Radical History vs the London Overground on the streets of Hackney

Last Thursday, Transport for London (TfL) announced new names for six of its Overground lines and everyone got very angry on social media. For me, this all raised some interesting questions for people invested in London’s radical history and in fostering inclusivity. As well as for observers of the culture wars.

Three of the new lines pass through Hackney:

• The Mildmay line is named after a hospital in Shoreditch (but frustratingly it’s in Tower Hamlets and not Hackney) which has done excellent work caring for AIDS/HIV+ patients. The line comes fairly close to the Mildmay Social Club in Newington Green though, which started life as the Mildmay Radical Club in 1888.
  
• The Weaver line is named after the waves of immigrant workers in the textile industry in the East End. We have previously covered both women in the rag trade in Hackney and the role of radical Jews in the borough.
  
• The Windrush line is named after HMS Windrush which is emblematic of the thousands of people from the Caribbean who travelled to the UK from the 1950s onwards, many of whom settled in Hackney. There were celebrations thougout the borough last year to mark the 75th anniversary of the ship’s voyage. The Windrush line includes Dalston Junction Station, which was built following the demolition of the site of the Four Aces – a key venue in the evolution of London reggae soundsystem culture and associated genres like hardcore techno and jungle.

The Suffragette line does not pass through Hackney, but we have previously covered Suffragettes in Hackney and Stoke Newington. I was pleased to hear recently that further work is being done in this area by the Women from Hackney’s History team.

Outrage!

First out of the blocks was the Daily Telegraph, with a righteous defence of the role of Irish people in London:

This is wildly at odds with the Telegraph’s long history of anti-Irish prejudice, which begs the question – what has changed?

The process of Irish people becoming respectable (“white”) in America is brilliantly described in Noel Ignatiev’s classic 1995 book How The Irish Became White and similar forces are clearly still at work in London in 2024. In the conservative mind, Irish people are now an asset to London – compared to subsequent waves of immigrants from elsewhere.

GBnews decried the “woke makeover” of the Overground and The Sun also helped fill up the culture wars bingo card with “virtue signalling nonsense”.

The Daily Mail unsurprisingly found a few people who baulked at the renaming project costing £6m of public money during a cost of living crisis.

Former Boris Johnson cabinet minister Lord Frost captured a mood when he said:

“The London tradition is that public transport lines are given a name either with a royal connection or one related to the line’s geography.

Giving them political names is, whether one agrees with the politics or not, a break with that tradition.”

This is a perfect example of the problem of how a lot of people think about politics (and history). Conservatives sincerely believe that the Royal Family is not political and so they get outraged when people of Irish heritage (or from other colonised nations) take issue with that.

And so to geography. The Bakerloo and Waterloo & City lines are named after an area of London called Waterloo. This is itself a celebration of the 1815 Battle of Waterloo, which marked the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Up to 50,000 people died in the battle.

These things are not political, but the woke Suffragettes using violent direct action to secure votes for women is. And so is naming a train line after women’s football team The Lionesses.

The outrage about the Overground echoes the controversy around historians revealing the connections of various institutions and ruling class families to colonialism and the slave trade. For some, that was not a deepening of historical knowledge, but an attack on a fixed body of facts – which were commonly embodied in statues and monuments. History as tradition and stone versus history as an active process of understanding and re-evaluation.

I am reminded of the Radical History Network of North East London‘s motto:

“Celebrate our history, avoid making the same mistakes – and get inspiration to help create a better society for the future.”

Which brings us to critiques from a more progressive angle…

Is this radical history?

It is important that we celebrate this diverse group of predominantly working class migrants and remember their workplace struggles through trade unions and other organisations.

There are obvious reasons why ethnic diversity is celebrated by Transport for London’s blurb about the weavers, but their struggles around pay and conditions are not mentioned. TfL is notoriously and increasingly anti-union and it is an interesting coincidence that a strike by Overground workers over pay was called off on the same day as the announcement about the renamings.

It is important that we remember that the fighr for votes for women was multi-faceted and that the Suffragettes were amongst its most militant exponents. Exactly 111 years ago a Suffragette bomb destroyed Liberal Minister Lloyd George’s home in Walton-on-the-Hill.

On the other hand, several commentators have pointed out that the woman in the image above is Millicent Fawcett who was not a Suffragette – she was instead the leader of the National Union of Women Suffrage Societies, who deplored the direct action tactics of the Suffragettes. So that’s quite funny.

We shoud defend the legacy of direct action. And in doing so, remember that whenever it is used it is decried by the media, courts and politicians – until enough time has passed for it to be deemed good and proper. This celebration of the Suffragettes is in stark contrast to the UK government’s ongoing clampdown on the right to protest.

It is important that we recognise the contribution of the Windrush generation in spite of the brutal racism that it has faced.

The TfL site does mention that the Windrush generation was “often met with intolerance and denied access to housing, shops, pubs, clubs and even churches on account of their race”.

It does not mention that the origin of this project of migration was in the British Empire, a violent exercise of racist colonisation which received the blessing of the “non-political” Royal Family of the time.

