Grenfell 8 Years On – 14th June 2025: Usually I write about events in the past, but today I’m thinking about something that will take place this evening in Notting Hill on the eight anniversary of the terrible Grenfell Tower fire on 14 June 2017. I’ll put the invitation to join this evening’s silent walk by Grenfell United at the end of this post.
2018
Eight years have passed, a long and detailed inquiry has taken place, but still we have seen no justice. Before long the tower will be taken down and the government will be hoping that we will all forget the terrible crimes that led to the fire.
2018
The essential details were largely known well before the inquiry began, within a month or two of the fire. More would have come out in court had prosecutions begun then. Instead we have had 8 years with little or no action, and certainly no justice.
2018
Eight days after the fire, Architects for Social Housing held an open meeting with residents, housing campaigners, journalists, lawyers, academics, engineers and architects about it, and the following month produced a report, THE TRUTH ABOUT GRENFELL TOWER.
2018
I went to many of the silent walks that have taken place to remember Grenfell – the images here are from the first anniversary on 14th June 2018, when around 10,000 people took part. I’l post the link to this event and to that in 2019 at the bottom of the post. As well as many more pictures these also contain more of my comments on the fire and its aftermath. And you can find more events I covered related to the fire by a search for ‘Grenfell’ on My London Diary.
2018
Grenfell United
Please join us at the Silent Walk for the 8th Anniversary of the Grenfell Tower fire on 14 June.
8 years on. No arrests. No justice. The tower is a stark reminder of what happened that night but the government has decided it’s time to bring it down.
Walk with us to show them you still stand united with the Grenfell Community. They want the tower out of sight. But we won’t stop until the criminals are brought to justice.
The Grenfell Silent Walk to remember the 72 people who died at Grenfell, to honour their memory and demand justice starts at 6pm at Notting Hill Methodist Church. Please wear green in solidarity.
Carnival, Racist Deportations & more Naked Cyclists: I began work on Saturday 13 June 2009 photographing a carnival procession in Carshalton in the south of London, travelled to Islington in north London for a protest against Britain’s racist and inhuman immigration policies and finally covered the uncovered cyclists taking part in the 2009 London World Naked Bike Ride, photographing the preparations in Hyde Park ad the start of the ride there and then on the ride at Waterloo and in the West End.
Carshalton Carnival Procession – St Helier – Carshalton
Sutton’s May Queen 2009 came to look at my cameras
My account of this event on My London Diary begins with a slightly unkind description “of the St Helier estate, a huge sprawling area built by the LCC 1930 to a kind of debased Garden City plan almost entirely without the charm of those earlier developments on what had previously mainly been the lavender fields of Mitcham.”
The procession began next to the “St Helier Hospital [built] in the modern style of the 30s, facing the imaginatively named St Helier Open Space” outside the Sutton Arena leisure centre and as usual I found the more interesting pictures were those I took there rather than on long procession to Carshalton where it was to end at a fair in Carshalton Park.
I’d come to the carnival largely because I was then working on a project on London’s May Queens, with several groups of them from across south London taking part in the procession, along with various other local organisations. And a Dalek and others in fancy dress.
The Rotary had brought their Father Christmas coming out unseasonably from the chimney of a small four-wheeled house towed behind a car at the rear of the procession. He’d been there too when I photographed the carnival previously in 2004.
It was a long an hot trek to Carshalton from St Helier, and the procession paused at Carshalton College for a break. I’d walked enough and made my way to the station missing the rest of the event and the funfair in Carshalton Park.
Speak out against Racism and Deportations – Angel, Islington
Britain’s major political parties at the prompting of our mainstream press have long promoted myths about migrants and asylum seekers, the more rabid of our tabloids in particular promoting the views of clearly racist columnists who publish stories about them getting homes and huge benefits, depriving the working class of housing, pushing down wages, taking “our jobs“, making it impossible to see doctors and more.
Nothing could of course be further from the truth. It’s the greed of the wealthy and government policies that have led to these problems – and without the migrants we would be in a considerably worse position. It’s something that is glaringly obvious when we need to make use of the NHS which would have collapsed entirely without them, but also in other areas. Demonising migrants is a deliberate policy divert public attention and anger away from the real problem of our class-based society. Divide and rule by our rulers,
Most of those who settle here from abroad want nothing more than to work and contribute to our society, though we make it hard for many of them to do so. They want a better life, particularly for their children and often work long hours for it. Migrant workers who clean offices are often more qualified than those who work in them – but their qualifications are not recognised here, and asylum seekers are unable to work except in the illegal economy.
