London Summer Festivals : Sunday 11th July 2004 seemed to be a day of festivals in London and I spent some time at three of them, walking between Trafalgar Square, Denmark Street and St Paul’s Covent Garden and taking a few pictures on the way.
Back then I was still working with the rather primitive Nikon D100 DSLR, with probably the dullest and smallest viewfinder of any camera I’ve used (though I have used deveral with no viewfinder at all.)
But although it only gave 6.1Mp files, (3012X2008 pixels) and the DX sensor was only half the size of a 35mm frame these were of remarkable quality and could be extrapolated to make decent large prints – one taken on another day was blown up to 2.3m wide for a public exhibition.
Nikon at the time and for some years were saying that the DX format was all that was needed for its cameras, and the later decision to move to ‘full-frame’ was driven by marketing – keeping up with Canon – rather than technical considerations.
Of course like most other photographers followd sheep-wise to move to full-frame when these new cameras came out, though most of the time when working with telephoto lenses I switched down to DX format for the greater equivalent focal length this gave.
At first the DX format with its 1.5x focal length multiplier meant I was working without any real wide angle lens. The 24-85mm worked as a 36-127 lens, But by July 2004 I had acquired the remarkable Sigma 12-24mm lens, “the world’s first ultra-wide-angle zoom for DSLRs with full-frame sensors” – 18-36mm equivalent on DX, solving that issue. And since on DX it was not using the corners of the frame it was a better performer than on full-frame.
I put the pictures in this post on the web in 2004, when most of us were still accessing the internet on dial-up modems and even the fastest connections were only 512kbs. To get web pages to load at a sensible speed the jpg image files had to be drastically cut in size to around 50-70kb. Now I would upload the same files the same size at two or three times the size to get visibly better quality.
Here- with some corrections is the text I wrote about the day in 2004:
Sunday I walked into Trafalgar Square to find it full of young Indian girls carrying ornamental jars and dancing with them, rehearsing for the Trafalgar Shores event that afternoon.
I left and went up to Denmark St for a set by 50hz, electrifying the first Tin Pan Alley Festival, organised with Shelter. Great Indie Rock and supporting charity without running. more pictures
Then on to a garden party in St Pauls Covent Garden, which was sprinkled with celebrities, actors (female) and others I’ve not heard of and didn’t recognise. And a picture I didn’t post in 2004
Back in Trafalgar Square the girls had donned traditional garb and were now recognisably the Saraswati Dance Academy in a colourful South Asian show. After this we were treated to some water puppetry from the Vietnamese National Puppetry Theatre (not very photogenic and hard to photograph) so i went back to catch Billy Thompson playing Grapelli to Tim Robinson’s Django with rhythm support from Dukato. Finally back in the square I watched the superb Irie! Caribbean Dance Fusion from Deptford/New Cross, London. Then home for a slightly dark and chilly alfresco dinner with family. more pictures
Highgate Hill Murugan Chariot Festival: Back in the first decade of this century my work covered a wider range of cultural events than now, including many religious events on the streets of London. The 2010 election which put into power a Tory-led government dedicated to making the poor poorer and themselves and their friends richer changed that for me, leading to 14 years dominated by covering protests – something which had only been one strand of my work before. I’m currently not sure if our recent election will change my work which for the last months has been completely dominated by Palestine.
I didn’t entirely stop photographing religious festivals and on Sunday 10th July 2011 went to Highgate where the annual Highgate Hill Murugan Chariot Festival was taking place.
Here I’ll copy what I wrote about it in 2011 with a few of the many pictures I made at the event. You can see more pictures on My London Diary.
Murugan is a popular Hindu God in Tamil areas and the patronal god of the Tamil homeland Tamil Nadu. As God of war Murugan with six heads has a divine lance and other weapons and rides a peacock.
In the Chariot Festival people make offerings to Murugan of baskets of fruits, particularly coconuts, which are blessed and returned.
Men on one side and women on the other pull on the long ropes to take the chariot around the neighbourhood, while a conch shell gives an audible warning of its movement; other women carry kavadi (burdens) offered to Murugan, chanting and carrying of pots, possibly of coconut milk on their heads.
