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BBC News
2 days ago
- General
- BBC News
Historic Birmingham pub's 'rare and remarkable' survival
In the grounds of a 19th Century park lies an old, derelict, timber-framed pub which has had to withstand both the passage of time and destroyed in the English Civil Wars, it was then dismantled and relocated before, in the 20th Century, almost being burnt down by suffragettes. The story of the Grade II listed Golden Lion in Birmingham is one of a "rare and remarkable" survival, conservationists say, and many believe the community has a duty to rescue it from ruin. Leaders of the restoration project received a boost in August after Historic England awarded them £344,265 to make vital repairs. The Golden Lion was one of 37 heritage sites in England - and four in the West Midlands - to receive funding, which also included the Bethesda Methodist Chapel in Stoke-on-Trent - known as the "cathedral of the Potteries".With the pub, which was originally based in Deritend High Street, its early history is "shrouded in mystery" though some of its timbers date back to the 15th Century, the Birmingham Conservation Trust building was rebuilt between 1616 and 1644, thought to be as a result of damage during a Royalist attack on Birmingham in the Civil Wars era. Since then, the Golden Lion has been used as a pub, culler's house, six small homes, a scrap shop and a rangers' hut, the trust was dismantled by the Birmingham and Warwickshire Archaeological Society in 1911 before it was rebuilt at its current location in Cannon Hill Park, where it was used as a cricket the votes for women protests, it was badly damaged in an arson attack carried out by suffragettes in 1912. Sarah Hayes, museum and trust director at the conservation trust, said: "It's a rare and remarkable survival of a timber-framed building in Birmingham, one that has stood the test of time and survived beyond all odds."But the building has stood empty and unused for 20 years, falling into a dilapidated state, with scaffolding currently surrounding the trust has been working with Birmingham City Council to try and bring it back into community use, though the grant from Historic England, a spokesperson said, would make the site secure and watertight but not yet repair work will include fixing the roof, chimneys, walls, floors, windows and doors, as well as adding French doors to the rear before the scaffolding is Hayes said it was "our turn" to help the much-loved building in "desperate" need of help."In many ways it feels like the last chance for us to act before its condition becomes beyond repair," she added. Meanwhile in Stoke-on-Trent, charity Re-Form Heritage said it was "delighted and grateful" to receive £521,737 of funding for its work to rejuvenate Bethesda Methodist Chapel in Grade II* listed building on Albion Street, Hanley, was first built in 1798, according to the Friends of Bethesda first, it seated 600 people but was deemed to be too small in 1813, so the back wall was removed and the building extended to fit 1,000 the "fire of Methodism" grew in the Potteries, the Friends of Bethesda Chapel said it was once again judged to be too small in 1819 so the extension was pulled down and chapel reopened to worshippers in 1820 and was "full to excess" with about 3,000 people in England said the chapel stood as a "testament to the power and influence of the Methodist Church" in 19th Century Stoke-on-Trent. Since its closure in 1985, the Friends of Bethesda Chapel and Historic Chapels Trust have been maintaining the specialists Re-Form Heritage have taken control of the efforts to bring the building back into grant will go towards repairing plasterwork, timber panelling, staircases, east lobby and ceiling coving, a spokesperson charity said the renovated site would "provide a more attractive, comfortable and accessible space".Under the plans, the building will be used as a mixed-use space in the future, housing creative arts education specialist Pinc College and feature exhibition and performance Heritage chief executive Alasdair Brook said: "The funds will allow us to move forward with bringing the much-loved Cathedral of the Potteries back into community use."We're excited at being able to progress our work at this important Grade II* listed building over the coming months." Follow BBC Birmingham on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
The Guardian
06-07-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
‘Women were grabbed and dragged away like sacks' – a history of British protest in pictures