The TfL acknowledgement of “intolerance” does not really do justice to the normalised violence and institutional racism faced by London’s black communities from the 1950s onwards. HMS Windrush will now be forever associated with the Windrush Scandal, in which the Conservative Party’s “hostile environment” for immigrants was directed towards the Windrush generation and its descendants. This resulted in countless detentions, threats of deportation and actual deportations for members of this “celebrated” community.

TfL is correct to point out that “Caribbean communities enriched and expanded London’s music scene.” But back in Dalston, the founders of the influential Four Aces nightclub bore the brunt of British racism. Newton Dunbar was one of the most arrested individuals in Hackney at one point in the 1980s, despite never being charged with anything significant.

Charlie Collins (aka Sir Collins) lost his son Steve in the 1981 New Cross Fire – a tragedy at a house party which is widely attributed to a racist attack. Charlie planted 13 trees in the garden of the Four Aces in memory of the 13 victims.

The trees were destroyed when the area was demolished in 2006 to make way for Dalston Square. A luxury development of 550 apartments was built on the site. Two of the blocks are named Dunbar Tower and Collins Tower. Newton Dunbar commented:

“They called it Dunbar Tower without consulting me. I do not know if they were taking the mickey, or if they had some other more sinister intention. It’s certainly no compensation for the building which was taken from me.”

According to Newton, “the demolition of The Four Aces laid down the roots for the subsequent gentrification of Dalston.”

The Dalston towers overshadowed a botched immigration raid in May 2022, in which Hackney’s residents successfully fought against police brutality. Two months prior to this, it was revealed that Metropolitan Police officers had strip searched a black schoolgirl, ‘Child Q’ without another adult present and in the knowledge that she was menstruating. This led to several significant protests and an inquiry. Giiven the long history of police racism in Hackney it is reasonable to suggest that these two incidents are just the tip of the iceberg.

The culture wars are being waged after a decade of capitalist restructuring (aka austerity), a process which has only intensified since the pandemic. Everyone except the super-rich has seen a rapid decline in living standards during this period – and women, ethnic minorities and those at the sharp end of the economic scale have borne the brunt of it. Arguments about the names of train lines are a distraction from this. (But sometimes a distraction from the doom and gloom of everyday life can be welcome and might even be an inspiration…?)

Complicating history

Where this leads me is that celebrating past victories is not enough. Radical history needs to be more than a checklist of “cool things that happened in my neighbourhood”.

At the very least, we need to recognise the struggles that these victories arose from and the wider context that those struggles existed in.

But more than that, we should be explicit about the suffering that these now “celebrated communities” endured and continue to endure. And be inspired to fight this injustice – and all injustice – in the here and now.

Update 20th February 2024:

Thanks to the commenter who mentioned this forthcoming event in Hackney to commemorate Sir Collins and the victims of the New Cross Fire:

“The only black and the only woman reporter…” Hackney Gazette in the 1970s

The following piece appears in the book It Ain’t Half Racist Mum: Fighting racism in the media edited by Phil Cohen & Carl Gardner and published by Comedia/CARM 1982.

It’s a remarkable account of a young black female reporter of working at the paper at the time, and what she had to overcome.

Juliet Alexander

Since this was published, Juliet has worked in a wide range of senior roles including Education Careers Manager at Hackney Learning Trust and with a huge number of local community and voluntary organisations. Her Linkedin profile will tell you more. She tweets at @julietshares

Two tokens in one: the only black and the only woman reporter…
Juliet Alexander interviewed

Juliet Alexander was a reporter on the Hackney Gazette in East London for five years. At her initial interview the editor said that taking her on meant that he was killing two minorities in one. He was joking. She is interviewed by Geoffrey Sheridan[1].

I started at 18, when most people in the office were young, left of centre, and anti-racist. Being black didn’t affect what I did at the beginning — that was in 1975. Being a junior reporter meant that I had to do all the crap that was going. Even after I had been on the paper for a few years, if a kid drowned or something like that, I was the one who went to see the family to get a picture of the kid. That was mainly because I was female. Yet in an area that is a quarter black there was no way I could cover all the black stories. And there was no reason why I should go out on those stories, with a few exceptions.

An obvious case was Maurice Hope, the light middleweight world champion, from Antigua. A reporter went out to interview him, and he couldn’t understand a word that Maurice said. His mother had an even heavier accent. So I was taken along. Maurice was anti-white before he won the world championship and the white press had ignored him. He said in the interview that the Hackney Gazette was the only paper that had given him any publicity, apart from the West Indian World.

Some blacks would only deal with me, such as Eddie Grant, who set up the first black recording studio[2], and Pastor Morris, who does the Finsbury Park Carnival. I covered news from the estates and word went round like wild fire that Juliet did housing stories, so there were lots of blacks there, but whites, too. They found it hard to separate the fact that I was a reporter from the fact that I was black, which is as it should be, I think.

