Constance Street

by Charlie Connelly

  ‘Can’t see the government putting up with it for long,’ said John. ‘I bet they’re scared of it turning into a full-blown revolution, like in Russia.’

  ‘That couldn’t happen here,’ said Nell. ‘People wouldn’t stand for it.’

  ‘That’s what Churchill’s saying, though. There might be a revolution.’

  ‘Well, even if it’s not a revolution, something has to be done. Look at us here, in Silvertown, all these factories laying people off left, right and centre. Things were bad enough here when they were crying out for workers, let alone now there’s all these men out of work. Someone has to stand up and do something. Just as long as this strike doesn’t go on long. I can’t help thinking that the longer it continues, the worse the outcome will be for folk like us.’

  Harry had gone up to the docks around lunchtime to see what was happening. He arrived back in Constance Street, took off his cap and scratched the back of his head.

  ‘I ain’t never seen nothing like it,’ he said. ‘The place is like a ghost town. There are ships half-unloaded, stuff all over the quaysides like someone snapped their fingers and everyone vanished on the spot.

  ‘There are groups of lads hanging around the gates, dockers, not sure what they’re supposed to do. They turned up at the start of their shifts but didn’t go in. One fella told me it wouldn’t have been right not to turn up for work, but he wasn’t going in. They’re just milling around up there in the streets. Some are drifting off home now – the ones with kids are saying they don’t get the chance to spend a day with their kids very often so they’ve gone home. There are organised pickets at the gates to stop anyone going in to work, but from what I’ve heard there’s been hardly anyone trying it anyway.’

  ‘They know what’ll happen if they do,’ said Nell. ‘Blacklegs have never been allowed to forget it round here.’

  ‘That’s true,’ said John Parker. ‘When I lived on Saville Road before the war, there was a fella lived there who usually got the cold shoulder because apparently he went in to work during the dock strike of ’89, and that was near on twenty years before.’

  ‘Well everyone’s pretty cheerful up the docks now,’ said Harry. ‘There was a crate of beer came out at one point, but mostly fellas are just standing around with their hands in their pockets as if they’re expecting to get word that the strike’s off and they should go back in.’

  He put his cap back on and looked across to the giant chimney over Tate & Lyle’s.

  ‘Not a puff of smoke,’ he said. ‘How often do you see that? It’s like waiting for a new bleedin’ pope declaration.’

  There was a restlessness about Constance Street over the next couple of days. Harry would go over to the docks in the morning to see what was happening, but he’d find the same thing.

  ‘Just fellas standing around not sure what to do with themselves,’ he said. ‘There was a full-scale football match going on in the yard outside the dock gate this morning. Apparently it’s cricket this afternoon. Everyone seems cheerful enough.’

  Nell knew it couldn’t last, though. There were rumours of troops on the streets further west, police baton-charging crowds of strikers. Frank Levitt told Harry that he’d seen what were clearly undercover policemen in Cundy’s the night before.

  ‘You could tell from the boots,’ he said. ‘Daft bastards. Also, every time you’d look over at ’em they’d look away. Me and Bill Basham started making out we were arranging something, you know, talking in low voices just loud enough for them to hear, saying, “So, by the station, ten o’clock tomorrow” – sure enough, ten o’clock this morning there’s a van full of police there.

  ‘I think they’re thinking, what with Cundy’s reputation from old strikes, that the leaders are going to be in there discussing their plans and operations. Thing is, they are, but they’re upstairs in the function room – they’re hardly going to be sitting in the public bar having a meeting, are they?’

  Frank found the whole thing hilarious but Nell was uneasy. This all felt a little like the eye of the storm. On the fourth day of the strike Harry came back from his daily reconnaissance of the docks looking less cheerful than usual.

  ‘You’ll never guess,’ he told Nell. ‘They’re bringing people in to try and get the docks working. Not dockers, though – toffs! There’s a load of kids from Oxford University and Cambridge University, all these hoo-rahs being bussed into the docks to try and empty a few holds and even work the cranes! Looked through the fence and saw a fella in plus fours and a rugby shirt trying to lift a sack of flour onto his back!’

