The Village Beneath

Gordon may have bottled out of the election here in Britain, but 3,500 miles away another Labour prime minister called Brown is fighting to be returned to office after nearly a decade of his party in power.

A general election will be held on the mid-Atlantic island of Bermuda on December
18th. This tiny democracy, where my close family lives now, is a little version of Westminster in the 1950s, a two-party system, first-past-the-post single member constituencies.

Universal suffrage was finally granted in 1968 but the same old white-dominated United Bermuda Party remained in power for 30 years before the black-dominated Progressive Labour Party swept to power in 1998.

What's frustrating in Bermuda is the lack of an alternative. A liberal party existed for a short period in the 1980s. A small group of MPs broke off from the PLP but they all lost their seats as elections came around and the two party squeeze kicked in. 

The PLP's coming to power in 1998 was a watershed in Bermuda's history and it needed to happen. Since then, it has been taken over by the social conservatives. The UBP has liberal leanings and is trying to distance itself from its white oligarchical past. There is only one daily newspaper and politics there is overwhelmed by racial legacies and by the personal vendettas endemic to small communities. 

Such a Christmas election is unprecedented in Bermuda's short democratic life. Will it spoil the Christmas cheer or give the holidays an exciting kick, like a dash of rum in the egg nog? Right now the PLP is tipped to win, but it should be an interesting fight.

Follow the election campaign at www.bermudasun.bm or www.theroyalgazette.com or go to the websites of the two parties: www.plp.bm and www.ubp.bm

One of my neighbours on Chalk Farm Road told me of the large crack in the wall of his basement. When he asked his landlord where it had come from, the answer was a V2 rocket which had hit another house on the street during the final months of World War Two.

Its difficult now to imagine that the area I live in, Hawley Mews/Road/Street, was the scene of some of the worst bombing raids during the Second World War. Now, I end up moaning to myself about the people urinating on my doorstep. So, I'd really like to talk to someone who lived through that experience in this area, to hear what it was really like and put my complaints into perspective.

According to the Camden historian, and former borough councillor John Richardson, this area was paricuarlly badly hit because of its proximity to vital railway interlinks. During 1944 flying bombs carried 1-ton warheads into the heart of St Pancras. Charles Allen Newbury, who served as an Air Raid Precautions officer at the time, describes how one fell on a surface shelter in Hawley Road, leaving several people dead and a huge crater.

The worst bombing came of course during the blitz between the summer of 1940 until the spring of 1941. Bombs fell in St Pancras from Highgate to Euston, but the worst of the incidents was on April 16, 1941, when 16 people were killed at Montague Tibbles House on Prince of Wales Road (now Penshurst). Crogsland Road and Haverstock Hill were also hit.

In total there were 1278 air raid incidents in St Pancras, according to Richardson. 957 people had been killed and 1,443 people had been seriously injurred. 1,576 houses were demolished, 1,744 uninhabitable and 13,825 had blast damage.

References:
Charles Allen Newbury, "Wartime St Pancras: A London Borough defends itself" (Camden History Society, 2006)
John Richardson, "Kentish Town Past", (Historical Publications, 1997)

The village beneath is an attempt to chronicle the civic pride that still exists in Britain today but feels kind of hidden.

We see examples of the village a lot, whether at a community safety meeting, a discussion about the history of the Greville Estate, a protest meeting to stop development on a treasured local street or turn a park into a town green.

But many civic events seem to be more reactions than they are ends in themselves.

Turnouts in local elections sometimes dip below a third here in London. In Germany and Sweden they stand at the 70 and 80 percent. Britain has become a country that looks to and increasingly defers to the centre.

Brown is just as media driven and lacking in vision as Blair and Major were. While the treasury micromanages, the quangos with their armies of unelected officials proliferate. The system dominates, confuses and smothers us.

It takes so long to work out how it works. And once one finally does, there's a realisation of just how heavily it is stacked against the citizen.

Local politics works because local councillors can get to know their neighbours. And I know the effect on a community that a good councillor can have. Residents appreciate being treated as if they are worth the effort.

If you're anything like me, old habits die hard. Its always fun to improvise a bit.

I've been going up the hill since I was wee, either to toboggan back down again (back then, it seemed to snow in London) or watch fireworks on Guy Fawkes night (another nostalgia).

I'm used to going up the hill from the corner of Primrose Hill Road and Regent's Park Road. The view is magnificent. But I usually spoil it a bit by sneaking a peak behind me while trudging up the path.

Tonight, instead, I tackled the slope from a different angle, entering the park on Primrose Hill Road but on the Elsworthy Road side. As I ran up at 45 degrees I almost felt enveloped by blackness and started to lose hope. I saw but one luminous bobbing thing in the distance, owned by a solitary dog walker.

Then, I spotted the viewing area and silhouettes in the distance. I began to gallop at the thought of a breather!

Approaching the view from this angle, the lights are spread out in a wide panorama as they gradually reveal themselves over the gentle slope. Its always been one of the best views in London but from that angle it was even more breathtaking.

I didn't stay long because my hands were numb and about to drop off. 

Residents may have noticed the increased police patrols in the last few weeks around Camden Town.

As I wondered up the High Street I almost choked on my coffee as I noticed two flourescent jackets moving their way along the canalside. That same day I saw two officers come into the alleyway behind my house to check all was well. To be honest, its great to have them here.

Some people say that Community Support Officers don't have enough powers to make a real difference.

I reckon the opposite. Apart from the deterrent effect of 18 people in police uniforms providing a continuous patrol for our area, they provide peace of mind for residents.

They're individuals who care. They'd be unlikely to simply ignore your pleas for help if you got in trouble on the streets late at night. They're willingly helpful fellow citizens, who just happen to have startlingly bright jackets and radios on them.

This new emphasis on police on our streets from Camden Council and the Met, along with the security guards funded by Camden Town Unlimited, have had a noticeable effect on the general feel of our area.

The statistics back this up: the number of recorded criminal offences between April and August this year dropped by 17.4 percent compared with the same period in 2006. And the number of drug incidents captured by CCTV fell by almost a third during the same time period.

One thing it would be nice to see is police patrols on Harmood Street and at the corner of Malden and Prince of Wales Roads after 10 pm. With the amount of car breakings that happen in that area, sometimes in broad daylight(!), any increased police presence would be a help.