This Sunday at Preston Community Library 3pm. Philip Grant on the British Empire Exhibition

 

Some forthcoming British Empire Exhibition talks you may wish to enjoy

 Guest post by local historian Philip Grant

 

Some images from Burma at the British Empire Exhibition

 

If you have found my recent articles about the Pageant of Empire in 1924 of interest, you might like to discover more about the British Empire Exhibition from one (or more) of the three illustrated talks I will be giving over the next few weeks, as part of its centenary.

 

The first, “The Jewel of Wembley – Burma at the BEE”, is on Friday 20 September, from 7.30 to 9pm, in St Andrew’s Church Hall, Kingsbury. This is at regular monthly meeting of Wembley History Society, but visitors are welcome [we just invite a contribution of £3 (£1 for students) towards the cost of the hall]. All the details you should need are here:

 

 

One of the aspects of the Exhibition’s history that I am most keen on is the perspective of people who came here from the countries of the Empire, rather than just the “official” British view. The album on which much of my talk is based contains dozens of newspaper cuttings and photographs. One of the most intriguing of which is an article by a female journalist of her interview with Ma Bala Hkin, the leading actress and dancer of the Burmese theatre troupe at the Exhibition.

 

One of the headlines from the “Evening News” article.

 

If you want to know what Ma Bala thought of the English women she saw in Wembley in 1924, you should come along to my talk!

 

The second of my talks, “A Harlesden Photographer at the B.E.E. – the West Indies at Wembley in 1924”, is a free coffee morning event at Harlesden Library, on Tuesday 8 October from 11am to 12noon. 

 

 

Back in the 1990s, Wembley History Society received a donation of photographs, together with some glass plate negatives, showing images of the Exhibition in 1924, especially from inside the West Indies Pavilion. They were the work of a little-known local photographer, whose stamp was on the back of some of the prints:

 

Harlesden Library seemed the ideal place to present this talk, and you can find more details and reserve your free place on the Brent Libraries, Arts and Heritage Eventbrite website. This talk is part of the Becoming Brent project, re-examining the British Empire Exhibition and its legacy.

  

The final talk I will be giving in the Exhibition’s centenary year is “When Wembley Welcomed the World”. This is being hosted by Preston Community Library on the afternoon of Sunday 27 October (exact time and further details will follow). It will be a free event, but with donations to the work of the community library invited from those who attend.

 

 

This illustrated talk is an introduction to the various nations which took part in the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley Park in 1924, and their people who came here for the event, but then moves on to show how Wembley has continued to welcome people from across the world ever since the 1920s.

 

I hope that “Wembley Matters” readers will find something of interest in these presentations, and I look forward to welcoming you to any of these events.

 

Philip Grant.

Democracy in Brent – are Cabinet Meeting minutes a work of fiction?

 Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

 

Minutes of the 28 May Cabinet meeting, published with the agenda for the 17 June meeting.

 

In March 2022, Martin published a guest blog from me entitled “Democracy in Brent – are Cabinet Meetings a Charade?”. This is a sequel, based on my own experience from the Cabinet meeting on 28 May 2024, including the incident reported by Martin in a blog later that day.

 

I am not suggesting that Brent Cabinet meetings are fictitious. They happen every month, usually with a similar 40 to 45 minute ritual, presided over by the Council Leader. Nor am I implying that everything in the minutes of those meetings is false. But the minutes of those meetings are meant to be a true and correct record, checked (and, if necessary, corrected) before they are signed by the Chair as the official record of what took place, a summary of what was said and what was decided.

 

“Minutes of the Previous Meeting”, from the minutes of the 28 May Cabinet meeting.

 

This is the official record of the checking and approval of the minutes of the previous meeting at Cabinet on 28 May. What actually happened was that Cllr. Butt said: ‘Can we just go through them for accuracy. Page 1, page 2 ….’ Ten turned pages in as many seconds, then onto the next item with no resolution or agreement that they were a correct record.

