I was recently honoured to be asked to give a talk to Urdu Culture London and Anjuman Taraqqi Urdu UK about the spot where the Indian Progressive Writers' Association gathered for their first meeting. Noor Zaheer had seen an earlier post on this site which prompted her to extend the invitation. She was sitting alongside me as I spoke about her father, the distinguished Urdu writer and leftist Sajjad Zaheer - and happily she confirmed the details of his personal life which I shared in the talk. Here is the text of what I said:  The Nanking restaurant was in the basement, down those steep outside stairs In the course of a few minutes I am going to take you on a journey in search of the birthplace of the Indian Progressive Writers Association – we’ll take in Little Tokyo, Tin Pan Alley, the Rolling Stones and Revolution. And we’ll end up at a now deserted basement not more than a mile from here. The renowned Urdu writer, Sajjad Zaheer, in his reminiscences gave an account of the first meeting of the IPWA: 'A Chinese restaurant owner of London was very considerate towards us and used to offer the back room of his restaurant free of charge. This small, unventilated cellar could accommodate forty to fifty people with difficulty.’ The venue was the basement of the Nanking restaurant in Denmark Street - and the date, according to the scholar Carlo Coppola, was probably the evening of Saturday, 24 November, 1934. Mulk Raj Anand says that it was at a meeting at the Nanking restaurant in the following year, 1935, that the Association’s historic manifesto was agreed The first All-India Progressive Writers' Conference was held in Lucknow on 10 April 1936 under the leadership of Sajjad Zaheer. But where was the long gone Nanking restaurant? Yes, Denmark Street – a short street off Charing Cross Road still associated with music and instruments - Tin Pan Alley as was, centre of the sheet music trade – before that Little Tokyo, hub of the small Japanese commuity in London – and earlier still a haunt of the radical O’Brienites, followers of the Chartist and socialist Bronterre O'Brien who met at the Eclectic Hall in Denmark Place and mustered alongside Karl Marx in the International Working Men's Association. I come at this from two perspective: a keen interest in fiction set in London which has a strong sense of place, and Sajjad Zaheer’s novella ‘London ki ek raat’ is exactly that, in large part a lightly fictionalised account of the lives of Indian students and recent graduates in Bloomsbury in the mid-1930s. The Lucknow-based scholar, Madhu Singh, has written about the title on a website I set up, London Fictions. My interest also arose because I was working on a biography of Freda Houlston – Freda Bedi – a woman from Derby from a non-privileged background who studied at Oxford in the early 1930s. There she met and married an Indian student and communist from Lahore, B.P.L. Bedi - and from that moment, long before she had set foot on Indian soil, decided that she was unequivocally Indian. She lived most of her adult life in India, died there, two of her sons live there today – one of them of course is the actor Kabir Bedi.  Oxford Mail, February 1933 At Oxford, Freda had two close friends: Barbara Betts, who became better known as Barbara Castle, and was really the first woman cabinet minister to make a big mark on British politics; and Olive Shapley, who became a broadcaster on the BBC notably as the host of Woman’s Hour on the radio. Freda was emboldened to have an Indian boyfriend by her friend, Olive. At Oxford, Olive Shapley was a fervent class-against-class Communist and Olive’s boyfriend was ... Sajjad Zaheer. They never married of course nor intended to marry. I suspect Olive is the model for Sheila Green in Zaheer’s novella, who is told by her Indian boyfriend that he is returning home because he loves his country and its national cause even more than he loves her. At Oxford, Zaheer was an evangelical communist. He took over the publication of the Oxford Indian students, Bharat, and turned it into a revolutionary publication. The only copy I’ve been able to trace is in the India Office Records. On the cover is the slogan: ‘Inquilab Zindabad’. It survives only because a British civil servant wanted to ban it and sent a copy to government lawyers for their view. They said it was, in effect, already illegal in India so no further action was needed.  Olive Shapley and Sajjad Zaheer remained on cordial terms. Indeed Olive’s son tells me that as a teenager he accompanied his mother to India, and they called on Sajjad Zaheer and his wife and daughters at their home in Delhi. So let’s get back to Denmark Street. What do we know of the Nanking restaurant where the IPWA held its early meetings? Rather wonderfully there’s an account of the street from a visitor in 1932: “….enter Denmark Street, which is now almost wholly given over to Chinese and Japanese restaurants and emporia. Undoubtedly the most amusing of these places is The Nanking, presided over by Mr. Fung Saw. Mr. Fung is some thing of a politician, and to his restaurant come many of the more youthful of the budding Parliamentarians. These, together with composers and song writers, their publishers and film artists, comprise the chief of Mr. Fung’s clientele. The hall of feasting is reached by long, steep steps, which lead to an exceptionally large, light, and lofty basement. ... Inside, the decorations are reminiscent of a Chinese junk, and the walls are decorated in vermilion and in greens and yellows, which only a Chinese artist is able to use to Oriental perfection.” And where exactly was the Nanking restaurant? Well, a 1940 street directory answers that. It was at no. 4 Denmark Street, sharing the elegant six-storey building with a bookseller, a music publishers, a film casting agent and a commercial artist. And no, the street hasn't since been renumbered. It was in the basement that Zaheer and his comrades met. So when I discovered that 4 Denmark Street was the spot, a decade back, I went round with my good friend Sam Miller. It was a bar, the Alley Cat, which promised live music nightly. When we navigated our way down the outside metal staircase and entered, there was no music and no other customers. The bartender told a story of tough times. The bar subsequently closed down. That basement space is derelict today. There must be a business opportunity there. And it really deserves a blue plaque asthe birthplace of the IPWA.. The floors above became Regent Sounds Studios. Back in the day, they all recorded here: Hendrix, Elton John, Black Sabbath, the Kinks. The ground floor is now a shop specialising in electric guitars but the studio signage survives.
