You are here: Home / Archives for Bermondsey

We Was All One

February 20, 2012 by 2 Comments

Like most people I could give you a long list of movies I’ve enjoyed over the years. And although I’m not good at remembering song titles, if you pressed me, I could tell you a few good songs that I like (just don’t ask me to sing them!). I could recommend bundles of books and the same would be true of TV programmes.

Without doubt my all time favourite 70s TV documentary is Ken Ashton’s ‘We Was All One’ - I know it’s a bit ‘niche’ even having a favourite 1970s TV documentary but honestly it’s so good that I’ve put it on here in full. It’s an amazing portrait of the old communities that lived around the Bermondsey docks. It gives some insight into the personality of the place in much the same way as meeting someone’s mum and dad helps you understand that person a little bit better.

In the opening scenes there’s an emphasis on community and togetherness. A working class solidarity. But there’s  a wind of change blowing. The beginning of a new Bermondsey landscape as shiny new estates are built to replace the old streets of Victorian terraces and tenement blocks. The irony is that those new blocks, built to replace dilapidated, sub-standard housing, have quickly lost their sheen and are now themselves being demolished to make way for posh flats for posh people. Further destroying that sense of community that was already being lamented in the documentary.

In the second part,  we encounter a great gaggle of old girls in the Marigold Pub just off Tower Bridge Road. There are scenes of the world famous boxing gym upstairs at the Thomas A’Becket on the Old Kent Road.  Here the point is made that the poverty of the place makes ‘fighters of men’. As one of the fighters says: “Bermondsey has won more Lonsdale belts than any other district” whether that is true or not, it highlights the battling qualities of a tough community - poor maybe but proud. Like it said in the opening credits, the boundaries of Bermondsey are drawn in feelings rather than lines on a map.

The theme of poverty is explored some more, with people talking about their need to turn to the pawn-broker just to pay for the most basic things of life. The so called “good old days” weren’t always good. But even in the 1970s, ordinary working people were still living in rat infested slums with three households having to share one toilet. The homes that replaced them may have had all ‘mod-cons’ but the people sitting up in their bright new flats missed the community aspect of their previous life.

“They broke the community when they closed the docks”. People continue to feel the effect of a community fragmented by the loss of such an important industry.

‘Hopping’ (not jumping with one foot!) the labour intensive activity of picking the hops used for making beer is another lost community activity reminisced about in the next section. It seemed like almost the whole area went away for a working holiday on the hop farms of Kent. “In Bermondsey everybody was hop picking”.

Life is changing fast but is it better? They were hard times but they were mostly good times – why were they good times? Surely it’s better now? People are better dressed now, they live in better homes, they are in better health, no one need go without medical care because we have the NHS. People are supported by the welfare state if they need it. It’s certainly changing fast but is it better? Is it progress if it’s at the cost of community?

“I will not cease … till we have built Jerusalem, In England’s green and pleasant land” is sung over images of new flats being built. Flats that are today themselves being demolished. Did they build ‘Jerusalem’ back then – Its safe to say they did not. What they did achieve was to cripple a community. Politicians, architects and local authorities would all do well to learn from the mistakes made back then. We can’t turn back the clock but we can learn from the positives demonstrated by the people of Bermondsey. People who share resources and lives. People who have learnt how to fight for the things they need, people who look out for one another, stand together and laugh together. A people to whom a ‘sense of place’ is still important.

Filed Under: General News Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Bermondsey girl, Bessie Brierley

February 10, 2012 by 2 Comments

Bessie Brierley

Long before Borough Market was a destination of choice for tourists and wannabe Jamie Olivers looking for overpriced Ostrich burgers and organic aubergines; it was, for generations a regular fruit and veg market serving the people of Bermondsey and the surrounding area.

Back in the early years of the 20thcentury, just after World War One, a little fair haired girl by the name of Bessie Brierley could often be found in the market; sometimes with no shoes on her feet and petticoats made from discarded sugar sacks, washed, bleached and sewn by hand by mum. Bessie would be scavenging round for discarded vegetables as the traders were packing up after a long days graft; looking to get a bit more food for the family.