  That evening a police van pulled up outside Cundy’s and the policemen got out carrying batons. They lined up as if they were going to storm the pub, but the sergeant went in alone first and saw that there were no more than half a dozen drinkers in there. One of whom, of course, was Harry Greenwood.

  ‘I thought we were going to get our heads smashed in,’ he said when he got home. ‘They were all lined up outside and this sergeant with a big moustache came in, had a look round, had a word with Bill Saddington behind the bar and then they all piled back into the wagon and drove off towards North Woolwich.’

  There were stories of violent clashes across the country between strikers and the police, of a meeting of 500 striking dockers in Poplar being attacked by the police, or the police being attacked, depending on which version you believed. Up at the docks Harry heard a rumour that the country was just two days away from running out of bread and milk. Industry and transport were at a standstill; nothing was moving, apart from what a few undergraduates and a collection of well-intentioned middle-class volunteers could shift. It was hard to judge a prevailing mood: in the main the working classes were fully behind the strike, especially the industrial workers, while the middle classes were jumpy about the potential ramifications. There was widespread fear, stoked by Churchill and his government British Gazette newspaper produced during the conflict in opposition to the TUC’s daily British Worker, of full-scale revolution. Yet even the King himself had apparently said, ‘Try living on those wages before you judge them.’

  Constance Street was in a state of stasis. The shops stayed open but business was almost non-existent. The air itself felt ominous: the silence of the factories, docks and river was no longer a novelty, it felt threatening. Where for the first couple of days the people of Constance Street had milled around outside, now they tended to stay in their homes as much as possible.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  On 9 May, the fourth day of the strike, Harry went up to the docks and noticed that most of the buoyant mood had gone. There were also more men picketing the gates. Harry soon realised why: from round the corner came a crunching of gears and the racing of an engine. As the noise got louder it was clear there was more than one. Around the corner came an armoured car. Alongside the armoured car more soldiers, walking along in the semi-crouch of a patrol expecting trouble. Behind it was another armoured car, then another. They approached the gates, where the men moved off the road onto the pavement, hands in their trouser pockets, watching the scene in disbelief. There followed a seemingly endless parade of vehicles: buses, vans, lorries, cars, even a few horse-drawn carts, all flanked by soldiers and with yet more armoured cars spread among their number. Inside the buses were the blacklegs: the students, the clerks and the costermongers, with expressions varying between fear, embarrassment and defiance.

  They were watched by a bemused crowd of dockers, a few shouting and gesturing, but the military presence precluded any more serious protest. The vehicles – 158 in total, according to one picket on the gate – were filled with flour, and around two o’clock in the afternoon the convoy headed off to Hyde Park, where the government had set up a food distribution centre. By that time Harry was back in Constance Street, largely bemused but also strangely deflated.

  ‘Can’t believe it,’ he kept repeating. ‘Just can’t believe it. Soldiers, on the streets, looking at us, ordinary folk, like we’re the enemy. There were blo
kes standing there who’d worn the same khaki during the war, would have been alongside ’em in the trenches, and these soldiers are giving them the moody eye in the East End of London outside their place of work.’

  His own mood became even more pensive when some of the girls came back from a trip to the Royal Victoria Gardens and said they’d seen a warship moored there.

