Crouch Hill & Stroud Green: My walk on Sunday 24th Sepember 1989 continued after I took a train from Blackhorse Road to Crouch Hill. Then the Gospel Oak to Barking line – apparently called by some the Goblin line was one of the least reliable in the country – perhaps it should have been called the Gremlin line. But for once a train came – and on a Sunday too!
The line is now part of the London Overground with a much improved service and in February this year was renamed the Suffragette line. It now also runs beyond Barking to Barking Riverside, though as yet there seems little reason to ever go there.
Marion Gray, Antiques, 33 Crouch Hill, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989 89-9e-21
Almost immediately out of the station was the fine house, on the end of a rather less grand terrace on the west side of Crouch Hill. The station was opened in 1867/8 as a part of the Tottenham and Hampstead Junction Railway and this accelerated development in the area.
This house was sold in 2017 having long been converted into a ground floor nursery with three flats above. Last year it was covered in scaffolding, presumably for a major refurbishment.
Crouch Hill, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989 89-9e-22
These shops are on the east side of Crouch Hill, immediately north of Japan Crescent and south of the railway. They still look much the same although the shops have changed and become considerably less useful.
I was attracted by the decorated brickwork, obscured on the leftmost building by some unfortunate cladding, and the curved brick partitions between the houses about the shop fronts.
At extreme right is the pub sign for Marler’s bar, opened in 1983 in a former post office. It’s a pub which has gone through a whole pile of names apprently including Hopsmiths, Noble, Big Fat Sofa, Flag, Racecourse, Tap and Spile and Brave Sir Robin. Andrew Marler was a partner of Tim Martin of Wethersppons, but the history of their collaboration appears to be dulled by alcohol and variously recorded.
Fytos Fashion at 34, Crouch Hill, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989 89-9e-23 was one of the 20 images that was a part of my web site and book ‘1989’, ISBN: 978-1-909363-01-4, and above is the page from that.
Alley, Crouch Hill, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989 89-9e-24
I can tell you little more about EKASA ENTERPRISE WHOLESALE DISTRIBUTOR other than the list printed here – CONFECTIONERY TOBACCO STATIONERY DRINKS GREETING CARDS MEDICINE E.T.C.
They shared the alley, reached through a carriage entrance between shops at 17 Crouch Hill, with Albert E Chapman Ltd, whose sign including also Stretchwall U K Ltd was there until at least 2011.
Bowler Products Ltd, 14-16, Crouch Hill, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989 89-9e-25
I hoped that Bowler products Ltd made either cricket balls or hats but they were Importers and Wholesale Distributors of a whole range of goods listed on their shop front but neither of these.
Old Style Delivery, Friern Manor Dairy Farm, Stroud Green Rd, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989 89-9e-12
According to the Hornsey Historical Society this Grade II listed building “with its seven sgraffito panels, was built specially for the Friern Manor Dairy Farm Company on the site at the rear of Hanley Road, where the company rented cowsheds and stables.” There had been a dairy here “from the middle of the 19th century, first by Davis & Co. and then by George Taylor” but this building dates from around 1889-95. The company began earlier and an inscription states ESTABLISHED AD. 1836 The artist of the seven panels and architect are unknown, though the bricks came from Tommy Lawrence of Bracknell.
The buildings were let in the 1920s to United Dairies who used them until 1968. After this they eventually in 1997 they were carefully restored to become The Old Diary pub. This closed in 2020 but was reopened in 2022.
Present Day Delivery, Friern Manor Dairy Farm, Stroud Green Rd, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989
I photographed all seven panels, and you can find some more pictures of them on Flickr, but here I’ll just share the two, one showing ‘Old Style Delivery‘ by two milkmaids with a yoke across their shoulders carrying pails, and this one, ‘Present Day Delivery‘ with the milkman driving a horse and cart carrying large churns.
Even as far back as I can remember in the immediate post-war years our milk was delivered using an electric milk float, at first I think a trailer with the milkman walking in front with a handle to control the power and steering and later with him sitting in a cab. But I do remember a visit to the outskirts of a small town in Germany back in the 1970s where the milk cart was horse-drawn and the milkman measured out the milk using litre or half-litre jugs into the containers brought out by the hausfraus.
We still now in our suburban area get our milk delivered in bottles by a milk operative in the middle of the night driving a now silent electric vehicle.
Muslim Extremists March For Sharia Zones: Today Anjem Choudary is due to be sentenced after having been found guilty of directing and encouraging support for the terrorist organisation al-Muhajiroun banned in the UK in 2005. Choudary whose home is in Ilford could face a life sentence.
