Some time in 1977 I visited Kew Bridge Engines in Green Dragon Lane, Brentford and was greatly impressed by the huge beam engines there, once used to pump water to the top of the tower. I had joined a local camera club, and they were running a photographic competition in conjunction with the site and allowed us free access. One of my pictures ended up with the second prize (rather to the surprise and disgust of many club members as I wasn’t really a ‘club photographer’) and also got printed in Amateur Photographer. You can see this and many other pictures on my web site London’s Industrial Heritage.
Blast furnace, Gunns Mills, Flaxley, Forest of Dean, 1988 88-7b-63
But it was there, either on that visit or a later one when I took my young sons and friends to Kew Bridge Engines for a birthday treat that I picked up a leaflet about the Greater London Industrial Archaeology Society, and I’ve been a member ever since. Though none of us to this day know how to pronounce GLIAS. And as I say on the web site set up for me by one of those two young boys 25 years on, “I’m not really an industrial archaeologist, but over the last twenty-five years I’ve photographed many things that interest industrial archaeologists.”
Gloucester Docks, 1988 88-7b-65
At least one of those boys came with me on a coach trip organised by GLIAS in June 1988 to Gloucestershire where we visited Lydney Harbour, Gunns Mills at Flaxley in the Forest of Dean, Gloucester Docks, the Old Sharpness Canal entrance and Sharpness Docks. It was a long day out, and we arrived back in London only just in time to run for the last train to Staines.
Old Sharpness Canal entrance, 1988 88-7b-21
The weather wasn’t ideal, with some quite heavy rain at times, but I still took around a hundred pictures, and there are 29 of them in my album ‘GLIAS trip, Gloucestershire, 1988‘ some perhaps more interesting for their IA content than as photographs. I can’t tell you a great deal about the industrial archaeology, but I think some make interesting photographs, and others are welcome to make more technical comments either here or better on the album.
Three of the four posts I made on December 6th 2014 had a Christmas theme, with two of them around the then annual Santacon event in London. In 2014, around a thousand Santas were gathering on Clapham Common and more at two other locations in East and North London, along with the odd elf, reindeer to start to a day-long alcohol-fuelled crawl through London, eventually meeting up somehere in the centre of the city in the early evening.
I followed them for a short distance, but I’d actually come to Clapham for an entirely different event, the South London March for Free Education, part of a national day of education activism against tuition fees, where students and supporters including Lambeth Left Unity and South London Defend Education were meeting to march to a rally in Brixton.
It was a rather smaller march than anticipated – perhaps many students were in Santa costumes on another event, or busy with Christmas shopping but I marched around a mile with them taking pictures before getting the tube into Central London.
The Fossil Free Nativity – Churches Divest! in the area between Westminster Abbey and Methodist Central Hall was organised and performed by Christian Climate Action and Occupy London, and was an entertaining if rather amateur performance starring Westley Ingram who wrote the play and performed as the Angel Gabriel, and George Barda of Occupy who played Joseph with his child as the baby Jesus. It was part of a continuing campaign to get churches to disinvest from fossil fuel companies.
From Westminster I set off in a bus towards north London in search of Santas, jumping off when I saw a red cloud of them in the distance. Or rather ringing the bell and fortunately it was not far from a stop where the driver would open a door. I don’t at all mind wearing a mask for Covid, but still feel something of a loss of freedom over the loss of open-door hop-on, hop-off buses.
Thousands in Santa suits and other Xmas deviations, police trying hard to keep smiling, cans of beer, doubtfully soft drinks, just a few Brussel sprouts in the air, crowded bars, sprawling mass of mainly young people having fun on the streets of London. Santacon!
I’d met a couple of photographer friends also out photographing the Santas and they packed up and left as the light fell, while I continued working with flash for another quarter of hour or so, until a phone call alerted me to a pint awaiting me in a local pub. I’d been photographing people drinking for hours but all that had passed my lips to that point was water, and I was ready to break that particular fast with a little Christmas celebration.
