Rachmansland Colin Machines, R. L. Travers Whose Poison Gas? W.
Horlock Old Age S. M.
Sir David Kelly Lady Kelly Sir Winston's Pyjamas G. B. H. Wightman Burying the Coffin Peter Donoghue. Geogrey Parker The Price of Money Nicholas Davenport The House of Lords Kenneth R. Middleton
RACHMANSLAND
SIR,--11 is curious to reflect that were Peter Rachman not (as we must suppose) now dead, Mr. John Spurting could not have written his admirable In Rachmansland, nor you, sir, published it; nor also would all the recent revelations about the Rachman property 'empire' have been possible. Yet many more instances exist, and save in the House of Commons, the laws of libel make it almost impossible for the public to be made aware of what is happening, In 1958, I published Absolute Beginners whose chief ddeor was the 'Napoli' of which St. Stephen's Gardens is one of the many sordidly vivacious thoroughfares. In 1960 came Mr. Love & Justice whose settings are in the tumbledown London north of the Harrow Road, and in the south of Stepney. In both instances I was told, by SW3-based friends as well as by reviewers, that the living conditions I described were inconceivable in modern London. Yet anyone with direct experience of these areas, like Mr. Spurling, will surely know that there was no exaggeration. (It would indeed be impossible to exaggerate the vivid squalor of these regions: no art, evoking them, could equal life.) I was further told that, in describing the race riots of 1958, which largely arose because of the callous exploitation of the tenants of both races, I was guilty of artistic licence. May I put on record here (which I have not revealed before) that no event described in the final section of Absolute Beginners ('In September') was not either witnessed by myself, or by friends whose accounts I know I can trust implicitly. I could, of course, legitimately have heightened fact provided I conveyed artistic truth. But anticipating a charge of over-emphasis, I deliberately used what really happened as a basis for a fictional description. (Once again, the horror of what did happen was startling enough to need little embroidery.)
From Mr. Spurling's article—and from any know- ledge of the areas I speak of—I think two con- clusions are imperative, First, that the upward soaring to the skies, in the past decade, of office and residential blocks in central and fashionable London, has been—and still is—accompanied by a savage down-grading and exploitation of slum and near- slum property that are a shameful disgrace to any nation, any capital city, and any political party whatsoever.
Next, that if tenants have the guts and resolution (as Mr. Spurling's neighbours had—though I'm not sure I myself would, with eviction. Alsatian dogs and bully-boys to face up to). a lot can he done to assert their rights, even thohgh the real remedy of radical improvement may lie outside their hands. The whole tone of our times is that 'they' are omni- potent, and 'we' can do absolutely nothing; but when challenged and confronted by individuals acting to- gether in sufficient numbers. an 'empire' like Peter Rachman's can be revealed as a vast confidence trick perpetrated on a conforming and timorous society. When I wrote of 'Napoli,' and of Cable Street, Stepney, years ago now, I was convinced I was recording a social phenomenon that was vanishing: a last hangover from the war years of slum living that would rapidly disappear. But there St. Stephen's Gardens (and a hundred other W11 streets) still are, and there Cable Street still is—though each year I can remember I have been told it is due for recon- struction.
But about this 'reconstruction.' when it comes, one word of enormous warning, please. The attrac- tion of Paddington and Stepney to many of those who choose, or who are forced, to live there—an attraction that partly compensates for racket rents and inconceivably squalid living conditions—is that their lives are not ordered and pre-ordained by tidy-minded bureaucrats who build 'model estates' to replace slums (and never live in them themselves, be it noted). Vast concrete blocks, and asphalt kiddi- parks (used mostly in fact for gang battles), and regulations about cats. and laundry, and lodgers (even the tenant's own family), and even -Cod help us—about keeping babies, do not appeal to any independent man or woman, and to replace slums by what amount to remotely-controlled municipal institutions, and not homes. is to substi- tute psychological exploitation for financial.
What we need desperately in England—it is our greatest social ill—is not only more decent housing, but an architecture—and above all a social attitude— based on the concept of community: in which families will not merely be allotted an isolated 'living space,' but be able to take part in a communal society in which human creatures can both live their own lives, and participate creatively in one another's. North Paddington. ghastly as it is. does offer a de- based communal existence of a kind; the huge new towers north of the Harrow Road are clean, decent, and absolutely soulless. And given the choice be- tween Rachman's empire and the municipalities', a great many—until our city fathers think not of buildings but of people—are going to prefer Rachmansland.
London, WC2
COLIN MACINNES
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