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.
Poplar, London
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Poplar is an historical, mainly residential area of East London, England, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is about 5.5 miles east of Charing Cross, historically a hamlet in the parish of Stepney, Middlesex, in 1817 Poplar became a civil parish. In 1855 the Poplar District of the Metropolis was formed, which also included Bromley, the district became the Metropolitan Borough of Poplar in 1900 which was abolished in 1965. The district centre is Chrisp Street Market, Poplar contains notable examples of public housing including the Lansbury Estate and Balfron Tower. Architecturally it is a mixture of 18th and 19th-century terraced houses, st Matthias Old Church is located on Poplar High Street, opposite Tower Hamlets College. It is next to Poplar Town Hall – which has mosaic detail – and Poplar Bowls Club, a recently reopened sports centre called The Workhouse stands on the site of Poplar Workhouse, where local politician Will Crooks spent some of his earliest years. The Metropolitan Borough of Poplar was the location, in 1921, of the Poplar Rates Rebellion, led by the Mayor, George Lansbury, who was later elected as leader of the Labour Party. As part of the 1951 Festival of Britain, a new housing estate was built to the north of the East India Dock Road. This estate includes Chrisp Street Market, which was commended by Lewis Mumford. Other notable buildings in Poplar include Poplar Baths, which reopened in 2016 having finally closed in 1988, during the development of the Isle of Dogs the street signs pointed to the new development, and Poplar was lost for a decade or more. The following year, tenants on further estates voted to remain with the Council, although many people associate wartime bombing with The Blitz during World War II, the first airborne terror campaign in Britain took place during the First World War. Air raids in World War One caused significant damage and took many lives, German raids on Britain, for example, caused 1,413 deaths and 3,409 injuries. Air raids provided a means of striking at resources vital to an enemys war effort. The East End of London was one of the most heavily targeted places, Poplar, in particular, was struck badly by some of the air raids during the First World War. Initially these were at night by Zeppelins which bombed the area indiscriminately, the first daylight bombing attack on London by a fixed-wing aircraft took place on 13 June 1917. Fourteen German Gotha G bombers led by Hauptmann Ernst Brandenberg flew over Essex and it was a hot day and the sky was hazy, nevertheless, onlookers in Londons East End were able to see a dozen or so big aeroplanes scintillating like so many huge silver dragonflies. These three-seater bombers were carrying shrapnel bombs which were dropped just before noon, numerous bombs fell in rapid succession in various districts. In the East End alone 104 people were killed,154 seriously injured and 269 slightly injured, the gravest incident that day was a direct hit on a primary school in Poplar
3.
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
4.
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
5.
Poplar Borough Council
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Poplar was a local government district in the metropolitan area of London, England. It was formed as a district of the Metropolis in 1855, the borough bordered the metropolitan boroughs of Hackney, Stepney, and Bethnal Green to the west and north, and the county of Essex to the east. To the south, the River Thames formed borders with the boroughs of Bermondsey, Deptford. It was formed from three parishes, St Mary Stratford-le-Bow, St Leonard Bromley and All Saints Poplar. In 1907 these three were combined into a civil parish called Poplar Borough, which was conterminous with the metropolitan borough. In 1965 the parish and borough were abolished, with their former area becoming part of the newly formed London Borough of Tower Hamlets, several councillors were imprisoned briefly in 1921 in relation to this. In 1951 Poplar was chosen as the site of the Festival of Britains Exhibition of Live Architecture, the East End of London had been heavily bombed during the war and its reconstruction was showcased at the new Lansbury Estate. New building materials and planning concepts were demonstrated, the trail continued with the Lansbury Estate and Chrisp Street Market. The former town hall in Bow Road, designed by Culpin & Son, is now a listed building, Poplar covered an area of 2,328 acres. The seal depicted the emblems of the three parish vestries merged into the board, the top shield was the seal of Poplar Vestry, and showed the Hibbert Gate of the old West India Docks, with a sailing ship on top of the shield. A similar representation of the gate and ship formed the head of the civic mace. The shield on the left was the seal of Bow Vestry and this represented the bow-shaped bridge over the River Lea. The shield on the right was the seal of Bromley St Leonard Vestry, there remain a number of street signs which have been preserved with the name of the former borough. In 1880 the population had increased enough for the parish of All Saints Poplar to be divided into three wards, South, East and West. In 1885 the population had increased enough for the parish of Bromley St Leonard to also be divided into three wards, West, East and South, in 1894 the population had increased enough for the parish of St Mary Stratford Bow to be divided into four wards, No. In 1894 as its population had increased the parish of All Saints Poplar was re-divided into four wards, Cubitt Town, Millwall, Blackwall, municipal Year Book of the United Kingdom for 1907. Official Guide to the Metropolitan Borough of Poplar,1927 Poplar Town Hall on the Port Cities website
6.
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
7.
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
8.
Metropolitan Police
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As of March 2016, the Met employed 48,661 full-time personnel. This included 32,125 sworn police officers,9,521 police staff and this number excludes the 3,271 Special Constables, who work part-time and who have the same powers and uniform as their regular colleagues. This makes the Metropolitan Police the largest police force in the United Kingdom by a significant margin, the post of Commissioner was first held jointly by Sir Charles Rowan and Sir Richard Mayne. The post is occupied by the now-outgoing Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe. The Commissioners deputy, the Deputy Commissioner, is currently Craig Mackey, a number of informal names and abbreviations exists for the Metropolitan Police Service, the most common being the Met. In colloquial London, it is referred to as the Old Bill. The Met is also referred to by the metonym Scotland Yard after the location of its headquarters in a road called Great Scotland Yard in Whitehall. The Mets current headquarters is New Scotland Yard, in Victoria, the Metropolitan Police Service, whose officers became affectionately known as bobbies, was founded in 1829 by Robert Peel under the Metropolitan Police Act 1829. In 1839, the Marine Police Force, which had formed in 1798, was amalgamated into the Metropolitan Police. In 1837, it also incorporated with the Bow Street Horse Patrol that had organised in 1805. Since January 2012, the Mayor of London is responsible for the governance of the Metropolitan Police through the Mayors Office for Policing, the mayor is able to appoint someone to act on his behalf, the current office-holder is Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime, Sophie Linden. The work of MOPAC is scrutinised by the Police and Crime Committee of the London Assembly, the area policed by the Metropolitan Police Service is known as the Metropolitan Police District. In terms of policing, the Met is divided into a number of Borough Operational Command Units. The City of London is a police area and is the responsibility of the separate City of London Police. The British Transport Police are responsible for policing of the network in the United Kingdom. Within London, they are responsible for the policing of the London Underground, Tramlink, The Emirates Air Line. There is also a park police force, the Kew Constabulary, responsible for the Royal Botanic Gardens. Officers also have limited powers in Scotland and Northern Ireland, within the MPD, the Met will take over the investigation of any serious crime from the British Transport Police and Ministry of Defence Police, if it is deemed appropriate
