A People's History of London

John Rees, Lindsey German

• Publisher: Verso
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9781844678556
• eBook ISBN:
  9781781684160
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

In the eyes of Britain's heritage industry, London is the traditional home of empire, monarchy and power, an urban wonderland for the privileged, where the vast majority of Londoners feature only to applaud in the background.
Yet, for nearly 2000 years, the city has been a breeding ground for radical ideas, home to thinkers, heretics and rebels from John Wycliffe to Karl Marx. It has been the site of sometimes violent clashes that changed the course of history: the Levellers' doomed struggle for liberty in the aftermath of the Civil War; the silk weavers, match girls and dockers who crusaded for workers' rights; and the Battle of Cable Street, where East Enders took on Oswald Mosley's Black Shirts.

A People's History of London journeys to a city of pamphleteers, agitators, exiles and revolutionaries, where millions of people have struggled in obscurity to secure a better future.

1

Origins

Llyn Din: the City of the Lake.

Celtic origin of Londinium

LONDINIUM

London was established by invaders: the Romans. There were pre-Roman settlements in the Thames valley, including in the area of modern London, but it was not until after the Roman invasion of AD 43 that a large urban area was settled. After landing on the Kent coast, the II Augusta, XIV Gemina, XX Valeria, and IX Hispana legions crossed the Thames at the same point before breaking into separate units as they continued north and west, almost unopposed at first. There were two subsequent, and decisive, battles, both of which the Romans won. London was born as a military supply base.

Londinium became established as a Roman trading centre over the following two decades. Its location had some natural advantages. It was at the furthest point inland where the Thames was still a tidal river, and therefore was readily accessible for sea-going ships; yet it was also the easternmost point where it was possible to cross the river easily. At some point in the second century AD the Romans were the first to bridge the Thames, at the site of the modern London Bridge. Here on the south bank of the river – what would become Southwark – there then lay two large islands with minor channels of the Thames flowing south of them. On the ground that rose above the surrounding marshes it was possible to build approach roads, like that from the already important town of Canterbury. The north bank, on the hills that would come to be known as Ludgate Hill and Cornhill, provided raised ground on which buildings could be safely constructed.

London was an advantageous location for a Roman settlement for other reasons. Londinium gave the Roman army access to corn from the rich farmland nearby. Fairly powerful tribes in the surrounding area had submitted to Roman rule whereas tribes in the West, Wales and, later, the North were actively hostile. The Thames itself was also a major attraction, for in the ancient world water connected more than it separated people. Within a decade of the invasion quays were being established along the Thames, and soon perhaps 10,000 people lived in the area between the crossing to Southwark and the western side of the Walbrook River, now vanished underground, but which entered the Thames near modern-day Cannon Street station. On the south side of the crossing, granaries, bakeries and workshops sprang up. The Roman historian Tacitus admired the teeming settlement, ‘crowded with merchants and goods’.

The native Britons’ first significant contribution to the history of London was to destroy it. In AD 60, seventeen years after the Roman invasion, the Iceni tribe swept out of their territory in the East Anglian heartland, destroying the Roman city of Colchester (Camulodunum) and then London. The Iceni had good reasons for their hostility. Following the invasion, the Romans had not conquered the Iceni but made a pact with their king, Prasutagus. On his death, however, Roman policy hardened towards them, a fact even Tacitus could hardly disguise. Tacitus records that Prasutagus ‘in the course of a long reign had amassed considerable wealth’, which he left in his will ‘to his two daughters and the emperor in equal shares’. This Prasutagus thought would be enough to secure ‘the tranquility of his kingdom and his family’. In a masterpiece of understatement, Tacitus says ‘The event was otherwise’.

His dominions were ravaged by the centurions; the slaves pillaged his house, and his effects were seized as lawful plunder. His wife, Boudicca, was disgraced with cruel stripes; her daughters were ravished, and the most illustrious of the Icenians were, by force, deprived of the positions which had been transmitted to them by their ancestors. The whole country was considered as a legacy bequeathed to the plunderers. The relations of the deceased king were reduced to slavery.

