This article describes the life of Brian Barnes, a community artist and local Battersea activist. He has used his art not only as a means of self-expression but to harness the creativity of the community as part of a wider arts movement to bring about social and political change. The article focuses on a specific event in 1979, the demolition of the mural, ‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly,’ by Companies Morgan Crucible and Wates, and how Brian and members of the Battersea Redevelopment Action Group (BRAG) took their fight to the High Court to seek justice.
Brian Barnes was born on the 20th of August 1944. According to his younger brother, Brian was a ‘feral’ child who liked drawing on the pavement. At Primary School he won 2nd prize for colouring-in a picture. He failed his 11+ exam and went to Midfield Secondary Modern School for Boys, where his art teacher Richard Coote encouraged him to stay on at school to do O’ levels (precursor of GCSE). With an O level in art he was successful in applying to Bromley College of Art, which later became Ravensbourne College of Art, and where he studied from 1961-1966. Bateson Mason, a tutor in life drawing at Bromley/Ravensbourne said that Brian was the best student he’d seen for 2 years. At age 19 Brian married Aileen, also an art student, and by the age of 21 had two children, Eloise and Glenn.
All students were encouraged to apply for the Royal College of Art or the Slade. Brian got a place on a Masters course in Fine Art. To finance himself and his family, he worked as a night parcels porter. In 1968 the family moved from Kent to Battersea, where Brian has lived, worked and campaigned ever since. From 1970 to 1977 Brian taught art at Tulse Hill Secondary Modern School for Boys. He enjoyed teaching but said the children had little interest in art. He got to do stage sets and posters. Around this time he also started to mix with politicos.
In 1972 together with Ernest Rodker, (a founding member of the Committee of 100, an anti-nuclear arms pressure group), they set up Battersea Redevelopment Action Group (BRAG). The aim was to fight property speculation on the Battersea riverfront and to redirect the Planning Authority to proper democratic consultation with local people on issues of housing redevelopment and regeneration. The two largest riverside industries in the area, Morgan Crucibles and Phillip Mills, were closing down and 18 acres of prime land were ripe for redevelopment. Local people were waiting years to be housed in Council properties, unemployment was high and Battersea was an area of high deprivation and poverty.
Morgan Crucibles intended to develop their site in conjunction with Wates Ltd, and to call it ‘Morgan’s Walk.’ The Phillip Mills site was owned by Raglan Property Trust. Between them, the developers proposed to cover the land with office blocks and luxury flats, ignoring the fact that the people of Battersea desperately needed decent low rent homes and places to work in industry.
BRAG’s very public campaign convinced Wandsworth Borough Council to reject the planning application submitted by Morgan’s and Wates. Wates appealed, and a public inquiry was held at which BRAG was recognised as an objector. To prepare evidence for the inquiry, BRAG formed a working party of local people. They also submitted an alternative planning application for the site, showing how they could be developed as a mix of light industry, affordable housing, open space and community facilities.
At the inquiry, BRAG called witnesses from Battersea to give evidence about Wandsworth’s housing shortage and lack of industrial jobs, shops, and public open space. Public inquiries on planning issues are fought on technical grounds. The Department of the Environment Inspector declared evidence about housing need to be irrelevant. Housing was housing, and no distinction could be made between luxury flats and local authority homes built to meet the needs of the 9,000 people on Wandsworth’s housing waiting list. BRAG refused to play this game, and insisted on giving evidence that local people considered relevant. The Inspector upheld the Council’s rejection, but only on the grounds that the developers had asked for too much office space.
In Autumn 1976, Morgan’s submitted two new planning applications to the Council. Both plans were for offices and luxury flats. Wandsworth Council rejected the applications, and made a declaration of intent to purchase the Morgan’s site under the Community Land Act. The Secretary of State for the Environment, Peter Shore, MP, refused to let Wandsworth Council buy and develop the land.
Around this time there was a dynamic community arts movement emerging across Britain and Europe. The arts had suffered from an elitist image and community arts strove to address this by promoting access for all, both as consumers and makers of art. Visual art was used as a means to express the views, beliefs and values of working class people and communities in deprived social areas, and to challenge and influence decision making by local policy makers and politicians. Brian Barnes, together with a handful of local BRAG activists were at the forefront of this movement in London, using art to challenge the establishment on planning and redevelopment issues. Brian collaborated with other artists, trained and worked alongside volunteers, taught school children and facilitated the development of creativity and the skills of individuals and community groups.
In the mid-1970s supported by BRAG, Brian and Aileen founded the Wandsworth Mural Workshop (WMW). Their first mural was, ‘The Good, The Bad and the Ugly.’ Brian drew up designs based on a consultation with local people on ‘what we like about North Battersea and what we don’t.’ The result was a design that to the left was a vision for the future; low cost housing, allotment, parks and green spaces, a safe environment, in the centre a broom sweeping towards the right, everything in its path that would have to go – air pollution, the stench from factories, property speculation, and local decision makers and politicians who were on the side of big business. With some funding from the Council, local companies and later the Gulbenkian Foundation, Brian and Aileen with help from around 60 local volunteers spent nearly 2 years priming and painting the 18 foot by 190 foot wall on a piece of land owned by the Greater London Council (GLC) and backing onto derelict land still owned at the time by Morgan Crucible near Battersea Bridge.
The mural, influenced to some extent by the great political and social narratives of the Mexican muralist, Diego Rivera, was opened by Hugh Casson, President of The Royal Academy in 1978. During the time that the mural stood, it was never vandalised or daubed with graffiti.
When Morgan’s gave unconditional permission to Wandsworth Mural Workshop to paint the mural in 1976 they did not know that it would receive national recognition as a work of art and become one of Battersea’s best loved landmarks.