Duncan Campbell on the power of protest From the suffragettes at the start of the last century to Reclaim the Night in the 1970s; from the battle of Cable Street against the British Union of Fascists in 1936 to the Anti-Nazi League marches four decades later; from the million marchers against the Iraq war in 2003 in London to the massive turnouts across the country two decades later against the war in Gaza, protest has been a vital and constant part of the fabric of British society. Most protests pass unnoticed, whether they are the picket lines during strikes in almost every corner of the UK or small demonstrations outside parliament. But behind almost all of them is a desire to alert the public to what is perceived as an injustice. Some – including those involved in combating racism, sexism and homophobia – have achieved many of their aims, either swiftly or after many years, and in doing so have changed the lives of millions. Others have been fruitless. Key to the success of many of them has been the coverage in the media, much of it dependent on the sort of images taken by David Hoffman, often at some risk to the photographer himself … The sort of coverage protests receive depended, and still depends to a great extent, on the political inclinations of the relevant newspaper or broadcaster. When David and I first met, at Time Out magazine in the late 1970s, it was still a radical publication; marches and demonstrations were listed weekly in its Agitprop section and covered by its reporters and photographers – a tradition carried on by City Limits magazine in the 1980s. But by the turn of the century, information about most protests had moved predominantly online. While the Mirror carried news of the suffragettes in their early days, its owner, Alfred Harmsworth, soon felt enough was enough. 'Sorry to see the outburst of suffragette pictures again,' he complained to Alexander Kenealy, editor of the Mirror, in 1912. 'I thought you had finished with them. Except in an extreme case, print no more.' The policing of protest has varied spectacularly. Demonstrators have frequently been thwarted, arrested, beaten up, kettled and, increasingly, jailed. Some have suffered worse fates: Kevin Gately, a 20-year-old student from the University of Warwick, died in 1974 in Red Lion Square, central London, in a protest against the National Front; the death of Blair Peach in 1979, in an anti-racist protest in Southall, west London, led to many more marches in his memory. But whatever laws may change, whatever responses the authorities and media take to marches and pickets and rallies and camps and road closures and hunger strikes and paint-spraying and occupations, protest – as demonstrated so graphically here – will survive. Former Guardian reporter Duncan Campbell died in May this year. Kicking off with this image from the last night of the 1979 Notting Hill carnival, David Hoffman recalls the start of his career In 1963, at the end of my last term at Kingston College of Further Education, I organised a rag week stunt with some female fellow students, who chained themselves to the railings outside the Houses of Parliament to protest that their vote was meaningless. They were all quickly arrested, as was I when I went to ask about them – but I did have a photo of one of the arrests. A journalist from (I think) the Daily Mail borrowed the film. The photo was published the next day and, more surprisingly, the paper returned my film and even paid me. Just 17 and I already had an arrest, a criminal record and a protest photo in a national paper: a perfect launch pad for my career. But I didn't spot the path that life was laying down for me. I had been given a chemistry set at age 10 and had science A-levels, so when parental pressure forced university on me, I chose chemistry out of inertia and ignorance. A decade of loose living and truck driving followed, until 1973, when I ended up in a squat in Whitechapel, east London, with a Nikon F. I didn't set out to photograph protests. My aim was to record the constrained world of poverty and slum housing I found myself in. I was young and perhaps believed documenting these issues might help change them. My photos of poor housing, unemployment and racism were published by Time Out, New Society, Housing Today and the Voice. But when demonstrations led to arrests, it was the national press and TV that took notice. These images were the ones most widely seen, the ones I became known for. Protesting has never been easy, but over my career I have watched laws steadily tighten, step by boiled frog step. Now, every detail seems to fall under police control. The pace of a march, slogans on placards, what can be chanted, what's printed on a T-shirt . New laws govern how loud a protest can be, how big it grows and whether it includes music, puppets, effigies or anything else that makes a strong photograph. Bit by bit, regulations have chipped away at our freedom to protest. Yet protest is like a balloon: squeeze it here and it pops up there. The more it's squeezed, the louder the bang when it bursts. Technology may be a tool of oppression, but it can also be a weapon of resistance. Activists are already using encrypted communications, decentralised organising and creative direct action to stay ahead. People have always risen to meet new challenges. Even under surveillance and repression, we have seen moments of extraordinary courage – in the streets, on social media or in quiet, everyday acts of defiance that keep movements alive. The future of protest may look different, but the spirit driving it will remain. This is an edited extract from Protest! by David Hoffman, published by Image & Reality at £28. The Greater London Council bought the popular farm on the Isle of Dogs intending to build a motorway. After locals marching with their animals campaigned to save it, the plan was quietly dropped. In the 1970s, when I first began to document social change, I saw tensions ramped up by racist and oppressive policing dominating the communities it pretended to serve. Combined with discrimination in jobs and housing, policing