One of the driving forces behind the SE1 Stories group, the long-time Southwark activist George Nicholson, has passed away aged 78. He died on February 1 at St Thomas’s Hospital after a sudden illness. George was one of the founding members of the group. He spearheaded the funding campaign for our exhibition and brought invaluable personal experience and insight into the story of community action on the South Bank in the 70s and 80s. George was indeed a central character in the story.
As a resident in Copperfield Street SE1, George began working with the newly formed North Southwark Community Development Group in the early 1970s. He formed a close collaboration with Ted Bowman the chair of the NSCDG and with other local resident and trades union activists, such as Lil Patrick and Anne Keane, who were campaigning for social housing and against the advance of speculative office development along the South Bank from Waterloo, to Bankside, Hays Wharf and Tower Bridge. He continued his commitment to housing v offices as a councillor on Southwark Council and then as chair of Planning at the Greater London Council in the Ken Livingstone administration from 1981 to 1986.
At the GLC he was instrumental in many significant events which made a real difference to London and its communities. He established the Community Areas Policy to protect residential communities in central London, and personally negotiated the transfer of the 13 acre Coin Street site to Coin Street Community Builders hours before the abolition of the GLC on April 1 1986. In his role at the GLC he also led the campaign against the LDDC, Canary Wharf and London City Airport. He set up the London Rivers Association to press for protection of wharves and river users. He worked closely with Ted Bowman and other market trustees to rescue the Borough Market from demolition and to restore its market function.
The SE1 Stories exhibition tells the story of these events. George would say that none of this was possible without the leadership of key residents such as Ted, Lil, Anne and Ernie and many others in the labour, trade union, and residents associations of those times in North Southwark and Waterloo.
George’s life was filled with good humour, friendship, and a commitment to help others. He will be remembered for his humorous and punchy speeches to committees, inquiries, public meetings, including his welcome speech to the SE1 Stories exhibition launch at Blackfriars Settlement. He reminded us often that he loved his life as an engineer on cargo ships sailing out of Liverpool in the 1960s, and was later brought into community action through a course he took at Goldsmiths College. He was an excellent photographer and curated a photography exhibition of his black and white photos of people and buildings in Southwark In the 1970s called ‘Made in Southwark’. In the 1970s, he bought a small cottage in the foothills of the Pyrenees in France which he restored over years. He became fluent in French and spent many summers and winters there with Julia his partner and his many friends.
RIP George.