LETTER FROM LONDON OCTOBER 2O15


Autumn begins to retreat and winter advances as London becomes colder, the light more anaemic and the trees drop their foliage to stand naked and forlorn. I have taken to clinging to my duvet in the morning. Why do we feel so safe in bed when in truth we are at our most vulnerable? A duvet and pillow little protection against earthquake, fire, flood or masked intruder. Still it is the pleasantest of illusions, snuggled up in warmth and comfort we feel ourselves holding the world at bay.

Last week walking along the South Bank, the Thames the colour of dirty cement, the sky slate grey, and as I looked across at St Paul's London seemed to have lost some of its glamour. Perhaps it was my mood, the day, or simply the past viewed with rose coloured spectacles. Still the London skyline has certainly changed immensely since when I arrived in the city in the early 1980’s, and not always for the better. Whole sections of the City now look like those brochures you see for Abu Dhabi or the other oil rich Gulf States. These are places without any of the real substance of city life which, whilst it breaths, is always sticky, jostling and pushing, always messy. Instead we are presented with sterile palaces of steel and glass and height. This is of course no accident since London is awash with cash, not all of it legitimate, from foreign investors, whose interests are only in making more money in London’s inflated property market; of the civic and cultural life of the capital they care nothing. Whilst London experiences the worst Housing Crisis since World War 2 what is actually being built is more luxury apartments like 1 Tower Bridge. 
Promo Picture for 1 Tower Bridge

 The steep and steady decline in the building of low cost housing, I refuse to use the Governments slippery term affordable, - everything is affordable if you have the money,- combined with an assault on the whole idea of social housing has been one of the greatest acts of class war since the assault on the mineworkers in the early eighties.
St Paul's of course, along with the Tower, Tower Bridge and Big Ben, is one of the iconic landmarks of London. Places that have lived and seen generations come and go, the latter particularly true of St Paul's. Standing in its shadow I was reminded of George Orwell’s remark apropos of the cathedral during the Blitz, that the cross on top of its dome should be upturned to become a sword. 
St Pauls During the Blitz

St Paul's had already seen many generations of Londoners come and go when Orwell wrote those words, and if you close your eyes while standing in the grounds adjacent you can feel their presence.
The Blitz destroyed 19 Churches, 16 built by Christopher Wren after the Great Fire. Of the 34 guild halls, 31 were destroyed. And when Paternoster Row, centre of London’s publishing industry, was destroyed, around 5 million books were lost. The cultural destruction in Germany was very much greater. We are rightly appalled by the barbarism of Daesh but when Europe reflects on its own past there is much to make you want to weep.

The sight of Cameron and the British Establishment fawning over the Chinese delegation and the President of the Communist Republic truly turned the stomach. What was truly disgraceful was pro-Tibetan demonstrators being arrested for simply waving a Tibetan flag. Cameron makes much of the promotion of ‘British values,’ whatever that might me mean. However I would suggest that they do not involve condoning oppression, torture and denial of basic human rights, nor indeed should they embrace arresting people for simply waving flags.
Pro-Tibet Protester Being Arrested 


The appointment of the truly odious Stalinist Seamus Milne to the post of Labour Head of Communications is a sign that Jeremy Corbyn intends a scorched earth policy. He’ll go down in the bunker with McDonnell and Seamus and probably take what is left of the Labour Party with him.

At the moment I am covering the Nour festival. More of this to come. However one thing about having to provide copy on time is that it improves my self-discipline. Deadlines having always been a problem for me and, unlike Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I do not enjoy the whooshing sound as they fly by. However, having lived in a deadline free world, I have come to appreciate the value of a point in time when a piece has to be nailed down, signed sealed and delivered. The alternative of staring out at a landscape without borders has led to numerous pieces going unfinished, having petered out in a deadline free void.

Lisbon 1974
Have just finished watching Night Train to Lisbon, with Jeremy Irons and Tom Courtney amongst others. What a truly wonderful film. Containing great subtly, understated emotion and nuance. Jeremy Irons is superb as the diffident English professor. Filmed on the Streets of Lisbon, it is a film celebrating the resistance to the Salazar regime, which culminated in the 1974 revolution which freed Portugal from over 50 years of dictatorship. The Portuguese revolution is an event now largely forgotten outside of Portugal. This feels sad to me, not only as the events inspired me at the time but because the left could learn much from the period. It would repay a fresh visit. So any historians out there please consider taking a closer look.



I write this surrounded by paperwork, unwashed dishes and an untidy apartment. I try to tell myself that this is ‘Bohemian’…try but fail.

AT October 2015



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