Some men roll half-naked along the ground behind the chariot holding coconuts. People sweep the road to make their progress less painful, and others anoint them with sacred ashes.
Highgate Hill Murugan Temple is one of the oldest and most famous in the UK, but the celebrations here seemed to be a little more restrained than those I’ve photographed at some other London Murugan temples.
Perhaps surprisingly, in Sri Lanka Murugan is also revered by Sinhalese Buddhists.
On the ‘History‘ page of the Highgatehill Murugan Temple web site you can read how the Hindu association of Great Britain was founded in London on 23rd October 1966, and in 1977 was able to buy a spacious freehold property at 200A, Archway Road, Highgate Hill. Here they built the Temple which includes a library, two Concert Halls, a prayer hall and a Priest’s flat which was opened in 1979, with a three storey Temple added a few years later. It was the first Sri Llankan Hindu Temple in the UK.
Garden Bridge, Housing, Domestic Violence, Migrants & Police Killings; Saturday 9th July 2016 began for me in Waterloo, where right wing Labour party members were attending a conference. Then I travelled to Hackney for a Sisters Uncut protest over domestic violence and housing, back to Downing Street for a rally against the scapegoating of immigrants and went briefly to a Brexit debate in Green Park and then south of the river again to a protest against police murders in the UK and US.
Garden Bridge protest at ‘Progress’ conference – Coin St
Lambeth Council were supporting the ‘Garden Bridge‘, a private green space to bridge the River Thames close to Waterloo Bridge, an expensive vanity project with a costing over £200 million with little public gain.
Lambeth residents came to protest as Lambeth councillors and council leader Liz Peck were attending the Labour Party ‘Progress’ movement ‘Governing for Britain’ conference.
The Garden Bridge project was finally abandoned in August 2017, by which time it had cost £53m, including £43m of public money.
Housing Protest at ‘Progress’ conference – Coin St
Also protesting outside the Progress conference were housing protesters against the demolition of council estates and their replacement by luxury flats under ‘regeneration’ schemes by London Labour councils including Southwark, Newham and Lambeth.
The protesters were from the Revolutionary Communist Group, Focus E15 ‘Homes for All’ campaign and Architects for Social Housing who had been involved in various campaigns to stop the demolition of social housing in these boroughs.
They say that New Labour policies, now accelerated by the Tory Housing and Planning Act, makes London too expensive for ordinary workers leading to social cleansing, while making excessive profits for developers, including housing associations and estate agents Savills.
East End Sisters Uncut on Domestic Violence – Hackney Town Hall
Sisters Uncut came to Hackney Town Hall to demand the council abolish all plans to demolish council homes, refuse to implement the Housing Act and invest money into council housing and refuges for victims of domestic violence.
They quoted a Women’s Aid report for 2013-5 which found that over 60% of applications to women’s refuges in Hackney are refused as no room is available.
The Brexit vote had been followed by a rise in the scapegoating of immigrants and Islamophobia, and ‘Another Europe Is Possible’ organised a rally at Downing Street to keep Britain open to migrants, and for policies and media which recognise the positive contribution that migration makes to the UK.
Speakers came from a wide range of groups including Movement for Justice, Left Unity, Friends of the Earth, Newham Monitoring Project, Stand Up To Racism and Syrian activists.
Many from the rally were going to the Brexit picnic and discussion in Green Park afterwards, and I did too.
Most of those who came to the picnic felt cheated by a vote that was based on lies and false promises, but they came wanting to find ways to make it into something positive for the country.
There were also some who had come to counter the protest with their own picnic for democracy organised by Spiked magazine, and when the people from the Downing Street rally arrived with their placards some of them came over to pick an argument.
Things got a little heated when a woman from the ‘Spiked’ group accused those holding the placards of being unwashed, and there was some vigorous speaking in response. But people from both sides stepped in to cool things down.
Local black organisers in Brixton called a rally and march in memory of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile and to show solidarity with those murdered by police brutality, both in the US and here in the UK.
Alton Sterling was murdered by police officers on July 5, 2016, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, shot at close range after police had pinned him to the ground where he was selling CDs outside a grocery store. In May 2017 the US Justice department announced there was insufficient evidence to support federal criminal charges against the officers concerned – despite the many videos of the incident and other sources.
