William Shepherd

Jane Jacobs died last week a few days short of her ninetieth birthday. She was the subject of one of my first ever published pieces in Fourth World Review…a review of the three best books in America in 1986. In her book Cities and the Wealth of Nations I found a kindred spirit…and somebody talking seriously about city regions replete with their own city currencies. For Jane Jacobs cities were best understood as organic systems…complex, evolving live beings…that take precedence over nations, set moral codes, and die when they stagnate. Jane Jacobs was also one of the first career dissidents to realise and resent the power of the military-industrial complex in the Cold War years.

Her last book Dark Age Ahead was published in 2004. She foresees the collapse of American culture as fecklessness weakens social bonds and dissolves public responsibility and the collective memory of history. Had she been born in 1936 instead of 1916 she might well have gone further and been one of the first to realise that the power of the military-industrial complex was waning after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of the politico-legal-media complex (PLM). I had occasion to discuss this in an exchange of e-mails with Tom Greco earlier this week about my intention to go public with my misgivings about the Global Warming bandwagon. The exchange went like this.

Tom Greco had written in response to my e-mail on Global Warming that it seemed to him there were far better uses for 'my considerable talents' (Hmm!). ‘Why not focus on what we can do something about rather than idle debates about matters that may or may not eventuate? Time will tell about that.’ I begun my reply by writing that I though we might be at cross-purposes on this. This is how I continued.

I have absolutely no intention of getting involved in the Global Warming Issue and will not be taking sides as an activist for or against... if this is what you fear. But I have some deep generic concerns about where this whole Global Warming issue has come from and it is these that I will be highlighting once a week in my Sunday weblogs over the next few weeks...in the second volume of my three volumes in 2006. Let me try to give some sort of overarching paradigm for this.

The military-industrial complex is not the primary driver of society. It all changed when the Berlin Wall came down. For the past two decades we have been under the control of an entirely new complex...the politico-legal-media complex (PLM)...which is far more powerful and far more pervasive and is dedicated to promoting fear under the guise of promoting security.

Western nations are actually really safe and secure by any objective standards yet people are being made to feel insecure by the PLM. And the PLM is powerful and stable precisely because it unites so many institutions of society. Politicians need fears to control the population; lawyers need dangers to litigate and make money; the media need scare stories to capture an audience and so on. These three estates are where power is being exercised...the tail that is wagging the dog...and the place where much funding is going...to such an extent that they can go about their business even if the scare is totally groundless.

And then there's academia. Global Warming facts are coming out of the ivory towers’ computer models…and there is no longer any disinterested Public Science Forum to verify the data and adjudicate between rival scientific claims. The universities have invented a new role for themselves as the factories of fear. They invent all the new terrors and all the new social anxieties; all the new restrictive codes; the words you can't say; the thoughts you can't think. They produce a steady stream of new anxieties, dangers and social terrors to be used by politicians, lawyers and reporters. Foods that are bad for you; behaviours that are unacceptable. Can't smoke, can't swear, can't think etc. Dr Aidan Rankin was getting close in his focus on political correctness...but this is just one part of a much larger complex.

In the course of pulling together my Global Warming research to write my Sunday weblogs...I will be trying to clarify why I believe the issues behind the emergence of Global Warming are very pertinent to concerns such as reclaiming the commons, evolving strategies for our peace parties to outwit their War Party etc. I see it as a brief but necessary diversion to make sure radical politics does not get spun off into the weeds and lose sight of the ball.

Once I have had my say about this I think we can start looking at how the money boys keep the whole of the PLM show on the road…because there may be some way to cut off the funding at the pass…once we find out where we should be setting up our ambush.

One final little remark...at the personal psychological level, fear and love are directly opposed to each other...so if there is an axis of evil anywhere then this is where it is...and this is where the battle between Good and Evil may need to take place. i.e. the personal response to all this is to refuse to be made insecure and Make Love Not War...which brings us full circle to the sixties and the hippies where we all grew up. We were actually right all along. That at least is probably what this Sunday's weblog will say. And that is what it said.

The boat goes down at a bit of an angle…and the bow line needs doubling up as it’s taking a lot of strain stopping Vemara slipping back and falling off the mud cliff at the stern into the river. But otherwise we have settled in at our new mooring on the River Rother just along from the newly constructed two million pounds Rye Fish Market Quay. Heidi came for a celebratory wine and cheese lunch yesterday and declared the moorings an improvement.

