The Diary

12 April 2004: A Lion's Roar, Or A Pussycat's Miaow?

Easter Sunday, all full of eggs and good things, hot cross bunnies, and baa-lambs frolicking in fields under trees newly in bud - and Jesus, isn?t it getting sweaty on the Albion front right now? In a way, it?s a bloody shame the Player Of The Year thing was cancelled, because if ever there?s a time all of us ? players and supporters alike ? need a distraction from the stomach-churning bump and grind of League football, now has got to be it. Two seasons ago, it was an excellent way of showing solidarity with all those guys doing it out there; a chance to empathise with them, even. You know, a mutual proliferation of that essential ?We?re all in this together? type of spirit, but, for whatever reason, it isn?t going to happen this time round. A pity, that, as the psychological benefits would have far outweighed the disadvantages, in my opinion.

Given we?re not going to get the opportunity of telling the players personally we?re essentially on their side and want them all to do OK, I guess we?ll just have to resort to bog-standard traditional methods of enthusing our finest, which means getting right behind them during those few remaining games. The stress-fest starts disgustingly early tomorrow, of course, when our travelling hordes head on out for the capital, and The New Den. It?s certainly Cuban Missile Crisis time right now; should we dip and Sunderland grab all three points at Ipswich tomorrow, then everything rides on next Sunday and our Wearside showdown. Lose that as well, and the baton then pretty much passes to The Mackems. Not a nice thought, even at the best of times, so I?m hoping and praying like mad that whoever blinks first tomorrow, it won?t be us. Conversely, a win at Millwall and defeat at Ipswich for Sunderland would give us the chance to seal promotion at the Stadium of Light, pretty much, as we?d only need just 2 points from our last four games to send us into transports of sheer delight.

Just out of interest, these are The Mackems? remaining games: Ipswich (A); Us (H); Palace (A); Wigan (A); Crewe (H); Norwich (H) and Burnley (A). Norwich? They?ve yet to play Reading (A); Walsall (H); Watford (A); Preston (H); Sunderland (A) and Crewe (A). As far as Sunderland are concerned, you could put up a convincing argument that their run-in is just as tough as ours, if not tougher. The first two need no comment, of course; of the rest, Palace just might have an outside chance of the play-offs, but don?t build your hopes up, Wigan?s interest in the outcome will be white-hot, while Crewe should be safe by then, so it wouldn?t matter a tinker?s cuss to them. Norwich and Burnley? The first, mid-table, probably, and little interest in the outcome, The Clarets might still be in the midst of a relegation dogfight and won?t be very keen on conceding should that be the case; they are a sod to beat on their own turf, and being Lancashire-based, cussedness runs in the genes, anyway! Norwich? Reading are on the fringes, Walsall should be out of trouble, as they only need one win to secure safety, I reckon, while Watford shouldn?t have anything riding on the result either, as they?re safe, more or less. Preston and Sunderland? The latter, again, needs little comment from me; a draw would be advantageous, given a run of previous favourable outcomes from us, and a following wind, while the former are well out of things.

So there you go, then ? study intently, then pick the bones out of that little lot, if you can. Looking at the mathematics of the whole thing once more, it very much reminds me of a sci-fi short story I read once, called ?The Cold Equations?. The storyline revolved around a guy who captained a space-freighter, fully-loaded with cargo, and proceeding from Planet A to Planet B. Unbeknown to him, his little sister had stowed away on board, and some way into the voyage, came out of hiding. Under normal circumstances, he would have been delighted ? but there was one small snag. The amount of fuel needed to propel the rocket, plus cargo, to its destination, was so finely calculated the presence (and additional weight) of ?little sis? meant the freighter would run out of fuel long before it reached its final destination. Solution? Poor brother had to eject ?little sis? into space via the airlock. That?s why the title; mathematics doesn?t take into account sentimentality when trying to make equations balance, and neither do calculations of what we need to do to do the biz. Those same ?cold equations? show our next couple of games will be absolutely massive; stuffing up doesn?t mean it?s totally impossible, of course, but you know and I know that if we do, we?ll have an awful uphill climb to retrieve ourselves after that.

