The Great Smog of 1952

Today marks the 60th anniversary of one of Britain’s worst disasters, one that is surprisingly obscure (I only found out about it because it forms the backdrop to a Doctor Who novel) and yet which cost the lives of around 12,000 people.

Frankly the Great Smog of 1952 sounds like the plot of a horror movie – weather conditions and air pollution combined to create a thick, choking smog that slowly poisoned those who inhaled it. It consumed the city, leaving a sooty residue in its wake and even making its way indoors, reducing visibility to a couple of metres. Descriptions sound almost apocalyptic in a strangely London-ish sort of way; it summons up images of Jack the Ripper prowling foggy, gas-lit streets, a mysterious, silent killer on the move with no-one entirely sure what was happening until it was too late. Londoners were used to fog, of course, but this was different; it was only after the smog cleared and people started to compare notes did the authorities realise that it had killed in the region of 12,000 people.

Not only is this tragic and somehow terrifying, it’s also mind-blowing – this happened within living memory, within the lifetime of my parents, and yet it’s relatively unknown. It had a great impact on environmentalism and legislation around acceptable levels of pollution in the UK but it’s not among the household names of British disasters, considering it killed more people than the Great Fire of London, which everyone’s heard of.

And so the Great Smog of 1952 is my own personal reminder that history is a lot bigger than we learn about at school. Sometimes huge and dramatic events take place that are forgotten with a few decades. The history books are fickle.

But they’re very, very interesting…

St. Paul’s and the Protests

I’ve been writing a lot about the protests that have been sweeping the globe over the last few months, and I feel a complete fraud when I do – I’m not out there on the frontlines, I’m just another blogging commentator that hasn’t been teargassed or arrested or yelled at by the 99%. I was thinking of leaving the subject alone from now on, but then St. Paul’s Cathedral got involved with Occupy LSX…

The background: Occupy LSX was one of the protest movements that emerged in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street. Their original plan was to set up camp at the London Stock Exchange at Paternoster Square – however, as that’s private property, an injunction was taken out, forcing the protestors to relocate to the courtyard outside the cathedral, and there they’ve been ever since. And let’s not kid ourselves, it’s been messy – The Chancellor of St. Paul’s, Dr. Giles Fraser asked the police to leave the protestors in peace, an act which echoes the idea of churches-as-sanctuary, but the Bishop of London has since asked them to leave; the cathedral was closed due to ‘health and safety reasons’ arising from Occupy LSX’s camp, but now looks set to reopen, and yet Fraser has now handed in his resignation. The impression I get is that the most iconic church in the country has unexpectedly found itself in the middle of a situation that it doesn’t quite know how to react to – stand with the protestors because of Christ’s concern for the poor? Or stand aside from politics in order to concentrate on services and prayer?

But wait, this isn’t just about politics. This is about names and symbols.

St. Paul’s is an iconic part of London’s architectural landscape, but it’s more than that. The photograph of the cathedral’s dome surrounded by smoke and flames during the Blitz has become a symbol of the city’s – the nation’s - solidarity, defiance in the face of adversity and, well, hope. Towards the end of 1940, Churchill directed firefighters to make sure St. Paul’s survived the constant air-raids – “The Cathedral must be saved, damage to the fabric would sap the morale of the country.” After all, St. Paul’s becomes the focal point for events of national importance – celebrations at the end of the First and Second World Wars, for instance, and the funeral of Princess Diana. After 9-11, crowds gathered at the Cathedral to express grief and solidarity with America. St. Paul’s is a focal point for the nation, and so it belongs, not to the 1%, not even to the 99%, but to all of us. In this sense, the protestors should be allowed to stay, as long as the Cathedral can operate freely.

But that’s when St. Paul’s runs into another issue – the role of church and state. Whether they let the protestors stay or not, a stand has to be taken, and that’s where bits of theology will be thrown around. One idea is that the church should keep its nose out of politics, based on the biblical story of Jesus paying his taxes with the words “Give back to Caeser what it Caesers and give to God what is God’s”. Which sounds fine on the surface, but even the people who heard that first time around were perplexed – I guess it raises a sneaky question of what exactly Caeser – kings, rulers, politicians, the state – has claim over that God doesn’t. The original story sounds like Jesus evading a trick question by being smarter than those trying to trip him up.

Of course, the other Bible story that’s evoked by this is Jesus kicking moneylenders out of the Temple in Jerusalem. “My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations,” he shouts as he overturns the tables of moneychangers and merchants, “But you have made it a den of robbers!” The message is traditionally taken as being that commerce shouldn’t become more important than faith, but maybe there’s a wider message than that. The moneychangers were set up in the Court of the Gentiles, the furthest point into the Temple that non-Jews could go; effectively, one of Jesus’s complaints is that merchandising is stopping people from getting to God, and I guess that extends to things other than money. As grace and accessibility to God is one of the themes of his teaching, I don’t think Jesus would be overjoyed at a church being closed by external forces.