 

A similar thing will probably happen at the next Cabinet meeting on 17 June. But the published minutes of the meeting on 28 May are NOT a correct record, and I will explain why.

 

The countdown clock for my petition presentation to Cabinet! (That’s me in the corner)

 

I have no quarrel with the minutes for item 5 on the agenda. That was my presentation of the tile murals petition to the Cabinet meeting. The Governance Officer asked me to let him have a copy of the text for my presentation, which I sent him, so that it is an accurate reflection of what I said, and very similar to the version which Martin published the day before the meeting.

 

Where the minutes do not reflect the reality of what happened is at item 7, when the meeting dealt with the award of the Bobby Moore Bridge advertising lease. This is the first part of that section of the minutes:

 

The Report which Cllr. Butt introduced did clearly state, at the start, that there were two potential options as a basis for awarding the contract. But the Council Leader did not refer to the option which would have restricted the advertising to the parapets of the bridge. The petition, and my presentation on it, did refer to both options and made a strong case for that option, ending with: ‘I commend Option A to you, and ask you to vote for it.’

 

I have highlighted the wording which states that Cllr Butt “responded” to the points I had raised. He did not. He only made the slightest reference to my presentation, in part of a sentence, ‘how the contribution that Mr Philip Grant spoke about benefits the borough’. He spoke mainly about the benefits of working with developers, the CIL money this brought in, and the £210m in government funding taken away from the borough over the past 14 years. He wanted to assure residents that his Cabinet was on the side of residents, and that it would continue to provide those services that every resident needs and depends upon.

 

This second part of the minutes gets even worse, as far as accuracy is concerned:

 

‘The Cabinet thanked…’? Cllr. Butt said that he would open the item up for comments from Cabinet members. He glanced around for one second, but no Cabinet member had indicated that they wanted to speak before he moved on to ‘the Recommendation’!

 

There was no evidence that the Cabinet had ‘noted the comments made during the presentation of the petition’. Even if they had “noted” them, they had not discussed or considered those points. It was as if the Cabinet members had decided, or been instructed, that they should not interfere with how the Leader wanted to deal with this matter.

 

It was very soon clear how he wanted to deal with it. The minutes again refer to the two options, and set out what they were. They give the false impression that the “Resolution”, or decision, was made how it SHOULD have been made, along the lines which I set out in an open email to Cllr. Butt on 20 May.

 

In order that the decision between the two options was not only fair, but could be seen to be fair by members of the public interested in the Bobby Moore Bridge tile murals, I had written:

 

‘From my previous experience of watching Cabinet meetings, you would usually ask members whether they agree with the recommendation(s) made by Officers in their Report. 

 

In this particular case, I am requesting that you invite individual votes for “those in favour of Option A” and for “those in favour of Option B”. In the event of an equal number of members voting for each option, you would, of course, have the casting vote as Council Leader and Chair of the meeting.’

 

Straight after his very brief invitation for comments from Cabinet members, Cllr. Butt moved on to the recommendation in the Officer Report, saying that this was for Option B, ‘advertising on the parapet walls of the bridge, plus the underpass walls excluding the mural with plaque.’ He then asked, ‘Can I take this in agreement from Cabinet members?’ With hardly a glance, and in virtually the same breath he said ‘Agreed. Thank you very much.’

 

I was watching, as was Martin, and a fellow Wembley History Society colleague of mine who had signed the petition and come to support it. We are all agreed that no Cabinet member raised a hand, or spoke, to show their agreement!

The final part of the published minutes deals with what happened next:

 

I am pleased that the minutes do mention my point of order, but I did not only “seek” to raise it, I DID raise it. Immediately after what I saw as a procedural irregularity over the “agreement”, I went to the public speaker microphone and said “Point of Order”, an action which should have led to the Chair of the meeting asking me to state what my point of order was.