Some facts:
Over a quarter of NHS doctors were born abroad (and others are the sons and daughters of migrants);
Immigrants are 60% less likely to claim benefits than people born in Britain;
Studies sho immigration has no significant effect on overall employment, or on unemployment of those born in Britain.
This campaigning protest in a busy shopping area outside one of London’s busier Underground Stations was organised by the Revolutionary Communist Group and was also part of a campaign by the Suarez family to prevent the deportation of John Freddy Suarez Santander, a 21 year-old father with a 3 year-old son. He came here from Colombia when he was six and grew up here. As a teenager he committed an offence and served 7 months in a young offenders institution.
Two years after he had served his sentence, the New Labour government passed a law to deport all immigrants with a criminal record, and an order was made for him to be sent back to Colombia, where he has no remaining relatives. His case in 2009 was still being considered at the European Court of Human Rights. The ECHR generally asserts that juvenile offences should not be seen as a part of a criminal record, but the Home Office decided the month before this protest to deport him anyway, and this was only stopped by his family going to the airport.
I’ve written rather often about this event, intended as a protest against the domination of our lives by ‘car culture’ which has resulted in our towns and cities and transport networks being designed around the priorities of motorists and road transport rather than us as pedestrians and cyclists – and to serve the interests of the companies that make cars and lorries. And it has resulted in illegal levels of pollution causing massive health problems.
Although it’s certainly an eye-catching event, it isn’t always very clear why it is taking place to those standing on the pavements, gazint at it in amazement, laughing and recording it on their phones. It’s probably good for our tourist industry, though I rather think London has too many tourists anyway, particularly as I struggle to walk over Westminster Bridge.
Heres one paragraph of what I wrote in 2009 – you can read the rest on My London Diary.
Some riders did have slogans on their bodies, mainly about oil and traffic, and some bikes carried A4 posters reading REAL RIGHTS FOR BIKE and CELEBRATE BODY FREEDOM or had flags stating ‘CURB CAR CULTURE’ which made clear the purpose of the event to the careful onlooker, but for most people it seemed simply a spectacle of naked or near-naked bodies. Though of course also a rare treat for any bicycle spotters among them.
I didn’t censor the pictures I put on line from the event though I’ve carefully selected those in this post. I think that there is nothing offensive about the naked human body but I included the following statement with the link to more pictures I posted then and which you can still see online.
Warning: these pictures show men and women with no clothes on. Do not click this link to more pictures if pictures of the naked human body may offend you.
Police Close Down Runnymede Magna Carta Festival: A couple of weeks ago I got on my e-bike and tried to cycle from Egham up Coopers Hill Lane which goes steeply up the wooded hill above the Thames flood plain at Runnemede. It wasn’t a great success as although the motor could cope with the gradient with a little more than usual help from my pedalling, the surface of the lane – here just a footpath was far too uneven and broken and I kept having to stop to prevent myself coming off the bike, eventually having to give up and get off and walk, pushing the bike for the final hundred yards or so.
Police turned away people coming to the Festival For Democracy issuing exclusion orders.
Close to the top I reached the metalled section of the lane and cycled on, past the fence I had gone through a gap in in ten years ago on my way to visit the Runnymede Eco Village and past the road leading to the expensive private estate that now occupies the site. On Friday 12th June 2015 I had cycled up the same route by pedal power alone, locked up my bike and walked to the Eco Village.
There I was warmly greeted and shown around the site, as you can read on My London Diary. The residents were busy getting ready for the Magna Carta weekend four day free ‘Festival For Democracy’ which was due to start the following day, celebrating both the anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta in the nearby meadows 800 years earlier and the third anniversary of the setting up of the village.
Erecting the main stage on the festival field
Although I’d not lived there I found it – as I commented in 2015- “seemed a great place to live so long as you were able to put up with a slightly spartan lifestyle. At my age I feel a need for hot and cold running water and a more pampered existence, but at least in summer a more open existence in the woods has its attractions.” It was a community that felt truly positive.
The community aim to respect the forest and live with it rather than destroy it
During my time there that day it became increasingly obvious that the authorities had decided that the free festival was not going to take place, although it was an entirely legal event and would have caused no distress to local residents with whom the villagers have good relations, and some at least were looking forward to the event.
