1.
Mural
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A mural is any piece of artwork painted or applied directly on a wall, ceiling or other permanent surface. A distinguishing characteristic of painting is that the architectural elements of the given space are harmoniously incorporated into the picture. Some wall paintings are painted on canvases, which are then attached to the wall. Whether these works can be accurately called murals is a subject of controversy in the art world. Murals of sorts date to Upper Paleolithic times such as the paintings in the Chauvet Cave in Ardèche department of southern France, many ancient murals have been found within ancient Egyptian tombs, the Minoan palaces and in Pompeii. During the Middle Ages murals were executed on dry plaster. The huge collection of Kerala mural painting dating from the 14th century are examples of fresco secco, in Italy, circa 1300, the technique of painting of frescos on wet plaster was reintroduced and led to a significant increase in the quality of mural painting. In modern times, the became more well-known with the Mexican muralism art movement. There are many different styles and techniques, the best-known is probably fresco, which uses water-soluble paints with a damp lime wash, a rapid use of the resulting mixture over a large surface, and often in parts. The colors lighten as they dry, the marouflage method has also been used for millennia. Murals today are painted in a variety of ways, using oil or water-based media, the styles can vary from abstract to trompe-lœil. Initiated by the works of artists like Graham Rust or Rainer Maria Latzke in the 1980s, trompe-loeil painting has experienced a renaissance in private. The buon fresco technique consists of painting in pigment mixed with water on a layer of wet, fresh. The pigment is absorbed by the wet plaster, after a number of hours. After this the painting stays for a time up to centuries in fresh. Fresco-secco painting is done on dry plaster, the pigments thus require a binding medium, such as egg, glue or oil to attach the pigment to the wall. By the end of the century this had largely displaced the buon fresco method. This technique had, in reduced form, the advantages of a secco work, in Greco-Roman times, mostly encaustic colors applied in a cold state were used
2.
London Borough of Tower Hamlets
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The London Borough of Tower Hamlets is a London borough to the east of the City of London and north of the River Thames. It is in the part of London and covers much of the traditional East End. It also includes much of the redeveloped Docklands region of London, including West India Docks, many of the tallest buildings in London occupy the centre of the Isle of Dogs in the south of the borough. A part of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park is in Tower Hamlets, the borough has a population of 272,890, which includes one of the highest ethnic minority populations in the country and has an established British Bangladeshi business and residential community. Brick Lanes restaurants, neighbouring street market and shops provide the largest range of Bengali cuisine, woodwork, carpets, the local authority is Tower Hamlets London Borough Council. The council, as of 2017 comprises 23 Labour Councillors,5 Conservative councillors,18 independent councillors of various affiliation, Tower Hamlets is located to east of the City of London and north of the River Thames in East London. The London Borough of Hackney lies to the north of the borough while the River Lea forms the boundary with the London Borough of Newham in the east. On the other side of the Thames is The London Borough of Southwark to the southwest, The London Borough of Lewisham to the South, the River Lea also forms the boundary between those parts of London historically in Middlesex, with those formerly in Essex. The Regents Canal enters the borough from Hackney to meet the River Thames at Limehouse Basin, a stretch of the Hertford Union Canal leads from the Regents canal, at a basin in the north of Mile End to join the River Lea at Old Ford. A further canal, Limehouse Cut, Londons oldest, leads from locks at Bromley-by-Bow to Limehouse Basin, most of the canal tow-paths are open to both pedestrians and cyclists. Victoria Park was formed by Act of Parliament, and administered by the LCC, since the latter authoritys abolition, the park has been administered by Tower Hamlets. Part of the borough is within the boundary of the Thames Gateway development area, the Hamlets of the Tower paid taxes for the militia in 1646. The London Borough of Tower Hamlets forms the core of the East End and it lies east of the ancient walled City of London and north of the River Thames. Over the course of a century, the East End became synonymous with poverty, overcrowding, disease, the East End developed rapidly during the 19th century. The area attracted large numbers of people looking for employment. Successive waves of immigration began with Huguenot refugees creating a new extramural suburb in Spitalfields in the 17th century. They were followed by Irish weavers, Ashkenazi Jews and, in the 20th century, many of these immigrants worked in the clothing industry. The abundance of semi- and unskilled labour led to low wages and this brought the attentions of social reformers during the mid-18th century and led to the formation of unions and workers associations at the end of the century
3.