The prosecution came about after a joint investigation by MI5, Scotland Yard, the New York Police Department, and Canadian police collecting evidence. His home had been bugged and online events were monitored. Police had been conducting separate investigations into his activities in the UK, US and Canada and came together leading to his trial at Woolwich Crown Court where he and a follower were found guilty last week.
Choudary had been a student of Omar Bakri Muhammad and had helped form the Islamist al-Muhajiroun organisation in Britain in 1996. This was proscribed in the UK in 2005 following the London Bombings, but Choudary carried on his activities under groups with various other names, including Al Ghurabaa, proscribed in 2006, and Islam4UK, banned in 2010.
These groups carried out a number of controversial protests to gain wide media coverage, and the East London protest by Muslims Against Crusades on Saturday 30th July 2011 by around 70 men was outnumbered by the press covering it – including me.
This was one of quite a few events where I photographed Choudary, and it appeared to many of us that Choudary, if not actually encouraged by MI5 was certainly being allowed to continue his activities as a way the authorities could keep tag on Islamist activities in the UK.
I heard Choudary speaking in public and was sceptical about the claims he made about ‘Muslim Armies’ but a couple of years later ISIS made them reality. And in June 2014 or shortly after, “Choudary pledged allegiance to the Islamic State’s “caliphate,” and its “caliph” (Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi) “‘via Skype, text and phone’ during dinner at a restaurant in London.”
This was a step too far for the British state and in August 2015 he was charged under section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000 for inviting support of a proscribed organisation and finally convicted in July 2016. He was sentenced to 5 years six months in prison.
He left prison in October 2018, but there were many conditions attached to his release and it was only in October 2021 that he was fully able to resume his campaigning online. The current conviction relates to his actions since then.
My London Diary has a long account of the march march from Leyton to Walthamstow calling for Sharia Zones by ‘Muslims Against Crusades’, calling for the setting up of Sharia Controlled Zones in the UK which ‘Islamic rules’ would be enforced by Muslims, along with many photographs.
Although the organisers had told the press there would be a thousand marchers, there were well under a hundred. And although the leaflet handed out by the marchers claimed support from a wide range of organisation, as I explained it was in fact “only supported by a very small circle of him and his fellow extremists.” Very few of the Muslims on the streets it went through showed support and rather more made clear that they were opposed.
My report also has some coverage of several small counter-demonstrations by the English Nationalist Alliance and other right-wing groups, some of which were stopped by police. As the march arrived for the final rally there were some offensive shouts by some ENA supporters but their protest was otherwise peaceful.
During the final rally there were some minor scuffles in a large crowd of Muslim youths as some objected to the speeches by Muslims Against Crusades, but police moved in quickly. Some photographers close to the scene had their cameras grabbed or were pushed as they tried to photograph what was happening, but I was some distance away.
Of course there were no Sharia Controlled Zones in London, just a few notices like these put up by this small group which had no effect. But my picture was widely pirated on at least 86 web sites around the world, used by right-wing extremists to spread the myth that such things existed. DCMA requests got some of them taken down, but they just appeared elsewhere.
A Damp Sunday in Hull: My poston My London Diary for Sunday 29th July 2018 begins with the question “What do you do on a wet Sunday morning in Hull?” and goes on to answer it, and a second post shows how we spent a slightly less damp afternoon in the city. The pictures here with one exception are from that day.
Hull, thanks to the remarkable generosity of Thomas Robinson Ferens, (1847 – 1930), a Methodist, “industrialist and philanthropist, for whom ‘Reckitt’s Blue made Ferens’ gold'”. He lived simply and gave this wealth almost entirely “to worthy causes. In 1920 he was earning £50,000 a year and giving away £47,000 of that, and still teaching Sunday School every week.” Thanks to him Hull has a university with the motto “Lampada Ferens” (carrying the light of learning) and more to the point for wet Sunday mornings, one of the finest municipal galleries in the country, though I had plenty of time for breakfast before it opened at 11 am.
I didn’t photograph the fine exhibition then showing in the gallery of the work of Käthe Kollwitz or any of the other work on display, but went on to meet my wife in Hull Minster where there was an exhibition by the Mission to Seamen and the statue shown above of Lil Bilocca made from issues of the Hull Daily Mail by Gail Hurst. Bilocca was the leader of Hull’s Headscarf Revolutionaries, the Hessle Road Women’s Committee who took direct actioin after three Hull trawlers, St Romanus, Kingston Peridot and Ross Cleveland, sank with the loss of 58 lives in freezing North Atlantic seas around Iceland in January and February 1968.
They fought the trawler owners – and at times the fishermens’ union – to get better safety measures and went to Downing St and persuaded Harold Wilson and his Labour government to review the industry and bring in safety measures which saved thousands of lives. For which she was blacklisted and subjected to a campaign of abuse and hate until her early death in 1988, but is now widely recognised as a hero for her campaign.
