For reasons which would take far too long to explain, I’m back in Dockland reading through my notes for an MSc dissertation on ‘The Impact of Containerisation on the London Docks’.

Otherwise known as the Clapton Manuscripts as this extensive collection of notebooks were written in the mid 1990s in that part of east London. The original plan being to use Hegel as a starting point for explaining historical change, leading to Marx’s theory of the development of capitalism and the empirical evidence for technical change itself. This all proved to be far too ambitious, although was intensely rewarding and illuminating.

This has all been sparked off by a three visits to Warehouse K in the space of 2 days, a visit to the Museum of Dockland(s) and discovering the foot bridge over the Royal Victoria Dock.And of course reading ‘Dockland Apprentice’ by David Carpenter.