Poplar Rates Rebellion
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The Poplar Rates Rebellion, or Poplar Rates Revolt was a tax protest that took place in Poplar, London, England, in 1921. It was led by George Lansbury, the previous years Labour Mayor of Poplar, with the support of the Poplar Borough Council, the protest defied government, the courts, and the Labour Party leadership. George Lansbury would later go on to be the leader of the Labour Party and this programme was expensive and had to be funded from the rates. Because Poplar was a borough, property rents were low. In addition Poplar ratepayers were charged a precept to pay for the London County Council, Metropolitan Police, Metropolitan Asylums Board, the London County Council and Metropolitan Asylum Board responded by taking the matter to the High Court. Thirty councillors, including six women, one of whom, Nellie Cressall, was pregnant, were sent to prison indefinitely for contempt of court for refusing an order to remit the monies. The men were put up in Brixton Prison, and the women in Holloway, the latter were taken by cab to Brixton where council meetings were held. Susan Lawrence used the time to read Tolstoy and prepare a pamphlet on taxation, the revolt received wide public support. Lansbury addressed crowds that gathered outside, through the prison bars. Neighbouring councils threatened to take similar action, trade unions passed resolutions of support and collected funds for the councillors families. Eventually, after six weeks imprisonment, the court responded to public opinion and ordered the councillors released, meanwhile, a bill, the Local Authorities Act 1921, was rushed through Parliament more or less equalising tax burdens between rich and poor boroughs. A mural commemorating the rebellion was painted in 1990 by local resident Mark Francis, in the early 2010s, the mural underwent restoration. The London Mural Preservation Society has a webpage on the mural, janine Booth, Guilty and Proud of it – Poplars Rebel Councillors and Guardians 1919–1925, Merlin Press,2009. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online edition
4.
George Lansbury
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George Lansbury, PC was a British politician and social reformer who led the Labour Party from 1932 to 1935. Originally a radical Liberal, Lansbury converted to socialism in the early 1890s and his activities were underpinned by his Christian beliefs which, except for a short period of doubt, sustained him through his life. Elected to parliament in 1910, he resigned his seat in 1912 to campaign for womens suffrage, in 1912 Lansbury helped to establish the Daily Herald newspaper, and became its editor. Throughout the First World War the paper maintained a strongly pacifist stance and these positions contributed to Lansburys failure to be elected to parliament in 1918. He devoted himself to politics in his home borough of Poplar. After his return to parliament in 1922, Lansbury was denied office in the brief Labour government of 1924, after the political and economic crisis of August 1931 Lansbury did not follow his leader, Ramsay MacDonald, into the National Government, but stayed with the Labour Party. As the most senior of the contingent of Labour MPs that survived the 1931 general election. He spent his final years travelling through the United States and Europe in the cause of peace, George Lansbury was born in Halesworth in the county of Suffolk on 22 February 1859. He was the third of nine born to a railway worker, also named George Lansbury. George seniors job involved the supervision of railway construction gangs, the family was often on the move, by the end of 1868 the family had moved into Londons East End, the district in which Lansbury would live and work for almost all his life. The essayist Ronald Blythe has described the East End of the 1860s and 1870s as stridently English, the smoke-blackened streets were packed with illiterate multitudes stayed alive through sheer birdlike ebullience. Interspersed with spells of work, Lansbury attended schools in Bethnal Green and he then held a succession of manual jobs, including work as a coaling contractor in partnership with his elder brother, James, loading and unloading coal wagons. This was heavy and dangerous work, and led to at least one near-fatal accident and he was present at the riots which erupted outside Gladstones house on 24 February 1878 after a peace meeting in Hyde Park. Shepherd writes that Gladstones Liberalism, proclaiming liberty, freedom and community interests was a mix that left an indelible mark on the youthful Lansbury. George Lansbury senior died in 1875 and that year young George met 14-year-old Elizabeth Brine, whose father Isaac Brine owned a local sawmill. The couple eventually married in 1880, at Whitechapel parish church, apart from a period of doubt in the 1890s when he temporarily rejected the Church, Lansbury remained a staunch Anglican until his death. In 1881 the first of Lansburys 12 children, Bessie, was born, another daughter, Annie, seeking to improve his familys prospects, Lansbury decided that their best hopes of prosperity lay in emigrating to Australia. On the outward passage the family experienced illness, discomfort and danger, on arrival at Brisbane in July 1884, Lansbury found that contrary to the London agents promises, there was a superfluity of labour and work was hard to find
5.
