Peasants Revolt | >Re-PHOTO

Stanford-le-Hope, Corringham, Fobbing and Vange – 2005

Stanford-le-Hope, Corringham, Fobbing and Vange: On Thursday November 17th 2005 I took my Brompton folding bike on the train to Waterloo, cycled from there to Fenchurch Street station and then took another train to Stanford-le-Hope, a small town in Essex east of Tilbury. For some years I’d been photographing on both sides of the River Thames in Kent and Essex, but this was an area I’d yet to explore.

Much of the area is marsh and there are few roads, but it is also the site of Coryton and Thames Haven oil terminals.The building of London Gatway Port began there three years later and it opened in November 2013, “a fully integrated logistics facility” located 30 miles east of London, “able to handle some of the largest container ships in the world.”

I wasn’t able to access the oil terminals but could see them from a distance both on this ride and on other rides I made to Canvey Island.

Below is what I wrote about the ride in 2005:

We had some fine weather in the middle of the month, which got me out on my bike again to take a ride around the north side of the Thames estuary, from Stanford-le-Hope – where Joseph Conrad lived and wrote for a couple of years along to Corringham village, then on to Fobbing and past Vange marshes to Pitsea station.

The first miles were on low-lying farmland, with the skyline dominated by the oil tanks and refinery at Coryton (named for the Cory brothers who bought the site in 1923). The old village at Corringham is on a low hill, and parts remain very picturesque. Fobbing has some more serious hills, its main street falling sharply from the church down to the marshes. I took the bike a short way on the footpaths across the marsh, but it wasn’t a suitable surface for riding.

Large-scale development is expected in the area, as the former Shell Haven site, just to the west of Coryton, is to become a large container port, London Gateway.

In the recreation ground at Fobbing is a memorial arch. In May 1381, a tax collector, Thomas Bampton, came to the village to demand unpaid poll tax from the peasants of Fobbing, Stanford and Corringham; his demands were so unreasonable that this caused a riot and the villagers threw him out.

By the following day, three of Bampton’s men had been killed and the revolt was spreading through Essex and further afield. News doubtless travelled across the river to Kent, where John Ball had earlier been arrested for his radical views, and Kent peasants also revolted. The arch was erected for the 600 anniversary in 1981. [More about the 1381 Great Rising or Peasant’s Reevolt on Wikipedia]

*Fobbing churchyard and view towards Southend*

North of the village, Marsh Lane is a bridleway leading out onto the marshes. There had been rather too much rain recently to make cycling along it easy, with large puddles and tractor-churned mud. After around three quarters of a mile, the track became just a grassy footpath and I turned round and made my way back up to the main road on the higher ground overlooking the marsh. [My Brompton soon becomes unrideable on very muddy ground, with mud between the mudguards and tyre locking the wheels – and a difficult job to scrape out.]

Vange is now very cut-off from its marshes, both by the railway line and the A13 road. I’d hoped to explore the marsh a little more, but when my front tyre got a puncture decided to make directly for Pitsea station and the trains home.

More pictures from the ride on My London Diary.

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King’s Cross, Excel and a Musical Protest – 2005

King’s Cross, Excel and a Musical Protest: Like other posts in the early years of My London Diary the text and pictures from Saturday 26th November 2005 are rather hidden away and it isn’t always easy to connect pictures with text. And it had seemed at the time a good idea to write the texts all in lower case, which makes them rather difficult to read, so I now like to resurrect some of them occasionally in a more accessible manner, linking back to the original pages for more pictures than in these posts on >Re:PHOTO.

Kings Cross – never again!

King's Cross, Excel and a Musical Protest - 2005 — *Bob Crow (RMT), right, applauds a speaker*

As I walked up the escalator (yes, I was late again) at King’s Cross I remembered the interviews with those who had been caught there in the terrible fire, thinking how hard it would be to find the way out in smoke-filled darkness. Parts of the station still look a terrible mess, though that’s not unusual in our underground system.

Up at ground level was a joint trades union demonstration in memory of the fire, and to defend the safety rules which are currently under attack by management wanting to save costs. Kings Cross – Never Again! was address by a number of speakers including Mick Connolly, John Mcdonnell MP Jeremy Corbyn MP, Keith Norman (ASLEF), Matt Wrack (FBU), and Bob Crow (RMT), all worried by the threat to the public and those who work on the Underground or in rescue services.

Proper safety procedures are particularly vital when as well as accidental disasters such as the King’s Cross fire, the safety of the system is also threatened by deliberate terrorist attacks.

I’d hoped the event would end in time for me to get to a lecture at the ICA, but it was too late. I went that way just the same, getting off the tube at Charing Cross and walking down Whitehall to Westminster station for the Jubilee Line, past the Cenotaph, surrounded now by a low fence. It was still covered by the wreaths of poppies from earlier in the month, now partly covered by the falling leaves from the many London plane trees, another and in some ways more touching symbol of loss.

More pictures from Kings Cross – never again!

Excel and Victoria Dock

*Victoria Dock, Spillers Millennium Mills and Pontoon Dock, with new Riverside Flats in distance, Silvertown, London.*

It was an afternoon of low winter sun, and stormy showers, with impressive clouds in the wide open skies over the expanse of the Royal Docks, and some peculiar colours. The demonstration I’d gone to see was nowhere to be found when I arrived, and I wandered the dock estate marvelling in the views.

In particular the high-level bridge over the dock is one of new London’s more spectacular sights, and a fine viewing platform. Unlike the last time I visited, the lifts were working too. A small group of people with musical instruments began to gather on the top, but they turned out only to be a band coming for a photo session.

