London: From Punk to Blair [Paperback]

If the "sprawling, amorphous" city of London and its recent history interests you, then I cannot recommend this book enough. Published by Reaktion, who excel at releasing slightly-eccentric alternative travel accounts that "explore the creative collision between physical space and the human mind" (their Topographics series is brilliant), this book seems to be the culmination of their efforts. A big hulking 400-page tome with a thoughtfully melancholic cover depicting a vast, dirty, washed-up stretch of a Thames-side shore, and in the backdrop, the much-derided Millenium Dome.

"London: From Punk to Blair" is at odds on the bookshelves alongside all those usual London volumes that glimmer with shots of Big Ben, Tower Bridge or Piccadilly Circus. This book comes more from the unorthodox school of Iain Sinclair, JG Ballard, Patrick Wright and Patrick Keiller (the latter two contribute chapters). Writers who present London as a strange and untameable beast, loaded with the ghosts of past inhabitants, crimes and happenings. Writers that are allured by its corruption and changing landscape. That explore the darkness that lies beneath its veneer.

A good variety of writers present subjective and opinionated essays and accounts on an array of London subjects, that often cover the unusual and elusive. Punk, Dialect, Weather, Tube stations, Brixton, Diana's London, Crime, Film, Pigeons, the Gay scene, Strip pubs, CCTV... to name but a few. "Blowdown: The Rise and Fall of London's Tower Blocks" elaborates on Hackney Council's "European record for demolitions by a local authority". The Sunday morning spectacles where audiences are invited to view the celebrity-guested "execution" (I have attended a twin one myself on Hackney Downs). Joe Kerr interestingly ponders upon whether these demolitions are actually a good thing. With high-rise living currently working well for the rich, is the failure of council-run towerblocks simply due to mismanagement?

The violent British thriller "The Long Good Friday" (1979, starring Bob Hoskins) receives close attention as the film that successfully epitomized what-was-to-come in Eighties London. It depicts an East-End Gangster who attempts to take advantage of the "deregulated capitalism" of the new Thatcher era, in the free-enterprise zone of Isle of Dogs. This eight-mile-square former-docksite was a ghostland of dead industry and working-class housing. The main character's ruthless ambition to build an Olympic stadium is ultimately thwarted and crushed by the very greed and corruption he ordinarily adheres to. The film stands as an accurate allegory of its free-enterprise era, and anitcipated the excessive, unfettered knock-'em-down-build'-em-high scenario that would eventually be enacted with an apocalyptic force (the working-class were swept away and sent packing) as the docks-area was transformed into a high-tech ultra-city of high finance and luxury living.

The essays never hold back on severe tongue-lashings for both Thatcher's Conservative, and Blair's New Labour governments, and seem rooted in an old-style Leftism across the board. Hilda Kean provides a brilliant chapter, "The Transformation of Political and Cultural Space", that laments the politically-aware era of the Eighties that boasted a number of halls, pubs, cinemas and radical bookshops as its social arenas. She expands upon the demise of certain practices that have slipped from the ordinary-person by the eradicating hands of the government. Self-help groups and libraries unceremoniously closed. Thriving squat communities removed by gentrification. Radical bookshops linked to political-cultural groups, priced out and bankrupted etc. She argues that these kind of factors have led to the eradication of the encouragement and flourishing of self-education and political-awareness. (And it's true... politics, certainly amongst younger people, WAS more fashionable in the Eighties. It DOES make you ponder upon governmental motives, "commodity culture" and "culture industries" etc. and question what direction we are actually heading in).

After reading Hilda Kean's essay, it may leave you with the impression of London's "past" being perhaps - admittedly more shabby, but - more empowered, creative, vibrant, self-nurturing and self-expressionistic... in stark contrast to the "New London": depoliticized, glossy, tourist friendly, gentrified, controlled, rebranded and repackaged. Food for thought!

The photographs compliment the text brilliantly, ranging from '77 Jubilee street parties to Eighties 'blowdowns' to the construction of a new "office city" in Paddington. My favourite shot is a moving portrait that cries out: CHANGE. An elderly couple pasing a local demolition site, powdery dust rising into a heavy ominous sky, housing blocks in the distance standing next in line for the death sentence. A poignant scene that speaks volumes about real everyday needs and life, versus the elusive but destuctive powers-that-be.

Interstingly, the book explores the emotional impact that certain physical spaces can induce. Iain Sinclair, a writer who explores and chronicles the capital's nooks and crannies like a man with a mental magnet, is conspicuous in his contributive absence, yet receives several references and discussions. The idea of atmospheric hidden-zones is given some thoughtful exploration by Nicholas Royal, who accounts his habitual solitary excursions through the city's fenced-off derelict quarters. The empty warehouses, hospitals and offices, draped in dust, "charged with a potent melancholy" that play a part in "the imaginative life of the city". And that one by one fall foul to the wrecking ball.

The topics of this book reach far and wide. Overall, it is interesting and thought-provoking. Ultimately, the underlying message seems to suggest a London that was perhaps "better before". The mood of many parts of the book can be summed up in a sentence from the inroduction: "Amidst the apparent evidence of increasing diversity and heterogeneity, the truth is that contemporary London is simultaneously moving towards greater uniformity and homogeneity".

Nevertheless, read and be stimulated.