Photo history exhibition and readings to mark 50 years since the construction of the Westway began. Colville Community History Project on the politics of community action and pop culture in the 23 acres under the flyover

Exhibition February 16-26 2016 featuring 30 classic Westway photographs and posters Tuesday February 16 6-9 pm launch event with film screening and readings Screening of documentary film by Wyn Baptiste and Dom Asbridge featuring the first Westway Trust director Anthony Perry. Slideshow talk by Tom Vague, readings by Dave Hucker, Mark Jackson, Mar-cia Robinson, Geoffrey Roome and Dave Russell.

31ALL SAINTS ROAD LONDON W11 1HE RSVP LAUNCH EVENT AND TALK www.bookandkitchen.com/events

The Sound of the Westway Life Under the Flyover 1966 - 2016

Colville Community History Project issue 14 February 2016 It’s Your Colville www.colvillecom.com contact tomvague@gmail.com getting it straight in notting hill gate

Acklam before the flyover

Westway site Acklam Road Westway Trust/Acklam Road/St Ervan’s Yard 1966 In the summer of 1966, before construction work began, the London Free School adventure playground was founded on the Westway site with an auto-destructive art performance. Emily Young recalls in ‘Days in the Life’ by Jonathon Green: “They were starting to build the motorway and they’d knocked down this run of houses. It was the dark side of the moon. It was the Martian wasteland. A very weird place, desolation, and we’d have happenings; huge bonfires and musicians would come and we’d take a lot of acid.” Muhammad Ali on Tavistock Crescent 1966/The Grove 1966/Tavistock Crescent Shanty Town Muhammad Ali visited the London Free School play-group run by Rhaune Laslett on Tavistock Crescent in May 1966, at the time of his second Henry Cooper fight. Rhaune Laslett went on to found the Notting Hill Carnival organising the first street procession in September 66. The gardens between Tavistock Crescent and Tavistock Road at the junction of St Luke’s Road became the ‘Shanty Town’ adventure playground—continued by the children’s playground on or near the site today. Westway looking west from span 43 1968/Westway construction/Same thing day after day graffiti 1968 During the 4 years of construction work, the sound of the Westway was summed up by Eileen Wright in ‘Taking on the Motorway’ by Andrew Duncan: “There was a terrible noise for weeks when they were pile-driving. They start-ed at 6 O’clock in the morning—sometimes it went on all night. You think the whole city is being bombarded be-neath you.” From 1968 the wall alongside the tube line beneath the Westway between Ladbroke Grove and Westbourne Park featured: ‘Same thing day after day—tube—work...’ graffiti by the King Mob group in ‘The Writing on the Wall’ photo book by Roger Perry. Westway Thorpe Close/Cambridge Gardens/Portobello Green Laing Construction 1970 As construction work began in September 1966, the North Kensington Playspace Group was formed by Adam Ritchie and John O’Malley of the Notting Hill Community Workshop. In 1968 the Playspace Group became the Motorway Development Trust, who planned to create a community strip featuring a laundry, café, health centre, nursery school, playgroup, sport area, and adventure playground—which opened on Acklam Road in 1969. Anthony Perry, the first director of the North Kensington Amenity Trust (now the Westway Trust), recalls that: ‘Portobello Green, as I named it, was completely fenced in with a high corrugated iron wall. It had been the site of the lorry ramp leading up to the motorway during its construction. I sold it to a scrap dealer on condition he removed it. I then declared it open to the public. Over the weeks that followed we slowly cleared it up. We tarmac-ed the part immediately adjacent to Portobello Road and started a charity market. The thing to do was to get people to use the land and consider it theirs.’

