Sean Creighton

Images

Kennington Cross Grade II listed Underground Toilets

Unveiling of Fred Knee Blue Plaque

John Archer’s Grave Morden Cemetery

Public History & Spaces

During 2005 I gave two talks on aspects of ‘Public History’ at Ruskin College, Oxford.

• ‘Labour and Public History in South London’ on 29 January 2005 to the Ruskin Public History Discussion Group at Ruskin College, Oxford, drawing on Battersea, Wandsworth and Kennington, Oval and Vauxhall history. An extended version of this talk is set out below. The photos on this page relate to activities mentioned in the text.

• ‘Passport to Kennington’ at the Public History Conference, Ruskin College, Oxford, 16–17 September 2005. Using examples from the Kennington, Oval & Vauxhall area I discussed the interlink between ‘heritage’ and community activity.

Labour and Public History in South London

(Extended version of the talk at the Ruskin College Public History Discussion Group on 29 January 2005)

This week has had several stories showing the contemporary importance of history and the public debate that it generates:
• the Holocaust memorial events
• the Tory Party’s proposals for changes to the history curriculum
• Seamus Milne’s article in the Guardian reminding us of the debit side of colonialism written in response to Gordon Brown’s praise of the Empire

Whatever ‘Public History’ is, we see that ‘History’ is ‘Public’

The title for this talk was chosen many months ago for inclusion in the programme. As I began to draft what I was going to say I was drawn to look more closely at the concept of ‘Public History’. What I want to share is some observations partly born out of frustration and confusion on a number of issues which seem to me to relate to both Labour and Public History, observations which are in their formative stage. These stem from my active involvement in matters historical over the last nearly 30 years.

Although I graduated with a history degree in 1969 I did not become actively involved in Labour History until my wife Ann persuaded Battersea Labour Party to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the General Strike in 1976 with an exhibition and a discussion by some of the activists of the time. This led to the formation of the Battersea & Wandsworth Labour & Social History Group, later re-named Wandsworth History Workshop. This in turn led to my involvement in the short-lived South London Record journal which managed 4 issues.

My interests since have broadened to Wandsworth as a whole, Black and Asian heritage, friendly societies, mutual self-help collective organisations, freemasonry, Settlements and Social Action Centres, public spaces, the importance of particular buildings, aspects of sport, and the political uses of song, Paul Robeson in the UK, the Battersea background to and Settlement involvement in the formation of the Workers’ Education Association, philantrophy in setting up public services, and the social justice role of faith organisations.

Like most of non-professional historians I make a miniscule contribution, and reach very small audiences. But I think there is an accumulative effect, through sharing information and ideas, and supporting the development of interests and activity by others, who in turn reach a wider audience. For example, following debate within Labour Heritage, the Labour Party linked history group, Dan Weinbren ran an initiative to set up a London Labour History network. Out of this came the Labour History Oral Project culminating in Dan’s book ‘Generating Socialism’. I organised a South London Labour & Co-operative History Conference. One of the themes was the history of friendly societies. This was because Roger Logan, another non-professional Battersea historian and member of the Ancient Order of Foresters, had challenged me on why labour history ignored them. These were two of the strands that led to Dan taking the initiative, with the support of a number of people like myself, in establishing the Friendly Societies Research Group in 1999.

Labour History

Over the years my conception of labour history has changed. It is much more multi-faceted that I realised in 1976. There are lots of specialist histories: the working class in general; the labour movement as a whole; the individual political organisations such as the Labour Party and the former Communist Party; and other forms of organisation, including certain types of friendly societies, the trade unions and the co-operatives; workplace, community, women, leisure, etc, and of course individual members.

Obviously historians have to specialise, but specialisation can lead to fragmentation, to forgetting that each specialism only gives a partial picture, to delusions that your own specialism is more important than others, for being lost in trees, failing to see the shape of the wood and the changes it is undergoing.

It is not unfair to say that for a long time labour historians were obsessed with the organised movement: the political organisations, the trade unions and the co-operatives. They concentrated on men. They neglected the wider working class, its other organisations and interests, its cultural life. A key component of this neglect was the treatment of friendly societies as a footnote even though they had bigger memberships than trade unions and trade unions started as such societies.