Philando Castile was fatally shot at close range after has car was stopped by police in he Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area. There was video of the incident and the officer was charged with second-degree manslaughter and two counts of dangerous discharge of a firearm. A jury acquitted him of all charges in June 2017.
There were many speeches both about these and other US cases and those in the UK, where Sean Rigg, Wayne Douglas and Ricky Bishop died after being held in nearby Brixton Police Station. One of the organisers spoke wearing a t-shirt listing just a few of those who have been killed by police in the UK. An annual protest is held every year in Whitehall against the many custody deaths in the UK, and in 2015 while this was taking place police took advantage of this to strip the tree in front of the police station of its deaths in custody memorials
Some time after I left the protesters marched around Brixton, bringing traffic to a halt for several hours.
Die Stamping, GPO, Ancient House, Churchyard, Leaves & Market: I can’t now recall why I had only time for a relatively short walk in Walthamstow on Saturday 16th September 1989 but it was an interesting one. I think possibly I was unhappy with a picture I had take earlier and had returned to have another attempt.
Essex Die Stamping Co, Church Path, Walthamstow, Waltham Forest, 1989 89-9b-31
From Walthamstow Central Station I crossed Hoe St and walked down St Mary Road, which leads to Church Path, and the Essex Die Stamping Co Ltd who were also steel engravers was on this path. The company had moved out to Harlow when I made this picture and the property had already been sold. It is now residential.
At the end of Church Path is Vestry Road and the Vestry House Museum in a Grade II listed building built as the parish workhouse in 1730. Before opening as a local history museum in 1931 it had served as a police station, an armoury, a building merchant’s store, and a private home. Among its exhibits is “the Bremer Car, the first British motor car with an internal combustion engine, which was built by Frederick Bremer (1872–1941) in a workshop at the back of his family home in Connaught Road, Walthamstow.” The museum is currently being renovated and should reopen in 2026.
The short fluted column and capital outside the museum was one of the many which adorned the frontage of Sir Robert Smirke’s fine neo-classical General Post Office HQ in St Martin-le-Grand, built in 19826-9 and demolished in 1912. It was then bought by stone mason Frank Mortimer who presented it to Walthamstow Council. They put it in Lloyd Park, but moved it outside the museum in 1954.
House, 2, Church Lane, Orford Rd, Walthamstow, Waltham Forest,1989 89-9b-25
The Ancient House at 2,4,6 and 8, Church Lane was Grade II listed in 1951, early on in the pioneer survey which followed the Town and Country Planning Acts of 1944 and 1947. The listing text indicates it began as a single fifteenth century hall house but has since been converted into separate dwellings with the hall also divided into normal height floors. It was extensively “restored in 1934 by Mr Robert Fuller under the supervision ofMr CJ Brewin, architect, as a memorial to W G Fuller, head of the Fuller’s firm of builders. “
Monument, St Mary’s Churchyard, Church End Path, Walthamstow, Waltham Forest, 1989 89-9c-51
An atmospheric view of the corner of St Mary’s Churchyard. Beyond the path (although not showing their best side) are the almshouses “ERECTED and ENDOWED FOR EVER By Mrs MARY SQUIRES Widow for the Use of Six Decayed Tradesmens Widow of this Parish and no other” in 1795. You can read more about them in an article by Karen Averby Story of Squires Almshouses built in 1795 in Walthamstow, East London.
Porch, 52-4, Church Hill, Walthamstow, Waltham Forest, 1989 89-9c-55
Although St Mary’s Church is well worth a visit I didn’t photograph it (or take a proper picture of the almshouses.) When I visited the National Building Record in Saville Row I often had to wait in the library where I could pull files for various areas off the shelves and look through the pictures they contained. Most were stuffed full of pictures of old churches, many taken by clergymen who apparently had time on their hands and were often keen amateur photographers. So I felt little need to photograph old churches.
Instead I took the footpath through the churchyard to Church Hill whre I found this porch across the entrance to two houses with delightful leaf ironwork.
Before catching the Underground from Walthamstow Central I had time for a short wander along Walthamstow Market which claims to be a mile long but isn’t, though at around a kilometre it is still the second longest outdoor market in Europe.