Exasperated by their acts of violence, and dreading worse calamities, the Icenians had recourse to arms.1

Boudicca (Boadicea is a later corruption) made an alliance with ‘neighbouring states, not as yet taught to crouch in bondage’, who, says Tacitus, ‘pledged themselves, in secret councils, to stand forth in the cause of liberty’. We have some sense of the feelings that motivated the Iceni from Tacitus’s account of Boudicca’s speech at a later stage of the same campaign:

Boudicca, in a [chariot], with her two daughters before her, drove through the ranks. She harangued the different nations in their turn: ‘This,’ she said, ‘is not the first time that the Britons have been led to battle by a woman. But now she did not come to boast the pride of a long line of ancestry, nor even to recover her kingdom and the plundered wealth of her family. She took the field, like the meanest among them, to assert the cause of public liberty, and to seek revenge for her body seamed with ignominious stripes, and her two daughters infamously ravished. From the pride and arrogance of the Romans nothing is sacred; all are subject to violation; the old endure the scourge, and the virgins are deflowered. But the vindictive gods are now at hand. A Roman legion dared to face the warlike Britons: with their lives they paid for their rashness . . .’2

After Boudicca’s victory at Colchester the Roman general Suetonius was forced to march to London, but then decided to abandon it as indefensible. The first Londoners pleaded with Suetonius to stay, but he refused and ‘the signal for the march was given’. In consequence Boudicca’s forces sacked an unresisting London and burnt it to the ground. The city was devastated, its destruction so comprehensive that today modern archeologists find in nearly every site a layer of charred remains up to half a metre thick, on both sides of the Thames.

London was at this time the nerve centre of a new regime of state taxation and colonial land dispossession that enraged the indigenous peasantry, as testified by the Boudiccan revolt.3 The final victory, though, lay with the Romans. Legions returning from Wales defeated Boudicca at a battle in the Midlands, after which she took her own life by drinking poison. The Romans returned to London and set about rebuilding it, although serious construction would not begin for another decade. Ironically, it was another foreigner, Gaius Julius Alpinus Classicianus, a member of the Gallic aristocracy and a brilliant administrator, who began rebuilding London. It was AD 75 before the forum-basilica was begun. But at the end of the first century AD London was the largest town on the British Isles. About AD 200 the stone wall which was to mark out the city limits for the next 1,500 years was constructed, stretching from what is now the site of the Tower of London to the Fleet River, near Blackfriars. Gates were made at Bishopsgate, Newgate, and Ludgate. The existing Aldgate was incorporated into the wall.4

THE DECLINE OF LONDINIUM AND THE RISE OF LUNDENWIC

In the second century AD, London prospered and grew as an imperial and trade hub. But in the following one hundred years growth was thrown into reverse. The Roman Empire was overextended, defending long frontiers against increasingly powerful enemies. Earlier in Roman history, wars of conquest had meant inflows of treasure and slaves. Later, as the frontiers became permanent borders, like Hadrian’s Wall, the empire became dependent on internal resources. Higher taxes replaced the spoils of war, and forced labour was imposed on peasants as the supply of slaves dried up. The imperial state siphoned wealth away from towns to support the army.

In AD 200 Britannia was divided in two. One half, Britannia Inferior, was ruled from York, the other half, Britannia Superior, was ruled from London. This diminished the city as an administrative centre. In addition, falling tidal levels in the Thames meant that quays had to be built further out into the river, which didn’t help trade. Moreover, significant trade was being diverted to northern ports, much of it en route to the army mainly based on Hadrian’s Wall. Infighting among would-be Emperors (and Britain was for a period part of a breakaway Empire in northern Europe no longer connected to Rome) further diminished the city’s ability to sustain earlier growth.

Londinium declined during the third and fourth centuries, as public buildings were not repaired and the private houses of the elite were too expensive to maintain. The population shrank, and much of the townscape was reduced to dereliction and filth. A change of name – from Londinium to Augusta (meaning ‘Imperial’) – could not alter the reality: the empire and its cities were in decline as an all-powerful state centralized resources in a desperate struggle to keep the ‘barbarians’ out. It was a struggle that the Romans abandoned in relation to Britain around AD 400. London by then was little more than ruins and waste ground.5

In the early fifth century Angles and Saxons from northern Germany settled in southern Britain. To the west of the deserted Roman city were the Middle Saxons (hence Middlesex), to the east the Eastern Saxons (hence Essex). They spoke a Germanic language that they called ‘Englisc’. Urban living had collapsed, and these newcomers were mostly engaged in settled agriculture. But slowly some new large settlements did appear. Around 730 the chronicler Bede was describing the ‘metropolis of the East Saxons’ as ‘an emporium for many nations coming by land and sea’. Excavations over many years have revealed that the site Bede was referring to lay immediately west of the walled Roman city of Londinium – its core remains are now underneath Fleet Street, the Strand and Trafalgar Square. This is where the Saxon trading town was built. Contemporary documents refer to this town as Lundenwic. In Anglo-Saxon, the ‘wic’ ending meant ‘market’, or to use Bede’s Latin equivalent, ‘emporium’.

