Greenwich archive

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Your editors have asked me to write an article about the petition which Greenwich Industrial History Society is currently running about the Greenwich archive.  This is a much more difficult task than it appears since while the petition is running things change every day.  By the time this reaches your letterboxes in three or four weeks time the situation may be entirely different. So I I’m not really sure that writing about what is going on currently is going to be particularly useful. There is a public meeting to be run by Greenwich Historical Society next week - but that will be over by the time you read this.

The whole point of the petition is to impress on the Council, as the ultimate decision makers, that there

is wide popular support for a functioning archive service.

I’m going to go back 25 years when we did have a service which worked.There was a museum at Plumstead and an archive, here in Westcombe Park. They were run by the Borough library service and were open and rooted in their local communities.  The sort of work which is currently going on in the east of the borough and around the Year of Culture bid could have been done by their staff very cheaply and effectively – they were not an expensive service to run. I am not going into all the whys and wherefores of what has happened since but we no longer have a museum and the archive is based in the trading estate, a long way from public transport, you have to make an appointment and order one your item in advance - and there is no browsing.

What we had in Westcombe Park - although covering the entire Borough - was the local history department and archive. This was based in the upper floors of Woodlands – now the Steiner School.It was open six days a week, plus some evenings.  It was friendly, it was accessible. You could chat to a staff member or you could just browse the shelves of books. Archive material was available immediately. Staff went regularly to speak at schools and help them with projects. They talked to local clubs and took part in the work of local historical organisations. Throughout most of its existence the archive and library were run by Julian Watson wh  retired 20 years ago. He is due to give a talk about the history of the archive at a meeting next week. Hopefully next month I will be able to say that it’s available on YouTube for everyone to hear.  I could talk about many of the staff but in particular for most of the time the library was open the senior assistant was Barbara Ludlow. As far as I’m aware Barbara had lived in Westcombe Park all her life – her mother lived in Humber Road and when we moved here her Dad was Chair of the local Labour Party branch. Her family links included much of the local Labour and trade union movements (her Uncle Charlie once hired Woolwich Odeon for Union branch meeting)as well as the owner of the trendiest record shop in South London.

Over the past 25 years decisions have been made which have changed all this. Initially I’m sure they were with good intent to help the regeneration of the Arsenal site but it moved the service away from its community bases. I am sure many decision makers today won’t know about this past and see it as an irrelevant and elitist organisations which would not meet the future aspirations of many of our residents.  Technically it is now owned by the Royal Greenwich Heritage Trust and I’m sure that it was thought that this organisation would grow to equal the success of what is now Better which took over our leisure activities in the 1980s.

So one of the reasons behind the petition is to try and get through to the decision makers on the Council that the archive and museum could be an inexpensive way of meting their aspirations and that there is massive public support for it.