The rain had eased off after lunch as we walked along Spring Bank and through Hull General Cemetery on Spring Bank West to Chants on a combined nostalgia trip and on the Larkin trail.
One of the surprises on Spring Bank was the return of Shakespeare, a TV repair shop which I had photographed in the 1980s but more recently had become a Portuguese grocers and, more recently a multicultural food shop. Though it was only the former shop sign and was soon to be covered by a new once for the food store.
And in the cemetery which has been cleared a little – it now has friends, whearas before the council were more its enemies – I was pleased to again find the Monument to Cholera Victims. The 1849 outbreak in Hull killed 1,860 – one in 43 of the city’s inhabitants.
A short detour took us past Linda’s former home and through the Northern Cemetery to visit her family grave and then it was on to Newland Park, a wandering street in which Philip Larking lived in two houses. The entrance to the street has a plaque on the Larkin trail, and the second house he owned there has a plaque and a large toad.
Newland Park is Hull’s most expensive roads, close to the University, and as well as Larkin was also home as another plaque records for 9 years of De Eva Crane in whose house her the International Bee Research Association was formed.
Architecturally of more interest is West Garth, a large ‘Arts & Crafts’ house designed by John Malcolm Dossor (1872-1940) who later became Lord Mayor of Hull. It has a ‘butterfly’ design, with wings at 45 degrees leading off from the central panelled entrance hall. The ground floor room closest to camera was the billiard room, with a full-size table and a bar.
Taken while staying at West Garth in 2008
At the rear the wings enclosed a loggia, which was south-facing and acted as a sun trap, where we took afternoon tea when staying there – my wife was for some years a frequent visitor and I sometimes accompanied her. The building also had a fine library, and five large bedrooms. When sold for £620,000 on September 1, 2017 it was Hull’s most expensive house sale for the year, considerably more than the second most expensive (also in Newland Park,) which sold for £450,000.
West Garth had been the childhood home of one of our friends and he moved back to Hull in later life, first buying Larkin’s first home in Newland Park (and where I think his lawnmower killed a hedgehog) and later moving back into West Garth, spending his last years trying to restore it to its original state aiming to get it listed, but sadly he died before the work was completed.
Our day ended at another of the locations on the Larkin trail, with dinner at the Royal Station Hotel. Originally built together with the station in an Italian Renaissance style, it opened as the Station Hotel in 1849, gaining the ‘Royal’ after Queen Victoria visited in 1853. We had stayed there on a previous visit to Hull, but on this occasion were at a more modern and cheaper venue a few minutes walk away.
March for a People’s Olympics: Twelve years ago on Saturday 28th June 2012 the London Olympics was in full swing and London was suffering from huge restrictions on the activities of ordinary Londoners.
Although the modern Olympic movement was started in 1894 by Pierre de Coubertin with high aims it has changed over the years to something very different. He intended them to help build a peaceful and better world by educating young people through sport and stated “The important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win, but to take part; the important thing in life is not triumph, but the struggle; the essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well.”
Instead what we now have is a fiercely nationalistic event, with countries devoting huge resources into training a small elite of athletes and expenisve and highly detailed scientific research to find legal ways to enhance their performances – as well as at least in some countries to find ways to circumvent the tests designed to prevent the use of illegal drugs.
The games have also seen a corporate takeover to provide some of the huge sums needed to stage such events, although taxpayers have also suffered. London 2012 cost £8.77 billion, around three and a half times its original budget, around two thirds from general taxation, a quarter from the National Lottery and the remainder from the Mayor of London and the London Development Agency.
The money for the games in London meant there was less to spend in other areas or the country, and even diverted money from grass roots sport. And huge amounts were spent on infrastructure designed for the needs of a few weeks in 2012 rather than the best interests of the future for the Olympic area.
London in 2012 saw a huge military presence, in part aimed at reducing the risk of terrorist attacks and draconian policing largely aimed at the protection of the brands of the various sponsors.
The ‘Whose Games? Whose City?’ protest had at first been totally banned by the authorities as its start point was only just over 2km from the Olympic stadium. Transport for London had refused permission for them to march along roads which had been designated as emergency backup Games routes. Eventually the march organisers came to an agreement with the police that should an emergency arise the marchers would simply go on to the pavement – something that regularly happens with marches when ambulances and other emergency vehicles are allowed to pass.
The endpoint of the march, Wennington Green, was also around 2km as the crow flies from the stadium, and Tower Hamlets Council, owners of Wennington Green attempted to ban speeches or other events there.
Marchers were also threatened with arrest should they display placards, hold banners or even wear t-shirts with political slogans. But on the day there were no arrests although police did at one point stop and search a man who had cut a piece of police tape. He was released after a large and noisy crowd of marchers gathered around and demanded his release.