Lundenwic extended from the western edge of the Roman city round the riverbank south and west to Westminster, and as far north as Oxford Street: excavations at the Royal Opera House revealed nearly sixty buildings along one street. Lundenwic benefited from a shallow beach on the Thames. The Strand is both a synonym for beach and marks the higher tidal reach of the Thames at this time. It was a better place for ships to dock than the old decaying quays of Londinium. But Lundenwic was close enough to the old Roman centre to make use of the network of Roman roads. Pottery, glass and metalwork from northern France and the Rhineland, millstones from Germany and amber from the Baltic have all been found in Lundenwic. So too have English wool and evidence of weaving and metal working. But Lundenwic was, after more than 200 years, destined to disappear. From the end of the eighth century Viking sea raiders, Danes and Norwegians, began to attack Britain. North Sea trade was disrupted and the Vikings attacked Lundenwic in 842 and 851. In 865 the Great Army of the Danish Vikings began a campaign which subdued the kingdoms of Northumbria, East Anglia and most of Mercia. In 871–72 the Danish army wintered in London. By 877 only King Alfred’s West Saxons were outside Danish control.

THE RISE OF LUNDENBURG

King Alfred is perhaps best known for his lack of culinary ability. But he has a greater claim to fame as the figure who re-established London on the site of the old, deserted location within the Roman walls. Alfred’s advance to London came after his fortunes had reached their lowest ebb. After years of warfare against the Danes, Alfred was surprised at the royal stronghold of Chippenham in Wiltshire while celebrating Twelfth Night in 878. Fleeing southwest, he took refuge in the Somerset levels where, according to legend, he burnt the cakes.

Alfred rallied his forces in Wessex, defeated the Danes at the battle of Ethandun (possibly at Westbury) and besieged them until they surrendered at Chippenham. The Danish King Guthrum converted to Christianity, and the Danes left Wessex. Within a decade Alfred had become strong enough to conclude a treaty with Guthrum that divided up the old kingdom of Mercia. The boundary between Alfred’s kingdom and the Danelaw, as Guthrum’s territory was now called, ran along the Thames and up the valley of the River Lea to the east of the old Roman city.

Practically the only change within the old city since the Romans left was the establishment of a church called St Paul’s on Ludgate Hill, built in 604 by Mellitus, bishop of the East Saxons. This wooden building burned down in 675 and was rebuilt ten years later. Alfred needed London as a border fortress: the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, begun on Alfred’s instructions and maintained until the middle of the twelfth century, records his decision to rebuild the city in 886: ‘King Alfred fortified the city of London [gesette Lunden burg, in the original]’. The city was then given into the control of Alderman Ethelred, ‘to hold it under him’.6

Under Ethelred, Lundenburg (or Lundenburh) was rebuilt east of St Paul’s with new blocks of streets on a grid system. A new dock was built called Ethelred’s Hithe (now Queenshithe). The Saxon town of Lundenwic became fields once more, remembered in the name Aldwych, the ‘old town’. South of the river, where graveyards had earlier replaced the Roman urban area, development took place: Southwark is first mentioned around 915 as Suthringa geweorche, the fortified work of the men of Surrey. Indeed fortification north and south of the Thames was still very necessary, as conflict with the Danes, never long subdued, erupted once more.

Alfred died around 900. However, it took another 116 years before the power of the Danes in England was such that a Danish King, Cnut, became accepted as King of all the English. Londoners had already reached a separate peace with Cnut, and had bought off invaders during the preceding wars by the payment of Danegeld. This continued as a regular levy, and in 1018 London was taxed 10,500 pounds in silver: one eighth of the total burden placed upon the nation, an indicator that London was again the wealthiest and largest town in the country. And although the abbey had existed since the eighth century, it was under Cnut that Westminster began to develop on what was then Thorney Island in the T...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Map
• Introduction
• 1. Origins
• 2. Lords, Lollards, Heretics and Peasants in Revolt
• 3. ‘The Head and Fountain of Rebellion’
• 4. Old Corruption and the Mob That Can Read
• 5. Reformers and Revolutionaries
• 6. Union City
• 7. Things Fall Apart
• 8. The Strike and the Slump
• 9. London’s Burning
• 10. Migrant City
• 11. Welcome to the Modern World
• 12. Neoliberal London
• 13. Protestopolis
• Acknowledgements
• Second-Edition Acknowledgements
• Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover Page