Stuart Christie, Highgate (1968)
Dublin Core
Title
Stuart Christie, Highgate (1968)
Description
Stuart Christie (2011):
'Note the Bob Fletcher (Esquire) hand made, hi-back button-down, price 29s 6d. These press photos appeared for sale on eBay recently. Thanks to Ally for bringing them to my attention.'
'Our local pub, the Queen’s in Crouch End, Hornsey, had become a focal meeting place for anarchists, libertarians, Trotskyists, and a couple of members of the Young Communist League (YCL) who were no better than they should be.
‘I didn’t know it at the time, but the pub was known to the police as the home of the ‘Hornsey Guerrillas.’ Something strange happened on the Friday night before the demonstration. First, seven or eight uniformed policemen, led by a Sergeant Phillips from Hornsey police station, filed into ‘our snug,’ and called time — 15 minutes before last orders. When we objected and complained to Harry, the landlord, he didn’t try to remonstrate with the police, as you might have expected, and told us to drink up, covering the pumps with a tea-towel as he spoke. There were perhaps about twenty of us in the pub that night and hackles were rising. We didn’t particularly want a rammy starting in our local, and with the ‘big’ demo the next day wiser and more worldly counsels prevailed and we allowed ourselves to be ushered out onto the pavement singing the Internationale.
‘Once outside we realised the whole street was crawling with police, from Tottenham Lane all the way up Crouch End Broadway and past the clock tower, where a large posse of policemen had massed. Beyond the clock tower we could see a convoy of Black Marias and police buses with reinforcements. Trouble was brewing. Our first thoughts were that there had been a right-wing coup and we were headed for internment in the nearby Arsenal football stadium.
‘A small group of us turned right to go towards Fairfield Gardens, but our way was blocked by a line of policemen who started herding everyone up towards the clock tower. As we walked we sang the Internationale, fists clenched in the air.
‘I think it was Jimmy Gilpin who kicked the whole thing off. Jimmy was another young Scots lad recently arrived in London from Dumfries to join the revolution. He had seen the events of May 1968 in Paris on the telly, read the stories of imminent insurrection in the newspapers, and he simply had to be there on the barricades so he gave up his pipefitting apprenticeship and ran off to Crouch End where his brother, Peter, an IS (SWP) activist lived with his wife Sheila up Crouch End Hill in Haslemere Road, next door to Tariq Ali and his partner, Jane.
‘Jimmy was trailing along at the back of the crowd when a police Panda car drew up alongside him. A pasty-faced cop said to him, provocatively, in his best Estuary English ‘Shut the fakk up, you bastard!’ Jimmy ignored him and walked on, still singing. The Panda drew up again and the pasty-faced cop screamed at him ‘I told you to shut up, you bastard.’ Jimmy turned and leaned in the window and said, in as polite a tone as he could muster: ‘We are singing about “uniting the human race,” so that lets you out pal.’ Next thing the cop is out of the car and has Jimmy bent over the bonnet in a headlock. It was the move the police were waiting for; it had been a set-up, a provocation. Police appeared as if out of nowhere — uniformed and plain clothes, dog handlers, cars and Paddy Wagons. When Peter Gilpin and Mike Cohen dragged the policeman off Jimmy, fighting broke out up and down the Broadway. Ray Jones was wrestling with a copper in the middle of the street, Graham Packham, Vaz Clark, Ross Pritchard, Conn, Big Jack Finnegan, Mike Hyme, Ross Flett, Allan Barlow, Phil Carver, Austin Berlin, Sheila Gilpin, Brenda, my girl-friend, and others were trading punches and insults with our attackers. The scene was straight out of Hieronymous Bosch, and the choreography out of West Side Story.
‘Fashion victim that I was at the time, I was wearing my brand-new bespoke dark blue mohair suit. With my short hair and clean-shaven Man at C&A look, I was often taken for an off-duty policeman or CID officer. Taking advantage of this I dodged around in the melee doing what I could, taking the numbers of the policemen as they tried to bundle people into the waiting Black Marias. As fast as people were pushed into the police vans, we pulled them out again. I asked one policeman who was trying to handcuff Jimmy to release him, saying he was ‘one of ours.’ The copper immediately released him, no doubt thinking that one CID officer was asking for the release of an undercover agent. I think they arrested Jimmy three times that night. On the last occasion he tried to climb into the Paddy Wagon, but was booted out by a copper who told him they were full up — and they had got what they had come for. It obviously wasn’t Jimmy Gilpin.