The attempts by the authorities to stop the march taking place had led to a great deal of media publicity and press and TV from around the world came to cover the start in Mile End Park.
The march organisers, the Counter Olympics Network (CON) pointed out strongly that this was not an anti-Olympics march, but one that protested at the way what should be a sporting event of noble origins has been taken over by corporate interests.
They pointed out that the games sponsors included “serial polluters, companies which seriously damage the environment and which wreck or take lives, Coca Cola, Rio Tinto, BP, Dow Chemical” as well as stating “G4S, Cisco, and Atos deny people their human rights in a variety of situations while Macdonalds helps to fuel the obesity epidemic. London2012 provides benefits at taxpayers’ expense while receiving little in return.”
They also pointed out the many broken promises and pointed out the doubts about the legacy of the games for East London in particular: “the lack of benefits for local people and businesses, the fantastic expansion of security into our daily lives, the deployment of missiles and large numbers of troops, the unwarranted seizure of public land at Wanstead Flats, Leyton Marsh and Greenwich Park.“
As the march went past the former match factory soldiers on top of the flats watched the marchers who chanted “Hey Ho, Sebastian Coe Get your missiles out of Bow“
Another popular chant also mentioned Coe: “Seb Coe, Get Out, we know what you’re all about! Missiles, job losses, Olympics for the bosses!”
Chris Nineham of the Stop The Olympic Missiles Campaign was one of the first speakers at the final rally. He pointed out that the London Olympics had already set a number of records, including the largest ever number of arrests on the first day – including 182 cyclists taking part in a ‘Critical Mass’ ride the previous day – the highest ticket prices, the most intensive application of branding rules and the highest level of militarisation of any Olympic games, with far more being spent on security that even in China.
There were, he said, more troops in London than at any time since World War 2, and more than at any time in Afghanistan, and that it was our presence there which made us a terrorist target, calling for the immediate withdrawal of our troops.
Rev Billy, Chelsea Manning & Global Racism – On Saturday 27th July 2013 I followed the amazing Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir into a branch of HSBC to protest over their support for fossil fuels, went to a vigil supporting whistleblower Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning and then a march and rally against Global Racism and Injustice
Rev Billy at HSBC Victoria,
If you’ve not come across Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir, a radical performance community based in New York City led by Billy Talen you have missed something. They perform guerrilla theatre actions which amuse and entertain while also highlighting the serious problems the world is facing and calling for action.
The performance in London was one of many at various JP Morgan Chase and HSBC banks in 2012 and 2013 which had begun in New York, a “radicalized midsummer cloud forest dream” against the support given to fossil fuels and climate chaos by the banks and the City of London.
Golden Toads had become extinct in their home in Costa Rica, one of many species that have already become extinct because of climate change. The message of the performance “was a simple one. Fossil Fuels are killing life on this planet. Already many species have suffered extinction, and the continuing huge investment in fossil fuel use backed by the banks and the stock exchange is driving climate change, threatening us all with extinction.“
As I wrote “London’s banks and the London Stock Exchange are playing a key role in the destruction of life on the planet, with over £900 billion of Fossil fuel shares on the London Stock Exchange – a quarter of the value of all the holdings and representing fossil fuel reserves of over 200 time the UK’s annual carbon emissions. Burning of all these reserves would create catastrophe. Between 2010-2012 … the top five UK banks raised £170 billion for fossil fuel companies, and the largest of these was the HSBC.”
On My London Diary you can read how I met the group as they trained for the performance opposite New Scotland Yard and then more about the performance which as well as the Golden Toads people also played moneys, eagles and jaguars and were joined by a gorilla. with the Rev Billy preaching about the need for the banks to repent and change their ways as the animals dropped dead on the branch floor.
One member of the team was there to reassure the bank staff and customers that there was no threat to them or property and that the performers would leave as soon as the event finished. And they did, leaving behind only some leaflets and small pools for water on the floor from the large ice eggs the Golden Toads had brought with them to help cool the planet down.
After leaving the bank the performance carried on for a few minutes on the wide pavement outside. A couple of police officers arrived and went inside the Bank to talk with the staff, and by the time they came out the Rev Billy and others were leaving to celebrate a successful action at a café and bar in Victoria station.
Free Bradley Manning Vigil – St Martin’s, Trafalgar Square
People were begining to arrive to take part in a silent vigil on the steps of St Martin-in-the-Fields on Trafalgar Square as a part of the international day of action by the Bradley Manning Support Network.
Bradley – now Chelsea – Manning’s court-martial for passing classified documents to Wikileaks had begun over a month earlier and an inevitable ‘guilty’ verdict was expected shortly.