Before I went on to the Gazette there had been trouble at Dalston police station. A black youth had his head flushed down the loo. It was felt it might do the police some good if they got to know a black person in a different way. I probably did very good PR work on behalf of black people. The only blacks the police met were those they arrested. Meeting a black person on professional terms was as much an experience for them as it was for me.

Sexism and racism

In fact their attitude was of a bunch of men to a woman, rather than to a black. They were incredibly sexist in some cases, and began with the attitude: ‘This silly little girl can’t do her job, so we’ll go out of our way to help her.’ Realising that not all blacks wear woolly caps, there was a slight shift in their thinking. With another reporter they’d say: ‘Two niggers were picked up for mugging an old lady.’ With me it was: ‘Two muggers were picked up…’ But sometimes they’d say ‘mugger’ meaning ‘nigger’. It was ingrained.

Racism came from outside the office, not inside. This man called Sid rang up one day complaining about blacks vandalising his estate. ‘He didn’t mind blacks,’ he said, but it was obvious he did. That’s what a lot of people who rang up said. ‘I’m not racist, but…’ I told Sid his experience was really awful — I was doing my middle-class Tory lady bit. I invited him over to the paper and met him at reception. He recognised my voice, dropped his head in his hands, and called himself ‘Sid the Shit’. We had a long talk. There was one of those phone calls every day.

The paper’s policy led to abusive phone calls. We followed the NUJ policy of not putting in someone’s colour unless it was material to the story, such as a black musician where his colour is part of the description of what he does. We would never put emotive terms into the headline or the introduction of an article. The North London branch of the NUJ was very militant and backed the union’s guidelines. The editor agreed with that. But if it was common knowledge that someone was black — if the evening papers had said so — we’d get abusive phone calls wanting to know why we didn’t call ‘a spade a spade’.

Striking against racism

We had a walk-out over racism. During the Greater London Council elections in 1977 a reporter noticed that an advert for a National Front meeting was due to go into the paper. The management said they couldn’t remove it. It was an immediate decision to go out on strike. I was doing the front-page lead article that day. I put it in my bag and walked out. We were out for three days, and picked up a hell of a lot of signatures supporting our action. We normally completely ignored NF meetings. The only time we mentioned them was in unfavourable terms — who they’d beaten up that week. In elections we gave details of all the candidates except the NF’s. We simply said they were standing two candidates, or however many it was.

Before I went to the Gazette it had given coverage to Derek Day[3] — a leading NF member — and to tenants in Hoxton, which was a fascist base. Things changed a bit. When Day’s address was published in the paper, because his son was involved in a court case, he came down to the office, distressed the receptionist, and demanded to see the editor. I volunteered to go down. He was ranting and raving. He came up to me, nose to nose. ‘I’m Derek Day,’ he yelled. `I’m racist and proud of it.’ He described the Gazette in unglowing terms, tore the paper in shreds, and threw it over me. I thanked him for his comment and excused myself.

As far as the NF was concerned, we were a ‘Nigger-loving Commie rag’, which is what they sprayed on the building. When flags were put up for the Jubilee, someone came into the office to lower them. ‘We had no right to fly the British flag,’ we were told.

(Juliet Alexander left the Hackney Gazette to work on the BBC Radio London programme Black Londoners. She now works in TV in the Midlands.)

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Some new notes

1. Geoffrey Sheridan who interviewed Juliet also has Hackney Radical History connections. He was son of a tailor, and Communist party member and grew up in Stamford Hill. He was a member of the International Marxist Group and wrote for a number of radical and socialist publications, From 1987 until his death in the year 2000, he worked in business planning for Hackney council. Guardian obituary here.

2. The legendary Coach House Recording Studios, founded in 1972 and based at 81 Osbaldeston Road, London N16.

3. Derrick Day was a notorious racist thug and National Front member. He was in charge of security at the NF’s headquarters Excalibur House in Shoreditch in the late 1970s. Veteran anti-fascist Martin Lux described him thus:

“Times were much harder then and a lot of the NF were very hard, violent people. You just have to look at the head of the Hoxton NF back then, Derrick Day, a fuckin gorilla with a face covered with razor cuts.”

It should go without saying that it would be remarkably brave for a young black woman working as a junior reporter, to volunteer to meet a ranting and raving fascist bully. Derrick Day died in 1995 during a protest against live animal exports in Brightlingsea, where he then lived. It’s unclear whether he had recanted his support for violent white supremacy later in life.

Hackney slave-trader updates

A round up of recent reckonings with the Borough’s colonial and slave-trading past.

Vote held on renaming of Cassland Gardens

Back in December, the Council organised a ceremony for the removal of the sign on Cassland Gardens E9, which was named after slavetrader John Cass:

There was a poll for Hackney residents to vote on options for a new name for the space. The Council’s Review, Rename, Reclaim initiative crowdsourced some suggestions and identified four black former residents of Hackney to choose between:

S.J. Celestine Edwards (1857/8-1894) – activist, editor and campaigner on anti-colonial and anti-racism.

Kathleen ‘Kit’ Crowley (1918-2018) – respected Cassland Road working class resident.

