If you go down to the Park today…. Part Deux. You can take photos of here but not of there!
Article | Clays Lane | Displacement | Security
The ODA continues to live down to its reputation for Media censorship and control. Visiting the Clays Lane area another Games Monitor person and I wandered down the road past the Travellers’ Site as the Travellers were moving their goods. The entrance to the road was open and no security guards were present. After walking round for a while I found my colleague making some drawings near the entrance to the Park Village estate where she had been sitting for some time without any interference.
Eventually a security guard appeared and asked us what we were doing. We explained we had come to meet a TV crew who were filming the Travellers’ move. He asked if we were visiting the Travellers. We repeated we had come to meet up with a TV crew and that I used to live on the Clays Lane estate.
The guard then informed us filming was only allowed on ‘this’ side of the road (the Travellers’ side) but not ‘that’ side (the Clays Lane side). No photos could be taken of the Clays Lane estate on the instructions of the ODA!
Why not? No explanation for this fatuous instruction was provided. ODA control freakery in action.
We were then ushered back up the road. The guard said the ODA didn’t want us there to which we replied we weren’t greatly bothered what the ODA wanted and anyway there were no guards at the entrance and the road was completely open so who was to know what anyone wanted?
This guard was apologetic about the lack of any warning but another one started telling us not to interfere and let them get on with their jobs, the age-old way of stopping people asking questions. When the same company was supposedly ‘guarding’ Clays Lane thieves were stealing lead and satellite dishes right under their noses, at the same time as one of them was sitting in a van with a dog in the back watching the scaffolding, which had been put up to house the cradle for the electricity cables. He refused to get out and help residents and there were no other guards around.
Photos of the Clays Lane estate were taken from the other side of the entrance to Clays Lane.
Submitted by Julian Cheyne on Tue, 16/10/2007 - 21:42.
Pictures of Clays Lane - pre and post demolition
Submitted by MichaelG (not verified) on Sat, 12/04/2008 - 16:51.
As promised...
the pictures of Clays Lane, during its last days, and then during its destruction.....
Theres a lot of them...164 in all so I've put them on Photobucket...
http://s296.photobucket.com/albums/mm195/clayslaner/clayslane/
many thanks....
Michael
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Photos..... memories.... good times.....bad times
Submitted by Techno Tim (not verified) on Wed, 30/04/2008 - 09:18.
Thanks for the photos, I left CL in the 1990s but I have been saddened by the despicable way the corporate machine has trodden on the estate and especially its members.
So many excellent memories, especially like the photo of my old home 11 Howarth.
Thanks again for the photos and best wishes to all clays laners past and present.
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Taking photographs and security - bizarre!
We got the same treatment when my partner and myself went down to Clays Lane to take pictures Saturday November 3rd.
From a distance you see the blocks, the windows all removed, doors ripped off and this high wooden fence all round from the entrance on round the whole site and the cycle track and beyond. Having lived there for a number of years in Brook and later Daly courtyard till 2005, I have been popping back during these late few months to take pictures of its gradual destruction.
As we approached the main entrance, where the bus stop used to be - now marked by a pile of old furniture - we were called over to the gate by a security guard. He seemed perturbed about something and he was telling us that the taking of pictures was not allowed. A 2nd guard joined him and reiterated the same. I told him that I had lived there and that was why I was taking the pictures. Note that we were out on the street and not on the 'site'. The 1st guard proceeded to say how he would 'get his boss' (I wondered what he thought his boss could do, we were out on the street and beyond any authority he may think he has). The 2nd guard responded to my repeated point of having lived there that 'that was then'. I then told him I would ignore him and continued to take photos.
We walked away from the gate and saw another person taking pictures. We described what had happened and he was surprised as he said that he had been there many times taking pictures with no problem. However when he approached the entrance he had the same treatment. At this point I made it clear that I was taking pictures of the guards which caused them to run inside their little cabin. Totally bizarre. We stayed on for another half an hour taking pictures from the road, and I had many memories flooding back during the time. No 'boss' arrived nor anyone of authority to deal with the menace they obviously thought we were.
Maybe there should be a continued prescence down there of people popping along every day to take pictures. At least it would make the security guards feel they are doing something important. I'll pop some of the pictures up on here, once I have hooked the camera up to the computer.