I frequently have found myself frustrated reading books on labour history. They often ignore the importance of the local bases of national activists. Movements and organisations with large scale followings are essentially made up of supporters at local level. Leaders usually cannot emerge nationally without a local base. That local base is provided by activists and supporters. Yet the work carried out at local level, of trying to understand those local bases often seems to be regarded as irrelevant. For instance, I see the same old hostile arguments trotted out about John Burns accepting a post in the Liberal Government from 1906, usually based on the critiques of his SDF opponents at the time, totally ignoring the support for his action within the broader labour movement in Battersea, and welcomed at the time by the TUC. I do not see how John Burns can be understood without understanding his local base and his relationship with it, especially given that the newly constituted reformist-revolutionary alliance Battersea Trades Council & Labour Party under the 1918 Constitution wanted him as one of its prospective Parliamentary candidates for the Khaki Election. He declined because he refused to accept the discipline of the Parliamentary Labour Party.

Labour historians seem to have lost their way; they have lost a sense of purpose. There are a number of reasons for this.

Labour history may have gathered strength in the 1960s, but it did so at a time when the labour movement itself was setting in place a fundamental change in its organisational structure. It separated off the Trades Councils from the Labour Parties. As the years have gone by the links at local level between Parties and trade unions got weaker and weaker to the point where many activists, lacking a historical understanding or practical experience of the link, succumbed to anti-union attacks.

Triggered by Thatcherism's success Eric Hobsbawm's The Forward March of Labour Halted? debate set in motion a strong wave of negativeness and hopelessness among many activists, especially in the Communist Party. The Communist Party journal Marxism Today, which had published many fine pieces of labour history, turned its back on history and stopped publishing such articles. Martin Jacques, the Editor, failed to give me a justification for this when I wrote to him at the time. An intellectual industry was born telling us that socialism and the labour movement were dead and Thatcherism was triumphant. This reaction contributed to her success.

The death of the Communist Party sparked off a lively historical debate about its influence. This has allowed us to look back and ponder what the labour movement might have been like nationally and at local level if it had not organisationally fractured in the early 1920s. Some of the product of such history may be regarded by some in derogatory terms as archaeology, but archaeology is precisely what is needed. It has been 'archaeological' digging that gave us labour, working class, feminist and black history. The main job still facing labour historians is the archaeological digging at the level of the locality.

Labour history has become 'safe' to study. It no longer engages with the practice of creating its own next phase. It is safely locked inside obscure and expensive journals and books. It does not know how to communicate to a mass audience.

By the mid-1990s some of the movement organisations themselves seemed to care little about their own history and stopped encouraging their members to have some knowledge about it. This has been particularly the case with the national Labour Party. A debate was started at the May AGM 1996 of Labour Heritage about its role and whether it should continue to exist. My argument that it should continue won the day.

Labour Party History

Within Labour History there is the specialism of Labour Party history. The anti-historical and centralist tendencies of New Labour are in contradiction to the positive elements of its message: its talk about decentralisation of power, of local and central government partnership, of valuing the role of local government, of involving people, of creating a participative democracy and of re-building community. These positive aspects of the New Labour project are devalued by the Party’s failure to celebrate its own history and its members historic contribution.

A Party not rooted in an understanding and valuing of its past risks sliding into being a populist Party reacting to the changing whims of manipulated public opinion. Until the invasion of Iraq was this not what New Labour had become?

It is from this perspective that I considered that it was right to respond positively to NEC member Diane Hayter’s suggestion that the 100th Anniversary of the change of the name of the Labour Representation Committee to the Labour Party should be celebrated in 2006. Labour Heritage’s Committee, of which I was Secretary accepted this, and has been advocating that the Anniversary provides CLPs with the opportunity to reflect on the way Labour has developed, and to celebrate their local histories and contributions. I hope to make my own small contribution with a more detailed study of Battersea Labour Party than I was able to do for its 80th Anniversary.

What is Public History?

What is ‘Public History’? For me it is about the use of history in community and political activity. It is not:
• the popular leisure consumption of history through visits to heritage sites, museums and watching and listening to history programmes on television and radio
• popular research engagement in family history that is self-contained, narrow in its focus, and not set within the socio-economic context of the family and not shared with a wider audience.

Popular engagement in family history that is set within the socio-economic context of the family, that helps to shed light on people’s historical experience and is shared with a wider audience, provides a bridge into ‘Public History’.

All history is ‘political’ in its broadest non-party sense. The labour history, History Workshop, feminist, oral, Black and friendly society history movements, have been and are ‘political’, seeking to write back into history ordinary people, their struggles, and redress the imbalance of more official and establishment histories or the histories told by victors. ‘Public history’ is a development on from these separate histories enabling connections to be made between them. All historical specialisms and approaches are useful routes into the historical picture. The challenge is to integrate them so that a more holistic and inclusive story of the past is told. I was therefore pleased to be able to give a paper at the Band of Brothers Conference in November which brought together labour, women’s friendly society and masonic historians. The sponsors included the Society for the Study of Labour History and the Friendly Societies Research Group.