Francis ‘Frank’ Owausu (1954 – 2018) – arrived in Hackney as a child political refugee. Teacher and co-founder of the African Community School (a “supplementary school” similar to the one shown in a recent episode of Steve McQueen’s “Small Axe” TV series).

Ralph Adolphus Straker (1936 – 2013) – union activist, anti-SUS law campaigner, Hackney Community Relations Council, African and African Carribbean arts patron.

There is a nice PDF with photos and biographical information about the four people here.

Voting on this has now closed and the new name will be announced in May.

(After a similar consultaiton and poll, the square outside Britannia Leisure Centre will now be renamed BRAFA Square after the Hackney-based 1980s British Reggae Artists Famine Appeal.)

#GeffryeMustFall / Museum of the Home

In other racist memorial news, I was amused to see the Museum of the Home on the scrounge for cash for a new green roof:

The roof of the museum also features its infamous statue of slavetrader Robert Geffrye. If the Museum thinks that sticking some flowers up there will distract us from Geffrye’s blood-stained stone hands, then they are sadly mistaken. Far be it for me to suggest that getting up on the roof is an opportunity for an unfortunate masonry based accident…

The Museum has finally added a page on the statue to its website which states that:

The Board and Museum team are continuing to review, discuss and explore options for the statue.

In the meantime we will reinterpret the statue honestly and transparently to tell the history of Geffrye’s career and his connections with the forced labour and trading of enslaved Africans. And we will acknowledge that the statue is the subject of fierce debate.

We will confront, challenge and learn from the uncomfortable truths of the origins of the Museum buildings, and fulfil our commitment to diversity and inclusion.

My position remains that the statue should be removed and that people should not visit the museum until it is.

Tyssen School is changing its name

Tyssen School will become Oldhill Communty School and Children Centre in September 2021:

This is due to the dubious past of the Tyssen family; who the school is currently named after. As part of the Review, Rename, Reclaim Project, Hackney Education informed the school that the Tyssen family played a part in the slave trade. The local authority has, consequently, supported the school to change their name. After consultation with our families and the local community, we decided on the new name  Oldhill Community School and Children Centre.

The link above includes a crowdfunder to help with the changes, including new uniforms and tablets for pupils in need.

There is more information on the Tyssen family and its connections to Hackney and the slave trade in a previous post.

Robert Aske and Hackney

The merchant Robert Aske (1619 – 1689)

Aske Gardens (Pitfield Street, Hoxton) is laid out on land bought in 1690 by the Haberdasher’s Company with money left by Robert Aske.

And where did Aske get his money from? Well, as our colleagues at Reclaim EC1 note, a large portion of his fortune came from his significant investments in the slave-trading operation known as the Royal Africa Company.

As comrade Transpontine notes:

According to historian William Pettigrew, the RAC ‘shipped more enslaved African women, men and children to the Americas than any other single institution during the entire period of the transatlantic slave trade’ (Freedom’s Debt: The Royal African Company and the Politics of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1672-1752, 2013) including more than 150,000 slaves forcibly transported to the British Caribbean.

Geffrye, Tyssen and Cass are identified as “contested figures” as part of the Council’s Review, Rename, Reclaim initiative. But Robert Aske is not mentioned.

More promisingly, schools named after Aske in New Cross and Elstree are reported to be considering a change of name. A statement issued by the schools’ sponsor, the Haberdashers Company, states:

‘The Haberdashers’ Company and its Schools in Elstree and South London have become aware that Robert Aske was a shareholder in the Royal African Company (RAC).  All are clear that the role of the RAC in the slave trade was deplorable and sits in stark contrast with the values which underpin the activities and philosophy of the Company, its schools and beneficiaries today.  The schools are already engaged in comprehensive reviews of culture, values and their brands and this matter will be included.  The outcome of these fully consultative deliberations, including the future use of the Aske name, will be communicated when conclusions are reached and decisions made.  The Haberdashers’ Company is proud of its ethos of benevolence, fellowship and inclusion, and the diverse nature of its membership’.

I hope this sensitivity and momentum can be maintained and that a more appropriate name for Aske Gardens can be found – as well as for the other memorials to Aske in Hackney identified by Reclaim EC1:

Obviously the name of Aske Gardens requires change. It seems likely that nearby Aske Street (N1 6LE postcode) is also named for the merchant Robert Aske and if this is the case it should be changed too.

Likewise, given Aske’s strong association with the Haberdashers’ Company we’d like to see the names of the nearby Haberdasher Estate and Haberdasher Street changed – it should also be noted that the Haberdashers’ Company is closely associated with slave trade figures such as the lord mayor Sir Richard Levett, who will be addressed in part 8 of this series.

A Zen internet page dedicated to Aske’s Hospital and Almshouses is among the places that note this listed building has been converted into flats and is now called Hoffman Square (N1 6DH), but there are stone panels at the front entrance detailing its history (relevant webpage here) that should be removed or at the very least amended to record Aske’s investment in the slave trade.

