Radical Kent

[steeplejack]

Essay on Kent's role in slavery & abolition campaigns

 

[brogdale]

K Bullstreet writes about his being part of the opposition to a big NF demo in Maidstone in 1984. There was a time where Welling / Bexleyheath (sites of big anti-fascist actions in the late 80s and early 90s) would have been considered Kent (until the 1920s, probably).

Welling United's badge is still the Kent white horse, and they weren't formed until the 1960s. People often write about the frayed border between Essex and London, the same can be said about Kent and London, as the debate about Bromley above shows. Being in Bromley a fair bit it does have that 'borderland' feel about it.

Not 'radical', but seeing what you said about Welling, I thought I'd put in a couple of maps to show how the historic border (extent) of Kent has moved progressively Eastwards (smaller) as the Metropolis expanded and administrative arrangement were changed to reflect that.

1. This marvellous old Symondson map from 1596 shows the fullest, Westward extent of the county as it bordered Surrey in what is now South London:


The border running from the Thames (between Deptford & Rotherhithe) running West of Lewisham and then roughly down the present border between the London boroughs of Croydon & Bromley.

2. The formation of the London County Council in 1889 (until 1965) pushed the border out Eastwards as shown by this Bartholomew map from 1955:



This pushed the County boundary out to Plumstead marshes on the Thames (the present day boundary between the London boroughs of Greenwich & Bexley) and going South and West round to Crystal Palace park.

3. The formation of the GLC in 1965 (to 1986) pushed the border further Eastwards as shown by this present day Electoral maps (OS)



This pushed the County boundary out to Dartford marshes (the River Darent/Dartford creek) on the Thames and then South down the LB Bexley & Bromley borders to the West of Swanley.

As has been said many time before, much of the outer London confusion about addresses results from the failure of postal delineation to keep pace with these administrative changes; hence people in LB Bromley having 'Kent" addresses. It makes sense historically.

Nerd mode over!

 

[ska invita]

im curious about this moat now

 

[brogdale]

View attachment 297010
im curious about this moat now

Maybe this?

 

[ska invita]

Maybe this?

nice, yeah i know that spot really well - imoften up and down that hill (Ringers Road)

talking Bromley Kropotkin lived here for a while...Darwin lived in Downe..I cant find any mention that the two met, but certainly Mutual Aid is inspired by Origin of Species and IIRC was originally dedicated to Darwin.

Another Bromely-born, HG Wells was a socialist, though IIRC Wells said Bromley was a shit hole and couldnt wait to be out of there (paraphrase )
===============
From an old post


Kropotkin’s house, 6 Crescent Road, Bromley

In summer 1894, he and his wife moved to 6 Crescent Road, Bromley (again, the garden was important, and at least it had the advantage of being a remote suburb in South London, rather than North), commemorated with a blue plaque.

This became an open house for anarchist exiles, and British socialists such as Keir Hardie (Morris, p. 69). Life was not easy, though; Fishman notes that it was practically a hand-to-mouth existence, and there was never any money in the house – when Stepniak visited Bromley from Hammersmith, Sophie had to borrow money from the neighbours for his return ticket (p. 222). Nevertheless, he gave financial support to anarchist causes, including donating money to the Arbeter Fraint so that it could continue publishing (Graur, p. 94). Perhaps the most notable incident of his life in Bromley happened in January 1905, when news of the Bloody Sunday massacre in St Petersburg reached Britain. According to his nephew, who was staying with him at the time, the cottage was besieged by reporters who wanted to interview Kropotkin. He was ill at the time, and just sent out a note with ‘Down with the Romanovs!’ written on it (Woodcock and Avakumovic, p. 365), which conjures up a rather marvellous picture.


