Posts Tagged ‘redevelopment’

Grenfell Councillors Visited – 2017

Monday, November 27th, 2023

Grenfell Councillors Visited – Five and a half months after the terrible fire at Grenfell tower the local council responsible seemed still to be doing little to rehouse those displaced and there had been no criminal charges brought. A small group of local residents and supporters from the Revolutionary Communist Group took to the streets of North Kensington to try and call on councillors and ask questions. Of course six years later they are still waiting for justice – and it seems unlikely ever to happen. The British establishment has long practised ways of looking after its own.


Protesters visit Grenfell councillors – North Kensington

Grenfell Councillors Visited

The group gathered at Latimer Road station in the early evening where they held a short rally. They then set off to march to the addresses of several councillors in the area, though most of the council come from the wealthier end of the borough rather than North Kensington.

Grenfell Councillors Visited

I could have told them (and probably did) that they were wasting their time at the first address, that of Councillor Rock Feilding-Mellen, former deputy leader of Kensington Council and their cabinet member for housing in charge of the installation of the dangerous cladding which caused the fire to spread disastrously. He had urged the consultants in 2014 to cut the cost of the cladding leading to the safe zinc cladding specified being replaced with flammable panels – and he only worried about whether they were the right colour. Those making them were labelled as troublemakers (and worse.)

Grenfell Councillors Visited

Other councillors were also involved in various decisions and lack of action, including deciding against an inspection of fire doors in properties in the borough that the London Fire Brigade had made a few months before the fire.

Grenfell Councillors Visited

Seven major complaints made about safety by residents to through the Grenfell Action Group were detailed in evidence to the Grenfell inquiry; these were simply dismissed by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea officers and councillors and in particular by the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO) responsible under the council for the management of Grenfell and other properties in the borough.

Feilding-Mellen, elected as a councillor in 2010 was made Deputy Leader of Kensington & Chelsea Council (RBKC) and Cabinet Member for Housing, Property and Regeneration in 2013 with no obvious qualification or experience for either position and began a campaign of social cleansing, to, in his words, “wean people off” living in social housing in the borough.

He cut the council’s housing waiting list in half, removed the right of residents forced out of the borough in redevelopment schemes to return and began an aggressive campaign of removing social assets from North Kensington. Both North Kensington Library and Westway Information centre were sold at cut price to Notting Hill Prep School and the Isaac Newton Centre to Chepstow House Prep School.

Both Feilding-Mellen and council leader Nicholas Paget-Brown were forced to resign from their posts weeks after the fire, though both remained councillors. Feilding-Mellen moved out of his house not far from Grenfell Tower at the end of June, claiming there had been threats against him and vandalism. He was thought to have retreated to the safer climes of Chelsea Harbour, though his wealthy family have quite a few properties around the country and doubtless abroad. Feilding-Mellen’s evidence to the inquiry sickened many as it seemed greatly concerned with getting free publicity for his business interests in psychoactive substances, which includes offering supervised, legal psilocybin retreats in Jamaica and The Netherlands.

David Lindsay speaking

The protesters were more successful in their visit to councillor David Lindsay, a locally born Conservative councillor who is said to be genuinely community minded and respected in North Kensington and was elected as Mayor of Kensington and Chelsea for 2022-23. He came out from his home and talked with them, explaining he had no connection with housing before the fire and had gone down to Grenfell at 4am on the morning of the fire to open up a centre for those affected. He told them that the council were trying hard to find suitable accomodation for the survivors and had spent considerable sums in doing so. The local residents told him they felt the council had been and still was failing in its duties and were not satisfied with his answers.

Finally I went with them some way further south into to rather wealthier areas, stopping outside the house of a third councillor in Portland Road. If they were home they were in hiding, but a neighbour came out to to complain that the protesters were waking his children up, and saying that they shouldn’t protest here and shouldn’t protest at night, but should do so in the daytime when no one would be at home and affected by it. He was met with some very angry and rather rude responses – and the protest continued rather longer and much more noisily that it would otherwise have done.

The group then turned around to make its way back towards Grenfell Tower, but I left them. The Royal Borough doesn’t seem to spend a great deal on street lighting and the batteries in my LED light were failing. I’d taken enough photographs and I was cold and tired and needed to eat and get home to work on the pictures.

More pictures at Protesters visit Grenfell councillors.


Saving the Whittington

Monday, February 27th, 2023

Saving the Whittington

Saving the Whittington
A huge campaign in 2010 led to Andy Burnham, then Health Secretary stopping the Whittington hospital board’s plans to close its maternity and A&E Departments. A major event in this campaign was the march I photographed on Saturday 27 February 2010 from Highbury Corner to a rally at the hospital at Archway.

Later in 2013 when the board announced plans for more cuts another successful campaign stopped these, and in 2016 there was yet another campaign over redevelopment plans in concert with a private contractor.

Many people tell me that protest never works and that campaigners are simply wasting their time, but in 2022 the hospital announced a £100 million refurbishment of Whittington Hospital’s maternity and neonatal facilities, which still deliver over 3,600 babies a year, and the A&E department is still open for business 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

I counted almost 2000 people walking past me a short distance from the start on the two mile march to the hospital, and more arrived for the rally, swelling the numbers to around 3-5,000. Or as the BBC at the time called it, in their usual way of minimising protests, ‘hundreds’ of protesters. But at least, unlike most protests, they did report on it.

