Opposite the High Commission were a group of Sikhs with a effigy of Indian Prime Minister Modi hanging upside down, opposed to his extreme-fight Hindu nationalist government which has threatened Pakistan, suspended the water-sharing agreement and made savage reprisals against Kashmiris after the 22 April attack.

*London, UK, 1 May 2025. Supporters of Indian Prime Minister Modi protest against terrorism in Kashmir*

After spending a few minutes photographing them I walked across the road to another group of protesters at the side of the High Commission. They had come to support Modi and protest against Pakistan which he claims had supported the militant group which carried out the killing. Part of Kashmir became a disputed territory at partition in 1947 when the local ruler decided to join India despite a majority Muslim population. It was granted some autonomy under an article of the Indian constitution, but this was recently rescinded. The country has been under a savage military occupation by India for many years. Other parts of Kashmir are administered by Pakistan and a smaller area by China.

On May Day I sent three groups of pictures to on-lin agency Alamy, a total of 84 pictures. The pictures in the three albums on Facebook are smaller versions of the same 84 images I posted the following day and a few of them are in this post. Unfortunately I think you need a Facebook login (free) to view the rest.

International Workers Day, Clerkenwell Green, London
International Workers Day March, London
Opposing Protests over Kashmir at Indian High Commission

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Southwark, Bermondsey & Rotherhithe – 2007

Southwark, Bermondsey & Rotherhithe: On Thursday 3rd May, 2007 I took a walk “south of the River” in Southwark, Bermondsey & Rotherhithe.

I was going to meet a few photographer friends in the evening, but when I’d finished lunch the weather looked so good and I had nothing vital to work on that afternoon so I took an early train to Waterloo, and then started to wander for the nexy three hours or so, taking a few pictures as I went.

Most of the area had been familiar to me since I began photographing London seriously back in the 1970s – some of my earlier pictures then were along parts of the riverside walkway much of which later in 1977 became part of the Silver Jubilee Walkway or later the Thames Path.

But I started away from the Thames on Southwark Street, turning down Redcross Way to the gates of Crossbones Graveyard, decorated with ribbons and strips of fabric in memory of the ‘Winchester Geese’, young women licensed by the Bishop Of Winchester to work within the liberty of the clink, where activities such as brothels, theatres (including Shakespeare’s Globe), bull and bear baiting were permitted to entertain gentlemen who were rowed across from the City.

The graveyard closed for burials in 1853, by which time there were thought to have been as many as 15,000 buried there, graves for those the church would not bury in consecrated ground, including many of the prostitutes and their young infants, but latterly many too poor to afford a proper burial. In 2007 much was still a building site but now there is a memorial garden there.

I continued in Southwark past the Charterhouse-in-Southwark Mission, on the corner of Crosby Row and Porlock St – demolished in 2011 to build affordable housing and along Long Lane to Bermondsey.

Years earlier I had written and published a folded A4 leaflet for an industrial archaeology walk around here, printing and selling several hundreds of copies on my dot-matrix printer which were used for a number of guided local history walks around the area, particularly those led by now the late local historian Stephen Humphrey. You can still download a free PDF, West Bermondsey – The leather area though parts of it are now out of date and the dot-matrix pictures are primitive but still recognisable.

I found quite a few buildings of interest in Bermondsey Street, I think all I’d photographed on previous visits, but some only previously in black and white. And some other things I had photographed, particularly in some of the alleys off the main street were either gone or changed completely, now tidily gentrified.

*The view of Tower Bridge I took from here is now blocked by buildings*

I came back to the river – or one of its creeks, St Saviours Creek at Dockhead, often said to be the mouth of the River Neckinger. It was probably never that though possibly of a very minor destributary with the main course of the river running alongside George Row several hundred yards to the east. The creek is simply that, a tidal creek, which possibly may have been used as a landing place for Bermondsey Abbey and the tide mill in this area.