Latest Salvo in the Culture Wars

Toyin Agbetu is one of the participants in the removal of the Cassland Road sign shown at the top of this post. As a representative of the Ligali organisation he has talked a great deal of sense on Hackney’s colonial legacy and how this might be addressed. Hence him being invited by the Council onto their Review, Rename, Reclaim initiative and Sadiq Khan’s Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm. He also has a fascinating history in music as a street soul artist.

The Conservative Party is rabidly opposed to any nuanced consideration of colonialism. A previous post on this blog looked at Minister for Culture Oliver Dowden’s interference with the Museum of the Home’s public consultation on the future of the Robert Geffrye statue. So it is hardly surprising that the Tories have subjected individuals on the Mayor’s Commission to intense scrutiny.

Initially Toyin came under fire for having heckled the Queen back in March 2007, during a Westminster Abbey church service held to recognize the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the Slave Trade Act. Reader, it may not surprise you that this only made my affection for Mr Agebtu grow.

We all have skeletons in our cupboards and perhaps inevitably the Tories kept going until they found something more damning. Some brief comments by Toyin about the COVID-19 Pfizer vaccine, which were unwise in my view, were blown out of proportion in the right wing press.

Some comments discovered by Jewish News are very troubling however, and have led to Mr Agbetu resigning from the London Mayor’s Commission. Toyin’s statement to the Hackney Citizen gives his side of the story and announces that a more developed response will be forthcoming after the elections in May.

Previous posts of interest:

Kick Over The Statues: Slavery and Hackney campaign

Government demands Museum of the Home keeps racist statue against wishes of the community

Outrage at museum’s “racist statue must stay” decision

Hackney’s Museum of the Home says its racist memorial is OK, actually

Have your say on Hackney’s slave-trader statue

September 2020 updates

Stoke Newington 8 poster with Stuart Christie bottom centre

Veteran anarchist Stuart Christie died back in August. He was probably most well known for his regrettably failed attempt to assassinate Spain’s fascist dictator Franco in 1964. But that was merely one aspect of a life dedicated to radical politics and publishing. His autobiography Granny Made Me An Anarchist is an essential read.

Stuart was also one of the people arrested in connection with the Angry Brigade bombings in the early 1970s – who became known as The Stoke Newington 8. However he did not live in Stoke Newington – he was picked up by the cops when visiting the flat at 359 Amhurst Road where several of the other defendants lived. He was eventually acquitted of all charges.

Some videos about his arrest and the trial have resurfaced after his death:

The Council website has a very boring web page about Black History Month 2020. Perseverence is rewarded by the discovery that this year’s events include a free online film screening of African and Caribbean History in Hackney on October 7th:

Join Hackney Museum for an online screening of a new film which gives an overview of African and Caribbean history in the local area. The film features stories from our collections, displays and exhibitions, creatively woven together by spoken word artist and performer, Bad Lay-Dee. Followed by a Q&A.

Book your free space on Eventbrite – joining details for the Zoom call will be emailed to you in advance.

Local residents are being given the opportunity to vote on the name of new public square outside the new Britannia Leisure Centre and the options are… really good actually:

• Bradlaugh Square – Charles Bradlaugh was an atheist and freethinkiner in the 19th Century who was prosecuted for blashphemy and (on a different occasion) for obscenity for republishing a pamphlet advocating birth control.
• Humble Square – named after the Humble petition of Haggerston residents demanding votes for women in 1910.
• BRAFA Square – British Reggae Artists Famine Appeal – set up in 1985 as an afro-centric response to the Band Aid charity single.
• McKay Square – Claude McKay was a Jamaican socialist, writer poet and activist.

There is more information on each option on the web page about the vote and you have until 11 November to make up your mind.

What a nice example of creative community engagement, in stark contrast to the top down approach of the Museum of the Home and Oliver Dowden, Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and their insistence on keeping the memorial to racist slave trader Robert Geffrye in Shoreditch against the wishes of the community.

Rab MacWilliam was editor of N16 Magazine which I have to say was never really to my taste (probably because it never strayed too far from Church Street). But he is by all accounts a good guy and his forthcoming book looks really interesting:

Stoke Newington has long been one of London’s most intriguing and radical areas. Boasting famous residents from Mary Wollstonecraft to Marc Bolan, it has always attracted creative types. In the 1960s and 1970s ‘Stokey’ was becoming a somewhat disreputable neighbourhood, but in recent years its appeal has led to its gentrification and the arrival of a wealthy middle class. The area’s history is a fascinating one. This book reveals, through a combination of anecdote, historical fact and cultural insight, how this often argumentative yet tolerant ‘village’ has become the increasingly fashionable and sought after Stoke Newington of today.

Hotspot of dissent, the Newington Green Meeting House is now offering socially distanced tours:

Tuesdays 12pm – 1pm and 2pm – 3pm

Thursdays 12pm – 1pm and 2pm – 3pm

Until December 17th.

I mentioned Nottinghan’s Sparrows Nest Archive of anarchist material last time but hadn’t spotted that they had uploaded a PDF scan of newsletter from the Hackney Anti-Fascist Committee. I doubt it is too much of a wild leap to presume that this group was some kind of split from the main militant anti-fascist group of the day, Anti-Fascist Action.

