| Notes from a disgruntled anarchist
GOVERNMENT CAN DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH
By Penny Rimbaud
‘I’m not sitting next to that’, hissed the young mother, pointing vaguely in my direction, her dribbling child in arm, her three-wheeled monster baby-buggy blocking all exits, her four-wheeled people-carrier waiting somewhere off Church Street to belch out its carbon cataclysm, her self-righteous indignation further polluting the damp, morning air and clearly confusing the already flustered East European waitress.
I looked around, seeking out the cause of her concern: was there dog-shit on the floor, a page-three girl pinned to the wall exposing more than her lack of dignity, a potential child-molester lurking beneath the table? ‘Haven’t you got a no-smoking area?’ she continued, ignoring the number one health warning that few people ever seem to give a thought to: ‘up-tightness seriously damages your health and can lead to heart attack’.
Now aware that I was the ‘that’ to which she was referring, I took a long, satisfying drag on my cigarette and blew out smoke rings across the table, one of which circled the crochet-booted foot of her crotchety offspring. Outraged, she dumped the child into the three-wheeled monster baby-buggy and headed for the door, colliding with the in-coming monster buggy and entering into a brief altercation with its owner. The two children eyed-up each other with the kind of resigned suspicion that I normally associate with Fresh’n’Wild security guards. As I thumbed through a sauce-stained copy of yesterday’s Guardian in which Blair once again admitted that he was perhaps wrong about murdering thousands of Iraqi children, but that it had seemed right at the time, the replacement mother was building up for her incantation: ‘I’m not sitting…’
Two days earlier I had spent an evening at the Bulls Head Jazz Club in Barnes, one of the few true jazz clubs left in London, very much like Church Street’s sadly missed Old Vortex: cheap, scruffy, scurrilously impolite, inspiringly musical, but (and this was the shocker) no longer smoke-filled. Now, forgive me if I’m wrong, but, like Pablo Picasso and Lauren Bacall, jazz is synonymous with smoke, and never mind the Left Bank existentialists or, indeed, N16’s bar-hugging founder (and this despite the fact that he’s recently given up. See page xx). Playing that night at the Bulls Head was world-acclaimed, sexagenarian alto genius Pete King, who after a lifetime of heavy smoking can still blow as hard and fast as the youngest dude on the block. The audience was almost as thin on the ground as it was on top, and the drummer had broken down (his car, that is) on the Westway flyover, but the gig was a stormer. But, and this is a big but, why was it that one of Britain’s greatest musicians was expected to present a whole evening of inspired creativity minus the cigarettes which are clearly a necessary part of that creativity? Fine, if the audience isn’t allowed to smoke, they can bugger off elsewhere (and probably won’t come back), but performers have no such option. As it is, through every solo that wasn’t his, Mr King sucked unhappily on a Nicorette dummy, which in my view was insulting (particularly given that the Government, whose prohibition this is, happily rake in a nicotine tax on cigarette substitutes so that they can continue unabashed in their murder of Iraqi children).
Yes, I’m bored with the double-speak, bored with moralist Christians whose morality not only excuses, but promotes murder, bored with ASBO entrepreneurs justifying their anti-social behaviour on the grounds of shareholder responsibility, sick to death of being told what I should do, for example, to save the planet from global warming whilst corporate industrialists smoke their smoke, global capitalists smirk their smirk, smarmy politicians joke their joke (heard the one about the Iraqi children?) and self-righteous prigs like the mother with whom I had the above encounter joyfully drive off in their four-by-fours to the nearest Tesco Extra to stock up on out-of-season, plastic-wrapped global exploitation. Of course there’s ‘no such thing as society’ if greed is at the fore of the social programme, but that, like it or not, is the Free Market principle from which we all suffer. Never mind culture, where’s the profit? Sod community, where’s the dosh?
