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* Amazon Fitness for Women *
Membership from as little as £25 per month
Full range of Aerobic, Pilates and Yoga classes to choose from
Nutrition and Weight Management plus Personal Training
No Joining Fee
Gym Programmes devised for Individual Needs and Goals
New High Powered Sunbed
Sauna, Jacuzzi and Scenic Garden
Extended Opening Hours
* 2 for l *
As a special incentive to readers, bring this advert and claim two
classes of your choice for the price of one. Club restrictions apply.
Call us on 020 7241 1449 or pop in for a free club tour
134 Stoke Newington Church Street, NI 6 (Entrance on Lordship Road) |
A STOKEY FOOTNOTE
There may be those who would dispute the fact that Stoke Newington is at the centre of
the known universe (think you’re tough enough?), but the more you delve, the more it
seems reasonable to claim that the contrarians of N16 are at least entitled to an extended
footnote in the history of protest.
Take Clissold Park. Or at least, take Clissold Park in 1977, when the motley collection of
terrapins, reject budgies and three-legged roe deer were joined for an admittedly brief
period by an altogether more exotic species: Astrid Proll, urban warrior, fugitive from
German justice, former Baader-Meinhof terrorist - and Stoke Newington Park Warden.
In 1971, former art student Proll had been (briefly) active in what journalists even now
refer to as ‘the notorious Baader-Meinhof gang, later the Red Army Faction, and still
probably the best-known of the so-called terror groups that emerged in the unsettled
decades of the 1960s and 1970s to challenge state repression. Against a backdrop of
student protest, industrial unrest, oil shocks, economic slumps, the Vietnam War and
Watergate, the Baader Meinhof gang captured the headlines more than most with a
three-decade campaign of terror against the state in which they were believed to have been
responsible over 30 deaths, 40 attempted murders, well over 2000 arson and bomb attacks,
dozens of armed robberies, and the abduction of several prominent politicians and German
industrialists.
Arrested in 1971, Proll spent nearly three years in prison awaiting trial in conditions
which led to a near nervous breakdown; so badly had her health deteriorated that the trial
was suspended and Proll herself retreated to a sanatorium in Bavaria to recuperate. At
that point, she literally ‘ran away’, eventually surfacing, under an assumed
name, in Hackney.
Her brief spell as a warden in Clissold Park was followed by a stint in an East London toy
factory and employment as a supervisor on a YTS car mechanics course in Camden. Spotted by
one of London’s eagle-eyed finest, ProII was eventually extradited to Germany, where
she was found guilty of bank robbery (other charges having been dropped). Released on time
served, she returned to her first love, photography, recapturing the headlines in the UK
for a short time last year when it emerged that she had been hired as a freelance picture
editor on the Independent - and was once again living in north London.
Come to think of it, N16 could do with a picture editor - that would make a footnote.
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