Among the marchers and speakers where almost every local politician, including David Lammy, MP for Tottenham and then Minister for Higher Education and Intellectual Property in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, who pledged his support for the hospital and all its services, revealing that he had been born there. Frank Dobson MP who was Secretary of State for Health from 1997 to 1999 also gave a powerful speech in support, as did Lynne Featherstone, Liberal Democrat MP for Hornsey and Wood Green. MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Emily Thornberry were also at the event, as well as Terry Stacy, the leader of Islington Council.

The proposals for the cuts and downgarding of A&E had come from a rationalisation programme initiated by Lord Darzi, a surgeon and national adviser in surgery to the Department of Health and a Labour Peer from 2007 until he resigned the whip in 2019. His report suggested moving much care from hospitals to GP-led polyclinics and to greater centralisation of trauma, stork and heart attack services to centralised specialist services.

Frank Dobson

Polyclinics remain rare, but although the greater specialisation of acute services made clinical (and financial) sense it failed to take into account the problems of London’s congested streets which would have led to long delays in treatment for many patients. Those inevitable delays would have meant deaths. And the selection of Whittington for closure neglected its good road and public transport connections which make it an ideal location for emergency cases as well as other patients and visitors.

Why Whittington was chosen as suitable for closure probably came down to two factors. One was certainly the age of the buildings, but perhaps more important was that the same factors of location and transport links made it an exceptionally valuable site for property developers. Had the cuts gone ahead in 2010, the rest of the hospital would probably by now also had been closed, with the site developed, including some of those old buildings converted into luxury flats.

Many more pictures from the march and rally at Save the Whittington on My London Diary.


An East London Ride – 2010

Friday, February 3rd, 2023

Salmon Lane Locki, Regents Canal

It’s perhaps misleading to call this a ride, since I spent most of the day on Wednesday 3rd February 2010 actually off my bike, parking it neatly to take photographs. Although a bicycle has been my main personal transport now for over 70 years (when I’m not using public transport or walking) I’m not really a cyclist. Or at least just a pragmatic cyclist, using a bike just to get from A to B (and on this day to C,D and most of the letters of the alphabet.)

An East London Ride - 2010
Memorial to firewatchers of Stepney Gas Works

And just very occasionally for a bit of exercise. I have used exercise bikes and always thought why bother when you could use the real thing, though I suppose when its pouring with rain or below zero there might be some point in them. And though one wouldn’t help me to take photographs I would be less likely to be killed by careless or dangerous drivers.

An East London Ride - 2010
Bromley-by-Bow gasholders, Twelvetrees Bridge

Back at the end of 2002 I bought myself a Brompton folding bike, and a year or three later when I was undergoing a Q & A interview for an amateur photography magazine it became my answer to ‘What is your most useful photographic accessory’. It had replaced the answer to a similar question from another such magazine which was ‘a good pair of shoes’.

Eternal flame, West Ham Memorial Gardens

Once you have practised a few times the Brompton folds (and unfolds) in a few seconds into a fairly compact package, which has the advantage you can take it at any time onto our trains and underground system. It’s too heavy for me to comfortably carry any distance, but I added the tiny wheels which mean you can pull it rather like a suitcase, only actually lifting it when necessary. And I bought the bag which fits on in front of the handlebars which was about the right size for my camera gear and essentials like a bottle of water or a flask of coffee and sandwiches.

The end of the ‘Fatwalk’

I can’t know remember exactly how I got to the start of my ride, though I think I probably rode from Waterloo to Fenchurch Street for a train to Limehouse station, crossing the Thames on Southwark Bridge. But from there on the pictures make my route fairly clear.

Bow Creek and Bow Locks

I cycled roughly along the Regents Canal up to the former Stepney Gas Works site north of Ben Johnson Road. There had been a fight to save more elements of the former gas works including gas holders which were some of the oldest surviving in the world; although some were said by English Heritage to be of national importance an attempt to get one of them listed failed. Eventually the area was redeveloped by Bellway Homes with only token ‘public art’ residues of the works.

From there I headed east to the bridge at Twelvetrees Crescent across Bow Creek and the Lea Navigation to visit another gas works site, the West Ham Memorial Gardens where war memorials, a permanent flame and a statue of Sir Corbett Woodhall are in a small wooded area close to the remarkable group of gas holders for the former Bromley-by-Bow Gas Works.

Three Mills

From there I went down to the recently opened path beside Bow Creek, part of a planned riverside walk which had been landed with the ridiculous name of The Fatwalk. As I commented then, most of the walk, meant to lead from Three Mills all the way to the Thames was still closed (and is still closed 13 years later) and by the time they were open the “nincompoop who thought that ‘The Fatwalk’ was a good name for this route will probably have retired or died or moved to another job for which he (or she) is equally incapable and common sense will prevail as we walk or cycle along the Bow Creek Trail.”

New Lock, Prescott Channel

The walk still only goes as far south as Cody Dock, now a thriving community resource and hub with events and exhibitions and worth a visit, but in 2010 still undeveloped. The silly name has gone and this path is now also a part of London’s sculpture trail, The Line, making its way from the Greenwich Peninsula to Stratford.

Three Mills Wall River

At the end of the Fatwalk, I had to turn around and go back to the Twelvetrees Crescent bridge, where I once again photographed the locks from the Lea Navigation to Bow Creek. Now there are new steps leading down from this bridge to the towpath, but then I had to go across and join the fast-moving traffic on the Blackwall Tunnel Northern Approach to make my way to Three Mills.

Stratford High St

Three Mills is home to one of Newhams only four Grade I listed buildings and the House Mill, a tide mill, was built in 1776, though there had been tide mills here at least since the Domesday book.

Olympic stadium

The film studios here were converted from a gin factory where Chaim Weizmann developed a new biochemical process to produce acetone needed for explosive production in the First World War – which led to the Balfour Declaration and later to Weizmann becoming the first president of Israel.

