On Saturday one of my fellow Third Estaters (I’m assuming Reuben) tweeted:

Definitely don’t think the left should be calling for a state van [sic] on the EDL march

Image: lionheartphotography/flickr

While compelling, I think this view is seriously mistaken. Granted, it’s always a good idea to be wary of calling on the State to do anything which limits either civil liberties or freedom of expression, given the countless occasions when it’s proved itself willing to do so in unjustified and harmful ways. And yes, the recent riots have given rise to a volatile political environment in which any number of unpleasantly authoritarian measures are far more politically viable than they were just a few weeks back. Even before the riots concerns were being raised about the criminalisation of political protest, from the anti-royalist demonstrators at the Royal Wedding I linked to above to the UKUncutters arrested at Fortnum and Mason’s in March. You don’t have to be a die-hard liberal defender of the principle of “I disapprove of what you say…” to think that this isn’t a tendency we should be doing anything to encourage.

There are, though, a couple of very important counter-considerations. The first is that banning the Tower Hamlets EDL march wouldn’t exactly be an unprecedented step. The English Defence League has already been banned from holding marches at least three times in the past couple of years – in Luton, Bradford and Leicester. Whether those bans were right or wrong, a ban on the proposed 3 September protest wouldn’t be sliding further down the slippery slope of authoritarianism, just a continuation of the same policy towards the EDL that’s always existed; letting them demonstrate as they please, except when practical concerns about the likely consequences of a march are judged to outweigh the right to freedom to protest – and the second counter-consideration is that in this case such concerns are very well-founded indeed. It’s hardly a secret that EDL demonstrations have a strong tendency to turn violent. How likely is it that an EDL march through a largely Muslim area less than a month after the worst riots the country’s experienced in decades is going to pass off peacefully? (As an aside, I’m well aware there are some on the left, whether they openly admit it or not, who are quite keen on the idea of a ruck with the EDL, but suffice to say that while I’m not such a naïve liberal that I think violence can’t ever be justified when it comes to countering the far right, actively desiring that it occur is stupid beyond belief.)

There are real and pressing concerns about the growth of State restrictions on political protest in the UK, but they pale into insignificance compared to the danger of serious violence if the 3 September march goes ahead. I don’t relish being in the position of calling on the government to shut down yet another political protest, but it’s by far the least worst option.

The BBC’s latest offering to the sitcom gods is Rev, the usual half hour, oh-they’re-in-a-pickle-now kinda thing, with the twist being that it’s not just about a vicar, but about an inner city vicar. It’s been hammered home by the BBC that this is a chance to move away from everyone’s favourite fat theological. Gone is the twee image of the countryside – instead, the writers are forcing themselves to deal with the issues.

The move away from Dibley and the countryside and into the city is taken to the ends of the East London – one of the most deprived areas in the country, lest we forget – and the first episode delved straight into the pressing matters of our time: vandalism, faith schools and small church congregations. (Okay, some of these are more pressing than others).

To sum up: the vicar, Adam, has just moved into his new parish, St Saviours on the Marshes. In the first week, the stained glass window is broken, and vandalism is suspected. In order to raise money to pay for the damages, the vicar is encouraged (by his church superior and his inner self) to accept money from the local MP in exchange for his kid to go to the church school, even though the kid’s family don’t really go to church. Eventually the vicar has a chat with god (overdubbed – no response from God booming through my speakers, I’m glad to say), has a bout of conscience, refuses the money, and settles for the broken window instead. The vandalism also turns out to be by one of the church regulars, an amicable drunk, and entirely by accident.

In the midst of this we have some casual racism (the only black character is a ‘cassock-chaser’ who orgasms during sermons, a clear dig at Pentecostalism), and the only asian character is a pervy chiropractor who inappropriately feels up the vicar’s wife.

Importantly, the countryside is also held up as a paradise in its absence – the vicar (originally from a small parish church in Suffolk) has a terrible time cycling in the godforsaken city, and is surrounded by ‘church whores’ who only pray in order to get their kids into the local church school. When the amicable drunk is having a crisis of faith, ranting about Richard Dawkins, the vicar takes the example of a snail shell as proof of God’s existence, something in nature (in the unchanging, green and pleasant sense) being beautiful, even though it doesn’t have to be.