Any connection with the Neckinger was lost when London’s sewers were reorganised by Bazalgette and the trickle sometimes visible into the creek is local drainage.

Going down Mill Street took me to the Thames and Bermondsey Wall West where I joined the riverside path, though mostly on the land side of warehouses, going past the huge Chambers Wharf on Chambers St with a huge cold store on the land side of the street before reaching the river again.

The path then runs beside the river to Rotherhithe, with view across the river to the City and Wapping as well as downriver to RRotherithe and Canary Wharf.

Near the well-known Angel pub was Diane Gorvin’s 1991 three part sculpture “Dr. Salter’s Daydream” which showed the doctor, his daughter Joyce who died as a child of scarlet fever, and their cat. Salter became the local MP and ran a pioneering local health service 20 or more years before the NHS. He died in 1945.

His wife Ada became the first woman mayor in London and the first Labour mayor in Britain in 1922. In 2011 the statue of Dr Salter was stolen for the metal in it. A local campaign raised £60,000 to replace it and a new statue of Ada was added to the group.

On the grass south of the riverside path are the low ruined walls a small of a small then moated manor house built by King Edward III around 1350. After his death the house was given to the abbey of St Mary Graces by the Tower and in 1399 it passed to Bermondsey Abbey.

A few yards east is the Angel pub, one of only two buildings standing on this long section of riverside. A short distance along is the second, sometimes called ‘The Leaning Tower of Rotherhithe’, four storeys tall and only around 11 foot wide. Once part of a long row of adjoining buildings it was more or less the only one left standing by bombing during the Blitz. It was the offices of lighterage firm Braithwaite & Dean, where lighters would pull in to get their orders and, importantly, their pay. They sold it in the early 1990s.

Finally I arrived in Rotherhithe where there were more pictures to be made – including several buildings and another sculpture, this showing Brunel driving a staem engine which now appears to have disappeared.

More pictures at Bermondsey & Rotherhithe.

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Just Shares, Riverside & No to the Crook, the Toff, The Fascist or Cop 2008

Just Shares, Riverside & No to the Crook, the Toff, The Fascist or Cop: Friday 2nd May 2008 was the day the results came out for the election for London Mayor and it turned out to be a sad day for London. Earlier I’d covered a protest calling on the City of London to move away from its unjust economic prcarices and then gone to an exhibition and walked along the riverside while I waited for the mayoral declaration, though it came after I had given up and left for home

Just Shares Take On The Bank – Royal Exchange, Bank

‘Just Share’, “a coalition of churches and development agencies seeking to engage with the City of London on issues of global economic injustice” and to “address the widening gap between rich and poor in the global economy” based at St Mary-le-Bow church in Cheapside had organised a protest in the heart of the City, in front of the Royal Exchange and at the side of the Bank of England.

I don’t think anyone at the Bank was listening to Ann Pettifor, Guardian economist Larry Elliott or the others as they spoke on the steps of the Royal Exchange, or took seriously the seminar later by Pettifor in one of Hawksmoor’s finest churches, St Mary Woolnoth, where former slave captain John Newton, writer of ‘Amazing Grace‘, preached his last 28 years.

She argued that current global debt-based financial systems are unsustainable and that structural change is necessary which gives proper regard to actual production, and the rediscovery of the insights of earlier Christian (and of course Muslim) traditions.

more pictures

London Riverside – South Bank and Southwark

After visiting an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery on the South Bank next to Waterloo Bridge I walked slowly along the riverside and took a few pictures.

I was on my way to London’s City Hall, then close to Tower Bridge, owned by the government of Kuwait. In 2021 City Hall moved to a GLA-owned property in Newham, some miles to the east. The results of the London Mayoral Election were expected to be announced there in the early evening.

A few more pictures.