tactics turned lively, optimistic youth into angry subcultures. Black youth in particular were targeted, with clubbing and street culture used as an excuse for busts and surveillance. On bank holiday Monday night, as the carnival drew to a close, police would change from friendly bobbies into pumped-up riot police as they tried to clear the streets. Moving along Ladbroke Grove, they attacked isolated groups of late-night revellers, which sparked counter-attacks and, predictably, led to the sort of retaliation pictured here. When the crowds in the street grew too large and hostile for shield police to disperse, vans were driven at them at high speed. It was the singing that always got me. Hundreds of women, peaceful and determined, would be roughly grabbed and dragged away like sacks, still calling for peace, undeterred by insults, arrests and violence. It always seemed to be dark, overcast and rainy. The camps were dotted along the perimeter fences and much of my time was spent running in mud-heavy wellies from one gate to another, chasing tales of fence cuttings or missile movements that rarely materialised. Suspicions of foul play over the death of 21-year-old Colin Roach – who was shot inside Stoke Newington police station, in what officers claimed was suicide – came against a background of racist and oppressive policing in Hackney which led to many protesters feeling the need to cover their faces when marching. The police's version of events quickly unravelled: Roach's fingerprints weren't found on the gun and the forensic evidence didn't match the scene officers described. While the local MP spoke out about a 'breakdown of faith and credibility' in the police, the Commission for Racial Equality called for an investigation. The poll tax had been a festering sore for what felt like an age, David Hoffman writes, and while earlier demos had been crushed by police action, this one had really kicked off, with 100,000 people marching. After repeated charges by mounted police, riots erupted, shops were looted, police vehicles and government offices attacked, and buildings burned. The eventual cost: hundreds of millions of pounds, and the end of Margaret Thatcher's government. Jamaican-born mature student Joy Gardner died after a brutal immigration raid on her home in which police handcuffed her, bound her with leather straps and gagged her with a 13-foot length of adhesive tape wrapped tightly around her head. Unable to breathe, she collapsed, suffering catastrophic brain damage from asphyxia. She was placed on life support but died four days later. In 1995, three of the officers involved were tried for manslaughter but were acquitted. As Reclaim the Streets marchers made their way into Trafalgar Square for speeches in support of sacked Liverpool dockers, thousands danced to sound systems – but the carnival atmosphere didn't last long. Confrontations began in Whitehall and an orange smoke bomb thrown into Downing Street triggered charges by riot police on foot and on horseback, their shields sprayed with paint from protesters' squeezy bottles. A police helicopter hovered noisily above and more than a thousand officers in black boiler suits, steel toe-capped boots and face masks blocked the exits. Once the square had been sealed, mounted police charged. Gay rights activists from Outrage!, led by Peter Tatchell (in blue shirt), stormed the pulpit of the cathedral on Easter Sunday, using archbishop George Carey's mic to denounce the church's homophobia and hypocrisy. Tatchell was injured and arrested. The protester in glasses to his right turned out to be an undercover police officer (or Spycop). On the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, the Stop the War Coalition, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the British Muslim Initiative joined in a national demonstration as part of the worldwide day of protest against George W Bush's wars. While an estimated 50,000 turned out to vent their anger at government plans, a bus shelter on Whitehall – a few hundred sensible yards away from the turmoil – made a more enjoyable platform to protest against tuition fee increases and maintenance grant cuts. Around 5,000 women and men marched to Trafalgar Square in protest against rape and sexual violence. They were part of a global movement that was triggered by a Toronto policeman's comment that women should 'avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimised'. Having spent half my life photographing others being arrested, I decided it was only fair to document my own arrests …. At a Tower Hamlets town hall occupation on 27 April 1987, Daniele Lamarche took this picture of my arrest for refusing to stop taking photographs, then gave me her film as she was working for the council and was worried that it might affect her job. Amid violent scenes following anti-Satanic Verses protests in London on 27 May 1989, missiles were thrown at poorly prepared police by angry youths. A cop I'd photographed dragged me off to Southwark nick. I took this selfie to illustrate the concept of justice turned upside down. At a Greenpeace anti-whaling demonstration at Norway's tourist office in London on 26 July 1993, I was the only one whose arms weren't chained, so the inspector, looking for someone he could actually arrest, chose me – essentially for being portable.
