Free Nelson Mandela

Cows, Cindy, Fonthill and Finsbury Park – 1989

*Milking, Friern Manor Dairy Farm, Stroud Green Rd, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989 89-9f-63*

Cows, Cindy, Fonthill and Finsbury Park: I couldn’t resist posting another of those sgraffito panels from the former Friern Manor Dairy Farm on Stroud Green Rd, though I suspect even when these were made the conditions for both cows and milkmaids were very different from those enjoyed in the stalls behing the facade.

Modern dairy practice is of course also very different as you can see in Andrea Arnold’s 2021 cinéma vérité-style film ‘Cow‘, not made as vegan propaganda but giving a very direct view of how we use animals to produce food for the masses. Watching it didn’t convert me to the vegan cause but I do think we need to have and enforce much stricter standards of animal welfare – though those in the UK are already firmer than in most countries. I already pay more for milk and would happily pay even more.

*Cindy Trading Company, Hanley Rd, Finsbury Park, Islington,1989 89-9f-66*

The Old Diary is on the corner of Hanley Road and I walked down here just a short distance and photographed this shopfront which appeared to be of a former travel agency, possibly the ‘Flight Line Cruise’ whose phone number is written large. The Cindy Trading Company whose name is on the door was later listed as a hardware store selling a range of DIY and home improvement items at 186 Stroud Green Road, a short distance away – and is now a dissolved company.

At right is an advertisement for Metposts and I may have been attracted by this as I had recently put in a fence on one side of my garden at home using these. It wasn’t quite as easy as the advert suggests and by the time I’d finished and put down the sledgehammer I’d decided digging and concrete might have been easier.

*Shop, Fonthill Rd, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989 89-9f-45*

I’m unsure what route I took from Hanley Road to Fonthill Road, possibly going down Regina Road or Evershot Road. I took a couple of pictures – neither digitised – of an interesting yard with two rather strange bell towers in the background, nothing like anything that I can now see in satellite images of the area, possibly a long-demolished public building,

Fortunately the location of this picture is confirmed by the reflection of the street sign for Fonthill Road. Also reflected is a sign for John Rowan Bookmaker, the company which developed the well-known Rowans Tenpin Bowl opposite Finsbury Park Station on Stround Green Road in what had previouly been a tram shed, cinema and Bingo hall.

By 1989 this end of Fonthill Road was already beginning to become one of London’s major fashion centres – and a few pictures I’ve not yet digitised reflect this. A few from 1989 in colour start here.

My walk on 24th September was coming to an end, and I took just one more picture of a shopfront on Seven Sister Road before catching the Victoria Line on my way home. But I was back in Finsbury Park a week later and I’ll include a couple of pictures from the actual park, Finsbury Park to end this post.

*Free Nelson Mandela, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989 89-9f-31*

Nelson Mandela was released unconditionally from Victor Verster Prison on 11th February 1990 following years of campaigning for his release. Most of the other graffiti on this wall is unintelligible black scribble at least to me, but I can also make out in white ‘PARANOID EYES’ -presumably from the song on Pink Floyd’s 1983 album The Final Cut.

*New River, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989 89-9f-21*

The New River was dug in 1613 to supply fresh drinking water to London from Chadwell and Amwell Springs near Ware in Hertfordshire.

Finsbury Park is around three miles from Finsbury which is on the northern edge of the City of London. People in Finsbury in 1841 signed a petition calling for a park that the people living in poverty in the area could make use of, and this was one of four sites that were considered.

This was around the last remains of the old Hornsey Wood, and by around 1800 had been developed with tea rooms and later a pub, as well as an artificial boating lake using water pumped up from the New River, and it was a popular place for shooting and archery “and probably cock fighting and other blood sports.”

There was some local opposition to sharing the area with the poor of Finsbury but the plans for what was originally to be called Albert Park (after Queen Victoria’s husband) went ahead, and the renamed Finsbury Park was approved by an Act of Parliament in 1857, though only completed and opened by 1869.

*New River, Finsbury Park, Manor House, Haringey, 1989 89-10a-02*

Lack of finance meant the park had deteriorate significantly by the 1980s, and the situation – like much in London – was greatly worsened when the Greater London Council was terminated with extreme malice by Thatcher in 1986. Haringey Council became responsible for the park “but without sufficient funding or a statutory obligation for the park’s upkeep.”

More recently £5 million Lottery Funding has enabled significant renovation of the park and its facilities. I last went to the park in March 2023 for the planting of a tree in memory of peace campaigner Bruce Kent by local MP Jeremy Corbyn and Kent’s wife Valerie. Both Kent and Corbyn were members of the Friends of Finsbury Park, with Corbyn now being a patron.

