Radical History Faction presents:
A short drift around the radical history of Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
FREE RADICAL HISTORY WALK.
Featuring mantraps, mummers, boghouses and pig’s meat!
Meet 2pm, outside John Soane’s Museum, Lincoln’s Inn Fields WC2A 3BP.
https://radicalhistoryfaction.wordpress.com/2025/06/29/lincolns-inn-fields-walk-13-july-2025/
From Haringey Community Press.
Hannah Francis from the George Padmore Institute on the significance of the Black Parents Movement in Haringey 50 years ago.
This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Black Parents Movement (BPM), founded in 1975 following the arrest of an innocent West Indian student in Haringey.
On 17th April 1975, 17-year-old Cliff McDaniel and his two friends, Keith and Chris, all students of the Stationer’s Company’s School in Hornsey, were on their lunch break when they were targeted by police officers. McDaniel was well known to the teaching staff, pupils and parents associated with the George Padmore Supplementary School, founded by Trinidadian activist John La Rose in 1966.
Following this incident, many parents and teachers rallied support for McDaniel and formed the Black Parents Movement. At the same time, a group of pupils and young black people formed their own independent but collaborative organisation called the Black Students Movement (later renamed Black Youth Movement). With the unlawful arrest of McDaniel acting as the catalyst, the aims of the BPM were to advance the interests of black working class, unemployed and young people.
John La Rose was a key founding member with early members including local supplementary school teachers Roxy Harris and Albertina Sylvester, as well as educator and campaigner Gus John. Guyanese publishers and activists Jessica and Eric Huntley, who founded the Ealing Concerned Black Parents and Youth Movement in 1976, were also closely affiliated with the activity of the BPM in its most active period.
Current George Padmore Institute (GPI) chair and BPM member Roxy Harris says of the movement: “The BPM played a leading role in developing strategies and action in Britain for black people to fight back against the racism and discrimination in the schooling system and against police corruption and violence and the complicity of the courts.
“John La Rose’s leadership was inspiring and down to earth. One memory is that however urgent and serious a meeting was, John never objected to the presence of children. Indeed he would take persistent fractiousness by the children present as a sign that we had gone on too long and that it was time for the meeting to end!”
BPM grew out of Haringey’s wider history of black radical activism and led to the formation of the Alliance in 1979, a partnership of the Black Youth Movement, Bradford Black Collective and the Race Today Collective. Key campaigns included the Bookshop Joint Action Committee (BJAC) which was formed to campaign against a string of racist and violent attacks on black and progressive bookshops across the country, as well as international solidarity campaigns such as demonstrating against apartheid in South Africa.
The BPM archive collection at GPI is a comprehensive resource preserving the history of the organisation’s founding, key activities, collaborators and organisational principles. Fifty years on, the GPI is marking the occasion by acknowledging this movement’s contributions to campaigning for the rights of black youths and workers against a racist criminal justice system, building alliances and community organising in Haringey and wider British society.
Radical movements have always needed bases and spaces to meet, eat, grow and gather. Recently in the UK and Ireland there has been a conscious effort to link these social centres, info shops and resource centres whether squatted rented or bought, into a loose network that can share ideas and support each other.
In January 2007 a Social Centres Network gathering was held at the 1 in 12 Club in Bradford that was attended by people from all over the UK. There was an idea to try and make the wider project of autonomous spaces more visible and clear to the people who used social centres and the idea of this booklet was born. A call-out for essays, cartoons, reflections, and rants was put out and here are the resulting 27 pieces. Most of them are descriptive of particular places, others discuss more general questions about the idea of social centres. A few of us helped to proof and layout the booklet but the pieces have not been edited.
As these pieces show, there is a huge diversity of projects being built from food co-ops and volunteer run vegan cafes to migrant solidarity and mental health self-help groups. At the same time we are often tackling similar issues as we experiment with self-management, working without leaders and treading the fine line between being a radical, autonomous space and also reaching out into our local communities, providing services and dealing with authorities.
We hope that this booklet will promote debate and action on the need for autonomous spaces in our cities and neighbourhoods. So now we pass over to those involved, to let the stories speak for themselves.
There are copies available FREE in all the social centres we can find and also by emailing us at socialcentrestories [at] riseup [dot] net
Copyleft- feel free to use, copy and distribute.
From https://socialcentrestories.wordpress.com/.
It is sad to hear of the passing of Tony Nicholls, a radical documentary-maker. We in the Friends of Lordship Rec worked closely with him in 2007 to make a very powerful documentary on the need to get the investment to rescue the park - which had fallen into a shocking state over the previous 20 years. The Council included it in the community/Council 2008 bid to the Lottery for £4m. The Friends were told that it was one of the reasons that persuaded the Lottery to award the money. Its still worth watching as it shows the journey from then till now - go and visit the park now and spot the difference!
