The comrades at Hackney Museum have a good run of FREE events coming up:
Thursday, March 27 · 6:30 – 7:45pm
Samplers and Schoolgirls: Hackney’s Female Academies in the 17th Century
In the 17th century, Hackney was the centre of education for middle and upper class girls from the City of London and beyond. Referred to as ‘The Ladies’ University,’ it was here that girls were taught a variety of practical skills and artistic accomplishments.
This talk by Dr Isabella Rosner will explore the surprising number of surviving objects made in those early modern Hackney schoolrooms, and look ahead to the 18th century to explore Hackney Museum’s collection of samplers.
Dr Isabella Rosner is the curator of the Royal School of Needlework and research associate at Witney Antiques. A 2023 BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker, Isabella hosts the successful Sew What? podcast about historic needlework and those who stitched it. A former Hackney resident, Isabella wrote her PhD on early Quaker women’s waxwork, shellwork, and needlework, much of which was made in 17th- and 18th-century Hackney.
Step back in time to explore the educational experiences of young women in 17th century Hackney. Discover the role of samplers and paper-based art in their education and the challenges they faced in pursuing knowledge. Come and learn about the history of female academies in Hackney and the impact they had on the lives of young girls. Don’t miss this unique opportunity to delve into the past and uncover the stories of these pioneering schoolgirls.
Summer of protest: Bengali anti-racist movement in 1978
Discover the turning points that mobilised an anti-racist movement in Hackney and the East End.
It is said that the brutal murder of Altab Ali on 4 May 1978 was a turning point that led to the mobilisation of an anti-racist movement by the Bengali community in the East End. This period marked a political awakening amongst Bengalis who had been long suffering violent racist attacks and housing discrimination in the locality.
Join Ansar Ahmed Ullah as he explores what led to the summer of protests in East London, how the Bengali community in Hackney and Tower Hamlets forged alliances with other community and political groups, and how the movement developed in the following decade.
Ansar Ahmed Ullah is a post-doctoral student at Queen Mary University London. His research is titled The Bengali Anti-Racist Movement: Explaining Mobilisation in East London, which is a collaborative study with the Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives and the Bishopsgate Institute. He also worked with Paul Trevor on Brick Lane 1978: The Turning Point project.
Battlefield Hackney: The 43 Group & Their Fight Against Britain’s Fascists
The 43 Group was an anti-fascist organisation formed in the wake of WWII by Jewish ex-servicemen and women, in response to the return of the fascist followers of Oswald Mosley to the streets of Britain. Between 1946-50 the 43 Group waged a direct and often violent street campaign against the fascists, with Ridley Road, Dalston as the most prominent and violent battleground.
In his talk Daniel Sonabend, author of [the highly recommended by me] We Fight Fascists: The 43 Group and the Forgotten Battle for Post-War Britain will tell the story of the 43 Group and their fight against fascism, with particular focus on the central importance of Hackney within the conflict.
Daniel Sonabend is a writer and a historian who spent ten years researching and writing on the 43 Group, conducting many interviews with its last remaining members. Daniel is now retraining as a psychotherapist. He is a resident of Finsbury Park but has strong family ties to Hackney as his grandmother grew-up in Dalston, above the grocery shop that her family owned for many decades on Ridley Road.
Hackney History Festival is back after its debut last year. 2025 dates are 10, 11, 17 & 18 May.
It features wide range of talks (and some walks) stretching from the French revolution, the Angry Brigade, bent coppers in Stoke Newington, radical women and a couple of sessions on gentrification – and a lot more.
If you prefer to experience radical history amongst the dead, Abney Park’s Radical Wrtiers festival might be more up your street.
This is a less condensed affair, with dates beginning March 2025 and stretching throughout the year.
There is an understandable focus on radicals buried in Abney Park Cemetary including Isaac Watts, Margaret Graham and James ‘Bronterre’ O’Brien. But also appearances from yer Iain Sinclairs and Diane Abbotts and events themed around living through the apocalypse and gentrification once again.
Finally there is a series of workshops at the Old Fire Station Community Centre – a venue so radical that it was visited by several spycops in the 1980s and 1990s.
An anti-fascist heckler is arrested on Ridley Road, 1947
Below is an intriguing eyewitness account of an anti-fascist protest in Dalston, from Direct Action (the organ of the Anarchist Federation of Britain) volume 2 issue 8 November 1947.
It caught my eye for two reasons. Firstly, histories of anti-fascism tend to focus on dramatic events. This can make for exciting reading, but it obscures the more mundane times when serious engagement with fascists was not possible – sometimes this can be quite boring waiting around with not much going on. The Direct Action piece covers an afternoon when the fascists did turn up, but the confrontration remained purely on the terrain of verbals. It is also mentions that large crowds of people were present – seemingly just to watch the spectacle rather than take part on either side.
The second aspect worth of mentioning is that it is quite a cynical and sectarian article. The Anarchist Federation of Britain had significant political differences with the Communist Party (CP) over a wide range of issues, including the Soviet Union and the Spanish Civil War (not to mention more basic issues of hierarchy and organisation). Indeed, a few weeks previously some anarchists had been arrested by the police whilst intervening at a CP rally about Spain in Trafalgar Square.
The article decries the absence of physical confrontation on this occasion, but fails to mention that the summer of 1947 saw some incredibly violent clashes in Ridley Road and surrounding areas between fascists and anti-fascists, including the legendary 43 Group (see especially Daniel Sonabend’s We Fight Fascists, chapter 6). According to 43 Group member Morris Beckman:
In October 1947 the Group was attacking an average of fifteen outdoor [fascist] meetings every week, and by whatever means causing more than half to close down prematurely.