Bridge over City Mill River

Past the studios I visited the new lock on the Prescott Channel, opened in 2009. Supposedly this was to be used by barges to carry away waste and bring in material for the development of the Olympic site instead of lorries, but was in practice only used for photo-opportunities. The Prescott Channel was built in the 1930s, part of a large flood relief programme, that was also largely to provide jobs at the height of the depression.

I get interviewed for a student film

Finally I cycled up to the Olympic site, a building site with little or no public access, but parts of the ‘Greenway’ – the path on the Northern Sewage Outfall – were still open and gave extensive views. The reason I was in London on this particular day, when the weather wasn’t at its best was to be interviewed and filmed by a group of students at the View tube on the Greenway. I can’t remember ever seeing the video. After the interview I made my way to Stratford to fold the Brompton and start my journey home on the Jubilee Line.

Bow Creek – right click to open at a viewable size in a new tab

As well as taking single images I also produced a number of panoramas, taking a series of pictures from the same position to be stitched together. These include some 360 degree views, produced by software from 6 or 8 individual images. The pictures were taken on a Nikon D700 and are each 12Mp, but the combined files are huge. It isn’t easy to display these on the web, and they fit even less well on this blog. I’ll post one here on a rather smaller scale and invite you to double click on it to see it larger, though still much reduced. You can find more online here.

Olympic Site Revisited
Three Mills
Bow and The Fatwalk


Houses, British Lion & Elmington Estate

Wednesday, November 9th, 2022

This post continues my walk in Camberwell on 27th January 1989. The previous post on this walk from January 1989 is St Giles, It’s Churchyard and Wilson’s School.

Houses, Benhill Rd, Camberwell, Southwark, 1989 89-1e-11
Houses, Benhill Rd, Camberwell, Southwark, 1989 89-1e-11

Benhill Road runs north from Camberwell Church St opposite St Gile’s Church and includes the site of the former vicarage and St Gile’s Parish Hall. These houses are I think mid-Victorian and I admired the slender decorative pillars at the doorways.

Opposite the Parish Hall just inside the property is a small building with a blue plaque which I photographed but have not put online as the lighting was rather poor. It now has a London Borough of Southwark blue plaque with the totally misleading message ‘The Parish Church of St Giles Porch and Doorway Relocated to its current site in the vicarage garden where it was used as a summer house after the church was accidentally burnt down on 7th February 1841.’

While the church was burnt down in 1841 this was never its porch and doorway, though it was largely built with material from the burnt out church and was probably not used as a summer house – and more recently has been used for rubbish bin storage. An article in the Camberley Quarterly by Donald Mason, Old St Giles: blue plaques and history, reveals its true nature and has some excellent illustrations.

British Lion, pub sign, Elmington Rd, Camberwell, Southwark, 1989 89-1e-12
British Lion, pub sign, Elmington Rd, Camberwell, Southwark, 1989 89-1e-12

On the corner of Benhill Road and Elmington Road I photographed a bicycle and the British Lion pub sign. The pub itself at 112 Benhill Road was a rather boring 1960s building rebuilt at around the same time as the flats around it. But there had been a pub on the site since at least 1871, The Prince Of Prussia, a name that probably became rather unpopular in the First World War.

Edmund St, Elmington Estate, Camberwell, Southwark, 1989 89-1e-14
Edmund St, Elmington Estate, Camberwell, Southwark, 1989 89-1e-14

I think the’ London County Council’ built the first flats on the Elmington Estate shortly before WW2, but there were four of these large blocks desgned by the LCC Architects department and built around 1956. The winter sun produced a rather elegant repeated pattern of light and shade on the frontage.

Edmund St, Elmington Estate, Camberwell, Southwark, 1989 89-1e-14
Edmund St, Elmington Estate, Camberwell, Southwark, 1989 89-1e-15


I think this large eleven floor slab block and its neighbours on the Elmington Estate, dating from around 1960 were demolished in 1999-2000. The flats passed to Southwark Council, formed in 1965 who lacked the cash to maintain them properly and they were in poor condition by the time I photographed them, and many flats were squatted in the 1990s.

Edmund St, Elmington Estate, Camberwell, Southwark, 1989 89-1f-01
Edmund St, Elmington Estate, Camberwell, Southwark, 1989 89-1f-01

In 1999 Southwark Council decided to demolish the whole of the Elmington Estate and these blocks were a part of the first phase of the redevelopment. Southwark Notes gives a great deal of detail about how this progressed.

In the first phase, most of those who lived in the flats were rehoused in council housing built on the site, but not all were too happy with their new homes. The article quotes one: ‘You will never know what privacy is like again. You will hear your neighbours and everything they do. And they will hear you. Your rooms will be smaller. You’ll be paying more for it. One day you’ll wake up and realise that you’d give anything to be back in your old home’.

The council for Phase 2 adopted “a whole new regeneration model premised on partnership with either corporate developers” or housing associations. Their partner here was the large and aggressive Housing Association Notting Hill Housing Trust who would offer zero social rented homes in the scheme (social rent being the equivalent rent of a council home). Some flats were available at so-called “affordable” rents, roughly twice those of council properties in the area, and unaffordable for most previous tenants. It was a process of ‘social cleansing’, forcing most of the poorer residents out of the area.

Bradbury, Solicitors, 119, Camberwell Rd, Camberwell, Southwark, 1989 89-1f-52
Bradbury, Solicitors, 119, Camberwell Rd, Camberwell, Southwark, 1989 89-1f-52

I walked throught the Elmington Estate and on through Burgess Park to Camberwell Road, turning south where a few doors down on the east side I photographed the railings and doorways of 119 and 121. Numbers 117-129 and attached railings are Grade II listed.