Sources
William J. Fishman, East End Jewish Radicals, 1875-1914 (London: Duckworth, 1975)
Mina Graur, An Anarchist ‘Rabbi’: The Life and Teaching of Rudolf Rocker (New York: St Martin’s Press; Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1997)
James W. Hulse, Revolutionists in London: A Study of Five Unorthodox Socialists(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970)
George Kennan, Siberia and the Exile System (New York: Century, 1891), 2 vols
P. Kropotkin, Memoirs of a Revolutionist (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1899), vol. 2
Brian Morris, The Anarchist Geographer: An Introduction to the Life of Peter Kropotkin (Minehead: Genge Press, 2007)
John Quail, The Slow Burning Fuse: The Lost History of British Anarchists (London: Flamingo, 1978)
Stan Shipley, Club Life and Socialism in Mid-Victorian London (London: Journeyman/London History Workshop Centre, 1983)
G. M. Stekloff, History of the First International (London: Martin Lawrence, 1928)
George Woodcock and Ivan Avakumovic, The Anarchist Prince: A Biographical Study of Peter Kropotkin (London: Boardman & Co., 1950)
George Woodcock, Anarchism (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963)

 

[steeplejack]

Great maps brogdale thanks for those. Very interesting.

"Radical" (spelt with a 'w'?) maps, one funny, one sad:



Kent from the "Red Atlas", issued to Warsaw Pact military so they knew the enemy's territory. Kent (bits of Sussex & Essex in here too) spelt phoenetically in Polish.


Kent in 2050 as a result of rising sea levels (projection). Thanet becomes an Island again and I for one look forward to a hardline workerist regime being imposed there. Very bleak also west / south-west of Folkestone, and the Medway towns. Half of Sheppey gone as well.

Source

 

[brogdale]

Back OT...when I last read Hobsbawn & Rudé's Captain Swing, I was led to the sad tale of the last hangings on Penenden Heath, just outside Maidstone (before the gallows were moved to the gaol in the town).

Towards the end of October 1830 there had been widespread uproar in the countryside in the southern counties. Thousands of farm labourers, who had seen their jobs and wages at risk owing to the advent of more modern farm machinery such as threshing machines, began to protest and to sabotage equipment.

These protests developed into riots in some parts of the countryside and the problem had become so dire that a Special Commission was eventually set up to try to ensure any guilty parties could be traced and punished. The events became known as The Swing Riots, named after a mythical leader, Captain Swing.
On December 17, 1830, two brothers William and Henry Packman, aged 20 and 18 years, were found guilty at Maidstone Assizes of setting fire to a barn belonging to farmer William Wraight of Blean.

Despite finding the brothers guilty, the jury recommended the judge, Mr Justice Bosanquet, should show mercy – the boys had been led astray by others, including another man, John Dyke, who hailed from the nearby village of Bearsted. The judge, however, took a dim view of the crime – in his view the boys were obviously guilty and nothing he had heard at the trial would induce him to leniency. The brothers, and John Dyke, were sentenced to hang within days.

And so it was, on December 24, William Calcraft was waiting to dispatch the three unfortunates on the heath at Penenden. A huge, largely sympathetic, crowd had gathered by the time the three prisoners arrived in a heavily protected wagon from Maidstone Prison. As the wagon approached the gallows, the prisoners, seated on their coffins, dolefully surveyed the scene. One of the Packman brothers was heard saying to the onlookers: ‘That (the gallows) looks an awful thing!’

Throughout their trial the Packmans had faced their fate quite stoicly and it was not until they witnessed John Dyke being prepared for execution that they truly showed any emotion. Meanwhile, Calcraft was no doubt under pressure to show how well he could handle a multiple hanging before such a huge crowd.

Once all three had been guided up the steps of the scaffold, they were each invited to address the onlookers. The chaplain, in a low tone, said to Dyke: ‘Now you have come to the worst and there is no chance of escape, do tell the truth.’ To which Dyke replied loudly: ‘I am innocent and Hewitt and his wife (who had given evidence against him at the trial) have sworn falsely against me – mind the ninth commandment!’

The Packman brothers had already admitted their guilt but, before the nooses were placed around their necks, they claimed an accomplice named Goodman had urged them to set fire to the barn. Henry Packman faced the crowd and declared that a man named Bishop – who had given evidence against them at the trial – had encouraged them to burn the barn. Bishop had turned King’s Evidence at the trial and, according to the judge and jury, had, in fact, been more guilty than the Packmans.

The Packman brothers, having addressed the crowd, turned to each other and shook hands. Henry and John Dyke had their hands tied behind them but, for some reason, William’s hands were not tied when Calcraft began to place the white hoods over the heads of the three men. Before Calcraft could place the noose around William’s neck, William tore off his hood, declaring that he wished to see the faces of the crowd.