Remember Copenhagen? This was COP15, and generally thought to have been a great failure, with developed countries’ refusing to adopt targets on limiting emissions by 2020 and developing countries insisting on their right to develop their economies and catch up with the big polluters.
But 2009 did see an upsurge in general interest in climate change, and one of the largest events in London against it, with many large charities combining in the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition and conducting what seemed more a PR exercise than a protest, culminating in a ‘Big Wave’ outside the empty Houses of Parliament at 3pm. Everybody around Parliament waved, made a lot of noise and then wondered what to do next.
As I wrote at the time: Although it was good to see a wider participation – although despite that huge potential and massive publicity the march was perhaps only a little more than five times the size of previous years – this year’s event, entitled ‘The Wave’ did seem more a stunt for the media than an informed political event. Surely with the backing of 11 million the coalition should be making demands, not just waving, and it’s perhaps hard to see the significance of blue hands and faces in a demonstration about global warming.
It did appear to have been an opportunity lost to adopt a more robust attitude and push our government at least into some action. The day of protest also involved all the other groups who had been protesting over climate change for some years – and seemed to me to rather be hi-jacking the annual climate march by the Campaign Against Climate Change rather than getting behind them and working with them. That feeling underlies much of my reporting of the day, which I split into the seven sections on My London Diary – as below.
Climate Emergency Bike Ride
After two speeches at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the ride, organised by the Campaign Against Climate Change went on to hold demonstrations outside the London offices of two multinationals guilty of activities that are contributing to climate change, BP in St James’ Square and E.On in Pall Mall. Speakers there outlined some of the damage the companies were doing to the environment and how their activities were accelerating climate change.
The Campaign Against Climate Change had also organised a rally in Hyde Park before the march organised by the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition who were gathering in nearby Grosvenor Square, presumably to avoid anything political. While the Coalition were simply calling for “a fair and effective international agreement” , CACC made clear that “there is no chance of an effective agreement until the North wins the trust of the South and it will only do that if Northern countries like the UK match words with action and take radical emission-reducing measures at home.” The failure of Copenhagen showed they were right.
The ‘World Association of Carbon Traders’, group of around 50 smartly dressed ‘city gents’ – who included a few ‘gentesses’ and rather more bad false moustaches – along with power-dressed business women, joined the joined the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition march under the banner ‘Carbon Trading: The Final Solution’. Their ‘ CO2$’ logo and placards including ‘Trust Me, I’m a Banker, Capitalise On The Climate’, ‘In Markets We Trust’, ‘One Solution. Trade Pollution’, ‘Greed is Green’, ‘Carbon Trader = Eco Crusader.’ and ‘Cash In On Climate Change’, which as well as the ‘Permits to Pollute’ they were handing out made their ironic intention clear.
I recognised some of the faces of these agents from previous demonstrations by the Space Hijackers, a group who call themselves ‘Anarchitects’ whose various projects over the last ten years given a new creative face to protest.
For a minute or two this banner led the march as it came through Berkeley Square while march stewards came and argued with them. After a short while and the intevention of a rather stout cop these protesters were persuaded to roll up their banner and suggested they join the march rather further back.
There they joined a few others dressed mainly in black, some carrying red or black flags behind another black banner with the message “NO BOMBS NO BAILOUT NO CAPITALISM“. The block left the march and went to Jubilee Gardens rather than stay for the wave at Parliament.
They waved. And then the stewards tried to get them to disperse. Some stayed on in Parliament Square., and I photographed some of them with banners, including Climate Rush. Their banner with a large heading ‘EQUITY’ carried the message “Emission Quotas Must Be Per Capita. The RIch Have No More Right to Pollute Than the Poor”.
In my caption I commented “It’s a principle seemed certain to prevent real progress at Copenhagen – as the rich and in particular the USA – won’t accept it.” And so Copenhagen was doomed to fail.
UK Uncut protested outside and briefly inside Topshop and other Oxford Street stores in Philip Green’s Arcadia Group, one of the major companies who together are alleged to dodge £12 billion per year in UK tax.
