1970s Islington

1970s Islington

I lived in Islington in the late1970s, orbiting around the political-social planet whence Jeremy Corbyn came to conquer the known Labour Party universe. I am not aware of ever meeting Jez, but I am sure I was sometimes near.

If I’m asked what was really distinctive about that era, my answer is: three flat sharers, in their mid 20s, employed in voluntary (NGO) sector jobs, could join together to buy a 5 bedroom terrace house between Holloway Road and Highbury Fields. We had an affordable mortgage. We were, it is true, given some money by our respective parents – but by no means substantial sums, even judged at the time.

(I have just looked up the current estimated value of our house on Zoopla. It is £1.65 million.)

Freehold homes shared by middle-class, left leaning, young people were fairly common in Islington in those days. The other kinds of housing that were popular were  “short life” dwellings – places which were awaiting redevelopment, usually by the Council (then much more active in building and conversion than now). There was a lot of it. The people living in short life accommodation included those of similar background to the freeholders, but who considered their lives to be lived more authentically off the housing ownership ladder (most stepped on to it later). As short-lifers could not always choose their housemates, there were often bizarre or even troubling combinations.

In Islington in the 1970s political activism on the left in the Labour Party was, plus ca change, much about ousting the old guard Labour machine from control of Islington Council. To us, at the time, the “old guard” was allegedly both right wing and corrupt. The derogatory term used was the “Murphia”: denoting a widely-held belief that Islington was run by a coterie of politicians who owed their positions to association with the (still) well-known construction firm, Murphy’s.

The rights and wrongs of this civil war is largely covered by time’s mists; but what is fact is that a young generation of left activists began to fight for control of Islington council seats. (Victory was finally sealed when most of the “Murphia” remnants joined the new Social Democratic Party.)

I don’t remember much about the detail of local Labour politics (although it was the one period when I was a member of the party). Doubtless we debated endless substantive and procedural issues. I recall thta, for a brief time, a restless Jack Straw attended our ward meetings, his mind fixed on greater things than the Murphia battles. I am not a success as a local political historian.

But I do remember a couple of the main preoccupations of that time, in that place.

There was the confrontation with National Front. The NF had some sort presence at Saturday’s Chapel Market, by the Angel. The coalition known as the Anti-Nazi League was in the habit of demonstrating and counter-leafleting against the NF stall and leafleters. Hefty lefties, on the whole, were the ones who volunteered for these animosities. But, also in the equation of heftiness were the police, in those days widely suspected by the left of inclining somewhat to the side of the NF. It was felt a good idea, on the part of the anti-NF organisers to send legal observers to this potential flashpoint, in case of fights and arrests. These observers, drawn mainly from law centre workers, were usually a lot less hefty than the protagonists.

I was once an observer. Unfortunately, it was day when, in the vivid phrase, it “kicked off”. To be precise: the person who got kicked was me. A friend and I had left the Chapel Market area, thinking that, as it were, leaving the field of confrontation somehow neutralised antagonisms. But we were marked and followed by some roughs. There was a chase – past Angel and down City Road. At the bus stop just near Angel, my friend, a few feet ahead, jumped onto the open platform of a bus just pulling away. Alas, I was too late and the pursuers caught up with me, knocked me down in front of a small, aghast, bus queue and directed two or three kicks at me, including a glancing kick to the head. I remember feeling stoically helpless, but also grateful that the attackers were wearing trainers rather than “bovver” boots.

I suppose that the arena was a bit too public as the attack was very brief. Somehow I was helped to the Upper Street offices of a Trotskyist organisation, the International Marxist Group, where such bruise and grazes as I had sustained were treated.

The assault was, of course, fodder to their weekly paper, and I found myself the martyred centre of next week’s front page on fascist violence. I also enjoyed a brief flare of fame on the Islington social circuit, described later.

There was a slightly unsettling postscript to this (in)glorious episode. Some days later I received a phone call from a well-spoken man, who said that he was a policeman based in Islington. Could I send in a detailed statement about what happened? So it could be thoroughly investigated? Not being of the school of “all policemen are pigs”, but rather having an ingrained middle-class trust for a middle-class sounding copper, I agreed. I wrote an essay describing my role at the demonstration and the attack. I assume now that my paper was destined for some Special Branch, or other police intelligence file. Certainly there was no further police follow-up into the crime itself.

The causes, alliances and schisms the 1970s Islington left have been well documented by others, especially by Lynne Segal, a true star of the era. I record here memories of the “benefits” which constituted the core of our social life.

These benefits might be held in support of squatters (the true, and the voluntary, homeless), striking workers  (eg the Grunwicks workers), miners, or other noble causes. They often took place at Caxton House, the community centre near Archway. There was music (sometimes live agit-rock), bad beer and worse wine, all enveloped by a fug of cigarette smoke. There was also the opportunity to negotiate the beginning or end of “scenes”.

“Scene” was the curious term which described a sexual liaison which was more than a casual encounter but less than something permanent – and certainly not involving co-habitation. “X is having a scene with Y”, would be the gossip at a benefit, and necks would surreptitiously crane.

I suppose that one way of deriving the etymology is to think in terms of the theatre. A Scene is more than line; but less than an Act; and never amounts to the whole Play. This metaphor has the happy property of involving some satisfying double-entendres. Indeed, the rock band Dire Straits has a lyric in which Romeo complains of old flame Juliet “Now you just say, Oh Romeo, yeah, I once had a scene with him” (pun obviously intended).

Me? Apart from my moment of martyrdom, in Islington I was like TS Eliot’s Prufrock (and here is yet another theatrical, Shakespearian, metaphor):

“..an attendant Lord, one that will do to swell a progress, start a Scene or two…”

December 2015