Direct Action also downplays the risk of street fascists seizing power compared to the threat posed by the ruling class. Which might be true, but curernt events demonstrate that far right groups can be very influential on the political mainstream.
Furthermore, Sonabend and Beckman make it clear that the fascist rallies throughout Hackney in the 1940s were also accompanied by everyday racist violence against Jewish residents. Anti-fascism includes community defence – and, to be fair, there is a fine record of anarchists confronting fascism whenever it raises its head…
The Sunday peace of Dalston (East London) has been broken for many weekends. At Ridley Road, and some street corners, three crowds have collected, Communists, Fascists and, by far the larger, amused onlookers of a weekly political row. The National Press, with its keen nose for a dog fight, has given the weekly show free advertisement and swelled the Fascist meeting by several thousand of its readers. The “Daily Worker” too, has done its wee best to make the fascist meeting a success by free advertisement.
Reading press reports one might think that a pitched battle was fought every weekend, with the police acting as a sort of U.N.O. [United Nations], keeping the ring and carrying out the bodies. The truth is, one could see more scrapping at one “Housewives’ League” meeting than in a month of Dalston Sundays.
I attended the beano a couple of weeks ago and found myself In the midst of a crowd who, not having the inclination for picture-going [cinema] and finding the beer too weak, apparently turned up every weekend for a free entertainment. It was very much like the story of the man who went up to a London copper and asked. “Is this Oxford Circus?” On being told ” Yes,” he enquired, “Well, what does if begin?”
A crowd of several thousand gathered, awaiting the Fascist speakers, about 150 to 200 policemen, including a mobile unit and a cavalry section attended. The meeting began, the communists shouted “Fascist ” and other insults and the Fascists shouted back anti-semitic jeers; the Communists made a very feeble attempt to rush the meeting, each keeping as far as possible beside or behind a policeman, the police closed the meeting and the insults and retorts, all verbal, continued in smaller groups.
It reminded me of a small row I once witnessed near Commercial Road. Two antagonists challenged one another, carefully undressed, uttered blood curdling threats, began dangerous looking spars, circled each other and continued the threats. After about twenty-five minutes of this without a blow being struck, a bystander shouted to one of the gladiators, ‘Don’t hit him Bill. Spit on his bleeding boots!”
How It Began
The weekly event began when the British League or Ex-Servicemen and Women began holding meetings in the East End. The League is fictitious name to cover the Fascist remnants of Mosley’s B.U.F [British Union of Fascists]. You don’t have to he an ex-serviceman to join it, but if you’re a Jewish ex-soldier you can’t join – not that you’d want to.
For a year, at least, the League made no progress, no one took any notice of it. Then the League remembered the “Goebbels technic.” The Nazi Party in Germany made little progress, its meetings were ignored, until Goebbels hit on the idea of deliberately provoking opposition and interruption at his party’s meetings.. The Jews were insulted and, and the Jews came and shouted back. In the Socialist districts, Socialists were libelled, and Socialists answered back. In Communist districts Communism was denounced in the most insulting words available, and the Communists, by the thousand, swarmed to the Nazi meetings. With the opponents came tens of thousands of spectators, a dog fight will always draw a bigger crowd than will a political philosopher.
When the modern fascists of London adopted Goebbels method they began their meetings in East London and, true to form, the Communist Party kindly volunteered to get them the crowd. Exactly the same thing occurred during the days of Mosley’s British Union of Fascists. It was Communist organised heckling and sham fighting which built up Mosley’s Blackshirt outfit and it was sham “anti-Fascism” which built up the British Communist Party, by shameless exploitation of a justifiable racial fear, by the creation of a threat and the promise to defend against it in return for “bumper collections.”
The B.U.F and the C.P. developed together. They are as necessary to one another as Punch is to Judy.
If there was no Fascist menace the C.P. would have to create one.
Not that the C.P. means any serious anti-Fascism. The official C.P. policy is to shout at Fascist meetings, members are instructed not to fight. Further. the C.P. policy is to ask the police to fight Fascism. The whole business is a political racket fought out by rival gangsters who use their big mouths as weapons.
The danger of Fascism in Britain is real, but it is unlikely to come by the will of these street rowdies. It will come from much higher-up. We are anti-Fascist and when the day comes we will prove as skilful and valiant as our Spanish brothers in fighting Fascism, by deed and social principle.
All conscious Black people and other progressive peoples are welcome to attend
Colin Roach, the police, Black people and the state
Abstract
“The experience of the Black masses during the decade of the seventies has alerted us to what underlies the superficial appearence of the British State: Namely that normal processes of political authority, when they cannot proceed by co-operation proceed through confrontation and, at a higher level, through the states orchestration and legitimation of repression.”
‘The Empire Strikes Back — Race and Racism in 70’s Britain’
When we begin to describe the 1980’s in Britain as the decade of increasing State authoritarianism, it is the deveiopments indicated above that we are referring to and elaborating upon. These developments certainly pre-date the 1970’s and show every sign of entrenchment and deterioration throughout tne 1980’s unless outbreaks of resistance condense into movements of permanent opposition.
By now we should realise that State oppression has assumed a permanent feature of Black peioples lives.
Throughout the 1980’s State oppression wh increasingly conditon and regulate the lives and experiences of other larger sections of working class people.