Two million people marched the streets of London in protest against the threatened illegal invasion of Iraq, and the lace-netting of Downing Street barely twitched. At what is possibly a conservative estimate, over six hundred and fifty thousand Iraqis have subsequently been bombed (if not nuked) into extinction (in our name), and now the US and UK Governments’ proposed Hydrocarbon Law will ensure that Iraqi oil is privatised into the hands of, yes, of course you know, Western Multinationals (in their name). So was it really necessary to mount what is in effect a genocide to get hold of one man, or was it more a case of bringing a country to its knees to get control of its oil? If Bush was that concerned about his ex-servant Saddam, why didn’t he simply send in a CIA hit-squad to do the job? They’ve done it most every other place on earth, so why not there? Simple, the Coalition (read Oilition) didn’t want to create a martyr, so they gave him a fair trial, one which conveniently circumvented the possibility of similar proceedings being taken against Bush and Blair for war crimes that far outweigh those of Saddam’s wildest dreams. So, they strung up their ex-puppet, and Iraq was free to pursue the golden promises of a democratic future: nightly bombings, daily shootings, street executions, up-against-the-wall rapes, inside-four-walls torture and the social, economic and cultural deprivation fast becoming synonymous with globalisation. Hey, but come on guys, Tony feels it’s right. It’s the same kind of drivel that we hear from all politicians. Just look at Brother Ken’s TFL (Transport For Losers, traceable by Oysters), his Olympic heist (a ‘Victory for London’ and a terrible loss for its people, particularly those unfortunate enough to inhabit the East End, and if you’ve got any doubts, just look at the rising costs both economic and social), or his blitzkrieg policy on urban regeneration (bugger the poor and then butter-up the rich: a love affair with capital, or outright rape?).
It’s people who make communities, and it’s businessmen and their lackey politicians who destroy them. Twenty-five years back, Church Street was a bohemian hang-out and even Islington hadn’t been swamped by high street big names and, perhaps more tellingly, Thatcher was yet to declare that there was no such thing as society. Stoke Newington still felt like it was a community: bums, beats, squatters, totters, artists, writers, nutters and a fair splattering of indigenous East Londoners. ‘Well, cor blimey, guvnor.’ Second-hand bookshops, bric-a-brac tat shops, butchers, bakers, candlestick makers, proper greasy spoons and real fish’n’chip shops serving up on yesterday’s news (‘Four Killed In Caravan Fire’), all of them free to get on with their own business outside corporate interference. There was even what was to become London’s most celebrated jazz club, the Vortex. But the irony is this. Over time, the Vortex became the heart of Church Street, a centre-point attracting trade throughout the day and late into the evening, trade which inevitably benefited other businesses. Smart restaurants sprung up all along the street, the plethora of already existing independent shops became just that little bit more up-market, and the estate agents, whose main interests had hitherto been trendy Islington, pricked up their ears and jumped onto the next 73 to Stokey. ‘Within walking distance of Church Street with its delightful boutiques and fine restaurants’ became the sales-pitch mantra. Gentrification was under way.
Enter Richard Midda of Mayfair: tennis player, alleged jazz fan, smooth-talking entrepreneur and aspirant global capitalist. With one or two smaller Church Street properties already in his bag, but with a well-trained eye for the biggest takings, Midda was drawn to the Vortex. He bought it, and within three years the Vortex was closed and the building was flattened (read Page???).
Like the Vortex, so Baghdad, and don’t bother to tell me that this is all a bit over the top. While the politicians simper on about regeneration, greedy corporate monsters and entrepreneurial fat-cats lick their lips and hunt around for the next killing. The illegal invasion of Iraq or, for example, the largely unreported genocide in West Papua supported in your name by successive British Governments, is part of the same programme that systematically undermined the unions, destroyed working-class unity and downgraded social
services whilst giving carte blanche to the travesties of globalisation. No one, but no one, can escape. As the wealthy elites carp on about the horrors of slavery, so they increasingly seek to ensure ours and those of every inhabitant of planet Earth. When they talk of making poverty history, they really mean creating a new market. As Africa is introduced to (i.e. force-fed) commodity culture, so it will become entrapped by a credit-card mentality far worse than the national debts that hitherto have been its scourge. Slavery or what? And just how free of that are you or I? Mortgage rates? Bank of England nothing. Just think French, think mort, think death. Not in my name? Get real. In Mammon’s monstrous mean-mindedness, we’re not names, were numbers: ones and zeros headed for the recycle bin. Meanwhile, and never mind the global warming with which they are inextricably synonymous, the global capitalists are basking on the beaches of the Bahamas. American Express? Call it a juggernaut and I’m all yours. |
