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Historian David Rosenberg |
It’s a radical roam through Islington
Teacher and writer invites public to join him on a journey through history of the borough
THE last thing Lenin needed when he was plotting revolution from a flat in Islington was a prudish, busybody landlady.
But the father of the former Soviet Union was told to close the curtains of his living room in Percy Circus because his wife wasn’t wearing a wedding ring and in those days people might get the wrong idea.
The old imperial British Queen may have been dead four years, but in 1905 a strong whiff of Victorian morality still permeated.
So says historian David Rosenberg, who launches the first of a series of walks around Islington tomorrow (Saturday).
Part-time teacher, writer and academic, Mr Rosenberg, better known for his walks around the “radical” Jewish East End, will be taking groups on a fascinating two-and-a-half-hour, three-mile tour of the borough, exploring the lives of important figures from history, going back from the present over 200 years.
In Chapel Market, Angel, he will tell of the often bloody confrontations between anti-fascists and the right-wing National Front in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
From there it’s back through time to Tolpuddle Street, named after the six Dorset workers deported to Australia for daring to start a trade union. The street commemorates the march, from Copenhagen Fields to Westminster, to free the martyrs in 1834.
Islington has history which also connects it with many international struggles. The office of the African National Congress – a banned organisation before it assumed government in South Africa – was in Penton Street.
The office was bombed in 1982 on the day of a big anti-apartheid demonstration in central London. The culprits injured a caretaker, but thought a leading member of the ANC was in the building.
Mr Rosenberg said: “The nine bombers later admitted their part in the attack and were offered amnesty under the country’s ‘truth and reconciliation’ scheme. They were of course part of the South African secret service and said the bomb had come over in a diplomatic bag.”
At the same time as the plot against the ANC, the Canon of St Paul’s Cathedral, Rev John Collins, was working in a top-floor office in Essex Road, valiantly raising millions for legal costs for South African political detainees.
At Finsbury Town Hall Mr Rosenberg’s tour reminds us of Britain’s first non-white MP, Dadabhai Naoroji, elected to Finsbury Central in 1892. He is commemorated with a street name and a plaque outside the Town Hall.
From there it’s on to Clerkenwell Green, once the equivalent of Hyde Park Corner, where you could go and stand on a soapbox and express views, however far out. The Green had been a meeting place for The Chartists and was the scene for a rally to celebrate the Tolpuddle Martyrs’ homecoming.
It also boasts the world famous Marx Memorial Library, originally a Welsh school, and its important collection of radical books.
Passing Lenin’s plaque in Percy Circus, Mr Rosenberg says that the revolutionary found Britain’s climate harsh – strange as he came from Russia – but really enjoyed travelling wrapped up on our open-top buses.
To Spa Fields, where in 1816 up to 20,000 people gathered for a mass meeting against the government to complain, among other things, about high prices.
Then on to Myddelton Square, home to Mr Rosenberg’s “favourite socialist”, Fenner Brockway (1888-1988).
Brockway was a humanist socialist politician who devoted his life to two causes – world peace and racial equality. He was imprisoned for his opposition to the 1914-18 war, and helped to found the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, based in Holloway Road.
• The walk, Visionaries, Dissenters and Rebels, takes place tomorrow, Saturday, at 11am. The fee is £5 (£3.50 unwaged). The meeting point will be confirmed on booking. Places are limited to 30. To book your place email david@eastendwalks.com |
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Your comments:
THE walk sounds fantastic. Only sorry I can't make it and hope he does more .
Harriet Spicer
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