The major question of the 1980’s particularty for conscious Black people and other progressive peopies. is ‘How are we to campaign against State oppression and injustice in the midst of the State failing to manage the economic crisis and attempting to institute coercive political measures?’
We make these necessarily pohtical remarks because this !S the basic context in which the campaign for an independent public inquiry into the death of Colin Roach and all the surrounding circumstances is taking place.
Colin Roach’s death remains an unqualified mystery. So far the Home Secretary’s (the State) has refused to authorize an inquiry. These are the basic facts which must be challenged – they have not changed.
The Home Secretary’s (the State) opposition to an inquiry was based on the State’s commitment to establish (and therefore not bring into question) its policing strategy for the 1980’s: the intrusive surveillance tactics contained in the possbilities of neighbourhood watch and neighbourhood policing and the authoritarian license inscribed in the excessive powers provided for in the Police Bill.
it is in the face of this that the campaign must be continued.
This public meeting has been called discuss the ways in which campaigns must be prepared to campaign in more concentrated and ionger term efforts than we have previously been prepared to do. We must in other words have the commitment to campaign in a systematic drawn-out fashion since this is how the State cppresses us. In our view there is no other way. This is why in 1984 we shall be saying:
NO COVER-UP BREAK LINKS
Published by RFSC c/o 50 Rectory Road, Londen N16 Te! 254 7480
NOTES
‘The Empire Strikes Back — Race and Racism in 70’s Britain’ was a book authored by the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies and published in 1982. The quote used is from a chapter entitled “The organic crisis of British capitalism and race: the experience of the seventies” by John Solomos, Bob Findlay, Simon Jones and Paul Gilroy and can be found on page 36 of the book.
This leaflet was collected by an Undercover Police Officer and sent to Special Branch. It forms part of the documents released by the Undercover Policing Inquiry. Which is why the scan isn’t of a particularly good quality. The relevant Undercover Policing Inquiries are:
The page collects a number of archival resources about Roach’s death and the community’s reponse to it:
The death was followed by several protests by the local community, organised by the Roach Family Support Committee (RFSC). This page includes links to scans of newsletters by RFSC.
Eighty people in were arrested outside Stoke Newington police station during the protests, including an elected councillor and Colin’s father, James. The Hackney and Stoke Newington Defence Committee was set up to assit them. Links to their publications are included.
In May 1983, the inquest jury found 8-2 that Colin Roach had committed suicide. RFSC and the community were not satisfied with this and commissioned their own Independent Commission of Inquiry. This inquiry published its findings in 1988 as the 313-page book, Policing in Hackney 1945-1984. The page includes a link to a scanned PDF of the book.
During the Undercover Police Inquiry it emerged that several spycops had infiltrated and monitored both the Roach Family Support Committee and Stoke Newington and Hackney Defence Committe as well as the protests. The page includes details of what has been revealed about these spycops and links to their published reports from the time – as well as more recent witness statements and testimony.
There are links to other resources too (let me know if there are more that can be added) and details of the Colin Roach case in popular culture.
In 1973 a “lollipop lady” working on Balls Pond Road was knocked down by a passing vehicle. Kerridge and Hawthorne Tenants Association protested about the incident – and the generally unsafe road conditions where children and old people were crossing – by staging a series of unauthorised demonstrations in which the road was blocked:
“The chaos these demonstrations caused – diversions, buses rerouted and retimed, jams – illustrated very well precisely the point the tenants were trying to make: Balls Pond Road is a very busy, rather narrow and potentially dangerous road badly in need of a safer crossing.”
Hackney peoples press october 1973
After several non-committal meetings with council officers, it was this sustained campaign of “Reclaim The Streets”-style direct action which finally spurred the powers that be into action. A pedestrian crossing was installed – and is still there today!
In the blockade photos we can see The Greyhound pub, which was at 72 Balls Pond Road. So I believe the hard-fought-for crossing is the one shown above, near the junction with Kingsbury Road. So whenever you cross there, you can thank the protestors of 1973 for their courage.
Another great story from Hackney Peoples Press…
Hackney Peoples Press was a radical community newspaper published between 1973 and 1985. I have scanned 96 issues and made them available for your delectation here.
A kind reader of the site got in touch and supplied me with a copy of issue 6, which was missing, so that has now been added to the archive too. You should be able to read and download a PDF of the whole issue here. (See below for a note on digital archiving sites some current difficulties).
The rest of this issue is a the usual mixed bag:
The front page story is a bit of a moan about the low turnout to a protest about council cuts to services for the elderly. Castigating your readers for “apathy” is probably not the best approach? There are more details about the campaign on page 2.
Page 3 covers homelessness – 1,000 people without homes in the borough and at least 600 empty council properties. (According to London World, Hackney had one of thei highest rates of homelessness in the country at the end of 2023, with 7,923 people estimated to be without permanent accomodation.).
There is also a handy guide for council tenants in furnished flats on how to get rent rebates.
Page 4 is a hair raising account of life on Haggerston Estate, in which local residents band together to solve mismanagement by the council, culminating in a rent strike. This includes a reference to the amazing Haggerston Food Co-op initiative, which you can see more about in this short fiilm from the time:
There are also shorter stories covering: a protest in Docklands against the opening of a luxury hotel, a campaign for greater democracy in schools, various disagreements at the Workers Educational Association AGM, a leaflet discouraging kids from joining the army. adult literacy classes, etc.
Page 6 is a lovely selection of Hackney photos from an exhibition at Centerprise:
Click / double click for a larger version
All in all, a great issue that gives a good flavour of the times.