Dave Morris
Restore Our Rec – Friends Documentary (2008) [15min 32secs]
Tony integrated his professional production work with a commitment to teaching. While he worked in higher education, including as course leader in media at Bedford College (1995-2005), he especially enjoyed working with schools and community groups. He was also a video consultant and trainer for the UN, working in Pakistan, Ghana, Ethiopia, and with many organisations in Nigeria (1992-2000).
Born in Biggleswade, Bedfordshire, Tony was the son of Betty (nee Stokes) and Clifford Nicholls, who was in the RAF. The family moved many times in England, Scotland, Kenya and Egypt before Tony was 14, finally settling in Kingsbury, north-west London, in 1958, where Tony attended Kingsbury County grammar school.
He and his friends became a force to be reckoned with, setting up the local Young Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament branch in 1960, and in 1962 joining the Young Communist League and the Communist party. The same year Tony was sent to Reading prison for three weeks for “obstructing a policeman” at Greenham Common.
In 1963, in search of models of socialist living, Tony stayed in kibbutzim in Israel. During this time he became a keen photographer, and, still a member of the Communist party, on his return to the UK Tony began working as a photographer for the Morning Star newspaper (1965-69), through which he travelled in the then closed communist countries, including Russia, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Albania. He also covered a sports match for the paper that led to one of his photos making the cover of Private Eye, in 1969.
In 1972, Tony was accepted on to the newly founded National Film School in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, to study documentary film-making. A man ahead of his time, in one of his student films he explored hidden cameras in cities that enabled governments to follow and collect data on the inhabitants.
Following graduation, Tony worked as a camera assistant on two features, and edited a film on projects in Chad for Christian Aid. He then worked as a director and cameraman for Liberation Films, producing health education films, community arts documentaries and campaign videos for various organisations.
He went to produce six one-hour documentaries for Channel 4 on the history of trade in tea, sugar and coffee (1983-85); he made educational and promotional documentaries in Nigeria and Ethiopia and produced and directed Music and Musicians of the Commonwealth (1993), a film of a gala concert for Queen Elizabeth at Lancaster House, commissioned by the Royal Overseas League.
As well as his position at Bedford, he lectured at the North London and City polytechnics, and the American College in London.
We met in 1989 and in 1993 our son, George, was born. We married in 1998.
He is survived by me and George, and by his brothers, Phillip and Geoffrey.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/apr/13/tony-nicholls-obituary
"The year 1984 has a hallowed place in the history of British industrial action as the year that launched the miners’ strike – but there is another strike, in its own way just as dramatic, that has been largely forgotten. On the 16th of April of that year, 155 nursery workers employed by London’s Islington Council began an indefinite strike. What was at issue was chronic understaffing, which led to an unsafe ratio of children to staff. The striking workers consisted almost entirely of young women, many of them in their very first jobs. They remained on strike for fifteen weeks until ultimately Islington Council bowed to their key demands."
The latest issue of the History Workshop podcast covers these events and includes conversation with participants. There is also a wider discussion about childcare struggles.
There is a related project happening on this topic called Childcare Voices. I was delighted to hear on the podcast that this had been partly inspired by the notes of a previous RaHN meeting on "Activism and the under fives" back in 2014.
Evan Smith has published an invaluable resource showcasing the ever-growing number of free to access online radical archives: https://hatfulofhistory.wordpress.com/radical-online-collections-and-archives/
Locations range from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe and topics include Anarchism, Black Radicalism, Feminism and many other revolutionary strands.
Evan has also written an interesting article on this initiative (and the limitations of digital archives generally) for Society for the Study of Labour History: Don’t Mourn, Digitise! Building a list of radical online archives
“Twenty-volume folios will never make a revolution. It’s the little pocket pamphlets that are to be feared.” - Voltaire
Veteran radical publishers Past Tense have (re)printed a bunch of seditious literature that should be of interest:
A brief examination of 'plotland' developments in early 20th century Britain - rural settlements, hosting DIY buildings, often on marginal, squatted & disputed land.
Black Women Organising: The Brixton Black Women’s Group and the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent £3.
And a lot more besides - see the full range at https://pasttensehistories.bigcartel.com/
Also available at an independent / radical bookshop near you.
More information and booking details here.
Lots of events over several venues and dates, but mainly the weekend of 10th-11th 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.
