Elsenham: Olivia Bazlinton, Charlotte Thompson

People who lost loved ones at rail level crossings get an opportunity to speak to politicians. Will an inquiry by MPs improve rail safety?

Elsenham: a matter of accountability

www.londonintelligence.co.uk/elsenham/


© Paul Coleman, London Intelligence, October 2013

Andalucia Star anniversary: Jill McNichol-Harrell's annual tribute to the crew including Mrs. L.A. Green, William Wheeler

Today - 6 October, 2013 - I received the following message - from Jill McNichol-Harrell. Jill delivers this message faithfully at this time every year, writes Paul Coleman.

'Please join me in a toast to Captain Hall, Mr. Wheeler, Mrs. Green 

and the brave crew of the Andalucia Star and all who sailed in that ill fated ship. 

Much gratitude to all the crews of the many other merchant ships 

who kept the life lines open during World War 2.'

Jill McNichol-Harrell.

The reason why Jill sends this message every year on this day becomes clear if you read the post below - first published on 7 October 2010.  It's seventy-one years ago to this very day - 6th October - that the Blue Star Line cargo ship, the Andalucia Star, was torpedoed and sunk during the Second World War - a catastrophe that Jill and most - but not all - other crew and passengers survived, chiefly due to the bravery and professionalism of the ship's crew.

Lifeboat 
(First published 7 October 2010) Out of the blue I recently learnt that another little girl - three-year-old Gillian Ash - was rescued from the sea after the Blue Star Line cargo ship, the Andalucia Star, was torpedoed and sunk on 6th October 1942 during the Second World War.

  Gillian Ash fell from the same tipped lifeboat as Jill McNichol, the five-year-old girl whose rescue I've detailed in previous postings. Gillian's mother plucked her from the cold choppy Atlantic and pulled her up into a lifeboat. 

  I received details about Gillian Ash from Mary Godward, whose uncle George Godward was on his way to England as a volunteer on board the Andalucia Star when it was torpedoed three times by a German U-Boat submarine - U-107 - and sunk with three lives lost. 

Mrs L.A Green

I'll highlight more details about Gillian Ash's rescue story in future postings. But for the moment, I just want to say how pleasing it was to receive the following apt and timely note today from Jill McNichol.

  Jill kindly wrote:

"My father always phoned me and we would drink a toast today to the Andalucia Star, her brave crew and all who sailed on her during her many voyages. 

Join me in a glass of anything you like. 

All the best and cheers, Jill."

  Sixty-eight years ago, Jill was crossing the Atlantic on the Andalucia Star with her father, S.G. Bicheno. According to one account, Mrs L.A. Green, “an elderly stewardess”, switched on a red light on Jill's lifejacket before lifting the little girl into a lifeboat with other women and children. 

William Wheeler

Most of the lifeboats had already been safely lowered but, as another survivor Douglas Gibson later recalled, one of the lowering lifeboats went down bow first, throwing many of its occupants, including Jill (and also Gillian) it seems, into the sea. "The bar steward and an elderly stewardess were crushed between the ship and the lifeboat and killed,” said Gibson. 

  William Wheeler, the Andalucia’s lamp trimmer (the ship's lighting technician), heard little Jill’s cry for help and then spotted her red light switched on earlier by Mrs Green. Wheeler immediately dived into the water, swam through wreckage for a distance of 600 yards to Jill and supported her for 30 minutes before helping Jill into the lifeboat. 

"Daddy was getting into a lifeboat when the third torpedo struck," says Jill. "He was very lucky not to have been killed on the spot."

Toast

Early October is a poignant moment for Jill and possibly other Andalucia Star survivors and their descendants dotted around the world. "Daddy, every year when he was alive, would phone me on the anniversary of the sinking and we would drink a toast to the ship and her brave crew," says Jill.

  So, earlier today, rummaging inside a kitchen cupboard, I found an old bottle of Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand and two ancient dusty cans of Fosters lager. I opted for the bottle of wine and pondered how a single event nearly 70 years ago continues to echo through the decades and connect with successive generations.

  And I raise my glass to my own grandfather, Leslie Coleman (1906-81), who sailed many times as a crew member on the Andalucia Star - and I'll join you, Jill, in the toast you and your father so thoughtfully invoked: 

"To the Andalucia Star, her brave crew and all who sailed on her during her many voyages...we remember and salute you."

Paul Coleman, London Intelligence, October 2013.