Eleven years on we still haven’t seen effective action by our government against the huge amount of tax evaded and avoided by the wealthy in the UK. Hardly surprising since many of those in government and their friends and supporters benefit greatly from these practices.
It was the threat by the EU to clamp down on some of these legal fiddles that was a major factor behind the huge funding and lies of the Brexit campaign, something that we are now paying the price for while the billionaires are doing very nicely thank you – and some profiteering hugely from the government’s Covid contracts for their mates.
It was the threats that a centre left government under Jeremy Corbyn might have made some slight changes that, along with his support for Palestinian rights, led to a hugely vitriolic campaign against him by the press and inside the Labour Party.
UK Uncut labelled Sir Philip Green, the boss of the Arcadia Group, which included include Topshop, Topman, Dorothy Perkins, Burton, Miss Selfridge Wallis and British Home Stores, as “Britain’s most notorious tax-avoider. While Green himself paid tax on his salary, the companies are owned by a holding company in the tax haven of Jersey, which is owned by his wife and immediate family who live in Monaco, and pay no tax. Arcadia are certainly not the only huge scale tax avoiders – and later the protesters also briefly visited Oxford St branches of two others, Boots and Vodafone.
They also point out that when Green awarded himself a huge dividend payout – £1.2 billion – in 2005, it went through various offshore accounts and tax dodges to his wife’s Monaco bank account. The loss in tax to the UK was £285 million.
We should have a tax system based on a simple principle. If people or companies make the money in the UK then you should pay tax on it in the UK, and any of the dodges now still used to avoid this should be illegal. At the moment the large accountancy firms are mainly used to aid the avoidance of tax, and they need to be completely re-purposed to with the role of ensuring the correct tax is paid.
Of course it won’t happen. It would destroy a huge part of the business of the City of London, currently the world capital of financial skullduggery and with a curiously intimate connection to our parliament. All we have seen over the 11 years since this protest are a few sweetheart deals with the tax office with some rather token repayments and things are unlikely to change.
Happening the same day was a march to Parliament by the Campaign Against Climate Change calling for urgent action over climate change including a Zero Carbon Britain by 2030. The march and rally was the seventh annual climate march organised by the CACC, which has spearheaded the campaign to get effective action to meet the climate challenge since its formation, aiming to put climate change at the top of our political agenda as the greatest threat that humanity faces.
While our government still seems shackled to business as usual and only making rather half-heated committments to tackling climate change with the necessary urgency, most of the rest of us are now convinced of the need for real action. From being regarded by many as cranks, CACC are now a small part of a huge mainstream.
Back in 2010 they were joined on the march largely by other relatively small campaigning groups, including Friends of the Eath, Greenpeace, the World Development Movement, the Climate Rush, the Green Party and many local groups, trade union branches etc. But as with most protests in Britain it was largely ignored by the media, dominated by a press owned by a handful of billionaires.
Things outside government were beginning to move back in 2010, particularly with the publication of an in-depth report compiled for the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT), ‘Zero Carbon Britain 2030: A new energy strategy earlier in the year, but since then we have seen another largely wasted eleven years.
I thought I’d see how the City of London was celebrating Christmas and took a few pictures of a real life Music Box in front of the Royal Exchange before going inside and being told I couldn’t take photographs. And although I’d been told there were free drinks I think they were only available for the kind of people who looked as if they would spend vast amounts on the luxury items being sold inside. I went out and walked towards St Paul’s Cathedral, pausing briefly to photograph a band and Santa who had come with a couple of reindeer who seemed rather small to me for his lengthy journey.
On the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral was a plain coffin with the message ‘25,700 EXCESS WINTER DEATHS’, a rather lower figure than that I photographed at last week’s Fuel Poverty Action protest – last winter the number was 63,000. Of course this can’t all be put down to 10 years of Tory austerity, and Covid will have played a part, though of course flu deaths were down.