 

But even as I was approaching the microphone, Cllr. Butt put his hand up and said “No!” He continued to speak over me as I made clear what my point was: ‘‘Point of Order. You said it was agreed, but not a single member of the Cabinet put their hand up to agree.’

 

“No!” Cllr. Butt trying to stop me from speaking. (from the webcast recording of the Cabinet meeting)

 

The minutes say that Cllr. Butt ‘advised he was not minded to accept’ my point of order. That is untrue. He did not even acknowledge that I was raising a point of order. The minutes do not include what my point of order was. If they had included it, and if Cllr. Butt had listened to it, then the “reason” given in the minutes (that I’d already had the opportunity to speak, when presenting the petition) is shown to be nonsense. My point was that the “decision” he had just declared as “agreed” had not been agreed by the Cabinet at the meeting. 

 

What Cllr. Butt actually said, speaking over me, was: ‘Mr Grant. Thank you very much. Mr Grant. Thank you for your contribution. There is no further …’ I continued to explain that I was raising a point of order, and what it was. Cllr. Butt then tried to humiliate me, saying: ‘‘Why are you embarrassing yourself like this?’ At this point, Cllr. Nerva tried to intervene:

 

“Chair. On a point of order …’ (From the Council’s webcast recording at 16:00)

 

Cllr. Nerva appeared to be trying to explain to the Council Leader how he should deal with a point of order which had been raised. However, Cllr. Butt ignored him, and continued to direct his words at me: ‘I’m truly disappointed in yourself. It just shows….’ As I had stopped trying to speak, he finished with: ‘Thank you very much. We will move on. Cabinet has agreed the recommendation for Option B. We will move on.’

 

The reality of what happened is very different from the record in the published minutes!

 

Brent’s Chief Executive, who was sitting next to the Council Leader at the meeting, but kept quiet throughout this, clearly realised that I had raised a point of order, what it was, and that Cllr. Butt had failed to deal with it properly. She wrote to me the following day, with what appears to be the response she thought Cllr. Butt should have made (and not the one included in the minutes!).

 

She wrote (and I have underlined the last part, for emphasis): 

 

‘I noted that you spoke again at the Cabinet meeting at the conclusion of the item that you had spoken to at the beginning of the meeting, in relation to there not being a show of hands in relation to the decision. For clarification, Members were not required to vote in this way, …. The Leader asked for confirmation that the other Members were in agreement with the recommendations and the agreement was unanimous through a verbal process, rather than a show of hands.’

 

My reply to her was:

 

‘There was definitely no show of hands, but a 'verbal process' suggests that Cabinet members spoke their agreement. 

 

There was silence. There was no vote. There was no evidence of agreement at the meeting, other than Cllr. Butt claiming that the recommendation had been agreed.’

 

Silence when Cabinet members were invited to discuss the (heavily biased) Report, and my petition presentation which put forward an alternative view to balance that. Silence when Cabinet members were asked for their agreement to the Officers’ recommendation. Paul Simon summed it up in a 1960s song:

 

Sounds of Silence. (Album cover image and lyrics extract from the internet)

 

Although I have shown that parts of the minutes for item 7 of the Cabinet meeting on 28 May are “a work of fiction” (you can confirm this from the webcast recording on the Council’s website, from 11:50 to 16:23), I don’t wish to blame the Council Officers whose task it is to prepare those minutes. They may have been following instructions. They may have prepared correct draft minutes, but been forced to make changes, after the Council Leader or a Senior Officer went ‘through them for accuracy’. I don’t know. All I do know is that these minutes are not a true and correct record!

 

Philip Grant.

Building Wembley Stadium, 100 years ago - a special anniversary article

Guest post by local historian Philip Grant

 

1. (Photo of the new Wembley Stadium in 2007 by Roy Beddard)

 

This month sees the centenary of the opening of Wembley Stadium. Most of us will have watched the new stadium being built, between 2003 and 2007. This article will share the story, and some pictures, of the first stadium being constructed.