At the time of writing the https://hackneyhistoryfestival.org/ website is down, but the ticket site is up at - https://www.tickettailor.com/events/hackneyhistoryfestival?
If you prefer to experience radical history amongst the dead, Abney Park’s Radical Writers 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 Cemetery including Isaac Watts, Margaret Graham and James ‘Bronterre’ O’Brien. But also appearances from Iain Sinclair and Diane Abbott and events themed around living through the apocalypse and gentrification once again.
Info here https://abneypark.org/radicalwriters
Founded in 1996, the club challenges the commercialisation, isolation and privatisation of modern life. We meet monthly on Saturday evenings.
Monthly meetings are held in the Church Hall of St. John the Baptist, Leytonstone, High Road, Leytonstone, London, E11 1HH (next to Aldi).
Meetings start with a buffet at 7:30pm followed by a talk at 8:00pm, then discussion at about 9:00pm.
All meetings are free of charge. Voluntary donations welcome. No need to book. If you can, please bring some vegetarian/vegan food and drink to share.
More info: https://newsfromnowhereweb.wordpress.com/
Saturday 8th February 2025 *** 6pm (or 7.30pm)
‘The most marvellous person of her sex since Joan of Arc,’ said Mark Twain
Arrive at 6pm to watch the film The Miracle Worker, starring Anne Bancroft. Or arrive as usual from 7.30pm. At 8pm, see a live performance of local writer Jennifer East’s play Helen, listen to excerpts from Helen Keller’s own writing about her extraordinary life as a child & an adult, hear about her surprising, seldom quoted political views and her friendship with Twain, & learn about SENSE, the charity for people with complex disabilities.
Saturday 8th March 2025
‘Spark2Life – Prevent Harm Promote Life’: One man’s journey from prison to purpose
Speaker: Dez Brown
Dez is the founder & CEO of Spark2Life, an award-winning ‘faith based not faith biased’ charity, working with medium to high-risk young people/adults. Dez has been through the criminal justice system. At 17 he was imprisoned for manslaughter, culminating in him finding faith & becoming an ordained minister. He has written an autobiography, Convicted or Condemned; is a qualified therapist; trains professionals on trauma awareness; served as a prison therapist and as a sessional prison chaplain. The charity’s main office is in Walthamstow.
Saturday 12th April 2025
The Shrewsbury 24 Campaign – We Never Gave Up!
Speaker: Eileen Turnbull
Eileen is the researcher & secretary of the Shrewsbury 24 Campaign, formed in 2006 to overturn a miscarriage of justice. The 24 were North Wales building workers, prosecuted in 1973-74 for alleged picketing offences during the national building workers’ strike. Six received prison sentences ranging from 4 months to 3 years; 16 were given suspended prison sentences. Through years of research, Eileen discovered the crucial fresh evidence that persuaded the Criminal Cases Review Commission to refer the case back to the Court of Appeal. In 2021 three judges quashed all the pickets’ convictions. Eileen will recount the manipulation of the original trials by the judiciary, politicians & media, which came to light only in the course of her research. This is an intriguing story, told with seriousness, passion & a touch of humour.
Saturday 10th May 2025
What can be done about the social care crisis?
Speaker: Anne Gray
Like many other ‘developed’ countries, Britain has an ageing society; more & more people need care in older age. Disability’s also increasing. 60% of us will experience caring for another adult some time in our lives – our partner, parents, another relative or friend. Disabled children often remain dependent on their parents till both generations are growing old. For years, successive governments have done little or nothing about this. Budgets for social care are just not keeping pace with need, so many people pay for their own professional care or do without. Some have relatives available to help but an increasing number don’t. Anne will explore some solutions to these problems from her book, A Radical Approach to the Care Crisis;Community, Solidarity and a National Care Service, to be published by Bristol University Press in April 2025. There will be signed copies for sale.
Saturday 14th June 2025
Broadwater Farm: Transformed!
Speaker: Clasford Stirling MBE
How is it that a notorious housing estate (‘one of the worst in the UK’) later had a waiting list? Crime rates on Broadwater Farm plummeted: by 2005, only 2% of residents said they felt unsafe there (the lowest rate in London.) In 1985, after Cynthia Jarrett’s death nearby when police raided her home, a riot took place; PC Blakelock was killed. Things had to change. Clasford, a life-long resident, has made huge contributions to the changes, creating a Youth Association, football coaching (making professional players), helping to unite residents (the Residents Association had been all-white on a multi-ethnic estate.) Broadwater Farm, run by LB Haringey, saw vast improvements physically, socially & economically. Clasford will explain how he & others achieved this miracle, & what it’s like to grow up & live there in 2025.
