Radical History Walk at Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park

This walk sets off at 11am and takes about 2 hours along our main paths and finishing at 1pm. Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park, known as the Cemetery of the working class, is where the East End’s radicals are buried in their thousands. The stories of Eliza Martin — buried under her married name, Elizabeth Best — who was 19 when she sat on the five-woman strike committee that took on Bryant and May in the 1888 Matchmaker’s women’s strike, and won. Or Chris Braithwaite, born in Barbados in 1885, a sailor, a docker, an activist and one of the leading Black political voices in 1930s Britain. And Will Crooks who went from the Poplar workhouse to become the first Labour mayor in London and MP for Woolwich and many more are buried here. Their questions and stories aren’t only historical ones. With hate rising again, can community activists draw on the lives of those buried here? Can a cemetery be a site not of rest but of action? Can we organise with the dead? Can we find hope in graves, in grave times?