The electronic music stage for the festival
Orders had clearly come down, possibly from royalty itself via our government that the festival must be stopped by any means whatever the law. And police had come telling lies that they about a cock and bull story of a ‘rave’ that was going to take place on a neighbouring football field that they had come to ‘protect’ the village from.
The invented story of an illegal rave was used by police and Surrey County Council to justify an order under Section 63 of the The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 which allows police power to restrict access, remove people and issue exclusion orders, and they used this to stop and turn away those coming to the ‘Festival For Democracy’.
Kettles on the fire for tea – and all were offered various infusions
Section 63 is specifically aimed at stopping illegal raves and should only be used to prevent ‘amplified music’ being played during the night, and certainly not for the festivals such as this one – hence the need for the authorities to spread rumours of an illegal rave. As well as being turned away, people were being given exclusion orders banning them from coming within five miles of the village, and several arrests were made for breach of this. The police action seemed a clear abuse of a law intended for quite different purposes, and I will be surprised if any of those arrested ever reach court.
One woman had built her home around a fallen tree
At the time I wrote:
It would indeed seem a travesty if at a time when we are celebrating 800 years of freedom under the law against the arbitrary power of the state achieved at Runnymede, the authorities should abuse the law by using those arbitrary powers to prevent a people’s celebration of freedom.
The festival starts, but police are turning people away.
This wasn’t the only action by which the state tried to stop the festival – and you can read more on My London Diary in Police threaten Runnymede Magna Carta festival which was at the time also posted on the now long defunct Demotix website. They didn’t entirely succeed, but it was on a rather smaller scale with so many being prevented from attending, though others managed to climb over the fences around the area. The account there also has many more pictures of the Eco Village.
Perhaps rather than celebrating Magna Carta we should all now be out on the streets and demanding a new charter for the freedoms we thought had been won 800 years ago.
Since 2015 we have instead seen governments introducing yet more restrictive public order laws and used them to take action against political protests and used to imprison peaceful protesters for long stretches, and Labour has continued these policies .
People’s Assembly against Austerity 2.0: Last Saturday, 7th June 2025 the People’s Assembly had organised what they hoped would be a huge anti-austerity demonstration against Labour’s Austerity 2.0 which seems a return to the policies of the Cameron and other Tory governments, cutting spending on public services while ensuring the rich continue to get richer.
They say:
Austerity is not an inevitability; it is a political choice. By sticking to her arbitrary ‘fiscal rules,’ Rachel Reeves is plunging the country into more crisis. By choosing to spend money on arms rather than public services, social security and our NHS, this government is actively impoverishing us. We say no – and we mean it.
Recent government announcements of a huge increase in defence spending are based on a return to the worst excesses of the Cold War and a false narrative of Russian invasion of all of Europe – something that the criminal and disastrous invasion of Ukraine when what Putin thought would be over in three days has turned into years of attrition, ruining the Russian economy, actually makes less likely.
Arms manufacturers have always played on our fears to boost their profits – and they are the only people who come out of wars as winners – both the Ukrainian people and the Russian people will end up as losers whatever the final outcome in Ukraine. And it was them and the NATO military hawks who kept up the isolation of Russia and the manipulation of politics in Ukraine and elsewhere after the fall of the USSR rather than welcoming Russia into our fold.
Already our government has drastically cut the aid budget, probably the most important expenditure to promote peace across the world, and is also planning huge cuts in benefits in an attack on the most vulnerable in our society.
It has also continued its attacks on migrants with a new Immigration White Paper which will attack our migrant communities and affect millions of migrants, continuing the racist policies of previous governments. We need migrants, particularly as our population is ageing. Those already here are making a positive contribution to our country – and would do more if we introduced safe ways for them to come here, particularly to join relatives already living here, allowed asylum seekers who can to work, recognised their qualification and made it easier for them to become British citizens. We need a positive approach to migrants rather than the increasingly hostile one.
Many on the protest came to protest about the increasing privatisation of the NHS and the failures to adequately resource it, about the cuts in education and about misguided and inadequate housing policies which have led to huge increases in rents – while making landlords wealthy. About the increases in energy prices and in prices generally which are making many poor. About the failure to abolish to two child cap on benefits which has put so many children into poverty.
Kid Starver Out – and a cut up Labour Party card.
We live in a country with massive inequalities and with governments that are inatroducing policies to increase these. The protest called for ‘Welfare not Warfare’, to ‘Tax the Rich’ and ‘Stop the Cuts’.
