‘Goldfish Are Wankers’: London Graffiti, 1984-1994

 

In 1994, the graffiti on the wall that ran along the Riverside Path in London’s Thamesmead told everyone that “GOLDFISH ARE WANKERS”.  We’ve seen “LESBIAN TURDS“, learned that “Cats like plain Crisps” and that you can “FREE KUWAIT WITH TIGER TOKENS“, but this is the first fish-themed graffiti we’ve seen.

Peter Marshall captured London graffiti when he was walking the city with his camera. He took many pictures of graffiti, and this is second instalment from his archive.

 

 

ABOVE: Varden St, Whitechapel, Tower Hamlets, 1986

The graffiti on this side of the street was partly painted over, but most is still legible and it read ‘TOWER HAMLETS COUNCIL IS A RACIST ??? COUNCIL – BHAG’. The Bengali Housing Action Group (BHAG) was founded in 1976 and as well as campaigning they broke into and squatted empty properties.

 

(ABOVE) The Oval, Tower Hamlets. 1983

The Oval first appears on maps around 1840 with houses on both sides, but by the time I photographed it these had long been replaced by various industrial sites, including ‘Sullivans Moulding Mills’ and the central area was a free car park, particularly useful for workers in those workshops and factories. I photographed it on several occasions over the years, and have returned in recent years.

The Oval is now ‘The Oval Space’ and is used for various events. It is still dominated by the nearby gas holders (behind me as I made this picture), but perhaps not for much longer as these are likely to be replaced by blocks of flats. The entrance arches at each end of the parking space are long gone, but the buildings at right of centre are still there. Those to the left of centre were recently demolished and the area was a building site when I was last there in April this year and is probably by now a five or more storey residential block obscuring the view of the railway viaduct. There was considerably more graffiti, and it was much more colourful if less informative. Although the council makeover to a public space brightened it up a little, for most of the year it seems only used – if at all – by a few people sitting on the concrete blocks to eat their lunch or make a phone call, whereas before it was well-used every working day as a car park – and at times for impromptu or alternative events which I suspect are now prohibited by bylaws.

 

ABOVE: The End, Reardon Path, Wapping, 1981

I think this was on Reardon Path or very close to this. The flats in the background are a part of the 1926 Wapping Housing Estate slum clearance scheme mentioned in a previous note.

This estate is one that, unlike around 200 others in London, has so far escaped the clutches of property developers who have colluded with local councils, mainly Labour councils, in so-called ‘regeneration’ projects which have resulted in huge losses of homes available at council rents in the city with the wholesale demolition of estates such as the Heygate estate at the Elephant, and continuing close by in the Aylesbury Estate, where only a handful of the replacements of thousands of properties are at rents the former population can afford, resulting in a process of social cleansing.

Unlike the schemes that led to the building of estates such as these, which replaced slum areas with houses in a very poor state, most of the estates being demolished are sound and could relatively cheaply be brought up to a better specification than those that are being built to replace them, as they were generally built to high standards for the time of construction. The process is driven by the huge profits that can be made from selling the new units at high market prices and for rent at high market rents.

 

Under the railway bridge was the graffiti ‘G DAVIS IS INNOCENT OK’ and then an image of a burning figure with a CND symbol, remembering the dangers of the nuclear flash which etched some figures on walls and pavements in Hiroshima. Traces of the iconic East End George Davis graffiti can still be seen here and the buildings remain much as they were – and the Prince Regent pub remains open for business.

You can read the story of George Davis and the graffiti campaign here.

 

Another picture of the inside of the roundabout which was completed around 1972 and has appeared on record covers as well as being used as a film location – famously where Alex and his droogs beat up a singing drunk in Stanley Kubrick’s adaption of A Clockwork Orange.

I have no idea why someone has painted Van Gogh on the railings -the Serbian rock group of that name was only founded six years later, but perhaps there may have been an earlier more local manifestation. And the National Front have been here too. There is a sinister look to this structure and doorway, and though I have no idea what is inside this concrete structure, it could well be a torture chamber.

The roundabout now has a rather odd metal structure on it, the ‘Atom’ monument, with two circular metal rings holding up a box with advertising screens for JCDecaux. If – as the firm who erected it claim – the adverts on it attract a great deal of driver attention, then they clearly decrease road safety at this critical junction. I can find no evidence for a local rumour that famed Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer had any part in its design. Wandsworth Council includes the structure on its list of works of art in the borough.

 

Limehouse, Tower Hamlets. 1982 30l-44: works, graffiti

These disused industrial premises were somewhere in the Garford St/Emmett St area on the Poplar/Limehouse border, which was about to be totally redeveloped for the Limehouse Link, DLR and Canary Wharf.

I was amused by the combination of ‘GET’ from the works sign and ‘COPPERS’ in the graffiti, though I suspect I also liked the various textures and the bold font, especially the large square full stop. Unfortunately I’ve no idea what the full text on the building was.

 

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See more of Peter’s great work here.