It's Always More Complicated

This is rather news to me - I think of people protesting the enclosure of commons as doing this a) a lot earlier and in more rural parts: Today in London’s parklife: 1000s destroy enclosure fences, Hackney Downs, 1875:

The 1870s were a high point of anti-enclosure struggles in the London area, following on from a decade of (mostly, though not exclusively) peaceful campaigns to prevent large open spaces being developed in the 1860s. Wanstead Flats in 1871, Chiselhurst Common in 1876, Eelbrook Common (Fulham) in 1878, all saw direct action against fences, as part of long-running resistance against the theft of common land.
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Many of these struggles were characterised by the large-scale involvement of radical movements, as London radicals, secularists and elements who would later help to form socialist groups made open space and working class access to it a major part of their political focus. Radical land agitation, notably through the Land and Labour League, was beginning to revive the question of access to land as a social question, and within cities this manifested as both battles to defend green space, and propaganda around the theft of the land from the labouring classes.

Centuries of hard fought battles saved many beloved places from disappearing, and laws currently protect parks, greens and commons. But times change… Pressures change. Space in London is profitable like never before. For housing mainly, but also there are sharks ever-present looking to exploit space for ‘leisure’. And with the current onslaught on public spending in the name of balancing the books (ie cutting as much as possible in the interests of the wealthy), public money spent on public space is severely threatened.
Many are the pressures on open green spaces – the costs of upkeep, cleaning, maintenance,
improvement, looking after facilities… Local councils, who mainly look after open space, are struggling. Some local authorities are proposing to make cuts of 50 or 60 % to budgets for parks. As a result, there are the beginnings of changes, developments that look few and far between now, but could be the thin end of the wedge.
So you have councils looking to renting green space to businesses, charities, selling off bits, shutting off parks or parts of them for festivals and corporate events six times a year… Large parts of Hyde Park and Finsbury Park are regularly fenced off for paying festivals already; this could increase. Small developments now, but maybe signs of things to come. Now is the time to be on guard, if we want to preserve our free access to the green places that matter to us.

HEIR, the Historic Environment Image Resource:

HEIR’s mission is to rescue neglected and endangered photographic archives, unlock their research potential, and make them available to the public.
HEIR contains digitised historic photographic images from all over the world dating from the late nineteenth century onwards. HEIR’s core images come from lantern slide and glass plate negatives held in college, library, museum and departmental collections within the University of Oxford. New resources are being added all the time, including collections from outside the University.

Dragon’s teeth and elf garden among 2025 additions to English heritage list:

The heritage body publishes a roundup of unusual listings to draw attention to the diversity of places that join the national heritage list for England each year.
As well as the anti-tank defences, this year’s list of 19 places includes a revolutionary 1960s concrete university block, a model boat club boathouse built in 1933 by men who were long-term unemployed, and a magical suburban “elf garden”.

Art history is too important to be the preserve of the privileged:

The act of looking has become commodified as technology companies ‘mine and sell our attention like coal’, as Kee writes. Letting art history become endangered and drift further into elite status is not only unfair, it’s also perilous. ‘Art history gives you tools to interpret the visual world and makes you more of a critical viewer of political messages, advertising and a barrage of social media images,’ says Perry. ‘It’s dangerous if you can’t examine these things critically.’

I suppose it is not exactly good ton, when obits all over the place deem one lady 'Queen of the Bonkbusters' (Dame Shirley Conran, died this week aged 91) to growl and pipe up 'I'm the grandest tiger in the jungle' Queen of the Bonkbusters, as presumably Jilly Cooper has some right to do, at least since the demise of Jackie Collins?

(Given that there has been a flurry on social media over some hip-hop battle of 'beef', and extensive references to historical parallels over a range of fields, one rather wishes there could have been a diss-down between these rival queens of Bonk, no?)

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I should probably take this more seriously, from several angles, but it doesdn't half strike me as in the tradition of Ealing comedies: Just Stop Oil protesters use hammer to smash Magna Carta display case: Judy Bruce, 85, and Reverend Dr Sue Parfitt, 82, tried to smash the glass surrounding the Magna Carta at the British Library (they did not actually smash the case).

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Missed the Northern Lights last night (not sure if one would be able to see them here anyway - while they were reported this far south, there's a fair amount of light pollution around here). I am perhaps less troubled by this after seeing all the Day of the Triffids jokes all over social media and warnings to look out for unusual vegetation in gardens this morning.

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I think I may already have mentioned toad crossings, enabling these amphibians to make their way to their traditional mating grounds without being run over: we now have adder tunnels to enable two separated populations of this endangered venomous reptile to mingle and increase genetic diversity:

The snake has has not been seen in Buckinghamshire since 2014 and is now virtually extinct in Oxfordshire. Greenham Common, which became a nature reserve 24 years ago after the closure of the RAF nuclear weapons base, is one of its last strongholds in the region. The tunnels opened for snakes this spring after radio-tagging studies showed two adder populations on the commons were not mixing because of the road. The populations need to meet each other to breed and boost their genetic diversity.