A note on digital archving
It’s important to me to provide scans of original documents about the radical history of Hackney, as well as dishing out my own thoughts. That way people can make up their own minds – and see the context for the issues I cover. A good example of this is the listings section of Hackney Peoples Press, which gives us some insights into regular meetings, venues, events, etc.
So that’s why I’ve uploaded 235 items (and counting…) to archive.org. That site appeared to be reasonably accessible and stable compared to other options. This has proved to be a useful resource for a much larger number of people than I had anticipated, which is great. Some of the material I have uploaded has been used by participants in the Undercover Policing Inquiry into spycops – and author Joe Thomas has found it all invaluable for his excellent trilogy of novels about crime and policing (and crimes committed by the police) in Hackney.
But archive.org was hacked earlier this month, which is irritating and instructive in equal measure. Luckily I have back ups of most of the material I uploaded there. And it looks like archive.org is slowly returning to its former state – although users are not yet able to login or upload new items.
So as a bonus, I’ve uploaded all my scans of Hackney Peioples Press and a few other things to the mega.nz site.
Digital archives are a great way to get material out to people – 24 hours a day, anywhere in the world, but they are far from an infalliable permanent record. So I definitely see the work I have done as a parallel activity to physical archives such as Hackney Archives and Bishopsgate Institute (both of whom have good hardcopy collections of Hackney Peoples Press and many other interesting things) and Mayday Rooms, Sparrows Nest, etc.
Image taken from “Pirate pics from the past” page on the Beyond The Airwaves site
Pirate radio was all over Hackney in the eighties and nineties. Aerials illegally placed on tower blocks beamed underground music to heavyweight car stereos and tinny transitor radios in shops.
Pirate crews played a cat and mouse game with the police and council officials. These exciting times were documented on DJ Clockwork’s website a few years back: http://www.djclockwork.com/
For example this hair-raising account of installing an aerial on Seaton Point in the Nightingale Estate near Hackney Downs:
September 20th 1999
“Andy the rigs gone off mate” The owner of Pure 94, Bish Bash calls me up.
“We’re gonna go up there tonight and put it on top of the chimney” He said.
“You’re mad Tom” I say “You can’t stick it up there”
“Yes I can” He said “I’m gonna stick it on the chimney and I’m gonna put a 30ft double stack aerial up there as well”
This seemed like madness to me. A double stack is a huge twin diapole aerial and it would be so so high if it was on the chimney it would stick out like a sore thumb!!
The block was completely surrounded in scaffolding covered with a green & white mesh, all the way up from the ground to the very top. This was the only way possible Tom & Cleggs were able to gain access to get in and climb up there.
“Come up there Andy, it’s gonna be great & we could do with your help”
I’m not gonna lie I was shitting myself! Nightingale had always seemed like a foreign land to me anyway. I grew up in Clapton Park, another estate notorious for pirate radio down the road and it was kind of the done thing back then to stick to your own estate, so the thought of going to the top of Nightingale scared me to death but I was also excited. I wanted to see the view from up there and experience a tiny taste of the Kool FM & Rush Glory days…
“Ok mate I’m in” I said.
DJ Clockwork – The Nightingale Chimney
That piece is especially interesting as it is a first person account of the later period of pirates, which isn’t documented that well. The writing really captures the excitement of the times – you get a real sense of the challenges people overcame to keep the stations running.
Image taken from “Pirate pics from the past” page on the Beyond The Airwaves site
What’s wrong with pirate radio?
Being a boring old bastard, I feel a bit conflicted about all this these days. On the one hand, I loved pirate radio myself and the musical cultures that they amplified. And I recognise that the pirates only existed because that music was marginalised. I am playing tunes from that time whilst writing this.
But as I wrote back in 2003, there were other people living in those tower blocks that took a very different view:
What also struck me was that I often have a very glamourised view of urban life and that this is tied to my own cultural preferences and age. So pirate radio, for example, is obviously a good thing because it cuts through the mainstream media’s stranglehold and gives people access to great music – music which speaks to, and is produced by, a marginalised section of society.
The people at the Residents’ Association have a very different experience of pirates. There are a few aerials on top of some of the tower blocks on the estate. Pensioners in the blocks hear people in the middle of the night scrambling about on the roof. They open their front doors and see gigantic young blokes busting open access hatches to the roof. They maybe get verbally threatened by them, they definitely FEEL threatened by them. They meet strangers in the lifts.
The lifts are a crucial part of all that is bad about living in the blocks. They break down, between floors at nine o’clock at night. Junkies use them as toilets, after shooting up and nodding out on the stairwells. A woman at the meeting had been mugged in the lift for her pension. Unsurprisingly, people on my estate do not regard pirate radio as being an excitingly vibrant part of urban life. They are too old to be excited by the latest plates being rinsed out, or MC battles. They regard pirate radio as being a menace, and not just because you can’t pick up Radio 4 at the weekends.
So, really, for all its pretensions at being “community” and “representing”, pirates only represent a particular section of the community. A section which is young, and yes, black. Responses are welcome to this point from the underground shout-out white-label-fondling massif. I’m NOT saying this to suggest that people are wrong to enjoy pirates, but that this is an interesting contradiction for those of us who choose to theorise about pirate radio.
Reading that back now I’d add that another beautiful thing about pirate radio (and the music played on it like dancehall and especially jungle) was its multi-ethnic composition. Working class kids in London of all colours really did unite behind the basslines on offer.
