Does Anyone Else Remember When Trafalgar Square Was a Happy Place?

Feeding the pigeons in Trafalgar Square 

(c. 1971)

 

 

I.

 

Six days later and still the row rumbles on about the Ramadan prayer event held in London's Trafalgar Square; a public gathering described by shadow justice secretary Nick Timothy as a provocative act of domination - prompting others to decry his remarks as Islamophobic and call for his head (figuratively speaking).     

 

I really don't want to comment on this matter, as I find it both depressing and tedious. 

 

However, as an anti-theist, I would quite happily ban all large-scale outdoor religious events; be they Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, or Sikh. I don't even like to see neo-pagans and old hippies gathered at Stonehenge for the solstice celebrations, to be perfectly honest. 

 

And, as an ornithophile, I would be delighted to see Trafalgar Square cleared of all believers, worshippers, devotees, etc. and made home once more to the thousands of pigeons who lived there for well over a century before Ken Livingstone decided they were a public nuisance and threat to human health (more on this shortly).

 

 

II.   

 

Feeding the pigeons in Trafalgar Square with seed bought from licensed vendors was an extremely popular thing to do in post-War decades; bringing joy and amusement to people of all ages and backgrounds, be they locals or tourists.

 

The birds were remarkably friendly and would perch on people, lions, and statues alike. Being pictured with a pigeon on one's head was an experience captured in countless family photos - such as the one above, taken in the early '70s, when I was a nipper and wearing my turquoise Fred Perry T-shirt and blue corduroy trousers held up with a classic snake belt. 

 

Readers might also note how, in the photo, the man, woman and young girl observing the scene are all smiling; a facial expression formed by flexing muscles at the sides of the mouth in order to signal happiness that is rarely seen in the UK today.       

 

 

III. 

 

As mentioned, the toxic transition from popular attraction to pest problem happened under Mayor Ken Livingstone, who famously branded the birds rats with wings and argued that their removal would result in a more pleasant environment. 

 

The last birdseed vendor was forced to stop trading after his license was revoked in 2001, terminating a tradition that had begun soon after the Square was completed and birds began flocking to it in 1844. Two years later feeding pigeons was officially banned in the main square to prevent damage to monuments and this ban was then extended to the North Terrace (near the National Gallery) in 2007, when fines for feeding the birds were increased from £50 to £500. 

 

There was some organised opposition to this, but, sadly, the writing was on the wall for our feathered friends and Red Ken was indifferent to the fact that suddenly removing a regular and abundant food source to 4000 birds would result in many of them starving to death. Today, Trafalgar Square is kept pigeon-free by the use of hawks patrolling the area to scare away any remaining birds that might wish to return to a once happy home and place of safety. 

 

 

IV. 

 

In conclusion ... 

 

The pigeon is a bird that links us to our past as Londoners; its association with the capital spans centuries and serves as a genuine symbol of a shared, non-sectarian history. As for the potential health risks they pose, I suspect these are greatly exaggerated to justify a sterile, overly controlled urban environment and, frankly, the preservation of imposing stone monuments is a secondary concern to me: 

 

"We have reached the stage where we are weary of huge stone erections, and we begin to realise that it is better to keep life fluid and changing, than try to hold it down in heavy monuments." [1] 

 

Only people of a malignant spirit - like Ken Livingstone - would wish harm upon birds, or believe - like the current Mayor Sadiq Khan - that the cry of Allahu Akbar is preferable to the gentle cooing of a rock dove ... 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, 'Tarquinia', in Sketches of Etruscan Places and Other Italian Essays, ed. Simonetta de Filippis (Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 32.  

Zen Fascism on the London Underground (Don't Be Kind - Be Cruel!)

Toby Triumph and one of his posters produced for 

Transport for London's #TravelKind campaign 

tobytriumph.com

 

 

I. 

 

Transport for London is the local government body with a multi-billion pound budget responsible for most aspects of the capital's transport network. 

 

The management board is appointed by the Chair (and Mayor of London) Sadiq Khan - or, as he doubtless now likes to be referred to, Sir Sadiq Khan [1]. It's the board's job to ensure Khan's transport strategy is implemented, whilst a Commisioner and several chief officers oversee day-to-day operations.