 

It was on a snowy day in January 1922 that the Duke of York ceremonially dug out the first turf for the stadium, but it was another three months before construction really got underway. The stadium had been designed by Sir John Simpson and Maxwell Ayrton, with consulting engineer, Sir Owen Williams, to be built of reinforced concrete. Sir Robert McAlpine & Sons were appointed as contractors, because they had experience of using this relatively new technique. They hired more than 1,000 men, many of them unemployed ex-servicemen from the First World War, to provide the labour.

 

2. The early stages of constructing the stadium at Wembley Park, mid-1922.
(From Geoffrey Hewlett’s 2002 book “Wembley”)

 

The site chosen for the stadium was at the top of a hill, where the ill-fated Wembley Tower had once stood in the Wembley Park Pleasure Grounds. The four craters, where the tower’s foundations had been dynamited, had to be removed, to prepare for where the football pitch would be, while construction of the terraces and stands which would hold 125,000 spectators went on around it.

 

There was a very tight schedule for the work, as the organisers of the British Empire Exhibition, which the stadium would form part of (that’s why it was known as the Empire Stadium for many years), had agreed that the Football Association could hold their Cup Final there in 1923. Britain’s top playing fields expert, Charles Perry, was tasked with preparing the pitch, and on his instructions sections of the fairways and greens on the former Wembley Park Golf Course were fenced off to provide the turf.

 

3. The stadium construction site, September 1922. (From Geoffrey Hewlett’s 2002 book “Wembley”)

 

The clay ground at Wembley would not provide good drainage, so Perry sloped this down towards the edges of the pitch, allowing water to run-off. Then he laid layers of clinker and cinders, 10 inches (25cm) thick, across the area, and topped this off with at least 5 inches of top soil. By September he was ready to start laying the turf, which was cut in 18” x 12” (45cm x 30cm) rectangles, 2½ inches thick. These were moved to the stadium on flat-bed trolleys and butted together straight away. Laying the pitch took a month, but by keeping the grass growing the “hallowed turf” of the Wembley pitch was ready by the end of October 1922.

 

 4. The structural steelwork for the stands and terraces, winter 1922/23. (From an old film)

 

By this time, the 1,400 tons of structural steelwork that would support the stands and terraces was being put in place. From then on, it was concrete which would be the main material used, 25,000 tons of it in all. Wooden formwork was put in place, miles of steel reinforcing rods were cut and inserted, and the concrete poured in by the workmen, from barrows or buckets.

 

  5. Workmen building the outer concrete wall of the stadium, winter 1922/23. (From an old film)

 

There was little in the way of “health and safety” then. The men wore their ordinary working clothes, with cloth caps, not hard hats. It was heavy, physical, manual labour, with wages only around £1 a week, plus extra for any overtime. And with their hard work, the stadium was beginning to take shape.

 

6. The North Stand under construction, December 1922. (From an old film)

 

It was on the north side of the stadium, looking out over the British Empire Exhibition site and towards Wembley Park Station, that Ayrton and Williams had designed their feature wall. Using the ability of semi-liquid concrete to run into moulds, then keep that shape when set, they delivered the iconic frontage that would symbolise Wembley Stadium for the next 80 years. This was emerging from the site by February 1923.

 

 

7. Work on the North Front of the stadium, February 1923. (From a 1923 McAlpine’s brochure)

 

The domed tops of the twin towers, with their concrete flag poles capped with concrete crowns, were the last parts to be finished. The photograph below gives an idea of the fairly primitive (by today’s standards) method of getting the concrete to the top of the formwork. It was carried by teams of workmen up ramps in buckets, which were then raised by rope and pulley to the men above!

