Exhibition: ‘Conditions of Living: Home and Homelessness in London’s East End’ at Four Corners, London

Exhibition dates: 30th June – 2nd September 2023

Photographers: the exhibition features work by Katalin Arkell, Peter Arkell, Cyril Arapoff, Chris Bethell, A.R. Coster, Firmin, John Galt, David Granick, Bert Hardy, Brian Harris, Hawkins, Nick Hedges, David Hoffman, Tom Learmonth, Steve Lewis, Jack London, Marketa Luskacova, Anthony Luvera, MacGregor, Monty Meth, Douglas Miller, Moyra Peralta, Ray Rising, Reg Sayers, Andrew Scott, Alex Slotzkin, Norah Smyth, Humphrey Spender, Andrew Testa, Paul Trevor, Edith Tudor-Hart, as well as several unknown photographers.

Jack London Collection (American, 1876-1916)
People of the Abyss
1902
© Huntington Library, San Marino, California

1902: a policeman disturbs a rough-sleeping youth in Whitechapel, one of many photographs by the American author Jack London that illustrated his book The People of the Abyss.

Another insightful, socially-minded (ie. actively interested in social welfare or the well-being of society as a whole) exhibition from Four Corners who champion creative expression, education and empowerment and build upon almost 50 years of radical, socially-engaged approaches to photography and film.

“This timely exhibition draws shocking comparisons with today’s housing precarity, high rents and homelessness. From Victorian slums and the first model estates, to the mass postwar council house construction and the subsequent demolition of many tower blocks, it ends with post-Thatcherite gentrification and its impact on affordable housing.” (Press release)

I have included bibliographic information on the artists in the posting where possible.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

PS. For more information on slum photography and urban poverty please see the essay by Sadie Levy Gale. “Exposed,” on the AEON website 21 August 2023 [Online] Cited 31/08/2023

Many thankx to Four Corners for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Images of housing, homelessness and resistance in London’s East End

Our summer exhibition explores how photographers have represented conditions of housing and homelessness for over a century. From workhouses to slums, damp council flats to Thatcherite gentrification, images reveal the systemic poverty that East Londoners have endured and how the medium of photography has been used to campaign for change. We are delighted to feature new artwork by Anthony Luvera, which addresses economic segregation in Tower Hamlets’ housing developments, a phenomenon known as ‘poor doors’. Created with a forum of local residents, this examines the rise of market-driven ‘affordable’ housing and the state of social housing today.

This exhibition is supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England and the National Lottery Heritage Fund. We particularly thank Getty Images Hulton Archive and Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives for their generous contributions which made this exhibition possible. We are grateful for the kind support of Report Digital.

Text from the Four Corners website

Jack London (American, 1876-1916)
Homeless people in Itchy Park, Spitalfields
1902
From People of the Abyss

NOTE: Photograph not in the exhibition

Jack London (American, 1876-1916)
View in Hoxton
1902
From People of the Abyss

NOTE: Photograph not in the exhibition

Jack London (American, 1876-1916)
Homeless women in Spitalfields Garden
1902
From People of the Abyss

NOTE: Photograph not in the exhibition

Not many people know that the famous American author Jack London was also a skilled documentary photographer and photojournalist. He took thousands of pictures over the years from the slums of London’s East End to the islands of the South Pacific.

In 1902 Jack London visited his namesake city London where he took pictures of its people and their everyday life. In the book “The People of the Abyss”, London describes this first-hand account by living in the East End (including the Whitechapel District) for several months, sometimes staying in workhouses or sleeping on the streets. The conditions he experienced and wrote about were the same as those endured by an estimated 500,000 of the contemporary London poor.

Even before, Jack London had talked about a book on the London slums with George Brett, one of his publishers. Thus, the writer knew what he was ought to expect ‘down there’: “He meant to expose the underside of imperialism, the degradation of the workers…”. The “evolutionary Socialist” wanted to find “the Black Hole of capitalism”.

With this preconceived vision in his mind, he disguised himself as an American sailor who had lost his ship and went into the East End taking pictures and experiencing their life. To be more precise, he wandered about Whitechapel, Hoxton, Spitalfields, Bethnal Green, and Wapping to the East India Docks. Jack London disguised as one of the working-class poor and pretended to be one of them, which made it easier for him to get to know the conditions of their everyday life. …

In his 1903 “The People of the Abyss”, the American gives this description of the poor Londoners: “the air he breathes, and from which he never escapes, is sufficient to weaken him mentally and physically, so that he becomes unable to compete with the fresh virile life from the country hastening on to London Town… It is incontrovertible that the children grow up into rotten adults, without virility or stamina, a weak-kneed, narrow-chested, listless breed, that crumples up and goes down in the brute struggle for life with the invading hordes from the country.”

Anonymous. “London’s East End life through the lens of Jack London, 1902,” on the Rare Historical Photos website Nd [Online] Cited 04/08/2023

Jack London (American, 1876-1916)
Whitechapel on a bank holiday
1902
From People of the Abyss

NOTE: Photograph not in the exhibition

Jack London (American, 1876-1916)
Frying Pan alley, Spitalfields
1902
From People of the Abyss

NOTE: Photograph not in the exhibition

Norah Smyth (British, 1874-1963)
A Street in Bow
1914
© Paul Isolani-Smyth

1914: residents of a street in Bow, photographed by the activist and suffragette Norah Smyth. A street in Bow in 1914 where the East London Federation of the Suffragettes (ELFS) took care of children during the first world war. Smyth documented children in Bow through a series of intimate street photographs.

Smyth, a suffragette, socialist and pioneering female photographer was a founding member of the East London Federation of Suffragettes (ELFS) and right-hand woman to Sylvia Pankhurst, who set up the federation in 1914.

