Finsbury Park is not what it seems - excerpt from our new book
In this post, MoH shares one of the introductory essays for A People’s History of Finsbury Park, This is part of a series of weekly posts leading to the book launch next month.
7 minute read
Finsbury Park is Not What it Seems – Introducing a People’s History
by Matthew Turtle
“Finsbury Park was a ghetto, full of violence, back then. Fights in the street; fights at school. I suffered and practised the violence myself—you couldn’t let anyone walk all over you.”[i] Don McCullin
A Popular Depiction
Popular depictions of Finsbury Park and the development of its surrounding areas have tended to highlight a part of the city that fell into decline in recent years. In this interpretation we have many examples, not just from the immediate Finsbury Park area but around it too. Let’s take some examples. Firstly, Campbell Bunk, the so-called “worst street in North London” which was built in 1850 and was situated just south of the park, but later demolished in the 1950s. The bunk which was immortalised in many ways by the historian Jerry White can be understood in the same vein as other large Victorian slums – a world set apart from the rest of society, a complicated place where crime and care could flourish equally.[ii]
The Woodberry Down Estate, located just north of the park also receives the same kind of assessment. Despite once being dubbed the “estate of the future” in the 1950s, it had by the 1980s in the words of Municipal Dreams author John Boughton declined. Boughton explains “Crime – or fear of crime – had risen. Hackney boasted of being ‘Britain’s poorest borough’ The Estate felt and looked tired.”[iii] The park itself is also singled out for a similar assessment. Hugh Hayes, writing in A Park for Finsbury dedicate a section of their book with the title ‘Destruction and Dereliction’ in their own treatment of the park and its condition in the late 20 century.[iv]
Wider historical sources that support this interpretation are not hard to find. A Haringey Ward profile of 1982 highlighted the park as suffering physical decay and deterioration “major social and on-street problems including prostitution and drug abuse”.[v] Other treatments are more tongue in cheek. In 2001 a local newsletter, the Finsbury Parker, sporting Harry Hill on the front cover referred to the words of a notable resident in Finsbury Park that it was situated in the “armpit of 3 boroughs.”[vi]
Crime is often a major influencing factor on these interpretations. A 1995 Islington Crime Survey commissioned by the council highlighted police statistics to illustrate an extraordinary rise in instances of crime in the latter part of the decade. This survey makes its assessment of housing renewal and its success clear “since Finsbury Park stood at the heart of the North London Housing Stress Area, the area already suffered from general dereliction. This spreading neglect made living in the area increasingly intolerable.” Indeed, the extensive post-war housing development around the park are singled out for fragmenting any possibility of social cohesion, generally fostering criminal communities and encouraging depopulation. Jerry White’s sympathetic and complex portrayal of the communities in the Campbell Bunk is this crime survey are dismissed as “very unlikely.”[vii]
Not What it Seems
Job done then. It seems that Finsbury Park’s history is more-or-less set. However, Beginning the research for Finsbury Park’s people’s history an alternative way of looking at the area very quickly began to emerge. This would probably hardly be a surprising to anyone with any knowledge of the area. How could an area famed for all those music festivals, a place with the George Robey pub, the Rainbow Theatre, Rowans bowling, and all those other places fall into decline?
