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8 July 2024

6 min read

Camden: what’s up in Keir’s backyard?

The new Prime Minister’s constituency has valuable lessons for the country.

Simon Walsh

Simon Walsh is a communications consultant, journalist and non-stipendiary priest in the Diocese of London.

Kier Starmer walks along a residential development's path with two other people.

Starmer and local councillors in Camden.

‘What good ever came out of Nazareth?’ was asked of Jesus. The same might now be said of Camden, which lies at the heart of the Holborn & St Pancras constituency. A safe Labour seat since the 1980s, its present incumbent is Sir Keir Starmer who has been handed the keys to Downing Street in the General Election.

His wallet apparently has on it ‘Take me home to Kentish Town’. Two buses link Kentish Town, where he lives, with Whitehall – a route of about four miles. He will go into government with a very full in-tray, and many of them are issues he knows first-hand from his own constituency. I know them too, having lived there for 20 years.

Sometimes I cover services for a clergy colleague in the nearby parish of St Mary’s, Somers Town. The church is on Eversholt Street which runs along the eastern side of Euston station, incidentally the capital’s first mainline railway terminus. Last year, as I arrived for a mass one rainy Saturday morning, a random group of people sheltered in the doorway. They were, I discovered, addicts waiting for a drugs drop. Towards the end of mass, one of the group – a young woman – came into the back of church and found a pew in which to start preparing her fix. Once I had disrobed, I asked if she wouldn’t mind doing it somewhere else.

Another time, in the same church, a young woman from Spain was asking for money. She had answered a job advert on social media to come and work on a chicken farm. Having arrived and paid her accommodation for a week, she found there was no chicken farm, and trying to find other work was almost impossible because of paperwork. What could we do to help? The church itself is in dire need of financial support too.

St Mary’s Flats... were among the first examples of public housing in the country to have electricity and Jellicoe became something of a social housing celebrity.

Somers Town was transformed 100 years ago when its energetic parish priest, Fr Basil Jellicoe, created the first housing association. Dismayed by the squalor of Victorian tenements, he set about raising funds for The St Pancras House Improvement Society. Jellicoe was only in his mid-20s but had a solid Anglo-Catholic background founded on mission and a heart for the poor. The cramped and filthy conditions with extreme poverty were ‘an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual disgrace’ – for him, the opposite to the sacraments.

By the time Jellicoe moved from the parish in 1934, the slums had been cleared and a number of the new blocks built, the first being St Mary’s Flats, with others given saints’ names. They were among the first examples of public housing in the country to have electricity and Jellicoe became something of a social housing celebrity. Tragically, having worn himself out he died at the age of 36. His legacy is one of praxis – active Christianity meeting social problems where they are – and his model became the blueprint for many other housing associations since.

No surprise, therefore, that families struggle to afford to live in the area and migrate further out. As a result, schools have started to close.

The area remains a swirl of social problems in addition to the drugs. Mental health issues are rife. There are plans to redevelop St Pancras Hospital which houses mental health services. The area suffers from traffic and noise pollution, and lacks communal spaces. Camden Council recently saw fit take one corner of a public green in Somers Town on which to build a tower block of multi-million pound flats, handy for nearby St Pancras Station. Crime rates are high with muggings and mobile phone thefts a daily reality. Last year, as mourners left a funeral one Saturday afternoon at St Aloysius Church just a few streets down from St Mary’s, a drive-by-shooting injured six people. Starmer called the incident ‘appalling’ and spoke of ‘extra patrols and community support’ after a conversation with police.

The area has become highly expensive. Local businesses are being priced out by increased rents. Very little social housing has been built this century. The average house price in NW1, which encompasses the Nash terraces of Regents Park, the council blocks and social housing of Somers Town, is £1.3 million. A two-bed flat is in excess of half a million quid. No surprise, therefore, that families struggle to afford to live in the area and migrate further out. As a result, schools have started to close – four in as many years recently. In his acceptance speech in Camden Council’s offices near St Pancras station, close to the world-renowned Crick Institute and Facebook’s UK headquarters, Starmer namechecked the mythical ‘girl from Somers Town’ and his hope for her future.

Charles Dickens went to school around here and knew these streets well. His 1848 novel Dombey & Son detailed the destruction and chaos caused in the area by the building of the railway line through it. 175 years later, it has been HS2, the great White Elephant which has dug up streets, seen whole blocks of accommodation and hotels demolished, diverted roads, and axed much-loved institutions like the Bree Louise pub. There has been no benefit to locals so far (quite the opposite, in fact) and it is a stain on both Labour and Conservative administrations. Sir Keir says he is furious at the ‘big hole’ left by the down-tools project. There is fear now that the redundant land will be subject to a ‘gold rush’ as developers circle to pick up some prime real estate.

Interviewed in June by the Camden New Journal, Starmer said: ‘The government has earmarked money for Euston. I want to see that money and obviously, if we come into power, we’ll see through all this money – and not stripped away from other projects which is the usual trick.’ He also said: ‘The other thing is we need housing. Camden desperately needs housing as many places do. So we will use it – if we are privileged to come into power – as part of our plan for 1.5 million homes.’

His manifesto has five pledges:

Kickstart economic growth

The cost-of-living crisis is biting hard here and the inequalities are stark. People need real money.

Make Britain a clean energy superpower

It’s going to need more than a few on-street charging points for electric vehicles. And the carbon footprint of that HS2 project?

Take back our streets

He wants to halve crime rates but London has around 106 crimes per 1,000 people and his own constituency feels less safe than it used to.

Break down barriers to opportunity

Camden already ranks highly in the deprivation index where barriers are concerned: schools, homes, jobs…

Build an NHS fit for the future

Again, the hospitals and GP services are cracking – high demand combined with under-investment is deadly.