From 1863 to 1887 photographer and portrait painter Henry Death (1820-1900), born in Moulton, Cambridgeshire, had his studio at 119 Camberwell Road, having moved there from nearby Addington Place where he set up a studio in 1856. He sold the house when he had to give up his business through ill health in 1887 and died in Camberwell thirteen years later. In !989 it was the offices of Bradleys Solicitors.

No 121 was the premises of the charity IAS, Independent Adoption Service, first registered in 1982 and voluntarily removed in 2009. I think both properties are now private residences.

147, Camberwell Rd, Camberwell, Southwark, 1989 89-1f-53
147, Camberwell Rd, Camberwell, Southwark, 1989 89-1f-53

No 147 Camberwell Road is a part of a terrace of around ten houses directly south of Cambridge House on the corner of Addington Square. These house look in rather better condition now and the tree here was removed a couple of years ago. Most of these houses are now divided into flats.


My posts on this walk on 27th January 1989 began at St George’s, Camberwell, Absolutely Board & Alberto. This walk will continue in a later post.


Druids, Paddington & Women March For Syria

Thursday, September 22nd, 2022

On Sunday 22nd September 2013 Druids carried out their annual Autumn Equinox (Alban Elued) ceremony on Primrose Hill at noon and later in the day women from the radical fundamentalist Islamist organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain marched from Paddington Green in protest against the chemical attacks and massacres of women and children by the Assad regime in Syria. Between the two events I spent some time taking pictures around the Paddington Arm of the Grand Union Canal.


Druids Celebrate Autumn Equinox – Primrose Hill

Every year for a little over 100 years the Druid Order have celebrated the Autumn Equinox on Primrose Hill, a site of historical significance in the history of Druidism and the re-invention of a Druidic tradition. Here on the Autumn Equinox in 1716 John Toland made a call for a meeting of Druids a year and a day later at the Apple Tree Tavern in Covent Garden, and on Midsummer’s day 1792 Iolo Morganwg (1747-1826) held the first meeting of the Gorsedd of the Bards of the Isle of Britain, the precursor of the modern Eisteddfod.

Morganwg was the bardic name of Edward Williams and his work “was a prime force behind the cultural revival that saw the birth of modern Wales” according to the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies whose web site describes him as “a profoundly complicated character: a struggling provincial poet in London, a manipulator and victim of the world of literary patronage, a radical, a medievalist, a forger of pasts, an opium eater and a forceful and opinionated critic.”

Most of the Druidic traditions we now have come from forged manuscripts he produced in particular the “Gorsedd Beirdd Ynys Prydain” (“The Gorsedd of Bards of the Isles of Britain”.) It was only in the twentieth century that the extent of his imaginative forgeries became clear. But although his work came almost entirely from his own extremely fertile imagination it had a dramatic effect in creating a new view of the Welsh nation.

The Druid Order made its first recorded appearance at the Summer Solstice at Stonehenge in 2021, though its founder, the remarkable George Watson MacGregor Reid, a trade union and Labour party activist with a great interest in oriental mysticism was probably there 3 years earlier. In 2014 he returned for the Solstice describing himself as a High Priest and “the direct successor of the Chief Druids who have been” and dressed in a very similar manner to that still adopted by The Druid Order.

I’ve photographed the Equinox ceremonies of the Druid Order, Spring at Tower Hill and Autumn on Primrose Hill on several occasions and have been impressed by the solemnity and spirituality of those taking part. Whatever its origins, it is a movement which respects the Earth and is peace loving and free-thinking with the apparent aim of developing themselves through being rather than through intellectual learning.

My account on My London Diary gives quite a detailed description of the event both in pictures and text so I won’t repeat that here.

Druids Celebrate Autumn Equinox


Paddington Basin – Paddington

The main line of the Grand Union Canal enters the River Thames at Brentford, from where it was possible for goods to travel along the river to London, but a direct canal route was obviously desirable and only two years after the Act of Parliament for the main route to Brentford was passed a further Act to allow the construction of a canal joining the this to a canal basin at Paddington, then on the western edge of London. This opened in 1801.

Unusually there are no locks on the 22km of the Paddington Arm – and you can travel a total of around 43 lock-free miles along the pound made up by it the Grand Union and Regents canal.

The area around the final length of the Paddington Arm from Little Venice to Paddington Basin has been the site of huge redevelopments in the past thirty or so years. A few older canalside buildings remain. Much of the land and paths open to the public in the area are on private land.

Paddington Basin


Hizb ut-Tahrir Women March for Syria – Paddington Green

Over a thousand woman gathered on Paddington Green for a march to the Syrian Embassy to show solidarity with women and children in Syria and to condemn the chemical attacks and massacres being carried out by the Assad regime.

Hizb ut-Tahrir oppose Western military intervention in Syria but call for the replacement of the current corrupt rulers in Islamic states by a Khilifah (caliphate), a state that will truly implement Islamic values and end the corruption and oppression of the current states. They call for Muslims to rise up and get rid of corruption, and in particular of “the criminal regime of the butcher Bashar Al Assad” in Syria, and for “Muslim armies to mobilise and replace the rule of the dictator with the rule of Allah.

At the front of the march children carried a small coffin and other children and women carried bundles representing dead children. There were a few young boys taking part, but I saw few men – just one small group with a banner and a heavy public address system – and the event was clearly led by the women, almost all of whom were wearing headscarves, with very few in niqabs or burqas which covered the whole face.

