The crowd was so large it stopped the Queen from attending the Derby and brought south London to a halt. Battersea residents in their hundreds possibly thousands, including local MP Alf Dubs united in a desperate last stand to defend the last remnants of what had become known as Battersea Mural from the bulldozers.

It was July 7, 1979.

This extraordinary moment in Battersea's recent history had attracted huge national media interest over the previous month, after demolition crews from Morgan Crucible Company demolished two-thirds of the huge 4000 sq ft The Good, the Bad and the Ugly mural, on the exterior wall of its defunct Battersea Bridge Road factory, to make room for a new office block.

But despite a round-the-clock vigil by residents to protect the last section, police finally arrested seven protesters, including the artist Brian Barnes, who had mounted a 12-hour protest on top of wall and officials from the Tory-run Greater London Council and bulldozers forced the crowd away, leaving the mural to be reduced to rubble in minutes.

Brightest

Designed by Barnes and painted by dozens of residents including present Labour leader Tony Belton over two years from the summer of 1976, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was the biggest and brightest mural in the UK at the time, a tribute to the Battersea community and a symbol of local feeling about the spread of blocks of luxury flats, and dismay about the 1978 election of a Conservative council in Wandsworth, the traditional bastion of socialism.

Stretching 256 ft and 18 ft high, the mural's first half, The Good, had over 20 portraits of local characters from nearby shops and the bus garage opposite the wall gathered around the iconic No.19 bus, new low rise family council housing being built with direct labour, the Thameside park allotments and the new adventure playround.

In the centre, was an enormous broom, a symbol of the tenants and worker's action, "sweeping" away the Bad: Morgan's obsolete factory, the notorious polluting Garton's glucose factory, Pooh Bear and Mr Toad representing the overspill of Chelsea's chic restaurants into Battersea and a fiery waterchute and burning Mickey Mouse, telling of the abortive attempt by Trust House Forte to build a Disneyland in Battersea Park.

At right angles to this long stretch, was a wall of flame (the Ugly) which showed the incineration of the Bad and the routing of the fleeing "gang of four", the leading Tory councillors of the day, including Thatcherite leader of the council Chris Chope, notorious for privatising many Wandsworth public assets, and present deputy leader Maurice Heaster.

Yet despite the council dismissing it as a "disgraceful piece of political cartoonery" after the GLC gave a £350 grant towards its painting, the Battersea Mural was not so much a protest as a document of local social history and art from ordinary people's perspective, according to Barnes, who still paints in his Carey Gardens studio and now heads the Battersea Station Community Group.

"It was all about local people in the portraits and the issues the mural discussed," he says.

"There was a groundswell of political opinion that art was thought to be for rich people.

"There was a movement at the time about local artists doing art for local people, making art more accessible by taking it out of the

galleries to where people could see it."

He wryly talks of his absolute discharge when he appeared in court charged with breaching the peace, after the mural was finally demolished "They ruled I was justified in bringing the whole of south London to a halt." and his being dubbed the "mad artist" by the Sun.

But Barnes had a conventional artistic training, learning his craft at Bromley and the Royal College of Art.

He then turned to large-scale community murals, designing and drawing the outlines and letting local people paint the two undercoats, three coats of gloss paint and finally varnishing.

Though he regards himself as a "community artist", Barnes' renown has spread across south London with such well-regarded murals as the 1980 Nuclear Dawn in Brixton and the 1988 perspective mural on the side of the Haberdashers Arms, Culvert Road, which celebrates Battersea's landmarks and most famous sons, such as Britain's first black mayor, John Archer.

"I'm still doing murals today and it looks like I'll do them forever, unless I get out my watercolours and do little landscapes.

"Not that I would ever do that."

q A short film about Brian Barnes' murals has been made by Battersea filmmaker Joyce Amparbeng, with funding from the Champions for Change Millennium Awards Scheme. It is available free on VHS and CD-Rom at local museums and libraries. Schools can receive a copy by phoning 020 7928 7811.

January 23, 2003 15:30