Moments later, all three men were hanging by the neck. After their bodies had hung for an hour, they were cut down. The Packmans’ father removed their bodies for burial at Canterbury. Dyke was later interred in the graveyard of the Church of the Holy Cross at Bearsted. On the gallows, John Dyke had indeed been telling the truth. Today, in the churchyard where he is buried, there is a plaque inscribed with the words: ‘This tree marks the grave of John Dyke, who was hanged for rick burning in 1830 at the last public hanging at nearby Penenden Heath. Subsequently it was found that he was not guilty of the crime’.

 

[Serge Forward]

I know that, as a weirdy religious cult, it doesn't really fit the "radical Kent" narrative... but you've got that fairly long established Bruderhof community near Robertsbridge. I remember they always used to get on and off the train in the days when I regularly travelled between London and Hastings. They were all very nice and were often handing out leftish, ecological and anti-imperialist type flyers. They kind of remind me of something out of Luther Blissett's "Q" book.

 

[Pickman's model]

I know that, as a weirdy religious cult, it doesn't really fit the "radical Kent" narrative... but you've got that fairly long established Bruderhof community near Robertsbridge. I remember they always used to get on and off the train in the days when I regularly travelled between London and Hastings. They were all very nice and were often handing out leftish, ecological and anti-imperialist type flyers. They kind of remind me of something out of Luther Blissett's "Q" book.

Yeh weirdy cults are generally over the border in Sussex, traditionally round east grinstead

 

[brogdale]

Yeh weirdy cults are generally over the border in Sussex, traditionally round east grinstead

Yep, notably Saint Hill Manor.

 

[Serge Forward]

Yeh weirdy cults are generally over the border in Sussex, traditionally round east grinstead

Aye, isn't that the scientologists in East Grinstead. Anyway, I've just checked and Robertsbridge is actually in East Sussex The Bruderfof do have a Kent community in Nonington (wherever that is). Anyway, they seem a lovely bunch. Pity about all the god bothery stuff and the horribal schmatte.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

I was taken to a place called Ashburneham for a 'holiday' when I was kid. That place was in Sussex. It's still a christian retreat today by the look of it.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

Aye, isn't that the scientologists in East Grinstead. Anyway, I've just checked and Robertsbridge is actually in East Sussex The Bruderfof do have a Kent community in Nonington (wherever that is). Anyway, they seem a lovely bunch. Pity about all the god bothery stuff and the horribal schmatte.

I think Nonington is near Canterbury somwhere.

 

[brogdale]

Aye, isn't that the scientologists in East Grinstead. Anyway, I've just checked and Robertsbridge is actually in East Sussex The Bruderfof do have a Kent community in Nonington (wherever that is). Anyway, they seem a lovely bunch. Pity about all the god bothery stuff and the horribal schmatte.

Nonington = (ex)coalfield territory.

 

[hitmouse]

If we're counting Welling, there's a pamphlet about Welling '93 here:

Ready, Welling and able: reflections on the events at Welling, 16.10.93 - Colin B West

An account of, and thoughts on, the demonstration against the far right British National Party headquarters in Welling, London in 1993 by one of its participants, writing under a pseudonym.

libcom.org

And some more recent Welling history:

How British Police Shut Down the Original UK Antifa

A massive operation in 2009 saw so many arrests of activists that an anti-fascist group had to shut down.

www.vice.com

Just remembered Mark Steel is from Swanley as well.
If Folkestone is in Kent (again, I have no clue about this stuff?) then that must be of interest to the logistics nerd end of communism - was it ever a proper old-style unionised port, or did the shift to large volumes going through it only happen as part of the process of breaking the dock unions, with containerisation and all that?

 

[hitmouse]

I've just done a search on my emails for Folkestone to see if I could turn up any brainy communist analysis about the port's role in global capitalist logistics, and found that they had a skateboarding owl:


And a Banksy that someone painted a big cock and balls on:

Rise and fall of Folkestone's Banksy and if it will see the light of day again

The Art Buff has not been brought out from storage for nearly four years

www.kentlive.news

So there's two important parts of radical Kent history for you, I suppose.