Bermondsey was a tough place to live back then. Bessie and her family lived in a drab tenement block near to London Bridge and the Borough Market. They had just two basic rooms up on the seventh floor. Bessie and her two sisters shared a bed in one room, while her two brothers, mum and her hard drinking father shared the other; which also served as washroom, kitchen and dining room. Bessie Brierley’s dad was often away at sea but his returns just brought more tensions and fresh misery. Drinking, gambling and domestic violence were all too common.

Education was an ill-afforded luxury for working class girls in those days and as soon as she turned fourteen Bessie found employment as a waitress in modest restaurant on Borough High Street. But before work took Bessie away from home, something happened which was to be the beginning of a totally new way of life for her.

Often on a Sunday afternoon Bessie would take herself off to Sunday school. It was something to do and she loved to sing. One Sunday, walking through the park on her way to Sunday school a friend called out to her, “Bess, why don’t you come to our place? We get better treats!” That invitation caused her to turn in the direction of Arthur’s Mission, Bermondsey, one of a number of Shaftesbury Mission Halls established with a special concern for children like Bessie, children suffering from the poverty and deprivation found in inner city London. Arthur’s Mission was attended by a collection of rough, ragged looking youngsters but at ‘Arthur’s’ appearance wasn’t that important. Loving and caring was what mattered. And the treats were nice! Food, clothes, outings, parties and regular stories from the Bible.

Bessie was no different from the other kids, she could swear and steal and fight with the best of them. But something was changing, she found herself beginning to wish she could stop. Her conscience was being stirred.

It wasn’t until four years later that Bermondsey girl Bessie Brierley prayed a simple prayer surrendering her life to Jesus, asking Him to forgive her. Virtually unnoticed on the tough streets of Bermondsey but extravagantly celebrated in heaven.

Who could have thought that from that simple act of committal, this poorly educated girl from the ‘wrong’ part of town would have an impact on the nations, touching hearts on distant continents?

Inspired by visiting missionaries speaking at Arthur’s Mission and strengthened by her growing ability to proclaim the good news in her corner of London’s dockland. Bessie knew that God was calling her to go overseas. But how could she leave her now widowed mother who needed every penny her girls brought home? When she finally spilled out her plans to mum, she got the surprising reply: “When your sister chose to get married I didn’t stand in her way. Why should I stand in yours if you choose another life?”

The members of Arthur’s Mission responded with overwhelming generosity. A fund was opened for ‘Our Own Missionary’ and before she went off to Wales to do her three years missionary training, some friends got enough money together to buy her a dress, a coat and a watch. Some other girls worked overtime to give a little extra money towards Bessie’s fees. As she left the smoke and smells of Bermondsey for the journey through the country lanes of Berkshire and Wiltshire and on to South Wales she constantly fought back the tears; tears of gratitude and of joy and of sadness at leaving behind friends and family.

Studying English Grammar, Psychology and New Testament Greek didn’t come easy to a girl who left school at fourteen but she studied hard, often into the night, determined to succeed.

At the start of the second world war, Bessie was already in the west African nation of Bissau. While the bombs rained down on her beloved Bermondsey, she was seeing people converted to Christ in her modest living room. When she returned home for a short break after her first two years abroad she left behind a group of twenty converts. During her time back in England at the height of the war, Bessie was living out of a suitcase speaking all over the country from Bristol to Colchester, London to Glasgow taking in the Midlands, Yorkshire and the North West. At one meeting in Manchester Bessie wrote that “Several hundred stood up as I made the appeal.”

The years flew by as Bessie continued to serve the peoples of West Africa. Towards the end of 1959 personal and family matters drew her attentions back to London, her mum now eighty-four years old had been moved to Bermondsey Medical Mission Hospital, where she received the kindest care, but was still unconverted. It was evident that she wouldn’t recover and Bessie ached for her mum’s salvation. Bessie had prayed and wept for her old mum through all her years away from home. She’d pleaded with her in person and by letter to come to Jesus. Finally, at the end of her life, with a London City Missionary beside her, Bessie’s mum made her peace with God!