Walthamstow Market, High St, Walthamstow, Waltham Forest, 1989 89-9c-43
The market began in 1885 and operates five days a week with around 500 market stalls as well as shops on both sides of the street. It is still worth a visit but I think has gone down considerably since 1989, though the four pictures I took on this occasion (three on-line) do not show it at its best.
You can browse a few more pictures I took on this walk on Flickr from any of those here, as well as many more of my pictures – over 30,000 from London.
This is the final section of my walk on Sunday September 3rd 1989 which had begun in Stratford, from which some images appeared in my web site and self-published book ‘1989’, ISBN: 978-1-909363-01-4, still available. The pictures here are in the order I took them, and almost all of these final images are in the book so you can read my deliberately disjointed thoughts that made up the text on the book pages here. Although this was the end of this walk I returned to the area for another walk a few days later.
Dove Cafe, 390, High Road, Leyton, Waltham Forest, 1989 89-9b-54
Andy & Co, Catering Equipment, 376-80, High Rd, Leyton, Waltham Forest, 1989 89-9b-55
Good As New Clothes, High Rd, Leyton, Waltham Forest, 1989 89-9b-41
Jesus is Alive, Leyton Rd, Stratford, Newham, 1989 89-9b-43
178-80 High Rd, Leytonstone, Waltham Forest, 1989 89-9b-44
Here you can see the buildling where I took a photograph in a earlier post of Eves, a ‘STRICTLY LADIES ONLY HEALTH CLINIC’. The road on the corner at the left of the picture is Eve Rd. As you can read the building was also BeCKS Driving Lessons, BRITAINS LARGEST PRIVATELY OWNED DRIVING SCHOOL FOR CAR & H,,G,V.’.
There are some clues as to the origin of this building, including the intertwined initials J and S but I have been unable to find out more. Currently it is a bookmakers.
Noted Eel & Pie House, West St, 481, High Rd, Leytonstone, Waltham Forest, 1989 89-9b-45
Finally I photographed the Noted Eel & Pie House, still present at the start of West Street although the Potato Dealers and Farm Produce shop at left is now an off-licence. The shop sign for the Eel & Pie House has changed and now spreads across three bays and all those white tiles have been replaced by green and the shopfront also now has a large eel at right.
You can read the history of the shop, with some pictures on their web site. It began with the great grandfather of the current owners who was the skipper of an eel barge sailing out of Heeg, a fishing village in the Netherlands. Eels were exported to London from there until 1938. Around 1894 his youngest son came London at the age of nine to live with a family who owned a pie shop and learn the trade, opening a pie shop in Hoxton with a cousin just before the outbreak of The Great War. He married the daughter of another pie shop owner and in 1926 with a loan from his father-in-law set up his own shop under his father-in-law’s name, E Newton, on Bow Road.
The shop name was changed soon after the outbreak of the Second World War when the Home Office insisted his name as a “friendly alien” had to be on the shop front. It became the “Noted Eel & Pie House” with his name, “H HAK” in the smallest font permitted in the bottom right corner as he worried customers might think it German.
In 1976 when two of his sons were then running the business the shop was compulsory purchased by the council and the business opened in Leytonstone in 1978. I suspect the sign in my picture may have come with them as it doesn’t quite fit and there is a name painted over at bottom right.
This was the final frame exposed on this walk. But I was soon to return to take more pictures in the London Borough of Waltham Forest.
Blair Lied, Millions Died – Chilcot: I’m certainly not a supporter of Trump and was shocked by the news of the US Supreme Court vote that granted presidents of the US immunity from prosecution for actions taken in their presidential role. But the publication of the Chilcot report on Wednesday 6th July 2016 was a reminder that in this country the same applies although our processes are more convoluted, lengthy and opaque.
In short, our establishment protects its own. And as Corbyn found out, demonises and discredits any who threaten it, even at times as in the case of weapons expert David Kelly most probably “eliminating” them.
Parts of the report were read out at the protest. It confirmed that the decision to go to war had been taken many months in advance between Bush and Blair, and revealed some new areas along with those already known where Blair had deliberately misled both Parliament and public.
