Last week saw the final daily edition of the London Evening Standard after a publishing record that stretched back to 1859. How paradoxical it seems that London, more than ever the cultural and financial epicentre of Britain, should no longer have its own daily newspaper, as many much smaller regional cities enjoy.
I will mourn it, especially since for several years I was a weekly columnist at the Standard in the 2000’s, writing about whatever caught my fancy. (The fancy of the formidable editor, Veronica Wadley, was often at odds with mine, which is why I eventually resigned the post.)
Here’s a sample of one of my columns, although not one I am particularly proud of since it appears I was in favour of the war on Iraq at the time, something that in hindsight has proved to be folly:
I suspect one of the reasons that the Evening Standard has essentially gone down the tubes ( although it will survive as a website and a weekly edition) is that what it ‘means’ to be a Londoner is nowadays largely meaningless. Long gone are the days of ‘The Lambeth Walk’ or ‘Maybe It’s Because I’m a Londoner’ or even the Clash’s ‘London Calling;. London is defined more than anything simply by being not the rest of Britain, and furthermore, very different from most of the rest of Britain, at least in its size, wealth and ethnic diversity.
Once it was identified largely, although far from entirely, with Cockney culture. Cockney was London, as evidenced in the spread of the Cockney hero or anti hero from Dickens right through to the films of Guy Ritchie ( ‘Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels’ ) and Jonathan Glazer ( ‘Sexy Beast’). (Cockney literature I don’t think exists.)
But that has almost gone now. London is simply a world city, not that different from New York or Paris ( albeit greener and more pleasant than either).
Whatever its current cultural makeup, there is a certain amount of envy out there towards residents of the great Metropolis, usually taking the form of resentment. As I live in both London ( huge, diverse) and Whitstable, Kent ( tiny, largely white, culturally homogenous) I get both sides of the story.
Londoners often express enthusiasm at the idea of living in Whitstable. Those in Whitstable are less keen on the idea or London, or Londoners. We are dubbed, dismissively, as ‘DFL’s’ ( Down From London), not ‘real’ Whitty’s at all, and responsible for house price inflation and being generally too big for our boots. Which is ironic since judging from their strangled vowels and propensity for florid and emphatic cursing, many of them to be 2nd and 3rd generation refugees from London themselves , part of the ‘white flight’ from the East End in the 1960’s and 1970’s.
It always surprises me that people living in regional cities and towns can sometimes be so chippy about London. They choose not to notice the levels of poverty and homelessness here, as well as the polluted air and impossible house prices. Yes, I love London, and feel very lucky to have been born here and spent my life here. But its far from an easy ride.
I think there is a more rational reason for the regional resentment of Londoner, and this is more to do with culture than the economy. In London we live in a hugely diverse society and since we generate most of the culture, in form of TV, theatre, art and film, our cultural output reflects that.
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