‘Jimmy then swung a punch at the policeman who lunged back, and then Mike Cohen stepped in took the policeman’s truncheon from him and cracked his collar bone with it. Mike got away, but Jimmy was grabbed, handcuffed and frog-marched to Hornsey Police Station
‘Suddenly I was rumbled. Sergeant Phillips, who was in charge of the operation, shouted to a dog-handler, a vicious-looking retard with an Alsatian dog to grab me. I suddenly found myself grabbed by my tie by the dog handler who started to strangle me with it. He also ripped the front of my best and irreplaceable Bob Fletcher handmade shirt. I really should have learned never to fight for freedom and justice in your best clothes. Unfortunately, I hadn’t realised freedom and justice were on the agenda that night. With one mighty leap I broke free and ran off into the night. The policeman fell to the pavement in surprise, releasing his dog, which took off after me like a bat out of Hell.
‘I ran into the alley behind the chip shop where I stopped and turned, hoping to pacify the dog with my winning ways, soft words and the divine intervention of St Francis of Assisi. The dog stopped, looked at me, bared its teeth, advanced slowly, growling then launched itself at my privates. I managed to turn and deflect the animal’s bite, so that instead of my bollocks, it sank its teeth into my knee, ripping my brand-new trousers badly. At this point anger and self-interest overcame my natural love of animals and, with no other weapons available, I pulled out a biro and thrust it up the Alsatian’s nose. The dog pulled back, howled, turned and ran off in search of its master.
‘I took myself off through the back streets of Hornsey and took a mini-cab to Charing Cross Hospital, worried about rabies.' From ‘Edward Heath Made Me Angry’, pp 68-69 (1968)
'Note the Bob Fletcher (Esquire) hand made, hi-back button-down, price 29s 6d. These press photos appeared for sale on eBay recently. Thanks to Ally for bringing them to my attention.'
'Our local pub, the Queen’s in Crouch End, Hornsey, had become a focal meeting place for anarchists, libertarians, Trotskyists, and a couple of members of the Young Communist League (YCL) who were no better than they should be.
‘I didn’t know it at the time, but the pub was known to the police as the home of the ‘Hornsey Guerrillas.’ Something strange happened on the Friday night before the demonstration. First, seven or eight uniformed policemen, led by a Sergeant Phillips from Hornsey police station, filed into ‘our snug,’ and called time — 15 minutes before last orders. When we objected and complained to Harry, the landlord, he didn’t try to remonstrate with the police, as you might have expected, and told us to drink up, covering the pumps with a tea-towel as he spoke. There were perhaps about twenty of us in the pub that night and hackles were rising. We didn’t particularly want a rammy starting in our local, and with the ‘big’ demo the next day wiser and more worldly counsels prevailed and we allowed ourselves to be ushered out onto the pavement singing the Internationale.
‘Once outside we realised the whole street was crawling with police, from Tottenham Lane all the way up Crouch End Broadway and past the clock tower, where a large posse of policemen had massed. Beyond the clock tower we could see a convoy of Black Marias and police buses with reinforcements. Trouble was brewing. Our first thoughts were that there had been a right-wing coup and we were headed for internment in the nearby Arsenal football stadium.
‘A small group of us turned right to go towards Fairfield Gardens, but our way was blocked by a line of policemen who started herding everyone up towards the clock tower. As we walked we sang the Internationale, fists clenched in the air.
‘I think it was Jimmy Gilpin who kicked the whole thing off. Jimmy was another young Scots lad recently arrived in London from Dumfries to join the revolution. He had seen the events of May 1968 in Paris on the telly, read the stories of imminent insurrection in the newspapers, and he simply had to be there on the barricades so he gave up his pipefitting apprenticeship and ran off to Crouch End where his brother, Peter, an IS (SWP) activist lived with his wife Sheila up Crouch End Hill in Haslemere Road, next door to Tariq Ali and his partner, Jane.