Part of this was of course the ‘dodgy dossier’ or rather dossiers, the first issued in September 2002 as a deliberate attempt to mislead the public, to which Blair added the sensational (and nonsensical) claim that led the Sun to headline “Brits 45mins from doom” to unverified (and later found untrue) claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and nuclear weapons programme.
The second ‘dodgy dosser’, issued in February 2003, which repeated the claims about WMDs was found to “been plagiarised from various unattributed sources including a thesis produced by a student at California State University.” It included some of the typographical errors from these, but some phrases had been altered “to strengthen the tone of the alleged findings“, later referred to as “sexing up” the report. A House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee inquiry found that the report had not been checked by ministers and “had only been reviewed by a group of civil servants operating under Alastair Campbell.”
BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan revealed that his “report which claimed that the September Dossier had been deliberately exaggerated” was based on an interview with David Kelly, although Kelly himself, as the 2011 BBC report Dr David Kelly: Controversial death examined states “gave evidence to MPs’ committees in which he said he did not believe he was the main source of the story”. Two days later he was dead.
The protest on 6th July 2016 took place in the street by the side of the QEII Centre on the morning the Chilcot report was being published there. It began with a naming of a few of the dead, with people coming up to read 5 names of UK forces and 5 of Iraqi civilians who died because of the war. It was only a token gesture, as over a million Iraqis are generally acknowledged to have lost their lives. This was followed by a number of speeches – there are pictures of the speakers on My London Diary.
Police were unusually uncooperative with the protest, insisting on keeping the minor road by the side of the QE2 where the protest was being held open to traffic in both directions, although there was very little actual traffic and it would have caused hardly any disruption to close it. It was hard not to assume they had come under political pressure to harass the event.
The protesters demanded that Blair be brought to trial as a war criminal. Of course Blair has been tried for nothing. Despite having been found to have lied to Parliament he is still treated by the media as a respected politician. Lying to Parliament is surprisingly not a criminal offence – and in response to a 2021 petition with over 100,000 signatures the government said it had no plans to make it one. Almost certainly because too many politicians would be found guilty.
Decent Housing & Saving the NHS: Ten years ago today there were protests over two of the major issues which still face our incoming government today, but which I have no faith in them facing or improving.
Focus E15 March for Decent Housing – East Ham
The housing crisis largely stems from successive governments, largely starting with Thatcher prioritising private ownership above all other ways of providing homes for people. Thatcher gave away publicly owned social housing to tenants at knock-down prices and refused to allow councils to try to replace what had been lost.
Government housing policy since have been obsessed with the idea of the “housing ladder“; housing isn’t – or shouldn’t be – about ladders to increase personal wealth but about homes, and the ladder is very definitely that in “Pull up the ladder, Jack! We’re all right” and sod those left at the bottom below.
Private renting has also moved from being a way in which owners of properties derived and income from properties they owned, to a scheme where more and more tenants are paying high rents to buy properties for their landlords. It’s a crazy system and one which should be stopped.
We have also seen a huge growth in properties which are largely built to be bought as investments, particularly by overseas investors, often being left unoccupied for all or most of the time. Clearly this needs to be made economically nonviable, not only because of the effects it has on the shortage of homes, but also because of the way it is seriously distorting the development of our cities.
Second (and multiple) home ownership is also an increasing problem, particularly in the more desirable rural areas of the country and we need to find ways to reduce the impact of this, perhaps through taxation to provide a fund to build social housing in these areas.
But the basic solution to the country’s housing problems is simple. Build more social housing. Any government which comes in without this as the main thurst of their housing policy will fail to improve the housing crisis.
As I wrote ten years ago “We need a government – national and local – determined to act for the benefit of ordinary people, making a real attempt to build much more social housing, removing the huge subsidies currently given to private landlords through housing benefit, legislating to provide fair contracts for private tenants and give them decent security – and criminalising unfair evictions.” We haven’t got one.
You can read more about the march in East Ham organised by Focus E15 Mums to demand secure housing, free from the threats of eviction, soaring private rents, rogue landlords, letting agents illegally discriminating, insecure tenancies and unfair bedroom tax and benefit cap on My London Diary.