For me ‘Public History’ at local level encompasses such activities as:
• the celebration by the residents of an anniversary of the building of their estate
• the anniversary of an important building or neighbourhood
• the fight to save built environment heritage
• an emphasis on the lives of ordinary people
• an emphasis on the role ordinary people and their organisations have played in shaping their area
• a re-imaging of British history to include women, the working class, black and ethnic minorities and other excluded groups

Some Aspects of Public History in South London

I now want to look at some of the activities which I would include under the heading ‘Public History’ in parts of South London over the last 30 years.

• Battersea Town Hall. Following a campaign to prevent its sale and possible demolition, it eventually became Battersea Arts Centre, firstly as a community arts facility and then when local Council cuts adversely affected it, an important regional theatre. Among its community history projects were:

-100th Anniversary of Battersea Town Hall. Pamphlet produced by Jo Stanley. A weekend of celebratory events including a debate on whether Battersea had benefited from the merger with Wandsworth which was videoed.
-Wandsworth Working Women’s Lives, by Jo Stanley and Bronwen Griffiths published by London History Workshop in 1990.
-Lavender Hill footprints project. A history and community involvement project in which local people and workers were asked to put what they knew about the past of Lavender Hill on a map of the street. The original aim was to carve aspects of that onto the paving stones; but the Council pulled out of supporting that aspect.

• Fred Knee. Fred Knee, member of the Social Democratic Federation, campaigner for housing for the working class, and founder of the London Labour Party, was honoured with a blue plaque on his former Battersea home unveiled by the then Labour MP Alf Dubs. Unfortunately, as yet this has not been followed up with a pamphlet about his life.
• Falcon Pub. The listing of the Falcon Pub on the corner of Clapham Junction as part of the 1970s Junction Action Group campaign against an office development scheme that would have seen the pub’s demolition. This fundamentally changed what could be done on the site, and preserved an usual feature of the Junction – the curve of the pub diagonally opposite the Arding & Hobbs store.
• Wandsworth Court House. A campaign by tenants on the Arndale Estate supported by a local community and youth worker led to the conversion of this redundant building into a community centre for the estate residents run by Arndale Community Project and Council offices. Later the Council forced the Project to relocate and the building was converted into Wandsworth Museum.
• Cottages on West Hill. Two 18th Century Wandsworth cottages were under threat of demolition to build a new office block by a local developer, while the Council traffic engineers wanted to widen the curve of the road as traffic entered the Wandsworth one way system. A campaign led to new proposals: the renovation of the cottages, a backlands office development and no road widening.
• Putney Exchange Centre. The original proposals for the redevelopment of Putney High St would have seen massive frontage demolition. A campaign fought for years finally forced the retention of most of the frontage and the development of a indoor store complex behind.
• Putney’s Parish Church. The venue of the Putney Debates among Cromwell’s Army in the Civil War. Commemorated every year with a lecture by such speakers as Peter Hain, Tony Benn and others.
• Latchmere Estate. Opened 1903 as the first Battersea municipal housing scheme. Celebrated by the local Residents Association by exhibition, plaque and talk.
There are numerous similar examples across South London, including:
• Coin St, where the Community Builders celebrated the 20th Anniversary of the GLC handing it the land after successfully defeating commercial developers.
• Borough Market.
• St Mark’s Church at the Oval, which has put up several local history plaques past which hundreds of people walk every day getting to and from Oval Tube Station. They include mention of the role of William Cuffay, the black British Chartist who organised the Kennington Common demonstration in 1848.
• The Old Vic where following a campaign led by Oku Ekpenyon, with the support of the Black and Asian Studies Association, a print of Ira Aldridge, the great 19th Century black actor has been put on display in the bar.

There are numerous opportunities to add new dimensions to such a list.

• John Archer. Archer’s grave is in the former Battersea cemetery in Morden. I am hoping to investigate the possibility of restoring it, having a plaque put next to it, and organising an event around it.
• Hailee Selaisse. A bust of the Emperor made when he visited Wimbledon while in exile is in the grounds of Cannizario Park off the Common. Talking recently to an activist in the Rastafarian community in St Agnes Place in Kennington, I realised that they did not know about this bust. We plan to explore the possibility of an event centred on it.

Both Archer and Selaisse feature in the Merton Black & Asian Heritage display I was involved in putting together in 2000, sponsored by my local community association. It has been used in many ways since, and led to the formation of the Merton Multi-Cultural History Group, and a project to develop teacher resources.

