Tag: London

Banksy’s new statue

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

The figure of “honour”, atop the rather mournful Guards Crimean War Memorial in the background, seems to be looking at the marching flag man and shrugging. “What can you do?”

On the edge of the Nakba Day Rally, walking away from it in the direction of the Tommy Robinson march, Banksy’s latest statue seen from the rear, and situated just outside the Atheneum on Lower Regent Street and Pall Mall, looked like it might have been an unlikely tribute to one of the mass trade union, Irish or Socialist leaders of the 1880s, whose demonstrations against unemployment and the Irish Coercion Acts in 1887 were met by volleys of empty champagne bottles flung from the upper windows of the Pall Mall “Gentlemen’s” clubs and a police assault in Trafalgar Square that led to 1 death and 400 injuries; with the army standing by with fixed bayonets. John Burn perhaps. The sort of statue you might see in a country in which the ruling class owns a revolutionary tradition. That of Danton on the Boulevard Saint Germain comes to mind.

However, even from the rear, there was something about the suit that was from a later period. And something about the mechanical toy style of marching that suggested the Right, not the Left.

Looking at it from the front makes all that clear. The huge flag, waving boldly and pointing ever onwards and upwards is blowing back across the marcher’s face, so that he can’t see where he is going. Blinded by belief. And he is stepping confidently forwards, off the edge of the plinth, at the foot of which all the kings horses and all the kings men would have a lot of trouble putting him back together again. The flag has no motif, so it can stand for any set of beliefs that blinds someone to facts and the reality of their situation. However, in the context of the dominant set of statues in London, almost all of which celebrate military figures from the days of Imperial pomp, and in the aftermath of the “put out the flags” movement, its obvious who his target is.

His own video of the erection of the statue underlines this.

As with all progressive statues in London, there will now be a struggle as reactionary forces in local government, like the Conservative Restoration in Westminster, seek to have it removed lest it lead people to think.

London Lockdown Lowdown

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

The skinny goblin Santa still suspended from his rope off that house in Kingsbury Road is looking increasingly like a hostage waiting in vain for a rescue from being trapped out of season.

One of my neighbours down the hill comes out of her house negotiating a shopping list over her shoulder with an elderly relative, gets to her car and calls to the toddlers strapped in the back seat- in a voice half way between forced jollity and grim determination – “Right. Who wants to go to ASDA?” – as though the tone would make it sound like Disneyland. From the back seats…silence.

Sadly, one of my downstairs neighbours – Mum, Dad, daughter, are moving. All COVID related. The landlords – who are getting on – have left for Ireland to quarantine in a quieter, sparser, greener place and are selling it out from under them. At the end of the first furlough period, both the Mum and the Dad downstairs were made redundant from their managerial roles in a hotel. Luckily, the Dad has found a job deputy managing a store – a rather posh one in Chelsea – and says he is the one member of the management team that hasn’t contracted the virus even though the streets are like a ghost town. This makes both him and his boss very nervous. Unfortunately the Mum has not and has had to claim Universal Credit. That makes them unacceptably precarious renters for far too many landlords; unwilling to accept tenants on benefit or solely dependent on one job in an uncertain environment. They have nevertheless found an unexpectedly affordable flat in Fitzrovia, near Regents Park, as the expected rent has dropped by 40% since last year – a sign of how much the centre of the city is hollowing out. This is part of the zone in the West End that is dead at the best of times, as so many houses and flats are owned as investments by absentee, often oversea, landlords and often not even rented out; so there are empty, lifeless streets lined with dark flats, and the occasional pedestrian scuttling nervously through the shadows.

All through the night, the foxes scream in the snow.