Abstract

In 1965 a group of children living in north London discovered that an area of

abandoned industrial land, which they had appropriated as their playground for

over a decade, was earmarked for development for much needed social housing.

The children decided to campaign against the development and contacted a

local environmentally concerned artist to assist them in their campaign.

Notwithstanding the children’s decision to seek adult support, they forged a

child led campaign that drew on the good offices of sympathetic adults, but

never relinquished their control. The campaign was well-run and attracted both

local support and national media attention, becoming something of a cause

célèbre. The campaign, now all but forgotten, was to continue for three years

and whilst its aim of saving the playground ultimately failed it has left a positive

legacy of active social engagement for many of the children who took part. This

legacy, in no small way sprang from the fundamental belief, by both the

children and adults involved, in the legitimacy of the children’s aspirations and

their role as autonomous political actors.

Key words:

Protest, Play, empowerment, active citizenship, political socialization, urban

wildscape.

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SAVING TAMMOLAND: A MICROHISTORY OF CHILDREN’S ACTION

TO SAVE A WASTEGROUND PLAYGROUND-1965-1968.

In 1965 the determination of the newly formed, Labour1 controlled, London

Borough of Camden (Camden), to tackle an acute housing shortage through the

provision of social housing, came into direct conflict with the desire of local

children2 to preserve a much loved playground and haven for wildlife ,where

they had played since the 1950s.’ A former industrial site, this was a space

abandoned by adults and appropriated by children, a space devoid of adult rules

and control, that afforded children the chance to play in privacy, a rare and

important commodity in the life of the child (Harker, 2005). This privacy

offered these children a chance to play in more culturally inclusive ways than

those permitted in ‘manicured,’ adult controlled parks; environments in which

children and their play is often considered a nuisance (Ward Thomas, 2012).

On hearing of the threat to their playground the children contacted a local artist

and early stalwart of the emerging green movement in Britain, Tammo de

Jongh3 (Tammo), to assist them in a campaign of resistance against the 1 The Labour Party is a centre-left political party in the United Kingdom. Growing out of the trade union movement and socialist parties of the nineteenth century.2 The campaign was conducted by children as young as 6 up to their mid- teens. The word ‘children’ will be used in this article to denote children and young people as they styled their own campaign the ‘children’s campaign.’ 3 Tammo, was a committed environmentalist, who in 1965 published what he subsequently claimed was ‘the original green manifesto.’ In the mid-1960s environmentalism was a relatively new phenomenon. Rachel

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destruction of their playground. Tammo immediately embraced the cause and

the children (hereafter referred to as ‘Tammolanders) subsequently renamed the

site ‘Tammoland.’4 The children’s campaign was organized in tandem with a

local campaign run by adults, however, it remained distinct and independent of

the adult campaign and was to ultimately prove more radical.

Too localised to have the national historical memory of the school strikes of the

1970s (Hoyles, 1989), or the wider play campaign of the period led by Lady

Allen (Allen & Nicholson, 1975); the Tammoland campaign has been

unexplored by scholars. Yet, unlike some of the higher profile play and

children’s rights campaigns of the 60s and 70s, it was child led and supported

by adults, respectful of and sympathetic to the aspirations and agency of

children as political actors. Indeed, in this regard, the Tammoland campaign

will be demonstrated to offer a model of engagement between children and their

adult supporters that has much to commend it in the contemporary world.

Carson’s Silent Spring had only been published in Britain in 1963. Tammo specialised in magical, nature inspired themes and was probably best known for producing the album cover for King Crimson’s ‘In the Wake of Poseidon’ album released in 1970. A well-known figure in Camden he went on in later life to form the Graigian Society, a religious order that blended environmentalism psycho-therapy, adopting the monastic name of Brother Anelog, the leader of a small monastic community of ‘Green Monks.’ Bohemian in outlook and lifestyle he was a larger than life figure. He later codified his philosophy in his 1996 publication, ‘The Future Will Be Greener’ which offered a blueprint for living in harmony with nature both on a personal and political level, focusing on political devolution, spirituality, sexuality and criminality (The Venerable Anelog & Brother Sebastian, 1997). A further text, published posthumously, in ‘Natural Psychology’ appeared in 2014. (Anelog/de Jongh 2014).4 It is important to note, that whilst Tammo played a lead and pivotal role in providing support to the children’s campaign, a small number of similarly concerned adults also assisted the children’s campaign, however, by and large, for now, there names are lost to history.

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Irrespective of the fact that the children’s’ campaign failed to achieve its

primary objective, although it did win a small concession from the borough

council, it will be argued to have left a positive legacy through giving those who

took part experiences that are essential for the building of active citizenship

(Silva Dias & Menezes, 2014); experiences which Hart has asserted, affords

children with the skills and passion to create “communities different from the

ones they inherited” (Hart, 1997, cited in Aitken, 2001, 173).

This exploration of the Tammoland campaign offers a previously unpresented

microhistory of children’s action in the 1960s, a chance to hear through first-

hand accounts, those voices too often lost to the historical record. Voices that

recall an era in which children’s agency and political protest were nasent and

untested concepts (Nakata, 2008). It therefore offers us more than a simple

mapping of a localised campaign of protest, but rather a glimpse of an emerging

movement of national significance.

The remaining traces of this campaign reside in the memory of those who took

part and in a relatively slim and scattered body of archival material. Therefore,

as the only popular cultural reference to the Tammoland campaign, Madness’

1984 song ‘March of the Gherkins’, suggests, the campaign is rapidly falling

into the past and out of memory. This paper will draw both on the remaing

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archival sources and the oral histories, gathered during 2015-16, of some of

those ‘children’ who took part5, the youngest of whom is now in her mid-50s.6 It

is important to acknowledged that as the author is included in this number and

concequently this essay contains elements of his personal narrative. Given the

importance of personal narratives to this work, prior to exploring the campaign

in detail, this essay will begin with a discussion of the method used to capture

the Tammolander’s voices.

