History and References

SE1 Newspaper

The local news that other papers did not print

SE1 was one of the longest-running of the numerous radical community newspapers that emerged throughout the UK during the 1970s and 80s. The collectively run paper focussed on the London neighbourhoods that stretch along the south bank of the Thames from Waterloo in Lambeth to Tower Bridge in Southwark. It was launched in July 1975. It had its ups and downs over the years but survived, serving the area until early 1991.

Origins
The 1950s and 60s had brought massive change to the residents of Waterloo and North Southwark. Whole industries such as food processing, the wharfes, engineering, brewing and more disappeared leaving empty lots and derelict factories. Then in the early 1970s the developers arrived promising rejuvenation - but for whom?

Not for the families who had worked and lived there for generations. Offices and hotels sprouted everywhere while the local needs for more low cost housing, more open space and better services were ignored. You had to walk a long way to get to a chemist. Some of the housing still included flats where neighbouring families had to share bathrooms located on the landings.

Whoever controls the news controls the story

In their fight to rejuvenate their area, stop office development and build housing, the residents of Waterloo and North Southwark decided they needed their own newspaper. Mainstream media such as the South London Press were not telling the full story of the development threats from the residents' point of view nor were they covering their campaigns or other events in their neighbourhoods.

The Blackfriars Community Action Team, the North Southwark Community Development Group (NSCDG), and local residents came together to found SE1 community newspaper. They set up office in some disused shop fronts in Meymott Street, SE1. Their aim was to share news among residents about their neighbourhoods and mobilise them to join campaigns to improve local conditions, protect local jobs and provide better housing and services.

While organisation and drive made SE1 a success, the project could not have succeeded without certain historical conditions being in place at that particular time too.

Offset, Printshops, and Paste-up

Through the 1960s cheap offset printing and simpler page layout methods triggered an explosion of independent printers and publications. Offset lithography had its beginnings well over a century ago, but it wasn't until the late 1960s that it had matured to a point where it became significantly cheaper compared to traditional letterpress systems.

Sheet fed offset printers offered some savings but it was the web offset machines which could print at high speeds on large rolls—or webs—of paper, often on both sides of the paper simultanously, using in-line printing units and in-line finishing systems that were ideal for newspapers and considerably cheaper.

Skills for preparing text and page artwork had become easier too using the paste-up method of layout - the key word being "easier" rather than "easy". Starting a newspaper still involved huge commitment and a steep learning curve.

The first series of SE1 was printed by the charity and campaigning organisation War on Want. Later issues were printed by radical print shops Spider Web Offset and East End Offset.

How was it produced?

With much effort! The paper was entirely put together by volunteers who researched and wrote the articles and took the photographs. Pasting up the layouts for eight, ten or sometimes twelve pages got faster with pratice but, even so, was fiddly and labourious.

To save money, the text for the articles was typed out in columns using an old-fashioned typewriter instead of having the text typeset at the printers. The columns of text were then trimmed to fit the column guides on the page size layout sheets and pasted down using a highly "aromatic" rubber cement called Cow Gum.

The stuck down text could be made to fit or corrected by using a scalpel to cut out words, lines or whole sections, then peeling them off the layout sheet (Cow Gum didn't dry hard) and pasting the required text back into correct position.

Headlines were made using Letraset dry transfer lettering. You rubbed letters from transparent backing sheets onto paper then trimmed and glued the headline to the page. Every headline had to be individually produced in this time-consuming way, letter by letter while keeping the alignment and spacing correct.

Headline typefaces in SE1 were often inconsistent. By coincidence the SE1 offices were just around the corner from the Letraset factory. Letraset gave SE1 rejected or outdated sheets for free, but it meant that there were not always enough letters to use across all the pages!

Photographs were selected and sent to the printer who made halftone copies of them according to the cropping and sizing instructions written by the SE1 team on the backs of the prints.

The half tones were made by photographing them through a screen or, later, by scanning them electronically. The printer then pasted them into the page layouts. Fingers crossed they ended up in the right place on the right page.