Image posted on Twitter by Councillor Jon Burke

Government demands Museum of the Home keeps racist statue against wishes of the community

Did the government advise @MuseumoftheHome not to take down a statue of a slave trader, despite a public consultation which supported its removal?@RiaChatter reports on the growing calls to reverse the decision after emails from the culture secretary's office were revealed pic.twitter.com/JeNPF2RdkV

— ITV London (@itvlondon) August 28, 2020

After several weeks of confusion and outrage, the reasons for the Museum of the Home retaining its memorial to slave trader Robert Geffrye against the wishes of the community are becoming clearer.

When the decision to keep the statue was announced, I asked the Museum a bunch of questions including:

The Mayor of Hackney suggests that the Department for Digital, Media, Culture and Sport may have influenced the Board’s decision. Is this true and if so what was their input?

This week a brace of emails extracted via a Freedom of Information request provided the answer. Huffington Post provided a good summary: Museum Felt ‘Extremely Compromised’ By Minister’s Plea To Keep Slave Trader Statue.

It has emerged that shortly after the community clean-up of the Edward Colston statue in Bristol, Oliver Dowden (Her Majesties HM Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport) wrote to the Museum of the Home to say:

“You play a crucial role in conserving our heritage assets, caring for our national
collections, providing access to knowledge and leading efforts to offer cultural education to all.

“I am aware that the issues of contested heritage provoke strongly held views, and that right now these issues will be in the forefront of your minds. I therefore wanted to share with you the government’s position on these issues.

“The government believes that it is always legitimate to examine and debate Britain’s history, but that removing statues, artwork and other historical objects is not the right approach.

“Confronting our past may be difficult at times but, as the prime minister has
stated, we cannot pretend to have a different history. Historical objects were created by previous generations, who often had different perspectives and different understandings of right and wrong.”

“As a government-funded organisation, I would expect you to be mindful of the above approach, which has been agreed with Historic England. If you plan to make any statements or actions in relation to this issue, please contact DCMS in advance of doing so.”

The reference to funding can only be seen as a not-so-veiled threat in the current climate.

Tory Minister Oliver Dowden thinks Hackney is a great place for a racist memorial

Dowden’s minsterial duties include appointing three of the Board members at the Museum of the Home and its Chair.

As Minister for culture, Dowden is the de facto minister for the burgeoning culture war in the UK. It is unsurprising that he has recently intervened in favour of Little Britain characters “blacking up” and “Rule Britannia” and “Land of Hope & Glory” being sung at the Last Night of the Proms.

He is MP for well-to-do Hertsmere in Hertfordshire. According to They Work For You, he has “Generally voted against laws to promote equality and human rights”. Dowden’s interference in Hackney is unwelcome.

A spokesperson for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport backed their minister:

“Whilst it is always legitimate to examine Britain’s history, removing statues, artwork and other historical objects is not the right approach. Instead, we should aim to use heritage to educate people about all aspects of Britain’s complex past, both good and bad.”

“Publicly funded museums must not remove statues that form part of a listed building or other heritage objects in their care for political or campaigning purposes. They must be seen to be acting impartially, in line with their publicly funded status.”

“Impartiality” is great cloak here for keeping everything the same forever – which is I guess the definition of “conservative”. But there are no plans to reintroduce statues of Jimmy Savile, oddly.

But yes, we will continue to educate people about Britain’s history. And perhaps create some history ourselves in doing so, as the people of Bristol have shown.

Hackney Citizen approached Ligali’s Toyin Agbetu for his charateristically spot on comment:

“As I read the communications between the Geffrye and government, it revealed that the culture minister Oliver Dowden was more concerned with preserving a monument that literally celebrates the history of Britain’s slaving past than developing assets that accurately reflect the reality of British society and culture as it exists today.

“It’s a backward-looking form of bourgeois cultural purism normally practiced by racists who feel threatened by the call for progressive change made by movements like Black Lives Matter.

“I interpret the statement, which explicitly highlights the fact that the Geffrye as a government-funded organisation is expected to be mindful of choosing to remove the statue, as a threat. The instruction telling the Geffrye staff to contact the government first if they go against its dictates was chilling.”

Ligali has also made a formal complaint to the Charity Commission about the Museum’s decision (and it was the museum’s decison – let’s not forget that)

Others including Diane Abbot have been similarly outspoken:

Still no comment from Meg Hillier, the MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch where the Museum is based though?

The museum is yet to announce a reopening date (September had been mooted). There is talk of “further reflection” by the Board. But talk and reflection are not enough.

The reopening of The Museum of the Home will be an excellent opportunity to “educate people about all aspects of Britain’s complex past, both good and bad.” And if the museum will not do that, then the community will.

Outrage at museum’s “racist statue must stay” decision

The Museum of the Home has gone very quiet since announcing last week that it would defy public feeling and keep its memorial to slave-trader Robert Geffrye. Its usually very responsive Twitter account has not posted anything since 31st July. They haven’t answered my questions.

