34 years ago, the area was replete with urban decay, squats dominating the streetscape. The Westway, the A-somethingorother motorway, races through the middle of it, as it did in the mid-1970s, and the district is home to immigrant communities, as it was back then. To the south, the areas of Chelsea and Kensington stand in stark contrast to the district to the north of them.
In the mid-1970s, a call went out from one of those squats - I wanna riot, a riot of my own. The squats have long since gone, demolished to make way for gated, semi-gentrified estates and council tenancies. The call to action has long since passed - as has the agitator calling for British youth to stand up. Its echo remains in the back catalogue of a multinational record label, making money for faceless corporations.
As I walked those streets, under the watchful eye of the camera, I wondered where the spirit of 1976 had gone. Me, a non-working class skinhead from Australia in his late thirties and employed in a well paid, white collar job, on a nostalgia tour of something to which he has no direct connection. Hardly a stellar example of the message that eminated out of the squats of Walterton Road.
Yet, as I walked through this area of West London, I was surrounded by people and locations that had even less of a connection with the message of 1976 than did I. the all-seeing eye peers down on them, they grumble, in the best of British tradition, about the weather, the economy, unemployment, the cost of living. Oblivious to the legacy of the area in which they live, and unwilling to challenge their lot in life.
Joe, you are sorely missed.
No comments:
Post a Comment