Evaporation of the east End spirit: East One film screening at the Barbican

East End people "evaporated" by regeneration, says filmmaker

By Paul Coleman

"The film laments the loss of East End people who have been evaporated by regeneration," says filmmaker Phil Maxwell, a long-term east London resident and former elected local politician.

  But East One (UK 2013), co-produced by Maxwell and Hazuan Hashim, might be in danger - unwittingly perhaps - of becoming seen as a prematurely nostalgic obituary to the spirit of working class east Londoners, generations of whom came from all over Britain and the Jewish and Bengali diasporas, to make Aldgate, Spitalfields and Whitechapel their home. 

  East One sets out as an engaging slice of East End nostalgia, driven by a pleading piano score - and tries to skim over the relentless outcomes of property developers and the 'buy-to-let' marketeers pricing these working people out of their family homes and traditional neighbourhoods.

Nostalgia over politics

But the grim reaper of 'Regeneration-Gentrification-Displacement looms beneath the surface of every nostalgic East One interview with some colourful local Aldgate characters. Sandra Esquilant, landlady of the Golden Heart pub off Brick Lane, heavily sighs: "The changes to this area haven't been for the best." 

  Maxwell and Hashim spent a year on this non-commercial "labour of love" documentary. Maxwell, a former elected local councillor, concedes East One avoids the politics of 'displacement' - namely, why elected councillors largely acquiesce in the displacement of local working people. 
  That's understandable, up to a point, but the nostalgia road taken leads East One perilously close to a triumph of pessimism over the East End spirit of optimism. The film pulls back from this peril through giving considerable free rein to the fighting poetry of local resident and poet Bernard Kops.
Maxwell and Hashim dwell generously on Kops as he spiritedly recites his Whitechapel Library, Aldgate East inside one of London's oldest and dearest synagogues, a passage helping to dispel much of East One's malingering, pessimistic after-taste. 

Filmmakers Hazuan Hashim and Phil Maxwell spoke after East One (UK 2013) was screened at the Barbican as part of the Urban Wandering film season. 

Photo: © Paul Coleman, London Intelligence, 2013.

Paul Coleman, London Intelligence, September 2013.

The Last Flare of Summer: The Thames Estuary, Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex

A Final Summer Flare

By Paul Coleman

Becalmed. 

Serene.

Mistily surreal.

Like teal blue silkened lava.

The Thames Estuary, determinedly unhurried, ebbs and flows at Westcliff-on-Sea.

And sun-baked, friendly people sizzle along this esplanade.
Paddle, promenade and soak up a final flare of summer balm.

Under a vast, wide blue Essex sky.
Before tomorrow's advancing Autumn shroud falls on the river
Concealing a vast blue Essex sky. 

© Words and Photos, Paul Coleman, London 2013

© Paul Coleman, London Intelligence, September 2013

Birthday, World Premiere, Mnemonic Suite Op.21, David Aprahamian Liddle, St Michael's Cornhill, Jamaica Wine House, Pasqua Rosee

A Liddle Treat 

Today (Monday, 2 September) marks the thirtieth year that I have been 21-years-old, writes Paul Coleman.

As a birthday treat to myself, I padded along Cornhill to St Michael's Church in the heart of the City of London - the capital's financial district - to enjoy the world premiere of David Liddle's composition, the Mnemonic Suite Op.21. It's a soulful and imaginative piece of music for organ, performed for the first time ever by the virtuoso Liddle himself (above, blue shirt). 

   Liddle's Suite is based on the eight Gregorian Psalm Tones - and its varied textures and moods brushed and blustered the air amidst St Michael's aisles, pillars and pews.

Coffee scorned

To keep the 'firsts' mood going, I'm now happily reflecting on Liddle's music in the Jamaica Wine House, a favourite City bankers' 'watering hole' right next to the church in St Michael's Alley. 

  Shall I order a coffee in a pub? Why coffee? Well, during the Jamaica Wine House's original incarnation in 1652, Pasqua Rosee, a servant of a wealthy English trader in the Levant Mediterranean area, became the first person to sell coffee to Londoners.

 'Coffee, it'll never take off in London,' said the sceptics, pouring scorn on Rosee's hot, thick liquid. 

Allez Alley

Historical records fail to regale what happened to Rosee down St Michael's Alley. Although Rosee disappeared, the Jamaica Coffee House became one of London's earliest and most famous coffee emporiums. Coffee, aided and abetted by sugar, took over London.

  The Jamaica Coffee House became a renowned meeting place for people engaged in England's vast trade in African slaves, a vicious enterprise that engulfed Africa and Caribbean sugar plantation islands like Jamaica - and enriched many powerful men in the City of London. 