More pictures from Excel and Victoria Dock.

East London Against the Arms Trade

*Musicians from ‘East London Against the Arms Fair’ treat visitors to the Excel centre to a musical welcome*

I’d more or less given up and decided to go home at that point when in the distance I heard the brassy notes of the Red Flag, and made my way towards them. By the time I’d arrived at the entrance to the Excel Centre, they were into the Internationale, complete with new words for the occasion (except that no-one was singing them, and I didn’t fancy a solo role):

We are told that profit from the arms fair will
trickle down all over town,
But it’s killing our sisters and our brothers,
it’s their blood that is trickling down.

All people now rally!
No arms fair any place!
The Intenationale unites the human race!

Next came the Cutty Wren, a song from the Peasant’s Revolt, which took my mind back to Fobbing where I’d been ten days earlier.

The Excel centre has hosted several arms fairs which have attracted a number of protests from local groups. One of the local papers, the Newham Recorder, found in a poll that 79% of local residents oppose them, and London Mayor Ken Livingstone has also voiced his opposition. Further arms fairs are already booked for 2007, 2009 and 2011 and the musical protest was one of a number of actions attempting to get the Excel centre to cancel these future events.

More pictures at East London Against the Arms Trade.

And I returned in those later years to photograph many protests agains the arms fairs – and you can find pictures of them on various September pages on My London Dairy.

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Climate Camp Blackheath 2009

Climate Camp Blackheath 2009 – On Wednesday 26 August 2009 I joined a group of climate activists who were gathering in front of Stockwell Underground Station in south London, waiting for directions to move to wherever that year’s climate camp was to be held. They were ‘Blue Group’, at one of six locations around London, waiting to get the secret instructions and move to the site.

*We met by the memorial to Jean Charles de Menezez*

It had been chosen as one of the meeting points because of what happened there on 22 July 2005. As I wrote, coming “up the escalator at Stockwell station it’s hard not to shiver at the memory of those videos showing Jean Charles de Menezes strolling down to catch his last train, and police coming though the gates in pursuit. There is a memorial to him outside the station, including a great deal of information about the event and the misinformation and covering up by police.”

*People wait for instructions in Larkhall Park*

It was a terrible mistake made by the Metropolitan Police and the officer in charge was rewarded for it by being put in charge of London’s police. She only recently lost that job after the London Mayor made clear that he had lost confidence in her, but a huge number of Londoners had lost confidence in her and the police in 2002.

After hanging around for while, we were told to go and sit in a nearby park and wait there, and we sat down and ate our sandwiches while some played games. Eventually at 2pm instructions came and we followed the leaders onto the tube, alighting at Bank and changing to the DLR, most still not knowing where the journey would end.

*And eventually we reached Blackheat Common*

By the time the DLR arrived in Greenwich the destination had become clear, and we left the station for the long walk up the hill to Blackheath Common, an area of common land with a long pedigree as a meeting place for rebels. Police seemed happy both at Stockwell and on the journey to watch the activists from a distance and as we walked past a police station they seemed to be in hiding.

*Some rested after the walk up the hill*

The common was the site where John Ball made his famous speech with his famous “When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?” and urged his peasant audience to “cast off the yoke of bondage, and recover liberty.” But the Peasant’s Revolt ended badly in 1381, with teenage King Richard II looking on as the priest was briefly hung and then carefully kept alive to watch his genitals and bowels being removed and burnt before he was beheaded and his body hacked into four pieces.

Jack Cade was a little more fortunate after his rebels camped here in 1450, as he was killed in a battle before he could be executed, but like Ball his severed head was displayed on London Bridge as a warning to others.

*Others were busy working, setting up the fence, toilets etc*

In 2009, the authorities rather stood back and watched, including from a helicopter hovering above as the camp was set up. As I commented, “With stabilised cameras the image quality should have been high enough for them to match the faces against their database (which of course they claim does not exist.)” Later they brought in a cherry picker to take pictures from, a considerably cheaper option.

I’d largely avoided photographing previous climate camps because of their ‘media policy’, which as I wrote “appears to be driven by a few individuals with paranoid ideas about privacy and a totally irrational fear of being photographed. It really does not steal your soul!” This stated that press photographers had to sign the policy and be accompanied while on the site by a minder.

I didn’t have any problems wandering freely and taking pictures while the site was being set up, and met many people who welcomed me, having met me at previous environmental protests. And I was invited to return later to the camp as a member of the documentation team with a sash that allowed me to wander freely. So I came back two days later to take more pictures, and though there were a few people who made clear they didn’t want to be photographed I was generally able to work as normal.

There were no uniformed police on the site on my later visit – and as I noted, it “was almost certainly the most caring and most law-abiding part of South London, with no crime, no drugs and very little alcohol around.” The organisation of the site was truly impressive.

But shortly before I left I noticed that one of the police cameras on their cherry picker was following me as I walked around, and after I left the site I was “followed rather ineptly (perhaps deliberately so) by a young black man in plain clothes as I wandered around for the next 15 minutes, occasionally writing in his notebook. It seemed a waste of public money.”

*Some anarchists left after 2 police came on site*

I’d stopped for some minutes at several of the workshops that were taking place on my second visit, and had been impressed by the expertise of many, both those leading the sessions and some of those contributing to the debates. If people like these rather than the politicians had been in positions of power we would now be in a very much better place to avoid climate catastrophe, but unfortunately what we have seen is 13 more years almost completely wasted.

More pictures from Wednesday August 26th
Climate Camp: Blue Group Swoop
Climate Camp: Setup

And for an account and pictures from my day there on Saturday August 29th
Climate Camp: Saturday