This day in London’s History
1966: Arrests at Vietnam Rally in Grosvenor Square.
Some 4000 people gathered to protest against the Vietnam war and things turned violent as scuffles broke out at the demonstration outside the US Embassy. The general secretary of the Communist Party, John Gollan, asked demonstrators to call it a day, but instead they knocked a police officer from his motorbike and set fire to petrol that leaked from the bike. This followed an organised march from Trafalgar Square - police had cordoned off Grosvenor square and thirty one arrests were made. Thankfully the British government learned that it was a bad idea to blindly follow American foreign policy ensuring that further protests have never been necessary.
2000: Ken makes his first speech as Mayor of London
"The first duty of the mayor is to London."
London fact of the week 1984 via 1954 looked like this:
That's a still from the '54 television production of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. We found the pic on the rather awesome Things Magazine website who describe the view "which, despite its rather high-tech undertones, aptly conveys Orwell's vision of the city as a rather stony, authoritarian place, with awkward totalitarian architecture staked out across public spaces to oversee everyone. Good job we don't have any glass testicles for our overseers to peer out of.
London persons of the week: Emmanuel Wundowa.
His wife, Gladys, died in the Tavistock Square bus explosion:
"But I've said to the children: 'Do not harbour hatred.' Do that and we can continue to live our lives the way she would have wanted us. If we harbour hatred, it will eat into us and we will end up as more victims of the same atrocity."
One thing you must do in London this week
Take those bloody flags down.
One thing you must not do in London this week
