Anthony Barnett, Vinay Chand, Clive Goodwin, Fred Halliday, John Hoyland, John McGrath, Adrian Mitchell, Mike Newton, Layout: Dave Craddock, Mike Newton, Ruth Prentice.
Circulation: Phil Kelly.
Published by THE BLACK DWARF, 79 CROMWELL ROAD, LONDON SW7. Distributed by larcular Lt se raul orecl Moore-Harness Ltd, 11 Lever Street, ECI. London ECà. betrayal. pubs.
years now.
Meanwhile, the mainland too Greenwich.
the 277.
whole hour."
"It's the a joke or a publicity stunt. Certainly, a lot of the islanders are worried about the kind of publicity of Independence" and his Citizen's has received Council's But when a Black Dwarf reporter went down to the island and talked to some of the people, it soon became clear that the present activity the result of 20 years of very real bitterness and The Isle of Dogs is a straggling no-man's land locked in a sharp U-turn of the Thames, and virtually cut off from the rest of London by a com plex of docks and waterways. High brick walls. blank-fronted warehouses and forests of cranes Town: occasionally give way to a bleak-looking housing estate or the remains of the old slum-dwellings. One There are plenty of places to live, and absolutely no amenities besides a few friendly and crowded For a start there are no secondary schools on the Island. A group of dockers we talked to described the problem: Citizens There's a school here- the Glengall Grove School-but it's been standing empty for three The Council shut it down so that they could modernise it. Then they decided they didn't have any money to spend on it, so it's been standing there empty ever since."
the secondary-school children have to go off the Island to get to school. Half primary-age children have go the either up to Mile End or Poplar COCKeTS "through pipe." Tunnel *That means waiting for the bus. Now listen to this: there's only one bus comes down here, It's supposed run every twelve minutes, but sometimes you have to wait for a The feeling of isolation may give the people a sense of community that is unusual for London But most of them resent being so The teenagers want to go up to town in the evenings. But if they do, they can't get back again same with said one dockers. "If me and the Misses want to go up to Mile End for a drink on a Saturday evening, Photo by Jose Nava. 1 enclose p.o./cheque for E1/E2.
Name Address taxi to get back. By the time the pubs have closed, the buses have finished."
The other big problem is shops. 4,000 people have been moved into the new estates on the island in the last three years, but in all that time only one shop has been built. The dockers said that their wives had to shop on the mainland, be cause the shops on the island had such a monoply they could charge extra for everything.
One is soon disillusioned by the sense of community. The deeply bedded working class tradition of localism has even divided the island There are two rival sections, Milwall and Cubitt "Over that bridge they're foreigners," said dockers towards Milwall."
It is in Milwall, the older part of the island. that the tenant's associations are very strong Many are taking part in the GIC rent-strike and this is where Ted Johns draws his support-his Council composed mostly representatives of the more militant Tenants Associations and according wife the tenants are backing him 100%. But other islanders Town where tenants associations have failed to develop, are afraid of looking silly as a result of his activities. More seriously, they are suspicious of the way the Citizens' Council has operated:
We were never consulted," said one of the *We just had these leaflets pushed through our door saying Wait for D-Day, and telling us to be ready to block off the bridges. No-one even knew where they came from.
In spite of that, a lot of them did block off the bridges, and they would be prepared to do a lot more as well. There seems an urgent need for public meetings to explain to the islanders what has been happening, and to give them a chance to decide what should happen next cently all the council tenants had a letter pushed "Listen to this." one docker told us. "Rethrough the door telling them they had to get rid of their pets, because of the regulations. Now of her four dogs- -and that's the Queen!"
had been at the barn fellow Johns methods. but OCLIC amenities, fair enough..
Island. The reason, however, not only the recent publicity that the Isle of Dogs has had.
Parts of the Isle have magnificent views over"desirable town residences."
these new the bourgoisie appears, amenities soon follow But by that time, unless the islanders are still more determined and advanced in their struggle the Isle of Dogs will belong to them even less than it does now With the running down of the docks the Isle of Dogs becomes that prized form of propertyreal estate. The bourgeoisie Will attempt liquidate it. They will disperse the long time residents and bring trendy house "groovers' to enjoy a view of the river that the docks blocked from the working class.
The action in the Isle of Dogs is an extreme combines a high level of political shrewdness example of British proletarian action.
and a fantastic absense of political class conSCIOUSESS combined to Geography generate • a1 and extreme form poverty nave of localism, a declaration of 'independence'. At the same time the residents need to grasp the nature society that allows working class communities to be run down while office buildings push their way into the sky.
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For six months eleven families have been squatting in Arbour House, a block of council flats in Arbour Square, Stepney. The flats were closed two years ago for improvements to be made on them, though they are in far better condition than most flats in the area. Eighteen months later, when nothing had happened local homeless families started to move in. The first four families went in the week after the Endell Sricted. Buat, with the help of the Campaign to Street and expected to violently Clear Hostels and Slums, they have skilfully handled both the police and the council, and at the moment they are living there very comfortably-most of them, for the first time in many cars One reason why the squat has been comparatively untroubled far the hypocritical attitude of the Council. Tower Hamlets is Labour-controlled, and wants to be told her she would have to live in the East End for two years before they would consider ne case-even though she had only been away in Dulwich for six months. At the time her baby was so ill that she walked out of Southern Grove leaving the baby behind her on the doorstep Then began the usual heartbreaking battle with the authorities for somewhere for her and the baby to live. It included a week living (illegally) wiln ner sister at beecnron bunaigs, one or le council hostels. It was enough to make her quite sure she didn't want to stay there. 'Oh God", she said. "They're disgusting'. In the end she found herself a 7 guinea flat consisting of two small rooms, no toilet, no hot water, and an army of rats and mice. There were also petty regulations imposedby the landlady- -like not allowing Marie's new boy-friend into the nouse because ne was coloured. As sne only had the social security to live on, the situatfrom our Belfast correspondent The Black Dwarf 23rd March 1970 Page 3 with Edward Heath at a celebration in London with the lackey tamonn Andrews hovering in the background. Whatever the crisis in
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After a lunch-time drink-John Hoyland, Black Dwarf reporter, talks to some dockers on the Isle of Dogs. our new address is: EDITORIAL COLLECTIVE
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I've got a poodle, see. And I can tell you I won't get rid of my dog unless a certain person gets rid
The feeling of the islanders over the whole affair was summed up by one of the dockers who
The better amenities look like arriving now, as announced in Tower Hamlets plan for the
looking the river. These are being bought up by property developers, and in their wake there will be a rush of middle-class pesple mein hen