Divide and conquer in EC4?

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Today a day in the City like none before. I’m not a total stranger to peaceful civil protest – partly due to student days in the "manif "mecca that is Paris – but if you do engage in this form of democratic action, you’re accustomed to march around Westminster or Hyde Park. If you are one of the many that seem to have a default huffish disapproval of any form of demonstration, then put down Grazia for a second and reflect for a moment that you would still only enjoy serfdom if many others had not done it before you. To see civil protest, even civil unrest, in the City of London, the new location chosen for obvious reasons, is something else. After many years in investment management, my associations with the City couldn’t be more different. To see this hyperinstitutional place so transformed and in the minds of some at least – invaded – by democracy, the mob, had something of the surreal about it.

I head first to the Bank, one focus of protest. Relief at the lack of ambient tension my first and welcome reaction. Threadneedle Street felt like it was hosting a carnival. A heavy, alert (but cheerful) police presence dividing the street in sectors, sure, but the drumming, whistling, dancing and cheering of the protesters, the observers (and everyone in between) completely unthreatening. It felt momentarily like someone had opened a wormhole from Cornhill to Rio de Janeiro, albeit , regrettably, minus the Samba Boys. The first placard I read: Resistance is Fertile summed up the serious but smiling nature of the demonstration’s embryonic phase.

Much of the clearly identifiable strictly-observer-only attendees were actually city workers; amused or bemused but with a pronounced lack of the condescending disapproval I may have expected and maybe with just a seasoning of solidarity? Certainly analogous to the atmosphere of a trouble-free football terrace. To witness this lot in mandated casuals was actually quite amusing; just because the Essex money broker lads were in tight Abercrumble & Vadge and gleaming trainers instead of pin stripe (that they actually never wear anyway – that’s the insurance brokers), it didn’t make them any more difficult to identify. It’s not hard to understand why city firms’ management were probably advised and felt obliged to instruct their staff to dress down through reasons of duty of care. Lynch mobs were dreaded. Nevertheless I don’t think you can underestimate the profundity of this sartorial limitation. Bosses actually decreed that staff must spend the whole day in a part of town they inhabit at least 5 days a week in disguise. Prudentially precautious? Or is it just me that senses a hint of shame, a veneer of cowardice? 

One female marketing/ops (meaning given on request) -type person was nevertheless only very slightly dressed-down. She obviously finds it impossible to operate minus twin set and heels, think Joseph. At one point she seemed aghast: “Oh no, they can’t arrest Jesus!” (Jesus .. as in stop usury in the Temple Jesus… did appear under pursuit by 3 officers, but they were only using his wake in the crowd created by the crucifix for speed). But then she confidently informed me that no-one protesting would have a job and are living off her taxes. £35 a week? Hmmm. Not thought through that one. She was the most upset by her presumption of their ignorance of what the City does. If only they understood what goes on then she could respect their protest. Interesting point. But I do wonder if she herself had a good grasp of CDS-squared, for example? Did she understand the unquantifiable level of multilayered, opaque, illiquid investment in US sub-prime? Did she see through the fog and capture why these products had the same investment grade as a FTSE 100 Company? Doubt it very much: and there resides a more interesting point. Most in ‘the City’ did not grasp what sections of their institutions were up to. In some cases the management didn't 'know'. I bet no-one (except maybe 5 managers and a quarter of the board) at Lehman for example knew their Temple was about to flounder. The conclusion: the City workers, the (vast majority of the) protesters and the public in general share a much commoner interest than they realise (look what’s been agreed today). Yet they are projected as being on different sides.

