Rebel Footprints

David Rosenberg

Description

The radical response to conservative heritage tours and banal day-tripper guides, Rebel Footprints brings to life the history of social movements in the capital. Transporting readers from well-known landmarks to history-making hidden corners, David Rosenberg tells the story of protest and struggle in London from the early nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century.



From the suffragettes to the socialists, from the Chartists to the trade unionists, the book invites us to step into the footprints of a diverse cast of dedicated fighters for social justice.



Self-directed walks pair with narratives that seamlessly blend history, politics and geography, and beautifully illustrated maps immerse the reader in the story of the city. Whether you are visiting it for the first time, or born and raised in it, Rosenberg invites you to see London as you never have before: the nation’s capital as its radical centre.

Acknowledgements

Foreword by Ash Sarkar

Introduction: Rebellious City

1. Writers and Rioters in the Fleet Street Precinct

2. Trailblazers for Democracy in Clerkenwell Green

3. The Spark of Rebellion in Bow

4. Coming in from the Cold: Immigrant Agitators and Radicals in Spitalfields

5. No Gods, No Masters: Radical Bloomsbury

6. Life on the Boundary: Fighting for Housing in Bethnal Green and Shoreditch

7. Stirrings from the South: The Battersea Four

8. Speaking Truth to Power: Suffragettes and Westminster

9. Not Afraid of the Prison Walls: Rebel Women and Men of Poplar

10. People's Power in Bermondsey

11. No Pasaran! Cable Street and Long Lane

Conclusion

Bibliography

Index

Sujets

• Social History
• Atlases
• HISTORY
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Employabilité, métiers et formations
• Movimiento sindical
• Gran Londres
• 19th century
• History of the British Isles
• General officer
• Ireland
• Suffrage
• 20th century
• Trade union
• History of Europe
• Greater London
• Economics
• Stephen Ireland
• Great Britain
• Business
• General
• Labor
• Vote
• Grand Londres
• London
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 avril 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781786804150
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Informative and well-judged . . . There is so much that is inspirational in this book NICHOLAS LEZARD , Guardian
You haven t walked the streets of London unless you ve understood the secret history of revolt and rebellion hidden all around you. Rosenberg takes you there as no other writer has done PAUL MASON
David Rosenberg s subtle, wide-ranging Rebel Footprints connects place to place and era to era . . . A book of detail and passion DANNY DORLING , author of Inequality and the 1%
This brilliant book is a fitting testimonial to the collective struggles of Londoners of every colour and creed FRANCES O GRADY , General Secretary of the TUC
Anyone who wants to know how the individual human spirit can assert itself, whether in the city or the suburbs, could do no better than turn to Rebel Footprints JACQUELINE BANNERJEE , Times Literary Supplement
Rosenberg brings his London stories and their characters alive DAVE HILL , Guardian

