uncarved.org blog

A while ago these images appeared on the North Sixteen Twitter:

I recognised them from a 1970s reggae documentary “Aquarius” as they are announced as being Stoke Newington (London N16), which is where I live:

(Footage starts at 4:50 but it’s well worth viewing in its entirety)

There was some interest about the exact location of these shots, as things have changed a fair bit in the meantime. I figured veteran reggae writer and lifelong Hackney resident Penny Reel would know. I grabbed him on the Chatty Mouth reggae forum.

Can you ID the locations of these shops in Stoke Newington taken from a 1976 film?

The top photo is Roy Shirley’s record shop cum studio on Birkbeck Road. The male in the doorway is Mr Shirley himself.

The bottom picture is Mr Johnson’s cafe on the corner of Sandringham and Birkbeck Roads. These two premises were within 20 yards of each other. In the back room of this cafe one could buy £5 deals of hashish and grass. It was the first Afro-Caribbean business on the street and is now a hairdressing salon.

Roy Shirley is pictured on the left of this photo. Back in the early 1970s, I used to go to blues dances in Birkbeck Road, off Ridley Road market, in the company of man like Ras Painter, Ras Paul, Gene Rondo, Sir Collins, Sir George, Roy Shirley and the rest of the Stokie rasses.

Many thanks, Mr Reel! It should go without saying that Stoke Newington has changed massively since I first visited in the late 80s, but it’s pretty much unrecognisable compared to 1976…

You should have seen Stoke Newington Church Street in the 1960s. Forget the Queen Anne villas and the “big houses”, back then it was a street of second hand shops. The whole area had lost its 18th century elegance and was now a slum street, full of thrift shops, second hand clothes and furniture shops, junk stores, indigent newsagents, cheap cafes, fish and chip shops, etc.

It was not until the Greenham Common lesbians moved in during the early 1970s, followed by the architects, media folk and squatters in the later ’70s that it turned into the wholefood, latte, sub-Hampsteadian parish it is today.

All the proles have moved to Herts and the provincial middle-class have temporarily moved in. However, once these people have children of five years old, William Patten school will not do for them and they will all move back to Devon, where they rightfully belong.

Penny Reel is the author of the essential Deep Down With Dennis Brown (Drake Brothers) which also includes a wealth of information about the reggae scene in London.

He also edited and wrote most of the 1981 Soundsystem Spashdown feature in the New Musical Express.

Issue 3 of the borough’s scurrilous subversive freesheet is now available online.

All your news and analysis as well as a crucial rundown of cinematic masterpieces which have been shot in Hackney.

Available around and about, but you can download a pdf here.

Pdfs of previous issues also available, including “Top Ten Hackney Tracks” and “Top Ten Hackney Novels”.

On Saturday a young man was shot in London Fields, caught in the cross-fire of what can safely be assumed to be a gang related confrontation. The shooting took place during a community festival.

In an uncanny echo of the “Day Today” “Dead Pigeon” sketch, Jules Pipe (the elected New Labour Mayor of Hackney) pointed out: “Despite this very worrying incident, hundreds of people were able to enjoy the event in London Fields safely.”

Sensing the opportunity to seize the crown for crass comments relating to this tragedy, Hackney Citizen has leapt into the breach with an absolutely toe-curling piece by Morag McKeown .

Like many middle class people, McKeown seems particularly vexed by gentrification and middle class people’s role in it. She is also concerned with the plight of poor people, from a bizarrely tabloid anthropological angle:

Hackney is home to some of the worst housing in the country. Slums. Families squashed into tiny houses, damp riddled, stacked up like criminals in estates full of drugs, intimidation and fear. The women try to keep clean, the fathers try to stay clean and the kids run around like toy soldiers marking their small bits of territory with drugs, guns and violence. They put the edge in Hackney.

As someone who has spent a fair bit of time on the estates around London Fields, I find this “ghetto-glamourising” particularly annoying.

I left a comment on the site, and harangued the Citizen on twitter:

Why have you published this nonsense?

Hi John we hoped the piece would stimulate debate, please post your criticisms of it on the site. many thanks, keith [direct message to johnedenuk]

Would you a publish piece saying all the middle class blokes in new flats nr London Fields were coke heads who beat their wives? For debate? [direct message to HackneyCitizen]

Hi John no we wouldn’t, but the piece doesn’t make inferences about all individuals in a given situatiion. best, keith [direct message to johnedenuk]

It makes that inference about people who live in “slums” in the 3rd para. [direct message to HackneyCitizen]

Hi John we’d be happy to consider publishing a counter argument to the piece. best, keith [direct message to johnedenuk]

As someone who lives on an estate, I have no desire to be associated with you if you publish stuff like that. Putting it politely. [direct message to HackneyCitizen]

Perhaps unsurprisingly no further response was received. I daresay Keith feels very threatened having unwittingly communicated with someone who lives on an estate, who is no doubt typing with one hand and brandishing a crack pipe and firearm in the other.

An estate, near London Fields, earlier today.

Direct messages on Twitter are private. I wouldn’t usually publish direct messages publicly like this. But I figured I might as well in this case, not least because Hackney Citizen was recently in bother itself for reproducing an allegedly private phone call between Hackney Tory Mayoral candidate Andrew Boff and a Hackney Council call centre.

At the time of writing, Jules Pipe had just issued a revised statement. The victim of the shooting is described as being in a “serious but stable condition”.

Meanwhile I am sure that Hackney Citizen is very pleased with the “debate” that McKeown’s piece has generated – 32 outraged and knee jerk comments… and counting.

I’m grateful to my old mucker Merrick for dropping by with his thoughts on the election. We’ve argued the toss about politics for well over 15 years now and I’m pleased that it looks like continuing until we are shouty old men.

I’m sure that Merrick is correct that, nationally. people avoided the Greens and Independents in many areas because they were voting tactically against the Conservatives.

But as Matt Sellwood (Green candidate for Hackney North and Stoke Newington) has pointed out, this doesn’t apply in Labour safe seats. Indeed it looks like large numbers of the electorate here were either not persuaded by the Greens, or irrationally voted for Labour because they wanted to send a strong message to the Tories (who stand ZERO chance of being elected here).

Whilst we can all take some comfort about the British National Party’s absence from Barking and Dagenham Council, I’m not at all convinced that this means they will now run off with their tails between their legs. My friend Glyn Rhys has dug into the numbers a little and come up with some rather more troubling conclusions.

Perhaps the most obvious of these is that the BNP now have 563,000 people prepared to vote for them. And that this support is despite an unprecedented campaign pointing out how horrible and “Nazi” the BNP is. Either these voters are fine with voting for alleged Nazis or they simply don’t believe it.

Merrick is correct to compare the current state of play with the National Front’s vote in the 1979 election. He is also right to say that there is probably a “ceiling” which far right (and far left, but that’s another sorry story) groups can reach in UK elections. Indeed, the main threat that far right parties pose is not seizing power and implementing their policies, but by acting as pressure groups on mainstream political parties.

The BNP now have double the votes the NF achieved and seem to be able to successfully spread out into new areas, which the NF failed to do. With electoral reform right at the top of the political agenda for the first time I can remember, those 563,00 votes may count for a great deal more next time around.

Parliament’s main priority in its next term will be to address the massive debt incurred whilst bailing out the banks. This means savage cuts, job losses and even harsher times for those at the sharp end. There are going to be a lot of pissed off people around looking for alternatives to whatever combination of Lib/Con/Lab ends up in charge. Call me cynical but I’m not sure that they’re all going to flock to the Green Party or the remnants of the left…

Road Rage archive #1 « Piece of Paper Press.

Tony White on 1980s Hackney, the backstory to his “Road Rage” crusty pulp novel, Psychic TV and much more…. well worth a read, as are his books!

Basically turnout was high and Diane Abbott’s vote increased massively. Plus the Greens did much worse than I expected, and I overestimated the prospects for the Indepedents.

There’s has been some consternation about a few hundred people getting locked out of polling stations last night. Whilst that’s unfortunate it’s unlikely to have made much of a difference to the big picture.

My career as a pollster has not got off to a great start, but I couldn’t find any other git who was prepared to put their money where their mouth was and come up with actual numerical predictions. I wasn’t a mile off but I’m glad I’m not a betting man…

Those results in full:

Candidate / Party / Actual Votes / uncarved.org prediction

Diane Abbott (Labour) 25,553 (13,000)
Keith Angus (LIb Dem) 11,092 (8,006)
Darren Caplan (Conservative) 6,759 (4,000)
Matt Sellwood (Green Party) 2,133 (7,846)

Suzanne Moore (Ind) 258 (976)
Maxine Hargreaves (The Christian Party) 299 (777)
Alessandra Williams (Ind) 61 (213)
Knigel Knapp (Monster Raving Loony Party) 182 (236)
Paul Shaer (Ind) 96 (29)
Dr Jack Pope-De-Locksley (Magna Carta Party) 26 (66)

actual percentage / uncarved.org percentage

Diane Abbott 54.9 (37)
Keith Angus 23.9 (22.8)
Darren Caplan 14.6 (11.4)
Matt Sellwood 4.6 (22.3)

Maxine Hargreaves 0.6 (2.2)
Suzanne Moore 0.6 (2.8)
Knigel Knapp 0.4 (0.7)
Paul Shaer 0.2 (0.1)
Alessandra Williams 0.1 (0.6)
Dr Jack Pope-de-Locksley 0.1 (0.2)

In other news, Jack Pope-de-Locksley is in the Hackney Gazette this week strongly disavowing any nazi tendencies. Not that this seems to have had any bearing on his vote.

Thanks to the three prospective MPs for Hackney who have taken the time to comment below. It’s definitely to their credit that they seem to be seeking people out to have a conversation with, even cynical gits like me.

This is for them:

A superb bit of live MC bizness recorded at the last Trash & Ready Session. Champian, Clappers Priest and Professor Mark on the mic.

Like a lot of people, my default position when it comes to electoral politics is abject cynicism.

This hasn’t been helped recently with the knowledge that the next decade is going to be completely screwed up, post- banking crisis.

So it’s easy to say “don’t vote – it only encourages them” and in fact I probably won’t. I am certainly not going to “vote x to keep y out” because that just perpetuates the whole charade.

Mind you, I live in Hackney North and Stoke Newington, which has been a safe Labour seat since it became an electoral entity in 1950 anyway.

“But John!”, I hear my loyal (yet also imaginary) readership cry, “What options could I expect to see on the polling card if I lived in your constituency? And what do you think of them?” And I have to reply: Well I dunno, politics with a big “P” isn’t really my style. Sites like Blood and Property and Hackney Citizen do a much better job than I could…

“No shit!” comes the response from my persistent (yet still fictional) readership “Can’t you just be snide about everyone as usual?”

Hmmm…well… OK then, since you asked so nicely.

Diane Abbott (Labour)

Has been in post since 1987, sits on a sofa with Michael Portillo on that godawful TV programme. The first black female MP.

Diane sent her son to a private school and then had the gall to say something like “The black parents of Hackney will understand why I have sent my son to a private school”. Not being black I can only guess that the answer to this is “because (a) you’re very rich and (b) that the secondary schools in your own Borough where you have been MP for over 20 years still aren’t good enough?”

Policies: Hackney Council is great and so is Gordon Brown, except the bits you don’t like – I’m opposed to them as well!

Visibility: Always on the telly. Labour have actually been round our flat in person and delivered a suffocating torrent of leaflets, but this is blatantly more to do with trying to oust the Lib Dem councillors in my ward.

Prediction: Still a shoe-in with 13,000 votes

Keith Angus (Liberal Democrats)

Probably in with something resembling a chance marginally better than that of a snowball in hell after the Clegg love-in. On the one hand he works “in financial services” (boo!) but on the other seems like a keen supporter of the British Humanist Association (yay!). Typical Lib Dem.

Policies: Helping Vince Cable with his DIY (see pic above). Fairness, transparency, all those things which are almost impossible to argue against unless you are a Stalinist or something, right? As usual the Lib Dems are all things to all people – if you live on an estate they’ll talk to you about deprivation, if you don’t it’s the environment.

Visibility: Here he is pulling his best “concerned” face in front of the Banksy which was painted over by the Council. The Lib Dems gave my 8 year old daughter a little flyer with a smiley face on it one Saturday on Church Street. Sinister, no? Given my ward is governed by three Lib Dem councillors I am disappointed that they haven’t been round yet. Or ever, in fact.

Prediction: 8,006 votes

Darren Caplan (Conservatives)

Being a Tory in Hackney must be a bit of a thankless task, so this guy must have really pissed off central office somehow.

Policies: Lower taxes, more prisons, more money for the police and army. Thanks, Darren.

Visibility: Not so great, but David and Samantha Cameron made him wear a Guantanamo Bay outfit when they dropped by the other week. Those crazy Etonians and their japes!

Prediction: The usual 4,00o votes. Who are these people?

Matt Sellwood (Green Party)

Recent blow-in from Oxford. Dismissed by a close acquaintance of mine as “looking like Penfold off Dangermouse” in his photo.

Policies: The Greens have made a massive effort to shed their “beards and vegan sandals” image and are now big on reducing inequality. Which actually means their manifesto is the most credible and left wing on offer. Matt is a parliamentary candidate who is pro-squatting. We live in strange times.

Visibility: You can’t really escape from the Greens in Stoke Newington. They also managed to get some leaflets through our letterbox. Matt seems nice enough on Twitter, even responding good naturedly to my jibes about his photo. He has also taken the correct line on the critical “N16 Bagels” issue. Fair play.

Also, as far as I’m aware he is the only candidate who is the subject of a slightly mental reggae youtube mashup. (If any of the other candidates are also the subjects of slightly mental reggae youtube mash ups then they should of course get in touch with me and I will post them in the interest of fairness).

Prediction: A credible 7,846 votes.

Suzanne Moore (Ind)

Columnist and alleged wearer of “fuck me shoes”. Announced her candidacy on Twitter seemingly having not really given the matter much thought until the election was nearly upon us. Was still asking people on Twitter what should be in her manifesto as of 24th April. So full marks for a “listening” approach but c’mon, maybe a bit more groundwork and planning would be good?

I can’t help feeling that independents who just show up and expect us to elect them MP are glory hunters, like people who never talk about football and then whip out a Brazil shirt as soon as the world cup comes around. Building a base in the community is long hard and often unrewarding. But if getting elected as an MP was easy, then everyone would be doing it. The rates of pay for ward councillors are far less lucrative and the work much less glamorous. But it is, in my view, the best place to start if you are going down the electoral road as an independent – unless there is a huge local issue to fan the flames of (ballot box directed) revolution in our hearts.

Policies: Not being Diane Abbott. Seems to agree with the Greens on most of the other issues?

Visibility: All over twitter, regular stalls on Church Street of a weekend and well known for her Guardian and Mail on Sunday columns.

Prediction: 976 votes. Fair play and all, but must try harder.

Alessandra Williams (Ind)

A lawyer who lives in Reigate in SURREY. Another Twitterer. Did not respond to me taking the piss out of her bigging up estate agents on there.

Policies: Anti-poverty (that controversial “pro-poverty” ticket hasn’t really been explored much by the candidates this time). Beg money of central govt for social housing (because they have piles of dosh just lying about right now). And most bizarrely, an “I’m Hackney and I’m proud” campaign, even though SHE LIVES IN SURREY.

Visibility: I’m sure she’s very visible – IN SURREY.

Prediction: 213 votes.

Paul Shaer (Ind)

Man of mystery and intrigue. All I have been able to find out about Paul is:

1) He ran in the North East GLA Elections in 2000 and got 1.5% of the vote.

2) There is a slightly odd reference to him over at Urban Dictionary.

Policies: The absence of any discernable policies may in itself be a withering critique of capitalist parliamentary democracy? Or not.

Visibility: His lack of visibility, in the age of Google-enhanced stalking, is actually pretty impressive.

Prediction: 29 votes. And some of them may simply be mistakes.

Knigel Knapp (Monster Raving Loony Party)

Wacky, yet reassuringly traditional. His lunacy is probably eclipsed by the candidates below.

I’ve got a fair bit of time for original Monster Raving Loony Screaming Lord Sutch and have recently being enjoying some of the tunes he recorded for legendary producer Joe Meek.

Knigel’s campaign is sponsored by William Hill, the bookies, who are obviously absolute tossers. But no worse than the people who donate millions of pounds to the Big Three, I guess.

Visibility: On the cover of N16 Magazine (AKA “estate agents quarterly”) and the Hackney Gazette. Other coverage guaranteed by dressing like a twat and those kerazeee policies:

“We will ban the bendy bus. They are still too big and bendy – and they don’t even make accordian noises as they go round the corners.”

“The Tories say vote for change. We say No ! – We will bring in a 99p coin.”

Prediction: 236 votes.

Maxine Hargreaves (The Christian Party)

Rev’d Maxine is married to Rev’d George Hargreaves – who wrote Sinitta’s “So Macho”. Which he may now regret, but no doubt still ploughs the royalties into his ministry-cum-political-party! Theocracy - what could possibly go wrong with that?

They live in Ilford in ESSEX.

Policies include:

SPEED!

Raise the motorway speed limit to 90mph.

VIOLENCE!

Return of corporal punishment in schools.

SPANISH INQUISITION!

“Seek sanctions for schools that refused to comply with their obligation to assemble pupils for an act of daily worship.  Such acts of worship should be Christian.”

“Ensure that proper balanced teaching and debate occurs in schools around the concepts of ‘Evolution’ and ‘Creation/Design in the universe’.”

“Ensure that schools are not forced to change their values by employing those who disagree with those values.”

SEX!

“Ensure that chastity before marriage and faithfulness within marriage – as the best and safest sexual practice – will be taught as an integral part of any sex education curriculum.”

“Call for the end of the promotion and teaching in schools of homosexuality as a family relationship.”

“Withdraw government aid from any agency which promotes abortion”

Visibility: No presence whatsoever to heathens like myself. But the lord moves in mysterious ways.

Prediction: 777 votes, drummed up from the Churches.

Dr Jack Pope-De-Locksley (Magna Carta Party)

Seems to be a ripperologist, tour guide and occultist. (EDIT: And neo-nazi?! see comments)

Policies: Getting prostitutes off the street? Haebus Corpus?

Visibility: Hard to see in all that fog and darkness. Shhh! What was that… that noise? Aieeeeeeeeeeee!

Prediction: 66 votes. From goths and history buffs.

(all predictions subject to the continuation of (in)activity as of up to April 28th. Bet on them at your own risk, I’m winging it just like every other fucker).

Sent via email, 14th July 2009:

Thank you for the latest issue of New Humanist which is a great read as ever, only slightly let down by Fiona Russell-Powell’s piece on Genesis P-Orridge. Whilst I’d be first in line to agree that Gen can be grumpy old sod, I don’t think he deserves a hatchet job for refusing an interview.

Leaving most of the snide gossip and factual errors in the article to one side, it seems curious that Russell-Powell omits the background to Genesis’ family exiling themselves from the UK.

The police raid on the P-Orridge household followed a sensationalist TV programme on “satanic ritual abuse” which falsely implied their involvement in child murder. The objectivity of the programme was called into question when defences of the P-Orridges were mounted from sources as diverse as Derek Jarman and The Mail On Sunday. The programme makers were revealed as evangelical Christians with their own axes to grind.

I was surprised to read that Hackney social services had taken an interest in the incident as the family had been living in Brighton for a number of years when it happened. Needless to say, no charges were brought against the P-Orridges, who must therefore be included in the select group of victims of “satanic panic” in the UK. I imagine that this will be of some interest to New Humanist’s readership.

I too was at the recent PTV gig in London and found the band to be on surprisingly good form. One of my friends had a brief chat with Genesis afterwards and remarked on how polite he was.

John Eden

Published in edited form in the September/October 2009 issue. My missive was awarded “Winning Letter” much to my amusement, but I am yet to receive my prize of six bottles of wine.

Since writing the letter I have been made aware of this recording of an interview Fiona Russell-Powell did with the Psychic TV for The Face in the early eighties. Her fascination with Charles Manson and the P-Orridge’s genital piercings seems to have diminished somewhat in the intervening years.

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