No to the Crook, the Toff, The Fascist or Cop -City Hall, Southwark

I sat on a wall close to City Hall reading John Updike’s novel ‘Terrorist’ which is perhaps why I attracted quite so much attention from a Metropolitan police FIT team (Forward Intelligence Team) photographer who took a number of photographs of me sitting there. I don’t object to being photographed, but was a little surprised when later I put in a Freedom of Information request to find the Met claimed they had no pictures of me, despite having photographed me working at many protests.

Protesters from various anarchist groups including Class War had come to City Hall to wait for the new London Mayor to be announced, though they were clear that they were against all the candidates – who they described as the Crook, the Toff, The Fascist and the Cop (there were six others also standing including Green Party candidate Sian Berry who got more votes than “the fascist” BNP candidate.

The protesters were allowed to protest in front of City Hall for around 35 minutes until Fitwatch went into action to frustrate the FIT teams (who could really use a little more intelligence) enclosing one of them in their banner.

Police called up their waiting reinforcements and the TSG arrived four minutles later and began to push the demonstrators, along with some bystanders, mainly tourists, towards the waiting pen which had been set up a short distance away.

One French woman was bemused. “But why are they just letting themselves be pushed” she asked me as I took photographs. “Because this is England and not France” I replied.

I watched as police told a man leaning peacefully on the river wall watching that he had to move as he was “obstructing the highway“. Clearly he wasn’t (though the police were) and he refused to move. They dragged him from the wall, claimed he was struggling (visibly he wasn’t), handcuffed him and led him away to one of the over 40 police vans parked nearby.

I showed my press card and for once was allowed through the police line obstructing the riverside path and made my way to a public balcony overlooking the area. “Cannier protesters had moved away faster, and were able to display their banner” for a couple of minutes but as I arrived they saw the police coming after them and made a run for a nearby pub.

“The police obviously couldn’t be bothered to chase them, and contented themselves with moving the innocent public away from the balcony, and after a short time, also moving the press.” I joined the protesters in the pub for a drink before leaving for home.

By the time I arrived home Boris Johnson (the Toff) had been announced as the winner and London suffered from a dysfunctional mayor for the next 8 years as he was again elected in 2012. Later those the police had penned were allowed to go home.

Many more pictures.

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Muslims, Our Railways & Little Venice – 2005

Muslims, Our Railways & Little Venice: Twenty years ago I published this post on My London Dairy about my day taking pictures, but it isn’t easy to find. So here it is again with the usual minor corrections and a few pictures, with links to the others already on-line.

Muslims United Against Oppression – Marble Arch

Muslims, Our Railways & Little Venice - 2005 — *Mozzam Begg reads his poem. War on Terror = War on Islam*

Saturday 30th April 2005 was a busy day. I started at Marble Arch where a number of Muslim organisations were showing their unity in protesting against the anti-terrorism laws and the way the ‘war on terror‘ was used to detain prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and Bellmarsh, to carry out increased stop and searches on Muslims in the UK, and threaten them with extradition, and to label the liberation struggles in Palestine, Kashmir, Iraq and Chechnya as terrorism.

The ‘Muslims United Against Oppression’ march and rally was organised by ‘Stop Political Terror’, the ‘Islamic Human Rights Commission’, ‘Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain’, ‘Cage Prisoners’, the ‘Islamic Party Of Britain’, ‘Muslim Directory’ and other organisations, and representatives of many of these spoke at Marble Arch. There were also two former Guantanamo detainees who spoke, Martin Mubanga and Mozzam Begg, who read a moving poem.

Ashfaq Ahmad spoke about the detention of his son, Babar Ahmad, who was born and brought up in south London. On December 2nd 2003, anti-terrorist police broke into his house in the early hours, and assaulted him brutally in front of his wife before taking him away. Six days later he was released without charge. He had over 50 injuries to his body, two potentially life-threatening, but despite this the Crown Prosecution Service decided there was insufficient evidence to prosecute any of the officers involved.