THE GATHERING OF ORAL HISTORIES.

The Oral histories offered by the surviving Tammolanders play a central role in

the unfolding of the story of the campaign and in any assessment of its legacy

fifty years on. The gathering of oral history finds its origins in anthropological

research and draws on the oral traditions that were, and still are, in some

cultures, central to passing on knowledge, history and tradition. Ontologically,

oral history is guided by the understanding that research is a process and not an

event, whilst epistemologically, oral history positions the researcher as a

collaborator, over an expert in the process, something that Frisch has described

as a relationship based on a “shared authority” (Shuman, 2003). Oral histories

proceed from a series of unstructured conversations between the researcher and 5 Sadly, the only adult known to have been involved in the campaign who is still alive was unable to recall the events due to incapacity. The author is grateful to both her and her family for agreeing to meet with him. 6 The author wishes to acknowledge the support, in terms of materials and their own recollections, offered by three fellow Tammolanders, Janice, Carol and Dave, without whom this project would have been the poorer, if not impossible. Their insights and memories have allowed the excavation of what may be termed the subjugated history of these events (See, Foucault,1988).

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the interviewees. Therefore, it differs from other traditional historical

approaches, in which ‘data’ is gathered and interpreted, by the ‘expert,’ at a step

removed from the lived experience.

Given the percieved propensity, borne of the traditional concerns and

methodology of much historical enquiry, to ignore, miss, or miss-interpret the

lived experience of marginalized individuals and groups, oral histories became

popular with, and developed by, many feminist historians and social scientists;

researchers with an interest in unearthing ‘subjugated knowledge’ (Leavy,

2011).

Unfortunately, whilst a record of some of the children’s voices from the

Tammoland campaign were contemporaneously recorded on radio and

television, albeit under the editorial control of adults, these voices are currently

lost to us. Mindful of the fact that children’s history is “rarely… well told”

(Brook’s, 2006:18), a feature that in no small way emerges from the absence of

children’s voices or the miss-interpretation of their voices (Invernizzi &

Williams, 2007. Jones, 2008), this essay seeks to portray the now lost voices of

the children who took part as faithfully as possible. Whilst those voices cannot

be accessed, the oral histories gathered here, afford an opportunity to proximate

them through the remembering’s of their adult selves. Whilst doubtless

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imperfect and prone to some of the misreadings inherent in any adult attempt to

recapture the thoughts and feelings of their childhood (Bahrick et al, 1974),

these oral histories tell these children’s stories better than would have been

possible through documentary sources alone.

Additionally, as Patel has argued, oral histories offer “ insight into the thought

processes behind behaviour,” thereby offering more than a transcript of our

contributors lived experience of the events of 1965-1968. They afford us an

insight into the “ how and why” they have “ lived their life …and the thoughts

and ideas that have guided their everyday behaviour and interactions with

others” (Patel, 2005, 337-338). Therefore, these oral histories give us an

opportunity to gain some sense of the percieved legacy in their adult lives of the

Tammolanders childhood activism. The clarity of the recollections offered by

the Tammolanders does much to mitigate against the wider forgetting of the

campaign.

THE PROCESS OF FORGETTING

The Tammoland campaign did not leave the documentary trail that the higher

profile, children’s rights campaigns of the 60s and 70s offer to researchers. In

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part this results from the fact that the children involved in the campaign had no

real sense of the importance of audit trails or an eye on posterity, resulting in

rather a thin and fractured trail of documentry evidence. As the archaeologist,

Greta Lillehammer, has suggested “ children do not write history, they make it”

(Lillehammer, 2010, 22 ). Indeed, the only documentary sources available on

Tammoland are exclusively written and preserved by adults. Not as a

‘Tammoland archive,’ but rather as incidental material in the Lady Allan

papers, the St Pancras Civic Society papers, various minute books of Camden

Council and a range of local and national newspapers.

Additionally, the Tammolanders didn’t have the social capital (Grenfell, 2012)

required to imbed their campaign into the wider political consciousness, in a

way that would ensure the interest of those who acted as curators of collective

historical memory. At the time these ‘curators’ had little or no interests in

children or childhood outside of their implication for social policy, as an adjunct

to adult concerns. The reality is that until rescently children were seen as the

“objects of study” in an adult world, rather than “active subjects,” a perception

that made their history largely “invisible.” (Sánchez Romero & Alarcón Garcia,

2015) and as such, more likely to be excluded from the historic record.

Notwithstanding the fact that over the last four decades that there have been

clear developments in the attitude of commentators towards the reality and

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contribution of children’s agency, including significant progress in the writing

of the history of children and childhood (Cunningham, 2005). The norm operant

at the time of the Tammoland campaign in the disciplines of sociology and

history was to marginalise children and their concerns, a marginalization that

resulted from their subordinate position in society (Corsaroe, 2011). This reality

effectively muted7 the campaign’s significance and memory.

TAMMOLAND

Tammoland was a site of approximately six and a half acres bound by Burghley

Road, Little Green Street, Lady Somerset Road and York Rise, Kentish Town

London N.W. 5, with a railway line running along its boundary with York Rise.

The area is now known as the Ingestre Road Estate.