On the morning of 4 February 1969, Bessie left her flat early in the morning to speak at a conference in Glasgow, she was a passenger in a full car as it headed up the dual carriageway. With unexpected suddenness a lorry was in collision with them, spinning the car round onto the other carriageway, pieces of the car were strewn across the road. All but one of the occupants were thrown out onto the road. Bessie who was in the front passenger seat was killed instantly.

Bessie’s friend Betty Macindoe penned a heartfelt tribute the day after her death.

What do I remember?/The happy laugh/that echoed till a thousand hearts replied/the tears that chased each other/down warm cheeks/to feel another’s hurt/the radiancy of spirit glowing from the face/of one who loved her Lord with uncommon greatness/the intensity of compassion that moved/ her audience/when the stars shone down on mango trees/on dark faces held in silence/or in the assembly halls of great continents/these things I remember/and give thanks.

All this for a streetwise working class girl born into poverty and hardship, who had to ‘duck and dive’ to put a bit of extra food on the table, who left school at fourteen to earn a few pennies to help her mum out. But a girl chosen by God. A God who had big plans for her. Plans to impact thousands of lives from Bermondsey, to the nation and to the nations. If He can use Bessie Brierley, can’t He also use you? Don’t discount yourself because of your background, or your lack of formal education, or the job you do - and don’t discount others because of theirs.

Filed Under: General News Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

City hope for the future

January 18, 2012 by 1 Comment

 

Michael Holland

Towards the end of last year I was contacted by local journalist, Michael Holland who said that he’d like to write a piece about me, City Hope Church and community engagement. Michael Holland is someone I’ve got to know over the last couple of years and we get on really well, I didn’t expect him to do a hatchet job on me so I was happy to agree!

Michael is a fascinating character, as a role model for prisoners, he would certainly be hard to beat. While serving 20 years for armed robbery, he grabbed at the chance to study. He won the Koestler Award, an award which encourages prisoners in the arts; went on to study at Greenwich University and today he’s a teacher, filmmaker, playwright and arts reviewer.

I’d like to recommend one of his documentaries: The rough and ready but poignant “Them Days are Gone”. This short film is the story of the docks as told by former dockworkers and their families. They talk of the hardships, the camaradarie, the good times and the sadness at the dock closures  You can purchase that and some of his other films by visiting bermondsey.biz.

The piece about me and the church was published in this month’s ‘Southwark Weekender’ a supplement to our local newspaper ,the Southwark News.  I’ve reproduced the article here in full (minus the photo of me, which was taken too early on a Saturday morning!)

 

“City hope for the future” by Michael Holland

I FIRST met Paul Brown, a Minister at City Hope Church, when he was researching religion amongst Bermondsey’s White Working Class and immediately warmed to his ordinariness and his open smile. Here was a man who dresses like me, has a not dissimilar background to me and sounds like me. Paul Brown has no time for aitches at beginnings of words; for him the ‘th’ sound is far too much bovver if he finks an ‘eff’ will suffice. He is a man after my own heart.

Paul has been at the Drummond Road church for 17 years and is obviously someone respected and loved by the congregation going by what I have seen on my few visits. It is a respect he has built up through his work in the local Bermondsey community and by utterly believing in what he does.