The first sign of an alternative take on things came from an unexpected place - punk Sex pistols front man Johnny Rotten. Rotten, in a video which you can find on youtube journeys around London in an open top bus commenting on the city. Rotten, who was born and raised in Finsbury Park reflecting on the close proximity of Irish, Jamaican, Cypriot and Turkish families, during his time growing up in Finsbury Park, states “The concept of racism was always in other areas, I mean we had to grow up and muck it in together it was a melting pot, and it was really hard to go outside of Finsbury Park and have to deal with the concept of “oh you’re one of them Mick’s lot, like it was a bad thing, it was astounding to us.”[viii]
Staying with a punk theme, other trailheads came into view. Looking through the pages of the Punk History of Woodberry Down, a project and book created by Rebecca Binns to capture an alternative history of the estate before its development she reflects: “I remembered a life which, although dystopian at times, was the closest I ever came to unbridled freedom and communality, not to mention a lot of laughs. It felt like a real alternative to the alienating pursuit of money popularised during Thatcher’s decade.”[ix]
These kinds of alternative interpretations are supported by many of the interviews presented in the book and also by historical developments. Time and time again, people who spoke about Finsbury Park painted a radically different picture of the area. It was, and is an area with a dynamic squatting and LGBTIQ+ rights scene, a place home to different communities of political and social resistance and a place where it’s increasingly diverse communities could stage gatherings in the park. Its diversity is its strength. In 1966, Beacon Books was established on Stroud Green Road, in 1972 London Friend was established by Finsbury Park’s Michael Launder. Indeed, anyone researching the history of politics around LGBT+ movements in London would be drawn to Finsbury Park. In the last ten years Haringey Vanguard, a BME LGBTQ+ history project focused on the history and contributions of Haringey based community activists in the 1970s – 1990s, was set up to explore this history. Islington Pride, another heritage project documents the lives of LGBTQI people, organisations and events in Islington was another.[x]
Who Tells the Story?
Clearly then the idea of decline throws up the question of who represents how we experience a place and who gets to speak up for an area. Do we trust the historical accounts that talk about the physical decay of the area and make frequent references to crime? Or do we listen to the accounts that point to the compelling and often contradictory accounts of the safety, vibrancy and dynamism of the park and its surrounding area? Katherine Stansfeld, in a piece written for the Conversation in 2017 gives us some clues. Writing in response to the attack on the Finsbury Park Mosque in 2017, she points to the community coming together to highlight the fact that “these gestures of everyday multiculturalism show that Finsbury Park won’t be divided by an attack on its freedom precisely because its residents celebrate their differences. It is a neighbourhood which doesn’t seek sameness but thrives on variation and refuses to be defined.”[xi]
Such insights reveal the complexity of history and how the legacy of social-economic forces can shape both an area and perceptions of it in often contradictory ways. If we take rough sleeping as an example, we can see this in the recent history of Finsbury Park. Commenting on visible rough sleeping in the area, both Alan Denney and Mark’s contributions to the book highlight that there was little visible rough sleeping in Finsbury Park in the eighties. Mark’s comments on the availability of buildings to squat in highlight a trend amongst the homeless community of self-sufficiency that actually prevented rough sleeping and one we see in the homelessness history books – that of skippering. In 1988, Lord Murray of Epping Forest commenting on homelessness broadly in the Lords stated that “Something like one-third of the single homeless are living in squats and "skippering".[xii]
The practice of skippering, which involves effectively staying on the road and moving place to place is directly derived from a long-standing tradition of movement, migration, labouring and tramping that has existed for centuries. Looking at this today, in the midst of our long-standing housing crisis and squeeze on temporary accommodation we can genuinely make arguments that we need those kinds of options for people now. In his speech though Lord Murray is clear on what needs to be done. Skippering is negative, and he highlights the need Local Authorities to have “money to provide direct access hostels for those who are squatting and living rough.” This kind of centralisation of options, is what we have broadly seen historically and was already established in Finsbury Park by the 1980s. Writing in the Marylebone Mercury in 1984, Anne Grosskurth of Shelter is quoted in saying that Bayswater had overtaken Finsbury Park as having one of the biggest concentration of hostels in the UK. “She estimates that there are about 300 families in 35 hostels in Finsbury.”[xiii] Squatting has also seen wholescale changes and the criminalisation of residential squatting has dramatically impacted the scene putting more pressure on this system. Has it worked out as Lord Murray might have hoped? Today, local newspapers in North London regularly publish articles about the scandals in the quality of temporary accommodation and hostels in the area, which all too often claim the lives of those who have to stay there. Looks at any Homelessness statistics in the last 13 years and it’ll tell a story of rising homelessness, slashed council budgets and system malfunction.[xiv] In June this year, the Local Government Chronicle published an article saying that the homelessness system is on the verge of collapse.[xv]
Clearly, something that was historically criticised can be reappraised in this light.