This district of Camden, whilst bordering middle class communities, was a

traditionally working class neighbourhood, featuring a high proportion of often

poor quality rented accommodation, much of which was subsequently

compulsory purchased8 by Camden in the later 1960s. The area’s lack of

amenities led Camden Councillor, Roger Robinson, to describe it as a ‘cultural

wilderness’ in 1967 (Lady Allen Papers (LAP) MSS.121/AP/10/1-2).

7 The author here draws on ‘muted group theory’, first proposed by Ardener & Ardener. (See Ardener &Ardener 2005).8 The Compulsory Purchase Act 1965 gave local authorities the power to acquire rights over an estate or to buy that estate outright, without the current owner's consent in return for compensation.

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The sight was a former pig farm (Planning Committee Minutes, 22 February,

1967), that was acquired by the Great Easter Railway Company (GER) in the

1860s to facilitate the dumping of earth from the building of the Tottenham and

Hampstead Junction Railway. The spoil from the railway was mounded on the

site and over time gave the impression of a hilly landscape, hence, one of its

names, initiated by local children, ‘The Alps’. In 1909 the GER opened the

‘Harbar’ works on one end of the site (Camden Historic Land Use), which

manufactured iron strip and bars, this building was subsequently converted to

hostel accommodation for railway crews. However, even this industrial activity

was limited to a small section of the site, leaving much of its acreage untouched

by human activity for decades, bar a small section used as allotments9 by

railway employees. By 1955 British Railways10 had largely abandoned the site,

leaving only half an acre of the site, at the Little Green Street end, utilised for a

staff recreational club and an associated model railway club.

On the abandonment of industrial activity on the site the land and buildings

became a playground for local children, a playground, which over the following

nine years, the children came to regard as an invaluable, much loved resource.

The absence of human activity allowed the site to develop into an area of 9 An allotment is a small area of land, let out at a nominal yearly rent for individuals to grow their own food or flowers. 10 The body established to run most of Britain’s railways on their nationalisation in 1948.

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natural beauty. Indeed, in 1966, a joint report of Camden’s Architectural and

Planning Officers noted that the area had a “Unique character in an urban area,

bountiful with trees and shrubs” (Planning Committee Minutes, 17 April, 1966).

The ecological uniqueness of the site was acknowledged by Counsellor, Corin

Hughes -Stanton, in 1967, who observed that it was “a shame the land had to be

built on as it was the last remaining piece of wild land in London” (St Pancras

Chronical, 22 February,1967). Whilst, a local newspaper observed that it was a

site “where children played in country like conditions” (St Pancras Chronical,

22 March,1968).

The author vividly remembers the terrain as an unspoilt place full of trees

flowers and animals, a recollection shared by all the interviewees. These, now

somewhat distant, childhood memories were supported by a contemporary

document identified in the Lady Allen Papers.11 The document, prepared by the

adult campaign called “The Magic Country,” describes how when Tammo “who

was rather fat” was first led onto the land through a hole in the fence by two

boys, Trevor and David,12 that he encountered a landscape:

“on which cow parsley grew twelve feet high” and a “ meadow...covered in marguerites and clover, micklemass-daisies and irises. There was a thicket with tall leaning trees and crooked trees covered in ivy. Flowering bushes were everywhere and a half-wild rose clung to an abandoned shack. Set in a hollow and surrounded by foliage was a large, derelict workshop….and an amazing

11 I am indebted to Carol, who identified the source. 12 The latter being one of the interviewees for this article.

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variety of plant-life was able to spread. Hedgehogs and other wild creatures found cover and birds were left to nest.”

The document also describes the views from a meadow on the “highest part of

the land-over-looking West Kentish Town and the spire of Christchurch,” and

“the Magic Country’s” appeal for children in the abundance of “grasshoppers,

snails and birds” (LAP. MSS,121/AP/7/1/35). These descriptions have a real

resonance for the author, who still recalls the excitement of his 6-year-old self,

encountering and cupping a grasshopper in his hand for the first time.

The children and Tammo intrinsically understood the value of the site, in an age

long before realisation of the importance of ‘urban wildscapes’ (Jorgensen &

Keenan, 2012). They saw beyond what most of the adult world saw, namely, an

abandoned industrial site, they had named ‘the old dump,’ a place that had

outlived its usefulness, or even failed in its purpose. A perception that Mah has

identified as leading to the devaluing and rejection of the environmental

potential of abandoned urban industrial sites by some members of the

community (Jorgensen & Keenan, 2012). Conversely, local children viewed the

site as vibrant, alive and brimming with possibilities, not an abandoned or failed

industrial site, but a wildlife sanctuary full of opportunities for play. Their

excitement and collective proprietorship was evident in the naturalistic and

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celebratory names that they deployed over the adult moniker of ‘the old dump,’

‘Magic Land’ ‘the Alps,’ ‘Wonderland’ and ultimately ‘Tammoland.’

CAMDEN COUNCIL.

The Borough of Camden was formally established on 1 April 1965, replacing

the Metropolitan Borough Councils of Hampstead, Holborn, and St Pancras.

Camden was a Labour controlled council that immediately set about developing

social housing and other infrastructure for its inhabitants.

Camden has long been ethnically and socially diverse, predominantly working

class with pockets of middle class communities. In 1965 the borough’s

population was estimated to consist of 26% who had not been born in Britain;

its population consisting of substantial numbers of Afro-Caribbean, Asian,

Greek Cypriot and Irish migrants.