Although for local people the mural represented their aspirations for low cost housing, jobs and leisure, for others, such as Conservative councillors, Mr Cube (Tate & Lyle), Disney, and Charles Forte depicted on the mural, it was seen as controversial and provocative, and by Morgan Crucible as threatening their continued interest in developing the land for luxury flats, offices and thereby, large profits.
In the early hours of 6th June 1979, eight months after Hugh Casson had opened the mural, contractors employed by Morgan Crucible started demolition without any prior warning, or legally required advance notice or permission from the GLC to bring heavy plant machinery onto a public park (in front of the mural). Brian Barnes attempted to dramatically defend his work by scaling the remains of the wall, and for 13 hours held a one man protest, defying attempts to get him down. He stood in the way of the bulldozers, and hundreds came to support him. He was arrested and charged with threatening behaviour and possessing an offensive weapon (bits of debris) alongside six of his supporters who were charged with obstruction.
The day after the painting was destroyed a defence group was formed to save the remaining section of the mural and continue the campaign against the actions of Morgan Crucible. A 24 hour watch was set up to protect the remaining section of the wall. Brian organised a ‘paint-in’, where events that continued to unfold were painted on the wall, including the recognisable figures of Ian Weston-Smith, Chair of the Company and local politicians. The vandalised mural and the recording of evolving events became a giant billboard of publicity for the campaign, seen by thousands passing on buses over Battersea Bridge, and was very bad publicity for Morgan Crucible.
BRAG and the Battersea Mural Defence Fund took legal advice from the Brixton Law Centre (a voluntary organisation advising and acting for those too poor to pay for legal help) and with their assistance on the 15th of June 1979 were successful in their application to the High Court of Justice for an ex-parte injunction to stop further demolition. The Attorney General agreed to take over the case and act as a relator for BRAG. Their statement of claim alleged that the demolition of the wall and any or all of it onto the public open space was an unlawful public nuisance. Justice Woolf grant the injunction.
The Guardian of 16 June 1979 reported:
“The legal intervention came just in time to prevent the final demolition of the mural. Workmen with pick axes began chipping away the last fragment of the wall to a chorus of protests from local people, but had to stop work when told of the latest development.”
The injunction against demolition was granted for five days. On the 20th of June after hearing affidavits from members of the public on the use of the public space in front of the mural before and during the demolition, and hearing statements and affidavits from Morgan Crucible, Justice McNeill discharged the injunction. No reasons were given for this course of action. The remaining section of the mural was demolished.
An epic poem called ‘The Ballad of Battersea Mural,’ was written by by Catherine Kennington, who also kept some bricks from the mural for thirty years.
BRAG’s fight continued and despite public protests and the professional advice offered by their own Chief Planning Officer, after an appeal to the Department of the Environment in 1979, Wandsworth Council gave permission to Morgan Crucible and Wates to build 300 luxury flats and offices on their 11 acre riverside site. The new scheme consisted of 230 low-rise dwellings for sale lining small residential streets.
BRAG’s tactics and learning from this experience were employed in other Battersea campaigns. This included members having shares in an offending company, to enable them to have a say or disrupt annual shareholders’ meetings and thus potentially influence decisions from within, demonstrations and direct action, working with local residents’ groups, Trade Unions and organisations’ through consultation and representation, press and TV coverage, producing alternative constructive development plans where the motive was to provide good services, low cost housing, open spaces etc. as opposed to property speculation and profit making. The role of art also featured in all these campaigns. For example in the design and production of silk screen posters, leaflets, newsletters, cartoons, plays, costumes and masks.
In November 1983 BRAG joined forces with other local groups against the proposed development of Battersea Power Station, and the amalgamated organisation became Battersea Power Station Community Group. Brian became its Chairman. The Group has been campaigning for the past 30 years to preserve the building for the public good. A DVD, ‘Battersea Power Station: Selling an Icon’ produced by a local film company, Spectacle and funded by World Monuments Fund, was filmed over 15 years, documenting the on-going campaign. It “debates whether-and how-historic buildings should be preserved, governed, modified or replaced, and ‘who’ they belong to.”
In 2005 Brian Barnes was awarded a MBE from the Queen for his services to Battersea. He continues to design and paint murals depicting the aspirations of local communities. A collection of his art produced for Battersea campaigns was acquired by the Victoria & Albert Museum in 1982. They include photos and working paintings used for a 50’x30’ mural, ‘Nuclear Dawn,’ in Coldharbour Lane, Brixton. Brian also donated three posters to the Museum, depicting the ‘Battersea Cow’ logo produced by BRAG to oppose development of the Morgan Crucible factory site.
By Janet Teal Daniel (Richmond U3A)
Janet was a member of BRAG at the time of the campaign to save the Battersea Mural, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.’
Bibliography
In the writing of this article I made use of BRAG’s unpublished minutes, reports and press releases. I also interviewed Brian and Aileen Barnes on two occasions in the summer of 2017. The Archivist, Jon Newman of Lambeth Borough Council is in the process of acquiring the BRAG papers and records for their collection. Once recorded the collection should be available for public viewing.
Other resources consulted:
Lobb, Steve. The Murals of Brian Barnes, 201?
Morley Gallery. Between Dog & Wolf: a South London Twilight. Catalogue. 8-29 June 2017
Proll, Astrid, ed. Goodbye to London: Radical art and politics in the 70’s, 2010.
Spectacle Film Company, DVD- Battersea Power Station: the selling of an Icon, 2015.
Note: readers interested to learn more about the Battersea murals can discover more in this video.
