Soon London Will Become A City Without A Memory Of Its Past

The Imperative Of Identity Ideology Demands The Politicisation Of London’s Public Space.

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan’s announcement that he will rename the City’s Overground in a tribute to multiculturalism is integral to his project of extinguishing all traces of old historical London and replacing it with images and symbols that communicate his political outlook.

Opponents of Khan’s unilateral decision to rebrand the Overground as a testimony to multiculturalism accused the Mayor of wasting £6.3m on a ‘pointless gimmick’. Yes, the Mayor has a habit of regarding London as his private fiefdom but his profligate use of tax-payers money should be of far less concern than his project of politicising London’s public space and infrastructure.

When he launched his rebranding initiative, Khan crowed that ‘not everyone’s going to be happy’ with his exercise in social engineering. That’s because not everyone who uses the Overground has been won over to his political crusade. That this is a political crusade promoting identity politics was made clear in a statement issued by Transport for London, which stated that:

‘This significant change, which will include a major update to London’s world-famous Tube map, will make it easier for customers to navigate London’s transport network while also celebrating the city’s diverse culture and history’.

Note the words ‘significant change’! Why should this renaming exercise be characterised as a significant change? Because the new names used to delineate different lines in the Overground network symbolise a self-conscious attempt to break with the City’s historic image of itself.

Transport for London refers to Khan’s pet project as a ‘historic re-imagining of London’s transport network. The use of the term historic re-imagining is absolutely accurate. The London that has been re-imagined in this exercise of social engineering is one where old forms of social and cultural solidarity are displaced by the fragmented identity communities celebrated by the multicultural ideologists. The explicit aim of this act of historical re-imagination is to distance contemporary London from the ideals, values and forms of solidarity that underpinned the outlook of communities in modern times. It is likely that the Blitz Spirit shown in response to the bombing of the City during Second World War will be re-imagined out of existence.

Though Khan is meant to be a mayor of all the citizens of London his aim is to consolidate his position through strengthening his relation with different constituency of identity groups. Why else would he name one of the lines, Mildmay line? This line is named after a Shoreditch hospital that looked after patients during the HIV/Aids crisis. Khan must have decided that he needed to invent a name that has significance for the celebration of gay identity. To curry favour with feminists, he decided to name one of the lines Lioness, an England women’s football team, who got to the final of last year’s World Cup final, only to lose to Spain. Another line is named Windrush. It ticks the box titled Black voters.

The newly re-imagined London is one that barely resembles the city’s past. Through this re-imagination London ceases to being an English historical city. The Khan administration is fiercely devoted to promoting an image of London where white people are conspicuously absent. That is why an official mayoral document, A City For All Londoners, warned against using images of white families in public propaganda campaigns. The authors of this document argued that images of white people do not reflect the ‘real London’.

The ’real London’ is a historically reimagined dystopia where the city is detached from its rich cultural heritage and its historical achievements. It was in this vein that in 2020 Sadiq Khan launched his Commission For Diversity In The Public Realm. The Commission stated that its focus would be on increasing representation among Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities, women, LGTBQ+ and disabled groups, as well as those from a range of social and economic backgrounds. The fragmentation of the city into numerous minority groups and causes is the reality assumed by asvocates of Real London.

In practice, the Commission’s goal of diversifying the public realm required the transformation of the way that different aspects of London’s public space is designated. Although the Commission was far from explicit about its objective of erasing London’s past, it signalled its unhappiness with the historical experiences that made this city a great global cultural, political and economic centre. This sentiment was made clear when in 2020, Sadiq Khan ordered a review of the city’s statues and street names because they may have some connections to Britain’s imperial past. He announced the establishment of a commission to review statues, plaques and street names, which largely reflected the rapid expansion of London’s wealth and power at the height of Britain’s empire in the reign of Queen Victoria.

Khan stated that some statues would have to be removed. He justified his endorsement of iconoclasm on the ground that ‘our capital’s diversity is our greatest strength’ and ‘yet our statues, road names and public spaces reflect a bygone era’. Khan’s statement offers a textbook illustration of a social engineer’s hatred for Britain’s past.  It takes for granted the belief that anything that smacks of a ‘bygone era’ is inherently flawed. The suggestion that public spaces that reflect a bygone era need to be altered or eliminated is a roundabout way of stating that London must be insulated from the symbols of its history. His pathologisation of a bygone era would remove all traces of the past and, in effect, impose his dystopian multiculturalist vision on London. A city where all traces of the past were eliminated so that it no longer reflects a by-gone era and no longer breathes the passions of the past would eventually turn into a grotesque no-man’s land.

There maybe those who have responded to Khan’s re-imagination of London as simply an irrelevant form of tinkering with a tube map or with street names and signs. However, the cultural narrative that gives meaning to public spaces matter. His Commission for Diversity is not merely interested in publicising the ideals of different identity groups but also of discrediting the historic foundation on which this great city was built. From this perspective London’s historical achievements are nullified and rendered shameful. The multiculturalist template adopted by Khan is intolerant of the distinct historical dimensions of London’s historical experience that made this city what it is. Unless this project of urban social engineering is resisted most of the London’s population will forget that once upon a time it was a proud globally significant English city.

In this case historical re-imagination is a euphemism for the vandalism of historical London.

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