Workshops are not generally the most exciting things to photograph, and I only took a few pictures. I left Occupy LSX shortly after they began a ‘Climate Walk of Shame’ around the offices of various climate change villians (‘unsavoury sites of climate criminality’) which began rather later than advertised to make my way to the Climate March (where they were also heading.)
Ten years ago we had a chance to begin to disastrous climate change, but world leaders failed to lead. The protest was organised by the Campaign Against Climate Change and around a thousand people marched through London calling for Climate Justice, highlighting the fact the 7% of the world’s population cause 50% of the worlds emissions as the Durban climate talks take place. This was COP17 but by the time of COP26 in Glasgow little had changed.
Here’s a few paragraphs from the post I wrote then on My London Dairy:
The 17th UN climate change conference taking place in Durban is widely expected to lead to a breakdown in efforts to combat global climate change, as the US continues to block serious attempts to combat climate change. The continued refusal of the US to accept mandatory limits on carbon emissions seems likely to prevent any progress on global reductions in emissions, and seems certain to lead to catastrophic increases in global temperature. To put it bluntly, our planet is going to fry.
Currently predicted global temperature rises by the end of the century would lead to an environmental crisis that would be expected to lead to huge areas of the world becoming uninhabitable, and billions dying through flood, famine and and other catastrophes. Those who will die will largely be the poor who currently are responsible for only a small proportion of the emissions, while the rich and highly polluting are those who will survive.
There is no longer any serious scientific debate about the reality of climate change, just about the the exact magnitude of the effects and the timescales involved. But all informed opinion agrees that urgent action is needed. We need to make drastic cuts in carbon emissions. The most industrialised countries who have contributed most to the increase in CO2 levels over the past centuries have a particular moral obligation to make drastic cuts.
Deja-vu all over again! Though perhaps now I might have added something about Australia, China and India also heads firmly in the sand, and also about species extinction – including possibly ours.
Congolese continued their protests in London against the election fraud, rapes and massacres and called on the British government to withdraw its support from the immoral regime of President Kabila responsible for the atrocities and voted out by the people.
As often while walking about London between the various events I photographed I took a few pictures, including some in the city centre, and others as I made my way to and from an evening event in North Acton where a photographer friend was appearing. I’ve always meant to take more photographs of London at night, but have never got around to more than the occasional picture like the one above.
And while I’ve taken many thousands of pictures along the River Thames from its source to the estuary, it’s always good to find something just a little different as in this study of bridges.
Hilgrove Rd, South Hampstead, Camden, 1988 88-6d-12
This semi-detached pair of Gothic revival red brick house date from around 1870 and are locally listed. They have a very ecclesiastical look. Hilgrove Road was laid out as Adelaide Road North in the 1830s or 40s and named in honour of Queen Adelaide, born as Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen in 1792 who in 1818 was married to William, Duke of Clarence and became Queen who in 1830 became queen consort of Great Britain when her husband was crowned as William IV.
The road was renamed Hilgrove road in 1875 by developers who wanted to attract house buyers with a name that suggested it was a semi-rural location – something that is very common in this area. You can read more about Camden street names in a listing by David A. Hayes and Camden History Society.
Fairhazel Gardens, South Hampstead, Camden, 1988 88-6d-13
Fairhazel Gardens sounds like another of these ‘semi-rural’ estate agents names, but apparently was taken from a truly rural local property on the Sussex estate of the Maryon Wilson family. Sir Thomas Maryon Wilson (1800 – 1869) was the 8th Baronet of Eastbourne and Charlton. He was also lord of the manor of Hampstead and according to Wikipedia tried hard to cover the area with housing despite problems with the terms of his fathers will and the protests of local residents. You can read more in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Fairhazel Gardens (originally called North End Road) began to be developed in 1879 but the flats probably date from between 1886 and 1896. The area was developed by Sir Spencer Maryon Wilson, the tenth baronet (1829–1897).
Greencroft Gardens, South Hampstead, Camden, 1988 88-6d-14
Greencroft was another genuinely rural name, coming from a farm near near Great Canfield on the Essex estate of the Maryon Wilsons (again according to the Camden History Society listing.) The houses here were built by Ernest Estcourt and James Dixon in the late 1880s.