 

TfL likes to promote a caring corporate identity concerned with promoting and protecting various rights and ensuring that their customers (i.e., passengers) eat healthily (in 2019 Khan introduced restrictions on the advertising of foods and drinks high in fat, salt, or sugar). 

 

Some would describe this as a form of wokeness, but coming as I do from a punk background indebted to the Dead Kennedys, I prefer the term zen fascism [2].    

 

 

II. 

On 13 November 2017, TfL launched a new campaign - #TravelKind - which encouraged customers (i.e. passengers) on trains and buses to consider others and help make public transport a more enjoyable experience for everyone. 

 

The campaign is still running today and includes a series of posters designed by the illustrator Toby Triumph; a hippie originally from North Yorkshire, but who now spends his time betweeen London and New York. 

 

Working with the wonderful guys at the advertising agency VCCP [3], Triumph produced nine posters for use across the TfL network, all designed in his colourful 1960s and early '70s influenced style: smiley faces, peace signs, rainbows, etc.

 

Obviously, I'm not a fan: nor of TfL; nor of VCCP; nor of Sadiq Khan; nor of Toby Triumph; nor of hippie idealism; nor of corporate wokeism; nor of zen fascism. 

 

Indeed, one is almost tempted to channel the spirit of '68 and put a big black X through the injunction BE KIND on the poster that hangs at a nearby bus stop and replace it with the words SOYONS CRUELS! [4].   

 

Notes

 

[1] Khan was awarded a knighthood in the New Year Honours List (2025) in recognition of his achievements and extraordinary service. Whether he deserved such - and whether he should have accepted such (and thereby open himself up to the charge of gross hypocrisy) - is debatable.

 

[2] The phrase - Zen fascist - is used in the band's debut single 'California Über Alles' (Alternative Tentacles, 1979) and is one that I have incorporated in several posts on Torpedo the Ark. 

      What Jello Biafra says of Jerry Brown I think we can also say of Sadiq Khan; he too is a left-leaning moral authoritarian who enjoys exercising power just a little too much, whilst insisting that all Londoners wear a happy face and share his vision of a diverse multicultural, multi-ethnic, net-zero city. To play the song, click here.   

       

[3] Founded in 2002, VCCP describe themselves as a global integrated communications agency that creates innovative and exciting advertising designed to transform brands. Their founding principles include being happy and unprecious.

 

[4] Soyons cruels! was a slogan painted on the walls of the Sorbonne during the student uprisings in Paris, in May 1968. 

      This might seem an outrageous and offensive statement to many people today. However, if you remember your Nietzsche and Foucault - and know something of the politics of the period, infused with the ideas of the Situationists - then the injunction takes on a certain philosophical character.

      James Miller suggests some interesting readings of what being cruel might mean in practice in his essay 'Carnivals of Atrocity: Foucault, Nietzsche, Cruelty', in Political Theory, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Sage Publications, August 1990), pp. 470-491. Click here to access on JSTOR.

 

 

Sadiq Khan and the Insufferable Suffragettes

A group of Suffragette terrorists pictured in 1913

 

 

That human weasel posing as London mayor, Sadiq Khan, has come up with a way to waste millions more of tax payers' money: a rebranding of six Overground lines with names said to celebrate the city's diverse history and culture. 

 

In other words, it's another attempt to impose a pernicious ideology and for Khan to virtue signal his own wokeness to the world. 

 

But there's a certain irony, of course, in naming the Gospel Oak to Barking Riverside route the Suffragette Line. 

 

For as readers who have read the history of this women's organisation from the early part of the 20th-century will know, their activism included an orchestrated bombing and arson campaign in the years 1912-14 that was described as terrorist in nature by the authorities and admitted as such by leaders of the movement, including Emmeline Pankhurst, whose daughter Christabel directed militant actions from the safety of exile in France.

 

Their radical slogan Deeds Not Words meant targeting not only government officials, but members of the public, with the aim being to make every aspect of English life insecure and unsafe. 