Much of the housing in Camden, in keeping with the rest of London in this

period, was provided by the private sector and was in poor condition, often

damp and insanitary, with large numbers of Victorian and Edwardian properties

which had received little investment for decades (Bowie, 2015). Substantial

amounts of the property in Camden were owned by institutions like St

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Bartholomew’s Hospital, which leased them on to private landlords. The need

for social housing in Camden was acute, with a housing waiting list of over

7000 families in 1966 (St Pancras Chronical February 18 1966). Camden, in

1966, along with its West London Housing Group partners, Westminster City

and Islington Councils, embarked on an ambitious housing project to build

60,000 new homes (St Pancras Chronical March 3 1966). Camden was

particularly proactive in this regard and by the September of 1967 it was

building new homes faster than any other metropolitan borough having

announced a five-year drive against slums in the January of 1967 (St Pancras

Chronical, 22 September, 1967).

In addition to its social housing prioritisation, Camden was a progressive

authority in regard to the provision of children’s play areas. Doubtless driven by

the same concerns for youth exercising British society in the late 1950s and

early 1960s (Donnelley, 2005), councillors were keen to ensure adequate

facilities for its children and young people. Indeed, by 1966 it could boast that it

was leading the country in the development of play centres and felt able to

claim that Scandinavian countries had been so impressed by its developments in

supporting play that they were “following the Camden model” (St Pancras

Chronical 17, June,1966). In the September of 1966 Camden won praise from

central government for its work on playgrounds (St Pancras Chronical, 16

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September,1966). Additionally, Camden Council collaborated with the North

West Polytechnic to provide a course of training in ‘Community Play-Centre

Work.’ By and large, Camden counsellors13 were far from unsympathetic in

regard to the play needs of children and were largely sympathetic to the

Tammoland campaign. However, they felt pulled between competing priorities,

a reality acknowledged by campaigners themselves (LAP.

MSS.121/AP/7/1/35). This was a campaign fought over, and between, two

social goods, namely, a place to play and a place to live.

LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS OF PROTEST

During the December of 1965 Camden’s Planning and Amenities Committee

authorised the drawing up of preliminary sketches of a housing development for

the Tammoland site. Under these plans the only part of the site to be spared

redevelopment was the small fraction containing the railway worker’s social

club. A number of local children, on hearing of the planned development,

contacted Tammo and the campaign was born. Dave, one of the boys that

started the campaign, vividly recalls these events and his decision to contact

Tammo, his next door neighbour, who he knew and respected, on hearing that

the site was going to be developed. Dave recalls, “I loved the place, I spent all

my time over there, my brother wasn’t interested, he was more interested in

13 A Councillor is an elected member of local government.

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football, but for me it was always nature. Me, Oakey [the nickname of Trevor,

mentioned previously] and Gary were over there all the time. It was full of wild

rhubarb and strawberries. We showed Tammo the land and the dangerous old

railway buildings, we knew he would be interested and the campaign started

from there” (Dave, 15 February, 2016).

Prior to the campaign local children had already occupied the disused railway

building and turned it into a club house without the encouragement or assistance

of adults. Having been introduced to the site, Tammo suggested that the

children drew up a petition that supported the preservation of the site and for the

development of the railway building into a “kid’s arts centre” (Janice, 24

August, 2015). Carol, aged 5 at the time, and the youngest member of the

campaign, dubbed ‘the baby of the group’ by her fellow campaigners, recalls

that after Tammo became involved he and a “potter called Don” utilised the

building as an art studio where the children were encouraged to create their own

artwork (Carol,11 December, 2015).

The children, by approaching Tammo for assistance in the campaign recognised

that if they were to save their playground that they had to take on an adult

controlled political structure that largely held them to be passive recipients of

adult decision making and who would treat their concerns accordingly (Dave,

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15 February, 2016). The children were not, however, surrendering the fate of

their playground into the hands of an adult, but rather, that they were acting

strategically in recognising the need for adult support in pursuing their cause.

As Roache has observed, given the disregard for children’s concerns and rights,

children “have to start from where they are socially positioned. This means they

have to make their own space in space not of their making” (Roache, cited in

Liebel, 2008, 38). Therefore, an alliance with sympathetic adults afforded them

with a degree of social capital that they did not enjoy in their own right. Their

decision then was instinctively astute given the sense of “powerlessness and

exclusion” that children sense in asserting their rights in the face of adult

resistance (Lister, 2008, 16). This was an alliance forged by children who

sought to pursue their rights actively, rather than ‘passively’ as the beneficiaries

of an adult led campaign (Morrow, 2008, 122). Thereby Illustrating that “just as

adults involve children in their politics….children draw adults into theirs as

group members, witnesses, advocates and offenders.” Making children,

“competent political actors in their own right” (Kallio, 2009, 4).

TAMMO

Tammo, a self -styled “reactionary and romantic,” believed passionately that the

power of playing in nature must not be lost in modern urban environments,

declaring:

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A sense of wonder is destroyed and all fantast lost in the impersonal deserts created by modern development. The child is obliged to play in the roar of traffic or a small room dominated by the blaring television set. There are no longer any magic sources of inspiration and contemplation, the child of today reacts therefore like a caged wild beast. One only has to study other cultures to realise that this is no more a part of human nature than to be totally passive all the time. All the talk of allowing children to express their natural aggression is nonsense [referring to competitive sports], it only encourages them to be destructive and to supress their better feelings.

Creative play is the freedom to explore in an imaginative and stimulating environment, where natural things are allowed to develop and the mental and sensitive faculties are engaged (LAA MSS.121/AP/7/1/35)

Tammo was ideally placed to lend assistance with the children’s campaign. He

was a founder member of the St Pancras Civic Society (SPCS), established in

the July of 1963. Tammo, at the SPCS’ first meeting, offered what amounts to a

personal manifesto, declaring that as a “reactionary and romantic” he was:

against planning and so called progress, against the commercial interests that threaten all that is individual, traditional and eccentric. If there must be change then we must keep a human scale and learn from the past: the life of the emotions and the soul were paramount if we were not to become mere machines” (Camden, Local Studies and Archives Centre (CLSAC) SPCS archives).