The Guardian
06-07-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
‘Women were grabbed and dragged away like sacks' – a history of British protest in pictures
Duncan Campbell on the power of protest From the suffragettes at the start of the last century to Reclaim the Night in the 1970s; from the battle of Cable Street against the British Union of Fascists in 1936 to the Anti-Nazi League marches four decades later; from the million marchers against the Iraq war in 2003 in London to the massive turnouts across the country two decades later against the war in Gaza, protest has been a vital and constant part of the fabric of British society. Most protests pass unnoticed, whether they are the picket lines during strikes in almost every corner of the UK or small demonstrations outside parliament. But behind almost all of them is a desire to alert the public to what is perceived as an injustice. Some – including those involved in combating racism, sexism and homophobia – have achieved many of their aims, either swiftly or after many years, and in doing so have changed the lives of millions. Others have been fruitless. Key to the success of many of them has been the coverage in the media, much of it dependent on the sort of images taken by David Hoffman, often at some risk to the photographer himself … The sort of coverage protests receive depended, and still depends to a great extent, on the political inclinations of the relevant newspaper or broadcaster. When David and I first met, at Time Out magazine in the late 1970s, it was still a radical publication; marches and demonstrations were listed weekly in its Agitprop section and covered by its reporters and photographers – a tradition carried on by City Limits magazine in the 1980s. But by the turn of the century, information about most protests had moved predominantly online. While the Mirror carried news of the suffragettes in their early days, its owner, Alfred Harmsworth, soon felt enough was enough. 'Sorry to see the outburst of suffragette pictures again,' he complained to Alexander Kenealy, editor of the Mirror, in 1912. 'I thought you had finished with them. Except in an extreme case, print no more.' The policing of protest has varied spectacularly. Demonstrators have frequently been thwarted, arrested, beaten up, kettled and, increasingly, jailed. Some have suffered worse fates: Kevin Gately, a 20-year-old student from the University of Warwick, died in 1974 in Red Lion Square, central London, in a protest against the National Front; the death of Blair Peach in 1979, in an anti-racist protest in Southall, west London, led to many more marches in his memory. But whatever laws may change, whatever responses the authorities and media take to marches and pickets and rallies and camps and road closures and hunger strikes and paint-spraying and occupations, protest – as demonstrated so graphically here – will survive. Former Guardian reporter Duncan Campbell died in May this year. Kicking off with this image from the last night of the 1979 Notting Hill carnival, David Hoffman recalls the start of his career In 1963, at the end of my last term at Kingston College of Further Education, I organised a rag week stunt with some female fellow students, who chained themselves to the railings outside the Houses of Parliament to protest that their vote was meaningless. They were all quickly arrested, as was I when I went to ask about them – but I did have a photo of one of the arrests. A journalist from (I think) the Daily Mail borrowed the film. The photo was published the next day and, more surprisingly, the paper returned my film and even paid me. Just 17 and I already had an arrest, a criminal record and a protest photo in a national paper: a perfect launch pad for my career. But I didn't spot the path that life was laying down for me. I had been given a chemistry set at age 10 and had science A-levels, so when parental pressure forced university on me, I chose chemistry out of inertia and ignorance. A decade of loose living and truck driving followed, until 1973, when I ended up in a squat in Whitechapel, east London, with a Nikon F. I didn't set out to photograph protests. My aim was to record the constrained world of poverty and slum housing I found myself in. I was young and perhaps believed documenting these issues might help change them. My photos of poor housing, unemployment and racism were published by Time Out, New Society, Housing Today and the Voice. But when demonstrations led to arrests, it was the national press and TV that took notice. These images were the ones most widely seen, the ones I became known for. Protesting has never been easy, but over my career I have watched laws steadily tighten, step by boiled frog step. Now, every detail seems to fall under police control. The pace of a march, slogans on placards, what can be chanted, what's printed on a T-shirt . New laws govern how loud a protest can be, how big it grows and whether it includes music, puppets, effigies or anything else that makes a strong photograph. Bit by bit, regulations have chipped away at our freedom to protest. Yet protest is like a balloon: squeeze it here and it pops up there. The more it's squeezed, the louder the bang when it bursts. Technology may be a tool of oppression, but it can also be a weapon of resistance. Activists are already using encrypted communications, decentralised organising and creative direct action to stay ahead. People have always risen to meet new challenges. Even under surveillance and repression, we have seen moments of extraordinary courage – in the streets, on social media or in quiet, everyday acts of defiance that keep movements alive. The future of protest may look different, but the spirit driving it will remain. This is an edited extract from Protest! by