The Public and the Historic Built Environment

We need to acknowledge the wish of large numbers of people to protect and celebrate the past as reflected in their local built and open space environment. The work of amenity societies in popularising and campaigning on this should be acknowledged. Without the dedication over 30 years of activists like my brother-in-law Paul Carter we would not have had the renaissance in British Waterways, in Paul’s case the re-opening of the Forth-Clyde Canal.

When amenity societies seem over precious about opposing building on Commons to enable better access and enjoyment for example for children with physical disabilities to have an adventure playground as happened in Wandsworth in the early 1970s, they are remaining true to aspirations that triggered the tradition of mass struggle and law-breaking against the enclosures of common land in the mid 19th Century, which led to Acts of Parliament preserving the Commons across South London. It is regrettable that the labour movement has not been very good at protecting its own buildings, despite the guidance issued on the topic by the Society for the Study of Labour History. The research of Heidi Topman, a former Secretary of Labour Heritage, into Labour Halls in Greater London makes a contribution to addressing this neglect. Her work started off in Wimbledon with an exhibition and pamphlet about the William Morris House.

The Importance of Public History Work

Work on ‘Public History’ is important because it helps to inform ordinary people, and community organisations struggling to obtain improvements in their neighbourhoods today, that they are heirs of a long tradition of ordinary working people creating organisations to meet particular needs, and engaging in collective activity to influence their lives and lobby for economic, political and social inclusion and justice.

It was for this reason that when I introduced a workshop for community activists on Neighbourhood Renewal in 2002, many of whom were from newer ethnic minority communities, I stressed that continuity. In particular the friendly, loan, building, co-operative, and trade union societies had:

• provided the glue that linked people together at work, and because work and home were often close, between work and community
• built an amazing infrastructure of social welfare and income support in the absence of a Welfare State
• were seedbeds for building experience in running organisations and in participative and representative democracy
• forced a response that made Britain more inclusive in electoral politics, and moderated the worst effect of economic forces through social and employment reform

The militant trade unionism of the period 1888 to 1892 had set in motion a new social and economic agenda based on the eight hour day, fair wages, direct labour and the public service role of local government, an agenda which Labour and then Tories began to dismantle from 1976.

The trade unions had created the Labour Party in 1900 as a political vehicle to represent the interests of working people in Parliament. Together they became a major electoral force, and in the 1945-51 period brought in the building blocks of the modern Welfare State, including the National Health Service and the expansion of public services.

I had then gone on to explain that the pursuit of social and economic justice had never been easy because of the effects of economic cycles and the resultant changes in types and location of jobs. Once the labour movement began to win control of local and Central Government it had to face the problems involved in policy implementation and management. In the process all kinds of mistakes were made.

The centralist wing of Labour ensured that the welfare state and publicly owned industries were built not on the foundation of the charity, voluntary and mutual sectors, but by nationalising them and creating centrally controlled bureaucratic structures. What Stephen Yeo calls the associational culture of Labour was thrown on one side and marginalised. Older forms of organisation began to wither, while new forms began to grow.

Under the 1976 International Monetary Fund deal the Labour Government began to roll back public services, paving the way for the Tory monetarist destruction from 1979. This resulted in a great increase in poverty and deprivation and the abandonment and betrayal by private and public services of the needs of the people living in the large number of what are now called deprived neighbourhoods. In the process individuals, families and whole communities had experienced hopelessness and brutalisation. Within the climate of Thatcherism collective self-help community organisation and voluntary organisations could do little more than mitigate the worst effects of the mountain of neglect, the failure to provide good quality job creation and investment, and to fundamentally address the underlying problem of low incomes and means-testing dependency.

Tackling the legacy of this deprivation lies at the heart of the Government's Neighbourhood Renewal Strategy for England. Much of its critique reflects what the community and voluntary sector had been saying for years.

While the Strategy has fitted uneasily within a set of tensions within Government policy, especially that of central control versus decentralisation and democratisation, it has provided opportunities for community and voluntary organisations to play a major role, especially in continuing the associational provision of services and activities, in providing social glue, fostering democratic participation, and unlocking the strengths and skills inherent in every community.

I went on to argue that part of the social glue function of community organisations should be to build a common sense of justice, understanding, and positive interaction between all the different sub-groups and interests within the neighbourhood community. There needs to be activity that brings people together, especially in those areas adversely affected by racism and ethnic segregation. The Government now calls this community cohesion.