Nelson Mandela’s Birthday

Back in 1988 on the 17th July, the day before Nelson Mandela’s Birthday on the 18th July, I joined thousands of marchers through London demanding he be freed from jail.

Free Nelson Mandela - Birthday March and Rally - London 1988 88-7h-66

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Mandela Mandela was born on 18th July 1918, so this was his 70th birthday and he was still in jail, then held in Pollsmoor Prison, near Cape Town, having been removed with other senior ANC members from Robben Island to remove their influence on younger ANC members held there.

Free Nelson Mandela - Birthday March and Rally - London 1988 88-7h-55

He was well treated in Pollsmoor and international attempts to end apartheid was increasing, along with secret meetings with the South African Minister of Justice. President Botha had actually offered to release him, if he “unconditionally rejected violence as a political weapon”, but Mandela had refused to leave while the African National Congress was still banned.

Free Nelson Mandela - Birthday March and Rally - London 1988 88-7h-31

Mandela’s 70th birthday was celebrated around the world, with a televised tribute concert at Wembley Stadium attracting an estimated 200 million viewers.

Free Nelson Mandela - Birthday March and Rally - London 1988 88-7j-65

The march in London was a large one, and I wasn’t then a seasoned photographer of protests, though I had taken pictures at a number of smaller events.

Free Nelson Mandela - Birthday March and Rally - London 1988 88-7h-34

Because of the size of the event there were a number of feeder marches leading to a rally in Hyde Park. I joined the march coming from Camden and went with it to the rally, where I took some pictures in the crowd but didn’t attempt to cover the speakers, who included the Archbishop of Cape Town, Desmond Tutu.

Free Nelson Mandela - Birthday March and Rally - London 1988 88-7i-43

I took altogether only just over a hundred black and white pictures, of which I’ve now uploaded around a quarter to an album, Free Nelson Mandela – March and Rally – London 1988. You can also click on any of the images in this post to go to a larger version from where you can browse all the pictures that are online.

1988 Free Mandela march

Although I first took pictures at protests in the 1970s, I had been taking part in protests since the middle of the 1960s. But I was then a penniless student with no idea about how you could cut costs by developing and printing your own films; I did own a camera, a Halina 35X, but had dropped it in the lake at Versailles and it never worked reliably after that, delivering random but usually very slow shutter speeds from its rusty leaf shutter.

Even after I had taken a short photographic course and got a job and could afford a new camera (a cheap Russian Zenith SLR) and had rigged up a temporary darkroom in the kitchen of our flat, I was still going on protests as a protester and took few if any photographs.

Of course there were fewer protests back in the 70s and 80s, or at least it was harder to find out about them in the days before the World Wide Web. There were of course huge events such as the Miners’ Strike, but unless you lived in the mining areas or could travel to them, which didn’t fit with my full-time job you read about most of these after the events were given newspaper coverage if at all. Many other protests related to strikes and union issues were simply impossible to know about unless they concerned your own union.

My attendance at protests was largely limited to the big national demonstrations organised by groups I belonged to – such as CND and the Anti-Apartheid movement and a few others that were advertised in advance in the alternative press. Many protests were only advertised by fly-posting on walls mainly in the areas they were to take place in – and there were few if any such postings in the area where I lived.

I began to be more a photographer of protests than an actual protester in the 1980s, particularly after a few of my photographs were accepted for an exhibition on protest (and I think one won a prize.) I began to realise that I could make a great contribution to the various causes with a camera than simply marching or attending rallies, and, a little later, began contributing my photographs to a picture library concerned with social issues, and later still providing my services directly to some protest groups.

Free Nelson Mandela - Birthday March and Rally - London 1988

As more and more people and groups went on-line things began to change. I found out about more and more protests, at first as groups set up web sites to promote their activities. I’d spend an evening or more a week going through a list of perhaps 20 or thirty different groups and using sites which listed bus and travel diversions and various search engines to find out about events and put them in my diary. Then Google arrived and made searching easier and finally Facebook and I had little time to photograph anything but protests.

Free Nelson Mandela - Birthday March and Rally - London 1988 88-7j-13

The Free Nelson Mandela march in London was on Saturday 17th July 1988, the day before his 70th birthday and two years before he was released from prison. I walked with the protesters taking pictures from Camden Town to Hyde Park, and took a few pictures in the crowds in Hyde Park, but none of the stage and speakers at the rally. You can see more of the pictures in the Flickr album uploaded a couple of days ago. Clicking on any of the pictures above will take you to the larger version in the album.

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.