But, despite the continuing distinction between countryside and city in that unhelpful, English way (and the casual racism), I think there’s definitely some redemption in the show. It displays religion as a working, functioning thing, albeit something which doesn’t necessarily do good things even when it’s functioning well.

If you’re an atheist like me (and I suspect that most readers of this blog are), then the scene of the vicar relishing the thought of setting prospective parents a Bible quiz in order to allow their kids into the Church school is scary and a bit sickening – but I think it’s also accurate, showing the close ties between money, property, class and religion which dominate the contemporary church. And it’s brave of the writers to broadcast this. (Interestingly, the mere presence of Olivia Colman from The Office and Peep Show, means that it all feels very ironic and sinister).

Religion is still big, and I think it would be a mistake to dismiss all progressive politics within it simply because the expression invokes God rather than ‘the people’ or some other transcendent being. Of course I’d rather that we got rid of transcendence altogether, but in the meanwhile I’m not going to pretend as if I/we have. Anarchists like David Graeber definitely rely on the imagination in the same way that Renaissance theologians use the soul, but this doesn’t mean there isn’t a hell of a lot of good politics and ideas going on in his writing. And the same goes for other radical transcendentalists like Christian anarchists and progressive Muslims.

I think our mistake too much of the time is to pretend as if the political ideology which causes the back-room deals of the MP trying to get his kid into a faith school is structurally different from the theological ideology which makes the vicar talk to God and expect a response.

Once you accept that we’re all living a lie of one kind or another, the point stops being about how good the lie is, but how progressive the results are. Mind you, I didn’t even get onto writing about the generalised sexism in the show…

The first time I went to the Foundry was for a New Year’s Eve party 4 or 5 years ago. It had all sorts of Hackney usuals: artsy films in the background, hipsters lounging on the ends of their cigarettes, coke snorting in the basement and an oozing ambience of cool. As I got to know the trendy spots of Shoreditch over the next couple of years (not too well, I’m glad to say), I found out that the Foundry was, however, slightly different from the usual hipster haunt: the people were actually a fair bit more interesting, the art was provocative albeit pretentious, and the stunning range of graffiti in the basement toilets contained stickers for political meetings and Indymedia collectives.

Early last year, I got to know the place far better as the focal point of activity in preparation for the G20 mobilisations. Chris Knight, the mad professor, the full range of anarchists, hippies, socialists and clowns met in the strange revolving-floor basement room to talk tactics and plot the latest installment in the traveling anarchist circus. It was there that the Bank of England was decided on as political site for those demos on April 1st 2009; it was there that the giant ‘four horses of the apocalypse’ puppets were conceived. It was there that we put on the fastest summit mobilisation anyone present had experienced. Those things usually take a year; we did it in a couple of months. There were other places we organised in as well of course. The squatted Library House in Peckham; a NGO office in Hackney. But the Foundry had an edge to it. The people who ran the bar were friendly and accommodating, always happy to give us the rooms downstairs, unmoved by the police van hanging outside the door.

Just over a year later, and the Foundry’s gone. The bicycle couriers, draped in Anarchist black and an array of European accents, still gather on the pavement outside, as they have done for years, to kick back and drink to the fact that they didn’t get run over that day. But the bar is shut, the neon sign has been taken down.

The owners of the building (not the same as the bar/ gallery people) have decided that it’s time to be gone with this progressive nonsense and build a big massive shiny cylindrical hotel. (Hilariously, a self-professed ‘art hotel’). Triumph to the phallus once again. The place has been cleared, semi-gutted, a giant iPad poster draped over the offices above the bar, so that the glory of Guardian-reading relaxation is beamed right down from the Foundry to Old Street station, lauding the image of Apple Corp over the kebab shops, dirty streets and migrant cyclists below.

The owners were evicted on Friday last week. On the Monday, the squatters moved in. Groups of people from different squats around London realised that this wasn’t meant to be: the Foundry’s time has not come. This weekend, there was a free, open cafe, called the ‘Crusty Spoon’. With England flags draped round passers by and popping out of sleek cars driving by, we sat out on the street by the building, sharing, eating, drinking, talking. Resisting. It’s still our space – and I sincerely hope that it stays that way.