Notwithstanding his membership of the Society, Tammo was committed to

ensuring that whilst the SPCC campaigned on the issue that the children’s

protest should run in tandem, but independently of it.

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The SPCS, established by middle class professionals, was founded to “improve

St Pancras as a place in which to live and work..” in the light of ongoing private

and public developments which the society viewed as an “anarchic assortment

of forces” that were shaping the borough and which the society viewed as being

“ narrowly partisan, and little interested in the resulting environment in which

we shall have to live.” Acknowledging its own limitations, the Society declared

that it could take on relatively few issues and relied on the community of St

Pancras to identify the issues that it should fight (CLSAC SPCS, ‘statement of

intent’, undated). Whilst Tammo was a founder member, the other members of

the Society were less keen on his rather confrontational style. Tammo offered to

draft a letter on behalf of the Society in the April of 1966 that would “provoke

the council” to do more to protect Camden’s trees, however, the other members

of the Society wished for a “more tactful approach.” (SCS archive, Minutes of

meeting, 7 April, 1966).

THE TAMMOLAND CLUB

The children’s campaign was established as the Tammoland Club. Tammo

provided space for the children to work on their campaign at his home in Lady

Somerset Road. He additionally provided them with materials and advice on

organisational structure and campaign tactics. Tammo, whilst hands off in terms

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of the children’s decision making, was clearly an influential figure in the

children’s campaign. The relationship between Tammo and the children was

that of a mentor and critical friend, rather than simply unquestionably

supporting their desires, or overtly imposing his will on their actions. That said,

doubtless Tammo had a level of influence over the children’s campaign, no

matter how lightly his strategic authority was deployed. However, the

relationship between the children and Tammo was far from a manipulative adult

-child interaction that would appear to be superficially child-lead. It was in

essence a genuine partnership between the middle aged ‘romantic reactionary’

and the children. The children and Tammo had alighted on a formula that Hart

was to typify, some forty years after these events, as progressing through “child

initiated shared decisions with adults” (Aitken, 2001, 173).

Despite, Tammo’s important role, the campaign remained definitively led by the

children. Janice recalls, “Tammo was in the background giving us a few hints

here and there, but we decided what to do, he stood back and just watched” (24

August, 2015). Carol also recalled the events of the campaign through the

wonder of her 5-year-old eyes, as she recalled the children preparing leaflets

and banners “laying on the floor on our bellies and painting “Save Tammoland-

Save Our Land.” These events took place in Tammo’s garden and in what

Carol remembers as Tammo’s “giant front room with its massive living room

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table,” even in her 50s recalling, “I was Alice in Wonderland and everything

was big, I was so small.” (12 December, 2015). Whilst the children prepared

their protest material, which included a papier-mâché Moose called Gazelda, the

mascot of the campaign that they pushed around in a pram, Tammo would put

on puppet shows, entertaining them with productions with names such as “how

can we save this land?” (Dave, 15 February, 2016).

Organizationally, the children elected officials from within their own ranks,

designed and produced a membership badge that featured a leaf design,

“symbolising growth and tenderness,” and appointed wardens to patrol the sight

to stop any vandalism (LAA. MSS.121/AP/7/1/35). The children also engaged

in fundraising to support their campaign, writing letters to build a fighting fund

and thank you letters for those who donated. Additionally, the children utilised

the abundance of fruit growing on Tammoland to help fund the campaign.

Rhubarb, strawberries and other fruits would be baked into pies by Janice and

her elder sister to be sold door to door to raise funds (Dave, 15 February, 2016).

Similarly, the tradition of ‘penny for the guy’14 was pressed into service in the

October/November of 1966 to raise funds for the campaign, receiving coverage

in the Guardian15.

14 A British tradition that entails children making an image of Guy Fawkes (a Catholic conspirator who attempted to blow up the British Parliament in 1605) for the purpose of raising money asking passers-by for a ‘penny for the guy,’ the money was put towards the celebration of Guy Fawkes night on the 5th of November each year, during which fireworks are exploded. 15 A left of centre British national newspaper.

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The children’s passion and vision for Tammoland promoted a high level of

parental and local community support for their campaign. Adults ceased seeing

it as the ‘old dump’ and began to view it as Tammoland, as a valued play

resource for their children (Dave, 15 February, 2016). Little by little, the

children’s families and wider community gave the space and support for the

campaign to develop.

It is suggested here that the level of support for the children’s campaign from

the local adult population, who would have most keenly felt the need for new

housing, is indicative of the emerging zeitgeist of 1960s London. Baker has

observed “ .. everyday familial politics are never situated entirely within the

domestic sphere of the home. Children’s…..choices are not just simply the

result of micro political relationships within the family, but are also influenced

by wider ideological expectations and material circumstances which frame the

range of possibilities for the micro political geographies of the family” ( Baker,

2010 pp 149).

The children’s campaign soon attracted support, both locally and more widely.

One of its earliest supporters was Camden’s Mayor, Luke Patrick O’Conner.