Her years of activism included a spell as a prominent member of the Communist Workers’ Party (CWP) during the 1920’s. Her active participation in the international socialist movement came to an end with the dissolution of the CWP. After twelve years in the East End of London, it was time to move on. Smyth decided to join brother Maxwell in Florence, where she took up a post at the British Institute.

Jane McChrystal. “The adventures of Norah Smyth: her life as a suffragette, philanthropist and artist,” on the Roman Road LDN website 22 March 2023 [Online] Cited 04/08/2023

Anonymous photographer
Shadwell Family
1920
© Topical Press Agency, Hulton Archive, Getty Images

1920: a poverty-stricken family make a meal from a loaf of bread in Shadwell, traditionally an area of slum housing where the population lived in closely packed tenements.

Exhibition reveals East End’s history of poor housing and homelessness

Opening at Four Corners Gallery this month, Conditions of Living: Home and Homelessness in London’s East End takes a visual journey from workhouses to slums, damp tower blocks to homeless shelters, exploring how photographers have represented these conditions for over a century. It sheds light on little-known histories: the tenants’ rent strikes of the 1930s, post-war squatting, and ‘bonfire corner’, a meeting place for homeless people at Spitalfields Market for more than twenty years.

This timely exhibition draws shocking comparisons with today’s housing precarity, high rents and homelessness. From Victorian slums and the first model estates, to the mass postwar council house construction and the subsequent demolition of many tower blocks, it ends with post-Thatcherite gentrification and its impact on affordable housing.

The exhibition features new work by the artist Anthony Luvera, which addresses the rise of economic segregation in recent housing developments across Tower Hamlets, a phenomenon commonly known as ‘poor doors’. Also titled Conditions of Living, this socially engaged artwork by Luvera is built upon extensive research into the social, political, and economic contexts behind the rise of market-driven ‘affordable’ housing provision and the state of social housing today, and is created in collaboration with a community forum of local residents who live in the buildings themselves. This new work builds upon Luvera’s twenty-year career dedicated to working collaboratively with people who have experienced homelessness, and addressing issues of housing precarity and housing justice.

Anthony Luvera says: ‘London is one of the world’s last major cities still to ban the practice of allowing property developers to build ‘poor doors’, despite proclamations by successive governments and mayors about stopping the appalling practice. My work with people experiencing homelessness began twenty years ago in Spitalfields. To be back in Tower Hamlets creating this new work about economic segregation in housing developments and the broken social housing system feels urgent, especially at a time when the costs of living crisis has sunk its claws into the lives of ordinary working people.’

Carla Mitchell, Artistic Director at Four Corners says: ‘this is a highly relevant exhibition, given the extortionate London rents which create forms of social cleansing for long established local communities. We were inspired by Four Corners’ own building, which was a Salvation Army working men’s hostel.’

Four Corners

We are a cultural centre for film and photography, based in East London for fifty years. Our exhibitions explore unknown social histories that might not otherwise be told.

Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives

THLHLA holds outstanding resources for the study of the history of London’s East End. Run by the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, collections cover the areas of Bethnal Green, Poplar and Stepney. Explore the changing landscape and lived experiences of individuals and communities in Tower Hamlets through original documents, images and reference books.

Press release from Four Corners

Edith Tudor-Hart (British born Austria, 1908-1973)
Stepney family
1932
© The Estate of W. Suschitzky

1932: portrait of an impoverished family in Stepney. Edith Tudor-Hart was one of the most significant documentary photographers of the period. Closely affiliated with the Communist party, she recorded the conditions of the working class.

Edith Tudor-Hart, née Suschitzky, was one of the most significant documentary photographers working in Britain in the 1930s and 1940s. Born in Vienna, she grew up in radical Jewish circles. Edith married Alex Tudor-Hart, a British doctor, and the pair moved to England. There she worked as a documentary photographer, closely associated with the Communist Party, compiling a remarkable archive of images of working people in London and later, the south of Wales. Although still active in the 1950s, the difficulties of finding work as a woman photographer led eventually to Tudor-Hart abandoning photography altogether.

Bert Hardy (British, 1913-1995)
Bombed East End
1940
© Bert Hardy, Picture Post, Getty Images

1940: a couple carry their salvaged belongings after bomb damage to their home, photographed by photojournalist Bert Hardy, best known for his work for Picture Post

Bert Hardy

If one photographer sums up the spirit and sheer brilliance of the seminal British newsweekly Picture Post, it is Bert Hardy (1913-1995). Alongside Bill Brandt and Don McCullin, former Victoria & Albert curator Mark Haworth-Booth regarded Hardy as one of the three greatest British photojournalists from the genre’s Golden Age. Indeed, Hardy stands alongside Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa and Werner Bischoff as the giants of 20th-century photography.

London born and entirely self-taught, Hardy was one of the UK’s first professionals to embrace the 35mm Leica in favour of a traditional large-format press camera. The smaller camera and faster film suited his instinctual shooting style and allowed him to consistently create something unique even in high-pressure situations. His confidence and courage enabled him to produce some of the most memorable images of the Blitz and postwar England and Europe. An inspiration to a generation of photojournalists, Hardy was often greeted as warmly by his subjects as he was by his peers – so much so one dubbed him the ‘professional Cockney’.

Anonymous. “Bert Hardy,” on the Getty Images Gallery website Nd [Online] Cited 04/08/2023

Monty Meth (British, 1926-2021)
New Houses
1951
© Monty Meth, Topical Press Agency, Hulton Archive, Getty Images

1951: workers stand on the ruins of Trinity church in Poplar, which was destroyed during the Blitz, and overlook new housing built in the wake of slum clearances.

