Nazmia, born in 1979, was part of the group that put on Ladyfest London, a feminist music festival, in 2002 at The Garage in Highbury. The original Ladyfest took place in Olympia, Washington in 2000 and inspired a continuing global movement. Nazmia also curated films at the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival (now BFI ...
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Jean Hart was born in the East End in 1931 and has lived in Kentish Town and its environs for the last 50 years. An actor, singer and educator she shares memories of her King’s Cross, starting with her evacuation on a steam train during WW2. WAR STORY “One little case also labelled” – Jean ...
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Anne Neale, currently the Peer Support & Volunteer Co-ordinator at the Crossroads Women’s Centre, talked to us in May 2018. She spoke about the history of the centre, which began in 1975 as a squat in Drummond Street, near Euston Station. Frequently displaced due to redevelopment and rising rents, the centre later spend 17 happy years ...
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Dr. Julia Pascal is a prize-winning Jewish atheist playwright and theatre director. After training and working as an actor in major theatres including The Royal Court Theatre, Nottingham Playhouse, and The Royal Shakespeare Company, she turned her hand to directing becoming the first woman director at the National Theatre. Her plays focus on politics and ...
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Cllr Nasim Ali was a teenager when the occupation of Camden Town Hall happened. He and his school friends were both bemused and captivated as the events unfolded. It was their elders, friends and family that they saw campaigning for better housing. Lainy Malkani spoke to him about how events unfolded through his young eyes.
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Cllr. Robinson was born in 1937 into a radical left-wing Jewish family in Glasgow. The famous Scottish socialist and trade unionist Keir Hardie was a family friend and Roger’s grandad taught him traditional socialist principles from an early age. His mother was an active campaigner within the Independent Labour Party, and led the Pensioners in ...
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Mahmud Hasan was a part time worker for the Bengali Workers Action Group in 1984. His role was to work with homeless people as well as run a luncheon club for elderly people. After a house fire took the lives of a young family in King’s Cross, the local community mobilised and occupied the Camden ...
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In 1984 Liz Smale, 24 was working for race equality organisation, Camden Committee for Community Relations (CCCR) as a Community adviser. Working closely with the Bengali Workers Action Group, Liz ran advise sessions with the local community, helping with accommodation, racism and work issues. Homelessness was a constant problem. At the time Camden Council was ...
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After the tragic death of a young Bangladeshi family in a house fire in 1984, an occupation of the Camden Town Hall was organised to draw attention to the poor housing conditions families were putting up with at the time. When news spread that a family had died in the fire, Jamila Hasan like so ...
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Sabes Sugunasabesan was working at Camden Committee for Community Relations as a Housing Officer at the time of Occupation ’84. After the tragic death of a young Bangladeshi family in a house fire in 1984, an occupation of the Camden Town Hall was organised to draw attention to the poor housing conditions families were ...
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Helal Abbas worked as a community worker at the Bengali Workers Action Group in 1984 during the homeless occupation of Camden Town Hall. The BWAG as it was known, was initially set up to support restaurant workers in the King’s Cross and Camden area. Very much like the ‘gig’ economy today, the workers at the ...
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Sarah Walker first came across the English Collective of Prostitutes at the North London Polytechnic, where she was studying English, in the early 1980s. In May 2018, Sarah and I sat down to record her memories of the ECP occupation of the Holy Cross Church in King’s Cross in 1982. Sarah talked about the political ...
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Lucy Neal has been ‘making art as if the world mattered’ ever since co-founding the London International Theatre Festival (LIFT) in 1981. LIFT brought participation, pyrotechnics and polyrhythms into the public realm, creating spaces for practitioners who were censored in their own countries. ‘Places remember events’ says Lucy, and Kings Cross was full of them. ...
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Ursula Troche is a writer, ‘train-informed psychogeographer’, performance poet and life model who has played an active role in the politics of women’s and race equality since moving to London in 1991 from her hometown of Löhne, Germany, in 1991. In a locational interview in the grounds of St. Pancras Old Church, Kings Cross she ...
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Errol Lawrence was the Public Engagement Officer at Camden Committee for Community Relations in 1984. He went on to head research at the Runnymead Trust and is now retired. Lainy Malkani spoke to Errol about his involvement in the Occupation ’84 campaign which you can listen to below. Occupation ’84 is the story of Camden’s homeless ...
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Prof. Joanna Zakrzewska confessed she hadn’t noticed the brass owls adorning the doors of the Eastman Dental Hospital (EDH), until one of her patients depicted heavy rocks tumbling through the doors as part of an art collaboration. Learning from patients, attention to detail and imagery are the big themes of my conversation with Joanna. We ...
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Amy Lamé (b. 1971), founder of legendary gay club Duckie, ended up as a resident of King’s Cross when she married a vicar, Jenny. The flat in Bloomsbury came with her wife’s job in the Anglican Church. Amy discovered it once housed orphaned girls from the Foundling Hospital, who were training as domestic servants. The ...
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A podcast opening the door to the Bell, an iconic lesbian and gay pub of the 80s and 90s. Kings Cross. A run down part of London, haunted by addicts, homeless people, sex workers – and queers, drawn there by the music and energy of one pub. The Bell. Situated on Pentonville Road, this shabby ...
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The Poor School was founded in 1986 by actor and director Paul Caister, in order to provide high quality, practical and affordable training for aspiring actors from all backgrounds. Paul has continued his groundbreaking work in the school up until the present day, but after ‘32 splendid years’, the school will be closing down in ...
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Outspoken Socialists Jennie Lazenby was born in 1954, and named after Jennie Lee, a Labour Politician. Her mother was Gloria Lazenby, who served as as a Labour Councillor for Camden from 1986 until 2002, and as Mayor of Camden in 1996. We talked to Jennie in the house she inherited from her mother, after she died ...
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Steve Lake moved to Priory Green Estate in 1979. Tipped off about an empty flat in Grimaldi House, a Dickensian building out of keeping with the rest of the estate, Steve and a few friends decided to make it their home. They broke into the flat ‘in the normal fashion’, and changed the locks to ...
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Jim MacSweeney moved from Ireland to London in 1982 to do a drama course, and found a world that felt 20 years ahead of the place he had left behind.By his own admission, he wonders whether he came for a drama course, or to deal with his sexuality. The move proved to be both a ...
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She represented King’s Cross as a councillor for 22 years and went on to serve three terms as the mayor of Camden, but it could be said Barbara Hughes’ political roots lie in the Hillview Estate. It was here she brought up her three sons in the 1950s and ‘60s and where as a young ...
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It isn’t Somers Town Father Philip Dyson grew up in the north of England, and moved to Somers Town in 1980. He spent 15 ½ years there, as the Vicar at St Mary’s Church. A community of “old Cockneys” inhabited the Somers Town that Father Philip remembers. There was no development around either of the ...
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