  The following day there was a commotion at the bottom of Constance Street: another convoy was passing along Factory Road on the other side of the railway line, making for Tate & Lyle in order to sequester as much sugar as possible and take it to the makeshift depot in Hyde Park. Again there was little resistance, although a line of police stood along the bottom of Constance Street, facing into it as if expecting the massed ranks of shopkeepers and residents to stage some kind of attack. Harry didn’t like the look of it at all and made sure the girls were all inside. There was a small incident when Lil Smale returned from an errand and wasn’t allowed through the cordon. She became rather insistent – informing the policemen that this was her street, not theirs, and as she’d done nothing wrong she was going to go home just as she pleased, thank you. As she made to push her way through the line a policeman grabbed at her arm, causing her to drop the bag of apples she was carrying. As they spilled onto the cobbles she roared at them, struggled, and after a few seconds the officers decided it was probably best not to mess with her – a dozen men with handkerchiefs over their mouths waving cudgels would have a much easier prospect – and released their grip. Lil gathered up her apples, letting the entire street know exactly what she thought of the police, and from the sound as she made her way to No. 7 you could almost see the storm cloud over her head and lightning playing around her temples.

  Nell looked up from the book she was reading – there being no laundry to do – and asked, ‘Was that Lil?’

  Harry was at the front window, looking down the street.

  ‘Yes, love,’ he said. ‘Seems she had a bit of a palaver getting past our boys in blue down the end there.’

  ‘Did she now?’ announced Nell. ‘Well, we can’t be having that.’

  She put down her book, kicked off her slippers, put on her shoes and headed down the stairs, pulling on her coat as she went. ‘Norah! Win! Ivy! Annie! Rose! Kit! Get your shoes on. Harry, you look after Ruby and Joan.’

  As she opened the door onto Constance Street, other doors were opening too. In the peace and quiet of the afternoon Lil’s protests had reverberated off the walls, gutters, door frames and windowboxes and the women of Constance Street were not happy about it. Julia Hammond the boot maker came out of No. 13 next door at the same time; Mary Jones from the newsagent was on her way over to check on Lil; Alice Kearey stuck her head out of the dining-room door; Mary Ann Franklin, who used to work in the sweet shop before it closed, stepped onto the street, while John Parker’s daughter Rose thundered out of No. 11 and, opposite, the face of Sarah Deller, whose husband Bill hadn’t worked in six months after being laid off by the chemical works, appeared in the window before the door opened and she too joined the procession of women, bringing a rolling pin with her just in case.

  By the time they reached the police line, the women of Constance Street must have numbered nearly thirty. They were all shapes and sizes and of varying vintages. For a few seconds they stood eyeball to eyeball with the police (or in some cases eyeball to tie knot and eyeball to jacket button). No one said a word. One of the policemen swallowed.

  The sergeant with the big moustache broke the impasse.

  ‘Go home now, ladies,’ he said.

  ‘We are home, thank you, sergeant,’ said Nell, sharply. ‘And we like to be able to go to and from our homes without impediment and molestation.’

  ‘You’ve nothing to fear from us, madam,’ said the sergeant. ‘We are here for your protection.’

  ‘Oh, we’re not scared of you, sergeant,’ said Nell, ‘but if your idea of protection is to manhandle and chy-ike a young married woman returning from a perfectly legitimate errand as if she were a common criminal then I think we can rather do without your protection, sergeant, don’t you?’

  ‘We have sealed off this street temporarily, madam, in case any of the striking workers choose to attack the convoy.’

  ‘And have they?’

  ‘I believe not, madam.’

  ‘You see it strikes us as rather odd, sergeant, that if you’re protecting us from some theoretical striking workers who you think might take it upon themselves to attack a motor convoy on the other side of the railway line – that you’re facing entirely the wrong way.’

  The sergeant said nothing.

  ‘It also strikes us as odd, sergeant, that the only attack that seems to have taken place on this street today has been by your officers on Mrs Smale. Do both those things not strike you as odd, sergeant?’

  The sergeant opened and closed his mouth a couple of times.

  ‘We are here for your protection, madam,’ he repeated, and one of the women began to snigger. That set off the Greenwood girls, who began to giggle, and the urge to laugh spread to the rest of the women who all began to snort, snuffle and eventually give in to gales of hilarity. The sergeant’s face was puce.

  ‘Ladies!’ he barked. ‘Return to your homes immediately or I shall have you all arrested.’