Plus it’s the nature of London’s working class communities that they are overcrowded and loud and sometimes fractious. And there have always been generational tensions. So singling out pirate radio as a problem was probably not sensible when compared to other issues, like the council deliberately failing to maintain estates, or the many other anti-social things that were happening where I lived.
Pirates gradually shifted online throughout the 2000s as part of the wider dematerialisation of music culture – away from physical media, record shops, etc… The tenacity of the people who worked on them to get their music out there, often a great risk to themselves remains very inspiring – so let’s finish with some tunes:
HHH Video were an activist collective working out of a studio in Martello Street, near London Fields. This second edition of their “magazine” is a great round up of the London counter culture and protest scenes of the mid 1990s.
Thanks to History is Made at Night, we know that there was a showing of this video at the 121 Centre in Brixton on September 11 1995:
This flyer is also a handy guide to the contents, as we are without the cover…
The most relevant part of this edition is the coverage of the eviction of the Spikey Thing With Curves squat in Hackney Central, which I have written a separate post about.
And now here is the rest for you:
The Criminal Justice Bill was a huge piece of repressive legislation conjured up in 1994 – the dying days of the Conservative government. The bill targeted a diverse section of youth culture and the protest movement, although its powers would of course be used by the poilice in a wide range of contexts against ordinary people.
Whole sections of the CJB were aimed squarely at travellers, squatters, hunt saboteurs, road protestors and infamously ravers, with the much mocked definition of:
“any gathering of 20 or more people [where there is music…] ‘music’ includes sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats.”
Other clauses gave the police even more powers of stop and search, of taking bodily samples – and reduced the status of the right to silence when under arrest.
On October 9th 1994, around 100,000 people marched against the Criminal Justice Bill in London. (A previous march in July, in which people climbed the gates of Downing Street is covered in HHH Video Magazine issue 1).
This clip begins with a bunch of Hackney squatters getting ready to attend the demo and speaking about various issues of the day.
It ends with the police violently attacking the protest after it reached its final destination of Hyde Park – and the protestors dong what they could to resist this. It was a messy evening. My friends and I were charged at by mounted police and then forcibly pushed down Oxford Street by riot cops…
The Criminal Justice Bill passed into law on 3 November 1994.
The McLibel trial was a huge issue in the late eighties and 1990s.
London Greenpeace activists being sued by an evil multinational corporation generated a lot of media attention and many solidarity actions, including the widespread dissemination of the “What is wrong with McDonalds” leaflet that had triggered the court case.
In this clip, activists disrupt the filiming of a McDonalds TV commercial in Ruskin Park south London, ensuring a frustrating day for the camera crew. You would need a heart of stone not to laugh.
The McLibel trial lasted nearly ten years, making it the longest-running libel case in English history. McDonald’s announced it did not plan to collect the £40,000 it was awarded by the courts and the European Court of Human Rights eventually ruled that the two defendants had been denied a fair trial.
“Anarchy In The UK: Ten Days That Shook The World” was an ambitious festival called by Class War founder Ian Bone. It took place from 21st-30th October 1994 at various locations across London:
“Anarchy In The UK” was the inspiration for Hackney Anarchy Week in 1996, which HHH Video also produced a documentary about.
The levitation footage is followed by a promo clip for an unknown (to me) band in a warehouse somewhere… this is probably the “Russian Techno Art Performance” on the 121 poster above.
In the summer of 1994 an entire row of houses in Claremont Road, East London was squatted in protest against the construction of the M11 motorway – a huge project which required the demolition of 350 homes and several wildlife habitats, so that commuters could drive to and from London more quickly.
The Claremont Road eviction lasted from 28th November to 5th December 1994. According to Squall magazine it was “the longest eviction in post-war European history”, featuring 400 protestors.
This footage is especially interesting as you get a sense of the community that had been created by the squatters and their alterations to houses and the street.
The M11 extension was eventually built, but it is widely acknowledged that the 1990s road protest movement made the construction of roads so complicated and expensive that several other projects were abandoned.
Cover photo by Hackney resident David McCairley
This clip is followed by a few minutes of firebreathing and fire juggling outside Hackney Town Hall. This was apparently a protest against the eviction of the Spikey Thing With Curves squat. A photograph from this ended up on the cover of Tony White’s debut novel Road Rage, which is a recommended pulp fiction take on 1990 UK road protests, with a nod to Hackney:
Road Rage! takes some liberties with the ‘sprawling consensual hallucination that is Hackney’, chiefly by relocating a lightly-drawn (no research, remember) analogue of the then M11 Link Road protests (which centred around the proposed ‘East Cross Route’ in Leytonstone) a few miles west to Well Street, E9. Events take place in a number of expedient and/or contingent locations around Well Street and London Fields: in the Pub on the Park, on Hackney Central railway station and the trains of the North London Line, in the Hackney DSS office and a still markedly pre-gentrification Broadway Market that would be unrecognisable now. This was where I lived at the time.
Tony white – Road Rage archive #1
There is more information about the book in the links below from Tony’s site.
HHH Video was ahead of its time – at what we used to call the “bleeding edge” of technology. It was very unusual to have access to a video camera thirty years ago, let alone the technology to do decent editing. There were only a handful of activist produced VHS tapes on sale in radical bookshops and through distributors – and public showings at squatted social centres like the 121 Centre were few and far between.
So it is pleasing that this footage has survived. For some of us it may trigger a nice trip down memory lane, whilst generating confusion and questions for younger viewers.