The Brown family originally hailed from Deptford before moving out to the London-Kent borders and into the building trade: ‘I was a bricklayer,’ he hits me with early on in the interview. Of course, after this bombshell, I had to find out how a builder, whose family were as far away from the church as they possibly could be, becomes a man of God, and found that it was a roundabout conversion that seems to fit in absolutely perfectly with the man I have come to know: ‘In 1984 Denise came home and told me she was going to church the next day, and I honestly thought she had gone mad,’ he tells me with a face that still shows signs of the initial shock. ‘She came back a changed person,’ says Paul, continuing the story of his wife’s conversion, and ‘then she started on me!’ He laughs as he recalls this story. ‘She was more calmer, peaceful, more confident… I was intrigued.’ After some time Paul eventually succumbed to his wife’s offers to go to church. ‘I’d like to say it was a wonderful conversion experience but it weren’t, it was the weirdest thing I’ve ever done in me life and I didn’t really like it.’ For all that, though, it was the people there that hooked Paul Brown into the church. They were so different from his workmates, his drinking buddies and those he went football with, ‘and it was that difference that was enough to make me say: “I don’t know anything about Jesus so I’m gonna find out.”’

From reading The Bible, looking and questioning, Paul came to the conclusion that ‘this stuff makes sense’ and made the decision to give his life to Jesus. I actually prayed for the first time,’ he tells me. ‘I went red with embarrassment even though I was on my own, but asked Jesus for forgiveness for all the things I’ve done wrong – I even named some of the things – Not all of ‘em,’ he adds, ‘otherwise I would’ve been there all night!’ He laughs long and loud at this memory and I laugh with him, thinking of my own misdemeanours. On regaining his composure Paul says that he told Jesus he would follow him for the rest of his life: ‘And I’ve never looked back.’ Paul Brown laughs easily and often and it is no wonder that he has become so popular in his church and in the community. As he makes coffee I look around his living room. I’m not sure if it is minimalist modern, or churchman spartan, though with several deft touches of style and a few bits of classic furniture, I will opt for the former.

On his return I was told how he and others had started churches from scratch out in the Dartford area, and how he doesn’t do ‘High Church’ but has always been involved with the nonconformist wing of religion. I asked how he became a minister and he explains that he did a part-time, two days a month for two years course ‘to get a bit of Theology and some understanding of it, but, to be honest with ya,’ he says, ‘all my training has been on the job, really – Reading the Bible and putting that into practice!’

That practice put him in good stead because he was invited to City Hope Church for his ability in connecting with non-church goers in the community, which he has been doing ever since his arrival in 1994. And whatever it is he does has worked because attendance has risen just about every year of his tenure.

We debated ‘community’ and if it still exists; the pros and cons of gentrification and he became political about social housing, calling the demolition of 3000 flats on the Heygate Estate to give over to private ownership and part-buy, ‘social cleansing’. ‘That changes the community,’ he reasons. He compared the recent street parties down The Blue, which saw people coming together, to the Bermondsey Street Festival: ‘The only thing festival had to do with Bermondsey and Bermondsey people was that it had Bermondsey in the title!’ exclaims this man who was now about to get his teeth into something like a Staff on a poodle in the park. He tells me of plans for celebrating local culture, heritage and tradition before it is totally lost with a Bermondsey History Weekend.

Getting him off his soapbox and back to the job in hand I got him talking about what his church provides: ‘Everything we do is aimed at the community rather than just our congregation, and everything we do is done for nothing, so we don’t charge people at all,’ Paul begins. He listed various clubs and groups that go on at the church, from Baby and Toddler groups, a Primary school kids’ club for about 100 kids from the community, a youth group, a gospel choir a Seniors’ group and everyone on the books gets a weekly home visit. ‘There’s no knocking on doors and singing songs to Jesus, it’s the total opposite of that.’ And with only half a dozen paid staff, this is all made possible by church volunteers, so at a time of Government cuts City Hope Church is doing more than the state. He spoke about family and how his commitment to Jesus has helped in his home life. Like anyone else family life has its ups and downs and he says that some of his children have made ‘massive mistakes’ that they have recovered from because of their grounding. Now he has in his brood a fire-fighter, a musician, a kindergarten teacher, a bookmaker and one at college, so all making their parents proud.