Canfield Gardens, South Hampstead, Camden, 1988 88-6e-62
Great Canfield on the Maryon Wilson Essex estate gave its name to Canfield Gardens – the estate there also contained a 16th century mansion Fitzjohns whose name also appears in the Hampstead area.
Cleve Rd, South Hampstead, Camden, 1988 88-6e-63
Woodcote at 16 Cleve Rd, the road named after a property near Quex Park in Birchington-on-Sea, Kent, the home of the Powell Cotton family who developed their estate around Quex Rd from 1868 on, with Cleve Road coming in 1882-6. Woodcote is a village on the Chilterns in South Oxfordshire, not far from Goring. Woodcote House there was the home of the Cotton family from around the 1790s until some time in the following century.
Kingsgate Rd, Kilburn, Camden, 1988 88-6e-51
Walking back towards Kilburn Park station my usual wandering fashion I came across this food stall being prepared in Kingsgate Road, though I can no longer remember what was the occasion for it. It looks like some church group, perhaps from the church close to the Quex Road end of Kingsgate Rd.
Belsize Rd, South Hampstead, Camden, 1988 88-6e-52
This long parade of shops is still there to the west of the junction with Kilburn Priory at 199-219 Belsize Rd. Belsize Rd was developed from 1851.
221 Belsize Rd, South Hampstead, Camden, 1988 88-6e-53
Kilburn High Rd, Kilburn, Camden, 1988 88-6e-54
The Red Lion at 34 Kilburn High Rd claims to have been established in 1444 and rebuilt in 1890, then replacing a rather charming two storey building possibly a hundred years old. At some time after my photograph it became called The Westbury, then in 2012 a bar called Love and Liquor, and finally in 2017 Soul Store West, a dinner, cocktail bar and hotel, which closed after four months. You can read more on its history in ‘Professor Morris’ and the Red Lion, Kilburn. The authors of this say the earliest date they can trace for the pub is an alcohol licence for 1721.
Tin Tabernacle, Cambridge Ave, Kilburn, Brent, 1988 88-6e-55
Finally as I walked towards Kilburn Park Station I couldn’t resist taking another picture of TS Leicester, Kiburn’s ‘Tin Tabernacle’.
This was my final picture in London for around a month, though I made more pictures of Hull and also on an industrial architecture visit to Sharpness and the Forest of Dean.
December 1st 2012 was a Saturday and another busy day for protests over various issues in London. The poor are always with us because employers pay rock-bottom wages, even those who sell high-priced goods on London’s premier shopping streets.
But the protest outside Adidas in Oxford Street was not about the poorly paid staff in their store, but about the workers who make their sportswear in Indonesia who make the sportswear they sell and who have not been paid what Adidas owe them for over a year.
The PT Kizone factory in Indonesia had been making sportswear for Adidas, Nike and Dallas Cowboys for many years with many workers being on pitifully low wages, many being paid as little as US $0.60 an hour (37p), hardly enough to keep them alive. But in January 2011 the factory owner fled and the factory closed in April 2011 and the 2,800 workers were left with no jobs.
Under Indonesian law they were entitled to severance pay, a total of around US$2.8 million (about £1.74 million) and the three companies for whom they had made goods for many years were obliged to share the payments. Both Nike and Dallas Cowboys agreed to pay up, but Adidas are refusing to pay the $1.8 million (£1.12 million) they owe, despite a worldwide campaign with a 50,000 signature petition and 5000 posts on their Facebook page demanding they pay.
On December 1st there were protests outside Adidas stores in London and other cities in the UK, with some protesters wearing masks with the face of Justin Bieber, who is the ‘global style icon’ for their NEO label. The protesters point out that Adidas were “happy to pay their $157m to sponsor the Olympics, but won’t pay 1% of that to avoid the destitution of those that made them their profits.”
A short distance away at the Indonesian Embassy in Grosvenor Square another protest was taking place against the Indonesian occupation of West Papua in 1962.