In his definitive article on hipsters, Douglas Haddow claimed that:

“An amalgamation of its own history, the youth of the West are left with consuming cool rather that creating it.”

As much as the ‘creative imagination’ can be mocked for being as ideologically trapped as any other, there is perhaps some inspiration to be taken from the birth of a Hipster politik. In the face of the in-your-face gentrification of the Foundry from hippie to yuppie, there may not be a wave of resistance, but perhaps there is enough for the unambiguous cool of the hipsters to be transformed from consumption to creativity.

I’ve been very late flagging this up because of the little matter of moving from one side of the country to the other, but you may or may not know there is a strike going on. Staff at Tower Hamlets College, an F.E. College serving some of the poorest people in the country, are on indefinite all-out strike against savage cuts to jobs and education provision. Much of what’s happening at Tower Hamlets is very specific to the site, from the particular importance of ESOL in this area to the peculiarly belligerent brinkmanship of the management, but this is part of the general trend of cuts in education I have previously highlighted. This is not just some ordinary strike, rather it is the opening shots in the coming battles against public sector cuts. The level of picketing, organisation and solidarity is impressive, and a marked break with the routine, one-day public sector strikes of recent years.

If you can get there, get there. If you can do a collection, do it. If all you can do is send a message, then send it now. The outcome of this could set the tone for some time to come.

Join the support rally this Saturday 12 September, 2pm, Altab Ali Park with George Galloway MP and strikers.

Send messages of support to lallylord [at] hotmail [dot] com and send solidarity money to Strike Fund, c/o Keith Priddle, Tower Hamlets College, Arbour Square, London E1 0PT

The rabbi of Britain’s oldest synagogue, Bevis Marks in the East End of London, has been suspended over his participation in a protest against banks charging high interest rates.  Full detials of the story can be found at The JC here.

The rabbi Natan Asmoucha was helping lead the start of London Citizens anti-usury campaign – a combined effort across the atlantic to legislate against exploitative lending.

’10% is Enough!’  Youtube Video

Dr. Maurice Glasman defended rabbi Nathan’s actions, arguing that, “Any anti-usury campaign without involvement from the Jewish community could quickly turn anti-semitic”.  However, many in the synagogue believe that the elders have leapt upon the first excuse to settle old feuds, save money and kick out a highly thought of leader whom they believe to be displaying ‘activist tendencies’.

The appeal process continues.

Today the Observer published an extremely alarming report that Dr Denis Walsh, “one of the countries most influential midwives,” has argued that women should be receiving less pain relief in child-birth, in favour of “yoga, hypnosis, massage, support from their partners, hydrotherapy and birthing pools as natural ways of alleviating their pain.” Walsh mixes up a few different arguments for this, some of which are medical (the risks of pain relief, particularly epidural) and some of which quite clearly are not. He writes that that “over recent decades there has been a loss of ‘rites of passage’ meaning to childbirth, so that pain and stress are viewed negatively”, and that “pain prepares women for the demands of motherhood.” I am not a medical professional, so I will abstain from commenting on the truth or falsity of his medical claims, but I would like to call into question what Walsh has to say about the socio-cultural aspects of birth. That being said, in phrasing this attack in these terms, I am already doing damage to the project of feminist obstetrics insofar as a battle that has been strongly fought is for the integration of socio-cultural aspects of medicine into the discipline as a whole. Nonetheless, I think in this case the separation is justified if only for the sake of clarity.

I have to admit that I am no expert on medical ethics, but I do take an interest. I’ve been working for an organisation that is important in the practice of obstetrics and gynaecology as a temp for a few months now, and whilst my work has nothing to do with the medical or ethical side of obstetrics and gynaecology, I have taken the opportunity to spend a little time doing some reading around the profession. So, upon seeing this article this morning, I dug out my mother’s old copy of Wendy Savage’s A Savage Enquiry, so as to get into the mindset of some good old feminist obstetrics in an attempt to form a critique of Walsh’s comments. Wendy Savage was a significant obstetrician and gynaecologist working at The Royal London Hospital, when she was suspended from practice in 1985 over alleged incompetence. Her practice focussed on the empowerment of women in giving birth, and challenged the dominance of the consultants in the process of a woman giving birth. She was exonerated during an enquiry in 1986, and went on to write A Savage Enquiry as a personal account of the suspension and the campaign against it. Whilst her book focuses particularly on Caesareans and breech presentation, some of the politics is important for formulating a feminist response to the comments made regarding pain management in birth in the Observer today.