 

 

8. Constructing one of the twin towers, February 1923.
(From “Glorious Wembley” by Howard Bass, 1982)

 

By April 1923, the stadium was finished. It had taken just 300 working days to build (not four years, like the new Wembley!). Sir Owen Williams, speaking about the choice of concrete for Wembley, said: ‘Its architectural possibilities, its adaptability, and its rapidity of construction demanded attention, but these alone were not the decisive factor. It was the economy of concrete which compelled its use.’ Wembley’s Empire Stadium had cost £750,000 to construct, equivalent to around £57m today. The new Wembley Stadium, when completed in 2007, had cost £798m.

 

Just one thing remained to be done before the 1923 FA Cup Final could take place on 28 April. The structure of the stadium had to be tested, to make sure that it was safe for spectators to use. All 1,200 workmen on the site had to march round the stadium as a group, visiting all parts of the terraces and stands. Following instructions and in unison, they had to stamp their feet, lean against the safety rails, and sit down then up on the seats, to recreate the effect of the crowds at an actual event.

 

 

9. 1,200 workmen, testing a section of the terraces, April 1923. (From an old film)

 

One of the first aerial photographs of the completed stadium was taken by the Kilburn-based Central Aircraft Company. In this picture (below) you can see the open terraces at either end, and the covered sections along the sides, which included the seats for 30,000 spectators, as well as the Royal Box. The pitch has been mowed, ready for a football match. But outside the stadium walls, it still looks like a construction site, and there is little sign of the pavilions which would house nations from across the British Empire at the exhibition that would open just one year later.

 

  

10. An aerial view of the stadium, from the east, April 1923. (Image from the internet)

 

 

11. The stadium during the British Empire Exhibition in 1924. (Brent Archives – WHS Collection)

 

Sir Robert McAlpine (proud of his firm’s achievements) called the stadium: ‘... a triumph of modern engineering.’ Through the efforts of Arthur Elvin and others, it would go on to become a world famous “Venue of Legends”, host an Olympic Games, World Cup and Euros football finals, numerous other sporting events, and many concerts, including Live Aid. But in 2002/03, it was demolished to make way for a new Wembley Stadium. 

 

  

 12. The concrete flagpole base in Brent River Park, near Pitfield Way. (Photo by Philip Grant, 2013)

 

The concrete marvel, built 100 years ago, has gone from Wembley – apart from one small fragment. The base of a concrete flagpole, from the top of one of the twin towers, was donated to the Council by the new stadium company in 2003, and now sits in Brent River Park, as a memorial to the original Wembley Stadium.

 

Philip Grant,
Wembley History Society,
April 2023.

Time and Tide, Treasure and Trash – mudlarking for London’s history. March 17th St Andrew's Church Hall, Kingsbury

Guest post by local historian Philip Grant

Mudlarks scavenging beside the Thames, from a 19^th century engraving.

 

In the 18^th and 19^th centuries it was not unusual to see boys from destitute families searching through the mud of the heavily polluted River Thames. They were looking for scraps of anything they could sell, bones, metal or coal, to make a few pennies and put some basic food on the table. They earned the name “mudlarks”, after a bird (officially a magpie-lark) that makes its nest from mud, which sailors returning to the Pool of London had seen on voyages to Australia.

 

Modern mudlarks search the shores of the Thames as a hobby (with permits from the Port of London Authority), looking for interesting objects which provide details from London’s history. These can date back to Roman times, or earlier, and any find of archaeological interest is reported to the Museum of London. One of these mudlarks is giving a talk at Wembley History Society on Friday 17 March:-

 

Many of the items which today’s mudlarks uncover are not treasure, but modern rubbish which has found its way into the river because too many of us don’t dispose of it the way that we should. But with practice, and advice from experienced mudlarks, a trained eye can often spot something older, and even have a good idea of what it might be. It will be fascinating to learn from Monika what she has found, and to see a selection of these items.

 

Monika engaged in her mudlarking hobby.

 

Wembley History Society welcomes visitors, not just to its members, to its talks, so that any local resident, young or old, who may be interested can enjoy them as well (there is a small charge, to help cover costs). Details are on the poster displayed above.

 

Philip Grant