Monty was born above a barber’s shop in Bethnal Green, east London, the youngest of three sons of Millie Epstein, a domestic servant, and Max Meth, a Czech Jewish immigrant who found intermittent work as a bread roundsman and tailor.

Educated at the local Mansford St Central school, Monty learned photography at the Cambridge and Bethnal Green boys’ club, which he credited with rescuing him from teenage pilfering, and at 14 went to work as a messenger for the Fleet Street picture agency Photopress, then on to the Topical Press agency. He returned after second world war service in the Navy to become a prize-winning photographer and photojournalist.

Martin Adeney. “Monty Meth obituary,” on The Guardian website Sun 28 Mar 2021 [Online] Cited 03/08/2023

David Granick (British, 1912-1980)
Stifford Estate
1961
Retouched by Chris Dorley-Brown
© Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives

1961: the now demolished Stifford Estate in Tower Hamlets, built in the late 1950s to replace slum housing, and comprised of three 17-storey tower blocks. Photographed by lifelong Stepney resident David Granick, who recorded the East End pre-gentrification.

David Granick (1912-1980) was a photographer who lived in the East End his whole life. His colour slides laid untouched until 2017 when a local photographer, Chris Dorley-Brown, examined them at Tower Hamlets Local History Library & Archives. These images capture the post-war streets of Stepney, Whitechapel, Spitalfields and beyond in the warm hues of Kodachrome film at a time when black and white photography was the norm.

David Granick was born in 1912 and lived his whole life in Stepney. A Jew, a keen photographer and a long-serving member of the East London History Society, he gave lectures on various local history themes illustrated with colour slides taken by himself or his fellow members of the Stepney Camera Club. Bequeathed to Tower Hamlets Local History Library & Archives after his death in 1980, where they have been preserved ever since, these photographs show the East End on the cusp of social change.

The London East End In Colour 1960-1980 David Granick 2019 Hoxton Mini Press

David Granick (British, 1912-1980)
Spitalfields Market
1973
Photo restoration by Chris Dorley-Brown
© Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives

David Hoffman (British, b. 1946)
Houses Stand Empty
1973
© David Hoffman

Photojournalist David Hoffman has spent more than 40 years photographing the happenings on the streets of London, with a particular focus on his East End hometown, and with his lens predominantly focused on those less fortunate than most.

His subjects have included the homeless, the addicted, and the enraged, and spanned slums, shelters, and the streets, in good spirits and bad.

‘Really, my work is about oppression,’ he explains, ‘It’s not about class, but how people’s lives are constrained and shaped by society. And that’s most visible at the bottom of society. You and I are constrained, too, but in far less, and far less damaging, ways.’ Besides, he adds, ‘No one’s going to get a feature published on how the middle class is having a tough time.’

What defines his work, Hoffman says, is that ‘I’m always looking for extremes.’

Hoffman’s first photographic training came from a course at the University of York, where, with Chris Steele-Perkins, he set up a Student Union-sponsored darkroom. Steele-Perkins went on to work for Magnum Photos and become their president. In contrast, after two years Hoffman ‘slung the course in at the same time that they slung me’.

He moved back to London in 1969, to the East End in 1970, and worked ‘rubbish jobs’ to support his photography.

‘I did van driving and jobs like that. I would work to save up money, and then take time off to do photography (until my money ran out).’ A polytechnic course helped: ‘It was a poor course and taught me nothing but I had three years being supported on grants so I could really put some effort into my photography’, and squatting ‘meant that I didn’t have to spend my time working to raise the rent and could build my photography into a survivable income.’

Amy Freeborn. “David Hoffman: chaos, riots, slums and the East End,” on the Roman Road LDN website 27 November 2014 [Online] Cited 04/08/2023

Marketa Luskacova (Czech, b. 1944)
Homeless men, Spitalfields
1975
© Marketa Luskacova

1975: homeless men in Spitalfields, photographed by the Czech documentarist Markéta Luskačová.

Marketa Luskacova’s work is marked by her own lived experiences. Themes like cultural identity and social behaviour are at the core of her candid photographs. Born in Prague in 1944 during the communist regime, Luskacova graduated from Charles University with a degree in Sociology in 1967 and studied Photography at FAMU (1967-1969). Around this time, she began to take photographs as a means to document local traditions in some of the poorest communities of Slovakia.

She moved to London in 1975, where she continued her career as a photographer. She began to document her surroundings, producing captivating portraits of everyday life in some of the least privileged areas of the city. She felt particularly drawn towards the cultural atmosphere of Brick Lane and Spitalfields street markets, where she used to buy her own groceries.

‘I was poor and I needed to do my shopping there as it was the cheapest place to buy things. I could identify with the people in Brick Lane because they were immigrants and they were in need of cheap goods. Once I had done my shopping, I would leave my bag with a stall holder while I took my photographs.’

In her series London Street Markets, Luskacova documents daily life in the city, capturing powerful and emphatic portraits of its people and their traditions and offering a glimpse into the diverse cultural fabric of London East End’s society in the seventies.

‘I don’t go to Brick Lane regularly anymore, sometimes six months pass between one visit and another … I photographed what I saw there and what I thought it was good to record, be it a face or a smile, an animal or a shoe. I believe in the evidential quality of photography, and I know that unless things are done in a visually interesting way they are not remembered.’

Anonymous. “Artist Profile: Marketa Luskacova,” on the Arts Council Collection website Nd [Online] Cited 04/08/2023

Tom Learmonth (British, b. 1955)
Usher Rd Bow, Tower Hamlets
1976
© Tom Learmonth

1976: children play on rubble on waste ground on Usher Road, Tower Hamlets.