And now, the cultural bit! Prior to the 16th century, the area we now call Millwall was just one of a collection of small villages just outside the metropolis proper, but come that period, small industrial concerns began to breed like bacteria: bell founding, glass-making, ivory and horn working and, later, silk weaving and paper-making. These industries flourished outside the city walls because of several factors that still apply to industry today: low-cost rents; the exclusion of certain trades from practising within the walls, plus the failure of the city authorities to put the brake on industry springing up in the area. This was around the time the city of London began to split into two, economically speaking; in the west, government and service industries were based, as were financial services in the City itself, while to the East, as we can see, manufacturing industries began to flourish. What with the civil war in the 1640's and the Great Plague of 1665, plus the Great Fire of 1666, there had to be much rebuilding, and as a consequence, London 1700 bore little resemblance to the town in 1600.

We now turn to the history of the area, proper, which isn?t really Millwall, as such, but what?s known to most as The Isle Of Dogs. How did it get that extraordinary name, then? One theory is that it?s a corruption of the title "Isle of Ducks." Another one reckons that when in residence at Greenwich, Henry VIII and Charles II used to hunt in Essex, but kennelled their hounds over the river, in order to save time and expense of ferrying them over when going hunting. Hence the name "The Isle of Dogs." However the earliest known record of this name is on a map from 1588. Another school of thought holds that in true Millwall tradition, the name arose because someone upset the fuzz! How come? Simple. In 1597, the writers Thomas Nashe and Ben Johnson co- wrote a play called ?The Isle Of Dogs? The uproar caused by their thespian piece ? sadly, the content is lost, so I don?t know what all the kerfuffle was about - led to a warrant being issued for Nashe?s arrest, and as a result, he briefly took refuge in Great Yarmouth. The play is lost because it was instantly and ruthlessly suppressed, but whatever was in it so enraged the Privy Council that all the London theatres were closed in punishment, and Nashe forced to leave town so suddenly he lost all his papers and notebooks, seized at his lodgings. From then on in, the name became a nickname of contempt.

In the Middle Ages, the Isle of Dogs was known as Stepney Marsh and came within Stepney parish. For a short period from 1448, when 500 acres were drained by the Bishop, of London, to 1529, when the embankment burst, the land was used for grazing. This was one of two recorded cases where The Isle ? it?s a peninsula, actually - was flooded. Around that time, the nearby docks began to prosper; legal quays were established down stream from London Bridge from 1558. All foreign goods had to be landed so that duties could be imposed.

Though the marshes on the peninsula were thoroughly drained in the 17th Century and grazing resumed, the Island still had something of a rotten reputation about it. Windmills were built along the flood bank, known from the late 18th Century as the Mill Wall. The first mill appeared towards the North end of the Isle in 1679, and by the 1740s there were no less than twelve of the buggers whirling away like crazy. By the 18th Century London had 1,400 feet of legal quays and a further 3,700 feet of other wharves, mainly on the South Bank where lower value imported goods could be landed. There was, though, one itsy-bitsy snag. The Thames pirates. These were regular organised bands, under various names, i.e. the Heavy Horsemen, the Night Plunderers, etc., and their robberies were rampant. The authorities of the time reckoned that of 37,000 persons employed on the river Thames at least 11,000 were thieves, and their annual booty amounted to half a million sterling. Because of this ? er ? ?shrinkage? the West India Merchants stumped up ?800,000 for a secure dock on the Isle of Dogs within the space of two days. Planning permission was a problem, however, and it was nine years later before anything tangible was accomplished. In 1799 the Act authorising the construction of the West India Docks finally passed a cynical House of Commons. Whoopee!

The building of West India Docks in1802 transformed the North of the peninsula and some development followed their opening. But it took the building of the East and West roads to the Greenwich ferry in 1812-15 to encourage development over the rest, at that time divided between a number of landowners, but two-thirds owned by William Mellish, one of the promoters of the West India Docks. Industry was quickly established along the west bank of the peninsula, but the centre remained completely empty until the Millwall Docks and its wharves, chiefly for grain and timber, took a huge slice out of it in the 1860?s. By the end of the 19th Century, the range of industries located there was immense, from milling flour, oilseed and baking, to the iron and maritime trades and wharfage. Chemicals and engineering became especially important, but these declined after the Second World War, and The Luftwaffe?s keen interest in the place. At the same time the successful industries relocated to new industrial estates, leaving mainly a rump of warehouses, depots and scrapyards, a bit of an outpost of empire once road became more important than river.