At most other Hizb ut-Tahrir protests I’ve photographed there have been clearly separate groups of men and women, and I’ve sometimes had problems with male stewards for photographing the women, though not from the women themselves. At this event most seemed keen to be photographed to help get their message across. I left the march which was going to the Syrian Embassy in Belgrave Square at Edgware Road.

Hizb ut-Tahrir Women March for Syria


Holloway, Nakba, Refugees & Topshop

Saturday, May 14th, 2022

Holloway, Nakba, Refugees & Topshop – Six years ago, the 14th May 2016 was also a Saturday, and like today there was a protests for Nakba Day, the ‘day of the catastrophe’, remembering the 80% of Palestinians forced to leave their homes between December 1947 and January 1949, but also several others on the streets of London which I covered.


Reclaim Holloway – Holloway Road

Holloway, Nakba, Refugees & Topshop

Local MP and Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn spoke outside London Met on Holloway Rd at the start of the march by Islington Hands Off Our Public Services, Islington Kill the Housing Bill and the Reclaim Justice Network to HMP Holloway demanding that when the prison is closed the site remains in public hands, and that the government replace the prison with council housing and the vital community services needed to prevent people being caught up in a damaging criminal justice system.

Holloway, Nakba, Refugees & Topshop

A group of around a hundred then marched from there to Holloway Prison, apparently already largely emptied of prisoners, and held a long rally there with speeches by local councillors, trade unionists and campaigning groups. Islington Council would like to see the prison site and adjoining housing estate then owned by HM Prisons used for social housing rather than publicly owned land being sold for private development.

Holloway, Nakba, Refugees & Topshop

The Ministry of Justice sold the site to housing association Peabody for £81.5m in 2019 and their plans include 985 homes and offices, with 60% of so-called affordable housing as well as a women’s building with rehabilitation facilities reflecting the site’s history. The development stalled in February 2022 with Peabody saying they were unable to afford the money needed to fit out the women’s centre.

Reclaim Holloway


68th Anniversary Nabka Day – Oxford Street

Protesters made their way along Oxford St from their regular Saturday picket outside Marks & Spencers, handing out leaflets and stopping outside various shops supporting the Israeli state for speeches against the continuing oppression of the Palestinian people and attempts to criminalise and censor the anti-Zionist boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.

Nabka Day, the ‘day of the catastrophe’ remembering the 80% of Palestinians forced out of their homes between December 1947 and January 1949 is commemorated annually on May 15th, but the protest was a day earlier when Oxford Street would be busier. The Palestinians were later prevented by Israeli law from returning to their homes or reclaiming their properties, with many still living in refugee camps.

The protesters included a number of Jews who are opposed to the continuing oppression of the Palestinians by the Israeli government. A small group of counter protesters shouted insults and displayed Israeli flags, accusing the protesters of anti-Semitism but the protest was clearly directed against unfair and illegal policies pursued by the Israeli government rather than being anti-Semitic. The counter-protesters tried unsuccessfully to provoke confrontation, standing in front of the marchers and police had at times to move them away.

68th Anniversary Nabka Day


Vegan Earthlings masked video protest – Trafalgar Square

Vegans wearing white masks stood in a large circle in Trafalgar Square holding laptops and tablets showing a film about the mistreatment of animals in food production, bullfighting, etc. The protest was organised by London Vegan Actions and posters urged people to stop eating meat to save the environment and end animal cruelty.

Vegan Earthlings masked video protest


Refugees Welcome say protesters – Trafalgar Square

Another small group of protesters stood in front of the National Gallery held posters calling for human rights, fair treatment and support for refugees. Some held a banner with the message ‘free movement for People Not Weapons’.

Refugees Welcome say protesters


Topshop protest after cleaners sacked – Oxford St

Finally I was back on Oxford St where cleaners union United Voices of the World (UVW) was holding one of protests outside Topshop stores around the country following the suspension of two cleaners who protested for a living wage; one has now been sacked. Joining them in the protest were other groups including Class War, cleaners from CAIWU and other trade unionists including Ian Hodson, General Secretary of the BWAFU and Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell.

Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, MP and Ian Hodson, Baker’s Unions General Secretary outside Topshop

The Oxford Street Topshop was heavily defended by police, as well as by illegal extra security guards wearing no ID. Several hundred protesters held up banners and placards and with the help of the police blocked the entrance to the shop, though the protesters made no serious attempt to enter the building.

Jane Nicholl of Class War poses on a BMW as they block Oxford Circus

After a while some of the protesters, led by the Class War Womens Death Brigade, moved onto the road, blocking it for some minutes as police tried to get them to move. The whole group of protesters then moved to block the Oxford Circus junction for some minutes until a large group of police arrived and fairly gently persuaded them to move.

UVW’s Petros Elia argues with a police officer outside John Lewis

They moved off, but rather than going in the direction the police had urged them, marched west along Oxford St to John Lewis, where they protested outside the entrance, where cleaners have a longstanding dispute. The cleaners who work there are outsourced to a cleaning contractor who John Lewis allow to pay low wages, with poor conditions of service and poor management, disclaiming any responsibility for these workers who keep its stores running.

There were some heated exchanges between protesters and police but I saw no arrests and soon the protesters marched away to the Marble Arch Topshop branch to continue their protest.

Topshop protest after cleaners sacked


The Elephant, Sewol and Brexiteers

Wednesday, April 13th, 2022

The Elephant, Sewol and Brexiteers
Saturday 13th April 2019 in London, three years ago seems very distant to me now.