 

On 25 October 1912, this involved setting fire to a train carriage as it pulled into Harrow station. Fortunately, nobody was hurt in this incident - but they certainly could have been. Which is why, as I say, there's an irony in naming a train line in honour of these fanatics. 

 

One wonders if a hundred years from now they'll accord the same honour to the Islamist suicide bombers who targeted commuters travelling on London's public transport network in July 2005 ...? 

 

 

For a follow-up post to this one on the suffragettes and the the British Union of Fascists, click here. 

 

For a follow-up post on two speeches by Emmeline Pankhurst, click here.

 

 

New Year's Eve 2020: Fireworks, Propaganda, and an Avian Mortality Event

 

Picture credits: BBC News / IOPA Facebook

 

 

I have already expressed my reservations regarding New Year's Eve fireworks in a post entitled Panem et Pyrotechnics - namely, that they make North Koreans of us all. 

 

This opinion was reinforced a few days ago, when that idiotic little weasel posing as the Mayor of London, Mr. Sadiq Khan, decided to light up the night sky above the Millennium Dome with a clenched fist symbol in support of Black Lives Matter. 

 

The locked down masses prohibited from attending the event in person - because of the virus - were, thanks to a complicit state broadcaster, able to enjoy the £1.5 million spectacle (described by some as a virtue signalling political stunt) live on TV and social media.    

 

Other highlights of the show included the turning of London's bridges blue and yellow with lasers on the eve that the Brexit transition period ended and the UK finally left the EU, and 300 drones forming the shape of a giant turtle with a map of Africa on its shell to express concern about the so-called climate crisis. 

 

As provocative and divisive as this was, it didn't have the heartbreaking horror of events in Rome, where a New Year's Eve firework display resulted in the deaths of hundreds of birds, mostly starlings, that were roosting nearby. 

 

Footage filmed from outside the city's main train station, showed the bodies of the birds littering the streets, as some reports insensitively described the scene, as if they were just feathered pieces of trash waiting to be swept away and their lives didn't matter.

 

A spokesperson for the Italian branch of the International Organisation for the Protection of Animals claimed that the poor things were essentially scared to death by the fireworks and although the RSPB claims that there is little evidence to suggest that fireworks present a grave danger to wild birds, I do not believe them and would challenge their record of protecting birds over the last 50 years when avian numbers have (in some cases dramatically) declined.

 

 

On the Politics of Beach Body Readiness

D. H. Lawrence wrote a series of poems sneering at modern sunbathers in all their beach body readiness. Yes they looked fit and healthy (healthy, healthy, healthy). And yes, they even looked good enough to eat. But somehow their flesh lacked meaning and vitality; their great inert thighs leading nowhere.  

So, far from feeling bad about his own emaciated and disease-ravaged physique when confronted with those bodies deemed biologically admirable, Lawrence defiantly affirmed his own contrasting quickness.  

I thought of this last year when there was a great hoo-ha over a poster for Protein World's weight-loss collection featuring a perfectly formed bikini-clad model (Renee Somerfield). The Advertising Standards Authority received almost 400 complaints from those who found the campaign objectifying and socially irresponsible. There was also a protest in Hyde Park and an online petition that attracted more than 70,000 signatures.   

Eventually, the fuss died down and everyone either forgot about the case, or found something else to get het up over. But now this issue of body shaming is back in the headlines thanks to the new London Mayor, Sadiq Khan, who has said he will ban all ads on the Tube and bus network that might offend commuters or make them feel pressured to conform to an ideal body type.

Speaking as a father of two teenage daughters, Khan warned that images such as the above demeaned women and caused confidence issues among young people. It is high time, he said, that such advertising came to an end.         

Obviously, this is an astonishing and, to my mind, rather worrying development. For it means that the Mayor is making policy on the basis of a Helen Lovejoy approach to decision making; one that effectively turns all Londoners into Sadiq's little girls in need of daddy's protection and wise authority.    

Ultimately, I'm no more beach body ready than Lawrence. But nor am I ready for Khan's progressive paternalism which offers a soft form of sharia and censorship in the name of feminism and thinking of the children.