FIND YOUR OWN WAY HOME

- notes from a VERY disgruntled anarchist -

I was walking across the middle of Gillett Square which, for those who don’t know, is one of Gauleiter Ken’s ‘Green Spaces for London’

I have it on good authority this was not the first governmental job that its architect had undertaken, indeed it is alleged that he was designing a new exercise yard for Brixton Nick when the Mayor’s Office e-mailed through about the Square. It was urgent, so without too much difficulty he was able, with the addition of half a dozen standard Health and Safety government issue trees of the kind you can’t hang yourself from, to adapt the yard for the purpose. It’s even got a long iron-railed balcony for the security guards to keep an eye on the inmates, light firearms and surveillance cameras optional. 

Well, the middle of the square is a no man’s land between, at one end, mostly whites sitting inside drinking wine beneath the corporate issue fluorescent lighting, and, at the other end, mostly blacks sitting outside drinking lager beneath the government issue trees. In the evening, some of the whites step outside, wine glasses in hand, to escape the smoking ban inside. Warily looking around the hostile environment as if they’ve just alighted from a plane in darkest Africa, and fearful that the lager drinkers might rush across the square and divest them of wine, cigarettes and wallets alike, they take a quick sip and a drag before retreating again to the security of the smokeless zone. But now I hear that there’s a problem growing, call it cultural if you like, I’ll just call it the inevitable outcome of enforced gentrification, the kind of gentrification which requires barbed-wire fences around luxury beaches in exotic but poverty ridden locations. At the white end of things people are beginning to complain, they feel ‘threatened’, and in response Hackney Council are proposing to declare the Square and its surrounding area a ‘drink free zone’. So now the mostly white drinkers will have to stay inside with their drinks and outside with their smokes, while the mostly black drinkers can smoke to their hearts and lungs content while risking arrest for carrying brown paper bags.

Before leaving the square, I noticed one of the lager drinkers heaped up against a dry-stone wall that looked suspiciously like a military barricade. I sidled up to him and asked what he thought of the redevelopment of the Square and the Council’s proposed drinking ban. Looking up into the glaring sun, dimly aware that it was daytime, he demanded to know my credentials. ‘Who the fuck are you?’ he said. ‘An interested party.’ I replied. ‘Look here, chief,’ he choked, ‘the party’s over. I’m homeless, jobless and legless, but I’ve still got my dignity. Now fuck off.’
 
I fucked off to Dalston Station where, waiting for a delayed Silverlink train, I watched almost everyone else calling and tapping texts into their mobiles, letting their loved ones and not so loved ones know that they were waiting for a delayed Silverlink train on Dalston Station. Eventually we were told rather curtly over the crackling PA that the train was cancelled and it was recommended that ‘we find our own way home’. Throughout the forty-five minutes that I’d wasted on the platform surreptitiously puffing my way through a pack of Old Holborn carrying the warning ‘smokers die young’, and avoiding thoughts of dead children on the Baghdad streets, I’d been once asked for change, twice for a cigarette and thrice for a light while the PA kept up a constant mantra ordering ‘customers’ not to smoke, to look out for suspicious looking baggage, to beware of pickpockets, that Oysters weren’t valid and that surveillance cameras were watching our every move just in case we were smoking, were suspicious looking baggage or were fiddling with the Oyster we’d just picked from a fellow customer’s pocket. Okay, I grudgingly conceded, if they can’t supply the trains I guess it’s only reasonable that they don’t call us ‘passengers’ any more. I then joined the disgruntled crowd of customers filing up the greasy stairs. The announcement screen had still not given up on our train, it was ‘due’. The ticket office had the blinds pulled down so that the cowering staff inside could escape the abuse that they correctly assumed might have come their way, after all, the customers always right. But ever tried getting a refund? In fact, ever tried getting a train? There were two posters in the entrance hall, one asking for witnesses to a mugging the previous night, the other a message from the Mayor’s Office saying ‘What’s in store for your East End? Ask Ken.’

Now then, if I was a terrorist, which culturally I consider myself to be, the forthcoming Olympics would be cause for a great deal of lip-smacking, finger-licking good. I for one already know what’s in store, and so, I hazard, does Colonel Ken. We all know that security bills will run into the millions and that dangerous cover-giving allotments are being evacuated for the cause of peace, but where does that fit in with Boeings colliding with large buildings, with exploding Mercedes outside explosive discos or even, indeed, ballistic toecaps up the Khyber? Get real, Ken, it’s a set up and you know it. It was a forgone conclusion that London would ‘win’ the Olympic heist, ‘back the bid, back our boys’, just another collusion between Big Brother America, the CIA and little old lady Britain.

So why are MI6 and the CIA allowing East London to be set up as a sitting duck? There are countries in the world that aren’t as hated as Britain and America and who might, if it is possible, have benefited from the Olympic pantomime without threat of attack. As it is, the authorities are cynically aware of the risks and know that there’s more than enough time available for the ‘enemies of the State’ to make careful contingency plans. Let’s be clear on one thing, to the authorities we are mere pawns. If they want to build their Olympic City, they’ll evict us from our homes, bulldoze our social centres, demolish our schools and playgrounds and pour tarmac and concrete all over our communal hopes and aspirations. They’re already doing it, and that’s before the ‘real’ terrorists wreak their havoc. But when the terrorist attack does come, it will be ordinary people like you and I who suffer injury to life and limb. Just look at 9/11. We’ll probably never know the degree of complicity by the American State, but allegations of complicity remain rife. There’s got to be a similar game-plan somewhere in all this Olympic malarkey, and don’t tell me that the CIA and MI6 aren’t a part of it. Maybe America wants to consummate its wedding of fear with Britain to ensure that its ‘special relationship’ is not threatened by the evil temptress of mainland Europe? Or maybe Britain needs to prove its worth as a victim of terrorism and thereby be able to justify the ensuing global atrocities? Or perhaps American and British arms manufacturers need to ensure future conflicts for the benefit of their hard-done-by shareholders? Who knows, but sure as bad eggs are bad eggs there’s a profoundly conspiratorial stink in the air.

When the State’s murder of an innocent young Brazilian is treated as a Health and Safety issue, you shouldn’t need convincing that things have gone seriously bad. Happy Christmas. War is over, right through the head.