NEU protesters
We would not need to bring in tax increases to greatly increase the amount of tax the country receives but could bring in billions by simply clamping down on tax evasion and tax avoidance. We should outlaw all those schemes that enable companies and individuals who earn money in the UK from not paying taxes. We need to change the law so HMRC would work to a simple rule – if you earn it here, you pay tax on it here – and enforce it. It would probably bring in at least another £20 billion a year.
Saturday’s protest was not the huge demonstration that the People’s Assembly had hoped for, though it was a respectable size, perhaps 3-5,000 people. The drastic and inaccurate weather forecast may have put some people off, but the many groups who backed the event only came in small numbers. Sometimes only just enough to carry their banner.
Revolutionary Communist Party
By far the largest and loudest bloc on the march was that of the Revolutionary Communist Party. Until 2024 called ‘Socialist Appeal’ it was relaunched under this new name. Back around the 1970s it was the Trotskyist Labour group ‘Militant tendency’, set up around the newspaper ‘Militant’ in 1964 and finally proscribed by the Labour Party in 1982.
Nicaragua, Votes For Women, Al Quds Day: Sunday 10th June 2018 my work began in Trafalgar Square where Nicaraguans called for an end to the current government violence in their country. I then photographed a march commemorating the extension of the UK vote to include many but not all adult women a hundred years earlier. Then I went to the Saudi Embassy where there were two groups facing each other, kept well separate by police. It was Al Quds (Jerusalem) Day and supporters of the oppressed people of Palestine had come to protest there, with a counter-protest by Zionists.
End government killings in Nicaragua – Trafalgar Square
Nicaraguans came to call for an end to the violent attacks by police on protests in Nicaragua where they have killed over 100 protesters, injured over 600, and others have been unjustly detained, tortured and some raped.
The government atrocities have been condemned by he CIDH (Inter-American Commission on Human Rights) and Amnesty International and this was one of protests across Europe in solidarity, demanding the resignation of president Daniel Ortega and his wife and and vice-president Rosario Murillo and free and fair elections.
Women wore purple, white and green head scarves to make up three strands of a huge procession in the suffragette colours through London marking 100 years since many British women gained the right to vote.
The 1918 act gave the vote to the first time to all men over 21 and to men like my father over 18 serving in the armed forces, but did not bring in universal suffrage for women. Women had to be over 30 and meet a property requirement. It was another ten years before all women over 21 – including my mother who was by then 23 – could vote.
My mother made no secret of her support for the Conservative party, displaying their poster in our front window at every election. My father, who kept quiet about his politics to avoid conflict at home, went into the polling station every time to cancel out her vote with one for Labour.
I left the march as the end of it passed Piccadilly Circus on its way to Westminster.
Zionists protest against Al Quds Day – Saudi embassy, Mayfair
As well as the official Zionist protest kept behind barriers by police around a hundred yards away from the pro-Palestine Al Quds day event there were also a number of extreme right football thugs roaming the area, together with some well-known Zionists. Some of these managed to come close to the Al Quds day event and shout at it and at times there was some forceful policing as the thugs were moved away.
The official Zionist Federation protest kept behind the barriers, shouting at the Palestinian supporters, most of whom simply ignored them though a handful faced them at a distance and shouted back. There seemed to be rather fewer of the Zionists than in earlier years and there were almost certainly more Jewish protesters in the Al Quds day event which was supported by several groups and numerous individuals from the Jewish left as well as the ultra-orthodox Neturei Karta, who always attract a great deal of venomous anti-Semitic shouting from the Zionists.
There had been considerable pressure on the UK government to ban the display of the Hezbollah flag, which was then still legal here, as the same flag was used by both the military wing, banned in 2008 and the political wing of the party which at the time had two ministers in the Lebanese government. Despite this the UK government banned the group as a whole in 2019, making the display of this flag from then on a criminal offence.
Protesters hold the largest Palestinian flag ever made, 70m long to symbolise the 70 years since the Nakba
The much larger crowd who had come to the protest organised by the Justice for Palestine Committee and supported by the Islamic Human Rights Commission and a wide range of pro-Palestinian organisations was squashed into a small area in front of the Saudi Embassy.
There was a large police presence in the area that kept them well apart from the counter-protest by the Zionist Federation and stopped the football hooligans from attacking this peaceful protest.
Al Quds Day was established by the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979 and is celebrated in many countries particularly across the Arab world. There have been events like this one in London for over 30 years.
