Comments on: At Speakers’ Corner

By: Herbert

Herbert — Thu, 03 Oct 2024 10:51:21 +0000

The black man is Reginald Ally Young. Popularly known ALLY. Been around since the 1960’s.

By: Marcin S. Sadurski

Marcin S. Sadurski — Mon, 18 Apr 2022 21:50:09 +0000

One more thing.

https://www.flickr.com/gp/msadurski/3agx5r

Does anybody recognize the orator on my photographs?
I took them in 1991.
AFAIR his name was Tom. I liked his speeches. He was an Anti-Thatcherist.

By: Marcin S. Sadurski

Marcin S. Sadurski — Mon, 18 Apr 2022 21:31:24 +0000

@ Victoria Strauss: His name was Stanley Green. Nothing in common with the Speakers’ Corner I am afraid. Except his eccentricity, perhaps.
Some more information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Green
You can peruse his placards and aforesaid leaflets in the Museum of London.
Here is the pic of this gentleman I took in 1991:
https://flic.kr/p/VeizWs

By: Richard

Richard — Mon, 28 Mar 2022 16:57:49 +0000

Thanks for the views of speakers corner. Thanks Adam Daly as well. Yes, it used to be much more political as I remember from occasional visits.

By: Victoria Strauss

Victoria Strauss — Mon, 28 Mar 2022 16:38:37 +0000

Does anyone else remember the mild-looking man who walked the Marble Arch end of Oxford Street in the ‘70’s carrying a placard proclaiming “No meat, no protein, no sitting down, no sex.” He sold a modestly priced leaflet, which unfortunately I no longer have.

By: Adam Daly

Adam Daly — Mon, 28 Mar 2022 15:07:19 +0000

I was a regulat visitor to Speaker’s Corner from the mid-1970’s, and on throughout the 1980’s. Although I stopped going from the 1990’s onwards, as I felt the overall standard of debate was falling, with far too many religious fanatics, and ill-assorted clowns and ‘loonies’. I never spoke and rarely heckled. Instead I engaged in discussion on the sidelines. Two speakers stood out for me personally – one of whom, who was simply called ‘Joshua’, was an old friend of mine. He was a classic 1960’s counter-culturalist, with a truly Messianic appearance. He had hair all over the place, wore ragged robes, and walked bare foot. But he was actually a Balliol graduate, who had dropped out in order to devote himself totally to Revolution and Evolution. And he was a spell-binding orator, who had cut his teeth by taking the Oxford Union by storm as an undergraduate, even though years later he was known in London as ‘The King of the Squatters’, having played a part in opening up 144, Piccadilly, the first major squat in London. He always researched his speeches meticulously in public libraries and rarely repeated himself – unlike Jim Huggon, the Hyde Park Anarchist, who became a bit of a bore after a while, endlessly repeating the same not very good jokes. On one occasion, Joshua held about a hundred and fifty people in the palm of his hand giving a four-hour speech on the evils of the Vietnam War, dressed only in a sack! On another occasion, he stood on a skip stripped to the waist, demanding to know from hecklers whether they’d been ‘present at The Creation’, because he had been, and could therefore speak with infinitely more authority about absolutely anything than they! He was often heckled for not washing, and would sometimes angrily retort: ‘Socrates didn’t wash!’ And he really hated being photographed, yelling at anyone who snapped him: ‘Stop that now or I’ll come down and stamp on your camera! This is not Hollywood!’ I never knew his real name or age or much about him, other than what I was told by a University-contemporary of his, a barrister, whose testimony I trusted. But he was a total one-off, and it’s hard to imagine anybody like that surviving even in today’s world. Speaker’s Corner for him was an ‘open-air University’, and a ‘launching-pad for Total Change’. He died of complications resulting from exposure, about twenty five years ago. The other speaker was a Maths lecturer known as ‘Paul the Prophet’, who in contrast to Joshua appeared very conventional. Yet his mind was anything but conventional. He developed his own philosophy of life stemming from Nietzsche and many other sources, and occasionally would do something utterly unique for a Hyde Park orator: he would stand on his soap-box in total silence staring at the crowd around him with Olympian contempt, as if they were sub-human. And when somebody dared to start heckling him, he would then proceed to take them apart intellectually with forensic briliance. Priceless! He didn’t miss a Sunday for abot 40 years I believe, but cut a sad figure eventually, standing like a shrunken sentry on his soap-box, with not a soul around him even to stare at. Then one day he no longer came. But those were the days, and I fear they will never come back, or not in my lifetime – and I’m 68 now. I miss those heady times greatly. Their abounding freedoms, exuberance and idealistic passions haven’t been emulated since.

By: David Walsh

David Walsh — Mon, 28 Mar 2022 09:44:04 +0000

Sir “Michael” Joseph? Surely you mean the late Sir Keith ?

By: Mathilde Grange

Mathilde Grange — Mon, 28 Mar 2022 09:21:48 +0000

A wonderful corner!

By: Paul Loften

Paul Loften — Mon, 28 Mar 2022 06:39:56 +0000

It’s over 50 years since I have been there so I don’t recognise a face. I do recall some former speakers . Lord Soper , McGuiness, A tattooed man , A very good SPGB speaker who could have converted the world to socialism but he just made too much sense . I recall one sentence he said . “People don’t need to sit on gold toilet seats “. The Arab -Israeli audience was always well attended and had lots of hecklers but you always lived in fear in that particular crowd. Does Heiko mean Sir Keith Joseph ? I can’t recall a Sir Michael.
There was also many different religious sects some very strange indeed. I always promised myself another visit but not had the opportunity . It’s a very good place to take visitors from abroad . They come away with a very memorable experience as we did this morning. Thank you for this interesting article.