Alongside narky radical historians and the usual lefties, the museum’s decision has been condemned by the Mayor of Hackney, MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington Diane Abbott as well as several local councillors. (I have not yet seen any comment from Meg Hillier, MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch?)

I was also very pleased to see this statement from artist Maria Fusco who was commissioned by the museum to produce an artwork for its reopening.:

Other coverage this week has included:

Vice Magazine – A London Musuem Is Ignoring Calls To Remove Statue of Slave Trader Robert Geffrye (Bex Wade)

Hackney Citizen – “Geffrye Must Fall”: Stand Up To Racism protest calls on museum to remove statue (Ed Sheridan)

Hackney Gazette – Hoxton’s Museum of the Home announces slave trader Geffrye’s statue will stay put (Emma Bartholomew)

Museums Association – Museum of the Home Decides to Leave Geffrye Statue In Place (Geraldine Kendall Adams)

Huffington Post – ‘Black Lives Clearly Don’t Matter’ As Museum Ignores Public Vote And Keeps Slave Trader Statue (Chris York)

Ligali – Museum Keeps Toxic Slavery Statue and Removes Support for Black Lives Matter

(In fact the Museum has bizarrely decided to move its statement on BLM here – as several people have pointed out, you cannot support BLM and also agree with the decison to retain the statue).

Ligali have also produced this graphic comparing the Museum to the now closed LD50 gallery in Dalston which was happy to host meetings of the racist alt-right:

Image from Ligali website

Pressure on the Museum is building. Elsewhere in London there is ongoing work to document racist memorials in Islington and the City of London – and evidence of City dignitaries celebrating the legacy of Hackney slave-trader Sir John Cass.

But let’s finish with a song. Paul Lime has suggested the following ditty which can be sung to the tune of “Solidarity Forever” by Ralph Chaplin. Let’s make some noise and bring down Geffrye.

Posted on twitter by @lime_paul

Hackney’s Museum of the Home says its racist memorial is OK, actually

It’s not often that an email from a museum pisses me off, but that was a thing that happened this week.

The monument celebrating slave trader Robert Geffrye

A previous post covered the legacy of slavery in Hackney and looked at how slave owners are memorialised throughout the Borough. This was followed by an optimistic post encouraging people to engage with the consultation about the future of the statue of slave trader Robert Geffyre in the grounds of the Museum of the Home.

On Wednesday the Board of Trustees of the museum wrote to me with the outcome of the consultation:

Thank you for taking part in the consultation about the future of the statue of Sir Robert Geffrye at the Museum of the Home.

Alongside many other cultural organisations across the UK, we have a responsibility to act against injustice, and this includes acknowledging the legacy of colonialism and slavery within our history. 

The statue of Sir Robert Geffrye on our building is a symbol of the historic connection the Museum buildings have to an English merchant whose wealth was partly derived from the forced labour and trading of enslaved Africans. Geffrye donated the funds to build the almshouses in which the Museum is housed. 

Following a process of reflection, debate and research, and a consultation conducted in partnership with Hackney Council, the Board of Trustees of the Museum has taken the decision not to remove the statue from the Museum’s buildings.  

The Board believes that the Museum should respond to the issues raised by this debate by continuing with its vision of change at a fundamental level, by diversifying the Museum’s workforce, creative partners, content and programming to become more representative and inclusive.  

The Board feels that the Museum should reinterpret and contextualise the statue where it is to create a powerful platform for debate about the connection between the buildings and transatlantic slavery.

The Museum has a responsibility to reflect and debate history accurately and in doing so to confront, challenge and learn from the uncomfortable truths of the origins of the Museum buildings. 

Many people took time to share their views in the public consultation. Overall, the response was in favour of removing the statue. However, feedback showed that what to do with the statue is a complex debate, full of nuance and different opinions.

The Board has taken the view that the important issues raised should be addressed through ongoing structural and cultural change, along with better interpretation and conversation around the statue. 

When the Museum of the Home reopens – as a place to reveal and rethink the ways we live in order to live better together – we will also be addressing, in our galleries and programming, the connections between the British home and exploitative trade, value systems and physical objects, both historically and today.  

We are committed to continuing to develop our programming and policies on anti-racism and equity to create greater diversity and representation at the Museum. 

The Board’s full statement can be read here.

The Board has chosen to ignore the wishes of local residents and has instead opted for the tiresome conservative position that having a memorial to a racist on prominent display is a good thing to stimulate a conversation about history.

The Museum’s website now also includes, incredibly, a statement in support of Black Lives Matter:

Black Lives Matter

We strongly believe that museums should not be neutral. As a sector we have a responsibility to be inclusive and accessible.

We are committed to anti-racism and equity, and to working harder to make our organisation more representative.

We will learn from history and ensure our staff, programme and collection tell diverse stories and represent Black voices, artists, visitors and communities.

BLM has been consistent in calling for these types of statues to be taken down. Not taking the statue down is against the aims of BLM. It is not “neutral” – it is against Black Lives Matter.