On December 1st 1961, West Papua had been set on the road to independence by the Dutch. The Netherlands had controlled the area since 1898 except during the wartime Japanese occupation. Indonesia had become independent in 1945 and claimed all of the Dutch territories in the area, leading to a long-running dispute between the two countries, and just over two weeks later began moving troops into West Papua, and were in the whole area by the end of the following year. But it was due to the United States fear of Soviet influence in Indonesia that the Dutch finally temporarily transferred the control of the region to Indonesian government as a part of the New York Agreement, which called for a later UN referendum on the future of the country.
This referendum took place in 1969, and although called the Act of Free Choice, involved voting by 1025 men and women selected by the Indonesian military who unsurprisingly voted unanimously in favour of Indonesian control. Since then the Free Papua movement has worked to gain independence both by peaceful protest and international pressure but also by guerilla warfare. Free West Papua Independence Day
Morsi’s Dicatatorial Decree
The Egyptian Embassy is short distance to the south in Mayfair, and in front of it there were over 50 protesters shouting noisily condemning the decree by Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi and calling him a dictator. A few yards down the street, separated by police was a protest by 5 of supporters of his action.
This was one of widespread protests in Egypt and around the world which led to the president announcing the decree would be scrapped a week later. But he proceeded with bringing in a new constitution which was described by many as an ‘Islamist Coup’ and was approved by a referendum later in the month.
The day’s largest event also started in Mayfair, outside the US Embassy, still in Grosvenor Square. It was the Global Day of Action on Climate Change, and the protest focused attention on the dangers of using shale oil and tar sands for energy, both of which would lead to excessive global warming and make reaching the targets set for carbon emissions impossible.
The US embassy was chosen for the starting rally as the dirty energy lobby in the USA, led by companies including the Koch Brothers, has succeeded in making the US the main barrier to effective climate action over the years.
After the rally they began to lay a mock pipeline from the US Embassy to the Canadian Canadian High Commission at the opposite end of Grosvenor Square to show their outrage at the continued exploitation of high-carbon tar sands. They had brought an impressive number of long pipes for the purpose, but they were not allowed to lay them in the direct route across the square, so didn’t quite make it going around the outside.
The thousand or so marchers then set off towards Parliament Square while I went to cover some of the events elsewhere before meeting them again in Parliament Square just before they erected a mock fracking rig with the message ‘No Fracking in the UK’. After this the rally there continued with speeches from Eve Macnamara from REAF (Ribble Estuary against Fracking), John McDonnell MP (Labour, Hayes and Harlington) and Natalie Bennett (leader, Green party).
Ten years ago today on Wednesday 30th November the TUC called a one day general strike over the government plans to cut public service pensions and their failure to enter any meaningful discussion with the trade unions on them.
The Southern & Eastern Region of the TUC, SERTUC, organised a march and rally in London, and at least 20,000 people came for a peaceful march through the capital. At the head of the march was TUC Deputy General Secretary Frances O’Grady, along with leaders of several of the other unions and professional associations taking part in today’s strike by public sector workers.
Frances O’Grady, Dep Gen Sec of the TUC and NASUWT president John Rimmer and a French trade unionist
Along with many strikers, including many taking strike action and marching for the first time there were also others who came to join them, including students and groups including UK Uncut and activist groups such as the Education Activist Network and other student groups, and a number of people wearing ‘Anonymous’ Guy Fawkes ‘V for Vendetta’ masks.
Some of these people began walking ahead of the official march and police stretched a line of officers across Aldwych stopping both them and the march behind them, but eventually they let the march continue. Although the march was going to Parliament along the Embankment, police had closed off Whitehall and created more traffic chaos than the large march.
UK Uncut had come to support the march and were handing out cups of tea from a yard in front of some offices on the square in what they called a ‘solidaritea!!’ action to support the strike.
Later around a hundred protesters from Occupy London rushed into the building in which mining company Xstrata has its offices in a protest against Mick Davies, its CEO, who they say “is a prime example of the greedy 1% lining their own pockets while denying workers pensions.”