In 2024 many of us carry a video camera at all times. Widespread CCTV combined with repressive legislation such as the Criminal Justice Act and its successors have made direct action a riskier business. Nevertheless, I hope this footage is inspiring in some way…
I’ve added all the HHH video output I have found to archive.org where it can be downloaded. HHH were always clear that their work was anti-copyright, so use as you will! It’s also all on the Radical History of Hackney YouTube channel along with other videos of interest…
Spikey Things With Curves was an occupied building across the road from Hackney Town Hall. Many people lived there and its residents created a cafe, workshops and exhibtion space for artists, and a music/party venue. It was named after some eccentric sculputures that were placed by the windows by one of its residents.
Below is a five minute video about this squat and its eviction in late 1994:
As the video makes clear, Spikey Things With Curves was very much focussed on being a creative community space and most people seem to agree that it was briefly a happening hub for some innovative art and great parties.
The best account I have heard is by Rachel aka Miss Pink on a recent episode of the excellent Tales From A Disappearing Citypodcast/vidcast hosted by DJ Controlled Weirdness:
“There was a big community of squatters in Hackney, and particularly Ellingfort Road and London Lane, which is by London Fields. Most of the houses were all squatted there. And then a group of people squatted the building right opposite Hackney Town Hall.
And so it was opened up, it was squatted with a cafe, it had massive windows at the front. So someone had made all these sculptures of mad looking things that were in the window, trying to sort of draw attention.
At that time I was still at college making glass stuff. So I would make just piles of round circles of glass. And then there was, you know, photographs, a photographic exhibition. And then we started doing parties in the basement.
I’d never DJ’d. [laughs] It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter – at all. The vibe was, kind of – you might be getting drowned out by a punk band in the next room and whatever.
But yeah, I enjoyed it. And then I started to get more into it. And then I started to kind of seek out more of the sounds that I liked, which would end up be sort of early, jungly, like kind of breakbeat-y kind of stuff.
So yeah, the Spikey Thing With Curves, that’s [where I started] DJing. It was only going for a few months – just my boyfriend at the time and his decks and yeah, just getting into it.”
From Tales From A Disappearing City: Episode 18 – 90’s London Subculture. Fashion, Clubs and Ambient Soho – special guest – Miss Pink, 15 May 2024
Miss Pink went on to be an excellent DJ and a rare friendly face behind the counters of some of Soho’s trendiest dance music record shops, including Ambient Soho and Black Market. Perhaps this would have happened anyway, but it’s clear that the open creativity of a squatted space played its part in Rachel’s evolution.
Whenwas it squatted?
Suggestions of the dates when Spikey Thing With Curves existed seem to vary between 1994-1996. We can see from the video that it was winter and most accounts seem to agree that it was only occupied for a few months.
Hackney’s Anarchic Nineties (written in 1996) states 1994, so that seems like a good bet and is what I will say until a grumpy old squatter contradicts me!
That article also points out that 280 has been previously squatted as emergency accomodation in March 1988, following the mass eviction of Stamford Hill Estate.
This handy spreadsheet of London squats also mentions that the same building was squatted in the noughties by veteran London punk organisers the Reknaw crew (you need to read it backwards).
Any more information on any of these squats would be very welcome – please leave a comment! I’d be especially interested in people’s memories and photos.
London Remembers gives a nice summary of its earlier incarnation as a site for God-botherers:
Built for the Salvation Army in 1910. Their Women’s Social Work HQ moved here in 1911 from offices at another nearby Salvation Army address, 259 Mare Street. The work run from here included: women’s social and slum work, rescue homes and children’s aid, all that we now know as ‘social work’. Refurbished in 2008 the building is now used as council offices.
It appears that after 2008, 280 Mare Street became the soul-sappingly named “Kreativ House”:
“a collection of uniquely designed private studios and workspaces that support forward-thinking businesses and their teams.”
It seems to have been home to a bunch of businesses including massage therapy, hairdressers, desks for rent and a private home care company…
Sistah Space, an inspiring domestic violence charity for women of African Heritage was based in the building too (whilst being properly messed about by the council) before moving to Ashwin Street in Dalston.
Footways, a charity focussed on encouraging walking is also based there.
The building is between the Baxter’s Court Wetherspoons pub and the Picturehouse Cinema. Raise a pint to its previous occupants if you are in the area.
Raising Hell is a veteran UK squat-punk fanzine that has recently been relaunched, as well as compiling its classic issues from the eighties and nineties into a handy anthology. The zine’s Instagram feed carries on its irreverent spirit and is well worth a follow.
They recently posted a flyer for this gig from 1994 featuring Hackney squatters Coitus (apparently originally called Eternal Diarrhoea when the formed in 1989). The band included some former affiliates of the infamous nihilistic Hackney Hellcrew.
As Raising Hell say in a note accompanying the flyer:
January 1994…. 30 years ago the Putlogs pub in Clapton was home to a series of punk gigs until a gig on the eve of the “Hackney Homeless Festival ” (a couple of months after this gig) in nearby Clissold Park was ruthlessly attacked by the local Stoke Newington cops.
It was quite common for London cops to target punk gigs at this time, both at squats and regular pub venues, but this was a particularly vicious assault resulting in many busted heads and 16 people arrested and then fitted up on completely false charges.
None of the cops cock and bullshit stories stood up in Magistrates Court or Crown Court and none of the defendants were found guilty. However the tables were turned a few years later when an internal investigation into the corrupt and violent regime of Stoke Newington cop shop resulted in 7 of the cops present that night being prosecuted and put on trial at the Old Bailey….
