A People’s History of London
Lindsey German and John Rees
First published by Verso 2012
© Lindsey German and John Rees 2012
All rights reserved
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
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Verso
UK: 6 Meard Street, London W1F 0EG
US: 20 Jay Street, Suite 1010, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Verso is the imprint of New Left Books
Epub ISBN-13: 978-1-84467-914-0
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
German, Lindsey.
A people’s history of London / Lindsey German and John Rees.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-84467-855-6 -- ISBN 978-1-84467-914-0 (ebook)
1. London (England)--History. 2. London (England)--Social conditions. 3. Social reformers--England--London--History. 4. Dissenters--England--London--History. I. Rees, John, 1957- II. Title.
DA677.1.G47 2012
942.1--dc23
2012010609
Contents
2. Lords, Lollards, Heretics and Peasants in Revolt
3. ‘The Head and Fountain of Rebellion’
4. Old Corruption and the Mob That Can Read
5. Reformers and Revolutionaries
11. Welcome to the Modern World
Acknowledgements
This book has obscure origins in an idea that David Shonfield once suggested for a ‘Radical Walks in Britain’ guide. We suggested it to Tariq Ali, and then we all forgot about it for a couple of years. Tariq recalled the plan and transmuted it into an offer to write this book. Tom Penn, Leo Hollis and Dan Hind at Verso have made it happen. We are grateful to all of them. We are indebted to Neil Faulkner, who knows a lot about most things and something about everything; we have plundered his knowledge without restraint. Dominic Alexander’s knowledge of the medieval world was put at our service and the relevant chapter would clearly be poorer without it. David Shonfield provided many insights and suggestions as he read the draft. Our long-time comrades and friends at the Stop the War Coalition, Chris Nineham, Andrew Murray, and Andrew Burgin read and commented on the whole book with their usual kindness and perspicacity. Kate Connolly was generous with her marvellous work on the Suffragette movement and Peter Morgan supplied the Oscar Wilde story. Jane Shallice, Feyzi Ismail, Mike Simons, Paul Cunningham and John Westmoreland have all been generous with encouragement and suggestions along the way. We are very grateful to all of them.
John Rees
Lindsey German
London, 5 November 2011
Introduction
Joshua Virasami is twenty-one years old, black, and ‘born and bred’ a Londoner. He grew up in West London and, like most of his fellow students, was working to pay his way through college. His job was in Costa Coffee at Heston motorway service station on the M4. But on 15 October 2011 Josh wasn’t at work or college. He was in one of the oldest parts of his home city, the original site of the Roman Temple to Diana, the churchyard at St Paul’s Cathedral. He was about to have a remarkable day.
Josh and some thousands of others were at St Paul’s because it was the advertised starting point for a demonstration. The protestors intended to occupy the London Stock Exchange – hence the name ‘Occupy LSX’. But the police prevented them from doing so, and in the game of cat and mouse that followed through the streets of the City of London the demonstrators took their last stand back where they started: on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral. There an impromptu rally took place and a tent city began to take shape.1 The protest grabbed the attention of the media, partly because it was one of many similar protests in eighty countries around the world, partly because it sparked a political crisis in the Church of England over whether the permanent protest camp that sprang up around the Cathedral should be forcibly removed. Not all of Josh’s fellow protestors will have