Love the Elephant, Elephant & Castle, London

The Elephant, Sewol and Brexiteers

The main event I covered on the day was at the Elephant & Castle shopping centre in south London, where local people and supporters were calling on Southwark Council and developers Delancey to improve the plans for the redevelopment of the area.

The Elephant, Sewol and Brexiteers

The campaigners main banner had the message ‘LOVE THE ELEPHANT – HATE GENTRIFICATION’ and this is an area that epitomises the changes that have been taking place in many of London’s poorer areas for many years now. Traditionally working class South London, this area has been at the centre of major demolitions of large council estates and their replacement largely by expensive high rise blocks at market rents with a nominal amount of so-called ‘affordable’ and miniscule amounts of truly social housing.

The Elephant, Sewol and Brexiteers

Immediately to the east of the shopping centre had been the award-winning Heygate Estate, completed in 1974, once popular for its light and spacious flats, but long subjected to a process of managed decline by Southwark Council who even employed PR consultants to emphasise a negative view of the estate, together putting together what the estate’s architect Tim Tinker described in 2013 as a “farrago of half-truths and lies put together by people who should have known better.” The council deliberately used parts of it in the latter years to house people with mental health and other problems, and as temporary accommodation. I photographed the estate on several occasions, most recently on a tour by residents opposed to the redevelopment of both the Heygate and the neighbouring Aylesbury Esate in 2012, Walking the Rip-Off.

The Heygate estate had a mixture of properties with large blocks of flats on its edges and contained 1,214 homes, all initially social housing, though many were later purchased by residents who became leaseholders. It’s replacement, Elephant Park is far less well planned but according to Wikipedia will “provide 2,704 new homes, of which 82 will be social rented. The demolition cost approximately £15 million, with an additional £44m spent on emptying the estate and a further £21.5 million spent on progressing its redevelopment.” The council sold the estate to the developers at a huge loss for £50m.

Many of the flats on Elephant Park were sold overseas as investment properties, the continuing increases in London property prices making these a very attractive holding. The new estate will also provide housing for those on high salaries in London, with a railway station and two underground lines providing excellent transport links for professionals working elsewhere in the city. Those who previously lived and owned properties on the Heygate have had to move much further from the centre of the city, some many miles away.

The Elephant & Castle Shopping Centre, was opened in 1965 on the site of the 1898 Elephant & Castle Estate which had been badly damaged by wartime bombing, and was the first purpose-built shopping centre in the UK and certainly one of the first in Europe. Many of its 115 shops were then owned by local traders.

A market trader speaks about the poor deal they are getting

The rally and procession by Southwark Notes, Latin Elephant and Up the Elephant at the Elephant & Castle called on Southwark Council and the developers Delancey to develop the Elephant for the existing population and users, rather than as social cleansing to attract new, wealthier residents and shoppers. They would like to see a development that retains the existing character of the area which has become very much a centre for South London’s Latin community many of whom live in the surrounding area. It became the most diverse and cosmopolitan shopping centre in London, with also other amenities such as a bowling alley and bingo hall, serving the population of the area.

Security officers order the campaigners out of the market area

They say the development should include more social housing and call for fairer treatment of the market traders, who should be provided with ‘like for like’ new spaces at affordable rents and be given adequate financial compensation for the disruption in business the development will cause.

A long series of protests in which locals were joined by students from the London College of Communication whose new building forms a part of the redevelopment did lead to some minor improvements to the scheme by the developers, but the shopping centre closed in September 2020 and demolition went ahead and was complete around a year later. The new development will include high-rent shops, almost certainly mainly parts of major chains, expensive restaurants and bars and plenty of luxury flats, along with a small amount of “affordable” housing.


Sewol Ferry Disaster 5 years on – Trafalgar Square

The Elephant, Sewol and Brexiteers

The good transport links that make the Elephant so attractive to developers also took me rapidly into the centre of London as the procession of protest there came to and end, although events there were continuing all afternoon – only four stops taking 6 minutes on the Bakerloo Line to Charing Cross.

I’ve photographed the small monthly vigils by campaigners in remembrance of the victims and in support of their families of the 304 people who died in the Sewol Ferry Disaster of 16 April 2014 on a number of occasions, though its always difficult to find anything new to say, either in words or pictures.

But this was a special event, the fifth anniversary of the disaster, and the 60th 60th monthly vigil. Campaigners continue to call for a full inquiry, the recovery of all bodies of victims, punishment for those responsible and new laws to prevent another similar disaster. They tie cards on lines with the class and name of the 250 high school children who were drowned after being told to ‘stay put below deck’.


Brexiteers march at Westminster – Westminster Bridge

The Elephant, Sewol and Brexiteers

Brexiteers were continuing to march weekly around London holding Union Jacks, St George’s flags and placards and many wearing yellow high-viz jackets because although there had been a small majority in favour of leaving Europe in the 2016 referendum, Parliament had not found a way to get a majority to pass the legislation needed. It was this indecision that led to a resounding victory for Boris Johnson in the 2019 election in December, though unfortunately his ‘oven-ready’ agreement has turned out to be extremely half-baked and most of the things dismissed by Brexiteers as scaremongering have turned out to be true, while the promises made by the Leave campaign have so far largely failed to materialise and most seem unlikely ever to do so.

Johnson’s deal – important parts of which he seems not to have understood, particularly over the Irish border arrangements has left us in the worst of all possible worlds, though it has made some of his wealthy friends – including some cabinet members – considerably wealthier and protected them from the threat of European legislation that would have outlawed some of their tax avoidance. Back in 2019 I commented “We were sold the impossible, and things were made worse by a government that thought it could play poker when what was needed was a serious attempt at finding a solution to the problems that both the UK and Europe face.”