Within a nanosecond the atmosphere plummeted: destination Armageddon. Some violence erupted. I cannot comment on the nature of the trigger and don’t fancy the violent thug / incendiary police debate; I did not remotely see enough to make an assessment. I only saw one very bloodied police man and then the very bloodied protester photograph on the cover of the Standard. Not that a tit for tat analysis is appropriate either. The speed of change of atmosphere was exhilarating, yet petrifying. The tone of chorus stepped down to something markedly more adversarial. The police ran in, shields, batons etc; the (non-fighting crowd) ran out the other way, a painful collection of moments of panic. The already relatively narrow Threadneedle Street now feeling like the smallest medieval City alley. Remember Cheapside next time, it’s wider. Just to calm things down someone let off a red flare, nice. Thankfully for my trachea no CS gas ensued. But for the record; the 'RBS building' into which a storming was attempted was already vacant and embellished with its For Let signs. Thanks, as ever, to Sky News for giving us a version of events totally divorced from reality.

It did calm down again. It was, as ever, a tiny, tiny minority of people involved; this was no poll tax riot. Extraordinarily, the potential average per capita loss due to the current crisis dwarfs by orders of magnitude any perceived loss to Maggie’s Poll Tax, but the Poll Tax was much easier to understand. Whoever was behind the violent escalation however, managed to assert a permanent degradation in the event. The police water-tightened cordons, very scary dogs were corralled in, the mounted police arrived in serious number. Determined but joyful(?) civil action had irretrievably descended into conflict. Movement was suppressed. The music died. The sirens and shouting of police instructions urgently incessant. There were sides to be on. Shame. Inevitable?

Being trapped in the central pen, but not being one of the few after a fight, not an enviable outcome, fortunately I was not.

Further back amongst the (still mainly city boy) ‘spectators’, how were people reacting to the paradigm shift? Some disgust, anger and disapproval at both ‘sides’, yes, but maybe a smidgen of delight at ‘a bit of action’? Sure there was. Quite a lot of it. Modern coliseum, Big Brother, small riot: wherever or whatever, quite a lot of English do love to watch a fight.

Tiring of observing the residual tension undulate down the street, I made my way to Bishopsgate to check out Climate Camp. The short transfer was unexpectedly lovely. The roads, lanes and alleys of EC4 were void of diesel fumes, substituted for a while by the milling groups of demo tourists and bathed in a lovely spring sun. Serious media hardware everywhere. It was just gorgeous to see the square mile like this. Turning from London Wall into Bishopsgate, I got all in a tizz at the thought of a second wormhole encounter in one day. Or someone had just teleported Glastonbury to the City. Tents everywhere, students basking in the sun, talks and various demonstrations of non fossil fuel energy. And a compost loo. I don’t know how the rest of the night panned out, but if there ever was a model protest, it was this one.

Quiet Expropriation

I was out shopping the other day. Not in the normal sense. For me, when shopping feels like shopping it instantly becomes a chore – an unpleasant one at that. I tend more to shop as a sideline, some other task or occupation predominating concurrently. If I were active in hunter-gather times, I would've always needed an alternative excuse to be out there – researching wild life for the next cave paint or some other pre-emption. Shopping comfortably occupies the space of jobs best done when not thought about too much category. My excuse this time was photography – I was out taking images. And I came on my bike, as usual. Nothing strikes you as problematic there. I was with a friend too and we had an (expensive) but delicious lunch at Carluccio's. Oh, and the suit I purchased cost the best part of £300. Still nothing obviously awry. Bike, camera, lunch, clothes shopping. Expenditure in the region of £350. All normal activities on a London afternoon.

But we weren't in London, not any more, not as you expect. We were in the new half western half of Spitalfields. And apparently this is a private estate. Ok, fair enough. Yes, fair enough indeed. For them. You are most welcome on the estate to impart some of your wealth to the businesses there; be they sartorial providers or one of the very nice but rather-too-predictable-to-be-exciting restaurant chains (when did you last see an independent catering business open in a new development?) You are very welcome, as the potential client of all these businesses and hence ultimately The Estate itself. But despite the fact they would be bankrupt without you, you'd better obey their rules.