The protest this year was a gesture of defiance to the demonisation campaign and the ongoing murders by Israeli troops of innocent Palestinian protesters in the Gaza Strip commemorating 70 years since Israel was formed on expropriated Palestinian land.
Intellectual Property, Naked Cyclists: On Saturday 9th June 2012 after a rally against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement outside Europe House in Smith Square I went to Hyde Park Corner where cyclists were preparing for the London World Naked Bike Ride, an environmental protest against a society based on oil and the domination by cars.
Rally Against ACTA
Current debates on intellectual property in 2025 are mainly concerned with protecting the rights of individual creators from being used without permission or compensation by companies developing AI which could then use the data taken to create new works which would mimic their work, essentially producing counterfeit works.
Back in 2012 the protests were against ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement put together in secret talks between the USA, Europe, Japan and some other major governments to protect the copyrights, trademarks and patents held by major multinational companies.
Wikileaks had released the secrets of these talks, deliberately set up in private to exclude the views of civil society and developing countries. They proposed putting draconian powers in the hands of major corporations without the need for allegations of abuse to be properly tested.
Now in 2025 the government is attempting to put into law an act which would legitimise the production of ‘fakes’ by the major AI companies, though the fight against this is being carried on largely in the House of Lords rather than on the streets or on the web. As usual laws are largely about protecting and advancing the interests of the rich and powerful – whose donations and lobbying keep our legislators on side.
As well as preventing much sharing of material on the web – some legitimately – ACTA would also disrupt much-needed generic medicines to majority world countries, where indiscriminate raids had already disrupted some legitimate supplies. And many musicians and other content creators feared it would be used by the major corporations to prevent or inhibit their ability to profit through distributing their own work via the Internet.
On 4th July 2012, 478 MEPs in the European Parliament voted against ACTA, 39 in favour, and 165 abstained, meaning the agreement did not enter into force in the EU.
More about the protest and about ACTA, along with more pictures on My London Diary at Rally Against ACTA.
Naked Cyclists Ride Against Oil
Around a thousand cyclists in various states of undress, some wearing nothing but shoes, took part in the World Naked Bike Ride, an annual environmental protest touring central London, much to the astonishment of many tourists. Shoes are required, but otherwise the dress code is “as bare as you dare.”
People gathered at Hyde Park Corner for the start of the ride
Public nudity is not illegal in Britain and the ride seems to cause a great deal of hilarity from some onlookers but little or no offence. Most of those on the pavements were tourists and eagerly taking photographs of the event.
Although there had been many earlier naked bike rides organised as naturist or political demonstrations, the first World Naked Bike Rides were organised in 2004 and now take place in many cities around the world. The rides are a protest against dependence on oil and other forms of non-renewable energy and “expose the unique dangers faced by cyclists and pedestrians” in modern cities.
In 2012 there did seem to be a rather clearer environmental message than in some other years, and my pictures here – and in the many more on My London Diary concentrate on this rather than the nudity, and on the many with body paint, sometimes solely for decoration but often expressing an environmental message, contributing to the purpose of the ride to “deliver a vision of a cleaner, safer, body-positive world.”
Back in 2012 there were similar rides in 20 countries around the world ands well as others in Brighton, Bristol, Cardiff, Exeter, Glasgow, Manchester, Portsmouth, Southampton and York.
After photographing the riders on the grass at Hyde Park corner I set off with them on foot, rather dangerously as other traffic was still driving around the busy roundabout and along Piccadilly. But I soon got out of breath and had to rest.
Later I took the tube to Westminster and met the cyclists again coming down Whitehall, going with them across Westminster Bridge. I left them to go to Waterloo Station on their way to the City and then back trough Holborn to Buckingham Palace and Hyde Park Corner.
Lord Maruga, Portugal Day & Khalistan: My day on Sunday 8th June 2008 very much reflected the multicultural nature of London, beginning with a Hindu Festival in Thornton Heath, moving on to a Catholic Mass celebrating Portugal Day in Kennington and finally a march by Sikhs remembering the 1984 massacre and calling for an independent Sikh state, Khalistan.
Lord Muruga in Thornton Heath
Hindu God Lord Muruga is particularly popular with the Tamils of southeast India (Tamil Nadu), Sri Lanka and Malaysia, and several hundred from the Sivaskanthagiri Murugan Temple in Thornton Heath celebrated him by pulling a chariot carrying his representation through the local streets.
