Covent Garden London
The heart of London's West End
Is Jim a World Leader?
At the memorial celebration service, St Paul's was full of old memories and old friends. It was almost 30 years to the day when a large crowd had assembled in front of the church to hear from celebrities, local activists and É me. It was in the run up to the 1971 Borough elections. I was one of three Labour candidates determined to break the long-standing Tory hold on Bloomsbury ward.
It was also the time when the local community had bestirred itself about the GLC's plans for Covent Garden. These were truly grandiose, with a large new road system and a new series of concrete commercial blocks. When my turn came, I laid into the GLC's plans with such vigour that David Jacobs (another speaker and a famous disc jockey of the day) rebuked me for being too unkind to the GLC. It was a great occasion. I have to say that, in the succeeding 30 years, I have never spoken to such a large and appreciative open-air crowd. We won. The scheme was dropped. We were elected.
As time has gone on, we can see that Covent Garden has been part of a global trend. Already in 1971, we were looking at what was happening at Les Halles, the old market in Paris. Across Europe, the old central core of towns seemed blighted by old buildings and inefficient and inappropriately placed warehouses, with curious street patterns. The old merchants and the middle class fled to the new suburbs. The housing was turning into slums.
In May, I went to Valencia and stayed in the Barrio, claimed to be the largest surviving old town centre in Europe. Originally, it was behind massive town walls, of which only the gates survive.
There are still magnificent fruit, fish and vegetable markets, stamp and coin markets, pet markets (how can they sell toucans?), bric-a-brac and ceramics; but along the streets are new restaurants, new bars, new shops, house fronts restored (with some European aid) and a real feeling of creative change. In the fine old Town Hall, there is a splendidly detailed 17th century map. The Barrio still follows the same street pattern; indeed some of the streets lie on Roman predecessors.
The river, which used to flood the Barrio, has been diverted. The riverbed is now a splendid longitudinal park. Near the sea, the river is 'Foster-ised' with splendid new buildings shimmering in white, a science museum and other worthy institutions (very dull inside), surrounded by Docklands-style apartment blocks, replacing old warehouses. The parallels with the East End were obvious.
Where traditional areas have been allowed to survive and regenerate themselves, communities flourish and grow. Tourists and local visitors flock in. Who wants to spend leisure time among white concrete blocks? It is not just Covent Garden and Valencia, but many 'centro storico' areas in Italian towns, and revived old central areas from Dublin to Toronto and Amsterdam to Sydney.
Good old friends, such as John Toomey and Jim Monahan, are not generally thought of as world leaders. But in a way we all were, without realising it. The new centre of life, in so many cities, is É the old centre of life. And a good thing, too.
Cllr Richard Arthur
(after being involved in the early days of the CGCA, Richard Arthur went on to become Leader of Camden Council from 1993 to 2000)
Covent Garden Community Association Annual Report 2000-2001
[ Home | About | Advice | Cartoons | Contact | Gallery | Handbook | Links | News | Newsletters | Sponsors ]