By that same token, I don’t think he’d be impressed with a church charging £14.50 to get in.

With all that in mind, remember who St. Paul was – the guy who took the teaching of Jesus into the non-Jewish world. Symbols again – St. Paul’s should be accessible. If it’s not, well, there’s a problem.

But while we’re talking about Jesus, let’s not forget that concern for the poor was one of his key themes. Many say that he’d be standing with the Occupy crowds, and while I don’t think it’s quite that easy to associate him with any particular cause or politics, I think he’d sympathise passionately. After all, this is the man who started his public work by taking a mission statement from the prophet Isaiah:  “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,  because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Any church should work towards following Jesus in his concern for the poor, downtrodden and the oppressed, and St. Paul’s offering support to the protestors is a part of that. The church should be a symbol of hope for the hopeless and helpless.

But maybe the real conflict of symbols is across the street. Look at where the protestors orginially wanted to camp – Paternoster Square, hope of the Stock Exchange. Pater Noster is Latin for “Our Father”, or the Lord’s Prayer, and while now the Square is symbol of the economic establishment, it’s named after a prayer that’s radical and revolutionary – it fundamentally can’t be Establishment, because its second line is “Your Kingdom come, Your will be done” – God’s Kingdom, not that of commerce or politics or the media. Praying the Lord’s Prayer is about aligning your values to God’s, and if there’s one thing we can be sure of, a corrupt banking and finance system isn’t aligned with God and Christ’s concern for the poor.

I’m no theologian, but it seems to me that the whole issue with St. Paul’s, Occupy and the City of London is a battlefield of spiritual ideas, almost a race for the soul of Christianity in the city. Not only does the Cathedral have to figure out who it’s going to side with, but they need to do that in a way that is in line with how Jesus would act – uncompromising but full of grace, compassionate but outspoken. And those who work in Paternoster Square may need to remember the ideas and prayers embedded in the stones beneath them, as the idolatry of the corrupt makes nations and economies tremble. Whose will be done?

 

There’s a quick follow-up to this post here.

 

 

 

One Country, Two Worlds? Can we explain the riots?

I don’t think it’s being naive or ignorant to suggest that no-one really knows why there have been explosions of violence and looting throughout the UK over the last few days. At worst, some of the explanations put forward are facile; at best, the explanations that ring true feel incomplete, the key to the cypher missing and the reason for the riots remaining a terrifying enigma. It’s clear just from watching the news that this seems to be a war of two worlds; the problem is defining what those worlds are.

The most obvious explanation is that this is about the rich/poor divide, and it’s true that the majority of riots arose from poorer communities. This makes sense; throughout Britain’s poorer towns and cities are families experiencing third, even fourth generation ‘worklessness’, where low educational attainment combined with a lack of unskilled jobs have produced significant unemployment and all its attendant problems.

But wait – ask anyone working in regeneration and they’ll tell you that’s been the case for years. And for all there’s been condemnation of rampant criminality, as if the riots are being carried out by a subspecies of trolls who have emerged from their hiding place to threaten civilised humanity, we can’t ignore the fact that David Cameron and Boris Johnson have enjoyed, well, rampaging during their time with Oxford’s Bullingdon Club. Not quite the same as the recent riots, of course, but not all that different, and when you consider the number of impoverished people who didn’t riot, making this a rich/poor thing isn’t telling the whole story. After all, the riots were partly organised by Blackberrys and Twitter, if you can access these it’s debatable as to exactly how impoverished you are.

Ahh yes, technology. Hearing police and MPs discussing Twitter, Facebook and BBM was a slightly disconcerting experience. It’s not that there isn’t a conversation to be had about the role of technology in organising large groups of motivated people – look at the Arab Spring – but the way in which social networks were mentioned was, well, faintly antediluvian, like Marty McFly introducing rock and roll to the fifties a few years too early.

So maybe the two different worlds we’re talking about are those of Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants. After all, one MP wants Blackberry Messenger banned because it allows ‘unsophisticated’ criminals to ‘outfox’ the police. Of course, the proper response to this is to ask why the police are so incapable of responding to new technologies? Social Networking has been a part of life for a few years now, it’s time to get used to it, save we end up demonising Twitter users, like Barack Obama and National Treasure Stephen Fry.