‘Jimmy was trailing along at the back of the crowd when a police Panda car drew up alongside him. A pasty-faced cop said to him, provocatively, in his best Estuary English ‘Shut the fakk up, you bastard!’ Jimmy ignored him and walked on, still singing. The Panda drew up again and the pasty-faced cop screamed at him ‘I told you to shut up, you bastard.’ Jimmy turned and leaned in the window and said, in as polite a tone as he could muster: ‘We are singing about “uniting the human race,” so that lets you out pal.’ Next thing the cop is out of the car and has Jimmy bent over the bonnet in a headlock. It was the move the police were waiting for; it had been a set-up, a provocation. Police appeared as if out of nowhere — uniformed and plain clothes, dog handlers, cars and Paddy Wagons. When Peter Gilpin and Mike Cohen dragged the policeman off Jimmy, fighting broke out up and down the Broadway. Ray Jones was wrestling with a copper in the middle of the street, Graham Packham, Vaz Clark, Ross Pritchard, Conn, Big Jack Finnegan, Mike Hyme, Ross Flett, Allan Barlow, Phil Carver, Austin Berlin, Sheila Gilpin, Brenda, my girl-friend, and others were trading punches and insults with our attackers. The scene was straight out of Hieronymous Bosch, and the choreography out of West Side Story.
‘Fashion victim that I was at the time, I was wearing my brand-new bespoke dark blue mohair suit. With my short hair and clean-shaven Man at C&A look, I was often taken for an off-duty policeman or CID officer. Taking advantage of this I dodged around in the melee doing what I could, taking the numbers of the policemen as they tried to bundle people into the waiting Black Marias. As fast as people were pushed into the police vans, we pulled them out again. I asked one policeman who was trying to handcuff Jimmy to release him, saying he was ‘one of ours.’ The copper immediately released him, no doubt thinking that one CID officer was asking for the release of an undercover agent. I think they arrested Jimmy three times that night. On the last occasion he tried to climb into the Paddy Wagon, but was booted out by a copper who told him they were full up — and they had got what they had come for. It obviously wasn’t Jimmy Gilpin.
‘Jimmy then swung a punch at the policeman who lunged back, and then Mike Cohen stepped in took the policeman’s truncheon from him and cracked his collar bone with it. Mike got away, but Jimmy was grabbed, handcuffed and frog-marched to Hornsey Police Station
‘Suddenly I was rumbled. Sergeant Phillips, who was in charge of the operation, shouted to a dog-handler, a vicious-looking retard with an Alsatian dog to grab me. I suddenly found myself grabbed by my tie by the dog handler who started to strangle me with it. He also ripped the front of my best and irreplaceable Bob Fletcher handmade shirt. I really should have learned never to fight for freedom and justice in your best clothes. Unfortunately, I hadn’t realised freedom and justice were on the agenda that night. With one mighty leap I broke free and ran off into the night. The policeman fell to the pavement in surprise, releasing his dog, which took off after me like a bat out of Hell.
‘I ran into the alley behind the chip shop where I stopped and turned, hoping to pacify the dog with my winning ways, soft words and the divine intervention of St Francis of Assisi. The dog stopped, looked at me, bared its teeth, advanced slowly, growling then launched itself at my privates. I managed to turn and deflect the animal’s bite, so that instead of my bollocks, it sank its teeth into my knee, ripping my brand-new trousers badly. At this point anger and self-interest overcame my natural love of animals and, with no other weapons available, I pulled out a biro and thrust it up the Alsatian’s nose. The dog pulled back, howled, turned and ran off in search of its master.
‘I took myself off through the back streets of Hornsey and took a mini-cab to Charing Cross Hospital, worried about rabies.' From ‘Edward Heath Made Me Angry’, pp 68-69 (1968)
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Unknown, “Stuart Christie, Highgate (1968),” Stuart Christie Memorial Archive, accessed December 22, 2024, https://stuartchristie.maydayrooms.org/items/show/426.