The procession was led by musicians, and by women carrying pots of burning embers on their heads and in their arms. As the chariot made its way along the street, people brought offerings of good to be blessed, and these were returned to them flaming.
Lord Muruga is the son of Agni, the fire god. He also carries a spear and a staff with a picture of a cockerel, and rides on a peacock. He is noted for the help that he gives for devotees who are in distress and the procession in particular visits those who cannot come to the temple because of their poor health or other disabilities
The flames are from camphor, widely used in Indian rituals and thought to eliminate negative energies. This waxy white solid burns with a relatively cool flame and emit little smoke.
Also known as Camões Day, Portugal’s National Day marks the anniversary of the death of its greatest poet and writer, Luís de Camões, on 10 June, 1580. He died in the year that Portugal became part of Spain, and the date of his death (the day of his birth around 1624 is not recorded) was celebrated as a national day after Portugal regained independence in 1640.
His great epic poem ‘The Lusaids’ centres on Vasco da Gama’s voyage to discover a sea route to India which was the foundation of the colonial explorations that brought the country great wealth and it made him a symbol of the nation.
Fascist dictator Salazar who ruled Portugal from 1932 to 1968 made the day a celebration of a fictional Portuguese ‘race’, but it is now simply a day for celebration by Portuguese communities around the world – and London has the largest Portuguese community outside Portugal, centred in Stockwell close to Kennington Park. The celebrations in the park includes entertainments and considerable eating and drinking after the initial open-air Catholic Mass I photographed.
Sikhs remember the massacres at Amritsar by the Indian Army and the mob killings encouraged by the Indian government following the assassination of Indira Ghandi by her Sikh bodyguards in 1984.
Sikh interests were ignored by an ignorant and incompetent British administration led by the Viceroy and Governor-General of India Lord Mountbatten who were responsible for the partition of India in 1947.
This annual rally and march in London calls for the establishment of an independent Sikh homeland, Khalistan in the Punjab and possibly incorporating some nearby areas of India and Pakistan.
Some Sikhs had been calling for an independent state since the 1930s and the movement continued to grow after partition with various militant Sikh groups including Babbar Khalsa, proscribed in the UK. Violent repression by Indian police led to a decline in the 1990s, but repression continues against Sikhs and in particular against those campaigning for separation and has increased in recent years. This makes it very difficult to determine how much popular support there is for the Khalistan movement in the area.
Data in the UK suggests that only a small fraction of British Sikhs support the establishment of Khalistan. In 2018, India asked UK to ban Sikh Federation (UK) who organise these events for its anti-India, pro-Khalistan activities, including proscribing the organisation but this has not happened.
The final post on walk in Limehouse on Sunday 6th January 1990 continued. The previous post from this walk is West India Dock Road & Limehouse Cut – 1990. As usual you can click on the images here to view larger versions on my Flickr pages.
Looking south towards the blockage across the canal through the bridge which carries the DLR over Limehouse Cut. At the right are the temporary buildings for the construction work on the Limehouse Link tunnel. The Limehouse Cut turns around to the right past the blockage to join Limehouse Dock and I think the industrial buildings you can see are in Brightlingsea Street.
I walked along the towpath to Commercial Road carried over the canal by Britannia Bridge, named for the Britannia Tavern which stood here until 1911, when it was probably removed to allow the bridge to be widened for traffic and also to allow for a towpath under the bridge.
At spring tides when the water rose to its highest it would overtop the old Bow Locks, with water flowing into both the Cut and the lower stretch of the Lea Navigation. This created a problem, particularly when the Cut was connected to the Limehouse Dock. In this picture you see the vertical guillotine gate which was fitted here after the Cut was taken over by British Waterways in 1948 enabling the canal to be isolated from the dock. It was removed soon after I made this picture.
You can also see the 1923 Empire Memorial Sailors’ Hostel on the corner of Commercial Road and Salmon Lane, built as a memorial to all the seamen who had lost their lives in the First World War. Later used as a hostel for the homeless and to house immigrants it had by 1990 been converted into luxury flats.
H W Bush, Mill Place, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90-1c-16
Island Row, Mill Place, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90-1f-66
Taken from near to the end of Island Row. But my walk was coming to an end. I made only one more black and white picture, not yet digitised, of the Regents Canal Lock from Commercial Road on my way to Limehouse station.