The waterways of the UK are awash with sewage and I daresay there are faint earthquakey rumblings in the vicinity of Wimbledon, where Sir Joseph Bazalgette is buried.

And today was spotted in the wild somebody hymning the praises of wood-burning stoves in the Telegraph.

Hai, let's go back to the Great Smog and the London Pertickler!

Quite apart from the environmental impact of burning wood - cough choke - there's the environmental impact of where the wood to burn comes from....

I suppose at least it's not a fossil fuel?

Goodness knows what was going on in the minds of the protestors throwing soup at Sunflowers (behind glass, fortunately). At least when Mary Richardson slashed the Rokeby Venus there was an obvious symbolism to the protest. We feel that Vincent would have been on their side?

Somebody did mention somewhere that funding art exhibitions is a favoured form of culture-washing by oil companies. But this was hardly explicit?

Apparently there were also cavils about Wasting Food?

To which I saw one response that selling the painting would feed I forget how many millions -

Except there is that thing of selling treasures that are in some form of public ownership to raise money, and the likelihood that they will end up in some private vault? (e.g. library some years ago that had a spare First Folio and a financial crisis.)

It seems, let us say, a little quaint and anachronistic to rule that an MP may not accuse another MP directly of lying: Dawn Butler ejected from Commons for saying Johnson has lied repeatedly. Labour MP accused the prime minister of misleading the Commons and the country over coronavirus.

This dates from the epoch, surely, when 'honourable member' was not just a form of words? (though thinking back over one's recollection of O-level political history, perhaps not...) But a period, anyway, when 'honour' meant something and could be impugned.

As for 'It's In The Roolz!!!', an argument I have seen some people making: Come On Down, Charles Bradlaugh, militant atheist, who upon election to Parliament refused to take the requisite religious Oath of Allegiance and wished to affirm instead (concessions having already been made for Quakers and Jews). His principled and contentious stand on this led to him being prevented from taking his seat as MP for Northampton from 1880 to 1886 and even being imprisoned. Eventually a law was passed granting the right to affirm.

As for unParliamentary behaviour, even if we leave out Cromwell marching into the Chamber and forcibly dissolving the Rump Parliment in 1653: 'Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors. In the name of God, go!':

In 1902 the Speaker was given power to suspend or adjourn proceedings in the case of 'grave disorder' (I discovered this by going to myself, 'wasn't there some incident with Hesletine and the mace?'): Incidents of Grave Disorder in the House of Commons, 1905-2017

While some of these pertained to external events and intrusions (19 May 2004 'Tony Blair was hit by some purple flour-filled condoms thrown from the gallery by a member of the group Fathers 4 Justice'), they included, 4 Mar 1975 'Angry confrontation continued and Nigel Lawson was seen to hit junior Minister Clinton Davis with his House of Commons Order Paper' and 27 May 1976 'Opposition Industry Secretary Michael Heseltine removed the House of Commons mace from its place on the table and advanced towards the Government front bench'.

This very interesting article by Collier and Raney, Understanding Sexism and Sexual Harassment in Politics: A Comparison of Westminster Parliaments in Australia, the United Kingdom, and Canada indicates the vast array of discriminatory and sexist behaviour that is just part of the way Parliament does business at Westminster and in the Westminster boys-school/mens'-club tradition:

Adversarial norms and parliamentary privilege are both on display during the formal proceedings of the House, and especially during Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs). PMQs often feature masculine styles of communication, including shouting, braying, put-downs, jibes, heckles, and taunts on both sides of the House. In addition, more overt sexist statements have also been made during PMQs. In 2011, David Cameron told the Labour shadow chief secretary Angela Eagle to “calm down, dear”, which was followed by laughter and further heckling from the government benches. In 2013, Secretary of State William Hague could be seen calling MP Cathy Jamieson a “stupid woman” twice during PMQs (Stevenson 2013). The need for parliamentarians to score political points against their rivals, combined with an informal acceptance of sexist language and behavior in the House, disproportionately disadvantages women. For Lovenduski, these highly ritualized displays of “public masculinity” send “a strong symbolic message to women that politicians are men who have repertoires of behavior that are not available to women (and some men)” (Lovenduski 2014b, 135). Some female MPs have recently stated that they find PMQs so adversarial and off-putting that they no longer attend (Mason and Edgington 2014). We see the three unwritten norms of myth of neutrality, adversarial politics, and parliamentary privilege working together to reinforce an accepted culture of behavior.

Spotted a newspaper placard saying something like 'Johnson threatened by imposters'.

And where my mind went to was a zap action* involving people in Boris masks and wigs showing up and taunting him in public places, which I think would be rather cool.

But apparently it is Boris fulminating that a 'sinister band of imposters' was using his name to post social media attacks on T May, P Hammond, etc.

*Though I'm not at all sure that that article is entirely correct, because it seems to be claiming that they were a means of LGBT protest in the early 70s, and there were various feminist zaps in the late 60s by e.g. the Redstockings and WITCH (Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell), like hexing Wall Street, and indeed I have a recollection that they were practised by other radical groups of the day.

