Monthly Archives: November 2021

September/October/November 2021 updates

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Ridley Road

The response to the BBC TV series has generally been favourable, which is interesting as militant physical force anti-fascism is not especially en vogue in 2021.

Our friends History is Made at Night and Past Tense have both written some great pieces on the events that inspired the TV series. The Radical History of Hackney piece is here.

There have naturally been some terrible takes from the usual right wing pundits about how the influence of Colin Jordan’s band of Nazis was overstated in the show and that they would never have seized power. This misses the point that neo-Nazi groups can make life miserable for ordinary people on a day to day basis – and they can shift the “overton window” of political discourse to the far right and influence mainstream parties that way.

History Workshop have produced an absolutely cracking podcast about the history and struggles of Ridley Road market:

It includes some great oral history about the fight against Oswald Mosley’s fascists, but the accounts from market traders about recent battles against regeneration are even more interesting. Interviewees include local resident Tamara Stoll, who has published a photo book on the social history of the market and was one of several people to work on the essential Rio Tape Slide Reel book.

December Events

Newington Green Meeting House has a couple of interesting things happening at the moment:

An exhibition on the history of the Gay Liberation Front that runs until December 16th. (Free)

A night of music celebrating working class composers on December 3rd. (Donation)

And finally a film night on December 9th with two documentaries about tenant and community struggles in Islington in the 1970s. (£5)

The Hackney Society are running a talk there entitled “Who Wants To Go To Hackney?” on December 15th:

When proposals for Crossrail 2 (originally called the Chelsea to Hackney line) were first considered by Government Mrs Thatcher was Prime Minister and the plans were passed in front of her for approval. Her memorable (and deadly) response was reported to be: “Hackney! Hackney! – who wants to go to Hackney?”

Christian Wolmar, the celebrated railway historian and journalist, will talk about the long and tortuous battles for London’s railways.

(Online and also in person at Newington Green Meeting House – £11.25 or cheaper for Hackney Society members)

Good things to read

Undercover Met officers may have infiltrated Hackney CND: Hackney Gazette – more wrongness revealed during the Undercover Policing Inquiry.

Ken Williams, 1953-2020: Anarcho-syndicalist and militant anti-fascist – this obituary published by Kate Sharpley Library includes some great memories of Ken’s time in Hackney in the 1980s.

Crass Go Disco by Expletive Undeleted sheds light on the under-explored overlap between the anarchopunk movement on the 1980s and the rave movement of the 1990s. It is extraordinarily comprehensive and there are a few references to gigs, squats raves etc in Hackney.

Hackney Reggae

The new space outside the revamped Britannia Leisure Centre was named BRAFA square following extensive engagement with the local community. BRAFA was the British Reggae Artists Famine Appeal – a benefit single and live event inspired by Live Aid – or rather, the lack of black artists involved with Live Aid.

Hackney Museum have produced a useful film about the story of BRAFA and launch of the square:

In other Hackney reggae news, I thoroughly enjoyed the memorial event for veteran dancehall soundsystem operator Ruddy Ranks that Hackney Archives organised in October:

L-R: Golden Eye (aka Red Eye) (Unity Hi-Fi soundsystem), Anthony Burke (Ruddy’s son), Eastman (Kool FM DJ), Etienne Joseph (Hackney Archives), Sterling (British Association of Soundsystems)

The evening at BSix College included the unveiling of a plaque for Ruddy, who attended school there when it was called Brooke House – as well as many memories of someone who was by all accounts a proper Hackney character. The Archives have some film of the event which I am sure they were upload in due course for people who couldn’t attend.

Hackney Slave Traders

Placards from protest outside the Museum of the Home on 13th June 2021

The Museum of the Home has issued another statement about its statue honouring slave trader Robert Geffrye. Whilst this statement is an improvement on previous ones, it basically just says that the museum feels bad about the statue being there. It has been surprising to see how much praise this has generated.

I am firmly in camp Vernon on this one and would encourage people not to visit the museum until the statue is removed:

Meanwhile the Council has been quietly getting on with asking local people what they want to be done with the remnants of slave-trading – and then doing something about it. (Like most people I am hardly a fan of the council, but credit where credit is due!)

Kit Crowley

In July, Cassland Road Gardens in Homerton (named after slavetrader John Cass) was rebadged as Kit Crowley Gardens in honour of a local community stalwart.

I was also pleased to see Tyssen Community School near Clapton Common (named after the slave-trading Tyssen family) was putting up some new signs to mark its renaming as Oldhill School:

Just nice things

It’s been a tough couple of years. I think we all need to be reminded that good people in the community have been doing their best to crack on and make things better with very little resources. These two films about grass roots sports in Hackney both cheered me up immensely.

A Conscientious Objector in Hackney in 1945

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Tony Gibson was a registered conscientious objector during World War two. He worked initially at an ambulance station in London before heading off for agricultural work in South Wales. Tony made his way back to London in March 1945 (about six months before the end of the war):

“Then I got my cards from South Wales and obtained employment as a carpenter in a firm repairing the bomb-blasted houses in Hackney, East London.

Here again pacifist and anarchist contacts stood me in good stead, for the building firm belonged to pacifists, and most of its workers were Conscientious Objectors of one kind or another – Christian pacifists, members of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, anarchists, fringe Trotskyists, and a few deserters from the forces who lived precarious lives without proper identity documents. When inspectors came round, the foreman told these latter characters to make themselves scarce for a while, since they didn’t appear on the firm’s books.

We even had one genuine Fascist, a mild little man who admired Mussolini (who had recently been killed). This fellow had a bad time in arguments with his work-mates, and was threatened with violence to drive him off the job, until a brawny young socialist declared that he would be his protector: ‘A man is entitled to his opinions, however daft'”

Tony Gibson – Burgess Hill School: A Personal Account
Photo of a bomb damaged housing in Ferncliff Road, Dalston courtesy of Hackney Archives

I thought this was a really interesting insight into the various strands of radical thought that were floating around in Hackney during the war. Anarchists are often seen as a chaotic destructive force, but this is a good example of one rebuilding people’s homes after they’d been destroyed by the Luftwaffe. This ties in with the hundreds of anarchist squatters in Hackney who would repair and redecorate derelict houses after the war right up to the 1990s.

Tony Gibson

Tony’s account above is the preamble to a longer piece about his work as a handyman at Burgess Hill Free School in Hampstead which was set up on anarchist-ish principles. This was published in the anarchist journal The Raven in 1987 and can be read on Libcom.

Whilst working as a labourer in Hackney, Gibson was also one of the temporary editorial team of the anarchist newspaper War Commentary, when most of the regular staff were imprisoned in 1945. He went on to some prominence in the field of psychology and remained an anarchist until his death in 2001. Libcom has also republished a Guardian obituary for him with more details of his life.