A putlog “is a short horizontal pole projecting from a wall, on which scaffold floorboards rest”.
Putlogs was located at 2 Charnwood Street E5 8SH, on the corner with Northwold Road. It was also known as Pudlocks and was previously the Duke of York pub:
Photo of Duke of York courtesy of CAMRA
The pub closed in 2000 and was converted for residential use in 2003.
Hackney Homeless Festival took place on Sunday 8th May 1994, which means the gig at Putlogs that was attacked by the police was Saturday night of 7th May 1994. According to the Independent, local heroes Coitus also headlined this one.
Press clipping coutesy of Raising Hell
Officers from Stoke Newington police station being corrupt and violent was par for the course in the 1990s. This incident was highly unusual as it led to PC Paul “protagonist of brutality” Evans being jailed for six months for assault. None of the trumped up charges agains the punks led to any convictions either, which was not always the case.
As usual there seems to have been a great deal of work undertaken by Hackney Community Defence Association / The Colin Roach Centre to assist the victims of police crime. It has to be mentioned that suing the police is a very stressful and time-consuming activity. The significant number of Hackney residents who were prepared to put themselves through the courts was a major reason for the downfall of the extraordinarily corrupt cops at Stoke Newington police station in the 1990s.
There are several media stories about the incident at the foot of this post, but the most useful account comes from anti-capitalist weekly freesheet SchNEWS:
Cowards and Bullies
Yes it’s official, on Wednesday Judge Graham Boal sentenced P.C. Paul Evans from Stoke Newington, Hackney, for assaulting a student on the eve of a festival, to six months saying, “You are a coward and a bully and you have brought shame on the force”. A solicitor told SchNEWS. “Members of the public charged with these offences could expect six to twelve months but I would expect someone who was in a position of trust and respect (sic) to receive considerably more”.
Six other members of the same scum squad were cleared of all charges. On the night before the 1994 Hackney Homeless Festival, two police officers were called to a pub to investigate a vandalised slot machine. Despite admitting that they were not threatened in any way they called for assistance, this being provided by another twenty of Newington’s worst.
A series of random beatings began after police chased a man they wrongly believed to have smashed the window of their car. A bystander was knocked to the ground then assaulted and arrested by a passing plod, his friend complained and was dragged to the ground, kicked in the groin then held to the floor by a boot on the face.
P.C. Evans approached a group of people standing outside the pub saying, “I’ve never seen so much collected scum.” One man remarked to a friend, “I couldn’t agree more”. Evans then beat him to the ground with his torch. Another two who objected to this behaviour were also assaulted, arrested and taken to Stoke Newington police station where Evans continued to kick them about the head, demanding they “Call yourselves cunts” as he did so.
A police photo showing the injuries to one man later went missing. The seven officers involved then got together in the station canteen where it took them an hour and twenty minutes to write their notes, claiming they had faced “an angry and violent mob”.
All arrested were acquitted and all charges dropped. The irony about this case is not that the police launched unprovoked attacks on the public, Stoke Newington have a history of this, but that one of their own who saw them fabricating their notes was so disgusted he blew the whistle. The local area complaint unit recommended that the seven officers be charged with ‘conspiracy to pervert the course of justice’ on the strength of his statement.
But, surprise surprise, the Criminal Prosecution Service kept the existence of the officer and his statement from the jury. Neither was any mention made of the fact that these same officers were involved in an attack on a squatted pub or that they were also involved the day after in attacks on 29 members of the public at the festival. One, a woman, suffered a broken arm, another a man suffering from Spina Biffida. No-one who was attacked or arrested were ever convicted of any crime and a number are currently suing police.
During 1987-94 alone, the Colin Roach Centre (set up after Colin Roach was shot dead in the foyer of Stoke Newington police st.), dealt with over 500 allegations of assault, the planting of evidence, police drug dealing and fit-ups.The centre also told us P.C. Evans is under investigation for nine other claims of assault against members of the public. It’s clear to SchNews that it’s not one apple, it’s the whole fucking barrel.
Colin Roach Centre: 0181 533 711
* Vocab Watch:
Affray – The unlawful use or threat of violence
Conspiracy (not applicable to the police)
(From: SchNEWS Issue 144, Friday 21st November 1997)
Finally let’s end on a song, with Coitus performing “Submission/Domination” to an audience of Stoke Newington punks (not sure when/where excactly):
This clip is taken from this cool short film “Stokey Punx” from 1995. Other bands featured included Dread Messiah and the anthemic “Beer” performed by Suicidal Supermarket Trollies.
Text of Guardian clipping photographed above:
(Undated but probably September 1997)
Police ‘covered up brutal attack’ Seven officers ‘invented story after beating up youngsters’ Vivek Chaudhary
POLICE officers launched a brual and unprov;ked attack on a group of young people attending a music festival and then colluded with colleagues to cover up their illegal conduct, the Old Bailey was told yesterday. The officers. all from Stoke Newington police station. north London, attacked festival goers who were attending a two day event in a north London park in May 1994, the court was told. James O’Mahony. prosecuting, told the court that the youngsters, who were having a “Saturday night out’, had not done anything wrong. They were attacked after some of them protested at police brutality when officers attempted to arrest a man close to a pub where there had been trouble. He said one man was beaten with a torch, another had his head smashed into railings, while another was attacked in the yard of the police station. Others were punched, kicked and verbally abused by officers.