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Janice, who at 13 and one of the older campaigners and the children’s media

spokesperson, recalls how O’Conner collected the children’s representatives in

his chauffer driven Mayoral car to inspect the site and later expressed his

support for their campaign. She remembers how she “felt incredibly special” at

being collected in O’Conner’s car and thinking that “this is probably the last

time that I will ever travel in a limousine” (Janice, 24 August, 2015). O’Conner

was later to receive the children’s delegation at Camden Town Hall in 1966 and

treated them with courtesy and respect, as he would any other delegation of

citizens, leaving the children in no doubt that the “Mayor was very supportive

of what we were doing” (Ibid). Carol, the ‘baby of the group,’ also remembers

her 5 year old self’s sense of wonder, recalling how she felt that she was

travelling “ in the Queen’s car….doing things that we never did before, all to

keep our playground.” She also recalls the Mayor’s chauffer’s annoyance at her

getting in the car “with big muddy boots on” and the Mayor reassuring the

chauffer that it was all right and that the “car could be cleaned later” (Carol, 11

December, 2015). However, not all of Camden’s politicians offered the same

level of respect for its younger citizens, with a Counsellor MacFarlane

dismissing the children’s campaign disparagingly asserting that the “Alps” only

attraction to the children was that it was forbidden (St Pancras Chronical, 24

February, 1967).

23

The campaign soon attracted wider press attention in national and local media,

with coverage in the Guardian, Evening Standard16 and the local newspapers.

The TV current affairs programme ‘Town and Around’ in 1965 covered the

campaign and the BBC’s flagship children’s TV programme, Blue Peter17, came

to film children playing on Tammoland in 1967, with presenter Valerie

Singleton visiting the site. Janice and another Tammolander called Teresa were

interviewed at the BBC studios for the programme, both receiving the supreme

accolade of a Blue Peter Badge. Additionally, Janice was interviewed on the

BBC Home Service. A photograph in the author’s possession shows Janice hard

at work, preparing for her interviews by compiling bullet points to ensure that

she presented the case as coherently and comprehensively as possible (Janice,

24 August, 2015). Carol also recalls Janice’s appearance on Blue Peter but as

befits a five-year old’s perspective the moment she recalls as most exciting was

when footage of children playing on Tammoland appeared on the BBC’s ‘Play

School,’ through the “square window. ”18 (12 December, 2015); a game that

Dave recalls was ‘cowboys and Indians’ (15 February, 2016). The campaign

had quickly become something of a cause célèbre.

16 A newspaper with London wide distribution. 17 Blue Peter is a British children's television programme. Its format takes the form of a magazine/entertainment show.18 Each week the programme would feature a film clip presented through one of three windows, Square, round or arched. Children were invited to guess which window it would be, something which became a much loved section of the programme.

24

Central to the children’s campaign was the delivery in the March of 1966 of a

petition supported by 743 signatures, which included 473 residents of Burghley

and Lady Somerset Roads (St Pancras Chronical, 2 May,1966). The petition

dealt with the inaccessibility of a nearby park, Parliament Hill Fields19, the

importance and potentiality of the site, its role in child health and development

and the environmental impact its destruction would wrought. (St. Pancras

Chronical, 18 March, 1966). The petition was delivered by 20 children who

marched on Camden Town Hall in the October of 1966, carrying the placards

they had made, bearing slogans such as “ We Like Grass” and “Tammoland is

Magic Land” (Dave, 15 February, 2016). They were received by the Mayor

who accepted the petition from them. Carol recalls the march and her

excitement of its coverage on the evening television news (11 December, 2015).

Dave also remembers the preparation for the march on the town hall with

Tammo urging the children “ not to stray, to stay in line and to take

responsibility for your banner” (15 February, 2016).

The SPCS also formed a “fighting fund” to campaign on behalf of

Tammoland’s preservation. The campaign had attracted enough attention to

19 The objection focused on the busy main roads that separated local communities from the park, however, Parliament Hill Fields was far from a wilderness and was an adult controlled space, that therefore did not offer the freedom and affirmation of identity that claimed space would offer the children ( Aitken, 2001).

25

receive an opening donation of ten guineas20 from Sir Billy Butlin, the founder

of Butlin’s Holiday Camps (St Pancras Chronical, 18 March,1966).

However, by the April of 1966, following the children’s march on Camden

Town Hall, the Secretary of the SPCS, Mr D Gurney, sent an open letter to the

Hampstead and Highgate Express newspaper clarifying the Society’s position

and distancing itself from the children’s objectives. Gurney’s letter attacked the

failure of central government to provide Camden with adequate land to build

on, thereby forcing the council to build on Tammoland. The letter went on to

assert that given the urgent need for social housing that the SPCS did not object

to the development and that whilst the SPCS wished the children well in their

campaign, its only focus was to win the children some concessions regarding

open space for play on the new development. Tellingly, the letter asserted: “The

petition and procession in defence of the playground were not initiated or

organised by us, although we are sympathetic to any group which takes

collective action to protect its amenities and especially to a group of children”

(Hampstead and Highgate Express, 15 April,1966).

The children’s demands continued to be far more radical, they wanted the whole

of the site preserved and to utilise the Harbar bar works as a children’s cultural

20 £10 and 10 shillings.

26

centre, across which they had already defiantly draped a banner that read “This

is a Play Centre” (New Education, 1966). Tammo continued to advocate for the

children’s cause and additionally proposed the integration of an artist commune

in a nature reserve providing artists’ studios and theatre space:

Where children could perform their own plays, have concerts and puppet shows, make their own scenery and costumes and arrange seating and tickets etc. Drama is a necessary and vital part of the child’s world.

That children should be influenced by the work of imaginative artists is a very good thing, in this way tradition is passed on.

Arts and crafts would also be in progress and children would be able to watch, or if they felt inclined, to take part and pot, woodcut, or do basketwork of their own. The important thing is that they would be able to watch what is going on and, by example, imitate.

