SOME BACKGROUND STUFF

I made these drawings back in '94 when I joined the anti-road protesters who had occupied the East London street to resist its demolition by the builders of a new motorway link being pushed through the area. The number of campaigners living in the street fluctuated around the 70 mark. They had held the street for several years during the later of which there had been several sudden and short-lived invasions by demolition gangs managing to take down one or two houses at a time.
I joined them in the latter part of 94 and stayed up until,(and during) the final, spectacular, 'Battle of Claremont'. During this time my role was to help set up and then run the "Jazz Cafe" at No.7 at the West end of the street. It was open every day (and into the early hours) for drinks and snacks and, every day, we provided some 100 hot meals for whoever happened to be on the street at the time. To provide the meal we sallied out each evening in a reconditioned ambulance to search the skips outside Tesco, Asda etc for undamaged food packets with that day's sell-by date. Amazing what they waste! Cheeses, ham, salads, cream, bread etc and so on. We'd converted the upstairs of No.7 into a 'music studio' and, of an evening you could listen to or sit in on some great jam sessions provided by musicians either living on the street or coming in for the buzz.
Well, there's too much to tell about all the events surrounding this astounding demonstration of committed resistance. Certainly more than is appropriate for this journal. However, for those interested, you can find plenty of stuff (inc. photos) via Google. Tap in either "Claremont Road" or "Reclaim the Streets" - a campaign that came out of the Claremont experience.

AND SO, TO MY SKETCHES
These were made at the time and show various parts of the street with some of its 'fortifications' and 'resistance towers'.

"Under Attack": Shows them demolishing houses opposite the Jazz Cafe as street people defend adjacent house by holding out on the roof on what became known as "Piss Tuesday". I made the sketch from the upstairs window of the Cafe where I had been sealed in when riot police surrounded it just as hundreds of other police, demolition gangs, bailiffs & co suddenly poured onto the street. They managed to destroy 3 houses and many trees bfore withdrawing that evening.

"Viva Claremont" Shows the aftermath of "Piss Tuesday". The authorities had built a high fence around the demolished site and, from then until the final "Battle" months later, had it guarded 24 hrs a day by dozens of sad, bored, underpaid "security guards" (who we often fed from the Jazz Cafe). The drawing shows the street people erecting a Resistance Tower on what was now the end of terrace house.

"Lock On" This shows a typical caribini 'lock on' used by the street's defenders to make their removal from their defending positions more difficult. As you may know, the strap goes round the wrist and the lock on is clipped to a metal bar sunk deep in a concrete block or similar hard to dig out object. The vignettes show the entrance to the Jazz Cafe (much nicer inside than out) and a record of street veteran Keith's epic hold out locked on to a concrete block in the chimney of the last house to be demolished on 'Piss Tuesday'. It took the County Sheriffs posse of Deputies all day to remove him - despite "spilling" petrol from their drills over him and, at one point, harnessing him to a cherry-picker platform and hoisting him up so that the pain in his stretched arm would make him release his lock on. Viva Keith.

The remaining pics are pretty self explanatory.

Claremont Road is now no more and traffic roars along the MI link
with a saved journey time of 10 - 15 mins. Its route through East London destroyed many hundreds of homes, streets, workshops and an ancient piece of Epping woodland ceded by Queen Victoria to the public "forever".