The documents had exposed a great deal of illegal and immoral actions by the US and other governments and Manning had been celebrated in countries across the world and awarded the Sean MacBride Peace Prize.
On July 30th 2013 Manning was sentenced to 35 years in the maximum-security U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, but in 2017 her sentence was commuted by President Obama to seven years and she was released. In 2019 she was again imprisoned for a year for contempt of court after refusing to testify at a grand jury investigation into WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
Against Global Racism and Injustice – US Embassy to Whitehall
Black Activists Rising Against Cuts (BARAC) UK organised a march and rally against Global Racism and Injustice in solidarity with families of Trayvon Martin, Stephen Lawrence, Azelle Rodney, Jimmy Mubenga and many others to highlight the reality of racism and seek justice, both in the UK and US.
The event began with a rally outside the US Embassy, then still in Grosvenor Square, led by Zita Holbourne and Lee Jasper, founders and national co-chairs of BARAC, an anti-austerity, anti-racist campaigning organisation, with various other activists and poets speaking.
The event was supported by a wide range of anti-racist groups including Operation Black Vote, the National Black Students Campaign, Global Afrikan Congress, PCS, RMT Black Members, Counterfire, UAF, Love Music Hate Racism, Lambeth TUC, Lambeth People’s Assembly.
The protest was in part because of the global outcry over the acquittal in Florida of the murderer of Trayvon Martin under the Florida ‘Stand Your Ground’ law. But it was a protest against global racism and injustice, with a particular emphasis on several well-known cases in this country.
One was the attempt by the Metropolitan Police to smear both the Lawrence family and its supporters through a covert police surveillance unit while failing to properly investigate the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence.
Lee Jasper stated “We march for Jimmy Mubenga, Mark Duggan, Kingsley Burrell, Smiley Culture and Azelle Rodney. We march for justice and equality in the 50th anniversary year of Dr Martin Luther King’s 1968 March on Washington. The truth is that his dream is a threadbare vision here in the UK where racism is on the rise amplified by austerity.”
Following a number of incidents which had led to growing tension between Israel and Hamas, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) launched a full-scale ground invasion of the Gaza Strip on 17th July 2014 which continued until 5th August, with a ceasefire being announced on 26th August.
During the weeks of the attack over 2,000 Palestinians were killed, around 70% of them civilians, and over 10,000 seriously injured. 67 Israeli soldiers and 5 civilians were killed and 730 Israelis injured. Terrible as those numbers were, they seem small when compared with the current genocide taking place in Gaza.
Israel also systematically destroyed many homes. Wikipedia states “The UN estimated that more than 7,000 homes for 10,000 families were razed, together with an additional 89,000 homes damaged, of which roughly 10,000 were severely affected by the bombing.”
On 26th July thousands of people had arrived for a rally on Kensington High Street, as close as protests were allowed to the Israeli Embassy. Police tried hard to keep traffic flowing on what is one of the main routes out of London to the West, but soon the number of people made this impossible.
I’d arrived early and was able to get to the stage where there were to be a few speeches before the march moved off. From this platform I could see the road packed with people looking both west and east.
I listened to some of the speeches and photographed a few of the speakers, including Labour veteran Walter Wolfgang and Owen Jones before making my way with some difficulty to front of the crowd around a hundred yards east down the packed road where the main banners were ready for the start of the march.
Fortunately I was able to join with a group of those who had been around the stage, including some of the speakers, who were going through the crowd which was extremely tightly packed all across the road. By the time I arrived the area in front of the march had been cleared and I was only able to take pictures of the front of the march by leaning over the arms of the stewards as the march started.
Behind the front of the march I was able to go into the march and take some pictures as I walked back in the opposite direction towards the tube station.
Among the banners on the marchwas one carried by the Turkey Youth Union: ‘TURKISH GOVERNMENT SUPPLIES JET FUEL TO ISRAEL – ERDOGAN RESIGN’. Much of that oil was coming from ISIS, who were largely financed by their oil sales smuggled through Turkey with the help of leading members of the Turkish government.
The march paused for a short while opposite Downing St, but stewards again made taking photographs difficult, although the marchers – including Jeremy Corbyn – were rather more cooperative.
When the front of the march reached Parliament Square one of the stewards who recognised me actually invited me into the area in front of the march to take pictures, and I was able to photograph the marchers with ‘Big Ben’ in the background – always a good clue that this was taking place in London.
I then photographed the long rally, taking pictures of most of a very long list of speakers including Michael Rosen. I photographed over 15 of them and you can see some of the pictures and a long list of names on My London Diary.
But as usual I was rather more interested in the people and took many pictures of the crowd and people in it, as well as others in the square including the anti-Zionist Jews who walk down from North London to protest at most events in support of Palestine.