The Garrick Club in London is preparing for a bitter struggle over whether to admit women members.. Not even the only club still to refuse the laydeez (I find this particularly ironic in the case of the Travellers' Club, given the many women who were noted for their excursions rather further than '500 miles from London' - 'If you miss the train I'm on, you will find that I am gone').

We may note that the 'gentlemen' who consider these places to be A Last Bastion of Civilisation behave not unlike internet trolls at the prospect of GURLZ in their treehouse.

Also those gents who have either clearly never actually listened to women conversing, or if they have, do not let it affect their happy preconceptions:

Women on the whole gossip about their intimate lives; men banter: they discuss things objectively in ways which are not emotional,” said the writer Tom Bower, who opposes allowing women members. “There are no personal confessions, things like that, which women spend a lot of time doing. There is laughter.

And as for those 'preserve me from my defenders' who claim that now that wymmynz have emerged from the nursery and the kitchen and have proper professional jobs one can have a proper conversation with them about srs bznz.... (no, really, Dame Rebecca would have had them for breakfast, no? on toast).

I also want to thwap Anne Widdecombe with something with poisonous spines for this:

I am a 70s feminist, not a 90s, not a whimpering sort. The current feminism is all about victimhood, and I can’t bear it. It’s not what we were about – the roar that was feminism in the 1970s said: ‘You give us equality and we’ll prove we’re just as good as you.’ By the 1990s, this had diminished to a whimper that said: ‘We’re not making it – we want special privileges.’ That to me is anathema. Feminism to me is going out there and competing with men on equal terms. It’s not having your path smoothed for you. I’ve never had that grievance culture.”

Unfortunately I can't, at the moment, track down that Rebecca West quotation about women who sat out the actual suffrage struggle, but afterwards took every advantage that it had gained.

And, oh, please, that thing about 'having your path smoothed'? You mean, like all those dead white straight men do? that is not a privilege. It is what is known as a level playing field.

(Not that people weren't complaining about 'victimhood' and 'whingeing' apropos of feminism in the 70s, it's a recurrent theme, that the previous generation were feisty and tough, the modern lot are tearful wimps.)

I will also cite in evidence that The Feminist Revolution Has Not Yet Taken Place, this piece on the Guerilla Girls:

The group’s fundamental mission is still to expose sexism and racism in the art world and, while the language might have changed over the years (“Become more coded,” says Kahlo), the underlying discrimination hasn’t. A gallery owner once said to Kollwitz, “women and artists of colour are just not making work that addresses the dialogue”, by which she understood them to mean, “I can’t make billions of dollars from women artists. So I’ll pick up this young white guy.”

And while museums and galleries have changed the makeup of their exhibitors slightly, “it’s a certain kind of tokenism,” says Kahlo, “where once institutions realised they had a problem with diversity, they would show one woman artist and one artist of colour, and think that was taken care of."

From today's ODNB Life of the Day, Timothy Bennett (1676/7-1756):

[R]emembered for his successful campaign to reopen a right of way across Bushy Park, a Tudor royal hunting ground and part of the Hampton Court Palace estate. The path, which ran for nearly 2 miles, was a popular route for local residents crossing the park between Hampton town and Hampton Wick.
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The closing of the pathway in Bushy Park was the result of ambitious plans for Hampton Court Palace in the reign of William and Mary. One of these was an improved road which, from a grand new gateway (now the Lion Gate, Hampton Court Road), provided an entrance to the royal residence through the palace gardens. The new road, nearly a mile in length, was flanked by rows of trees from which it took its name, Chestnut Avenue..... Access to the new road, part of the royal route to London, was only permitted to those issued with tickets, and this excluded most of the local population.
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In June 1900 the former lord chamberlain, Earl Carrington, unveiled a monument to Bennett adjacent to the public path that, since the eighteenth century, has been known as Cobbler's Walk.

There is annoying WOEZ WOEZ PC article criticising the protest against pink girly Lego ('celebrating not architecture and action but beauty salons, cupcake bakeries and poodle parlours': pass me a sparkly pink sickbag) in today's Guardian.

It is particularly irksome because Hannah Betts goes ' the one area we should never seek to police is [children's] imaginations'.

How is this ghastly, from what I hear, practically universal gender essentialism in children's toys and other paraphernalia, not a mind-forg'd manacle upon their imaginations and sense of the acceptable and appropriate?

I don't think little girls should be forcibly prevented from indulging any taste for pastels and sparkles and ponies and fairy princesses (any more than little boys should).

I think they should be allowed to know that there are other options available and pink is not the only colour they are allowed.

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And Amazon have actually sent me a promotional email for the notorious Bic for Her Amber Medium Ballpoint Pen pack. What fresh hell is this? Do they not get the mockery and sarcasm all over teh intahnetz?

Let's have some Smokey Robinson: live performance of 'Just My Soul Responding' (1973)