The march was supported by housing protest groups from Hackney, Brent and from South London and organisations including BARAC and TUSC. I was surprised to see the popular support it received on the streets with even some motorists stopping their cars to put money in the collection buckets.
Save our Surgeries on NHS 66th Birthday – Whitechapel
The National Health Service began on 5th July 1948 and on its 66th anniversary the Save our Surgeries campaign against health cuts in Tower Hamlets marched to Hackney in a show of opposition to health cuts, surgery closures and NHS privatisation.
The setting up of the NHS was opposed by the Conservatives and they and the doctors and dentists associations forced many compromises which led to it being a less than comprehensive health service, though still a great national achievement and one which for we are justly proud of.
Many doctors made – and some still make – large incomes from private practice and fought to keep these rather than back a universal system wholeheartedly. But in more recent years a huge private medical system has grown up alongside the NHS and more and more people are covered through work schemes providing private medical cover.
This private system has grown parasitically on the state medical system and all governments over the past thirty or more years have found ways to syphon off money to it, by allowing it to tender for various more straightforward aspects of NHS services.
Successive governments have also created huge administrative burdens on the NHS, setting up new levels of administrators which oversee and to some extent override clinical decisions. But financially the most disastrous impact on the NHS comes from the various PFI agreements, largely made under New Labour, which enabled the building of new hospitals without the costs appearing in the government’s debts, but tied the trusts running the hospitals into huge debt repayments and the kind of service contracts that make replacing a light bulb cost £1200.
General practice was set up in 1948 under doctor-owned surgeries but increasingly these are now owned by healthcare companies after New Labour in 2007 allowed larger companies to buy them up. Operose Health, part of US healthcare giant Centene Corporation in 2022 was running 70 practices and a BBC Panorama report showed they were only employing half as many doctors as average practices, while employing six times as many physician associates (who have only 2 years of medical training rather than the 10 for GPs) who were being inadequately supervised.
Unfortunately Labour policy appears to be to increase the reliance – and transfer of funds to the private sector rather than reduce it. You can read more about their position in the 2023 Tribune article Labour’s Love Affair with Private Healthcare by Tom Blackburn, which aslo sets out clearly the financial links of Wes Streeting to private healthcare. And of course he is not the only Labour MP with a financial interest. Labour might sort out a few of the problems but the creeping privatisation seems sure to accelerate.
The protest in East London was over changes in the funding of NHS surgeries which have failed to take into account the extra needs of deprived innner-city areas and were expected to lead the closure of some surgeries as well as other NHS cuts, particularly those happening because of the huge PFI debt from the new Royal London Hospital.
There was a brief rally in Altab Ali Park before the march with speeches by local politicians and health campaigners before the crowd of several hundreds set off down the Whitechapel Road on its way to London Fields in Hackney where it was to meet up with other protesters for a larger rally. But I left the march at Whitechapel Station.
DPAC 4th July Tea Party: One of the many strange questions that Americans ask on Quora (a web site I occasionally waste some time on and usually regret) is why we British don’t celebrate the 4th of July. It’s actually a rather better question than most – perhaps we should celebrate when we got rid of a nation that can produce Trump and Biden, one of whom still seems likely to be the next president when clearly neither is suitable.
Of course, here in the UK we have our own contest today between Sunak and Starmer, neither of whom in my estimation fit to govern, and, as in the USA elected by an archaic system designed to frustrate rather than provide democracy. If you were unfortunate not to have heard the late David Graeber speaking in person about US Democracy (and haven’t read his book on the subject) you can hear him talking on video (and read a transcript) on The Lost Byway, the site on which more usually John Rogers publishes the videos of his remarkably upbeat walks around London.
Of course I don’t believe that there are Americans dumb enough to write most of the stupid questions that are posted on Quora, which must surely employ a whole squad of AI-driven bots to generate and post them.
Should we need an excuse for a party in the first half of July we would of course do better to wait 10 days and celebrate with the French (also this year embroiled in election madness.) That would almost certainly be far more fun and a good excuse to drink wine, though I might draw the line at accordions. Its 58 years since I found myself in the square in front of the Mairie in a small French municipality a few mile south of Paris and I haven’t forgotten it.