Make Seats Match Votes – Old Palace Yard, Westminster, London. Saturday 25th July 2015
In our recent UK general election there were a little over 48 million registered voters, although only around 29 million bothered to vote. Of these marginally over a third voted Labour who ended up in a landslide victory with 411 of the 650 Parliamentary seats – around 63% – almost two-thirds of our MPs.
The Tories got 23.7% of the votes – almost a quarter of the votes and gained 121 MPs, around 18.6 % of seats. The Lib-Dems did rather better with their 12.2% of the votes gaining 72 seats, 11% of MPs, but as a whole the smaller parties did extremely badly.
The three main parties together got just under 70% of the votes, leaving 30% to the other candidates. Together these resulted in around 40 MPs, around 6% of the total.
Worst hit by our crazy first past the post electoral system was Reform, who actually polled more votes – 14% – than the Lib Dems, but only 5 seats.
It’s also worth pointing out that Labour’s vote share and total vote of 9,708,716 under Keir Starmer was considerably less than in 2017 when Labour under Jeremy Corbyn got 40% of the votes, a total of 12,877,918 on a higher turnout. Corbyn was not only more popular, but his candidacy increased the interest in politics in the UK.
It’s clear from the figures that Labour did not win the 2024 election, but that the Tories lost it, with Reform splitting the right-wing vote to produce the Labour landslide.
The result was a Labour government which at least seems likely to be far more competent than the Tories who had clearly lost the plot. They seem to have hit the ground running, if not always in the correct direction and I’m concerned about their plans for the NHS, housing, poverty, Israel and more.
But we desperately need an electoral system that more clearly reflects the will of the people. There can be arguments about what would be the best way to do that, but I think something using a single transferable vote system – marking candidates in order of preference 1,2,3.. etc, perhaps with a party list for the Upper House (which clearly should no longer be the House of Lords) would be preferable.
I have only ever voted once for a candidate who ever became an MP although I’ve voted in every election since I was old enough to vote in 1966. A year or two before his death in 2017 I met Gerald Kaufmann MP and amused him by telling him he was the only MP I had ever voted for back in 1970 when he was first elected as MP – for Manchester Ardwick.
This year as usual for where I live we got another Tory MP, though he only got 30% of the vote. Labour could have won had they had a good local candidate, and the Lib-Dems and Reform were not that far behind. On any sensible voting system we would now almost certainly not have a Tory MP. Though at least he seems likely to be a rather better constituency MP than our previous absentee member.
My account of the protest on Saturday 25th July 2015 considers the results of the 2015 General Election, “the most disproportionate UK election ever” until 2024 and the pictures demonstrate the problems of photographing the kind of photo-opportunity that looks great to its art director but is highly problematic to us photographers with feet on the ground.
A map of the UK made with coloured balloons to show the constituencies in different colours sounds a good idea, but as I commented, it “would have looked quite impressive from a helicopter, but seen at ground level was rather disappointing.”
Schools, Warner Estate, Baptists & Art Deco: My motivation for this return to Walthamstow was I think to photograph the building whose pictures end this post. On a previous visit I had – for the only time I can remember – lost a cassette of exposed film. I’d realised this later in the same morning and had gone back on my tracks to search for it to where I changed films, but without success. And there had been one building I had photographed that I was keen to have pictures of as Art Deco was one of my particular themes at the time, working for a never published book, London Moderne. But I’d decided to walk around some other areas again before going to take those pictures.
Markhouse Road Schools it tells us on the building were ‘REBUILT 1907’. Walthamstow was forced by the government Education ministry to set up a school board 1880, before which there were“5 Anglican schools, 5 run by Protestant nonconformists, and 3, including an orphanage and an industrial school, by Roman Catholics.” The school boards provided elementary education for 5-13 year olds. Mark House Road board school opened in 1891 with infants, boys and girls departments.
Unfortunately the schools burnt down a few days before Christmas in 1906 and were almost completely destroyed. Walthamstow Urban Distric Council who had been running elementary schools in the area since 1903 rebuilt them and they reopened in 1908.
The school became a secondary modern school in 1946 and closed in 1966, though the building remained in use for various educational purposes for some years until it was finally demolished a few years after I made this picture.
Nat West, Bank, 10, St James St, Walthamstow, Waltham Forest, 1989 89-9e-66
The rather fine entrance to the NatWest bank in St James St; the building on the north of the corner with Leucha Road, is still there, one of the two blocks built by the Warner Estate featured in the previous post on this walk, but the doorway, now for a food store, is sadly bereft of dragons and decoration.