They met at Picadilly Circus under the eyes of around a hundred police watching and photographing them from the steps around Eros, and after around half and hour in intermittent rain a small group rushed across the road to stand outside a branch of Boots with a banner reading ‘Precarious Workers Brigade’, but made no attempt to enter the store, which then quickly put down its metal shutters.
Protesters rush into Panto House
But this was just a diversion, and the rest of the group rushed down Haymarket behind a long banner reading ‘All Power to the 99%’ and then turned abruptly down Panton St and rushed into Panton House. The police had got rather left behind and were unable to stop them, and I followed in after some of the protesters, but got very out of breath rushing up the stairs.
A crowd of protesters make it hard to get up the stairs
I hadn’t picked up completely on what was happening, and failed to get up to the roof where a group of around 20 was continuing the protest against Mick Davies, CEO of mining Company Xstrata and the highest paid CEO in the UK. Police forced me and other protesters still on the stairs to go down and leave the building.
I was disappointed not to get onto the roof with other photographers, but rather pleased that, since it was impossible to take more pictures I could now go home. Those on the roof were kept there by police for rather a long time and those who had hung around on the street outside were also kettled.
Global Frontlines bloc banner ‘Still fighting CO2onialism – Your Climate Profits Kill’
Many groups came together for a march through London on 29th November 2015 about the need for action over global warming and climate change on the weekend before the Paris talks. It had been agreed that the march should be led by the Global Frontlines block, as the Global South is already being more affecte by climate change.
But on the day the organisers, representing the large groups including Avaaz, changed their mind. They decided to put the main march banner along with some of those in carnival animal costumes at the front of the march as they felt the Global Frontline was too radical, wanting system change not sops.
The organisers decided to put their main banner and a section of animal costumed carnivalistas in front to hide this more radical group, but not surprisingly the Global Frontlines group were not having this and moved back in front of the carnival. The organisers then sent in the private security guards they had employed to steward the march rather than relying as most other protests do on volunteers, with orders to hold back the more radical block and remove some of the more political placards and coffins that were being carried.
It was hardly surprising that this move was resisted, and the protesters stood their ground, and repelled the security guards. The organisers then called the police to try and enlist their help to move the bloc from the front of the march, but other than passing on the organisers’ request I understand they sensibly refused to try to illegally remove the block. The whole argument was a disgraceful attempt to de-politicise the event and to marginalise those facing the sharp end of climate change, and one which they successfully resisted.
The banner at the front of the Global Frontlines block – and thus march as a whole – read ‘STILL FIGHTING CO2ONIALISM YOUR CLIMATE PROFITS KILL‘ and there were others with anti-colonial messages including ‘Extractivism is Colonialism‘ and other anti-mining sentiments. Apparently what worried the more conservative charities most was the message ‘British Imperialism causes Climate Change‘ as well as two coffins naming companies BP and BHP Billiton.
The organisers held back the rest of the march to leave a longish gap between this group and the rest of the march led by the the ‘The People’s March for Climate & Jobs‘ banner which the organisers had tried to put in the lead, along with its white rabbit and giraffes. But when the Global Frontlines stopped and sat in the road for a protest close the offices of BP in St James Square, many of the more radical groups in the main march streamed past this banner to join the march up again.
It was an unfortunate dispute, and one that for many of us undermined the credentials of some of the more affluent protest groups, who many on the left suspect of being funded by corporations and governments to try to tame the environmental movement rather than effectively oppose climate change. It seems quite clear that without some drastic system change we are doomed to see business as usual taking us to extinction.
Rowley Way, South Hampstead, Camden, 1988 88-6d-54
Camden council bought the Alexandra Road estate, part of the Eyre estate in North London and their architect Neave Browne designed this ziggurat style terrace in 1968, but construction only began in 1972. Browne saw the design, with vehicles restricted to the basement level as a better solution than tower blocks, which had been discredited by the Ronan point collapse and other problems. Family flats with small gardens opened onto the walkway at ground level, with smaller flats stepped back above them, so all got good light and air. The height of the 8 storey block at left gave some protection to the rest of the estate from the noise of the main West Coast railway line from Euston.