In Conclusion
It is in this spirit of re-assessing that we present the People’s History of Finsbury Park. If Finsbury Park, in Stansfeld’s words, can’t be defined then we can at least explore.
The pages that follow in the book offer an exploration. In it we explore myths and legends about the areas, untold histories of squatting and personal accounts and poetry from people who live or have lived in the area. Some come from people who have experienced homelessness and others don’t. The pages take us a little beyond the boundaries of Finsbury Park in an attempt to present the texture and nuances of the area. Our focus is often on the late 20th century but at times we’ll go back further. We’ll explore people’s battles with authorities in various guises, homeless festivals that have come and gone, autonomous squatting communities, poetry and much, much more.
We hope you enjoy A People’s History.
A People’s History of Finsbury Park is available from MoH. Check out our free events that we are planning next month (02 and 03 July)
References:
[i] Simon Hemelryk, I remember (Interview with Don McCullin) Readers Digest (2019)
[ii] Jeremy White, Campbell Bunk: The Worst Street in North London between the Wars (1986)
[iii] John Boughton, Woodberry Down, Hackney: ‘The Estate of the Future’ Municipal Dreams Blog (2013)
[iv] Hugh Hayes, A Park for Finsbury (2019)
[v] Haringey Council, Community Profile 4: Harringay and Green Lanes (1982)
[vi] The Finsbury Parker, Issue 107, (2001)
[vii] Peter Harper, Jayne Mooney, Edward Whelan, Jock Young and Michael Pollak, Islington Street Crime Survey Islington Council (1995)
[viii] Johnny Rotten, Johnny Rotten’s tour of London Youtube (2012)
[ix] Rebecca Binns, They’ve taken our ghettos: A Punk History of the Woodberry Down Estate (2018)
[x] Links to the Haringey Vanguard and Islington Pride projects can be found online
[xi] Katherine Stansfeld, Why the Diverse Community of Finsbury Park won’t be divided by terror, The Conversation (2017)
[xii] Lords Chamber, Vol 492 debated on Wednesday 20 January 1988, Hansard
[xiii] Marylebone Mercury, Spare thought for homeless says Shelter, Friday 03 February (1984)
[xiv] The Hackney Gazette and Ham and High have both brought attention in a series of press articles on conditions on hostels in North Hackney. The Brownswood hostel and Shuttleworth hostels have both been a particular focus due to their appalling conditions. More broadly, the ‘pay by night’ accommodation market operated by landlords and letting agencies is a well documented scandal and according to research carried out by Shelter and BBC’s Panorama in 2020, has seen councils spend billions to temporarily house people in sub-standard accommodation.
[xv] Megan Kenyon, Homelessness sector in London ‘On the brink of collapse’, Local Government Chronicle (2023)
Links
Interview with Don McCullin - https://www.readersdigest.co.uk/culture/celebrities/i-remember-don-mccullin
Municipal Dreams - https://municipaldreams.wordpress.com/2013/09/17/woodberry-down-hackney-the-estate-of-the-future
Islington Street Crime Survey - https://islingtoncrimesurvey.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/islington-street-crime-survey-harper-et-al.pdf
Johnny Rotten - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SkUPM_T7FE
The Punk History of Woodberry Down – https://radicalhistorynetwork.blogspot.com/2015/07/theyve-taken-our-ghettos-punk-history.html
Why the Diverse Area of Finsbury Park won’t be divided by terror - https://theconversation.com/why-the-diverse-community-of-finsbury-park-wont-be-divided-by-terror-79721
Local Government Chronicle - https://www.lgcplus.com/services/housing/homelessness-sector-in-london-on-the-brink-of-collapse-mps-hear-18-07-2023/