Of course, those future banner hangers so feared by the Greater London Council could well be protesters marching under another of Ed Hall’s creations. His work with Deller, for all the artist’s whimsical anarchy, represents the more establishment side of Hall’s output. On the whole, his banners are explicitly, unavoidably, political. Alongside his union work, he has also created pieces for Stop The War, The Anti-Nazi League, Unite Against Fascism and the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign amongst others.
“For 30 years, I was in an ordinary office, an architects’ office for Lambeth Council,” he says. “I studied architecture at Sheffield University in the 1960s. That was back when the steel works were still going full pelt and the sky would go orange at night in the winter.” After graduating, he worked for the councils in Liverpool and Greenwich before landing at Lambeth.
“I wanted to work there because it had a very well-known director, Edward Holland, who actually ended up living in William Morris’ Red House in Bexley. But I stayed with Lambeth for 30 years. It’s where I started to become hostile to Thatcherism and the Conservative Government. We were building 1000 council houses a year, and we were just one borough, and people could live in them for reasonable rent with a security of tenancy. But then it started to dawn on me that this was going to come to an end. There wouldn’t be any council house building. And the ones that were already there would be sold off. I had only been slightly political before that, but by the early 80s I was the Unison convenor for my section of 800 people.”