Born in Liverpool but brought up in England, Wales, India and Australia, he studied on the first BA degree in photographic arts in the UK, at the Polytechnic of Central London. “There I developed a social and political view of what photography could and should do,” he says. “My work concentrated on the community in the East End of London. After graduating I worked in community photography projects in the East End and freelanced as a photojournalist in the wide sense of the word; I wrote as well as photographed.”

Tom Learmonth (British, b. 1955)
Mrs Baldwin, Mansford Street Estate, Bethnal Green
1978
© Tom Learmonth

1978: Mrs Baldwin on the balcony of her flat on the Mansford Street Estate, Bethnal Green. The estate of more than 700 homes was built over 20 years from 1957.

Andrew Testa (English, b. 1965)
Bailiffs move along rooftops towards protesters as they evict Claremont Road on the route of the M11 motorway
1994
© Andrew Testa

1994: bailiffs move along rooftops towards protesters as they evict occupants of Claremont Road on the route of the M11 motorway, prior to the demolition of the houses.

Anthony Luvera (Australian, b. 1974)
Assisted Self-Portrait of Ruben Torosyan
2004
© Anthony Luvera

2004: assisted self-portrait of Ruben Torosyan by Anthony Luvera. Luvera started the project in 2001, helping homeless people to document their lives and experiences.

Anthony Luvera (born 1974) is an Australian artist, writer and educator, living in London. He is a socially engaged artist who works with photography on collaborative projects, which have included working with those who have experienced homelessness and LGBT+ people. Luvera is an Associate Professor of Photography at Coventry University… Luvera has worked extensively with people who have experienced homelessness. Many of these projects use his “assisted self-portrait” methodology, where the subject of the photograph, assisted by Luvera, makes and selects the pictures.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Photographs and Assisted Self-Portraits

Photographs

I had never wanted to photograph homeless people before. I’d read the (de)constructive writings by photo critics on ‘others’, poverty and representation. I knew about the complexities of the find-a-bum school of photography trounced by Martha Rosler. So in December 2001, when it was put to me by a friend to get involved as a photographer at Crisis Open Christmas, the annual event for homeless people in London, the invitation threw me. “I’d much prefer to see what the people I met would photograph.”

Over the following months, the conversation with my friend about photography and homelessness bounced louder in the back of my head. I became extremely interested in how homeless people have been represented and in questions about the process of representation itself. To what degree could the apparently fixed proximities between photographer, subject and camera be dismantled and reconfigured? How could a ‘subject’ become actively involved in the creation of a representation? What use, if any, would all this serve in the meanings offered in the final presentation?

I sourced 1,000 cameras and processing vouchers, and spent every day and many late nights at the following Crisis Open Christmas…

Between 25 and 40 people dropped in to each following weekly session. Around a big communal table, we gathered to look at the photos, to show and tell the stories held in the images, and to drink endless cups of tea. The sessions were high-energy, swarming with vibrant personalities. The youngest participant was 19 and the oldest was nearing 90. Different people got involved for different reasons. Some wanted to make snapshots of their special times, favourite places, friends and family. While others had ideas about art and concepts to explore with photography. I explained how to use the cameras and listened to each participant’s ambitions, encouraging everyone to simply go and do it. I never brought along photography books or showed my own photographs, nor did I tell any of the participants how or what to photograph. When looking at the photographs I asked each participant to pull out their favourites, or the images that best represented what they wanted to show. With permission I took scans of these photographs and held the negatives in a file. Release forms and licenses were provided, written especially for the project by specialist intellectual property copyright lawyers. Permission was not always given, which was always completely respected.

I never asked why anybody was homeless. Though over time stories came out with the photographs. In the four years the sessions have taken place I have worked with over 250 people. Every person I’ve met has a very different and particular story to tell. Some are entirely abject, while others are remarkable for their ordinariness. All are compelling in their own way. And while there may be commonalities between the experiences of particular individuals, not one situation of any participant could be seen as being broadly representative of the cause or experience of homelessness.

Ruben Torosyan

Ruben Torosyan left Georgia in the late 1980’s when the country was still under harsh Soviet rule. Not issued a birth certificate and unable to get a passport, Ruben was determined to get to the capitalist West to create a better life for himself. He spent over five years traveling across Europe attempting to obtain political asylum in over 15 different countries. In every place he was unsuccessful, largely for the same bureaucratic reasons, boiling down to the incredible fact that Ruben has absolutely no official way of proving who he is or where he comes from. In Spain Ruben smuggled himself on to a shipping freight container. Squished in with bottles and bags for his excrement, and packets of biscuits to eat, he travelled for 35 nights in complete darkness to get to New York. After failing to get legal rights to remain there, and escaping detainment, he struggled on the streets of Brooklyn in conditions worse than back home in Georgia. After two years, determined not to go back to Georgia, Ruben did the same shipping container trip to Ireland to get to London, where shortly after we met.

Ruben came to the sessions with a very clear idea about what he wanted to use the cameras to photograph in making his contribution to the archive; the discrepancy between what he expected London to be and what, in his experience, it actually was. Ruben’s depictions of dirty, litter strewn streets (serendipitously replete with the newspaper headline, “I Feel Used”), a naked man with mental health issues running down the road, people begging and a poor woman walking by without shoes, are for him, depictions of the filthy, hostile, brutal and ugly place that is London. Where there is “no mercy and the food is rubbish”.