In the centre a nature- study library would create a link for the children with the world of plants and wildlife (LAA. MSS.121/AP/7/1/35).

The children’s campaign won the support of Lady Allen, who visited the site in

the summer of 1966 and declared it “incredibly beautiful…a paradise for

children, contrasting vividly from ‘prisoner of war playgrounds.’ This

description may seem as more apposite than ever in 21st century Britain, with its

shrinking spaces for free play, in playgrounds where play is increasingly

governed by ever expanding health and safety concerns and the associated anti-

litigious imperatives of corporate play spaces (Harker, 2005); all forces that

conspire to homogenise activities in an adult sanctioned and controlled arenas

of play.

27

Encouraging Camden to rise to the challenge, Allen declared, “Camden could

lead the world in one of the most adventurous things a council can do. The sky’s

the limit” The proposal also won support from Councillor Roger Robinson,

Chair of the Camden Council for Community Relations who saw it as a

“magnificent opportunity to teach children how to create, when so many things

in our society are being destroyed…It is also a way of getting rid of racial

friction. It is very difficult to break down adult prejudices, and this is a way of

seeing that this doesn’t arise again.” (Unidentified newspaper article LAA,

MSS/121/AP/1/2/341). However, as Robinson pointed out the decision would

ultimately lie with the Planning Committee of the Council.

THE COUNCIL’S DECISSION

Given the shortage of available land and the determination of Camden Council

to build social housing in order to reduce the 7000 strong waiting list, the

chances of reprieving Tammoland from the bulldozers was always slim. From

the very earliest days of the children’s campaign the Council’s Planning and

Amenity Committee (PAC) made it quite clear that there was no alternative but

to build on the site. However, in the March of 1966 the Council decided that a

28

small wooded area which bounded Burghley Road would be saved as “it was

unsuitable for building.” The Chairperson of the PAC, Counsellor Peggy Duff

announced that “we will meet the children and parents and others concerned and

will tell them of our decision” (St Pancras Chronical, 18 March, 1966).

However, a central government freeze of council expenditure gave a temporary

‘stay of execution,’ giving campaigners some hope that the development may

not go ahead and the campaigning went ahead unabated. However, by the late

Autumn of 1966 it was evident that the ‘stay’ was just that.

Following the three-week Penny for the Guy campaign in the Autumn of 1966 it

was decided that the money raised should be used for a celebratory bonfire and

fireworks display on Tammoland. More than one hundred children gathered on

the night of November the 5th 1966 at the disused railway building to celebrate

the campaign. Local newspapers reported that fire engines arrived on the scene,

but having observed that everything was in order left again without incident.

Carol remembers the firework display vividly and the sense of celebration,

community and empowerment. Tammo, who had suggested and organised the

party, declared that “the evening was a great success; it is one more example of

what can be done on this playground” (St Pancras Chronical, 11

November,1966). The fireworks party happened at a point when it was evident,

to all bar the children involved in the campaign, that the fight to save

29

Tammoland was effectively lost. It was however, a public relations success and

importantly gave the children the opportunity to celebrate their campaign. It is

suggested here, albeit speculatively, that by literally sending their fighting fund

up in smoke, Tammo sought to offer the children something that was immediate

and tangible, something that offered a sense of achievement, that grew out of

their campaigning, despite the fact that the writing was on the wall for

Tammoland.

By the January of 1967 the plans to develop the site were back on course, but

Camden announced that it would make a concession to the campaign by

providing 0.10 of an acre of the six-and-a-half-acre site as a playground (Town

Clerks Report 30/1/67, PAC CBA). Tammo protested, calling the allocation

inadequate, an enduring complaint by the residents of Ingestre Road Estate (Big

Woods, 2003) and made one last attempt to alter the decision (Evening

Standard, 23 February, 1967). Despite Tammo’s protestations, the council

stated that the playground was to be situated behind a tower block, subsequently

named, Grangemill, on the railway boarded edge of the site. In response to this

plan the SPCS lodged one last set of objections to the placing of the playground,

the configuration of housing on the site and the disproportionate amount of the

site given over to car usage to the detriment of open areas (10 April, 1967, PAC

CBA). Notwithstanding any remaining objections, Councillor Duff declared that

30

it was “unthinkable” that the development wouldn’t go ahead given the housing

shortage (St Pancras Chronical, 24 April,1967).

The play space survives to this day, it is a caged area of hard standing, devoid of

the nature so treasured by the campaigners, conforming to what Lady Allen had

described as a “prisoner of war playground.” Interestingly, the playground is

camouflaged from the main road through the estate by a tiny wooded remnant

of Tammoland. It could be romantically assumed this was a nod to the past by

the estates architects, however, in reality it provided a low cost option for the

provision of space required by planning regulations between Grangemill and

some adjoining terraced houses.

By the January of 1968 work had begun on the Tammoland site but one final

concession was to be won from the Council. In April of 1968 the St Pancras

Chronical declared a “happy ending to a fierce controversy,” announcing that a

children’s play centre was to be included in the build, in fact it was opened as a

community centre. The 12 sided building, which still stands today, reflected

Tammo’s spiritual beliefs (The Venerable Anelog & Brother Sebastian, 1996).

Tammo was to run the centre for 5 years, until his growing green spirituality

driven management style and its related use of the building was to alienate him

from members of the local community and Council officials.

31

Whilst ultimately, the campaign may be argued to have achieved little, or at best

partial success, the saving of ‘Tammoland,’ with all its natural beauty and play

potential had failed. Even the woodland that survived the bulldozers did so

because of the topography of the land, or the requirements of building

regulations, rather than any pressure brought to bear by the campaign.