A large part of Savage’s argument in the book is about the dangers of surgical intervention, and her preference for natural means of birth. She writes, “Women throughout the country have realised that they have the right and the power to see that the health services they get are the ones they want (pp. 73 – page references refer to the old Virago edition), and goes on to say that “[a]lthough obstetricians justify their takover of birth by reference to the improved outlook for mother and baby, and although there have been many advances for which women are grateful, there are still a large number of situations about which doctors lack adequate information to say which is the best course of action. My philosophy, in which I am not alone, of involving the woman in the decisions about her care, means that the obstetrician must relinquish some power.” (pp. 176)

Whilst Savage is a staunch defender of “natural”, or vaginal birth where possible, what is clear is that her reasons for this are medical. She believes that the best care for mothers and babies is this sort of birth (better survival rates, less risks of complications, and less trauma for the woman,) and it is on this point that Walsh comes somewhat unstuck. In the quotations from his recent article in the Journal of Evidenced Based Midwifery, he too is arguing for natural births when possible, but alongside the aims of survival, safety, and recovery he introduces a number of more dubious political objectives: natural childbirth for the sake of being natural; a return to birth as a rite of passage; and pain as a means of preparing a woman for motherhood. In fact, he is completely explicit that pain-relief may be desirable but advocates “natural” methods over conventional pain-relief, seemingly giving no other reason than the fact that they’re natural.

Outside of the context of birth, some of these objectives can be examined in greater depth as a means of exploring their underlying conservatism, and ultimately their challenge to feminism. The demand for rites of passage is a very strange one to hear from a medical professional today. Historically rites of passage have been brutal, and one would wonder whether Walsh would equally justify circumcision (both male and female), in order to preserve cultures in which these practices are dominant. Furthermore, rites of passage have for so long been a key means by which women have been (and are) disempowered: Through marriage women have become subservient to men; and through childbirth women have become subservient to the structure of the family.

Walsh writes that “Celebrity births, television portrayals of labour as a highly medicalised process and films such as Knocked Up have added to a culture where pain relief seems normal, even though labour pain is natural, healthy and temporary.” He fails to mention that in many case the avoidance of pain regardless of the fact that it is natural, healthy and temporary may actually be desirable, not least for the woman involved. Furthermore, the argument that pain is a good preparation for motherhood is at the very least problematic; there is an implication that those women who choose to have an epidural are for that reason worse mothers. As an aside, I am also reminded of a line from an aria in Humperdinck’s opera Hänsel und Gretel, in which the father sings “Hunger ist der beste Koch!” [Hunger is the best cook!] Well of course, those who are hungry enjoy their food more, but I am yet to be convinced by an argument that we should starve ourselves so as to create a healthy relationship with food.

It would be unfair, though, for me to suggest that Savage and Walsh are diametrically opposed. Whilst Savage doesn’t talk much about pain-relief in A Savage Enquiry, she does say that “men […] have the feeling that they have got to do something about the pain, about the way the labour is progressing, whereas women, who know that they will probably go through this experience, even if they have not already been through it, understand that it is a very important part if how a woman functions in life, and that there are worse things in life than pain, and that to go through the process of pregnancy and labour and be in control of it is a very important part of a woman’s self-esteem.” (pp. 137) She also writes that one of the key points of her obstetric philosophy is that “Midwives and doctors must have clear reasons for procedures and birth management options” (pp. 88) It is really only with reference to Walsh that we are able to come to a resolution of this seemingly intractable contradiction within the feminist viewpoint of a woman’s wish for pain-relief and the demand for a medical procedure that is in itself not medically necessary.

