Poem I did on the trailer about the Crouch End Civil War

1. Local legends?
Hello. I'm Richard Tyrone Jones, a poet and
Director of 'Utter!' Spoken Word, one of
London's longest running spoken word nights.
I run tours around London where I tell people
some stories about local culture which are
true, and some which I've just made up. Their
job is to guess what's real and what's not. I'm
here in Crouch end in North London to tell
you a poetical story about the darkest, yet also
the most heroic period of Crouch end's
history... Is it true? Listen and decide...
The martyrs of Crouch End Clock Tower
Now Crouch End was part of the Municipal
Borough of Hornsey, up to 1965,
But in that year, the Local Govt Act meant
London's, well, local government was
reorganised
so Crouch End was left in limbo, neither
Islington nor Harringey. No overarching local
authority at all

2. though for some months councillors
continued to run Crouch End's affairs from
the modernist monolith of the town hall.
(Shot of Town Hall).
This proved unpopular with certain figures in
the quasi-fascistic Islington (pft!) council
regime,
who started issuing housing benefit to a small
minority of Crouchenders who held islington
(pft!) sympathies... incidents like these
soon sparked a low-level parking war, with
Harringey traffic inspectors
retaliating by ticketing cars with Islington
parking passes
and binmen from Haringey and Islington
(pft!) had fistfights over who'd collect
rubbish...
until in the summer of 1965, three Haringey
council workers just... vanished.
To this day their bodies have never been
found. it can only be presumed these brave
binmen

3. met their doom in the hungry jaws of the back
of an Islington (pft!) binvan.
Throughout April incursions continued until
almost two-thirds of Hornsey's council
housing stock
was being administered by Islington (pft!)
Housing Officers at point of knife and barrel
of glock.
It is believed Islington's aim was the clear
running water of the New River.
So what stopped them? Why, the heroic
martyrs of... Crouch End clock tower.
On May 17th 1965, here, twelve militiamen
from Haringey Housing department (and a
spaniel called Clive)
holed up under attack from islington (pft!)
forces. Surrounded on both sides,
outnumbered and outgunned, they still
managed to hold out for three days,
sniping from the clocktower at islington (pft!)
(pft!) irregulars who had infiltrated the
Broadway.

4. while around them shoppers... continued
shopping, thinking the bangs were just cars
backfiring,
while in fact they were the last reports of
brave Crouch End soldiers expiring.
But the Harringey soldiers' brave sacrifice
meant a column of volunteers from
Tottenham
could outflank the enemy along Ferme park
Road, and soon there was no stoppin' 'em.
The forces of perfidious Islington (pft) found
themselves cut off by a pincer movement
With their surrender, the Haringey civil war
soon reached its bloody denouement. (end).
In revenge for their sneak attack, the
Islingtonites (pft) were shot in the face like
dogs
in the cellar of the Clocktower, where their
blood would oil the cogs.
Though it would be several months before
Ferme park and Highgate were freed
and many spies in the Council had to be
rooted out like weeds

5. by the Harringey secret service, this was their
finest hour,
and without the brave sacrifice of the martyrs
of Crouch End clocktower
we'd all be speaking Islingtonian now....
(pft!)
Now, your job, dear viewer, is to take a local
landmark, place or piece of art - anything you
find curious in your local area, or 'endz'- and
then to make up a tall story which explains
how it came to be there. Maybe there's a
statue of someone and nobody knows who
they are, so you can make up a story about
what they did, like invent dubstep back in
Victorian Times. Maybe there's a shopping
centre that's haunted because someone met a
very unusual death there. Or a strange
building that might have been a pagan
temple... let your imagination run wild!
The best way to make someone believe a
story is to frame it by mentioning true events

6. or people, like the 1965 Local Government
Act, which makes it seem a bit more
believable, and adding specific details, like
the name of the dog. And then when you've
written this as a story, poem, rap or however
you want to present it, post it up on the
facebook group - either in writing or in a link
to a video clip - preferably with a picture or a
link to a picture of what you've written about
so we can visualise it - and we can all give
you some constructive feedback on how to
make it even better or how else you could add
to your local legend.
(Remember if some of you are scared about
the idea of writing a poem, just write a story,
and then hit return whenever you get to a
word that seems particularly important in the
story. That's all a poem is, really. It doesn't
have to rhyme.)
And don't worry about making your first draft
perfect. The best writers rewrite and rewrite
and rewrite things, and there's no reason why

7. you should be different!
Then when you've finished it, try telling it to
some gullible people, like children or
American tourists and see how many of them
believe you. It's fun if you start the story off
to be quite believable then get more and more
wild and ridiculous and see the look on their
face just when they realise that you're giving
them a load of old horseshite...
Shot of the Harringey Arms.
One last fact about the insurrection of 1965 -
this historic pub was previously known as the
Nag's Head but during the civil conflict, the
bank vaults next door were used as the
Hornsey Borough Council arms dump, it was
very hot work down there, and the arms
manufacturers would drink at the pub next
door after their shifts which is why its name
was changed in tribute to the arms they
provided which helped liberate Harringey: the
Harringey Arms.