But I have photographed at protests over the years which have deliberately been timed for various reasons for US Independence Day as well as rather more that totally ignored any significance the day might have.
On Friday 4th of July 2014 Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) celebrated Independent Living Day with an Independent Living Tea Party at the Dept of Work & Pensions, calling for a stop to the removal of the Independent Living Fund which provides funding, education and transport that enables disabled people to live in the community.
The chose American Independence Day stating “The famous Boston teaparty led to a revolution against the British government let’s see where our teaparty leads….”
It wasn’t a huge protest but “Fifteen or so people in wheelchairs along with around as many walking but with other disabilities along with carers and supporters filled the pavement in front of the DWP in Caxton St, and at times made a considerable noise. As well as their voices and a megaphone, some had brought whistles and other musical instruments (and some less musical) to liven up the event. For those with hearing difficulties there was a BSL signer.“
The future looked desperate for the almost 18,000 who then received support through the fund, and they were engaged in a long fight to try to prevent it being closed. In 2013 the government had lost a court case over its closure, but four months later the government had decided to go ahead and close it anyway in 2015. A fresh legal challenge failed.
Responsibility for supporting disabled people being passed to local authorities who were given funding roughly 12% less than the ILF – and this was not ring-fenced. DPAC said that given councils were having already to make massive cuts it seems unlikely that all of this will make its way to the disabled and that councils will largely be unable to find the staff to properly implement fair schemes. They point out that the ILF is a well organised and cost-effective scheme and any replacement is almost certain to be less efficient and to severely impacting the quality of life of severely disabled people.
DPAC fear that many currently usefully employed disabled people will have to give up work and will no longer be able to live independently but will have to go into residential care – at much greater cost.
Protests that are well-behaved and follow the rules seldom get coverage in the media – as last weekends massive Restore Nature Now showed – 60,000 people supported by a huge range of groups marching through London was not ‘news’ for BBC Radio 4, and there has been a huge news blackout on all the many peaceful marches calling for a ceasefire in Palestine.
So DPAC always like to end their events with a little disruptive action, usually in the form of a road block, although despite this their protests are still ignored by the mass media. Around half of those taking part decided to take part and blocked busy Victoria St by stopping their wheelchairs and holding banners on the pedestrian crossing.
Police arrived a few minutes later and tried to persuade them to move, getting a little firmer and eventually threatening protesters with the possibility of arrest for obstructing the highway.
“Before long there were around four times as many police as protesters and when it began to look as if the police might carry out their threat of arrest, the protesters who had been receiving a great deal of support from tourists and others – even including some in the traffic being held up or diverted away down Great Smith St – decided it was time to end the protest and wheeled their chairs away.”
Despite this action I don’t think the event received any publicity outside some specialist print and online media. There were a couple of celebrity weddings, another getting sentenced for indecently assaulting girls, a hurricane in the US, an underpass collapse in Brazil – and some celebrations in the USA and many other stories.
Mecca, Statues, Bakers Ladders, Timber… Continuing my walk on Sunday September 3rd 1989 which had begun in Stratford, from which some images appeared in my web site and self-published book ‘1989’, ISBN: 978-1-909363-01-4, still available. The pictures here are in the order I took them. For those images which were in the book I’ll show the book pages here.
Back at the Bakers Arms after a little stroll on Leyton Flats I found this closed Mecca Leisure Bingo Hall on Hoe Street, its ground floor frontage covered with flyposting. Cinema Treasures says it opened as The Scala Cinema in 1913, was renamed the Plaza Cinema in 1931 and then closed, reopening in 1933. After its next name change in 1961 to The Cameo Cinema in 1961 it kept going for two years before becoming a Mecca Bingo Club. Left derelict for 18 years after this closed in 1986, it was taken over by a church in 2004, Grade II listed in 2006 and now looks much better. The listing text calls it the Former Empress Cinema and notes its still existing elaborate interior plasterwork.
The London Master Bakers’ Pension Society (now the Bakers’ Benevolent Society) was founded in 1832 and in 1854 decided to build almshouses. The foundation stone for the first was laid in 1857 and the first block of 18 were finished by 1861 and the rest by 1866, providing homes for elderly poor bakers and their widows.