Every single form of post or railing or any vertical appendage of any kind is emblazoned with its Cycles Forbidden, Private Property sign. There are certainly hundreds of these notices installed; how painful. When the plans were drawn up for this contentious development, and somebody was cooking the deal for the private estate, which turkey in the local authority (presumably the City of London) thought it wouldn't be necessary to oblige them to be bike friendly? At least to compel them to install sufficient bike storage on The Estate. There are pitifully insufficient bike racks in the area, check it out.

So here we are. It's not that charming corner of your city that you love to wander aimlessly around in any more. You are now a visitor on someone else's estate. You must come and spend. Then leave. There is something in this titular reality that is undeniably tainted. Renovated in an impressive style on one hand, albeit too monochrome, this cherished, historical, public district has been ruined on the other. Duly infuriated by all this irrational 'for fuck's sake, don't you get it yet?' antibikeism, I eventually found a suitable lamppost adorning a pavement of an estate-bordering street. Safely on public land. Not so simple. When I returned to my bike, The Agents of The Estate had decorated it with a lovely sticker. My bike was about to be clamped! Bike, clamped, yes that's right. Now near apoplectic, I removed said sticker and stormed upstairs to the Estate Management Office (do these people think they are Sandringham or something?) The agent was, to be fair, more friendly than you would expect nowadays and tried to assure me that my bike was on a private part of the street, not the public zone. The what? He even tried to visually demarcate some invisible border. Unaware I couldn't care less if it belonged to Big Liz herself, he was on and on about the private bloody estate ad nauseum, ad infinitum, ad up your arse-eum. What nonsense is this? Who let this happen? Spitalfields is Spitalfields. It's an old market with a new bit added on. It's full of shops, cafés and restaurants, walkways and piazzas. It's criss-crossed with streets, ancient thoroughfares and rights of way. It's a very strange form of private property indeed.

Irritating, sure, but all a bit predictable really. London 2008 is an increasingly great place to cycle but the antis cling on like some desperate, ousted, huffing aristocracy. The security guard of The Estate actually told me they won't allow people to secure bikes to posts and railings because the owner ... doesn't like the look of them. I was sober. There was no chance of an auditory hallucination; he actually said it. So, sod it, we don't let them get to us with our impermeable duck backs etc. Loving photography, I try to shed the all too familiar feeling of harassment in our fair city and wander off to take photographs. 'Excuse me sir,' came the polite Nigerian accent. 'I'm sorry sir but you cannot take photos in this place.' Gulp. Swallow. Sigh. 'This is a private estate.' I immediately have one of those visions of someone committing spontaneous murder with a heavy frying pan that you see in films. That moment when your characteristic cool is suddenly annihilated by pettiness and it all gets far too much. Fortunately I didn't quite lose it so; at least I had no suitable Le Creuset in easy reach. But I wasn't having any of this nonsense either. You just, sometimes, have to fight back. 'I'm sorry, what are you talking about? Of course I can take photographs here,' I calmly, politely reply. 'No sir, sorry you can't. Well, it depends, it depends on the camera. You need to write in for permission.' I'm starting to wonder if I'd taken the wrong turn and unwittingly biked to Narnia. Or Berlin, circa 1940. What the flock? By all accounts, if you have a small camera then it's fine, but if we're talking an SLR then we have a problem. Some mobile phones have cameras not significantly inferior to my SLR these days, but that's not the point. I didn't give in. I stayed polite and full of smiles but carried on taking photos.

The guard left me alone. But the problem lingered – it was hard to not let them ruin the day. In so many tiny but innumerable ways life in London is so controlled. In isolation, every measure is tolerable, often justifiable and easy to comprehend. Cumulatively, it's becoming insufferable. We are increasingly disenfranchised such that trying to enjoy our city is becoming a veritable challenge. Resist. It's your city. Love it as you want to. As it happens, I'm writing this in Barcelona. Chatting to an acquaintance last night who plans to move here without delay, I ask why. The answer simple: 'I'm over London, I can't bear all the rules any more.' Amen.