This edition published 2019 by Pluto Press First published 2015 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright David Rosenberg 2015, 2019
The right of David Rosenberg to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 3856 9 Hardback ISBN 978 0 7453 3855 2 Paperback ISBN 978 1 7868 0414 3 PDF eBook ISBN 978 1 7868 0416 7 Kindle eBook ISBN 978 1 7868 0415 0 EPUB eBook
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Illustrations: Chris Browne Typesetting: Melanie Patrick
For Julia, Jacob and Reuben, and in memory of a ground-breaking London historian, Bill Fishman (1921-2014)
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Foreword by Ash Sarkar
Introduction: Rebellious City
1. Writers and Rioters in the Fleet Street Precinct
2. Trailblazers for Democracy in Clerkenwell Green
3. The Spark of Rebellion in Bow
4. Coming in from the Cold: Immigrant Agitators and Radicals in Spitalfields
5. No Gods, No Masters: Radical Bloomsbury
6. Life on the Boundary: Fighting for Housing in Bethnal Green and Shoreditch
7. Stirrings from the South: the Battersea Four
8. Speaking Truth to Power: Suffragettes and Westminster
9. Not Afraid of the Prison Walls: Rebel Women and Men of Poplar
10. People s Power in Bermondsey
11. No Pasaran! Cable Street and Long Lane
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank the staff at Pluto Press, who have been consistently encouraging and helpful. Thanks to the staff of the libraries and archives who have provided access to historical materials and assistance with images: Bishopsgate Institute (special thanks to Stefan Dickers); British Library Newspaper Archive; East End Women s Museum; Hull History Centre; Humanist Library, Conway Hall; Labour History Archive at the People s History Museum; LSE Reading Room; Marx Memorial Library; Modern Records Centre, Warwick University; Southwark Local History Library; Tower Hamlets Local History Library; TUC Library Collections; Wandsworth Heritage Service; Women s Library at LSE; and the Working Class Movement Library. Thanks to City Lit students who road-tested several walks and gave invaluable feedback. Special thanks to Chris Browne at Pluto Press for mapping the walks so imaginatively and helping with photos. Thanks also to musician, activist and fellow West Ham fan, Billy Bragg, for his foreword to the first edition, and to writer, broadcaster and activist Ash Sarkar for her foreword to this second edition. Finally I would like to thank Julia Bard for expert editorial advice and personal encouragement and support.
FOREWORD
Which is the biggest gang in London? In the years following the 2011 riots after the killing of Mark Duggan, territories have become ever more fragmented and fractious. Postcode wars are getting smaller. But perhaps it s time to cede the honour to the Metropolitan Police. Despite our CCTV-saturated streets, not a single officer has been successfully convicted in a criminal court for any of the 180-plus deaths at their hands since the millennium. The majority of the victims were in custody, but 22 were shot and 44 died during pursuit.
Now, though, even the Metropolitan Police find that their domain is under threat from interlopers. You ll see them around Camden, Greenwich, Newham, Tower Hamlets. The footsoldiers of gentrification trussed up in stab-proof vests and hi-vis, clunky walkie-talkies clipped to the waist. These private security workers are to police what hoverflies are to wasps; responding to noise complaints and displacing rough sleepers on behalf of whatever housing association or corporation it is they work for.
But their power rests on more than imitation. London is in the middle of a wave of urban enclosures - except this time, there aren t any fences to let you know when you re on private land. The only way you ll know is when a security worker orders you to stop doing something like filming, drinking, or lying down on the wrong bit of grass. Corporations are winning a turf war that most of the city doesn t even know it s fighting.
As David Rosenberg explores in this book, London has always been a city of thieves. Not just muggers and cutpurses but, as pointed out in a new chapter, also the wardens of Fleet Prison, who would charge prisoners for food, lodging and the privilege of being unshackled. The jailer s racket of the eighteenth century has enjoyed a second-life in the modern day, as G4S, Serco and Sodexo lap up lucrative contracts to incarcerate one of the biggest prison populations of any country in Europe.
A second new chapter includes a social commentator s disparaging quote about the nineteenth-century slums in Bethnal Green and Shoreditch: Industry is the exception, robbery is the rule. With rents for a one-bedroom flat costing around 2,000 a month on Boundary Street in 2018, the landlord class have certainly kept the spirit of Old Nichol alive.
But as Rebel Footprints reminds the reader at each turn, London isn t just the product of scams and exploitation, but of collective struggle too. Our city belongs to the tailors and bakers, the matchwomen, rioters and rent strikers - and perhaps if we draw inspiration from these repertoires of organising and insurrection, it could belong to us too. This book isn t a mere guided tour of London s curios. It s the basis of a radical project in its own right. It s a call to walk the streets, and learn their histories, so that we might just one day run this city.
Ash Sarkar
INTRODUCTION
REBELLIOUS CITY
London from the 1830s to the 1930s

[A]gainst those who laud the present state of society, with its unjustly rich and its unjustly poor, with its palaces and its slums, its millionaires and its paupers, be it ours to proclaim that there is a higher ideal in life than that of being first in the race for wealth . . . Be it ours to declare that health, comfort, leisure, culture, plenty for every individual are far more desirable than the breathless struggle for existence, furious trampling down of the weak by the strong, huge fortunes accumulated out of the toil of others, to be handed down to those who had done nothing to earn them .
Annie Besant
The writer and activist Annie Besant wrote these extraordinary lines in 1885, 1 when she was living in the comfort of London s West End but becoming increasingly immersed, albeit transiently, in the struggles for better lives led by impoverished Eastenders. She depicts a city mired in conflict between the powerful and the marginalised, the exploiters and the exploited, and the brazen sense of entitlement by those who were ravaging the lives of an underclass. Her description reads just as hauntingly today as the struggles for a more equal city that marked the decades after the Second World War have given rise to a widening gap between London s rich and poor. The wealthy classes are rampantly recolonising significant pockets of inner London, expanding the number of gated communities, installing exclusive boutiques, gyms, restaurants and luxury outlets, while pushing long-standing residents towards the city limits, where new pound shops open weekly.
But Besant was writing, speaking and acting in the middle of a remarkable era of campaigning and protest, in which significant numbers of London s citizens of all ages showed that they refused to accept injustice. Five decades earlier, on 13 May 1833, around 3,000 people gathered for a political rally in London s Coldbath Fields - an open space lying in the shadow of London s largest prison, the Middlesex House of Correction, which occupied the plot of land between Farringdon Road and Gray s Inn Road where Mount Pleasant Postal Sorting Office stood throughout the twentieth century. Until 1850 the prison housed men, women and children - some as young as six years old - usually serving short-term sentences. Its capacity rose from 600 in 1825 to 1,150 by 1832. Its inmates were typically described through their economic roles, beggars, tramps, thieves and debtors , though the prison occasionally held political radicals too. In 1820 it had temporarily housed the Cato Street conspirators , who had been accused of plotting to murder the Prime Minister and his entire Cabinet. Five of the conspirators were later executed at Newgate Prison.
After 1850 the Middlesex House of Correction accommodated only male offenders over the age of 17. It became notorious for its widespread use of solitary confinement, its adoption of the silent system , which forbade conversation between prisoners, its use of leg-irons restricting prisoners movements, its paltry brea