This week 10, 20, 30 years ago

10 Years Ago

A whale of a stunt was pulled off by festival organisers that caused some initial shock.

A worryingly realistic model of a 17m sperm whale beached on the Greenwich riverside.

As crowds gathered, a cast of animal rescue workers and scientists rushed to help the apparent creature in distress.

Thankfully it was revealed to be staged as part of the Greenwich + Docklands International Festival and the whale was moved onto the lawns of the Old Royal Naval College for the Greenwich Fair event.

A football club run by its fans was set to return to its Rotherhithe roots.

Non-league Fisher FC hoped that ambitious £750,000 redevelopment plans for its former Surrey Docks Stadium would have meant a new home ground in the heart of Bermondsey and Rotherhithe, which would have drawn most of its players from the local area.

The club was established in 2009, after Fisher Athletic FC, which was founded in 1908, went bust.

Pollution that could be emitted by a proposed incinerator would be “taken into account” as Boris Johnson decided whether to allow it to be built.

Campaigners fired hundreds of emails to Boris Johnson’s inbox in their last-ditch bid to stop the £200million South London Incinerator- an energy recovery facility that was being built.

The incinerator in Beddington Lane, Wallington had already been given planning permission, but approval was still needed from the Mayor of London’s office.

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20 Years Ago

Teachers who lost their jobs staged a protest outside a school which reopened using agency staff.

Parents joined the staff outside the school gates of BBI Education in Vauxhall Street, Vauxhall, a private school for children with autism.

The school cited a cash crisis for the redundancies but reopened just 10 days later using agency staff.

Police hunting for a man’s killer made the unusual step of asking train drivers to appeal for help over the public address system.

Police had been called to Northbrook Road, Lewisham, after a man’s body was found.

A post-mortem revealed he had died of head injuries.

Passengers were asked if they remembered seeing a man in his mid-20s who they thought might be linked to the man’s death.

Opposition councillors on Southwark council voiced grave concerns over plans to introduce a £6.30-an-hour minimum wage for town hall workers.

Tory Councillor Toby Eckersley claimed that the minimum wage would cause massive budget problems and that the Labour-run Southwark council had buried the plans in a council report.

He also said he was angry because he and his Tory colleagues on the shadow finance committee had not been consulted.

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30 Years Ago

Campaigners complaining of traffic jams and their streets being used as rat runs asked for a four-month-old road scheme to be redesigned.

Department for Transport chiefs closed Gleneldon Road and introduced a yellow box junction at St Leonard’s Church in Streatham High Road in a bid to ease a notorious bottleneck.

But campaigners living nearby said that it made the crossing dangerous for pedestrians and called for the transport bosses to rethink the move.

A pressure group for the unemployed warned that it would stage a sit-in at a job centre in protest at a “useless and patronising” Government training scheme.

Unemployed Action Group (LUAG) announced plans to occupy Brixton Job Centre in Brixton Road over plans to force the unemployed into five-day workshops.

The group’s members said the date of the protest would be kept secret to prevent it being stopped.

A former member of a “cult church” spoke out against it in a bid to stop others being sucked in.

The 34-year-old man from Morden began a campaign against the church and formed a self-help group to help former members.

The church demanded a percentage of followers’ income, encouraged recruits to live in single-sex communes and told them to deny the existence of any other faith.

The whistleblower had been a member of the cult for seven years.