But I had also carried a second camera body loaded with colour negative film and I made the occasional colour picture during the walk. Here are four of them:
London Walking Weekend: Most weekends since the 1980s I’ve spent at least one day walking around London, often on my own but more recently mainly with others carrying banners and placards. But Saturday 6th June 2009 was a little different as it was designated as the Walking Weekend of the Story of London Festival, and I went to a couple of free events put on by the Heritage of London Trust and Pevsner Architectural Guides in east London, as well as doing a little on my own.
London 2012 site
On Saturday morning I took a guided tour of St Mary Magdalene’s Church in East Ham led by Tara Draper-Stumm for the Heritage of London Trust, a charity which does a great deal of work in restoring buildings and sites in danger across the capital.
It was a great guided tour of one of London’s most interesting churches, Grade 1 listed and “claimed to be the oldest parish church still in weekly use in Greater London“, large parts dating from the first half of the 12th century but of course greatly added to, altered and restored over the centuries, most recently in 1965-6.
But I didn’t take any pictures, so nothing to post here from this tour. Back in the 1990s when I was a regular contributor to our National Building Record I often found myself waiting in the library there for my appointment and would pull a box file for an area of London from their shelves – to find it almost entirely full of photographs of old churches, many taken by their vicars back in the day when many were gentlemen of leisure with the money to take up photography. It rather put me off photographing them and on this morning I decided to simply experience the event, listen and look. But there is a fine illustrated tour of the church online.
London 2012 site
From there I had some time to spare before the afternoon walk and went to visit the huge building site on Stratford Marsh for the London Olympics, by then sealed off by miles of blue fence. It was something of a rush to take pictures to later make into panoramas as well as some other pictures before getting back on the DLR from Pudding Mill Station to Poplar.
Footbridge at Poplar Station – a similar panoramic image I took on this footbridge a years earlier was used wrapped around two sides of a 12 inch record, ‘Limehouse Link’and less impressively on the CD.
There I met someone whose name had been familiar for many years but I’d not met, Bridget Cherry, a leading architectural hisotrian whose name appears on the essential works for anyone with an interest in the subject, The Buildings of England, begun by Nikolaus Pevsner in 1951. She worked on many volumes, some with him, as well as becoming General Editor.
1930s streamlined moderne concrete at Constant House, refurbished and fitted with entrance doors
These books remain essential guides to anyone with an interest in architecture in England, and I walked most of the ‘perambulations’ in London from them, although my interests were rather wider than the buildings contained in them and my walks also took me to many other places. You can read more about this walk on My London Diary. Here I’ll include just a few of the pictures I took with captions and some brief comments.
The 1930s pub ‘The Resolute’ , named for HMS Resolute, one of the ships sent in 1850 and 1852 to search for Sir John Franklin, lost in the N W PassageRobin Hood GardensSome gardening going on with residents growing salad crops
Robin Hood Gardens, designed in the late 1960s by Alison and Peter Smithson and completed in 1972, gained international recognition for its Brutalist architecture and was the highpoint of the walk. Its two long blocks enclosed a large garden area which was suprisingly quiet despite the site being alongside of one of London’s busiest roads. Neglected for years by Tower Hamlets council it was used to house many ‘problem’ tenants but by 2009 had largely recovered and become well regarded by those who lived there.
But the local authority had already decided to demolish it as a part of a ‘regeneration’ scheme. Attempts to list it scandalously failed – despite its international architectural significance – probably to protect the profits of the developers and demolition began in 2017 but was only finally completed in March 2015. Listing of large council estates became largely impossible under New Labour and expensive, highly profitable and environmentally disastrous schemes regeration schemes providing expensive but largely poorer quality buildings with little social housing have since obliterated estates – including some fine architecture – which could have been refurbished to modern standards at a fraction of the cost.
St Matthias Old Church built 1652-4 but exterior reworked in 19th centry and monument to Captain Samuel Jones
London Gardens, Green Lifestyle & Carnival de Cuba: I had an interesting time twenty years ago on the weekend of 4-5th June 2005 in London. After a visit to some fantastic private gardens on the Saturday, on Sunday I went to a Green Lifestyle festival in Greenwich then photographed a Cuban carnival procession at Coin Street.
Here I’ll edit slightly the text I wrote back in 2005 and integrate it with some of the pictures I made, with links to the rest of those I put at the time on My London Diary. And end with a brief comment.
