“…Commerce on the Thames brooded, writes Peter Linebaugh (2006:410) in The London Hanged :upriver came either unnourishing hunger suppressants such as tobacco and sugar, or deceiving stimulants such as coffee and tea, while downriver sailed vessels carrying soldiers, marines, convicts, sailors, migrants, gunpowder, cannon, Bibles, and sharp‐edged tools.The unevenness of this exchange is implicit in the direction by which these materials flowed. But construction of the West India Docks also instigated a shift in the terms of that trade.…”
Section: Figurementioning
confidence: 99%
“…Sugar sweepings or “perquisites” dominated the river economy, often in gendered ways; formalised, male employment on the water often sustained the riverside's informal, female trades. Barrow‐women, street‐dealers and sex workers would all benefit from the sugar sweepings taken by gangmen, lumpers, coopers and lightermen alike (Linebaugh 2006:434). Consequently, despite the apparent precarity of non‐monetary employment, London's river working class could find stability through a rich system of mutual aid and co‐operation.…”
Section: Figurementioning
confidence: 99%
“…At the centre of this network were the coopers, who had the tools and expertise to repair and open the barrels. “The coopers united the two stages of offloading – on the river and on the quay – and their position was vital for the provision of sweepings to the lumpers and gangsmen”, notes Linebaugh (2006:420); “Within the division of labour, theirs was strategic to the livelihood of all”. Employment amongst the port's working class was undoubtedly uneven, but the search for payment in kind was unmistakably a collective endeavour.…”
Section: Figurementioning
confidence: 99%
“…With workers to be trapped within the docks, their numbers and activities could likewise be confined. Operating behind closed doors labour could be standardised, value quantified, and perquisites impossible to procure (Linebaugh 2006:440). Conversely, those without the docks would become a disposable class of unemployed, a category of urban poor denied access to the river economy in ways that had been policed hitherto by the colour of someone's skin.…”
Focusing on the construction of London's West India Docks in 1802, I argue that this project established a feedback loop with conditions of production in the Caribbean. Through an analysis of committee minutes, letters, parliamentary papers and visual art, I move beyond economic accounts of slavery's impact to demonstrate how geographies of security and surveillance-first developed on the sugar plantation-were imported into the design and function of London's port. As such, I argue that London's docks produced a geography of segregation which offers a unique insight into the workings of racial capitalism and its exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerabilities. Positioning my discussion alongside London's contemporary landscape, I excavate Britain's repressed memories of slavery to illustrate how they still scar the urban environment.
“…Commerce on the Thames brooded, writes Peter Linebaugh (2006:410) in The London Hanged :upriver came either unnourishing hunger suppressants such as tobacco and sugar, or deceiving stimulants such as coffee and tea, while downriver sailed vessels carrying soldiers, marines, convicts, sailors, migrants, gunpowder, cannon, Bibles, and sharp‐edged tools.The unevenness of this exchange is implicit in the direction by which these materials flowed. But construction of the West India Docks also instigated a shift in the terms of that trade.…”
Section: Figurementioning
confidence: 99%
“…Sugar sweepings or “perquisites” dominated the river economy, often in gendered ways; formalised, male employment on the water often sustained the riverside's informal, female trades. Barrow‐women, street‐dealers and sex workers would all benefit from the sugar sweepings taken by gangmen, lumpers, coopers and lightermen alike (Linebaugh 2006:434). Consequently, despite the apparent precarity of non‐monetary employment, London's river working class could find stability through a rich system of mutual aid and co‐operation.…”
Section: Figurementioning
confidence: 99%
“…At the centre of this network were the coopers, who had the tools and expertise to repair and open the barrels. “The coopers united the two stages of offloading – on the river and on the quay – and their position was vital for the provision of sweepings to the lumpers and gangsmen”, notes Linebaugh (2006:420); “Within the division of labour, theirs was strategic to the livelihood of all”. Employment amongst the port's working class was undoubtedly uneven, but the search for payment in kind was unmistakably a collective endeavour.…”
Section: Figurementioning
confidence: 99%
“…With workers to be trapped within the docks, their numbers and activities could likewise be confined. Operating behind closed doors labour could be standardised, value quantified, and perquisites impossible to procure (Linebaugh 2006:440). Conversely, those without the docks would become a disposable class of unemployed, a category of urban poor denied access to the river economy in ways that had been policed hitherto by the colour of someone's skin.…”
Focusing on the construction of London's West India Docks in 1802, I argue that this project established a feedback loop with conditions of production in the Caribbean. Through an analysis of committee minutes, letters, parliamentary papers and visual art, I move beyond economic accounts of slavery's impact to demonstrate how geographies of security and surveillance-first developed on the sugar plantation-were imported into the design and function of London's port. As such, I argue that London's docks produced a geography of segregation which offers a unique insight into the workings of racial capitalism and its exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerabilities. Positioning my discussion alongside London's contemporary landscape, I excavate Britain's repressed memories of slavery to illustrate how they still scar the urban environment.
“…These theoretical insights will help to analyse the empirical case study in the paper, which focuses on conflicts and tensions between social movements and the state over the right to free speech in Hyde Park, London, from 1861 to 1962. From the 12 th century until 1783, Hyde Park was the home of the most notorious hanging tree in Britain, namely Tyburn hanging tree, which had inadvertently produced, in part, a space for people to regularly gather to discuss social and political issues of the day (Linebaugh 1991). During the early‐to‐mid 19 th century, Hyde Park was being used by radical social movements for demonstrations.…”
By drawing, among others, on the ideas of the Bakhtin Circle and Judith Butler, this paper explores spatial struggles over the right to free speech at Hyde Park, London, 1861-1962 From the 1860s to the early 20 th century, the state gradually constructed a "monologic" discourse about an ideal-typical "indecent" speaker who would "trespass" on Hyde Park through their "excitable speech" against a legally sanctioned right to give a "public address" in the park. This discourse gave the state some room to evict those it claimed to be transgressing "public address". However, different "heteroglossic coalitions" of regulars ensured that Hyde Park remained not only a "political assembly" to discuss political issues, but also a "social assembly" to exercise free speech on a range of social topics. Indeed, by the 1950s, these coalitions used a nearby road scheme to successfully argue it was the state that was potentially trespassing, or "encroaching", on free speech at Hyde Park.
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