We discussed how the demographic of the area has changed in his time and he says that the congregation is made up of people from over 20 countries and each nation is celebrated with specific days set aside for events. Paul Brown has always felt that the church is too white and too middle-class and has done much to break down the cultural barriers that he sees, hence heroes that include William Booth and Keir Hardie. He now writes a blog where the main part will be about church and the working-class, ‘as I think it is a big issue for the church’. Log in and find out more about this fascinating man. www.paulbrown.info

Filed Under: General News Tagged With: , , , ,

A Stolen Statue

December 13, 2011 by 2 Comments
Dr Salter’s statue

A famous statue of Dr Alfred Salter, the inspirational Christian campaigner and Labour MP in Bermondsey, was stolen from its position by the Thames recently. The life sized bronze figure has presumably been sold for its scrap value.

When Alfred Salter was selected as the Labour candidate for the Bermondsey West seat in 1918,the Times newspaper commented at the time: “Dr Salter, the Labour candidate, is one of the highly educated idealists who are to be found in the ranks of that party. After a brilliant academic career, he decided to devote himself to work among the poor in Bermondsey, and there he has laboured for many years both as a doctor professionally and as a member of local administrative bodies. Personally, nobody has a word to say against him, but his views are of a very extreme kind.”

Salter was born in Greenwich in 1873, and went on to study medicine at Guy’s Hospital. In 1900 he married fellow socialist and Christian, Ada Brown. In that same year he established his medical practice in Bermondsey and the couple worked and campaigned together to combat the effects of grinding poverty and the overcrowded slums. Salter was renowned for providing medical services free of charge to those who couldn’t pay; eventually establishing a pioneering public health service in the area that pre dates the NHS by twenty years.

Fenner Brockway said of the Salters in his book:Bermondsey Story: The Life of Alfred Salter:

…they began the partnership which was to bring something little short of a revolution to Bermondsey and its people.

People in Bermondsey today feel very strongly about the theft of this statue. I suppose it demonstrates, over sixty years after Salter’s death, the loyalty and the solidarity people feel towards a man who was seen as one of their own.

So, should we be bothered about the theft? After all, there are a number of other lasting memorials to his name in the Bermondsey area. There’s a block of flats, a primary school, a medical centre, a street, even the Alfred Salter Bridge. They all ensure his name lives on.

I believe there’s something far more important than the theft of a statue (sad as that is). It’s the ongoing theft of the values Salter and others have campaigned so vigorously for, often at great personal cost. Things like free medical care, old age pensions, assistance for the unemployed and good quality social housing to name just a few.

Like that statue; which was lovingly crafted at great expense; then torn from its rightful place and sold off cheap.  We see the welfare system of this nation being stolen from us and ‘cashed in for its scrap value’.

This has prompted church leaders to write to the Government protesting the proposed unrealistic benefit caps. Benefit caps which will facilitate ‘social cleansing’ as people are forced out of their communities, and which will increase homelessness and child poverty. For decades, we have consistently seen Social Housing sold off and not replaced and whole estates pulled down and the land sold to private developers. We’re now seeing NHS hospitals handed over to companies to run for profit. Schooling is slowly being taken out of the hands of the local authorities. Apparently, under the new Education Act only academies and free schools can now be set up. There will be no new community schools!

As we’ve seen, Alfred Salter was a man universally loved by the people. A man of principle, motivated by his Christian beliefs, which in turn fed his socialist values. He was loved and respected by the people of Bermondsey because he poured out his life for them. “Personally, nobody had a word to say against him..”

We desperately need a new generation of ‘Alfred Salters’. Committed Christians who are willing to stand up for people today who continue to suffer as a result of the ideology of the wealthy elite at the head of our government. An ideology which demonstrates to me that they have no understanding of the effects of poverty and hopelessness their actions have inflicted on the voiceless poor of this nation. We should cry out for justice.

The influential Christian politician, Keir Hardie stated:

Poverty can never be remedied by charity, but only by justice.

We need a new generation of campaigning Christians who love and value the working class enough to live amongst them; to love and honour them; to be an advocate and a voice for them. To proclaim a message of hope, justice and Good News to them. Just like Alfred Salter.

Filed Under: General News Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,