Leucha Road, one many streets built as part of the Warner Estate in Walthamstow got its name from one of the family, Leucha Diana Maude who was the daughter of Clementina and Cornwallis Viscount Hawarden Earl de Montalt, a Conservative politician with an Irish peerage. Clementina was a noted amateur photographer and had ten children, eight of whom survived infancy, so there was no shortage of names for streets around here.
This was one of the earliest to be developed on the Warner Estate in 1895 and the buildings on it are two storey maisonettes, called “half houses” by the Warners.
Leucha Road was acquired by Waltham Forest Council in the late 1960’s and they repainted the doors which had been green like all other Warner properties in what the Conservation Area statement describes as “a pale and inappropriate “Council-house” blue“. The Warner Estate sold off 2400 of their properties to Circle 33 Housing Trust (now part of Circle Housing Group) in 2000 and of these 600 still had outside toilets.
Shops, High St, Walthamstow, Waltham Forest, 1989 89-9e-52
Another picture of some of the Warner estate shops in the High Street with at the left a rather strange ‘streamline’ feature which I think must have belonged to a building to the left demolished in some road-widening scheme.
A curiously barn-like structure dated 1932, Walthamstow (Blackhorse Rd) Baptist Church. This building replaced a ‘tin tabernacle’ in which the congregation had been meeting since 1898. The church is still a “friendly multi-cultural church in Walthamstow.”
Not dated but also obviously from the 1930s was this building for Hammond & Champnesss Ltd on Blackhorse Lane.
Hammond & Champnesss Ltd was established as in 1905 by cousins Ernest Hammond and Harold Champness to make hydraulic water-powered lifts. They were joined by Ernest’s brother Leonard and for some time the company was Hammond Brothers and Champness Ltd.
Hydraulic lifts are raised and lowered by a piston inside a long cylinder with fluid pumped in to move the piston which is connected either directly or by ropes and pulleys to the lift cabin. They can be used in buildings up to five of six stories high.
Hammond Brothers and Champness Ltd went bust in 1932 and the company was taken over by E Pollard & Co. Ltd who renamed it to Hammond & Champnesss Ltd but kept it operating as a separate company. This was taken over by US company Dover Corporation in 1971 but they continued to make lift components in Walthamstow until that company was taken over by Thyssen in 1999.
The building became Kings Family Network. It was refurbished in 2014 and is now Creative Works Co-Working office space.
This wasn’t the end of my walk that day, but after taking three pictures of this building I made my way to Blackhorse Road station and took the train to Crouch Hill.
Dangleway Revisited, Tamils Protest Killings: On Tuesday 23rd July 2013 I revisited the Museum of Docklands and then took the DLR to Royal Victoria for another ride on the Arab Emirates cableway in a detour on my way into central London to photograph a rally by Tamils at Downing Street.
Another Dangleway Ride – Royal Victoria Dock to North Greenwich
It was only a few weeks since my first ride on London’s cable car across the River Thames, but I was in docklands for a second visit to the ‘Estuary’ show at the Museum of Docklands. As one of those featured in the show I had been at the opening, but that was more about meeting people than seeing the work, though I had taken a short look at it all.
The dangleway is fairly pointless in terms of transport, but is one of London’s cheaper tourist attractions, and though short it joins two areas of some interest. I suppose the views might not be to everyone’s interest, though I found them fascinating, and its certainly the cheapest way to do a little aerial photography.
Tamils have long been the subject of discrimination in Sri Lanka, and the Civil War there from 1983 to 2009 against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam resulted in around 100,000 Tamil civilain deaths, as well as around 50,000 fighters on each side. The figures are unclear as the Sri Lankan government has always refused independent, international investigation to ascertain the full impact of the war.
According to Wikipedia, “Since the end of the civil war, the Sri Lankan state has been subject to much global criticism for violating human rights as a result of committing war crimes through bombing civilian targets, usage of heavy weaponry, the abduction and massacres of Sri Lankan Tamils and sexual violence.”
The Tamil Tigers also became notorious for attacks on civilians, suicide bombings. assassinations and the use of child soldiers. The final stages of the war in 2006-9 were particularly bloody, and ended in a total defeat of the LTTE.
The British Tamil Forum at had come to Downing St on the 30th anniversary of the 1983 Black July when 3000 Tamils died in riots across Sri Lanka in an anti-Tamil pogrom orchestrated by the government.
This was not the first anti-Tamil pogrom, but its unprecedented frenzy of violence was a turning point after which Tamils knew they could never be safe in a state dominated by the Sinhalese.
In the four years since the Mullivaikkal Massacre of 2009 Tamils claim that an estimated 147,000 Tamils are either dead or missing, and they see the only solution as the formation of an independent Tamil state – ‘Tamil Eelam.’