Babar Ahmad was again arrested on 5th August 2004 following an extradition request by the US government. In 2005 he was still in prison awaiting a final verdict on whether he will be sent to the USA, although a fair trial there seems unlikely.* The allegations against him appear to be that he emailed a US sailor on two dates (one was Babar’s wedding day, the other in the middle of his honeymoon on a remote island without internet access), that he had a brochure from the Empire State Building (true, his father had got it on a visit there in 1973) and that he had travelled on a false passport, despite the fact that his real one has the appropriate entry and exit stamps.

Unfortunately our extradition agreement with the USA apparently does not allow Britain to refuse requests on the grounds of evidence.

Having failed to treat Babar with any justice in this country following his arrest – almost certainly a case of mistaken identity that too many would lose face over to readily admit – it now looks as if we will hand him over to our American allies for further mistreatment.

Around 5000 Muslims made there way from Marble Arch and along the Edgeware Road towards Paddington Green Police Station for a further rally.

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* Babar Ahmed spent 8 years in a UK prison before eventually being sent the the USA for trial. Although there was huge pressure to try him in the UK the CPS decided there was “insufficient evidence to prosecute” him. In 2009 he was awarded £60,000 compensation for the “serious gratuitous prolonged unjustified violence” and “religious abuse” during his arrest; the four officers who were accused of this and dozens of other assaults on black and Asian men were tried but acquitted in 2011. After his extradition in 2012 he spent two years in solitary confinement in pre-trial detention in a Supermax prison. Eventually he came to a plea bargain which led to his release in July 2015.

RMT march to Renationalise the Railways – Bloomsbury

I made my way to the Charing Cross Road to meet the RMT march against rail privatisation, a two-week, 14-city national mobile demonstration from Glasgow to London to make the case for re-nationalising the rail network.

As someone who travels frequently by rail, I’m fully convinced of the need for some action. On my line to London, services are less frequent and less reliable and slower than when I moved here thirty years ago. The latest trick has been to write yet more ‘spare minutes’ into the timetables so that more trains will arrive on time. Journeys that a few years ago took 28 minutes are now timetabled for 34 minutes. [Now in 2025 this has increased to 37 minutes.]

There certainly seem to be a great problem over signalling on the lines, with trains that should have a clear run on green with miles of clear track in front of them continually finding amber or double amber and occasionally red. Either systems are not working or there are not the signallers to work them.

The whole fare structure is also a nonsense, far too complex for anyone to understand. None of the enquiry services ever seem to be able to tell you anything other than standard fares (if that) and journeys covering more than one operator are a nightmare. Try several online systems and you are likely to get several different answers as to fares and availability. As a first move back to a sensible system why not set up a national fare structure, with train operators paid for running trains from a central body?

It was a good-natured demonstration making a real point, but unfortunately not one any likely government wants to hear.

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Canalways Calvacade – Litttle Venice

Finally I went off to Little Venice, where the Inland Waterways Association was having a three day Canalway Cavalcade celebrating the bicentenary of the Battle of Trafalgar. In 1805, canals were growing as the main form of inland transport, and it was the year two of the major civil engineering structures of our canals, the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct and the Blisworth Tunnel were completed.

I’m not a great canal person, though I often cycle along the towpaths. But the first time I ever drove a narrowboat, I found myself in charge of 70 feet of steel hull through the dark narrow length of Blisworth, and later the same year also took the marginally overwide craft across Pontcysyllte, where there was considerable resistance to its movement through the narrow channel. Getting through some of the locks on the way there and back was harder, and we learnt some less conventional locking techniques, opening the upper gates for the water to force the marginally over-wide hull through, scraping its sides past the brickwork.

However I’d not come to see the boats, even though the navy were taking part, with one of our smaller ships, a crew of three and commander from the Royal Naval Reserve.

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London Isn’t Venice, Yet! – Mutiny Arts, Little Venice

Mutiny Arts from Brixton were to perform an ecological drama, London Isn’t Venice, Yet!, warning of the dangers of global warming and rising sea levels.

The play went down well with the audience in the Sheldon Square ampitheatre, part of a new office development in Paddington.