A prophet is not welcome in his own country, it was said. Although the new Prime Minister was elected with a majority in his home seat, it was down to 18,884 votes from the 2019 endorsement of 36,641 votes – a drop of almost 50%. In this election, an Independent candidate called Andrew Feinstein polled 7,312 votes with his pledge to improve life for local residents. Starmer’s constituents will be counting on him to fix the nation along with the problems on their own streets. Otherwise, safe seat or not, he may no longer be welcome in Camden either.

Article

Comment

Mental Health

Poetry

15 October 2024

4 min read

Auden and our anxious age

While the tropes of trauma are still with us, how to not die in our dread?

Jack Nicholson

Jack is a graduate of Peterhouse, University of Cambridge and Blackfriars, University of Oxford. He works in local government.

An outdoor vigil is lit by people holding up mobile phone lights.

Oxford's peace vigil.

BBC News.

Faces along the bar

Cling to their average day:

The lights must never go out,

The music must always play . . .

Lest we should see where we are,

Lost in a haunted wood,

Children afraid of the night

Who have never been happy or good.

This week, we mark the 85th birthday of W. H. Auden’s poem ‘September 1st, 1939’. He describes four solitary drinkers in New York on the cusp of the Second World War. September 1st, 1939: Hitler invades Poland. Those four faces struggle to find meaning in their lives.

In a later, much longer poem of 1947 (first UK edition, 1948) Auden built on this theme, having lived through the War, to identify an ‘Age of Anxiety’. He wrote, ‘We would rather be ruined than changed / We would rather die in our dread / Than climb the cross of the moment / And let our illusions die.’

I have been reflecting on this of late, especially in light of a recent night vigil for peace, remembrance, and unity at Bonn Square, Oxford, where I live. This took place on 7 October, the anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel in 2023: the darkest day in Jewish history since the time that Auden wrote his poems.

In an Age of Anxiety, Auden wrote, ‘the world needs a wash, and a week off’. The gathering in Oxford was especially poignant because some 250 people chose to go out in the rain, on their Sunday-evening time off, and in the darkness, to hear prayers and readings from different communities. It was as if the world was awash with people coming together.

The Bishop of Oxford the Rt Rev’d Dr Steven Croft said, ‘Our purpose is simply to be together.’ People simply had to do ‘something in the face of the helplessness that we all feel, in the face of these terrible events’. Louise Gordon, co vice president of the Oxford Jewish Congregation, described people ‘clinging to hope’. Imam Monawar Husain stressed that togetherness as such is a ‘symbol’, a symbol of hope.

Symbols abounded. Candles were lit. In ‘September 1st, 1939’, Auden described ‘Ironic points of light’ which

Flash out wherever the Just

Exchange their messages:

May I, composed like them

Of Eros and of dust,

Beleaguered by the same

Negation and despair,

Show an affirming flame.

The crowd spontaneously joined in with the protest song ‘Where Have All the Flowers Gone’, which was first sung in 1955.

It is striking that so many of the tropes and themes concerning what has gone wrong with the world, from our perspective, were already apparent and received clear expression from 1939 through to the mid- to late-1950s, in terrible events, then in thought, poetry, and protest song, in an age of anxiety.

If there are similarities between Auden’s age and our own, then we should be encouraged by that.

Sociologists described the ‘lonely crowd’ in 1950. This suggests that people seek more approval and acceptance from others as the physical distance between them diminishes and society becomes increasingly geared toward consumption. The capacity to come together for peace, remembrance, and unity becomes far less likely.

Philosopher Max Picard lamented the loss of the ’World of Silence’ in 1952: the capacity to be still. And later, in 1958, the word ‘meritocracy’ was first used to describe a dystopian world in which merit (IQ + effort) reigns, replacing previous relational bonds, a sense of togetherness, exemplified in the gathering in Oxford in 2024.

C. S. Lewis, in Oxford in the late 1950s, identified friendship as a kind of love which is regarded 'in the modern world' as 'quite marginal; not a main course in life's banquet', which is especially true if we bypass the banquet and spend our time at the bar (or, worse, online, at home). Louise Gordon, at the vigil, also spoke of the way in which people were counterculturally 'clasping hands in friendship'.

When sociologists today describe the ‘lonely century’ (Noreena Hertz) or when so many sigh over our inability to sit, or stand, in silence, in some sense at least they have not identified anything new. War crimes are, sadly, all too familiar to us. And recently, the lawyer Stephen Toope identified an ‘age of anxiety’ today.

It is not as simple, however, as saying that we have been anxious for the last seventy years. Auden’s age was also one of creativity of which the Anglosphere has been proud, for instance, around the foundation of the National Health Service in 1948. His generation stared into the abyss. They did not die in their dread.

If there are similarities between Auden’s age and our own, then we should be encouraged by that. Lamentation is as old as love, and the choice is as stark as he put it in his poem 85 years ago: ‘love one another or die’.

The notion of vigil is equally old. Today, vigils are held for peace, remembrance, and unity. In Christian liturgy, however, a vigil is specifically a watch during the night, looking forward to the dawn of a new day. ‘As the night watch looks for the morning’, likewise the people wait for Christ, their saviour.

That silent watch is far removed from the solitary ‘faces along the bar’ who ‘cling to their average day’. Horrible events such as those which took place on September 1st, 1939 or October 7th, 2023 bring people together in common purpose, simply to be together and to cling instead to hope for a better tomorrow.

Anxiety is replaced by hope.

Candles are lit. It may well rain. But song will be sung. And people of good-will, having climbed ‘the cross of the moment’, will show what Auden described: that great ‘affirming flame’.