The protest called on the UK to boycott the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM 2013) in November 2013 hosted by Sri Lanka. They see this as legitimising a state which has been severley criticised by the UN and human rights organisation for the atrocities it has been committing.
People at the protest signed letters and cards calling on HRH The Prince of Wales to uphold the values of the Commonwealth and reconsider his decision to attend CHOGM 2013.
Shops, Warner, Marx, English & A Lighthouse from my walk on Sunday 24th September 1989.
Shop Window, High St, Walthamstow, Waltham Forest, 1989 89-9c-36
I wasn’t quite sure what I thought about this window display with at right a dress with pictures with rear views of three mice as PRODUCER, DIRECTOR and EDITOR sitting in their directors chairs holding megaphone, script and clapper-board for TAKE 1.
To the left is a mannequin in some kind of underwear and holding another item of lingerie, with other items draped over what looks like a deckchair without its canvase. Behind the two is the larger face of a woman photographed in similar underwear.
I’m not sure how I would describe the faces and hair styles of the two mannequins; perhaps “imperious”?
La Three Shoes, High St, Walthamstow, Waltham Forest, 1989 89-9c-23
I’m unsure if ‘finial’ is the correct architectural term for these decorative features at the division between the shop fronts on the substantial block on the north side of the High Street between Pretoria Avenue and Carisbrooke Rd, I think at 19-35.
This block was developed by The Warner Estate Co. Ltd, registered in 1891 and responsible for much of the development of the area between the 1880s and the First World War, and it probably dates from the early 1890s.
Quite what the significance of the dragon, the flower and the grotesque devilish face are I leave to you. But I took four photographs of this, and another between 27 and 29 in the row.
Clock, Apollo, 4, St James St, Walthamstow, Waltham Forest, 1989 89-9c-25
I tuned south down St James’s Street where on the right are two more blocks of Warner properties with more of the dragons and flowers but without the grinning gargoyles between the shops. Between the first and second floor buildings are mouldings with winged cherubs holding an ornate a bowl of fruit, surrounded by swirls of oak leaves. There is a flower at each bottom corner and in the centre, below the bowl what could be a mushroom or toadstool.
Shops, 2-10, St James St, Walthamstow, Waltham Forest, 1989 89-9c-11
Apollo Dry Cleaners are still I think in the shop at 4 St James St and you can see them in this picture of the row of shops. The clock which was above the Opticians at Number 6 has now gone, although I think two strips of wood which held it are still in place.
These shops – and those on the High Street in the top picture are not even locally listed but they are in the Walthamstow St James Conservation area, with these Warner properties on St James St marked for possible future local listing. There are also desciptions of these and the High Street properties.
Alfred English, Funeral Directors, St James St, Walthamstow, Waltham Forest, 1989 89-9c-14
Funeral Directors Alfred English are still at 70 St James St, but the extension at he side of their large detached house is no longer a shop window and the large sign on the wall to its left and reflected in the window has also gone.
Alfred English have been funeral directors in Walthamstow since 1896, for many years as a family owned firm. It has become a part of Dignity Group which includes 795 Funeral Directors across the UK.
I was rather disappointed to find that Marx House had no connection with Karl, but was named after Marx Gross its first occupier. But while that may be so, I think it may also have a connection with the street name, Markhouse Rd, which apparently derives from an early Marck Manor House. Mearc apparently meant boundary and the estate was on both sides of the boundary between Leyton and Walthamstow.
This was on Markhouse Common which was enclosed in the 1850s and development of this area then started with railways serving the area around. Until 2002 there was a pub at the junction of Markhouse Lane and Queen’s Road, which over the years had various names including the Commongate Hotel, JD’s, Couples and the Sportsman, but is now a hotel with its old name.
This local landmark was built in 1893 and was for many years a popular church in the area. Bullard King & Company, Limited had been founded in 1850 by Daniel King and Samuel Bullard with a fleet of sailing ships trading between London and Natal as The White Cross Line, and they moved to steam vessels in 1879, adding services to carry labourers from India to South Africa.
In 1889 Captain King donated the site on Markhouse Road and paid for the building, begun in 1892, making clear what he wanted to architect J. Williams Dunford. Apparently originally the church had a revolving light shining during services.
The light perhaps helped to attract worshippers and in 1903 it had congregations of over 1,500. The building was Grade II listed in 2007, and the listing text contains an unusually lengthy description including the following: “The lighthouse turret is distinctive, particularly given the church’s inland location, and is an uncommon feature of the design. Despite the obvious link between Christian imagery of Jesus as the Light of the World and the function of a lighthouse, there are no known examples of church designs which use a lighthouse architectural feature. “
The building is still in use as The Lighthouse Methodist Church though I imagine congregations are now considerably smaller.