   No, no coffee. It'll remind me too much of the wretched aspects of the City of London's history.

Instead, I'll have a birthday beer, please - and raise my glass to Rosee, St Michael's and to the creative force that is David Liddle.

Paul Coleman, London Intelligence, September 2013


© Words & Photos Paul Coleman 2013

Joy Gardner, Deportation, 28th July 1983, Nellie Sterling

Twenty years ago – in the summer of 1993 – Joy Gardner, a 40-year-old black Jamaican mother, died after London police tried to deport her. Paul Coleman reports how a close friend of Gardner disputed police and media claims that Gardner ‘violently’ resisted arrest.*

Just how ‘violent’ could injured 

Joy Gardner have been?

Joy Gardner fell and was unable to walk just four days before police and immigration officers tried to deport her to Jamaica, writes Paul Coleman.

On Saturday, July 24^th, 1993, Joy Gardner, 40, told her close friend Nellie Sterling that she had slipped, fallen down some stairs and badly twisted her ankle.

  This evidence was not presented to an Old Bailey jury that, following a four-week trial in 1995, cleared three police officers of Joy Gardner’s manslaughter.

 During the raid at Gardner's north London home on Wednesday 28^th July, police officers wrapped thirteen feet of tape around Gardner in the presence of Graeme, her five-year-old son.

  Police said this was to stop Gardner resisting arrest but family and friends claim she suffocated. Gardner was later pronounced dead on 1 August 1993, having suffered brain damage caused by a lack of oxygen.

Nellie Sterling

Nellie Sterling, 61, had often looked after Joy Gardner’s son, Graeme. In a face-to-face recorded interview, Ms Sterling told this writer that on July 24^th Gardner was baking cakes and cooking chicken at her flat in Hornsey – where the police raid would take place four days later.

  Sterling said Gardner planned to sell the cakes and chicken at a Stoke Newington street festival near to Ms Sterling’s home.

  Sterling added Gardner planned to travel from Hornsey to Stoke Newington where they would have shared a stall selling home-cooked food.

Slipped and twisted

Ms Sterling, a nurse, said: “Joy said she was going to bake some cake and do some chicken. But she rang me that Saturday morning to say she had been going downstairs, had slipped and twisted her ankle.

  “It was swollen. She said she couldn’t walk. She couldn’t come to Stoke Newington.

 “She had already baked the cakes. I said to her: ‘You should’ve phoned earlier. I could’ve helped you.

  ‘Alright,’ Joy said. ‘Cake go spoil.’

"So I said, ‘I’ll come over and eat some.’

"We treated it as a little joke.”

‘Paining me badly’

Sterling, who first met Joy Gardner in 1992 at a north London Pentecostal church, went to the street festival that afternoon without her friend.

  Sterling added: “At six-thirty that Saturday evening Joy rang me again to find out how I got on at the festival.

  “I said: ‘Alright. How’s the foot?’

“Joy said: ‘It’s paining me badly.’”

Last time

Sterling advised Gardner to go to the doctor on Monday morning. Joy said to her: ‘If I can walk.’

 Sterling replied: ‘Alright, I’ll see you one day in the week then.’

  “That was the last time I spoke to Joy,” recalled Sterling.

Life support

Four days later, on Wednesday, July 28^th, Sterling received a phone call from a friend, who broke the news that Gardner was on a life support machine in hospital after an attempt earlier that morning by police officers and an immigration officer to deport her.

  “I switched on the news,” said Sterling. “I couldn’t believe it,” she recalled.

Investigation

Sterling emphasised that Gardner had promised she would go to the doctors on Monday. However, Sterling did not speak to Gardner again and so does not know if she made a doctor’s appointment before the attempted deportation on Wednesday.

  The prosecution case of manslaughter at the Old Bailey against three police officers – PC Colin Leonard Whitby, Detective Sergeant Linda Evans and PC John Winter Burrell – was based on an investigation of Joy Gardner’s death by Essex police officers, conducted under the supervision of William McCall, a member of the Police Complaints Authority.

  Nellie Sterling was not interviewed by Essex Police during the course of their investigation. The results of the investigation were passed onto the Crown Prosecution Service. McCall has since completed his appointment at the PCA.

  Sterling said that Essex Police had rang her for information after a reporter from an evening newspaper had passed her numbers to the police. “I thought about talking to the police,” she recalled. “But in the end I just didn’t want to talk to them as I felt strongly that it was the police that had killed Joy.”