Anthony Luvera. “Photographs and Assisted Self-Portraits,” in Source, Issue 47 2006 published on the Anthony Luvera website [Online] Cited 03/08/2023 (with permission of the author)

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Exhibition: ‘Brick Lane 1978: The Turning Point’ at Four Corners, London

Exhibition dates: 10th June – 10th September 2022

Paul Trevor (British, b. 1947)
Hyde Park, London W2, 14 May 1978. Altab Ali’s coffin departs for Downing Street
1978
Gelatin silver print
© Paul Trevor

1977-1978 were tumultuous years in Britain. In 1977 Queen Elizabeth II celebrated her Silver Jubilee but the disaffection and alienation of large sections of society were evidenced in the numerous riots, strikes and protests that spread across the country. There were many “youth cultural movements in the late 1970s in the UK – namely skinheads, punks, and soulboys – along with the social, political, and cultural tensions between them.” Racism and homophobia were rife in both West Indian and white British communities.

Punk ruled the airwaves and the streets, the “Yorkshire Ripper” was running amok and undertakers went on strike in London, leaving more than 800 corpses unburied. “On 7 June, Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren and the record label Virgin arranged to charter a private boat and have the Sex Pistols perform while sailing down the River Thames, passing Westminster Pier and the Houses of Parliament. The event, a mockery of the Queen’s river procession planned for two days later, ended in chaos. Police launches forced the boat to dock, and constabulary surrounded the gangplanks at the pier. While the band members and their equipment were hustled down a side stairwell, McLaren, Vivienne Westwood, and many of the band’s entourage were arrested.”1

On the 13th August 1977, the Battle of Lewisham took place took place, “when 500 members of the far-right National Front (NF) attempted to march from New Cross to Lewisham in southeast London and various counter-demonstrations by approximately 4,000 people led to violent clashes between the two groups and between the anti-NF demonstrators and police.”1 On the 30th January 1978, then opposition leader Margaret Thatcher says that many Britons fear being “swamped by people with a different culture”.

And on the 4th May 24-year-old Bengali leather garments worker Altab Ali is murdered in East London in a racially motivated attack which mobilises the British Bangladeshi community to protest. These photographs pay tribute to the activists who mobilised around the rallying cry of justice that followed.

Socio-documentary photographers like Paul Trevor are vital in recording the roiling emotions and feelings of people during periods of great stress, protest and change. What is striking about his documentary photographs of the local Bengali community’s mobilisation against racist violence and institutional police racism is their power and directness – the grim determination of the people and their anger against what was and had been happening to them for a very long time comes across in the photographs with visceral force, perhaps even their anger against being photographed as well. The looks of defiance aimed at the camera lens is an act of defiance toward racism itself – no more they are saying. Never again!

We can see it in they eyes of the elderly gentleman in shirt and tie (with the protective, open hand across his chest) and the women at right in the photograph Adler Street, London E1, 14 May 1978. The start of the march behind Altab Ali’s coffin from Whitechapel to Hyde Park, organised by the Action Committee Against Racial Attack (ACARA) (1978, above); we can observe it in the stare of the man underneath the placard at left in the photograph Hyde Park, London W2, 14 May 1978. Rally following the march behind Altab Ali’s coffin from Whitechapel, organised by the Action Committee Against Racial Attacks (ACARA) (1978, below); and we can feel it in the gaze of the man at right in the photograph Leadenhall Street, London, 14 May 1978. Thousands of Bengalis follow the coffin of Altab Ali from Whitechapel to Hyde Park, organised by the Action Committee Against Racial Attacks (ACARA) (1978, below). We can feel the emotion, outrage, and passion in all of these photographs. We are human beings and we don’t deserve to be treated like animals…

Today, arm in arm, we still need to march to protect our freedoms and rights as human beings. And we still need photographs to document our resistance toward right wing ideology, discrimination and racism. Which reminds me – in the recent Commonwealth Games, “In 35 out of the 56 Commonwealth nations homosexuality is considered a crime, with some countries still punishing it with the death penalty… Seven Commonwealth nations have a maximum penalty of life imprisonment for being gay.”3 Still this, in the 21st century. It’s barbaric. And none of this hiding behind the cloak of religion and religious dogma … for religion is just a salve to the conscience of the unconscionable.

Brothers, we need to protest against discrimination and racism of any form around the world.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

1/ Anonymous. “Silver Jubilee of Elizabeth II,” on the Wikipedia website Nd [Online] Cited 21/08/2022

2/ Anonymous. “Battle of Lewisham,” on the Wikipedia website Nd [Online] Cited 21/08/2022

3/ Benjamin Butterworth. “Commonwealth Games 2022: Tom Daley and protesters criticise anti-gay laws in 35 Commonwealth countries,” on the iNews website, July 28, 2022 [Online] Cited 21/08/2022

Many thankx to Four Corners for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

“I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.”

Martin Luther King Jr.

“Tolerance, inter-cultural dialogue and respect for diversity are more essential than ever in a world where peoples are becoming more and more closely interconnected.”

Kofi Annan

“In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist. We must be anti-racist.”

Angela Davis

“Freedom is never given; it is won.”

A. Philip Randolph

On display at Four Corners: an exhibition of photographs by Paul Trevor, celebrating east London’s Bengali activists of 1978.

This exhibition reveals the dramatic events which were sparked by the racist murder of Altab Ali, a 24-year-old Bengali leather garments worker, and pays tribute to the activists who mobilised around the rallying cry of justice that followed.

Local East End photographer Paul Trevor documented how members of the local Bengali community endured racial abuse as a constant factor of everyday life, and the moment at which they mobilised against racist violence and institutional police racism. The exhibition brings together 75 of Trevor’s photographs for the first time, alongside oral history recordings by original activists.

