There’s a narrow strip of land in Canning Town, no more than 50 metres long and 25 wide. It’s hemmed in on one side by Victorian terraced streets and on the other by the six lanes of traffic that make up the A13 Newham Way. But its neat wooden planters, filled with lavender and vivid bushes of California Lilac, release a heady scent, which battles with the fumes from the road
At either end of this pocket park, a mounted mosaic provides a clue about the historic meeting that took place a few yards from this spot in the now-demolished house of a local doctor. Each is dedicated to one of the two men who met there on a September evening in 1931. They were among the most recognisable figures of their time and their encounter made the front pages of next day’s newspapers. The Stratford Express reported: “Two little men, both famous in his own sphere, met in the house of an Indian doctor in Beckton on Tuesday evening – Mr Gandhi and Mr Charles Chaplin.”
I first learned about the Chaplin/Gandhi rendezvous at Newham Council’s archive in Stratford, where was I researching the history of cinema in the area. The busy but helpful archivist directed me towards a stack of beige foolscap folders she had pulled from the vaults ahead of my visit.
As I picked through ancient receipts and invoices and gently handled gilt-edged programmes, an image jumped out at me. It was a photocopied page from a newspaper with a picture of Gandhi and Chaplin, side by side, surrounded by a small group of people (above). Gandhi, in his white robes is immediately recognisable, the silver-haired Chaplin less so without the familiar toothbrush moustache and bowler hat worn by his on-screen character the “Little Tramp”.
Also in the picture are three women. The one on the right is Sarojini Naidu, the Indian independence activist known as “the nightingale of India” because of her sensuous, often patriotic poetry. From the setting of the image, they could be anywhere. But they are in Canning Town.
I was aware that Gandhi had spent time in the East End, and that Chaplin was originally from Bermondsey (still east, though south of the river), but I didn’t know they had met, still less in Newham, where I grew up.
Gandhi was in London for the Second Round Table Conference, called by the British government to discuss constitutional reform following widespread protests on the Indian subcontinent against British colonial rule. It took place over four months from September to December 1931.
During his time in London, Gandhi often stayed at the home of his friend Dr Katial, where the meeting with Chaplin took place. He became a well-recognised face in the neighbourhood. An article from the Star newspaper in September 1931 – a few days before the Chaplin meeting – describes him being greeted by a bricklayer as he passed a building site with the words “What Ho! old pal”. This apparently prompted a smile in return, while schoolchildren called out “Good old Gandhi!”.
How he and Chaplin were brought together is not entirely clear. An account from Mahadev Desai, Gandhi’s secretary and confidant who documented the London trip for the journal Young India (accessible here) says the approach came from Chaplin. Although the *Mahatma had never heard of the film star, he was encouraged to meet him after hearing how many people he had made laugh.
It is well documented that during this period Chaplin went on a kind of mission to meet many of those who were regarded as great thinkers of the time, including Albert Einstein and George Bernard Shaw. After getting through a scramble in the street – contemporary accounts say the crowds outside the house numbered around 10,000 – the pair spoke for around an hour.
In his autobiography, Chaplin recalls:
“I met him in a humble little house in the slum district off the East India Dock Road. Crowds filled the streets and the press and the photographers packed both floors. The interview took place in an upstairs front room about twelve feet square. The Mahatma had not yet arrived; and as I waited I began to think of what I would say to him. I had heard of his imprisonment and hunger strikes, and his fight for the freedom of India, and vaguely knew of his opposition to the use of machinery.”
Chaplin’s and Desai’s accounts agree that industrialisation and Gandhi’s opposition to it was a key topic in their conversation. Chaplin’s own views leant towards socialism and he was curious as to why Gandhi so opposed mechanisation, which he saw as having the potential to liberate working people. Gandhi explained his opposition in relation to his ongoing struggle against colonialism:
“I am not against machines but I cannot bear it when these machines take away a man’s work from him. Today, we are your slaves because we cannot overcome our attraction for your goods. Freedom will surely be our ours if we learn to free ourselves from this attraction.”
Who knows what impression the movie star made on Gandhi, whose goal of Indian independence was finally achieved in 1947? We do know that the meeting had a lasting impact on Chaplin, who was yet to make the film many consider to be his greatest work. Released five years later, Modern Times is a slapstick satire of industrial capitalism. In his last outing as the “Little Tramp”, Chaplin plays a factory worker ground down by the rigours of modern work.
That meeting in Canning Town, in streets where, overhead, factory chimneys belched their loads into the dusk of the autumn sky, must have fed into Chaplin’s creation of the film.
The legacies of both men have undergone a reappraisal and that they expressed views and behaved in ways, particularly towards women, that are uncomfortable to hear of. Yet it’s hard to deny that each represented, in his own way, a kind of greatness.
I’m glad there’s a place that memorialises the meeting between Chaplin and Gandhi and I’m glad people will remember it took place – from schoolkids who helped design the mosaics to neighbours in the flats and houses nearby. I’m also glad this pocket park, opened by Newham in 2015, is as it is – unassuming, humble almost. It’s a reminder that a meeting of minds, a historical moment, a momentous conversation can happen anywhere. Even in a stretch of land next to the A13.
*Mahatma is an honorific in Indian culture. derived from Sanskrit.
Elin Morgan is a writer and communications professional from East London. Follow her on Bluesky.
OnLondon.co.uk provides unique, no-advertising and no-paywall coverage of the capital’s politics, development and culture. Support the website and its writers for just £5 a month or £50 a year and get things that other people won’t. Details HERE. Pocket Park mosaic photo credit: Tian Khee Siong and Royal Docks.