Past Tense Profile picture
London radical histories & mysteries. Obsessions: open space, gentrification, strikes, riot, music, drink, spycops. https://t.co/3uyYVJY3D4
Apr 14 42 tweets 8 min read
@SouthwarkNotes Some of the other places covered in today’s Radical History Faction walk:

Tolmers Square NW1, squatted 1973 on during a battle against property developers SCIT

spitalfieldslife.com/2018/01/24/the… @SouthwarkNotes Joe Levy’s Stock Conversion and Investment Trust started buying houses in Tolmers Square cheap in 1962 and ran the place down. They eventually owned about half the area and the council most of the other half.
Feb 28 38 tweets 10 min read
No-Go Areas have been in the news a lot recently; this trope is generally (though not always) used to attack migrant communities in inner cities.
London has been mentioned, especially the East End.
Let’s have a look at some historical London ‘NoGo Areas’ shall we?
A thread. 17th/18th century sanctuaries and liberties were areas where usual law didn’t apply: often under old church law or weird economic exceptions.
wp.me/p74yfw-1Vk
Feb 25 14 tweets 4 min read
@SebastianEPayne @theipaper ‘Intimidation’ of MPs is hardly new. Crowds have been lobbying Parliament for centuries, often aggressively because they were angry. It has long been a routine expression of grassroots political consciousness
A short thread: @SebastianEPayne @theipaper It was an almost weekly occurrence during the 1640s Civil War… including women protesting war and poverty:
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Apr 1, 2023 118 tweets 21 min read
The main gate to the St. George’s Estate, Weybridge, Surrey, now a posh private estate & golf club.
#OnThisDay in 1649, a small group calling themselves 'True Levellers" squatted at St George’s Hill, & began to dig the land and plant vegetables.
More here: wp.me/p74yfw-HF Often called 'Diggers', the ethos of the St George's Hill commune was an egalitarian agrarian communism: they advocated the taking over of waste lands of the manors, by the poor, to be worked collectively, to grow food and raise animals, to feed all, for need, not profit.
Mar 22, 2023 5 tweets 2 min read
Event this Saturday: commemorating a meeting in March 1923, 100 years ago, when Sylvia Pankhurst spoke at what is now The Gunmakers (then an Italian social club "Dondi's") against fascism in Italy, perhaps the first publicly advertised anti-fascist meeting in the UK. The Sylvia Pankhurst Memorial Committee, historian Alfio Bernabei are holding an event on Saturday 25 March 2023 at 3.30pm at The Gunmakers pub, Clerkenwell, formerly Dondi’s Club.
Feb 27, 2023 27 tweets 8 min read
If you're in London, there's a great exhibition on at the Charing Cross Library, London WC2, about British suffragette and communist Sylvia Pankhurst and her life partner, Italian anarchist Silvio Corio, antifascists who denounced Mussolini's regime and infamous war on Ethiopia. Image Curated by Alfie Bernarbei, it focuses on the exiled community of anarchists, socialists & other activists who made up London’s Little Italy, fleeing authoritarian governments, who linked up to existing radical movements here. Image
Feb 1, 2023 76 tweets 20 min read
Solidarity with all teachers, university workers, civil servants, train and bus drivers (& any others!) striking today.
Collective action from the grassroots can win!

For information and inspiration here’s some strikes, with disputes, anti-strike repression, a historical thread: We mainly write about London so this thread generally focuses there, 1000s of other stories are out there. Not a comprehensive list, many omissions… add your own tales and links!
Jan 30, 2023 5 tweets 1 min read
Saw this yesterday - in tears for some of it. both a harrowing and heartening film. Nan Goldin’s life entwined with the struggle to hold the capitalophropist scum Sackler family to account for engineering the OxyContin epidemic for profit. Plus the trauma of AIDS among her friends and the scenes she was part of… But rebelling, fighting back, is shown as a lifesaver. Nan’s survival from a suburban fucked-up family and escape into art and the counter-culture/underground is contrasted with her sister’s suicide…
May 11, 2022 68 tweets 17 min read
Cost of Living driving you to desperation? Sick of a society where wealthy elites party on the backs of millions who can’t make ends meet?
You’re not alone. Get together. Join unions, form unions, form mutual aid groups. Collective action in our own interests works.
(Continues) Direct action can provide all we need. Let’s seize everything we need!
Some inspiration from London history (mainly: we’re a London history project). A thread. Add your own examples…
Apr 12, 2022 26 tweets 7 min read
41 years since the 10-12 April 1981 Brixton Uprising.
Here’s a series of posts on Brixton, housing, rebellious cultures, racism, policing & resistance.
Not a complete history or analysis…
1. Changing, Always Changing: Brixton before the Riots, part 1: wp.me/p74yfw-1rT 2. In the Shadow of the SPG: Racism, Policing and Resistance in 1970s Brixton

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Oct 29, 2017 24 tweets 3 min read
As there are inaccurate accounts of yesterday's attack on @helensteel12 at @AnokBookfair here's what I saw. Two women came & handed out a leaflet questioning transgender politics, mainly re Gender Deregulation legislation being discussed now.