 

[Serge Forward]

Has anyone mentioned the Kent & Sussex Agricultural Labourers Union?

 

[Serge Forward]

Couple of things off t'Libcom. Apologies if already posted.
Fascism and anti-Fascism in the Medway Towns 1927-1940 - David Turner
4. Maidstone, National Front demonstration 1984

 

[hitmouse]

November 2021, Kent bus drivers win 6.5% pay increase by threatening to strike:

Kent and Sussex bus strikes off as Stagecoach tables new pay offers

…

www.unitetheunion.org

 

[Puddy_Tat]

There was a time where Welling / Bexleyheath (sites of big anti-fascist actions in the late 80s and early 90s) would have been considered Kent (until the 1920s, probably).

As has been said many time before, much of the outer London confusion about addresses results from the failure of postal delineation to keep pace with these administrative changes; hence people in LB Bromley having 'Kent" addresses. It makes sense historically.

yes.

with a possible bit of tinkering at the edges, what is now in the (greater london) boroughs of bromley and bexley only became london boroughs in 1965 when the GLC was formed. Prior to that they were 'metropolitan kent' (and there were smaller boroughs like erith, beckenham and orpington that got merged in to bexley and bromley respectively) - what's now lewisham and greenwich boroughs (which incorporated the old deptford and woolwich boroughs respectively) was london county from 1889.

the london postal area, the london telephone area and administrative london have never matched - and prior to the 2000 greater london assembly, the metropolitan police district didn't quite match either.

ETA - Penge is an oddity, having moved from Surrey to London to Kent to London...

 

[brogdale]

Penge is an oddity

As an ex-resident of sunny Sydenham, that made me smile.

Not 'radical', but I love this:

Watch Portrait of Penge - BFI Player

 

[ska invita]

William Morris speaking at the Crooked Billet, Penge.
WM is the seated figure with beard, supposedly.

Im loving the carriage. Seems to be a Clarion Van it is suggested
The Clarion Movement

Trades Union Congress Library Collections Blog | Latest news, features and discoveries

 

[hitmouse]

Harsh justice in Folkestone: repression against opponents of World War I

A short account of the severe sentence handed out to anarchists in Folkestone just for flyposting anti-war posters.

libcom.org

This one sounds like it could be really interesting:

KCC versus the homeless: the King Hill campaign

1966 pamphlet about the struggle of a group of homeless families in Kent against the local county council. Jointly published by Solidarity and Socialist Action, it contains four extra pages added in 1967 with an update about the families being successful.

libcom.org

 

[brogdale]

Harsh justice in Folkestone: repression against opponents of World War I

A short account of the severe sentence handed out to anarchists in Folkestone just for flyposting anti-war posters.

libcom.org

This one sounds like it could be really interesting:

KCC versus the homeless: the King Hill campaign

1966 pamphlet about the struggle of a group of homeless families in Kent against the local county council. Jointly published by Solidarity and Socialist Action, it contains four extra pages added in 1967 with an update about the families being successful.

libcom.org

good finds

Didn't know about either.

 

[brogdale]

That Kings Hill protest reporting is really impressive stuff.
What s shocking episode and case.

 

[brogdale]

Some good examples of materials relating to the Miners' strike here including this Kent NUM poster:



Also interesting references to support for the striking Kent coalfield miners from Black solidarity groups, international solidarity groups and other regional trades councils etc:



Here the Kent area NUM "Agitate, Educate, Organise: banner taking central place.

 

[charlie mowbray]

We’Re Still Here: Folkestone Riots · British Universities Film & Video Council

bufvc.ac.uk

 

[charlie mowbray]

Jimmy Cauty

www.folkestonestatus.com

 

[charlie mowbray]

Mention on p.10 of radical newspaper The Black Dwarf about Schools Action Union activity in Folkestone.

Amiel Melburn Trust Archive - Amiel Melburne Trust Archive

banmarchive.org.uk

 

[charlie mowbray]

'We shall not be moved': 60 years of protest in Kent

War, religion and rubbish dumps - We take a look at some of the causes that have brought placard-waving protesters onto the county's streets.

www.kentonline.co.uk