Mr O’Mahony said: “If that was not bad enough the officers then told lies about what happened. It was a beating up and then a cover-up. “They put together a framework of lies for the basis of the continued detention of those arrested. All the officers made entries into police note-books and made witness statements… These were then used for the prosecution of those who had been assaulted and unlawfully arrested.”
Police officers Martin Pearl, David Hay, Paul Evans, Colin MacLennan, Mark Astley, Dustin Irribarren and Emma Flannigan all deny conspiring to pervert the course of justice on May 8, 1994. Messrs Evans, Hay and MacLennan deny conspiring to commit perjury between May 7 and October 15. 1994, while Messrs Evans, Astley, lrribarren, Hay and Pearl deny affray on May 8. 1994. Messrs Evans, Astley and Irribarren deny assault on the same day and Messrs Evans, Astley, Irribarren, Hay and Pearl deny false imprisonment — again on May 8, 1994.
The court was told that the officers arrived following trouble at the Putlog pub, Stoke Newington.
Mr O’Mahony said: “No complaint could be made as to fair and firm enforcement of the law but police conduct here was brutal, unprovoked and over the top. It was deliberately directed at innocent people.”
He told the jury that not all seven officers in the dock were responsible for the violence but all seven were responsible for making false notes in their police note-books. Messrs Evans, Hay and MacLennan also lied on oath as to what happened during the trial of one of those arrested, he said. The man was, however, acquitted.
Mr O’Mahony described Evans as the “protagonist of brutality” who launched his attack, along with some colleagues, in two Iocations close to the pub.
“Those people had done nothing wrong. Again and again, protests were made at the heavy-handed, brutal violence but to no avail. It didn’t stop on the streets. It continued in police vans and it continued at Stoke Newington police aation.” The court was told that at least five festival goers sustained injuries and were then prosecuted on the basis of false witness statements made by the officers. They are all due to give evidence at the trial along with other witnesses who saw police launch the unprovoked attack, the jury was told.
Mr O’Mahony said: “That night all the defendants were in the canteen of Stoke Newington police station. All made notes in official note-books as to what happened and the contents later went into witness statements. The jury also heard extracts from the statemenek which alleged that police had come under attack.
Seven Metropolitan Police officers have been charged with offences including assault, unlawful imprisonment and conspiring to pervert the course of justice over incidents in east London, the force confirmed last night.
The charges follow incidents in May 1994 and February 1995 which prompted several complaints and an internal police inquiry, supervised by the Police Complaints Authority.
Two of the officers have already appeared in court and been remanded on bail. The others have been summonsed and will appear before magistrates in early November.
Six of the officers, all male, were based at nearby Stoke Newington police station, and were on duty at the time of the alleged offences. The seventh was based at Enfield, in north London.
The charges arise out of a public-order incident when 12 people were arrested outside the Putlogs pub in Hackney. The arrests came after a performance by a punk band called Coitus the day before a festival for Hackney’s homeless. All those arrested were charged with counts of obstruction, affray and criminal damage. All were subsequently acquitted.
One set of complaints is believed to centre on four people among those arrested. A second, and unrelated, set of complaints is believed to centre on accusations of assault in cells at Stoke Newington.
Charges were laid after advice from the Crown Prosecution Service. None of the complainants has been named. Additional case papers have been filed to the CPS and its decisions on further allegations of assault and perverting the course of justice are awaited.
Scotland Yard said that Constable Jason Cook and Sergeant Terence Norman had already been bailed by Bow Street magistrates on charges of assault in Dalston, east London, in February last year.
On Monday, summonses were served on PCs Martin Pearl and David Hay alleging unlawful imprisonment and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice in Stoke Newington in May 1994. PC Mark Astley, based at Enfield, faces the same charges.
PC Colin MacLennan is charged with conspiring to pervert the course of justice in Stoke Newington in May 1994. Yesterday, a further summons, alleging assault, unlawful imprisonment and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, was served on PC Dustin Irribarren.
All five are due to appear at Bow Street on 5 November.
Russell Miller, solicitor for nine of the complainants, hailed the decision to prosecute as “the culmination of 14 months’ work and an unprecedented example of co-operation between victims, their solicitors and those responsible for investigating police crime. It is an example all those concerned with the current crisis in policing should look to as a model”.
A police officer convicted of assaulting a reveller at a festival for the homeless has been jailed for six months at the Old Bailey.
PC Paul Evans, 32, from Stoke Newington police station, north east London, had brought disgrace on himself and shame on his profession, said Judge Graham Boal.
He was found guilty of assaulting Ben Swarbrick by beating him, and of affray and was sentenced to a total of six months.
Evans was cleared of false imprisonment and conspiring to pervert the course of justice.
He had denied all charges.
The judge told him: “As a constable in the Metropolitan Police, your duty was to uphold law and order.”
He said a prison sentence was inevitable and added: “Were it not so, the public would have cause for concern.”
Six other officers from the same station were all cleared on Monday of various charges they faced after the festival for Hackney’s homeless in May 1994.
The officers faced a total of 15 charges related to alleged attacks on the public or that they had conspired to pervert the course of justice regarding those events.
Mr Swarbrick said afterwards: “I was brutally assaulted by PC Evans that night. I’m not too happy with the verdict but I’m glad it’s all out of the way now.”
The officers had been called to a pub after they received reports of vandalism on a fruit machine.
They made 12 arrests but people involved alleged the officers had been heavy-handed.
The prosecution described PC Evans as the “main protagonist” in the events.
The Independent 18 November 1997The Times, November 19 1997
The Radical History of Hackney 