Thursday, April 21, 2005

Downtown

Tonight the sandstone steeple of the nursery looks starched against the pale blue sky above Shadwell. A flat up and down ironing board of a man with a tonsure and tassels of coarse brown hair combed forward to his eyes and ears stands outside the old Mercury building, hands on hips, surveying the drug rehab centre opposite.

This is where the Battle of Cable Street was fought in 1936, when the good people of London’s East End pushed back the fascist march of Oswald Mosley and his Blackshirts. “They shall not pass”.

Two silver cyclists, all angry helmet and Lycra, bump over a discarded shoe sole. A madman bobs his head by the Doner kebab sign and tries to direct the traffic. Plastic carrier bags are stuck to the pavement by patches of rain, reminding us that this is April, not California.

And here now canvassers for the ‘Respect’ party tell the Muslim electorate not to vote for local Member of Parliament Oona King, a black woman, because she is Jewish.

No comments: