Cherry Groce - discussion and memorial news
- Thread starter Gramsci
- Start date
CH1
"Red Guard"(NLYL)
BBC World Service had this programme at 3 am.
My 30-year fight for justice for my mum
This is a 45 minute interview with Lee Lawrence Cherry Groce's son and carer, and founder of the Cherry Groce Foundation.
My 30-year fight for justice for my mum
This is a 45 minute interview with Lee Lawrence Cherry Groce's son and carer, and founder of the Cherry Groce Foundation.
brixtonscot
Well-Known Member
John Martyn song Nightline refers to shooting of Cherry Groce
- "My song "Nightline" refers to the disconcerting episode of that inspector who, in pursuit of a young thief, slipped into an apartment and shot a 60-year-old lady ..." - translated from Italian
www.johnmartyn.info
More here
Nightline si riferisce ad un fatto di cronaca ben preciso: qualche tempo fa una squadra di poliziotti scese a Brixton e durante una retata ci furono degli spari. Rimase ferita una donna di cinquantasei anni, Cherry Groce, che in seguito ad una paralisi morì. Francamente non so come si possa confondere una donna di quell'età con un giovane
www.johnmartyn.info
- "My song "Nightline" refers to the disconcerting episode of that inspector who, in pursuit of a young thief, slipped into an apartment and shot a 60-year-old lady ..." - translated from Italian
Quando Il Cuore Non Invecchia: John Martyn | One World
Nightline si riferisce ad un fatto di cronaca ben preciso: qualche tempo fa una squadra di poliziotti scese a Brixton e durante una retata ci furono degli spari. Rimase ferita una donna di cinquantasei anni, Cherry Groce, che in seguito ad una paralisi morì. Francamente non so come si possa confondere una donna di quell'età con un giovane
Intervista a John Martyn | One World
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GarveyLives
Well-Known Member
Mrs Cynthia Jarrett was not being "deported" anywhere when she died after Metropolitan Police officers entered her home a week after the subject matter of this thread, Mrs Groce, was shot. She was - in common with Mrs Groce - a British housewife, born overseas. Their treatment as British housewives by the Metropolitan Police within a week of each other differed from the treatment other British housewives with sons suspected of crimes for reasons unconnected to the identity of their passports.
GarveyLives
Well-Known Member
Were and are Mrs Groce, her friends, family and supporters and The Cherry Groce Foundation, as well as the people who rose up against the Metropolitan Police in Brixton on the evening of Saturday 28 September 1985, hours after Mrs Groce was shot by Inspector Douglas Lovelock - most of whom, I suspect, had lived in or around Brixton for all of their lives - "local people" or part of "the local community"?
In any event, given your concerns, will you and any of those whom you do consider to be "local people" and "the local community" be leading a counter-demonstration at the official opening of the memorial?
GarveyLives
Well-Known Member
Will you be leading a counter-demonstration at the official opening of the memorial so that your concerns can be made clear to all?
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
Just wondering why you are asking this. Can you explain?
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
If there was such a demand for this then it would not have needed the Council to step in and fund it.
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
This is going back a bit. What I was saying was that the local community did not get a say in this either way.
By the time it went to planning committee it was foregone conclusion.
There was no public competition for the design, no local groups I know were asked about design or siting of it in Windrush Square for example.
CH1
"Red Guard"(NLYL)
I see wikipedia draws parallels between Cynthia Jarrett's case and Cherry Groce's.
I don't recall that comparison in the media at the time.
In any event in both cases the trigger events became obscured by subsequent riots.
Particulalry in Mrs Jarrett;'s case there was the Brioadwater Farm riot in which a policeman died.
From what I can remember at the time the murder of PC Keith Blakelock dominated the tabloids for months, followed by the monstering of Winston Silcott who was apparently fitted up for that crime.
Sorry if I had mis-remembered Mrs Jarrett's situation - though such a comment or speculation might have been in the press.
TopCat
Putin fanboy
There won’t be any counter demo? Stop shit stirring.
urbanspaceman
Well-Known Member
No of, course there won't be a counter-demo. But I remain struck by the ugliness of the sculpture and the crude way that Lambeth has rammed it through.
Over decades of living in Lambeth, I've observed by turns the loopy derangement of Red Ted (Knight) then Linda Bellos, followed by the adequately competent and democratic Blairist administration of the 2000s, tempered as it then was by a functioning Conservative and LibDem opposition.
But more recently the non-Labour vote has collapsed, ushering in a true one party state, inexorably culminating in the concentration of power in the inner circle, and secured with the imposition of cabinet, rather than committee, control.
The cabal that now constitutes the local government of Lambeth might be characterised as a non-ideological state-corporatist real estate developer, immune to either democratic or shareholder scrutiny. If you still believe that Lambeth remains socialist in any meaningful way, please re-examine its relentless project to reduce the amount of council housing, as it redevelops estate after estate.
And to burnish its woke credentials, Lambeth cynically throws an occasional trivial performative bone to satisfy the appetites of its progressive/values voters: here manifested in the shape of the Groce memorial, 35 years after the event, and paid for with other peoples' money.
It seems to me that the current situation in Lambeth can be explained by John Cruddas's analysis of how Labour has abandoned the traditional working class, and is now controlled by an graduate metropolitan elite, which is preoccupied by identity politics. SInce there is no prospect of effective political opposition (as we used to say when I was growing up in Doncaster: "they'll vote for a donkey if it's wearing a red rosette") or committee oversight, the Lambeth Politburo is quite free to pursue its own agendas while periodically staging a bit of virtue-theatre such as this sculpture to distract the base.
Jon Cruddas: ‘Labour is in danger of becoming dominated by the meritocratic elite’
The MP and torchbearer of Labour’s intellectual history thinks his party is losing sight of its historical mission to stand up for the working classes
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editor
hiraethified
Photos here
www.brixtonbuzz.com
In photos: Cherry Groce memorial unveiled in Windrush Square, Brixton
The Cherry Groce memorial in Windrush Square was officially unveiled today. We went along to grab some photos:
www.brixtonbuzz.com
TopCat
Putin fanboy
I have to say, this is bollocks.
CH1
"Red Guard"(NLYL)
It would seem from an interview between Andrew Marr and Mary Beard that David Adjaye is a guest on the Mary Beard show on BBC Two on Friday and they will be discussing the Cherry Groce monument.
A shot was shown of the monument on Marr - complete with people relaxing on the steps/seat.
Knowing Mary Beard she might hail this as the new people-friendly direction of monuments.
I live Mary Beard - she appeals to all that cultural vacuum in my life - and she looks like my Auntie Pam.
Unfortunately this programme istarts hald-way through the Channel Four News - which is probably the BBC's secret agenda.
A shot was shown of the monument on Marr - complete with people relaxing on the steps/seat.
Knowing Mary Beard she might hail this as the new people-friendly direction of monuments.
Inside Culture With Mary Beard
www.bbc.co.uk
I live Mary Beard - she appeals to all that cultural vacuum in my life - and she looks like my Auntie Pam.
Unfortunately this programme istarts hald-way through the Channel Four News - which is probably the BBC's secret agenda.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
Southlondon
The river's there for a reason
I see the purpose of statues/monuments as being a way to keep an event or person of note in people’s minds beyond the immediate generation. We’ve got a multitude of old statues of colonial generals and Victorian philanthropists that provided a focus of celebration to those who erected them in one generation, then a second purpose when in more enlightened times they’ve sparked a much needed national conversation on the horrors of our colonial past and how it’s effects still impact on people today. I reckon those news pictures of the Bristol statue being toppled by people power will become as iconic as some of the powerful news photos from the Vietnam war or the Bloody Sunday pic of the vicar waving a handkerchief as the British army murder his neighbors. They are a solid physical emblem of that particular moment in history and I think it is long overdue to give space in Brixton to commemorate that point in history when the local community fought back against police brutality, and it will make it harder for future generations to forget that moment with a nice big sculpture in a prominent position to remind us all. Making it a representation of one specific person is a good way of bringing it home to people that these were ordinary people - mums dads wives sons etc in a way that some abstract monument not linked to an individual might not .
I do agree that Lambeth should be better at consulting on such issues, but that would have opened up the debate to those reactionary elements that would try to paint the events of that time as simple criminality.