London Gardens – North London, Notting Hill and Chelsea
A Chelsea rooftop garden
London Arts Café, now sadly long defunct, was an organisation which promoted urban art and examined its contribution to urban life. Its annual programme often included some interesting visits, sometimes taking us to places we never knew existed. On Saturday June 4th 2005 we were privileged to be able to visit three very different private gardens, each it it’s own way extraordinary. They are all among those featured in the 2000 book by George Carter, The New London Garden, (ISBN 1-840000-347-2) where you can find more details about them and view some splendid photographs by Marianne Majerus.
Judy Wiseman’s sculpture garden in Gospel Oak
We met George in the Notting Hill garden and he talked to us about his work and the importance of the garden in urban space, and we were also fortunate to meet the garden owners who also told us about their own gardens.
A grotto in Notting Hill
In North London, we visited a garden filled with sculptures of various types by designer and sculptor Judy Wiseman, making the most of the various locations. Most were casts of bodies or parts of bodies. This garden, I think alone among the three we visited, is open to the public to visit on one day most years as a part of the charity Open Gardens scheme.
In Notting Hill, the garden was more practical in some ways, with a large expanse of lawn, but in one corner was a dark area of trees and bushes with a fantastic grotto.
Most fabulous of all was the rooftop garden in Chelsea, stretched along the rooftops at the back of four houses, all former studios of well-known artists. One of the highlights for me was a scale model of a glasshouse built by Decimus Burton, used to create a miniature world with plants and figures.
After spending some time admiring this garden, we were also shown the art gallery in one of the houses, with an incredible collection of pictures, including works by Picasso, Braque, Courbet, Moholy-Nagy and many other famous names, including some fine work from the 1950s. There were also some fine rooms in the house, including a modern kitchen and some fine period pieces.
Solar Panels and The Queen’s House, Greenwich, London, June 5, 2005
The group that had organised Kingston Green Fair had been asked to organise the London Green Lifestyle show in Greenwich Park, held on World Environment Day, June 5, 2005 as a part of London’s contribution to a more sustainable lifestyle. Unfortunately the events were spread over far too wide an area of the park to really be successful.
As always, there was rather a lot of missing the obvious in the approach to a better environment. So there was little about the need to drastically cut down air travel, and relatively little about cutting down car use. Casual visitors could certainly have gone away with the idea that if we all recycled our rubbish and perhaps switched to a green power supplier, everything was set for a rosy future.
Solar powered roundabout
I first spoke in public about the need for effective action to save the world in 1970. I had sold the last car I owned in 1966, using a bicycle wherever practicable since then, very occasionally using taxis and hiring a car for a few holidays. We’ve lived a relatively low-impact lifestyle, perhaps except for my addiction to cameras and computers! I changed jobs so I could cycle to work (and now work mainly online to avoid travel.) Others I’ve known have done more, moving to become largely self-sufficient.
Bike power to run a sound system
At the moment the government is playing lip-service to the need for urgent action on the environment, but falling short of taking or even discussing any effective actions, to do things like actually cutting the use of fossil fuels, or reducing the number of car and air miles we travel. [Little has really changed in challenging the centrality of the car in our culture since – and electric cars are little better for the climate.] I’m increasingly gloomy about the future, though the world will probably stay in reasonable shape for the rest of my lifetime.
We need to think far more seriously about quality of life, rather than concentrating on things that are easy to measure like gross national product. much of it is truly gross, and there are better ways to organise our lives around the things that really matter.
Carnival de Cuba – Coin St Festival, Bernie Spain Gardens
Carnival de Cuba was taking place the same day at Coin Street (perhaps the one successful development in london since the war.) I got there in time for the procession, and clearly everyone was having a great deal of fun.
The visits to the gardens in these pictures was for me a rather unsettling window on the private realms of the over-privileged in our society who inhabit a very different world to the rest of us. Though there are far worse ways many of them chose to spend their phenomenal and largely unearned wealth it would be good to see the tremendous creative talent shown here put into work that could be appreciated by a much greater public in public spaces.
But perhaps like the private collections of Sir John Soane we can now see in Lincoln’s Inn Fields or those stolen from the Tradescant family by Elias Ashmole at least some of these may eventually become publicly accessble assets.
Later I photographed more private gardens of the wealthy in a collaborative project with the short-lived Queen’s Terrace Café, shown there in 2011 as ‘The Secret Gardens of St John’s Wood’ and with the book with Mireille Galinou of the same name still available from Blurb, where you can view the preview which contains many of the pictures.
