Found some old Ian Walker articles from his New Society days that were not previously online, so I've done the right thing and scanned them in and put them on the blog. Sadly, I don't have a complete set from his New Society days but I'll keep looking. If you are new to my admiration for the late Ian Walker, I suggest you check out this old blog post for more background and also check out this page which lists all the Ian Walker articles from New Society which are already on the blog.
The road to Southend by Ian Walker
The remains of a neon BINGO hang from the half-moon portico of a 1930s cinema which has corrugated iron all over its doorways and windows. A tea house and Madame Rosalind’s (“Palmist and Clairvoyant”) are all boarded up, too, The only place on this street doing any business is a cut-price store which has great rolls of carpet propped up outside in the rain. From this empty street it’s a steep climb down to Southend’s burned out pier.
Alf Pullen has lived in Southend for the last 30 years. Retired now, at 66, he comes down to the promenade most days to sit in one of the blue-and-white huts that run all along the front. “All sorts of things are closing down,” he says. “People on short time, on the three-day week, that kind of thing. The atmosphere was better before they built that shopping precinct. People came down here and used to enjoy themselves.” He’s complaining that the council let the gas board build an office block on the seafront, when his theme is disturbed by three loud booms.
“That’s from Shoebery,” he says, pointing down the Eastern Esplanade. “Some experimental military place. They try out new things, got half the beach. Can’t let people on it because of all the unexploded shells.”
It sounds like world war three, started ahead of schedule, over the road in the Monte Carlo arcade. Electronic explosions on the Space Invaders, bells and buzzes on the pinball tables, rifle shots, ejaculating one-armed bandits, simulated growling of Grand Prix cars. You can hardly hear the disco number that an off-work drill operator, here with three schoolgirls, has put on the jukebox. What does he think of Southend? “Shit,” he says, smiling.
In the arcade next door, run by a northerner called Jack, it’s much quieter. Just a few women wheeling infants round on pushchairs and a couple of OAPs waiting for a few more to show so they can have a game of bingo. The caller has a Bureau of Police, Richmond, Virginia, badge on his short-sleeved blue shirt. He’s reading the Southend Standard. Lead story is about teachers who don’t mark books. “Prisoners of death block,” on page three, is about suicide and Valium in a ten-storey block of flats. A cat was discovered in a lift shaft on page five. Today’s by-election in Southend East makes it on page 13.
Jack sits before stacks of cans containing pears, carrots and soup. “The truth is,” he says, “the place is going downhill and absolutely without any action from the council, who are trying to turn Southend into a commuter town for London. The council let the pier go downhill after the main part was burned down three years ago. They got these high-falluting plans for a £200 million marina and the rest of it and, of course, it all falls through. You used to get a lot of families down from London once, but not now. The fares have gone up so much, £2.60 for a single. If a man brings his family down, that’s a tenner before he gets anywhere. It’s an expensive do, coming to Southend, now.”
In season Jack would have over 200 bingo games a day, but at this time of year it’s down to 30 or 40. “Just ticking over,” he says. “It’s just the old locals, and they come mainly for the foodstuffs. Three cans of soup for one win. Get a bit lucky and it’s cheaper than the shops.”
I’m walking up the hill which leads from the seafront to the high street when the rain turns to hail. In a doorway next to a tattooist’s, a middle-aged Welsh woman I’d noticed back in Jack’s is sheltering. “Look at the front,” she spits, staring down the hill. “They call it the Golden Mile. What do you think of it? Bloody tatty, that’s what it is. All we get down here these days are the drunks, the skinheads and the rock-and-rollers. Jack’s had a lot of trouble with them, you know.” Inside the tattooist’s, which advertises “bright colours, modern equipment,” a young bloke in a combat jacket inspects the designs that are pinned to the. wills. Two girls toy with the idea of getting their ears pierced for four quid.
The Palace Hotel, at the top of Pier Hill, must have been quite ritzy in its day, before the white paint crumbled and before the bingo parlour was installed on the ground floor. Now it’s the flop-house with the best seaview in town. Jack said the council put up homeless here who can’t be housed anywhere else. In the Palace’s amusement arcade four 14 year old girls from nearby Benfleet are trying to amuse themselves.
“We came to go roller-skating, but it wasn’t open. We’re going to McDonalds now, then look around for some records.” These girls think Southend’s great. More to do here than there is in Benfleet. They’re looking forward to the time, in a couple of years, when they can go disco in Southend, they say, walking up the high street for their hamburgers. Past the message spray-painted in black on a boarded-up Betty’s Restaurant: “In all your decadence people die.”
Although the pier's superstructure was destroyed, fishermen were allowed on to the walkway tip until 28 February; according to a council notice at the entrance to the pier. An amusement arcade, bowling alley and cafe are all the entertainment now on offer at the surviving front end of the pier. Through the cafe windows you can see across the water to the industrial islands of Sheppey and Canvey, the Shellhaven refineries. The pier divides the town. Eastward it’s the Golden Mile. Westward it’s residential, green lawns, women in fur hats taking classy dogs for walks..
One of these women walking along the West Cliff says she is happy in Southend, “Although I must say I preferred the old high street to the shopping precinct. But that’s progress I suppose, isn’t it?”
I drive out for a twilight tour of the Shoeburyness military base. Some of the best beach in town is on the military range. I drive alongside barbed wire past tall grey buildings with green guns parked outside, on past Wakering church graveyard and down a bumpy mudtrack as far as you can go, to the MOD checkpoint. There is a small island all lit up. I’m told they store “atomic hardware” out there. Maplin Sands are out there, too. “I’ve watched shark out there come in with the tide following the mackerel shoals,” a man tells me.
On the way back I go past an office block which is said to have stood empty for ten years before becoming one of the VAT headquarters. I travel down an underpass, which he calls Southend’s folly. “You drive down there and you just have to turn round and come back,” a cabbie tells me. “It doesn’t lead anywhere. They put it in hoping they’d get the airport. They say it cost millions of pounds.” He shrugs, “The road to nowhere.”
Back in the centre of town, a crowd of skinheads have gathered in McDonalds. A market research woman buttonholes people as they walk through the door. She wants to know what they think of the service, how often they eat here, what papers they read, the last time they went to the cinema.
One boy sits in the corner trying to shield a box of Kentucky Fried Chicken with his hand, but he is noticed. “I don’t think you ought to be eating that here,” says one of the managers, a McDonalds kipper tie over his white shirt, as he escorts the boy to the exit.
“Raining,” one skinhead says as he steps outside. “Fucking rain,” replies his mate. They turn their collars up, hunch their shoulders into the rainfall and make for the pub on the corner. Inside, a sepia photo of King George hangs over a pink-and-purple neon jukebox playing the current No. 1, Atomic. ’There are skins, hippies, punk and teds all in the same bar, but nothing happens. No one here would make it past the bouncers at any of the town’s six discos. Respectable dress only.
Some of the unrespectables gather later at a seafront pub called the Ivy House, on the Golden Mile. A DJ plays soul and reggae and sixties hits, but there’s no dancing. No licence and no room. Someone smashes an orange glass lampshade on his way out, but that’s the only violence all night. After closing time, queues form first at the hamburger stand next door and then at the bus stop. The lights from the refineries look beautiful at night.
“Morning, nice morning,” chirps a tramp the next day. He isn’t asking for money, either. A green Tory Cortina cruises down the seafront playing brass band music out of a PA rigged up next to a Teddy Taylor banner. A brown Mini urges Saturday morning shoppers to vote Liberal. Labour activists in the precinct hand out leaflets which avoid mentioning Southend.