Banishing the hungry

From: Simon Jones [mailto:drsrjones@hotmail.com]
Sent: 13 November 2007 13:30
To: oliver.hatch@londoncouncils.gov.uk
Subject: London Local Authorities Bill - Nov 2007 - Free Refreshment Distribution

Dear Mr Hatch:

I am writing to comment on the proposal to criminalise the distribution of food and drink on council-designated land in London, as defined in your consultation document, with a expressed focus of preventing homeless ‘soup-runs’.

When one first reads this, it is with some sense of disbelief. The potential heartlessness of such a move has led some to comment on the internet that this must in fact be a joke, albeit a bizarre one.

However, unfortunately this is not a joke but rather a serious proposal being put forward by a genuine proposer. It would, naturally, be interesting to know who or what community or commercial interest is in fact behind this. Given this affects the use of public land (note my use of term rather than council-designated) then I would expect a transparent declaration of all interests to be appropriate here.

In any case, given the very limited information provided by the above-referenced document, it would appear that the problem being raised is nuisance to properties adjacent to soup-runs, whether residential or commercial.

Now, the first thing I think is important here is the use of the word nuisance; it’s a dangerous term. Nuisance, used euphemistically, can simply be an expression of nimbyism - “we don’t want that sort around here” - kind of thing. However, nuisance can also be very serious, including anything from noise and litter to harassment and even violence. Abolishing the right to give food in a public place to those in need (something that may actually be enshrined in law) is an extremely serious proposal. It is a right any citizen possesses today. Given the potential seriousness of this matter, I would say then that it is the responsibility of London Councils to be much more explanatory and descriptive when outlining such a position and not rely on imprecise terms such as nuisance, without any accompanying evidence.

The second important thing I note from this proposal comes from its different possible interpretations. It’s very easy to have an instinctive reaction of horror when reading this – a revulsion at the fact that in 2007’s London the rich will gladly banish the destitute from their doorsteps, harking back to Dickens’s days. But hold on, this ‘nuisance’ thing again... Is it simply people not wanting to have the hungry fed in their vicinity? If so, then the horror is indeed genuine, and indeed society is regressing backwards so quickly then I don’t even want to see the future. If this is simple heartlessness then London Councils must screw a million copies of this proposal up and throw them all in the middle of Lincoln’s Inn Fields or some other common soup-run location. Then that really will be nuisance. London Councils also represent the homeless, although by definition not having a fixed address they are a lot less vocal.

But, and this is a big but, what if this nuisance is real nuisance? A source well acquainted with soup-runs comments that they can be accompanied by “scuffles and bullying” and gang activity can be present. Now things start to look rather different. However, if such problems are occurring, then banning soup-runs is hardly the solution. Those people need to be fed (and receive all the other ancillary services at such locations: advice, fact-finding, support etc). So if this a matter of riverains having to deal with genuine trouble caused by some / a small number / a tiny minority of soup runs and raising a genuine issue with the London Boroughs then it surely cannot be local government’s response to simply say, ‘oh, ok, we’ll ban them then’.

Might the councils otherwise feel some obligation to provide indoor facilities for food distribution? Or possibly policing the system in some way? I’m always seeing Southwark’s ‘Community Wardens’ doing nothing much at all around Shad Thames and More London, maybe they could help? Nevertheless, this unintelligent knee-jerk response is exactly the most terrible solution to this potential but not-yet-quantified problem. Let’s hope some rationality prevails and that the authorities deign to actually engage with the organisations concerned to improve this situation. Else someone go wake up Dickens.

When engaging the public on this matter London Councils need to better summarise the real extent of any problem. One expert in this area, Jon May at Queen Mary, does not seem to think there are any of the problems I discuss above.

On a final note, there is something in this proposal that leaves a very bad taste in the mouth (pun excusing notwithstanding); the proposal contains a proposed exemption: free sample distribution for marketing purposes outside retail premises. The irony, now I feel really sick.

Please don’t do this.

Best regards,

Dr Simon Jones