I have a new walk into town each day. Along by the side of the football pitch on The Salts, up the Ypres Steps, past John Ryan’s house by the Gungardens and through St Mary’s Churchyard. The cherry tree was in full bloom and reminded me of a painting Priscilla Ryan did a few years back of the self-same tree…made up into postcards.

On Wednesday 12th April I suggested that London’s Mayor…Man of The People Ken Livingstone…should start eyeing up the City of London for controlled demolition as his personal contribution to Socialism and Global Justice. The Lord Major of this English Province has long been a private fiefdom for my old school. I have pedigree.

The genesis of Christ’s Hospital was the dissolution of the monasteries and the resultant overflow onto London’s streets of the poor and destitute. Encouraged by a sermon from Nicholas Ridley…exhorting mercy to the poor…the king wrote to Sir Richard Dobbs, Lord Mayor of the City encouraging him to act. He set up a committee of merchants to sort it out. Had this been 21st century Bogotá…instead of 16th Century London…these street children would have been rounded up and forced to endure a life of hunger, harassment, sexual abuse and death…and we talk of progress?

Henry VIII had already granted the use of Greyfriars to the City for the relief of the poor and the boy king Edward VI granted The Palace of Bridewell, his lands of the Savoy and rents and other chattels to create three Royal Hospitals - Bridewell, St Thomas and Christ’s, which was for the education of poor children. The first boys and girls entered the school in Newgate in 1552 and the Royal Charter was granted and signed by its founder Edward VI the following year.

Christ’s Hospital occupied a site in Newgate for 350 years. From time to time children were farmed out around the country…after the Great Fire of 1666 made parts of the school uninhabitable for instance. Eventually the girls settled at Hertford and in 1897 the boys were relocated from Newgate to the purpose built site in Horsham. The foundation stone was laid by Edward, Prince of Wales on 23 October 1897 on behalf of the Sovereign, the date being the anniversary of the birthday of Edward VI. A decade ago Hertford was shut down and the girls moved to Horsham.

Christ’s Hospital was given a second Royal Charter by Charles II in 1673. This charter created the Royal Mathematical School to train navigators for careers as naval officers or merchant seafarers. Samuel Pepys Secretary to His Majesty’s Navy…and later Vice President of Christ’s Hospital…features strongly in Christ’s Hospital history.

HRH the Duke of Cambridge started a tradition of Royal Presidents in 1854. In 1919 George V became the first Royal Patron followed by George VI in 1937 and Her Majesty the Queen in 1953. The support of the City of London Corporation and Livery Companies of the City has carried on uninterrupted. Each year on St Matthews Day hundreds of boys march through London for lunch with the Lord Mayor at his Mansion House residence. Christ’s Hospital’s founding principles were to support disadvantaged children and to remain a school for the general public.

The more enlightened radical Old Blues…there will not be many…might like to help Our Ken by chiselling away at the monolithic horrors of the London-based imperial mismanagement from inside the crumbling edifice. We are the school of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Leigh Hunt and Charles Lamb and not just the purveyors of cannon fodder for the English Imperial Navy and providers of clever clerks to speculate in overseas adventures with the people’s savings…and the billions of pounds of ill-gotten imperial gains…under The City of London’s fiduciary control.

It really is time for the common people of this green and pleasant land to get rid of all this imperial nonsense once and for all by withdrawing from The Killingry Business. Shutting down the arms factories in Mercia is one place to start. Another is to cut off the political need…oil for fighter jets…and the money supply from the Global Policeman Business…much of it orchestrated from The Square Mile…with little concern for the collateral damage.

In the 1990s there were worries that Frankfurt would replace London as the capital of European Global Capitalism. It never stood a chance as anyone who has passed through that charmless German city realised. But Gordon Brown was sufficiently concerned that he made it a separate test in HM Treasury’s assessment of whether to abolish the English Pound. No other part of the economy was singled out for such special treatment.

London is the most European place on the planet and the most cosmopolitan city in the European Union. It is also the driving force for integration across the entire continent. It is not Brussels but London that is the evil in our midst. It must be treated as the Roman Senate treated Carthage. But serious talk about dismantling The City of London and getting out of the Imperial Killingry Game will arouse the wrath of some awfully powerful enemies…and not very nice ones either.