There’s a sign in the window saying that the Stones’ recorded ‘Not Fade Away’ here in 1964. You know the song, I'm sure. It goes: 'Your love for me has got to be real, Love is real and not fade away’. Part of our common purpose today is to ensure that the progressive legacy of those who gathered in the basement of the Nanking restaurant all those decades ago does not fade away.
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 Denmark Street - that enticing and endangered link between St Giles High Street and Charing Cross Road - is much more than simply London's faded Tin Pan Alley, the once legendary home of music publishers and recording studios. It's the most substantial surviving remnant of old St Giles, one of the more notorious of the rookeries of mid-Victorian London. The wonderful early eighteenth century St Giles-in-the-Fields is yards away, and the area around was a stronghold of artisan radicalism 150 years ago. Denmark Street still has a handful of marvellous late seventeenth century buildings - and is still choc-a-bloc with guitar shops and music businesses which give it a wonderfully louche air. It was also the spot where one of South Asia's most influential literary movements, the leftist Indian Progressive Writers' Association, was founded. The venue was the basement of the Nanking restaurant - and the date, according to the scholar Carlo Coppola, was probably the evening of Saturday, 24 November, 1934.  I've long wondered where exactly the Nanking restaurant was - whether it was a precursor of the Giaconda, the dining rooms where music magnates lunched (and now an up-market burger bar). With the help of a 1940 street directory in Holborn Library, I've cracked it. The Nanking was at number 4 (the street hasn't been renumbered), on the south side, and towards the St Giles High Street end. It was next to a labour exchange (that's now a Fernandez and Wells coffee shop). After the Nanking, no. 4 became the Regent Sounds Studios, where the Rolling Stones put together their first album back in 1964 and where Black Sabbath, Elton John, the Kinks and Jimi Hendrix also recorded. So - quite a shrine to the golden age of British rock. There's more about the street's musical heritage here. The main business in no. 4 today is Regent Sounds, not studios but a guitar shop specialising in Fender and Gretsch. And the basement - the spot where the IPWA met - is a bar and live music venue, the Alley Cat. In the early thirties, Denmark Street was buzzing with Chinese and Japanese restaurants and businesses. The China Rhyming blog uncovered a description from the Queenslander newspaper (not quite sure why they were showing such interest, but I am glad they did) in 1932. Here it is: “….enter Denmark Street, which is now almost wholly given over to Chinese and Japanese restaurants and emporia. Undoubtedly the most amusing of these places is The Nanking, presided over by Mr. Fung Saw. Mr. Fung is some thing of a politician, and to his restaurant come many of the more youthful of the budding Parliamentarians. These, together with composers and song writers, their publishers and film artists, comprise the chief of Mr. Fung’s clientele. The hall of feasting is reached by long, steep steps, which lead to an exceptionally large, light, and lofty basement. There is another and a mere prosaic entrance through a hall door on the ground floor, but somehow no one ever seems to notice it, and so we descend the more picturesque steps. Inside, the decorations are reminiscent of a Chinese junk, and the walls are decorated in vermilion and in greens and yellows, which only a Chinese artist is able to use to Oriental perfection. On the opposite side of the road are two Japanese restaurants, and just round the corner we can enter the banqueting hall of Wah Yeng, who contents himself with catering, to the exclusion of everything else. Mr. Yeng explained that he had a largo back room, which he reserved for Chinese business men, but as Chinese merchants do not so often come to London the hall at the back is usually thrown open to all.”  By 1940, there were only a couple of Chinese and Japanese restaurants on Denmark Street - though the East Asian aspect was reinforced by a number of Japanese shops and businesses.
But the directory demonstrates that by the outbreak of the Second World War, Denmark Street was already established as the centre of the music publishing industry - there were eighteen music related businesses in this single, short street as well as a handful of movie enterprises.
In his reminiscences, Sajjad Zaheer gave an account of the Association's first meeting: 'A Chinese restaurant owner of London was very considerate towards us and used to offer the back room of his restaurant free of charge. This small, unventilated cellar could accommodate forty to fifty people with difficulty. Our regualr meeting was held there.' (Zaheer wrote a novella about Indian student life in and around Bloomsbury, A Night in London - here's an excellent account if it and the context in which it was written.) According to the novelist and founder member Mulk Raj Anand, it was at a monthly meeting of the Association at the Nanking restaurant in the followng year, 1935.that its manifesto was adopted. It opens with these stirring words: Radical changes are taking place in Indian society. Fixed ideas and old beliefs, social and political institutions are being challenged. Out of the present turmoil and conflict, a new society is arising. The spirit of reaction, however, though moribund and doomed to ultimate decay, is still operative and is making desperate efforts to prolong itself. It is the duty of Indian writers to give expression to the changes taking place in Indian life and to assist the spirit of progress in the country.
And a closing thought: Denmark Street sports a blue plaque celebrating Tin Pan Alley. Shouldn't there be one for the Indian Progressive Writers' Association too, perhaps on the outside of the Alley Cat?
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