Notwithstanding this, the small packet of natural woodland that survived the

development continued to be an important play resource for children and

teenagers. However, given its proximity to housing, their activities and its

associated noise often generated conflict between children and residents, from

both the estate and the increasing numbers of homeowners on those sections of

Lady Somerset and Burghley Roads that abutted the site. This, on occasion,

resulted in the intervention of police and Camden’s community safety staff

during the 1970s when the author played as a child and hung out in the woods

as a teenager.

However, the measure of the campaign’s success reaches beyond the success or

failure of its original objectives. Those who shared their reminiscences spoke

enthusiastically of their sense of empowerment during the campaign. Janice

recalls, “The achievement for us was the media took hold of it [the campaign] at

the time. For us we felt we were heard by the media. It was a great thing for us

32

children that our efforts were heard” (24 August, 2015). The sense that the

campaign was taken seriously by the adult world and that it gathered significant

grass roots support in the local community has left an enduring legacy of

achievement with those who took part.

Those interviewed for this article have all stated unreservedly that the

experiences gained in the battle to save Tammoland’ has left them with an

enduring sense of pride and agency, which has fed through into their private,

professional and political lives. When Janice was asked by the author “what if

any enduring legacy did the campaign leave you with?” she replied “I have

always worked with children, so maybe that is what came out of it” (24 August,

2015). Carol echoed this theme but asserted that the main legacy for her was as

conviction that you “do the right thing” for your community over the interests

“of industry and financial gain, it’s more for your community over finance” (11

December, 2015). The response of all the campaigners interviewed and indeed

in regard to the author’s own sense of legacy from involvement in the

campaign, strongly chimes with Silva Dias & Menezes’ assertions regarding the

fruits of early political engagement by children, which manifests itself in an

enduring commitment to community and active citizenship.

CONCLUSSIONS

33

The campaign to save Tammoland, whilst relatively small and localised, is a

significant event marker in the development of greater political agency for

children in the UK. The philosophy and praxis of this campaign offers a model

of child/adult cooperation at a community level that has real resonance in the

contemporary world.

The campaign, whilst drawing on adult support, remained child led, in an era

when children’s involvement in campaigns was either to provide, by their

presence, examples of their vulnerability or needs, in adult run campaigns, or,

less visibly, as passive recipients of adult patronage in advocating their cause.

The radical departure from these norms in the Tammoland campaign is

illustrative of the widening participation of the rights based agenda cantered on

the establishment of political agency by historically marginalized groups that

would emerge more fully into public consciousness as the countercultural

agenda gained traction during the later 1960s.

The children involved in the campaign had appropriated the space vacated by

adults as their playground and when adults sought to re-impose their authority

over the space the children sought out a strategic alliance with adults to preserve

their playground. The person they chose to approach, the proto-green,

artist/philosopher, Tammo, had the social and political capital to further their

34

cause. Additionally, he had an intuitive conviction in the credibility, value and

necessity of children’s agency, that ensured that he would not seek to subsume

their campaign into one of adult controlled action.

The model of co-operation that emerged through the campaign, that of child led

engagement with adult collaborators, prefigures models of best practice

identified by contemporary scholars and activists. However, there is no

suggestion here that the children involved developed this strategy on a

conscious political level. They acted instinctively in identifying an adult that

they could trust, an important element of any campaign, especially those

involving children and young people. Above all this campaign relied on

relationships over the pre-conceived ideological drivers so prevalent in adult

campaigns.

The children’s conviction, energy and enthusiasm ultimately won them the

support and respect of their local community, the media and a leading local

politician. However, the pressure of acute housing need ensured that they could

not ultimately succeed in their primary objective of saving Tammoland.

However, the process of campaigning and the sense that their arguments were

listened to by those in authority has left those who took part with a legacy of

pride and a propensity to engage in their communities for the common good.

35

Dave is a long term foster parent with an enduring sense of the possibilities

offered through social action. Janice went on to work as a classroom assistant

and has a passionate interest in social justice, Carol has a lifelong engagement

with community campaigns. The author has been active as a trade unionist,

political campaigner, play, youth, social worker and academic whose work has

focused on issues of social justice, abuse of power and crimes against the

vulnerable. On reflecting on their various roads to activism, all of the

contributors were unstinting in their assertion that the Tammoland campaign

played a significant role in their political socialization and lifelong commitment

to social justice.

The real legacy and overwhelming success of the save Tammoland campaign

fifty years after its conclusion, is that it demonstrates the power of social

campaigning by children to promote life long active citizenship. The

Tammoland campaign demonstrates that a campaign’s measure of success can

be found in its process as well as its outcomes. As the poet Constantine P.

Cavafy observed in his poem ‘Ithika,’ expecting your stated destination to offer

you rewards is often to miss the real value of a journey, as the real riches lay in

the wisdom that the journey itself provides, rather than what you thought that

you would gain at its endpoint (Cavafy, 2014). A point all too readily lost in a

36

world in which the metrics of success are increasingly corralled into narrowly

defined objectives that take no account of, or ascribe any value to, process over

outcome, thereby discounting the positive collateral consequences of

campaigning itself.

It is fitting to end this article with the enduring memory of Dave, the boy who

started the campaign, who on reflecting on the campaign’s legacy, mused. “The

memories of those years are so fantastic. Now I’m older I think it was such a

shame that we couldn’t do more. I would still be involved with that today, to

help the kids of London” (15 February, 2016).

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AUDIO/VISUAL:

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INTERVIEWS CITED:

Janice, August 24 2015.

Carol, December 11 2015.

Dave, February 15 2016.

40