The protesters were also protesting with flags and banners supporting members of the armed forces against their trial for killings in Northern Ireland and for the Islamophobic campaign ‘Our Boys’ which seeks to have a drunk driver of Hindu origin who killed three young men prosecuted as a terrorist.


Limehouse, Pimlico & the City

Thursday, February 25th, 2021
DLR, Limehouse Dock, Limehouse, 1992 92-3d-36-7a_2400
Panorama, DLR & Limehouse Dock, Limehouse, 1992

My walk down the Lea Valley from the source to the Thames took a long time on my posts here, and there are still many pictures in the Flickr album that have not featured here, including those around the other outlet from the Lea Navigation to the River Thames via the Limehouse Cut and Limehouse Basin by which barges could avoid the winding and rather treacherous Bow Creek. There are over 500 pictures in the album, including a number of colour images and they come from various visits over around ten years when I probably made several thousands of exposures. And I continued to make occasional visits there after 1992, the latest I think in 2018 or 2019. So here are just a couple of final images before I return to my wider explorations of London, back in 1987.

Heavy Rain, LimehouseBasin, entrance, River Thames, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, 1983 33f-45_2400
Heavy Rain, Limehouse Basin entrance, River Thames, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, 1983

1987 continued

St George's Drive, Pimlico, Westminster, 1987 87-10a-15-positive_2400
St George’s Drive, Pimlico, Westminster, 1987 87-10a-15-positive_2400

My last post about my pictures around London several months ago ended with two pictures from Pimlico taken in early October, and that’s where I will take up the story. The long streets of the area lined with Cubitt’s impressive stucco were developed from 1825, St George’s Drive, along with Belgrave Road were the two principla streets, with these opulent five storey town houses, were built (as Wikipedia quotes) for “professional men… not rich enough to luxuriate in Belgravia proper, but rich enough to live in private houses”.

By the 1980s many houses in the area were beginning to show their age; some had been converted to hotels and others offices, while others were in multiple occupation, often rather crudely converted. Developers were busy buying up properties to convert them into flats, as this picture with its estate agent’s boards and scaffolding illustrates.

Churton Place, Pimlico, Westminster, 1987 87-10a-02-positive_2400
Churton Place, Pimlico, Westminster, 1987

The side streets were also a part of Cubitt’s development, but here the houses were less grand and typically of three storeys.

River Thames, foreshore, Blackfriars, downstream, City, 1987 87-10o-63-positive_2400
River Thames, view downstream from Blackfriars, City of London, 1987

My next visit to London, later in the month took me further east, walking from Waterloo Station to the City meant I had to cross the River Thames and this picture shows a rather misty view downstream, with Southwark Bridge, Cannon St Rail Bridge, London Bridge and Tower Bridge. At the left is a tall warehouse on the upstream side of Queenhithe, London’s earliest dock. Now there would be another bridge, the Millennium footbridge, in the foreground.

White Lion Hill, City, 1987 87-10o-52-positive_2400
White Lion Hill, City of London, 1987

White Lion Hill leads up from the river to Queen Victoria St, where a rather dull office building, the Faraday Building, seems to have the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral on its roof. This part of the building was built in 1890 as a post office sorting office, which in 1905 became the GPO’s first London telephone exchange. A taller extension to the west (to the left of this view) was added in 1933, with the whole complex becoming known as Faraday House. This held the international telephone exchange and in its first years virtually all the world’s international telephone conversations were routed through here.

As this picture shows, Faraday House partly blocked the view of St Paul’s Cathedral from the Thames riverside and this led to the introduction of regulations restricting the height of new buildings in various locations giving a number of protected views from around London – including a well known one from Richmond Park. But the regulations only came in after Faraday House was built and were not retrospective. The photograph also shows another of Wren’s churches, St. Benet Paul’s Wharf, rebuilt after the Great Fire and reopened in 1683. Queen Victoria granted the church to Welsh Anglicans in 1879 and services are still conducted there in Welsh.

Knightrider St, City, 1987 87-10o-43-positive_2400
Knightrider St, City of London, 1987

Redevelopment was in full swing in the Knightrider St area as you can see from these pictures. I think the building at right is is the back of the building on Queen Victoria St now home to the Church of Scientology, and to the left is probably Faraday House. So many of what see like older buildings in the city are now just facades to more recent developments.

Knightrider St, City, 198787-10o-42-positive_2400

The web has many references to Knightrider St, but none that give useful information about its post-war past. Most are about its name, suggesting that Stow’s suggestion it came from being a handy route for knights riding to St Paul’s and Smithfield is unlikely (though there are no positive suggestions), or list buildings along the street which were demolished in the nineteenth century or earlier, and exactly the same information is in those reference books I’ve consulted which mention the street.

Knightrider St, City, 1987 87-10o-41-positive_2400

Addle Hill which runs down to the western end of Knightrider St, which continues west as Wardrobe Terrace. In between taking these pictures I photographed The Bell pub, on the corner of Addle Hill and Wardrobe Terrace which closed in 1989 and was demolished in 1998, one of many pictures not on-line. Further east on Knightrider St is The Horn Tavern, which was renamed The Centre Page in 2002 and is newspaper-themed.

These pictures are from Page 7 of my album 1987 London Photos.


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.


Up the Elephant

Sunday, July 28th, 2019

A quick trip on the Bakerloo line took me from elephants in Cavendish Square to the Elephant, where Southwark Notes, Latin Elephant and Up the Elephant were holding their Love the Elephant Street Celebration.

