These posters are on display around various locations in New Cross as part of No Pain In Pop’s ‘Nail The Cross’ festival. Thanks to longtime collaborators Charlie Gibson for her Spaceman Collage and Patrick Barrett for his image of electricity lines at Bletchley Park.

Reg Ward, first Chief Executive of the LDDC, speaking at a local meeting in 1982 described the Docklands as “a blank canvas upon which we can paint the future”. However, when the London Docklands Development Corporation (LDDC) moved into its Isle of Dogs offices, there were still local working docks, many small industries and a population of 56,000 people, mainly living in high-rise council tower blocks with poor amenities.

The LDDC was the Thatcher government’s favourite quango, it trampled all over the working class and created the ultimate sore thumb in Britain’s privatized metropolis - Canary Wharf. Headed by Ward, a former Chief Executive of Hereford and Worcester County Council and Hammersmith and Fulham London Borough Council the LDDC began planning internationally funded office buildings in the early 1980s.

Left in the dark, the local Docklands community soon saw scaffolding superstructures protruding out of their neighborhood. The gross negligence of the suited cronies with their gravy-dripping fingers provoked an intense backlash from the formerly silent majority. This backlash culminated most poignantly in poster campaigns and bizarre protests by artists, local representatives and Labour politicians.

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