But what has this to do with ‘Public History’. Apart from people needing to have an historical understanding of how their communities developed, a central challenge is how to address the disproportionate discrimination experienced by Black and minority ethnic communities, 70% of whom live in the deprived neighbourhoods.

It was for this reason that on behalf of the Black & Asian Studies Association I made representations to the Treasury and the Neighbourhood Renewal Unit arguing that tackling racism must be a central aim within neighbourhood renewal, and that this should include improving the knowledge and understanding of the Black and Asian historical presence and contribution to the development of British society over the last five hundred years.

The only recognition of this case was the inclusion of community history and the history of ethnic communities as projects which could be funded under the Neighbourhood Renewal Community Chest programme linked to the Community Empowerment Fund support to the community and voluntary sector within the Strategy.

Public Historians and Public History Activity

There is a wealth of community activity going on around the country. There is a danger that this will not be properly recorded, archived or become ‘Public History’. This will lead to new forms of non-inclusive history. The Public History movement needs to consider how it can support community organisations in this work. Adapting the advice issued by the Society for the Study of Labour History on archiving for labour organisations, I have prepared an advice note which is posted on the Settlements and Social Action Centres Group’s page on my website. It will only make sense to organisations if they recognise that their own histories are an important part of their contemporary development and as an educative and community development tool. It was with this perspective that I was successfully able to argue while working at the British Association of Settlements and Social Action Centres for the inclusion of a sense of history in the occupational standards developed for community workers. In being a guest tutor on the Community & Youth Work course at Goldsmiths since 2002 I have sought to encourage this understanding.

Our Public History or Theirs?

The sort of ‘Public History’ I have been talking about is the Cinderella to other types of public history. When the commemoration events of the end of the Second World War were organised in 1995 there was little acknowledgement of the role of black members of the armed forces from the Caribbean, Africa and the Indian Sub-continent. The West Indian Ex-Servicemen and Women’s Association based in Clapham Manor St organised its own commemoration. At the main event its President Rene Webb said that a society that cannot look after its own poor cannot be expected to look after its black poor. I think it can similarly be said a society that cannot celebrate the contribution of the majority of its ordinary people cannot be expected to celebrate that of ethnic minorities.

A challenge for our type of ‘Public History’ is how to turn officially backed commemorations into different types of celebrations or to run parallel activities telling a more rounded story. This year sees the 200th Anniversary of Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar. As the work I have been involved in Merton has shown Nelson had several black connections. Can we have a strand in the Anniversary on Nelson and the Black Atlantic? The National Trust presents a particular form of public history at its stately homes. Can public and black historians use the 200th Anniversary of the ending of Britain’s official involvement in the slave trade to get the National Trust to present the real hidden history behind so many of these stately homes; built on slave and colonial exploitation?

Public and Personal Histories

Given what I have said ‘Public History’ is not some abstract concept outside our own lives. Activists in political and community campaigns help make ‘Public History’. The personal is not just the political but the historical. How many people who have been active in various ways have their own personal archives, which they draw on from time to time to inform their current involvements. How do they intend to ensure that these archives are preserved to illuminate future ‘Public History’ work?

Public History and Academia

And how can hard pressed history academics assist hard pressed community groups in furthering all aspects of Public History? I think one avenue is through exploiting the Higher Education Funding Council Active Community Fund which can be used to fund volunteering activity by staff and students with local communities.

Kennington Cross Lavatories

To end this talk I want to return to another example of ‘Public History’ in action: Kennington Cross Grade II listed disused underground gentlemen’s lavatories. Community action defeated the attempt to create major road changes at Kennington Cross. This would have meant the removal of the above ground structures of the toilet, which were manufactured locally, and infilled the underground toilets. Having saved them the Friends of Kennington Cross community group developed ideas for bringing the lavatories back into use. They propose to convert them into a community arts and heritage centre. With the help of the local Community Development Trust, a bid and business plan has been submitted to Lambeth Council. The Friends have generated enormous levels of interest in the project, from the gay community because it was a meeting place, to artists and filmmakers to businesses who see it as a potential unique venue for promotional events in the project, which will enable income generating activities to subsidise community uses.

© Sean Creighton, 2005

PERFORMANCE, DISPLAY AND THE NEGOTIATION OF POWER IN PUBLIC SPACE

Interdisciplinary Workshop supported by White Rose Consortium of Universities. Held at Wakefield campus of Leeds University - 29 April 2004

NOTES FOR DISCUSSION BY SEAN CREIGHTON

Some Questions

What are we defining as public space?

How do we differentiate between ‘privatised’ public space and ‘open’ public space?

When are buildings public spaces?

How have definitions of public space changed over time?