In the late 1960s the site was purchased, probably as a part of a GLC road-widening scheme and the Bakers moved out to new villas in Epping. The almshouses were saved from further threats to demolish them by Grade II listing in 1971 and were purchased by Waltham Forest Council for use as 1-bed flats.
Rather to my surprise this corner of Russel Road and Lea Bridge Road still looks remarkably similar although the names have changed and the central buildings have been rebuilt, I think with a slightly wider pavement. But it still sells tyres and cars and there is still a shed on the corner, though no longer named the DUCK INN, and the buildings down Russell Road still look much the same.
This house was demolished to build a modern office for the Capworth Panel & Timber Co Ltd, which was dissolved in 2012. As well as the main house all of the sheds and buidings at right also went.
The house had obviously seen grander days, and I wonder it it had originally had a carriage entrance at left where the brickwork does not quite match and the window and door are clearly much more modern, perhaps having been added at the same time as the first floor windows were given a makeover probably in the 1930s or 50s.
I still had time to continue my wandering around the area and take a few more pictures and will post a final set from this walk shortly.
Laburnum Street Party, Haggerston: The street party on Sunday 2nd July 2006 was one of the more enjoyable events I photographed, and was a part of a long-running local campaign to get the Haggerston Baths re-opened.
The baths which have their front entrance on Whiston Street ande back onto Laburnum Street were first opened with great pomp and ceremony in June 2004 by the Mayor of Shoreditch. Hackney Citizen’s 2017 article has a great deal of information on this and all the later developments.
At the time less than one in 20 houses in the area contained a bathroom, and as well as a 30.5 metre swimming pool there were 31 cubicles with baths (first class and second class though I’m at a loss as to the difference) supplied with hot and cold water and a laundry y where people could bring their clothes to wash in a trough before putting them through a mangle before taking them home to dry on a washing line.
The baths, designed in a Wren style by leading pubic baths architect A W S Cross were built with the best materials and designed to last. The insistence on them being built to the highest standards resulted in them costing almost twice the original figure, almost £60,000.
The baths were damaged by bombing in the Second World War but soon reopened and were considerably modernised in 1960 and in the 1980s when the pool was reduced in length to 25 metres.
The building was Grade II listed as “a unique and important part of Hackney’s heritage” in 1988. But the London Borough of Hackney appeared not to appreciate it, and funding cuts for local government under the Tories led to “more than a decade of neglect and poor maintenance by Hackney Council” and in February 2000 the baths were closed “temporarily” for health and safety reasons. They were at that time Hackney’s main swimming pool.
A strong local campaign began for the reopening of the baths, and as a part of this the Haggerston Pool Community Trust held the first Laburnum Street Party was held on 26th June 2004, the 100th anniversary of their opening.
Hackney was short of money to make the repairs partly because of the disastrous Clissold Leisure Centre, begun in 1996 with a budget of £7m. The plans were updated when Sport England became involved to £11.5mm but had increased to £34m when it opened 3 years late in 2002. Less than two years later it was closed on health and safety grounds finally reopening in late 2007 by which time the cost had increased to £45 million.
In 2009 it looked as if the pool was to be refurbished and reopened as a result of the local campaign when the Department for Children, Schools and Families announced a £5m grant towards the cost – which thanks to continued neglect of the building had by then increased hugely from the original £300,000.
But the financial crash led to Hackney abandoning the £21m scheme for turning the pool into a a Health and Wellbeing Centre in 2009. The Haggerston Pool Community Trust continued to look for backers for the restoration but Hackney Council in 2015 “asked developers to come forward with expressions of interest in restoring the building and bringing it back into public use. The winning developer will have to cover the cost of the work and then pay the Council rent for an annual lease.”
“Of those parties who expressed an interest ten developers went on to make formal proposals. Of these, three were shortlisted based on an earlier consultation where residents were asked what facilities and uses they would like to see on the site. One developer pulled out, leaving two proposals.”
Neither of these included a swimming pool and the council site tries to explain why, though I think the answer is simple – it would not make enough money for the developers when they leased it. On the web site of the chosen developer Castleforge you can see an impression of what the baths could look like in 2024. It seems a horrible end to what began as a very impressive municipal investment to improve the lives of local people.
