Pepys Estate Deptford 1981

Images and context.

Eddystone House. Albany Empire Summer Playscheme. August 1981.

Key Deptford background dates.

August 1977. ‘Battle of Lewisham’.
Anti-fascist demonstration at New Cross. First mainland appearance of riot shields.
December 1977. Moonshot Club Firebombing.
After prolonged fascist threats. The Moonshot was the first purpose-built community centre for black people in the UK.
July 1978. Albany Empire arson by National Front.
After hosting more than 15 ‘Rock Against Racism’ benefits, a three-day ‘All Together Now’ festival, at least one ‘Scrap the SUS laws’ gig, and an anti-racist theatre show, ‘Restless Natives‘. A note left at the site said: “Got you.” Greenwich Police refused to accept it as evidence.
January 1981. ‘New Cross Massacre’.
The suspicious fire where 13 young people died.
April 1981. Brixton Riots.

Deptford at the time was therefore a turbulent place. The widespread racist application of the ‘SUS’ laws, and the excesses of the ‘Special Patrol Group’ fuelled a range of self-defence groups.

It was also an age of ‘hard to let’ cheap GLC housing which was rapidly filled by artists and activists of all kinds. Deloraine House on Tanners Hill was one – home to Dire Straits – plus much of the Crossfields Estate.

The shot above was taken at Eddystone House on the Pepys Estate.
I was the photographer for the Albany Touring Summer Playscheme of 1981. The programme at each site was to enable the local group to produce their own shows, including designing and building sets and costumes from anything available, in the best Adventure Playground tradition.

The tour included Grove Park, Brownhills School, Clockhouse, Plumstead Common and Lewisham Women’s Refuge. Pepys was our last stop. We had just finished our two days on site, helping with ‘The Funky Riot’, a musical on roller skates (after a swift re-write when Lewisham council heard about the word ‘riot’ in title).

We were packing the van when I noticed our prima-ballerina trying to go upstairs on her skates.
I managed to expose some frames before she faced reality, turned, clicker-clacked back down, and was off in an embarrassed flurry of mauve and white petticoats.

Without the Albany, and the efforts of people like co-ordinator Jenny Harris, this image would not exist. Neither would the plethora of Adventure Playgrounds in Deptford and New Cross. With Sybil Phoenix OBE, founder of the Moonshot Club, Jenny was at the heart of Deptford’s cultural self-defence scene in the 1970’s and 80’s. With John Turner, she was largely responsible for the old Albany Empire on Creek Road, and for raising the New Albany out of the ashes of the old. The activism and energy of all the community groups it helped organise embodied life and fun in the middle of a hard time. Deptford would have been a much grimmer place without the work of so many selfless ordinary people.

If this shot manages to grab one moment which helps illustrate the precarious relationship between the Deptford environment and its residents, it will have worked for me.

At London College of Printing in 1985, I showed it to John Benton-Harris, who I had just heard of, and whose lecture I gate-crashed.
“Ah. You’ve got a wide-angle lens. Good. Anything else to show me?”

I might have asked him if he had any images of Deptford, but didn’t think of it until it was too late.