Houses, inhabited almost entirely by dockers and industrial workers, crept over the farmland only slowly, and included both average London terraces and grotty, insanitary rows of off-street cottages built by speculators. That?s when the place became real Alf Garnett country (notwithstanding Alf being a Hammers-lover, of course!). Mind you, Hitler didn?t half do the area a favour in 1940-41, when he undertook a campaign of destruction that knocked anything wrought by The Lions? more ?enthusiastic? exponents of the art into a cocked hat. The distinctive loop of the Thames around the Isle of Dogs, was known to the Germans as Zielraum (target area) G. Bomber crews were given specific targets like the docks or the gasworks, and attacked them if visibility permitted, otherwise they simply bombed the target area. ?Black Saturday', 7 September 1940, was the first day of the offensive against London. Just after 4.15 that afternoon, almost 1,000 aircraft stacked up at heights from 14,000 to 23,000 feet, crossed the French coast and headed for the docks. Twenty one British squadrons went up to meet them, bringing about the largest aerial battle yet seen.

There was no stopping the bombers, which pressed home their attack, and they dropped 300 tons of high explosive on London. Not much by today?s ?shock and awe? standards, and a firecracker compared to nukes, but about 2000 civilians were killed or seriously injured, and wide areas of warehouses and factories in the East End were soon ablaze. When the bombers came back after dusk they needed no navigational aids: they were guided by the blazing East End and fires downstream at Thameshaven. They dropped another 300 tons (305 tonnes) of explosive and thousands of smaller incendiary bombs, and when the last of them left, before dawn on 8 September, London was still burning, with three of its main-line railway termini closed. Oh ? and another thought. So badly organised were the social services at the time ? they still came under The Poor Law, believe it or not, and their workers very much of the ?Bumble The Beadle? mentality, still ? totally unable to cope, they were completely reorganised nationwide after the war.

From then on, London was bombed night after night, and during the second week in October there were almost 1400 killed in the capital. Terrible damage was caused by 2200 lb parachute mines, so Churchill ordered ministries: 'No disclosure should be made of the severity of effect, in the public estimation, of these mines.' There were further bad raids on the area in November and December, but The Blitz eased in 1941, due to the shift of German bombers to the Eastern Front, however, smaller scale raids were still regularly made on the docks area.

Mind you, The Germans must have felt the same way we do about Millwall FC, because in the very early hours of Monday April 14th 1943 the Luftwaffe carried out their second small nuisance raid on London in 24 hours, and actually managed to blitz the ground! As the bombers reached the outskirts, all but one were repelled. The lone raider managing to get through dropped two bombs towards central London, one falling onto waste ground. The other scored a direct hit on The Den, Millwall's North Terrace, in fact, close to the Old Kent Road end corner, the point of impact thought to be under a half-ton crush barrier there, which was flung an incredible 200 yards through the air. Not only that, there was a massive crater on the terrace affecting the penalty area, and debris was scattered all over the pitch. Not much change there, then?..

Now, of course, the docks have long-gone, but the deprivation and run-down feel of the place still remains. Where there had once been whole families who derived their living from stevedoring, and immigrants from Europe, there are now more recent incumbents; since the war, redevelopment of the old slums meant an exodus of the traditional Dockland inhabitants to Essex, mainly. In their place came those from the Caribbean and Asia, and, even more recently, refugees from conflicts in eastern Europe and Africa. Famous Lions? Try Helen Mirren for size, she was born in those there parts around 1946. There?s also Top Of The Pops presenter Richard Blackwood, but he?s not a happy bunny at the moment; according to my researches, he?s being repossessed! Looking further back in time, Sir Walter Raleigh was of those parts. He was, of course, the bloke who went to America and brought back spuds and tobacco. And, no, he didn?t snuff it from lung cancer; because he later fell into disfavour with good Queen Bess, his head ended up parting company with his body.

And there you have it. Never let it be said I don?t illuminate your lives with the bright beam of knowledge. I?m off to my pit, now, as it?s going to be an early start for me. We?re travelling down there courtesy of that nice man Sauce (taking a car to those parts is an absolute no-no), so a few premature zeds will be in order, methinks. This one really is a ?must win?, so even if you can?t make it to the game, let the power of positive thought do its good work by flooding through your mind. Well, that?s what Big Dave told me last season, and who am I to argue? Not that I would, mind, religious or not, he?s still quite a hunk of a bloke! Think ?win? and who knows? We might just emerge from the Easter break with a great big grin on our faces. Tell you all about it tomorrow night ? until then, tara.

 - Glynis Wright

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