Lifelong Bermondsey resident John Cooper plans to celebrate his 102nd birthday this week with a sandwich and a cup of tea with his family.
But John’s low-key birthday celebrations should not be taken as a sign that he is content to enjoy the start of his second century quietly.
Speaking from his Southwark Park Road home this week, John had his say on the industrial disputes that have rocked the train services and the Tube, as well as the legal system, with more strikes possibly on the way.
100 years old and John is a Bermondsey lad through and through
Speaking about striking workers, he said: “I’m with them, obviously. Oh obviously. The likes of us, it’s not our fault the trouble that’s happening now. And yet they want to cut our wages. Something’s got to happen somewhere.
“We’ve done nothing to deserve it you know. I say ‘we’ because I was always a union man. But I never went on strike for more money, I always went on strike for better conditions.”
John worked as an engineer for the Peek Freans biscuit factory on Drummond Road for much of his career, but, as the News has previously reported, he walked out when told to make redundancies in his team.
“I’m a ‘small c’ conservative, I’ve voted Labour all my life. When I was a kid, jobs were local and you worked hard and you did five and a half days a week. But if you were sick, they came round, they looked after you. Nowadays, you work for someone, you get sick, you’re fired.”
Reflecting on his childhood, John said: “In those days we didn’t have nothing… if you were sick or ill, you’d go to the doctor, who’d charge you half a crown, which the old girl never had. If you had to go to Guy’s or St Thomas’ you were pushed there – you couldn’t get an ambulance, nothing like that.”
John recalled Alfred and Ada Salter, the husband and wife team who served as MP and mayor of Bermondsey from the 1920s onwards, and helped transform the area for the better.
“Dr Salter, what he did for Bermondsey,” he said. “Him and his wife Ada genuinely wanted to help people. He was genuine you know.”
John never met the Salters. “The only way we knew him was he used to have a bike, with these high handlebars. We used to take the mick out of anyone with a bike.
“We used to see him at the [Methodist] central hall, at the beginning of Bermondsey Street. We used to have the Christmas party, always finish up with a twopenny ha’penny toy. We’d have a cup of lemonade and all that. He was there.”
John still goes to the Ancient Foresters at the other end of Southwark Park Road every week, taking a taxi to and from the pub. He has cut his Guinness intake to a single pint per visit after a fall last year, and says his balance is less good than it was.
But the former footballer, boxer, long-distance runner, cricketer and bowls player said he “was always sporty”, adding: “that’s what kept me relatively young, I suppose.”