Of course, let’s not kid ourselves, even those of us who are used to technology get confused by it. Back in the day, when I was at primary school, a rumour circulated that a gang from the local high school were going to come down and start bricking us all. It never happened, being a fairly standard urban myth that almost everyone has encountered at some time in some form or other. Yesterday Twitter was reporting rioting in a whole number of townships; most of this was rumour, getting out of control as people retweeted without confirming if their local Asda was really burning down. It was urban myth creation at the speed of broadband, and while it highlighted that reporting news is becoming increasingly social, citizen journalism could really do with checking its facts. Natives or Immigrants, we could all do with learning to curate the digital world. After all, native or not, it’s pretty stupid to pose on Facebook with a stolen PS3 and not expect the police to take a look.

What other factors? Race? No, communities seemed fairly well represented on both sides of the equation.

Police vs the Kids? Not an argument without merit, perceived or otherwise, but I wonder how many people rioting have even heard of Mark Duggan?

The Engaged vs the Disengaged? Well, define disengaged. While it might be fair to say the rioters aren’t exactly participating in their communities, it’s also true that senior politicians seemed reluctant to cut short their holidays while the capital burned, and still seem blissfully unaware of how badly the hacking scandal has tainted authority in this country. And how much respect would you have for the police if the only time you encountered them was when they were stopping and searching you for no good reason?

If I’m honest, it’s disengagement that rings most true to me – I could understand it just being criminality if rioters were looting other communities, but their own? Not fearing the police is one thing, but surely you’d think twice about reprisals from the bloke next door who owns the off licence you just looted. The whole thing looked like a bizarre, corporate form of self-harm – no, bear with me, some of the reasons for self-harm could be relevant on a corporate level – dissociation, lack of control, poverty, unemployment. But then some rioters say they’re having fun and just using the whole situation as an excuse to steal some new trainers, less a scream of repressed frustration, more an expression of greed. And it’s not easy to have sympathy for greed.

All of which is to say there aren’t any easy answers, and while it would be easy to blame Twitter or immigrants or a lack of hanging and flogging, it’s not that straight-forward. We know that, because whenever someone tries to explain the Weird UK Summer of 2011, they sound unfinished, or just plain wrong. I’m fully expecting the riots to stop as suddenly as they began, leaving us all blinking and muttering about mass hysteria and social contagion.

Perhaps this isn’t something we can’t explain, not without looking at every facet of England (and it seems to have been an English, not British thing so far). Are we prepared to stop and reflect and change to that extent? Or will we demonise and condemn and never quite figure out what went wrong during a very strange August weekend in London?

More Good News in the Wake of the Riots

Another day, another outbreak of rioting. But as in yesterday’s post, good news still manages to find its way through:

The Sikh Community of Southall – There will come a point when certain people will use these riots to stir up racial tensions. When that happens, remember that hundreds of Sikh men (some of them with ceremonial swords!) were on the streets defending both their temple and their community.

Post-it Notes – in Peckham, a boarded up pound shop is now covered with Post-it notes, all of them explaining why residents love their community.

Wizards – There are no words.

Station Announcements – As quoted on Twitter (see link): “This is a country filled with courage. Everything will be alright. Have a nice evening.”

So, has anyone got any other good news stories from behind the riots?

Good News in the Wake of the Riots

We watched coverage of our nation’s capital as it rioted and burned; others, fewer in number but more immediately affected, watched it from their living room windows as businesses that had stood for generations were set alight and looted. The events of the last three nights have been horrifying, with a thousand potential explanations but none of them ringing true.

It would be easy to see this in apocalyptic terms, forces of destruction and anarchy let loose upon the world as financial markets plummet and the corruption of authority figures exposed. But this isn’t armageddom, a cleansing divine flame hasn’t got a grudge against Nandos and Footlocker. Today seems to be the start of the hangover, but also the moment communities were able to regroup and reclaim. So instead of this post being a further rant, I wanted to link to some of the good news that’s emerging; before the recriminations start, notice the range of age, class and ethnicity represented below – if the country’s going to rebuild, we need to hold on to that, not the darker angels of human nature that are sure to arise in the next few days…

Riot Wombles – After the recent hockey riots in Vancouver, affected communities arranged mass clean-up operations to get things back together. Well, the same thing has happened in London, Birmingham and Liverpool, with thousands of people pledging support. And, because this is Britain, the name that’s sticking to these volunteers is ‘Riot Wombles. Somehow this is far more British than rioting.

The Turkish and Kurdish Communities of Hackney – A group of residents stand up for their area by defending Kingsland Road in Hackney.

Restaurant Staff Defend Diners With Rolling Pins – Similar to the link above, kitchen staff at The Ledbury restaurant in Notting Hill defended diners with kitchen utensils when it was raided by rioters.

Lady yells at rioters – But in spite of all the above, a new hero has emerged. A lone lady, walking stick in hand, yells at rioters to grow up and fight for a cause, not violence. The clip contains Some Bad Words, but given the circumstances I think we can forgive her…