London County Council
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It covered the area today known as Inner London and was replaced by the Greater London Council. The LCC was the largest, most significant and most ambitious English municipal authority of its day, by the 19th century the City of London Corporation covered only a small fraction of metropolitan London. From 1855 the Metropolitan Board of Works had certain powers across the metropolis, many powers remained in the hands of traditional bodies such as parishes and the counties of Middlesex, Surrey and Kent. While the Conservative government of the day would have preferred not to create a body covering the whole of London. It was established as a council on 31 January 1889. Shortly after its creation a Royal Commission on the Amalgamation of the City and County of London considered the means for amalgamation with the City of London. The LCC inherited the powers of its predecessor the MBW, but had authority over matters such as education, city planning. It took over the functions of the London School Board in 1903, from 1899 the Council progressively acquired and operated the tramways in the county, which it electrified from 1903. One of the LCCs most important roles during the late 19th and early 20th century, was in the management of the expanding city, in the Victorian era, new housing had been intentionally urban and large-scale tenement buildings dominated. Beginning in the 1930s, the LCC incentivized an increase in suburban housing styles. The LCC set the standard for new construction at 12 houses per acre of land at a time when some London areas had as many as 80 housing units per acre. By 1938,76,877 units of housing had been built under the auspices of the LCC in the city and its periphery, many of these new housing developments were genuinely working-class, though the poorest could rarely afford even subsidized rents. They relied on an expanding London Underground network that ferried workers en masse to places of employment in the city center and these housing developments were broadly successful, and they resisted the slummification that blighted so many Victorian tenement developments. The LCC undertook between 1857 and 1929 to standardize and clarify street names across London, many streets in different areas of the city had similar or identical names, and the rise of the automobile as a primary mode of transportation in the city made these names unworkable. In an extreme case, there were more than 60 streets called Cross Street spread across the city when the LCC began its process of systematic renaming and these were given names from an approved list that was maintained by the LCC, containing only suitably English names. If street names were deemed un-English, they were slated for change, Zulu Crescent in Battersea, for instance. By 1939, the council had the powers and duties. The LCC initially used the Spring Gardens headquarters inherited from the Metropolitan Board of Works, the building had been designed by Frederick Marrable, the MBWs supeintending architect, and dated from 1860
6.
Poor relief
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Classifications of poor used in the Poor Law system classified people into categories for those considered deserving of poor relief and those who were not considered deserving of poor relief. The impotent poor could not look after themselves or go to work and they included the ill, the infirm, the elderly, and children with no one to properly care for them. It was generally held that they should be looked after, the able-bodied poor normally referred to those who were unable to find work – either due to cyclical or long term unemployment in the area, or a lack of skills. Attempts to assist these people, and move out of this category, varied over the centuries. The idle poor were of able body but were unwilling to work and they were not considered deserving of poor relief. Vagrants or beggars, sometimes termed sturdy rogues, were those who could work but had refused to, such people were seen in the 16th and 17th centuries as potential criminals, apt to do mischief when hired for the purpose. They were normally seen as people needing punishment, and as such were often whipped in the place as an example to others