David Hoffman, published by Image & Reality at £28. The Greater London Council bought the popular farm on the Isle of Dogs intending to build a motorway. After locals marching with their animals campaigned to save it, the plan was quietly dropped. In the 1970s, when I first began to document social change, I saw tensions ramped up by racist and oppressive policing dominating the communities it pretended to serve. Combined with discrimination in jobs and housing, policing tactics turned lively, optimistic youth into angry subcultures. Black youth in particular were targeted, with clubbing and street culture used as an excuse for busts and surveillance. On bank holiday Monday night, as the carnival drew to a close, police would change from friendly bobbies into pumped-up riot police as they tried to clear the streets. Moving along Ladbroke Grove, they attacked isolated groups of late-night revellers, which sparked counter-attacks and, predictably, led to the sort of retaliation pictured here. When the crowds in the street grew too large and hostile for shield police to disperse, vans were driven at them at high speed. It was the singing that always got me. Hundreds of women, peaceful and determined, would be roughly grabbed and dragged away like sacks, still calling for peace, undeterred by insults, arrests and violence. It always seemed to be dark, overcast and rainy. The camps were dotted along the perimeter fences and much of my time was spent running in mud-heavy wellies from one gate to another, chasing tales of fence cuttings or missile movements that rarely materialised. Suspicions of foul play over the death of 21-year-old Colin Roach – who was shot inside Stoke Newington police station, in what officers claimed was suicide – came against a background of racist and oppressive policing in Hackney which led to many protesters feeling the need to cover their faces when marching. The police's version of events quickly unravelled: Roach's fingerprints weren't found on the gun and the forensic evidence didn't match the scene officers described. While the local MP spoke out about a 'breakdown of faith and credibility' in the police, the Commission for Racial Equality called for an investigation. The poll tax had been a festering sore for what felt like an age, David Hoffman writes, and while earlier demos had been crushed by police action, this one had really kicked off, with 100,000 people marching. After repeated charges by mounted police, riots erupted, shops were looted, police vehicles and government offices attacked, and buildings burned. The eventual cost: hundreds of millions of pounds, and the end of Margaret Thatcher's government. Jamaican-born mature student Joy Gardner died after a brutal immigration raid on her home in which police handcuffed her, bound her with leather straps and gagged her with a 13-foot length of adhesive tape wrapped tightly around her head. Unable to breathe, she collapsed, suffering catastrophic brain damage from asphyxia. She was placed on life support but died four days later. In 1995, three of the officers involved were tried for manslaughter but were acquitted. As Reclaim the Streets marchers made their way into Trafalgar Square for speeches in support of sacked Liverpool dockers, thousands danced to sound systems – but the carnival atmosphere didn't last long. Confrontations began in Whitehall and an orange smoke bomb thrown into Downing Street triggered charges by riot police on foot and on horseback, their shields sprayed with paint from protesters' squeezy bottles. A police helicopter hovered noisily above and more than a thousand officers in black boiler suits, steel toe-capped boots and face masks blocked the exits. Once the square had been sealed, mounted police charged. Gay rights activists from Outrage!, led by Peter Tatchell (in blue shirt), stormed the pulpit of the cathedral on Easter Sunday, using archbishop George Carey's mic to denounce the church's homophobia and hypocrisy. Tatchell was injured and arrested. The protester in glasses to his right turned out to be an undercover police officer (or Spycop). On the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, the Stop the War Coalition, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the British Muslim Initiative joined in a national demonstration as part of the worldwide day of protest against George W Bush's wars. While an estimated 50,000 turned out to vent their anger at government plans, a bus shelter on Whitehall – a few hundred sensible yards away from the turmoil – made a more enjoyable platform to protest against tuition fee increases and maintenance grant cuts. Around 5,000 women and men marched to Trafalgar Square in protest against rape and sexual violence. They were part of a global movement that was triggered by a Toronto policeman's comment that women should 'avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimised'. Having spent half my life photographing others being arrested, I decided it was only fair to document my own arrests …. At a Tower Hamlets town hall occupation on 27 April 1987, Daniele Lamarche took this picture of my arrest for refusing to stop taking photographs, then gave me her film as she was working for the council and was worried that it might affect her job. Amid violent scenes following anti-Satanic Verses protests in London on 27 May 1989, missiles were thrown at poorly prepared police by angry youths. A cop I'd photographed dragged me off to Southwark nick. I took this selfie to illustrate the concept of justice turned upside down. At a Greenpeace anti-whaling demonstration at Norway's tourist office in London on 26 July 1993, I was the only one whose arms weren't chained, so the inspector, looking for someone he could actually arrest, chose me – essentially for being portable.