The show marks the culmination of a major heritage project led by Four Corners and Swadhinata Trust, in partnership with Paul Trevor. With the help of volunteers and original activists, the project is creating a record of this watershed moment as told by local people. The exhibition, alongside project oral history interviews, short films and podcasts, will be available as a touring show, and will be lodged at the Bishopsgate Institute Archives.

Text from the Four Corners website

Altab Ali Day is held each year on 4 May. It commemorates the racist murder of a young Bengali man in 1978 and the transformative events that followed. East London’s Bengali community mobilised with mass demonstrations, meetings and sit-down protests. Their actions were a turning point in resistance against racism and discrimination in Britain.

Photographer Paul Trevor captured the dramatic events of that year. Guided by these photographs, Four Corners and Swadhinata Trust are working with local volunteers to record the memories of people involved at the time, creating a vital record of this watershed moment.

Paul Trevor (British, b. 1947)
Adler Street, London E1, 14 May 1978. The start of the march behind Altab Ali’s coffin from Whitechapel to Hyde Park, organised by the Action Committee Against Racial Attack (ACARA)
1978
Gelatin silver print
© Paul Trevor

“On the week after that murder had taken place, maybe … six or 7,000 people, all different backgrounds, came to the park. And we walked behind his coffin in a black… van… We walked to Downing Street to protest and appeal for help. That was an extraordinary gathering of people from different backgrounds, from the mosque, from the churches, all sorts of people, different politics, Anti-Nazi League then joined us, but it was done at no notice, very just quickly from the heart. And it was yes, an important turning point I think.”

Dan Jones

“It was cold and wet and horrible, and a lot of people went home before we left Altab Ali Park as it is now… it was you know predominantly Bangladeshis that went, a lot of the men who’d normally be working but would have Sunday off were on it. It was quite remarkable like that… there was a great sense of solidarity in that.”

Claire Murphy

Paul Trevor (British, b. 1947)
Hyde Park, London W2, 14 May 1978. Rally following the march behind Altab Ali’s coffin from Whitechapel, organised by the Action Committee Against Racial Attacks (ACARA)
1978
Gelatin silver print
© Paul Trevor

Paul Trevor (British, b. 1947)
Downing Street, London SW1, 14 May 1978. Bengali delegation outside No 10 after delivering Petition
1978
Gelatin silver print
© Paul Trevor

The hard facts about the resistance movement of the 1970s in East London are that different umbrella organisations at different periods of time were formed to mount the resistance movement in the 1970s in East London. It was never ever a national organisation and certainly not an individual, but the local community groups who mobilised the Bangladeshi community to mount the resistance movement. When the community was under attack by the far-right National Front (NF), we looked to the authority to protect us from the vicious racist attacks. However, the police turned a blind eye to the situation. Various local Bangladeshi organisations and the anti-racist individuals felt the necessity of forming an umbrella organisation to protect the community from racist attacks. The first such umbrella organisation was the ‘Anti Racist Committee of Asians in East London’ (ARCAEL). The ARCAEL organised a mass meeting at the Naaz cinema Hall in the middle of Brick Lane on 12th June 1976 and convinced the Bangladeshi community that we could not rely on the authorities to protect us and we had to fight back and defend ourselves. ARCAEL organised vigilante groups and confronted the NF thugs who would run their stall at the corner of Bethnal Green Road and Brick Lane every Sunday to sell their filthy propaganda literature and to recruit new members. The police took notice of these confrontations. However, this resulted in increasing numbers of arrests of the Asians. At one point the police told us that whichever group went to the spot first would be allowed to have their presence. We started mobilising ourselves early in the morning and the NF tried to be there before us. We then decided to start gathering at the corner of Brick Lane and Bethnal Green Road on Saturday evenings and kept on occupying the spot overnight.

It was the entire community under the leadership of ARCAEL engineered the resistance movement in East London in the 1970s.

After Altab Ali was brutally murdered on 4th May 1978, the Bangladeshi community vowed to stamp out racist attacks once and for all. We took to the street and we shouted slogans, “Enough is Enough” “Come What May, We Are Here to Stay.” “Here to Stay, Here to Fight” “Black and White Unite and Fight”. Immediately, after the death of Altab Ali, another umbrella organisation, “Action Committee Against Racial Attacks” (ACARA), was formed for the specific purpose of organising a national demonstration. In just 10 days preparation, ACARA successfully organised a National Demonstration to highlight the lack of police action to protect the victims of racial attacks in East London. We marched from Brick Lane to Hyde Park for a rally and then went to Downing Street to give a petition to the Prime Minister demanding a full investigation into the police handling of racist attacks in East London and more protection of immigrants. The petition was given by the chair of the ACARA, Mr Taibur Rahman who was accompanied by the General Secretary, Jamal Hasan and five other committee members, namely Shiraz Uddin, Shoeb Chowdhury, Gulam Mustafa, Akikur Rahman and Zia Uddin Lala.

One can see the news coverage with a photograph in front of 10 Downing Street in the East London Advertiser, dated 19th May 1978. This is available in the Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives, 277 Bancroft Rd, London E1 4DQ (near the Queen Mary University). Two days before the national demonstration, ACARA issued a press release which appeared in the East London Advertiser on 12 May 1978, “… In a joint statement, committee members Taibur Rahman, Jamal Hasan and Shiraz Uddin told the Advertiser: ‘This march condemns the death of Altab Ali. It has been called to publicise what is happening to Asians in East London so that everyone can learn of the attacks which make us daily victims…'”

From these two newspaper articles, it is obvious that it was the umbrella organisation ACARA which mobilised the community and organised the national demonstration. There were a few more umbrella organisations since 1978. Hackney and Tower Hamlets Defence Committee was another important umbrella organisation which organised a one day strike by the Asian and black workers in East London and had a sit-in protest in front of the Bethnal Green Police station demanding the release of some of our members who were arrested in the demonstration. The police had to give in to our demand and released the three of our members arrested earlier.