Acklam Hall—Subterania

Westway roundabout/Westway opening demo 1970/Westway horse and cart/What’s happening under the motorway North Kensington Amenity Trust 1971 The Westway opening ceremony on July 28 1970 was accompanied by a re-housing protest. As Michael Heseltine, the parliamentary secretary to the transport minister, cut the ribbon, a banner was unfurled on Acklam Road demanding ‘Get us out of this hell—re-house us now.’ The following year the North Kensington Amenity Trust was set up to develop the 23 acres under the flyover for the benefit of the local community. Hawkwind free gig under the Westway 1971 ‘X In Search of Space’ album Hawkwind played a series of free gigs under the Westway, pictured on the gatefold sleeve of their ‘X In Search of Space’ album. Frendz underground paper reported that: ‘The weekly Saturday concert under Westway in Portobello Road pounds on. Next week Graham Bond, Pink Fairies and Hawkwind.’ During these gigs the latter merged as Pinkwind. Hawkwind’s 1974 album ‘Hall of the Mountain Grill’ was named in honour of the café at 275 Portobello Road, the last house on the southside of the Westway. Westway plans meeting cartoon poster 1972 A poster under the flyover advertising a meeting about plans for the area in 1972 announced: ‘All Saints church hall is being pulled down. Perhaps a public hall should be built under the flyover?’ The Acklam Hall community centre was constructed in the mid 70s by the North Kensington Amenity Trust under the administration of Anthony Perry with an Urban Aid grant obtained by the GLC. The hall opened in 1975, at 12 Acklam Road in Westway Bay 63 on the site of Mode, with a benefit gig for the North Kensington Law Centre on Golborne Road, headlined by Joe Strummer’s pre-Clash group, the 101’ers. Westway Free Shop sign clown 1973 Acklam Road in the 70s is described in ‘Soft City’ by Jonathan Raban as consisting of: ‘a locked shack with Free Shop spraygunned on it, and old shoes and sofas piled in heaps around it; a makeshift playground under the arch-es of the motorway with huge crayon faces drawn on the concrete pillars, slogans in whitewash, from Smash the Pigs to Keep Britain White.’ The Free Shop sign was sprayed with ‘It’s Only Rock’n’Roll’. From 73 the Notting Hill Carnival office was on Acklam Road under the administrations of Leslie Palmer and Selwyn Baptiste. Tom Waits Portobello Road/Cambridge Gardens 1976 Tom Waits was photographed in June 76 under the Westway at Portobello Green, where a few months later ‘The Clash’ album police charge picture would be taken during the Carnival riot. Aswad recorded ‘Three Babylon (tried to make I and I run, they come to have fun with their long truncheons)’, before the riot about an incident at Briggs’s yard on Acklam Road. Brinsley Forde has recalled Acklam being like Jamaica: “It was a fantastic atmosphere there, everybody went there to dance; we felt it was ours, the people who lived in the Grove.”

The Clash Free Shop Portobello Road 1977 ‘Up and down the Westway, in and out the lights, what a great traffic system, it’s so bright. I can’t think of a better way to spend the night than speeding around underneath the yellow lights.’ The Clash became synonymous with the Westway from the lyrics of ‘London’s Burning’, written by Joe Strummer after watching the traffic on the flyover from Mick Jones’s tower block flat. Mick has said: “The music came from the sound of the streets and the Westway.” Carol Clerk wrote in a review of the Sound of the Westway fanzine: ‘For punk rockers, the Westway symbolises their music—fast, loud and violent.’ Westway Acklam Road 1977 Roger Matland, the Amenity Trust director from 1976, recalled: “Early impressions of the trust land were of its emptiness. It was eerie walking past a boarded-up bay in the evening and seeing 30 or 40 vagrants there round a bonfire.” At the 1977 Carnival, Bob Marley was at Lloyd Coxsone’s sound-system on the Acklam/Portobello corner, as the Kensington Post reported: ‘the latest punch-up began to move underneath the flyover to a patch of land which usually houses a happy hippy market.’ Carnival 78 Sons of Jah/prag VEC Acklam Hall/Westway Market Carnival riot 1978 Wilf Walker’s Black Productions punky reggae party at Acklam Hall under the flyover featured Aswad, Alton Ellis, Barry Ford of Merger, Misty in Roots, Sons of Jah, King Sounds and the Israelites, Crass, the Members, the Monochrome Set, the Passions and prag VEC. The most renowned Black Productions gig turned out to be Tribesmen, the Valves and the Invaders on November 10 1978, as the latter changed their name to Madness, featured in Dave Robinson’s ‘Take It or Leave It’ film. Aswad Carnival Portobello Green Vernon St Hilaire/Clash Acklam Hall 1979/Concrete Island Westway graffiti At the end of the 70s Wilf Walker founded the Portobello Green Carnival stage. After Aswad topped the post-punky reggae bill, in Viv Goldman’s review: ‘The cans and bottles glittered like fireworks in the street lights, then shone again as they bounced back off the riot shields. The thud thud thud of the impact rivalled the bass in steadiness, suddenly the street of peaceful dancers was a revolutionary frontline, and the militant style of the dreads was put in its conceptual context.’ The Sound of the Westway 1966-2016 exhibition combines oral history, pop culture and psychogeog-raphy research. City Living Local Life on the Colville/Golborne wards boundary, before, during and after the flyover, featuring the London Free School adven-ture playground, Carnival origins, Muhammad Ali, Hawkwind, Aswad, the Clash and Acklam Hall/Subterania. Colville Community History Project aims to preserve and celebrate local history with exhibi-tions, newsletters, talks, slideshows and films www.colvillecom.com tomvague@gmail.com Getting it straight in Notting Hill Gate VAGUE 82