Class War’s Notting Hill Pub Stroll – Class War’s peaceful pub crawl on Saturday 5th March 2016 had been widely advertised arousing considerable paranoia and a fairly large police presence with several businesses deciding to close for all or part of the day. Foxton’s even went so far as to get their offices boarded up, though it was unlikely they would have otherwise had suffered more than a few stickers on their windows.
Notting Hill has played an important part in Class War’s history. It was here, actually in Grenfell Tower, that some early issues of the Class War magazine were put together, and here on 27 August 1983 where the first Class War conference was held, here where Ian Bone in 1988 met Joe Strummer and his enthusiasm led to the ‘Rock Against the Rich’ tour.
You can view a short RoughlerTV video of Class War’s ‘Bash The Rich‘ protest on 3 November 2007 in Notting Hill and see my pictures of the event on My London Diary. Policing on that occasion was large and heavy-handed while in 2016 they largely remained in the background, at least until the group reached Foxtons.
I wrote at some length about the pub crawl in 2016, when some from Class War took a walk around some of the key sites in the area, led by Ian Bone, and you can still read Class War’s Notting Hill Pub Stroll on My London Diary, as well as a shorter version with fewer pictures posted here on >Re:PHOTO a couple of years ago. I’ll use different pictures in this post and only give a brief outline of the event.
Some of us met at the start of the walk outside the Ground Floor Bar on the corner of Talbot Road and Portobello Road, where the first Class War conference took place in an upper room in what was then the Colville Hotel. Unfortunately this bar had closed down for good a few days after it had been advertised as the meeting point for the pub stroll, so we had to stand outside to listen to Ian Bone speaking about the event. It reopened some months later as a gin bar.
We crossed the Portobello Road to the next stop, formerly the Warwick Castle pub where ‘Rock Against The Rich‘ was conceived, no longer a proper pub in 2016 but a rather ghastly gastro-bistro, The Castle. It had decided to close for a few hours for “maintenance” and staff inside cast us apprehensive glances as we heard another speech and some adorned the windows with ‘blue plaques’ (blue paper plates) and Class War stickers.
H H Finch’s bar on the Portobello Rd had long closed but had been replaced by Young’s with a tourist pub in 1991. In 2016 it still also had the name Finch’s Dining Rooms on its frontage along with their new name. This venue had stayed open despite the Class War event though I think with some extra bouncers on the door, but we all walked in and enjoyed a few rather pricey beers, with a few others coming to join the group. I think all Class War had done here in the past was drink and talk and drink…
We walked down Portobello to the only remaining real pub on the street, the Earl of Lonsdale, formerly Henekeys. Its Victorian interior had been gutted in the 1960s but was restored after Sam Smiths took the pub over and changed its name.
The beer here was cheaper and better and it was hard to drag ourselves out and rejoin our route, but most of us managed to continue the stroll down to the house where George Orwell lived from 1927 to 1929. Ouside here Lisa McKenzie praised him for his recognition of the war by the elites against the working classes.
Next came Foxton’s boarded up for the occasion, where Simon Elmer of Architects for Social Housing spoke about the housing crisis and the role of estate agents in gentrification. After he had been speaking for a few minutes a large group of police vans and motorbikes arrived and Class War quickly disappeared into a local pub and the stroll finished.
You can read more about the history of Class War in Ian Bone’s highly entertaining book, Bash the Rich, still widely available.
And there is much more about the 2016 event at Class War’s Notting Hill Pub Stroll.
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