How have public spaces been used for performance and display over time and what changes have taken place?

What have been key elements in the negotiation of power in public space?

How have public spaces been managed in the past and what are the contemporary issues in management?

What has been the changing legal framework in relation to the use of public space?

How have law and order concerns changed the use and management of public space?

What lies behind the decline in performance and display since the Second World War?

Are there any remaining residues of the tradition?

What motivates the continued organisation of carnival processions in local festivals?

Do the public have a different view of what public spaces are to those in government (at every level) and business?

Public spaces for who?

Public spaces

• the street
• the square
• the park
• open spaces
• community gardens
• commons
• rivers
• canals
• beaches and coastline
• countryside
• National Parks
• Rights of way
• The role of buildings and their design in defining public spaces
• Monuments and statues
• Ponds
• Town Halls
• Libraries
• Swimming pools
• Public and community halls
• Churches

Performance:

• Street theatre
• Buskers
• Carnivals
• Circuses and funfairs
• Pageants
• Races
• Sport
• November 5
• Open air pop and other music festivals
• Historic re-enactments

Display:

• Marches and demonstrations
• Funeral processions
• Religious festivities
• Organisational events
• Commemorative events
• Military parades
• Remembrance Day
• Art
• Murals
• Statues
• War Memorials
• Banners

The Negotiation of Power:

• Peterloo
• Hyde Park
• Speakers Corners
• Enclosures of commons
• The Royal Parks, inc. Richmond Park under Charles I, Cromwell and Charles II
• Municipal activity to increase public space
• Ideology of the creation of public spaces e.g. Trafalgar Square
• Marches and demonstrations
• The stocks, executions and hangings
• Trafalgar Square and its three Ps: protest, pigeons and plinths
• Cable St
• London Squares
• Public space management
• Crime
• Anti-social behaviour and disorder
• CCTV
• Utility services inc. mobile masts
• Cars, cyclists and pedestrians
• Notting Hill Carnival
• Use of parks for events
• Safety and risk
• Children’s play and adventure
• Rambling and the right to roam
• Signage and street furniture
• Commemorative plaques on buildings
• New Year Festivities in Central London
• Riverside walkways
• The London Eye
• Conservation areas
• Demolition, redevelopment, regeneration
• The planning system
• Town and City waterfront areas
• Prostitution and kerb-crawling
• Tramps and begging
• Public toilets
• Playsites
• Street public phones
• Railway stations
• Disability Access
• Noise
• The 24 Hour Economy
• Street Wardens
• Museum charges
• Litter, graffiti, vandalism
• Flyposting
• Advertising
• Street trees
• Civil liberties
• Street trading
• Gambling
• Strikes and pickets
• Charges for use of sports facilities on public spaces

The Players

• The people
• Central Government
• Local Government
• Police
• Magistrates
• Businesses
• Landowners
• Developers
• The Armed Forces
• Friendly societies
• Freemasons
• Church groups
• Political organisations and campaign groups
• Charities, community and voluntary groups

Statues

• Hilda Kean (Ruskin College Public History) article 'An Exploration of the Sculptures of Greyfriars Bobby, Edinburgh, Scotland, and the Brown Dog, Battersea, South London, England' published in Society and Animals 11:4 (2003), looks at two public statutes and their meanings and the context of acceptance/conflict in terms of their siting in public spaces.
• The Trafalgar Square plinth debate
• Richard Oastler. When he died the Trade Unions and Short Time Committees in Manchester and Lancashire erected a memorial to him. 100,000 people attended the unveiling on 21 May 1869. (Edmund & Ruth Frow. Radical and Red Poets and Poetry. Working-Class Movement Library 1994, p. 58)

Public Meetings

• Illustrated London News 13 April 1872 picture showing agricultural labourers meeting underneath a tree at Witnash to organise strike action. (Edmund & Ruth Frow. Radical and Red Poets and Poetry. Working-Class Movement Library 1994, p. 124)
• The Wellesbourne Tree: Agricultural workers song set to Auld Lang Syne: ‘When Arch beneath the Wellsbourne Tree. (Edmund & Ruth Frow. Radical and Red Poets and Poetry. Working-Class Movement Library 1994, p. 122)

Banners

During the Great Dock Strike 1889:

• "The banners were a striking feature of the procession. First came a white canvas, on which in plain letters was set forth the demands of the men, then the banner of the Stevedores' Protection Association and lastly that of the Original Grand Order of Abstinent Sons of Temperance, bearing the words 'In God is our trust' and 'The Greatest of These is Charity.'" (Evening News & Post, 17 August 1889.)
• 'When all had assembled to join the procession the muster was estimated at between 60,000 and 70,000. There were several bands of music and banners were very numerous from the handsome and artistic productions owned by several lodges of the Sons of the Phoenix which took part to the mere sheets of calico, supported by sticks and bearing encouraging inscriptions rudely painted, which were carried by members of various trades, who joined the strikers from the docks.' (Evening News & Post, Monday 26 August 1889*).
• "There were not only dock labourers and waterside workers in the gathering, but men of temperance and provident societies, with their banners...' (The Times, Friday, 6 September 1889)

Friendly Societies Use of Public Space

• Foresters Regatta with Oddfellows from Putney to Hammersmith. (Labour & Unity, July 1870)
• Wandsworth & District Amalgamated Enrolled Friendly Societies met on 15 March 1888 to fix date of parade and which funds money to go to. Committee members included representatives of the South London Unity of Oddfellows, the Foresters and the Hearts of Oak. (Unity, March 1888)

Public Protests and The Use of Song (see Annex)

Young People and Public Spaces
Dr. David M. Pomfret, University of Hong Kong ‘Lionised and Toothless’: Young People and Urban Politics in England and France, 1918-1940. European Cities, the Public Sphere and Youth in the Twentieth Century Conference. On www.esh.ed.ac.uk/urban_history/text/PomfretM5.doc

Contemporary Public Spaces

There is an enormous public effort through charities, and community and voluntary groups into preserving, conserving, managing and promoting open space whether parks and commons, canals and waterways, etc. These often link with the history of the spaces.

• Bankside Open Spaces Trust (South Bank London): www.bost.org.uk

Canals and Waterways

The Waterways Renaissance Awards 2002 started in 2002 by the British Urban Regeneration Association and the Waterways Trust partly recognise the years of campaigning achievements of members of the public in canal societies, like Forth & Clyde, in getting the canal network cleaned up, and improved for public leisure benefit.
www.bura.org.uk; www.thewaterwaystrust.co.uk

Government Policy on Public Spaces

Government Policy on Public Spaces is on Office of Deputy Prime Minister's Site under Urban Policy. www.odpm.gov.uk
 
£89m announced October 2003 for revitalising public parks and spaces.

Visual and Other Material

• Engravings .e.g. in Illustrated London News e.g. 4 July 1857. p. 6. Engraving of 'Great Open-Air Demonstration Against the Chelsea New Bridge Toll' - public space issue.
• Postcards e.g. the 1929 Godiva Coventry Pageant (May issue of Picture Postcard Monthly)
• Photographs
• Films e.g. ETV collection
• Newspaper accounts

Promotion and Some Connections

• Simon Fowler, Editor, Family History Magazine on public space themes. e.g.’ Did you ancestor take part in ....?'
• History Today article
• Other specialist historical journals
• Friendly Society Research Group
• Society for the Study of Labour History
• Local History Societies
• Labour Heritage
• Waterways Trust
• Proboscis – inc. Public Reveries, Public Spaces project: www.proboscis.org.uk
• The role of private and public spaces in knowledge management – paper at spark.spanner.org/ul/_Public_Spaces_in_KM.pdf4
• Art and Public spaces: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/sacs/research/fineart/public.htm
• Civic Trust: www.civictrust.org.uk
• Amenity societies
• Public Spaces and Quality of Life in Cities. EURA Conference in Brno, Czech Republic. 23 September 2004. www.eura.org/conference_reports/23_september_2004.htm
• Sensory Trust: www.sensorytrust.org.uk
• Policy Studies Institute. Green Spaces Report 2001
• Mayor of London’s 100 Public Spaces Programme: www.london.gov.uk
• Make Space Report. Cabe. www.cabe.org.uk
• Living Places - Cleaner, Greener, Safer Spaces on ODPM website
• The Living Streets organisation. www.livingstreets.org.uk.  Champions streets and spaces for pedestrians
• CCTV: www.crimereduction.gov.uk
• Noise: United Kingdom Noise Association - www.superscript.co.uk/ukna/response-14-03-03-b.html
• Landscape Design Trust journal ‘Green Places’ launched October 2003 www.landscape.co.uk
• Joseph Rowntree Trust funded research projects dealing with aspects of public spaces. www.jrf.org.uk  . Search ‘Public spaces’
• Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens. www.farmgarden.org.uk
• Living Spaces partnership: www.living-spaces.org.uk
• Groundwork UK. Undertakes a lot of work to improve public space environment. www.groundwork.org.uk/about/index.htm
• Mass Observation Archive, Sussex University. List of questions on public spaces for people to contribute on: www.sussex.ac.uk/library/massobs/latest_directive.html
• Open Spaces Society. www.oss.org.uk: John Stuart Mill, Octavia Hill. George Lefevre