  ‘Really, sergeant?’ said Nell above the tumult. ‘For what? Laughing in a public place?’

  She turned to the gathered women.

  ‘I don’t know about the rest of you but all this laughing’s made me tired,’ she said. ‘I think we should have a nice sit down.’

  And with that Nell Greenwood fluffed out her skirt and sat down on the cobbles. In a flurry of skirts and bobbing heads the rest of the women and girls did likewise.

  From the laundry window Harry was weeping with laughter. He’d been concerned at first, as he’d heard more than one tale of police brutality over the previous days, but when he saw the mass sit-in, he knew that Nell and her cohorts had won.

  ‘Your mother is an incredible woman,’ he said to Ruby and Joan, wiping tears from his eyes. ‘Don’t you ever forget it.’

  It was about another twenty minutes of police humiliation before the sugar convoy left Tate & Lyle with its armed guard. Once it had gone the sergeant ordered his men to stand down and march back to their motor coach parked a little further along the North Woolwich Road.

  ‘Cheerio, sergeant,’ called Nell, a call echoed with great gusto by the rest of the women. They hauled themselves to their feet, some more awkwardly than others, brushed the dirt from their skirts, clapped their hands together to remove the dust, adjusted their skirts, and then walked back to where they came from, melting away through their doorways, the proud and formidable women of Constance Street, until the street was quiet and empty again.

  The strike ended after a week, on 11 May. It came as a surprise to most of the strikers, who had felt they were in quite a strong position, but the TUC, who’d co-ordinated the strike, clearly thought differently and called it off after meeting with the government. Silvertown powered up again and the air was filled with clanging, banging and booming once more. The trains steamed through, to and from North Woolwich, and people could tell the time again by the factory hooters signalling changes of shift. The unemployed men were still on their doorsteps, staring glassily at the cobbles while thin, hand-rolled cigarettes burned down to nothing between their fingers.

  The docks held out for a few more days: the TUC in conceding defeat had hoped to negotiate a ‘no victimisation’ rule, whereby strikers would be able to return to their jobs, but no such guarantee could be given. The dockers, however, who had stayed solidly behind the strike all the way through, held out until they received assurances from the Port of London Authority that the men could return to their jobs without any fear of reprisal or retribution.

  This meant that, as Silvertown eased its way back into the old routine, the laundry stayed quiet for a few more days. The girls enjoyed the extra leisure time a
nd Nell read more books than she could remember, but the strike also set her to thinking. She had a hunch that the strike would change the docks for ever. She’d heard that the port of Tilbury was growing and, far from vessels using the new King George V Dock instead, increased mechanisation and communication at the Essex port was making it a much more attractive proposition to the shipping lines than the Royal Docks.

  The laundry was doing fine, she thought, and the girls were a great help. But would there still be the same opportunities for Rose, Ruby and Joan, for example, when they grew to working age? Were all the Greenwood eggs, she wondered, too much in one basket?

  Her natural business sense was making her wary. These were tough economic times and the industrial world was shifting. Things were changing fast; if she didn’t act soon the Greenwoods were in danger of being left behind, and there was too much at stake for that to happen.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  On the last night of the 1920s Constance Street was, on the whole, glad to see the back of them. They still gave the decade a good send-off, with a big knees-up at the Greenwoods’, and while nobody was particularly expecting the 1930s to be some kind of Silvertonian golden age, in that simple calendar event of one decade flicking over to another there was still the liberating sense of a new beginning.

  The party was in full swing when the turns started, and Nell changed into Harry’s suit for her Vesta Tilley performance. Nell was nearly 53 now, the age Tilley had been on the night she took her final bow at the Coliseum. It seemed an age ago, a different world. The Albert music hall was just a cinema now; she and Harry would go and watch some of the American comedies at the weekend, Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, and the newsreels that reminded them there was a world beyond the island, that there was more to that world than belching chimneys, clanking dock cranes and the thunderous parping of ships’ foghorns.