Daily Mail
16-06-2025
- Daily Mail
Suffragette's horrifying account of being force fed pints of milk in prison after being jailed for London window-smashing campaign
The fascinating archive of two Suffragette sisters including their graphic accounts of going on hunger strike in prison has emerged for sale for £30,000. Frances and Margaret McPhun were both jailed after taking part in the window-smashing campaign in London in March 1912. They had travelled from their home in Glasgow to join other campaigners and were arrested and sentenced to two months hard labour. Both sisters, university graduates aged in their 40s, refused to eat and had to be forcibly fed, which they describe in shocking detail in letters from their time at Holloway Prison. The letters were smuggled out of prison by other suffragettes upon their release to inform the movement's leaders about the continued struggle. In one letter, Frances, the younger sister, tells of being held down in a chair as two pints of milk were poured down her throat. In another, she recounts how a fellow suffragette used her head as a battering ram to keep away a nurse trying to feed her by nasal tube. Frances wrote: 'The doctor and nurse rushed in, a sheet was thrown round me, and I was held down in a chair and two pints of milk were poured down my throat. 'Don't gasp with horror. '(Another suffragette) using her head as a battering ram she kept them at bay. 'The fat nurse reposed on her tummy, a wardress on each foot, the doctor supporting her head between his knees! 'One girl was hurt – her nose bled and she was unconscious for some minutes.' Margaret wrote to her brother Robert, describing her cell: 'A chair and plank bed... straw mattress... small window high up... The view is not inspiring, ...smoke and dust ascend like incense to my window.' Both sisters were awarded the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) Hunger Strike medal for 'Valour' for their defiance of authority. They returned to Scotland to carry on their activist lives, writing articles to promote the suffragette cause. The medals and letters have remained in the McPhun family for over 100 years but are now going under the hammer at auctioneers Bonhams, of Knightsbridge. There is also Margaret's presentation copy of Holloway Jingles, which she contributed the poem 'To A Fellow Prisoner' to. Sarah Lindberg, manuscripts specialist at Bonhams, said: 'The military-style medals, known as the 'Victoria Cross' of the suffragette movement, were awarded by the leaders of the WSPU to suffragettes who had undertaken hunger-strike whilst imprisoned for the cause. 'There is also a series of extraordinary letters from the sisters inside Holloway Prison describing at first hand the conditions experienced by Suffragettes and the harshness of forcible feeding. 'Railing at the unfairness of their punishment throughout the correspondence, the sisters remain angry and defiant. 'Most striking is the description by Frances of hunger strike and forcible feeding, believed by both sisters to be a necessary tool to achieve their aims, showing the bravery and fierce determination shown by their fellow inmates. 'The letters were smuggled out of Holloway Prison on scraps of paper by Suffragettes who were leaving prison so they are a rare survival. 'The items have come through the family so there is a very good provenance and we hope a Scottish institution may acquire them.' The suffragette movement was founded in 1903 and many campaigners were imprisoned before they were released to help with the First World War effort, which they did with distinction. In November 1918, months after the conflict ended, women over the age of 30, who met a property qualification, were given the right to vote. However, it would be another 10 years before this right was extended to all women over the age of 21 under the Equality of the Representation of the People Act. The sale takes place on June 19.