Jamal Hasan. “The big lie,” on the Altab Ali Foundation website May 2019 [Online] Cited 05/08/2022

Paul Trevor (British, b. 1947)
Leadenhall Street, London, 14 May 1978. Thousands of Bengalis follow the coffin of Altab Ali from Whitechapel to Hyde Park, organised by the Action Committee Against Racial Attacks (ACARA)
1978
Gelatin silver print
© Paul Trevor

Exhibition reveals a dramatic struggle for justice in east London A major exhibition of photographs by Paul Trevor documents a dramatic struggle for justice.

Following the racist murder of Altab Ali in May 1978, east London’s young Bengali community took to the streets in protest. Four Corners’ new exhibition, Brick Lane 1978: The Turning Point, brings together seventy of Paul Trevor’s images alongside accounts of pioneering activists, to produce a powerful narrative of the time.

The show marks the culmination of a major heritage project led by Four Corners and Swadhinata Trust with a dedicated group of volunteers, and who have interviewed many people involved in these momentous events. The exhibition pays tribute to a generation whose actions changed the course of civil rights in the UK.

Julie Begum, Chair of Swadhinata Trust, said, “It is important to commemorate Altab Ali Day to remember the racist violence the Bengali community faced in the East End of London, and to celebrate the community’s united defence to defeat the evils of racism.” Paul Trevor said: “They say a photo is worth a thousand words. But sometimes, as in this case, words are essential. This project is an opportunity to add the voices of those who made history to the images of that story.” Carla Mitchell, Artistic Development Director at Four Corners said: “This history is highly relevant today, with an increase of racist attacks and violence making the headlines. Thanks to National Lottery players we will be able to ensure that this powerful heritage is made publicly accessible for a wide audience of current & future generations.”

Historical background

1978 began with opposition leader Margaret Thatcher on ‘World in Action’ television programme saying that many Britons feared being “rather swamped by people with a different culture.” Her comments were seen as a direct appeal to would-be National Front voters in working class neighbourhoods. Racist violence was endemic in east London, and particularly around Brick Lane recently arrived Bengali migrants worked in the local rag trade, as had the Jews before them.

The National Front’s newspaper pitch at Brick Lane’s Sunday morning market attracted skinheads who harassed the local Bengali community. They were a target for far-right groups, who wrongly blamed them for high unemployment and bad housing. East London has always been a haven for migrants, from the French Huguenots fleeing 17th century religious persecution, to the Irish poor of the 19th century, and Jews escaping Cossack pogroms in Russia and Poland. It also has an equally long history of racist violence and resistance to it. Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists tried to march east to the docks in 1936, but were stopped by Jews, Irish dockers and communists in the famous ‘Battle of Cable Street’.

Altab Ali’s murder on the night of the May 1978 local elections in which 41 National Front candidates stood, marked a turning point for the Bengali community. 7,000 people marched behind his coffin to a rally in Hyde Park, then to Downing Street where they handed in a petition demanding police protection. That year young Bengali people mobilised in a community-led, anti-racist struggle which brought about a radical social transformation both locally and far beyond.

Anti-racist protests against the electoral threat of the far right National Front party were supported by a grass-roots, multi-cultural movement – Rock against Racism – which held open-air concerts in nearby Victoria Park, headlined by The Clash, Steel Pulse and Tom Robinson. Community protest and music radicalised a generation, and helped destroy National Front support.

Local photographer Paul Trevor documented the dramatic events of the era in over 400 photographs, many of which will be on show for the first time in this exhibition. His photographs show how the local Bengali community endured racial abuse as a constant factor of everyday life, and how they united to end violence and institutional racism. Trevor was also a member of the Half Moon Photography Workshop collective, whose work focused on socially-committed photography. Some of his images were covered in their Camerawork magazine: Exhibition Poster for Brick Lane 1978 A Community Under Attack; Review of the exhibition Brick Lane 1978. A community under attack.

By the end of 1978, the National Front was forced to leave its headquarters near Brick Lane, though far-right racist attacks in east London persisted into the 1990s. To this day the name Altab Ali remains linked with the struggle against racism and for human rights in London’s East End.

Press release from Four Corners, London

Paul Trevor

Trevor was born in London (b. 1947) and grew up on a kibbutz in Israel. He studied at the National Film & Television School, and was a founder member of Camerawork, the UK’s first radical photo magazine. In 1973, together with the photographers Chris Steele-Perkins and Nicholas Battye, he formed the Exit Photography Group. Their largest project, Survival Programmes documented life in the inner cities, both in photographs and recorded interviews over a period of six years. Works from the project were shown at the Side Gallery, Newcastle in 1982 and brought together in a book; the photographs here are drawn from this project. The works were as much about documenting the squalor of the inner cities, as they were about recording the process of poverty – inadequate housing, unemployment, overcrowding, illness and old age. The Exit archive is now housed and administered by the LSE.

Paul Trevor (British, b. 1947)
New Road, London E1, June 1976. Demonstration organised by ARCAEL (Anti Racist Committee of Asians in East London)
Left: Chomok Ali Noor. Centre: Mala Sen
1976
Gelatin silver print
© Paul Trevor

“… the Bangladeshi workers who used to work in sweatshops by and large in the East End, experienced a lot of what they called Paki bashing… People would just for fun… they would beat isolated people walking on the streets.”