The Board’s decision is so wrongheaded that ITV News has weighed in to make them look stupid:

Here's the interview yesterday on ITV London with @mayorofhackney where we shared our thoughts on @museumofthehome refusing to take down the statue of a slave trader in Hackney. pic.twitter.com/myJsAyvR4C

— JermainJackman🇬🇾 (@JermainJackman) August 1, 2020

In that clip Mayor Phil suggests that the Board are “out of touch” and Jermain Jackman (Hackney born and bred winner of The Voice UK) is clear about his anger at the decision.

Former councillor, writer and general comrade Patrick Vernon has called for a boycott (and he is right!):

A parody Geffrye Museum twitter account has been set up and is well worth a follow:

From that account I discovered that the first protest against the decision took place yesterday:

Protest outside Museum of the Home, Saturday 1st August 2020

I think that the Board have groslly underestimated the strength of feeling about this in the community and will regret their decision.

My questions for the Board are:

1. The Museum’s Director has stated previously that “Homes should be welcoming places of shelter and security, love and comfort. This is what we want our museum to represent We know that for many the statue of Robert Geffrye on our building represents abuse, oppression and the history of thousands of enslaved people torn from their homes and families and forced to work in appalling conditions.” Is this view shared by the Board? Is this still the view of the Director?
   
2. Why was it the right to change the name of the museum from The Geffrye Museum of the Home to The Museum of the Home – but it is not right to remove the memorial statue to Robert Geffrye?
   
3. How successful do you think you will be in “diversifying the Museum’s workforce, creative partners, content and programming to become more representative and inclusive.” when there is a massive statue of a racist slave-owner looming over the grounds? Why should the museum’s workforce have to face that every day?
   
4. Given that none of the Board members are black, was your decision to retain the racist statue against residents’ wishes discussed by the museum’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Group?
   
5. In the ITV News clip above, the Mayor of Hackney suggests that the Department for Digital, Media, Culture and Sport may have influenced the Board’s decision. Is this true and if so what was their input?
   
6. You say on your website that “The feedback from the consultation was considered alongside other information when the Board discussed the future of the statue.” What was this “other information”?
   
7. When will you be removing the statue of Robert Geffrye?

The outcome of a conversation about a racist statue in Bristol

Have your say on Hackney’s slave-trader statue

Geffrye made his fortune with the East India Company and the Royal African Company

Last Thursday, the Museum of the Home launched a consultation on the statue of Sir Robert Geffrye in its grounds. The consultation is being promoted by the Council. It closes on 3rd July.

In our last post, we identified Robert Geffrye as one of three people who are memorialised in Hackney who profited significantly from the slave trade.

Last year the museum began the process of removing Geffrye from its name, which is encouraging as is this statement:

Homes should be welcoming places of shelter and security, love and comfort. This is what we want our museum to represent.

We know that for many the statue of Robert Geffrye on our building represents abuse, oppression and the history of thousands of enslaved people torn from their homes and families and forced to work in appalling conditions. 

Sonia Solicari, Director of Museum of the Home

The short duration of the consultation suggests that they are not expecting much controversy about this, but I would urge people to complete it all the same. It’s a five minute job and you never know if there will be some sort of rabid right wing “write in campaign” in the current climate.

The Board of the museum will make a decision about whether or not to keep the statue in place in late July. The museum itself is closed because of the Coronvirus lockdown but hopes to open later this year. They have some great online content for people in the meantime.

Enoch Powell in Dalston

Enoch Powell’s infamous racist “rivers of blood” speech was delivered in Birmingham in 1968.

Despite, or perhaps because of this, he was President of Hackney South and Shoreditch Conservative Association in 1973. It seems like the presidential position was elected, so he was clearly popular with Hackney’s Tories at the time (if not with the party leadership).

The borough’s Tories invited Powell to deliver a speech in 1976 – even though he had left the Conservatives to join the Ulster Unionists two years previously:

Powell would later inspire the “Enoch Powell is Right” Party – a split from the National Front which stood in Hackney Council elections in 1981.

Hackney Fascists: “Enoch Powell Is Right” Party – 1981

The National Front and its several disputatious progeny fought a minimal election campaign in the May 1981 County Council and Greater London Council elections […]

A further [NF] splinter group labeling itself “Enoch Powell Is Right” fought the three seats of the Borough of Hackney and also Stepney and Poplar. At least two of these four candidates had fought seats for the NF in the 1977 GLC and 1978 borough elections […]

The four “Enoch Powell Is Right” candidates averaged 2.6% [of the vote].

from: Racial Exclusionism and the City: The Urban Support of the National Front
by Christopher T. Husbands (Routledge, 1983)

You can see from the results below that the Enoch Powell Is Right (EPR) candidates actually stood against the National Front (NF) ones, splitting the fascist vote cleanly in two:

Robin May went on to form the British National Party with John Tyndal in 1982.

Enoch Powell himself was intimate with Hackney Conservatives in the 1970s.

See also: The National Front’s Hackney HQ