Walsh writes that, “many women avoid experiencing the discomfort of childbirth because hospital maternity staff are too quick to offer an epidural or agree to a woman in labour’s request for a pain-killing injection in her back to ease her suffering.” (italics mine) What has happened in the 23 years since the publication of A Savage Enquiry is the normalisation and democratisation of epidural as a medical procedure. Whilst previously medical intervention was used as a means of subordinating the woman, what Walsh unintentionally shows with absolute clarity is that the refusal of the procedure is now the means by which women can be subordinated and controlled, most worryingly to fit in with his conservative views of womanhood and motherhood.

It may be the case that we need further discussion regarding the dangers of medical intervention, but this discussion should take the form of education, in which women (and people in general) are empowered, rather than simply refusing the treatment, and with that disenfranchising women from the control of their bodies and their experiences.

Wendy Savage published Birth and Power: A Savage Enquiry Revisited in 2007, which contains essays on a number of related issues alongside the full text of her original book on the enquiry.

It was quietly announced last week that the Minister for Culture, Andy Burnham MP, is to uphold English Heritage’s initial recommendation that the Robin Hood Gardens estate in Poplar, East London, should not be listed.

Robin Hood Gardens means little to those who don’t live there and is, alas, held in even less regard by those who do.  As a community organiser in East London, my first week on the job took me back to the corner of Poplar High Street and Robin Hood Lane, where the estate now stands, in an attempt to solicit and then organise residents’ concerns over its coming foreclosure.  “Them fuckin’ pricks who built it wanna try n live hear mate,” I remember one man saying to me.  Another gentleman, a Somali man of very little English, simply gave me a thumbs down.

I remember being aghast at that the time that the architectural magazine Building Design was launching a campaign to save such a monstrosity.  As a gap year student trying to reconcile my youth, my politics and my libido in Havana, I too had had the dubious pleasure of once living in a great Stalinist concrete slab.  I remember sitting there one evening, 30°C of glorious sunshine, a vi ew golden tobacco fields below, and thinking… what a pile of shit.  What kind of ideology builds this?   The answer: a noble one.

Completed in 1972, Robin Hood Gardens was supposed to be to the crown jewel in the East End’s post-war reconstruction.  Lacking both the necessary resources and the cultural assurance to justify the use of its traditional forms, British architecture had embarked upon a sociological crusade following the New Towns Act of 1946 – a mood paralleled across the formation of welfare state, with similar acts elsewhere such the Education Act of 1944.  Britain was not only to be rebuilt – it was to be reconceived.  And along with the nearby Balfron Tower and Carradale House, both of which had just been completed, architects Alison and Peter Smithson sought to build Britain’s answer to Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation in Marseille.  Honest, functional, rational: its ‘streets in the sky’ where to engineer in Britain a materialist realisation of the Russian constructivists abstract and then betrayed dreams. 

Forty-five years later and Robin Hood Gardens has failed.  Please debate any of the above, but it has failed.  For all the principled thought and design, it is simply not fit for purpose.  And although Tory spending cuts, right-to-buy and ALMOs are no doubt partially to blame, you cannot dare venture, as the Smithson’s contemporary Erno Goldfinger once did, “I built skyscrapers for people to live in there and now they messed them up- disgusting.”

I started by saying ‘took me back’ to the corner of Poplar High Street and Robin Hood Lane – truth be told, I think I had only been there once before.  It was to survey what is now just a hollowed out mess adjacent to the municipal car park.  There, amongst some grit and a rather sorry attempt at a tree, still stands the visible the remnants of what was once ‘The White Hart’ pub.  It was here that my father and his family lived between 1964-1967- one of four or five pubs owned at one time or another by my Grandad Sid and my Great Uncle Ern around the East India Docks.  It was demolished to make way for the new estate.

And so, it is with a heavy heart and a certain reluctance that I will soon welcome the end of part of the East End’s, and my family’s, post-war history.  Over the past few years, I have come to love and hate Robin Hood Gardens in equal measure.  What is undoubtedly so alluring about these buildings is that they attempt to conceive of world which we have not yet built, and then look to transport us there.  They are truly rationalist and revolutionary – built in the belief that social architects can turn over a clean page, start afresh, and then conceive of and construct something better out of the ruins of what went before.  But unfortunately, like much preplanned revolutionary wholesale change before it, it could not continue to inflict its will upon a people forever.  Houses, like socialism, must be built from the bottom up.