Sean Creighton
26 April 2004

Annex: Public Protests and The Use of Song

• Among the processions to Peter's Field on 16 August 1819 were female societies preceded by female bands. The resultant Peterloo Massacre is commemorated in With Henry Hunt we'll go (to the tune The Battle of Waterloo).
• During the campaign for a Ten Hour Bill in 1832/3, there was a demonstration involving 17 bands and hundreds of banners to Campfield by the Salford and Manchester Short-Time Committee. Children sang their factory song: 'We will have the Ten Hours Bill’
• In the campaign for the Tolpuddle Martyrs a broadside verse The gathering of the unions was used at the mass demonstration held on 21 April 1834.
• The membership card of the National Charter Association included the words God is our Guide taken from a song sung at a rally organised by the Birmingham Political Union on 6 August 1838, attended by 200,000 people.
• An early mass meeting of Chartists in Leicester in November 1838 attended by an estimated 3-7,000 people sang the Corn Law Hymn to the tune of the Old Hundreth. On 19 November at an outdoor meeting to officially adopt the Charter the meeting began with singing of three verses by the Corn Law Rhymer (Ebenezer Elliot) ‘God of the Poor! shall labour eat?’
• In 1875 in the village of Cherhill William Durham and his family were evicted from their tied cottage, and his 12 year old daughter excluded from the village school. The Union organised a rally in support of the family in a field and in pouring rain 1,000 farmworkers sang When Arch Beneath The Wellesbourne Tree.
• Alfred Linnell's funeral procession on December 18 1888 was one and a half miles long and comprised 120,000 people went from Great Windmill St, to Bow Cemetery. William Morris spoke. While the rain poured down 10,000 people sang Morris' Death Song to music arranged by Malcolm Lawson.
• In 1905 four hundred unemployed workers set out from Leicester to march to London to be welcomed at an SDF/ILP rally in Hyde Park against the Unemployment Bill. They set off amidst packed streets on 5 June 1905 to the tune Lead Kindly Light.
• One Sunday in May 1906, the police prevented the SDF from holding a meeting in front of the market Hall in Nelson. The branch Secretary Bryan Chapman and Ernest Marklew, another speaker, were arrested. Supporters stood outside the police station singing socialist songs. They were fined. In the Sundays that followed thousands went to hear them and other speakers continue to try and exercise their right to speak in the street. Chapman and Marklew were arrested again, and this time imprisoned. The following Sunday 5,000 marched to the Market Hall, led by the Nelson Old Band singing The Red Flag.
• Electioneering involved numerous variations of the same political campaigning song to the tune of Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, The Boys Are Marching. In the 1906 General Election in Hastings, where Robert Tressell, the socialist author of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists lived, the final Liberal procession with 5,000 people and a 54 piece instrumental band, sang: Vote! Vote! Vote!" for Freeman-Thomas!
• When Christabel Pankhurst was released from prison on 3 November 1908, there was a protest march to Holloway, by which time thousands were taking part half-a-mile long. Brass bands played the Women's Marseilles, John Peel, Men of Harlech and John Brown's Body', with the women joining in singing their own words to the tunes.
• During 1910 the suffragettes used bicycle parades to advertise meetings up and down the country. 'About a dozen men and women would set out on decorated cycles, heavily placarded with details of the coming meeting. They rode in file along the country lanes singing the Women's Marseilles, and when they arrived at an open space or a village green, they would dismount, and from an improvised platform encourage the local people to come and hear the distinguished Suffragette speaker.'
• On Emily Davison's funeral procession on 14 June 1913 from Victoria Station to Kings Cross bands played solemn music of Chopin, Handel and Beethoven.
• Just before Christmas 1921 large demonstrations of unemployed workers marched through the West End, singing 'workers' battle-songs, particularly the "International" and the "Red Flag", recalled one of their leaders Wal Hannington. On New Year's Eve 1922 outside St. Paul's their bands played Auld Lang Syne and the Red Flag.
• When the Poplar Borough Councillors were summonsed to the Council Chamber by the District Auditor to show cause why they should not be surcharged in respect of excess wages paid in the year 1921-2, a large crowd assembled outside singing 'The Red Flag' before getting into the building.
• When the imprisoned Councillors were released they walked through the gates of Brixton Prison singing The Red Flag to thousands of their supporters outside.

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