Please support my work as a reader-funded investigative journalist, commentator and activist. If you can help, please click on the button below to donate via PayPal.

Six years ago yesterday, a bold experiment in people power — involving challenging political myopia in relation to London’s housing crisis, celebrating the provision of green space for local people, and publicizing environmental concerns regarding clean air and mitigating the worst effects of traffic pollution — came to a violent end in the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, in south east London.

On the morning of October 29, 2018, notorious union-busting bailiffs hired by Lewisham Council undertook a terrifying pre-dawn raid on the handful of campaigners camping out in the garden as part of its two-month occupation, to prevent its destruction as part of an ill-conceived and inappropriate housing development.

Throughout the rest of the day, as the bailiffs tore down trees and structures within the garden, there was a tense stand-off with campaigners, as a line of police protected a line of bailiffs, attempts to reoccupy the garden were violently repulsed, and individual incidents of violence against campaigners — and even passers-by — were widespread.

Read the rest of this entry »

On July 11, 2012, as part of my ongoing project to photograph the whole of London by bike (or see here), I cycled east from Greenwich, intending to travel to the Thames Barrier, on the border of Charlton and Woolwich, but then carrying on, through Woolwich to Thamesmead, the satellite town originally built in the 1960s, and used as the setting for Stanley Kubrick’s notorious film “A Clockwork Orange,” and back via Belmarsh Prison and Plumstead, before rejoining the Thames Path once more for the journey back west, and home.

I’m posting these photos in four sets, and this is the last of the four, following Chasing Clouds in Greenwich: Photos of a Journey East Along the Thames,  Industry and Decay: Photos of a Journey Along the Thames from Greenwich to Woolwich and Lost Glories: Photos of a Thames Journey from Woolwich to Thamesmead (also see here, here and here). In those, I recorded the first stage of the journey, through Greenwich under a brooding, rain-filled sky; the second stage, through New Charlton, past the Thames Barrier and into Woolwich, through industrial estates, and with a diversion to an evocative set of river stairs; and the third, through the housing developments in the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich, and then on to Thamesmead. Read the rest of this entry »

On July 11, 2012, as part of my ongoing project to photograph the whole of London by bike, I cycled east from Greenwich, intending to travel to the Thames Barrier, on the border of Charlton and Woolwich, but then carrying on, through Woolwich to Thamesmead, the satellite town originally built in the 1960s, and used as the setting for Stanley Kubrick’s notorious film “A Clockwork Orange,” and back via Belmarsh Prison and Plumstead, before rejoining the Thames Path once more for the journey back west, and home.

I’m posting these photos in four sets, and this is the third, following Chasing Clouds in Greenwich: Photos of a Journey East Along the Thames and Industry and Decay: Photos of a Journey Along the Thames from Greenwich to Woolwich (also see here and here) in which I recorded the first stage of the journey, through Greenwich under a brooding, rain-filled sky, and then through New Charlton, past the Thames Barrier and into Woolwich, through industrial estates, and with a diversion to an evocative set of river stairs. Read the rest of this entry »