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May Queens in April – 2007

May Queens in April: Most years on April 28th I’ve photographed events around one the the more important but largely overlooked by media occasions of the year – International Workers Memorial Day – which remembers those who have died in the workplace, with the slogan ‘Remember the dead – fight for the living‘. You can read a number of accounts of some of these events on My London Diary – such as this one from 2013.

But some years – and this year, 2025 is another – I have other commitments on April 28th and have not been able to cover International Workers Memorial Day. In 2007 I was working hard on a project on London’s May Queens for a museum exhibition (unfortunately cancelled at the final stage due to financial constraints) and needed to be in south-east London to work on that. My day on Saturday 28 April began in Chislehurst and then moved on to Bromley where a number of local May Queens were crowned.

After the exhibition was cancelled I put together some of the pictures from these events in a book, London’s May Queens, still available. It’s perhaps important to say that these events are not beauty competitions but activities to raise the confidence and abilities of the girls who take part, including in public speaking and performance and that the various roles in the local groups and the London May Queen group to which they can move on are assigned solely on their length of membership. It still follows the structures and texts from its founding years.

All of the rather detailed text from the second edition of the book both about the history of May Queens, this and other May Queen events around London and around half of its pictures can be viewed in the book preview on-line. Here is the text about the book on Blurb:

2012 saw the crowning of the London’s 100th May Queen. The first Merrie England and London May Queen festival was held in 1913 and it has continued every year since, still on the same lines. In the 1920s and 30s it was a major event, covered by cinema newsreels and competitions in daily newspapers, but now it is known to few outside the over 20 local realms that take part in the annual event. The 72 pictures in this work give a unique insight into this community event.

Here with the usual corrections are the two posts I wrote in 2007 on My London Diary. The pictures here are all from that day and you can see more at the links below each post.

Chislehurst May Queen Society – Fund-Raising Pub Crawl

Chislehurst isn’t far from the central London but is surrounded by woods and commons and feels very different to Hither Green a couple of stations closer to the centre. Even as a suburb it feels very rural, with what looks like a large village pond and village green.

Chislehurst is one of the ‘realms’ in the London May Queen Festival, but is finding it hard to keep going and attract new young girls to carry on the tradition (see London May Queen 2005 and Chislehurst May Queen 2006) for more pictures of them.

So getting publicity in the local area is very important. They need people to notice them and the May Queen Festival, and to bring their daughters and grand-daughters along to take part in the fun. Obviously the girls who do take part are enjoying it, but it is also a commitment and takes hard work to practice the maypole dances and so on.

To get some publicity the week before the May Queen Festival they organised a sponsored fancy-dress pub crawl. I met up with them at The Lounge, a fairly newly refurbished bar at the top of the hill to the north of the town centre, with an interesting decor.

From there we went down into the centre of Chislehurst, letting people know about the May Queen and collecting money both on the street and in the pubs we visited.

I was sorry to have to leave after the third pub, when perhaps things were beginning to warm up a little, but it was fun, and I hope will help to raise the profile of the May Queen group in the area.
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London May Queen: Bromley May Queens

I’d promised this year’s London May Queen, Erin, that I would try to photograph her, and unfortunately I had to be elsewhere for her actual crowning at Hayes in May. So Bromley seemed a good place to catch up with her and take some pictures, as there she would be appearing with five local may queens from groups around the area – Bromley Common, Shortlands, Hayes, Hayes Common and Hayes Village.

Erin, the 2007 London May Queen, is easy to recognise in my pictures as she is carrying a frame with pink roses and white flowers that says ‘I am the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valley‘, as well as a sash saying ‘London May Queen‘.

Unfortunately we got on the wrong bus to get to Bromley and enjoyed a long tour of most of the outer reaches of south-east London before finally arriving there. It didn’t help that the address I had for the start was rather vague, but finally we met up with the procession almost exactly where we had got off the bus 15 minutes of wandering earlier, and walked with the procession through the centre of the town to the gardens.

