People make communities

Many people contributed to the efforts to see the communities of Waterloo and North Southwark survive and thrive. Here are some – please add your suggestions or contributions via our comments page.

Ted Bowman obituary on LondonSE1 community website (2014). An important person in North Southwark community action.

David Harter obituary in The Guardian (2021). Major legal input into the Coin Street campaign.

Ernie Hearn speaking at Blackfriars Peabody Buildings Tenants Association meeting, 1974. Photo by Paul Carter.

Robert Elms talks with Ernie Hearn, Listed Londoner on BBC Radio London (2015). Ernie’s Beach on the Thames – see Plaques of London or the news release. As well as being instrumental in saving the South Bank’s foreshore and involvement in the Coin Street campaign, he put much energy into the establishment of what is now the Colombo Centre.

Margaret Mellor obituary, WCDG (2019).

Lil Patrick’s long campaign for local green space is recognised by Potters Field Park, opened by her in 1988.

Jim Radford, mentioned on two of the exhibition panels, was a significant social campaigner – for example he wrote a piece on The Squatting Campaign for The Guardian in 2004. His newspaper obituaries in 2020 tend to focus on his status as the youngest known participant in D-Day, peace campaigner and folk singer, as does his Wikipedia entry.

Keib Thomas obituary in The Guardian (2007). Keib played a key part in getting the second series of SE1 Community Newspaper off the ground – a gardening column was just a small part of his input. There is a statue of him in Chumleigh Gardens (part of Burgess Park). He was involved in local community activism as a worker at Bede House and Morley College Community Project in particular.