For generations the Elephant & Castle has been a lively South London hub, its nature changing over the years. The country’s first shopping mall was built here in 1955 on the site of a bomb-damaged estate, and while showing its age is still more interesting than most, and one that both reflects and caters for the local community, increasingly Latin-American, as well as largely older bingo-playing local residents.

Shopping malls are generally pretty soulless places, and on going inside you transition from whichever town or city you were into some strange limbo of franchises and chains. The few with a little more character are some of the older ones, usually incorporating market traders and other small local businesses, while the more recent examples have little to offer except the same as every other more recent mall.

Virtually the only reason I ever enter them is to search for the public toilets most offer, which usually involves a long trek following often confusing signage designed to take you past every retail outlet en-route.

Not of course that the Elephant shopping centre is perfect, far from it. It is certainly showing its age and needs improvement, and it has been deliberately run down by its owners to promote the redevelopment.

But campaigners say it should be redeveloped with the local community in mind while the developers Delancey working with Southwark Council and the London College of Communications, seem largely concerned with maximising their profits from the scheme.

Years of campaigning by local community groups has resulted in some minor improvements to the proposals – including more social housing, though it remains to be seen if this will actually happen.

Although the plans were finally approved last December, the campaing goes on, to keep the shopping centre alive until it is demolished and to get fairer treatment of the existing traders. Some have been promised space in the new development, but sometimes only a small fraction of their current area, and the campaign want all to be made offers on a ‘like for like’ basis, with an increase in the relocation fund.

More at Love the Elephant.


There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, please share on social media.
And small donations via Paypal – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.

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.


Boris’s Biggest Blunder?

Monday, June 24th, 2019

Earl’s Court

Probably the largest desert in London – thanks to Boris!

Boris Johnson’s time as Mayor was in many ways a disaster for London, but while the media obsess about his sexual peccadilloes and to a lesser extent his racist comments, little is said about his more important failures, which may have enriched some of his city friends but whose consequences will remain to impoverish Londoners for many years after he has left office. One of these, and probably the biggest, is the stalled £12 billion Earls Court redevelopment, which makes even the £53 million Garden Bridge Fiasco fade into insignificance.

The vacant site where one of London’s iconic 1930s building once stood

It’s wrong of course to call it a blunder. It was a deliberate scheme for the enrichment of a few, undoubtedly including friends and financial supporters of the Conservative Party at the expense of London and Londoners, aiming to provide a huge high-rise development of investment properties largely for sale to foreign investors, a huge empty triangle in what was once a thriving part of London, contributing greatly to the local area and more widely, housing several thousand people who would lose their homes and removing jobs from the area.

Along with Boris, and Transport for London, then a part of his fiefdom, the villains in this £12 billion scheme are developers CAPCO, (Capital & Counties Properties) whose development proposals bear no relation to the considerable history, needs of the area and its locality and the contribution it would pay to the local economy, simply wiping the whole area clean and imposing a solution based on maximising profit to the developers. As soon as they acquired the site in 2008 they applied to English Heritage for a Certificate of Immunity from Listing for the 1930s Earls Court Exhibition Centre, granted despite its iconic status – and the fact that some aspects of it were apparently already listed.

We look at the site of Earls Court 2, with a photograph before demolition

The site falls into two London Boroughs, Kensington and Chelsea and Hammersmith and Fulham, both when the project began under Conservative control. Hammersmith and Fulham council agreed to sell off the two council estates which cover a large part of the area to Capco in 2012. Since Labour took over in H & F in 2014 they have set up an inquiry into the decision to sell and have called for Capco to return the two housing estates. In February 2019 the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, stated that he wanted the two estates to be transferred back to the council by Capco unconditionally after they demanded unacceptable planning permission in return for their release.

Empress Place would make a fine entrance to a new estate – but Capco will knock it down

There are two large office blocks on the site, both visible in the top picture. The tower at left has already been sold and is now occupied by the Metropolitan Police. The smaller block, at right, belongs to TfL and is a part of their site which also includes extensive workshops; it seems that they have so far failed to find suitable alternative sites for these essential facilities.

Thanks to determined opposition from local people the scheme has so far failed to materialise, and the West Kensington and Gibbs Green estates are still there, along with the TfL workshops, but the demolition of the two exhibition centres has created the largest desert in London. The cleared area, left as dusty bare cleared rubble is a local eyesore and pollution source, with wind carrying dust into local homes and businesses, creating thick and possibly dangerous grime.

West Kensington, a well built and much loved estate that Capco would demolish

Opposition to the demolition of the exhibition centres is led by the Earl’s Court Area Action Group, one of whose members took me and other journalists on a tour of the area last week. They now demand the demolished area be developed with a replacement venue for the demolished iconic Earls Court Exhibition Centre as a large green space for exhibitions, sports and cultural events, along with “low rise, high density, exemplary green housing with a wide range of housing options including social housing, green space, community and social infrastructure, reflecting the demographic and unique characteristics of Earl’s Court.”

The residents of West Ken & Gibbs Green estates have been campaigning against the demolition of their homes since 2009, and as a part of their campaign for ‘The People’s Estates’ commissioned Architects for Social Housing (ASH) who in 2016 produced ‘the People’s Plan’ for improvements and new homes on the estates without demolition. They want the estates to be transferred to community ownership.

Gibbs Green estate also well built, loved and in good conditions and under threat of demolition by Capco

Earl’s Court Area Action Group
WKGGCH – West Ken & Gibbs Green Community Homes
ASH – Architects for Social Housing


There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, please share on social media.
And small donations via Paypal – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.

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.

To order prints or reproduce images