Upset

Sterling recalled that as it was school summer holidays she had arranged for her son, Mark, to stay with Joy Gardner and her son Graeme at Gardner’s Hornsey flat – so that the boys could spend time together. Graeme and Mark were then due to spend the following week at Ms Sterling’s home. “Mark was very upset when Joy died,” said Ms Sterling.

  “Joy loved Graeme very much,” recalled Sterling, a regular visitor to Gardner’s Hornsey flat. “Her flat was very neat and clean.

  “The only untidy place was Graeme’s bedroom where he kept all his toys. Joy spoilt Graeme. Some parents, especially from the Caribbean, like to give their children what they themselves never had. It’s understandable.

  “The way I look at it is that people should build a centre in Jamaica and name it after Joy. Joy’s name lives on.”

Note: Fears of unrest following Joy Gardner's death, see previous posting at:

http://paulcolemanslondon.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/twenty-years-ago-on-28th-july-1993-joy.html

After the trial, Joy Gardner’s mother, Myrna Simpson, said: “I heard in court that the police officers fell down on Joy. Joy was confused.  They said she was violent, superhuman, but she had no strength.”

Simpson spoke at a public meeting at Haringey Civic Centre.  

* The interview with Nellie Sterling was first published in the London-based weekly Caribbean Times newspaper on 1^st July, 1995.

Paul Coleman, London Intelligence, July 2013

Joy Gardner, Death Twenty Years Ago, Deportation, Police, Immigration, Linda Evans, Colin Whitby, John Burrell, Nellie Sterling

Twenty years ago - on 28th July 1993  – Joy Gardner and her five-year-old son Graeme were startled by an early morning police raid on their north London home. Paul Coleman reports.

The ‘Smear Campaign’ 

against Joy Gardner

London's Metropolitan Police were reportedly on a state of alert following the death of Joy Gardner in the summer of 1993, writes Paul Coleman.

Senior police officers fretted that the death of a black Jamaican mother at the hands of police officers could see London experience riots of the kind that had struck Los Angeles in April 1992.*

Raided
Deportation squad police officers raided Joy Gardner’s Crouch End apartment early on the morning of 28th July, 1993. Immigration officers had ordered police to arrest and deport Gardner, aged 40, as they had deemed her to be an ‘illegal overstayer’.

  Information posted by immigration officers in Gardner’s case file had suggested she was determined and possibly violent.

Thirteen feet of tape
During the raid, police officers fixed a body belt around Gardner’s waist. Reports said thirteen feet of tape was wrapped around Gardner - in the presence of Graeme, her five-year-old son.

  Police said this was to stop Gardner resisting arrest but family and friends claim she suffocated. Gardner never recovered from a coma and died some days later from brain damage caused by a lack of oxygen.

'Smear campaign'
People protested against police and immigration officers on the streets of Crouch End and Hornsey. A heavily policed demonstration took place outside Hornsey Police Station. But the protest passed without incident – despite media hype about potential trouble.

  In the months after Gardner’s death, newspapers like the Daily Mail and Daily Express ran stories depicting Joy Gardner as a determined illegal immigrant with a violent temper. Journalists received information about the identity and whereabouts of Gardner’s former boyfriend. Stories quoted the boyfriend claiming Gardner had been violent towards him.

  Gardner's friends claimed this amounted to a concerted 'smear campaign' against her. They claimed immigration officers had wrongly informed deportation police officers that Gardner could be violent - and when Gardner died, they claimed police and immigration officers had encouraged journalists to write stories suggesting Gardner was a violent person.

Acquitted

Two years later, three police officers – Detective Sergeant Linda Janet Evans and Police Constables, Colin Leonard Whitby and John Winter Burrell - stood trial at the Old Bailey and were acquitted of the manslaughter of Joy Gardner. No police or immigration officers faced disciplinary action.

Countered

After the trial, during the summer of 1995, this writer met and interviewed Nellie Sterling, a close friend of Joy Gardner.

  Sterling countered claims that Gardner was a violent person. In fact, Sterling, said Gardner was unable to walk at the time of the raid – and could not have violently resisted her deportation.

This blog’s next posting publishes an account of that interview.

© Paul Coleman, London Intelligence, July 2013

 

* The LA riots killed 53 people and injured over 2,000. They began after a trial jury acquitted four LA Police Department officers of a prolonged violent assault on motorist Rodney King, an African-American. 

 George Holliday videoed on a camcorder from a nearby apartment the police beating King. National TV aired Holliday’s film across the United States - many years before the advent of You Tube, Twitter and Facebook.