Red London Joshua B. Freeman
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emigrate from anywhere. U.S.-born Latinos Red London obviously retain cultural characteristics of Joshua B. Freeman the countries that their parents, grandpar- ents, and great-grandparents left behind. Red Metropolis: Socialism and the Govern- But as Alba highlights, for many of them, ment of London these characteristics do not define their life by Owen Hatherley chances. Political integration accompanies Repeater Books, 2020, 266 pp. integration into other core institutions, like schools, jobs, neighborhoods, and families. Instead of searching for ethnic-specific Few tourists strolling the south bank of explanations for Latino political behavior, the Thames in London realize that they we should probably focus on the key vari- are going through a carefully constructed ables that pattern politics among whites. showcase for what Owen Hatherley If education and geographic location describes in his new book, Red Metropolis: increasingly pattern the white vote, the the structures and programs put in place same goes for many second- and third- when the political left ran Great Britain’s generation nonwhite Americans. Where largest city. On one end of the procession they live and whether they graduated from sits County Hall, the massive, longtime college are likely more important drivers of home of the London city government, until their political decisions than the country the national government eliminated home their grandparents arrived from. rule and sold off the building. At the other The majority-minority hypothesis end is a new City Hall, designed by Norman inspires white backlash, while greater Foster, housing the current incarnation of assimilation diminishes the importance of the London government. In between lies ethnicity in minorities’ political behavior. a series of city-built cultural venues—the This is the worst of all worlds for progres- Royal Festival Hall, National Film Theatre, sives counting on demographic shifts to Queen Elizabeth Hall, Hayward Gallery, and SPRING 2021 · transform our politics. But it’s consistent National Theatre—and Oxo Tower Wharf, T with our nation’s past: diversification and a mixed-use complex in an old power sta- expansion of the mainstream has occurred tion, developed by a nonprofit cooperative ISSEN before, and it is occurring again. And while with local government backing. Nothing D college attendance rates are growing, the is named after Marx, nor is the architec- increase is slow enough that near-term ture a tip-off to the socialist vision behind elections will feature an electorate in it, but at least in its heyday, the South Bank which roughly four in ten voters are non- announced to the world an alternative to college-educated whites. Progressive capitalist urbanism. policy dreams will remain just that unless In recent years, as Washington swings Democrats reduce losses with these voters between gridlock and reaction, U.S. pro- while winning back the children and grand- gressives have looked to local govern- children of immigrants increasingly drawn ment as an arena for attracting followers, to the Republicans’ message. As Shor has trying out social programs, and improving noted, “The joke is that the GOP is really the lives of constituents. Seattle passed a assembling the multiracial working-class $15 minimum wage law seven years ago, coalition that the left has always dreamed followed the next year by Los Angeles (with of.” Only it’s not funny at all. both laws mandating phased increases), while the federal minimum remains a Jake Rosenfeld is Professor of Sociology at measly $7.25 an hour. The Chicago City Washington University-St. Louis and author Council now has a six-member socialist of You’re Paid What You’re Worth and Other caucus. Next year’s election almost cer- Myths of the Modern Economy. tainly will bring a crew of socialists to New York’s City Council as well. But there has not been much systematic thinking, at least in the United States, about the possibilities and limits of 142 municipal progressivism, let alone munic- project anywhere, the Boundary Estate, a ipal socialism. solidly constructed and architecturally dis- Hatherley dives deep into the issue tinguished cluster of buildings just a mile in his lively, opinionated account of what from the Bank of England. That project the left did when it had control over and others that followed were designed London’s government. It is an eye-opening in-house by the LCC’s Architects’ Depart- story of extraordinary accomplishment. ment and built by its Works Department, a During long stretches since the late publicly owned construction company that nineteenth century, leftists or left-liberal paid union wages and erected schools, alliances have directed the administrative firehouses, and transit facilities as well. structure for London, the Greater London Some of the city’s individual boroughs region, or the boroughs within it. With the also built housing, including Battersea, capital city often at odds politically with which used its own workforce to do so. much of the