I had wrongly titled this Langtry Walk, which runs at the south of this estate a few yards away with a single lower row of flats by Browne built on similar principles. The name Langtry walk refers to royal mistress Lily Langtree, nicknamed “The Jersey Lily”, who, as local historians Dick Weindling and Marianne Colloms have shown had no connection with the area but was co-opted by a resident whose house in Alexandra Road was to be demolished for the new estate.
The estate was Grade II* listed in 1993, remarkably early in its life and the first post-Second World War council estate and one of very few public housing schemes to acheive this status.
This photograph was made from Abbey Road, with the back of Rowley Way at the right of the picture. Snowman House at left is on Abbey Road and Casterbridge at the corner of this and Belsize Rd and both are in Camden Council’s Abbey Estate. Both were approved in 1965 and building completed in 1967. They have 20 storeys above ground and are 59.4m tall – about 195 feet.
A bridge across Abbey Road connects the Casterbridge tower with another Abbey estate building, Emminster, which has a parade of shops at ground level. Both the 8 storey Emminster and another block, Hinstock, are scheduled for demolition to make way for new affordable homes to be built, and improvements to the road layout. This bridge was still there in April 2021, but will presumably soon be gone.
Finchley Rd, Camden, 1988 88-6d-35
I walked back towards Kilburn Grange Park and then to West End Lane, and then across to FInchley Road. On my contact sheet this row of heraldic figures on the front garden wall of a house is labelled ‘Finchley Rod’, but it may have been a few yards down a side turning.
The Alcove Cafe, Finchley Rd, Camden, 1988 88-6d-36
The Alcove Cafe was in a part of the former station entrance for the Finchley Road (Midland) station which first opened as Finchley Rd & St John’s Wood in 1868. Around 1905 a row of seven shops and offices named Midland Crescent was added to the entrance on the west side of FInchley Road. The station closed in 1927 but the shops remained, being demolished in the early 1990s for the building of the O2 Centre here. Various planning, finanacial and other problems held up the new building which finally opened in 1998.
Neasden Electronics was roughly opposite the former station, and these buildings have now been replaced by a hotel.
Broadhurst Gardens, South Hampstead, Camden, 1988 88-6d-22
I walked down towards Swiss Cottage turning briefly into Broadhurst Gardens to make a picture of the rear of the St John’s Court flats on FInchley Rd, built in 1937-8, architect T P Bennett, with the lower three floors for the department store John Barnes, with five floors above housing 96 flats. In 1940 the store became part of the John Lewis Partnership. It closed as a department store in 1981 and the ground floor are now occupied by Waitrose.
Swiss Cottage, South Hampstead, Camden, 1988 88-6d-24
I made a couple of photographs of new office buildings at Swiss Cottage.
Swiss Cottage, South Hampstead, Camden, 1988 88-6d-25
And then went on the photograph Ye Olde Swiss Cottage, a Grade II listed Samuel Smiths pub originally built as an alpine-style chalet and called The Swiss Tavern.
Ye Olde Swiss Cottage, Finchley Rd, Camden, 1988 88-6d-26
Various dates for the building of the chalet can be found on the web, including both 1804 and 1840. Possibly CAMRA may be more reliable given the nature of the building, which they state “was built in 1830 by T Redmond and it stood next to a toll gate; travellers would stop at the tavern while waiting to pay their fees. There had been a gabled building on the site called Lausanne Cottage said to have been used by Charles II as a hunting lodge and their may have been an earlier pub called the Swiss Tavern.”
I didn’t pop in for a pint of ‘Old Brewery Bitter’ (and probably it wasn’t then on tap) but continued my walk – and will do so in a later post.
Click on any of the pictures to go to a larger version on the album 1988 London Photos from where you can browse the whole album. Pictures there are usually in file name order which differs from the order in which they were taken.