This is one occasion when I think Lambeth wielding its colossal mandate to govern out borough in the way it sees fit in the absence of any effective opposition as a good move. Why prevaricate on something like this, it needed doing and it’s done. If we had a committee system or if they consulted on absolutely everything then not thing would get done quickly and the drain on officer and councillor resources would have a detrimental effect on delivery. As for paying for it, I know a lot of old time monuments were paid fir by public subscription but they didn’t have council tax and section 106 money to spend. In the general scheme of things it’s a paltry amount and 106 money is income to spend on infrastructure yes but wind rush sq is such an important focal point for Brixton recognising the black community presence, that I see this (to me aesthetically ugly but then I think the Elgin marbles look crap) monument as a nice finishing touch to the sq.
Lambeth Labour are in an unassailable position Because they are popular with vast swathes of the electorate. If you doubt that try canvassing with an open mind and the most common response is that people are generally happy with the status quo thus the inability of the opposing party’s to have any luck in threatening Labours position as a one party state. When they are repeatedly elected with such landslides it’s their prerogative to act without worrying about public debate on occasions like this and I personally think fir once they’ve done the right thing.
going of subject slightly, People bleating on about it being a one party state have to recognise it’s the electorate that give them that position and it will only change when an alternative party can inspire more people to vote for them instead. This will only happen if people that care get out and do some hard work in the doorstep like the many hundreds of Lambeth Labour activists do week after week then we might get an opposition voice that goes beyond the irrelevant trio of greens and an even more irrelevant lone tory.
I do agree that Lambeth should be better at consulting on such issues, but that would have opened up the debate to those reactionary elements that would try to paint the events of that time as simple criminality.
This is one occasion when I think Lambeth wielding its colossal mandate to govern out borough in the way it sees fit in the absence of any effective opposition as a good move. Why prevaricate on something like this, it needed doing and it’s done. If we had a committee system or if they consulted on absolutely everything then not thing would get done quickly and the drain on officer and councillor resources would have a detrimental effect on delivery. As for paying for it, I know a lot of old time monuments were paid fir by public subscription but they didn’t have council tax and section 106 money to spend. In the general scheme of things it’s a paltry amount and 106 money is income to spend on infrastructure yes but wind rush sq is such an important focal point for Brixton recognising the black community presence, that I see this (to me aesthetically ugly but then I think the Elgin marbles look crap) monument as a nice finishing touch to the sq.
Lambeth Labour are in an unassailable position Because they are popular with vast swathes of the electorate. If you doubt that try canvassing with an open mind and the most common response is that people are generally happy with the status quo thus the inability of the opposing party’s to have any luck in threatening Labours position as a one party state. When they are repeatedly elected with such landslides it’s their prerogative to act without worrying about public debate on occasions like this and I personally think fir once they’ve done the right thing.
going of subject slightly, People bleating on about it being a one party state have to recognise it’s the electorate that give them that position and it will only change when an alternative party can inspire more people to vote for them instead. This will only happen if people that care get out and do some hard work in the doorstep like the many hundreds of Lambeth Labour activists do week after week then we might get an opposition voice that goes beyond the irrelevant trio of greens and an even more irrelevant lone tory.
CH1
"Red Guard"(NLYL)
Not quite sure what this post is about in specifics to do with Lambeth.
I suppose in an ideal world where Lambth Progress Labour was not controlling spending we could commission an artist like Ai WeiWei to design an installation commemorating the Vietnam War - maybe a suspended fibre glass B52 dropping water bombs on the Special Brew drinkers in Windrush Sqyare.
I should point out we've been round this loop before in the radical Bellos administration.
Builidng were renamed - Mary Seacole House, Paul Robeson House, Olive Morris House, Mandela Trading Estate, Mahatma Gandhi Trading Estate, Angela Davis trading estate - all now demolished or sold off by the way
Linda Bellos met her match on parks, She got Max Roach Park - which was new - named for a living black American jazz drummer.
Then she started on Brockwell Park, wanting it renamed Zephania Mothapeng park - after an imprisoned South African ANC stalwart the burgers of Herne Hill rebelled in numbers and it couldn't be done.
Southlondon what statues and locations did you have in mind for us now in Lambeth?. Or was your piece a reaction to inadvertently and I would say mistakenly putting on a GB News Culture Wars special fronted by that snivelling New Zealand Nazi presenter who seems to be the star of the show now?
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GarveyLives
Well-Known Member
Expect more ale-fuelled fury in response:
Event to celebrate peace and unity in Windrush Square one year on from unveiling of Cherry Groce memorial
Event to celebrate peace and unity in Windrush Square one year on from unveiling of Cherry Groce memorial
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