nation—never more so than (In 1913 Battersea elected the first Black now, with the Labour Party in firm control mayor of a London borough, the Progres- of the region but floundering elsewhere— sive John Archer.) During the 1920s, some municipal leftism not only filled a vacuum Labour-led boroughs put up housing in social provision when Conservatives projects modeled on the housing com- ruled nationally; it also served as a model plexes that had arisen in socialist-led for what socialists might do if they won Vienna. Meanwhile, a program of tree control of Parliament. and flower planting was launched in Bermondsey to enliven working-class quarters. Later, in Finsbury, the Soviet Housing and architecture figure large émigré architect Berthold Lubetkin was in Red Metropolis. Hatherley has a long- hired to design the Finsbury Health Centre, R standing interest in the relationship one of London’s great modernist buildings, EVIEWS between politics and the built environment, as well as to create a plan for multiple new evident in his earlier books, including A housing estates. Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain When the Conservatives won control of and Landscapes of Communism: A History the LCC, they abolished the Works Depart- Through Buildings. But more importantly, ment but continued to build public housing from the late 1880s through most of the and government facilities, including the past century, housing has been at the top mammoth County Hall. As Hatherley of the left agenda in London, as working- shows, left-run authorities repeatedly class families, generation after genera- established norms, expectations, and insti- tion, have found it difficult or impossible tutions that survived long into Conserva- to afford decent, sanitary living quarters. tive eras, if usually in diluted form. Though Hatherley’s purpose is ultimately Labour retook control of the LCC in political, he provides a wealth of informa- 1934 and kept it for the next thirty-three tion and insight about design and planning. years. With the party having suffered a (Red Metropolis includes many photo- massive national defeat three years ear- graphs of the buildings under discussion, lier, it provided an opportunity to demon- but readers unfamiliar with London geog- strate that Labour could govern effectively raphy might want to keep Google Earth without giving up its principles. And that it open as they read.) did, in spades. Most importantly, the LCC Hatherley begins with the Progressives, launched a massive program of housing an assortment of liberals, trade unionists, construction. It also revamped parks with and socialists, including George Bernard facilities for working people: pools, gyms, Shaw and Sidney Webb, who prefigured cafés, and athletic fields. And it created the yet to be founded Labour Party. The the modern London transit system, taking alliance ran the elected London County over two private companies that ran the Council from its creation in 1889 until 1907. Underground, which it integrated with Among the LCC’s legacy is what is consid- trolley and bus lines. The design aesthetic ered by some the first municipal housing of the newly created London Transport, 143 seen in station architecture, signage, type- governance. As part of the postwar Labour faces, and posters (as Hatherley notes, a government, he unapologetically defended combination of European modernism and British imperialism. Hatherley, a left-wing English Arts and Crafts), became the writer and critic, seems surprised and a defining look of London, and to some bit embarrassed by how much he admires extent still is. Less well-known was the cre- what Morrison achieved in London, having ation of a free healthcare system for the made good on his slogan “Labour gets city, over a decade before the founding of things done!” the National Health Service. Livingstone was an entirely different Two outsize figures shaped what left- kettle of fish. The creation of the GLC wing government meant in London during in 1964, which replaced the LCC with a the twentieth century: Herbert Morrison, new, somewhat weaker government that the longtime leader of the LCC, and Ken included large suburban areas, diluted the Livingstone, who headed its two succes- power of the inner-city Labour bases. The sors, the Greater London Council (GLC) Conservatives and Labour traded control and the Greater London Authority (GLA). until 1981, when Labour carried the local They could not have been more different. elections one last time (the GLC would be Morrison, the son of a policeman, was abolished five years later). In short order, a a top Labour leader for a quarter cen- coterie of leftists within the party deposed tury, serving as transport minister in a the moderate head of London Labour, put- minority Labour-led government before ting Livingstone at the head of the GLC heading the LCC. During and after the and other Marxists of various stripes, such Second World War, he held positions as as John McDonnell, Mike Cooley, Hilary home secretary, deputy prime minister, Wainwright, and Sheila Rowbotham, in and foreign secretary.