A typical print run was 1500 to 2000 copies. Papers went to newsagents, pubs and cafes and local organisations like tenants’ groups and pensioners’ groups. Newsagents generously gave free space to the paper in support of their community. Some people had their own distribution rounds in their neighbourhood.

Finance

Advertising helped keep the paper going but through most of its history the cover price mattered too. At first it was 5p, but this crept up as the group struggled to cover the printing costs. There were fundraising events – including, two years running - a sponsored bike ride to Brighton, and a very successful music event in the Colombo Street Centre. In 1977 the cover price was 8p and by July ’79 it was 10p.

Death and revival

The March 1981 issue announced that it was to be the last – not because of money, but because there were not enough people to produce and distribute it.

Local residents and community groups quickly got together to revive the paper. Morley College funded a weekly evening course covering all aspects of production. The GLC gave an equipment grant for a typewriter, camera, handheld cassette recorder, and a new-fangled machine to punch out headlines.

With all these preparations completed, SE1 reappeared in December 1981, price 15p. In 1984 new funding made the paper free. In 1985 the paper moved to the NSCDG's office in Copperfield Street, SE1. More about SE1 offices later. . .

SE1 managed to continue until February 1991. By that time it was partly dependent on one of the paid workers at NSCDG to act as effective editor. Other duties began making it impossible for him to continue in this role and there were no volunteers able to take the responsibilities over.

Printing costs were getting higher and higher too, so publication had to cease - a sad reflection of the times since it was low printing costs over a decade before that made it possible to conceive of publishing a monthly newspaper.

Legacy

SE1 did not disappear completely. Southwark Archives had been collecting issues of the paper through all the years it was published which they later bound. In 2018 they aquired a large number of photographic prints, negatives and other material connected to the newspaper.

 

The history of the photo hoard is a little hazy. We know that some material was rescued [this link needs to be cleared by Sally Lynes] from the Meymott Street offices right at the last minute before they were boarded up in 1985. We know that the set given to the Archives came from the Willowbrook Urban Studies Centre when it closed in 2018. We are not sure if the material went directly to the Centre or if it was taken to the NSCDG offices in Copperfield St. until those office closed in ???? The 2018 donation includes photos from late editions as well as early editions, which points to the photos from Meymott Street going to the NSCDG. [Bob and his wife Deb are going to clarify some of this timeline].

Meanwhile, not far away, Lambeth Archives had been holding a related set of photos since 1994, many of which had appeared in SE1. The Blackfriars Photography Project collection was donated to Lambeth Archives when the project came to an end after 22 years.

In 2019 the collections in both archives caught the attention of a former photographer coordinator of the Blackfriars Photography Project. Her discovery led to other SE1 contributors meeting up and forming the SE1 Stories group.

The group are mainly focussed on the Southwark Archives collection of newpapers and photos at this point. We are trying to identify people and events in the photos and getting everything ready for the online archive Southwark Library are developing. We have also been finding ways to get the images out into the local neighbourhoods, partly for feedback, partly to share the social history they encapsulate, and partly to support the work of local activists today.

During the COVID lockdown, we were given a grant by Southwark Council's Blackfriars Stories fund to create a touring exhibition celebrating the roles that SE1 newspaper and other social-action projects played in community action campaigns in the 1970s and 1980s, and how those efforts connect to contemporary debates. We had to curate and design it through meetings on Zoom. The exhibition has had nearly 30 showings over four years in local community centres, leisure centres, libraries and church halls. It includes a number of artefacts, including replicas of SE1 newspaper issues, shown below.

We have also managed to raise funds for digitising the newpapers and photos in the SE1 collection, making this site possible and laying the foundations for an online picture library.

Offices

SE1 newspaper was initially produced from some abandoned shops awaiting redevelopment in Meymott Street off Blackfriars Road. Some of the newspaper's volunteers, members of the Blackfriars Community Action Team, lived in the flats above the shops for several years with the agreement of the owner. Eventually, in 1985, the site was repossessed and redeveloped into an office block.

In its final years the newspaper was produced from the offices of the North Southwark Community Development Group in Copperfield St.