It was a shame that the police had apparently insisted that the procession rush through the town centre. It was led by the band of T S Endeavour, playing ‘When The Saints Go Marching In’ (and other popular tunes) and I’m sure they could have marched at half the pace without causing great traffic chaos – much of the centre is in any case pedestrianised.

Some of the younger girls taking part really had to run to keep up through the town centre. Events such as this enliven towns (and Bromley could do with an awful lot of enlivening, being total shopping hell) adding colour and individuality, and it seems far more important to celebrate them to the maximum than worry excessively about traffic flow.

At the gardens things were more relaxed, and the London May Queen was able to crown those of the other queens who had not already been crowned at their own local ceremonies, and there were many pictures taken by me and the mothers and fathers.

Again it’s a shame that Bromley doesn’t have a maypole and there wasn’t any singing or dancing or acting. But it was a nice summery afternoon and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves.

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More from Narrow Street – 1990

More from Narrow Street – 1990: My walk in Limehouse on Sunday 6th January 1990 continued. The previous post from this walk is Around Narrow Street, Limehouse – 1990

*Dunbar Wharf, Narrow St, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90-1b-62*

It was hard not to take picture after picture on Narrow Street, particularly as I was aware much was soon to disappear, and I made over 20 exposures, though I’ve digitised less than half of these, and I’ll only post a few of these as some of the others are rather similar or at least overlap in terms of subject. This view shows some of the same buildings from the picture that ended the previous post, but from a slightly different viewpoint. Most including all in this view ,were demolished shortly afterwards.

*Listed properties in Dunbar Wharf, Narrow St, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90-1b-45*

My previous post told the story of Duncan Dunbar and his son of the same name who built up a huge shipping empire based around Dunbar Wharf but sold off at his death in 1862. The four warehouses at 136, 136½, 138, 140 were Grade II listed in 1973 and some at least were still in various commercial use back in 1990.

Until the 1970s it was a working wharf – E W Taylor, a lighterage company had begun using it for oversize cargo in 1857 – and the company also “became experts in the warehousing and fumigation of the botanicals used in making gin.” The company, now part of Dunbar Wharf Holdings Limited, acquired Dunbar Wharf in the 1940s.

*Barlow & Sons, Dunbar Wharf, Narrow St, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90-1b-46*

All the remaining properties in Dunbar Wharf have now been converted into flats and you can read online about the 2020 renovation of one of the 1790s warehouse buildings into “a beautiful residence by the Thames.”

Barlow and Sons Auto Repairs were at 144 Narrow Street and offered their auto repairs with the aid of some really king-size spanners. This building was replaced in 1997 by Creek House.

*Narrow St, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90-1b-51*

These buildings were demolished shortly after I made these photographs for the development of the Limehouse Link tunnel and were then replaced by modern flats with a vaguely pastiche frontage. Their demolition enabled archaeological investigation of the site of Joseph Wilson and Company’s Limehouse Porcelain Manufactory operating here from 1745-8.

St Dunstan's Wharf, Narrow St, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90-1b-44 — *St Dunstan’s Wharf, Narrow St, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90-1b-44*

St Dunstan’s Wharf at 142 Narrow Street is also Grade II listed and has survived. Together with the listed buildings of Dunbar Wharf it backs onto Limekiln Dock. Above the doorway is its name and a floral decoration together with what appears to be a large pair of blacksmiths’ tongs, the pincers used by St Dunstan to grab the together with another tool I don’t recognise.

Along is bottom are the initials W & G.G and the date 1878. Gardner & Gardner, hay & straw salesmen, are listed at this address as well as in Spread Eagle Yard in Whitechapel High Street. The listing text states this is on a metal plate, but it looks more like terracotta in my picture. Apparently the building was also used as a store for materials including juniper berries and flowers used to make gin.

I was more or less at the end of Narrow Street and my walk will continue along Three Colt Street in another post.

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