Saturday 12th July 2025
The Vi Gostling Memorial Lecture
Imagining a far better future – but how do we get there?
Chair: Andy Littlechild
We have a panel of representatives from political parties & groups with their sometimes overlapping but often vastly different philosophies & practices. Prepare to hear from, quiz or challenge activists: we’ve invited the Communist Party of Britain, the Green Party, the Labour Party (possibly with local MP Calvin Bailey), the LibDems, the London Anarchist Communist Group, the Revolutionary Communist Party, the Socialist Party, the Socialist Party of Great Britain, the Socialist Workers Party, Workers’ Liberty & the Workers Party of Britain.
Saturday 9th August 2025
Resisting racist and state violence in east London
Speaker: Kevin Blowe of NetPol
Last summer, thousands of people gathered in Walthamstow, as riots erupted around the country, to resist threats of far-right protests against local immigration advice services. This counter-demonstration was widely praised in the media & by politicians, in marked contrast to the relentlessly negative portrayal of ordinary people offering a similar kind of solidarity to besieged Palestinians in Gaza as ‘hate marches.’ One reason why so many felt the need to oppose the far right was the chaotic, inadequate way police in other parts of the country had responded to anti-migrant violence: in Bristol only days before, local people had been forced to physically protect a hotel where asylum-seekers were staying. There was a strong sense the police were more concerned with the government’s demands to crack down on Palestine protests than with violent racist groups. Kevin, campaigns coordinator of the Network for Police Monitoring, was an activist for 26 years with the anti-racist & police monitoring group, the Newham Monitoring Project. He argues the idea that ‘the police don’t protect us’ is deeply embedded in the struggles for justice by black & Asian communities in east London & that there’s much we can learn from the history of these struggles: about how to sustain opposition to both the far right & state violence for longer than just one warm summer evening.
Saturday 13th September 2025 (Part of E11 Festival)
Ignatius Sancho: from Slave Ship to Westminster
Speaker: Chris Harrison
Among many prominent black 18th century British citizens, Ignatius Sancho is distinguished for the breadth of his interests & the range of his social contacts. A writer, composer & owner of a small business, he was acquainted with many important figures of his time, including Laurence Sterne, David Garrick, Joseph Nollekens & the Montagu family. He is one of the first black Britons to have voted in a general election – a considerable achievement for someone thought to have been born on a slave ship crossing the Atlantic. Chris Harrison, musician & educator, has done much to raise awareness of Sancho’s life & work & will tell the story of how Sancho made this remarkable journey, illustrated by a live performance by members of the Hackney Community Orchestra (of which Chris is musical director) of some of Sancho’s music.
Saturday 4th October 2025 ** 1st. Sat. of October
The Invention of Essex: The making of an English county
Speaker: Tim Burrows
Tim’s book had reviews so enthusiastic that his visit to us is a must. Born & still living in Southend, his book, to quote reviews, is ‘a love letter to a county whose variety & richness is so often overlooked.’ He’s written ‘the most insightful, thorough, hilarious & poignant investigation of place, of people, of history. The way Tim weaves his own family & experience into such a detailed, well-researched narrative of geography, sociology & history is masterful.’ ‘Lucid & erudite; one of our greatest living writers.’ Come & hear about utopians, rebels, travellers, gangsters, eccentrics – and you can buy the book, signed by Tim.
Saturday 8th November 2025
The Housing Scandal: What to do about it
We’ll look at many aspects of the appalling current failure to ensure that everyone has a decent place to live. Speakers have been invited from the London Renters Union, Advisory Service for Squatters, Residents Assns., Pavement, DOPE & Big Issue magazines, Action on Empty Homes, Housing Action Groups, Social Housing Action Campaign, & Butterfields Won’t Budge/Focus E15 campaigns. They will discuss how they are trying, & have tried, to do something serious & bold about it.
Saturday 13th December 2025
CLR James: An Unexpected Life
Speaker: John L. Williams
John will be talking about his biography of the great Trinidadian historian, radical & cricket-lover: CLR James. His book brings this extraordinary 20th century life into brilliant focus as it moves from Trinidad to London to Lancashire to the USA & back again. ‘CLR James was decades ahead of his time in challenging our thoughts about empire, colonialism, black history &, not least, in writing brilliantly about cricket. He finally has the biography his extraordinary influence deserves’ (Barney Ronay). John is a Cardiff-born novelist & biographer; his subjects range from American crime fiction to Dame Shirley Bassey. Benjamin Zephaniah described John’s account of the Cardiff 3 case, Bloody Valentine, as his favourite book.