“And there was of course, the death of Altab Ali which caused the huge huge meeting, which of course we went to the community centre and we said we ought to call a protest and get the government to see that this stops because the police are not paying any attention… So from the Altab Ali meeting from the meeting of Anti-Racist Committee of Asians in East London, we called it ARCAEL… huge meeting in a cinema in Brick Lane. And when we called the meeting, we thought we’d get you know fifty people – thousands of people turned up, the cinema was full, and the entire Brick Lane was packed with people listening through loudspeakers outside… and the emotion poured out, the determination to do something poured out.”

Farrukh Dhondy

Paul Trevor (British, b. 1947)
Whitechapel Road, London E1, June 1976. Demonstration organised by ARCAEL (Anti Racist Committee of Asians in East London)
1976
Gelatin silver print
© Paul Trevor

The banner at left refers to Enoch Powell (British, 1912-1998), “politician, classical scholar, author, linguist, soldier, philologist, and poet. He served as a Conservative Member of Parliament (1950-1974) and was Minister of Health (1960-1963) then Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) MP (1974-1987)…

Powell attracted widespread attention for his “Rivers of Blood” speech, delivered on 20 April 1968 to the General Meeting of the West Midlands Area Conservative Political Centre. In it, Powell criticised the rates of immigration into the UK, especially from the New Commonwealth, and opposed the anti-discrimination legislation Race Relations Bill. The speech drew sharp criticism from Powell’s own party members and the press, and Conservative Party leader Edward Heath removed Powell from his position as Shadow Defence Secretary…

Polls in the 1960s and 1970s showed that Powell’s views were popular among the British population at the time.[35] A Gallup poll, for example, showed that 75% of the population were sympathetic to Powell’s views. An NOP poll showed that approximately 75% of the British population agreed with Powell’s demand for non-white immigration to be halted completely, and about 60% agreed with his call for the repatriation of non-whites already resident in Britain.

The Rivers of Blood speech has been blamed for leading to violent attacks against British Pakistanis and other British Asians, which became frequent after the speech in 1968; however, there is “little agreement on the extent to which Powell was responsible for racial attacks”. These “Paki-bashing” attacks later peaked during the 1970s and 1980s.

Powell was mentioned in early versions of the 1969 song “Get Back” by the Beatles. This early version of the song, known as the “No Pakistanis” version, parodied the anti-immigrant views of Enoch Powell.

On 5 August 1976, Eric Clapton provoked an uproar and lingering controversy when he spoke out against increasing immigration during a concert in Birmingham. Visibly intoxicated, Clapton voiced his support of the controversial speech, and announced on stage that Britain was in danger of becoming a “black colony”. Among other things, Clapton said “Keep Britain white!” which was at the time a National Front (NF) slogan.

In November 2010, the actor and comedian Sanjeev Bhaskar recalled the fear which the speech instilled in Britons of Indian origin: “At the end of the 1960s, Enoch Powell was quite a frightening figure to us. He was the one person who represented an enforced ticket out, so we always had suitcases that were ready and packed. My parents held the notion that we may have to leave.”

Whilst a section of the white population appeared to warm to Powell over the speech, the author Mike Phillips recalls that it legitimised hostility, and even violence, towards black Britons like himself.

In his book The British Dream (2013), David Goodhart claims that Powell’s speech in effect “put back by more than a generation a robust debate about the successes and failures of immigration”.

“Just when a discussion should have been starting about integration, racial justice, and distinguishing the reasonable from the racist complaints of the white people whose communities were being transformed, he polarised the argument and closed it down.”

Text from the “Enoch Powell” and “Rivers of Blood speech,” on the Wikipedia website

Paul Trevor (British, b. 1947)
Outside police station, Bethnal Green Road, London E2, 17 July 1978. Sit down protest
Bengali Youth Movement Against Racism sit-down protest outside Bethnal Green Police Station, 17 July 1978
1978
Gelatin silver print
© Paul Trevor

“I thought Britain would love us. But in fact it was the opposite, they hated us. So the reason I never had my childhood teenage I was frightened. I was living in fear. We never had a place to go to apart from Brick Lane.”

“… people got beaten up in streets, people used to get mugged… after work coming home by racists. Then we came into the realisation that we… have to fight back. Then all some of the young teenager we named we set up an organisation called Bangladesh Youth Front.”

“… 1978, I was 18 or 19 at the time… Then I came to know the name of Altab Ali… We organised a demonstration to march from Whitechapel St Mary’s Churchyard to Hyde Park Corner… And that was the day gave us the strength after seeing all these people supported us. All these people was chanting. ‘Here to stay. We are here, here to stay’… and there was… slogans saying ‘black and white, unite and fight. We are black, we are white, we are united.'”

Rafique Ullah

Paul Trevor (British, b. 1947)
Brick Lane, London E1, 17 July 1978. Bangladesh Youth Movement Against racism march
1978
Gelatin silver print
© Paul Trevor

Paul Trevor (British, b. 1947)
Curtain Road, London EC2, 20 August 1978. Hackney & Tower Hamlets Defence Committee & ANL (Anti Nazi League) march
Left to right: Syed Mizan, Jamal Miah, Abdul Manik
1978
Gelatin silver print
© Paul Trevor

“We wanted to defend our community. We wanted to show the world that Altab Ali was a very simple and innocent garments worker who was murdered by racists for no reason. He was simply working in rag trade, and on his way from work to home he was murdered.”

“We marched from Brick Lane to Hyde Park corner, we marched to House of Commons, we marched to major roads in London protesting the murder of Altab Ali.”

“… there were a huge number of people that needs to be recognised by the community, by the next generation, by the future generations, by the history that you are involved. I think these people need some recognition.”

Syed Mizan