SWIMMING TO BARNES

The interruption of the boat race and subsequent statement by the protagonist prompted this reflection on the area which it arcs around, Barnes. Many walks have been taken along this curvature of the river. It is remarkably free of buildings for the most part and encloses the mysterious other world of Barnes. Although just across the river from the busy and undoubtedly urban Hammersmith, in a curious reversal of what was until relatively recently the far more industrialised south bank of the Thames, Barnes is determinedly suburban and almost rural, with large areas given over to a Common. But as so often in this city and this country all is not as it seems. 

I do not claim to know a great deal about the area, but know it well enough from attempts to traverse it that it is a very curious mixture of private and public spaces, and a bastion of the establishment, albeit in a most discrete and understated manner. This is in fact a hallmark of the way the status quo is maintained and made to appear perfectly ’natural’ in this country, as if it were simply a given, like a part of the landscape. It is a fallacy. It is very rigidly controlled and maintains and duplicates itself by the most apparently harmless but in fact in highly proscribed and exclusive system of ownerships and concessions.

In and close to Barnes are numerous extensive areas that have been annexed as sports grounds. Barn Elms is one, a large fenced off area, a former polo ground, that is now private playing fields with a couple of rugby clubs. 

Cross the Barnes railway bridge to where the Oxford and Cambridge boathouse are located are yet more strangely empty acres of  ‘sports grounds’ Duke’s Meadow, formerly the Ibis Sports Ground, and the Bank of England’s very own playing fields. Most of these areas are inaccessible to the public, despite being large open green spaces that front the river. I have just found another tucked in behind the road which follows the curve of the river but is set back from it which appears to have been the Harrodian Club sports ground. Golf courses are another excellent wheeze to keep the public off of land and indeed there was one in Barnes, alongside the small tributary Beverly Brook which, although now public, retains a semi-private inaccessibility, as does the whole of this small river. The footpaths end abruptly and places to cross this small stream are hard to find. Then there is the dominant presence of St. Paul’s public school and the many acres of playing fields that it owns.

That the whole area that the boatrace imposes itself upon is largely the preserve of the elite who have been to schools like St. Paul’s is just what was wilfully avoided and not addressed by the reactions in mainstream media to what I believe the swimmer was trying to highlight, not just the boatrace itself. Why does the BBC ritually broadcast every detail in a technically difficult and no doubt expensive live programme which now includes hours of irrelevant and fatuous fawning over the crews, mostly extremely dull Americans on well paid athletic scolarships ? Because it confirms the dominant classes position as unquestionable, just be content as viewers of this spectacle with being able to watch their meaningless contest as to yearly bragging rights. As for the river being plastered with advertisements and the protagonists who willingly chose to take part being feted as courageous heroes, that’s ugly and ridiculous, respectively. 

  

The anodyne ‘debate’ on the supposedly satirical programme ‘The 10 O Clock Show’ completely failed to grasp or critique the public school system and the point that was made about all our leading politicians coming from this background linked directly to the Oxford and Cambridge nexus / mafia. The boatrace is just one small example of how  extensive and entrenched the ownership of much of this part of London and its river is with a very small elite sub-section of society. 

Just to set the record straight the wilfully misnamed ‘public’ schools are private schools and run as businesses. In their early days there may have been some excuse for them being titled ‘public’ as there were no other schools at all. They have been for centuries been fee charging and thus exclusively the domain of the relatively rich. They own much land, not only their sites but also own estates in inner London, much of Maida Vale is owned by Eton for one example, and elsewhere. That they remain as charities and thus exempt of tax is an obvious absurdity and that clear lie can only be sustained by the influence they have consistently held in government. This comes about through the circle that still exists whereby the children of the well off middle or upper class are sent to schools such as St. Paul’s, Eton and so on, by parents that often also went to the same place, and then get choices and assistance to enter into the self-contained and interconnected world of academic, business or indeed sporting elites. Once entered into this world, one predicated on having sufficient funds above all, there is a fast inside track that is very well laid and established for going onto the best universities ( best in terms of the perceived value of their degrees, self justified by repetition and accepted as a given that Oxford and Cambridge are the best by those that went there ) being introduced to others from the same background in one’s field of interest, be that politics, business or even if you are one of those odd ones who prefers something in the arts. 

Thus despite some protestations to the contrary and some obvious examples of those that do not hail from this system, deliberately highlighted to deflect attention eg Alan Sugar, the great majority of those that are in positions of power in almost every area of life in this country are a product of this closed cycle. That is not to say they are all exactly the same nor that they cannot ‘do a good job.’ This is to say that as a self justifying and self selecting elitist system it remains fundamentally unchanged and as firmly established as it ever was. In fact I suggest it is less challenged than in the past. Incredibly it seems almost more fully accepted or perhaps more expertly obscured than ever. 

Back to Barnes. It has a relaxed atmosphere that in this country is almost  always a sign of there being no shortage of money about. It has ‘village’ pond and High Street with small local shops for local people. There is a butchers, a bakers, a cheese shop etc. Again these are becoming signs of high affluence rather than a normal shopping street these days. There are vast areas given over to rugby pitches, quite who owns this land is not clear. Some must belong to the school, some may be the Local Authority. What is particularly striking is that in any other part of London it would have been built on. 

At the risk of sounding like an estate agent there are excellent public transport facilities with two train stations going into the centre of London. The housing is almost entirely two storey dwellings with front and back gardens, the most land usage with the lowest density of occupation. The overall quality of the environment with the one exception of a degree of plane noise, is just about the very best that can be had while living in London. 

And who are the people that live here ? Its safe to assume that a large percentage are from exactly that circle described earlier, it is one of their homing grounds, like the ducks and geese that are so well provided for at the Wetlands Centre. This extraordinary thing is slap bang in the middle of the area, again neatly preventing any further building, on the site of former reservoirs, and is now completely fenced off and charges a considerable sum to go in and look at the birds. Again I cannot imagine this happening in any other part of London with the pressures on space and land values. It is not necessarily a bad idea, but it is simply not operating in the same world that I have to live in. How is it that the burgers of Barnes can hold off the forces of development that prevail in 99% of the rest of the city and retain their precious peace and excess of amenity ? It cannot be by chance. No, of course not, it is by influence. It is the physical manifestation of the invisible links between the elite that have been natured here and occupy the corridors of power in government, the boardrooms in the city and the offices of the Crown. 

There is even the jazz venue, since jazz became a predilection of certain Oxbridge undergraduates in the 1950’s it sneaked into unlikely places such as Barnes, not exactly an obviously Bohemian location, and the august portals of BBC Radio 3 which remains immune to pretty much any other music of the Twentieth century without classical credentials. 

I am glad that it is a relative oasis set in the otherwise heavily congested and unrelentingly built up area of south west London, there are no actual gates to prevent access, but it is a product and a domain that has been created by and is largely peopled by a privileged few. 

The way that part of the river is co-opted by rowers, not just on boatrace day, but all the year round by the many public schools which have their boathouses along Putney Embankment and often spoil a peaceful stroll along the tow path by driving their charges along by bellowing into a loudhailer from a motorised dinghy, is a clear indication of who really ’naturally’ belongs here and who will use it as they wish, not for the broadest benefit. The embankment where the boathouses cluster is compromised by their slipways which cause the road to flood at any particularly high tide. However the houses along there are set high and are well enough back for this not to be a problem, for them. It is if you happen to want to walk along the road ( there is no defined footway ) on such an occasion, as are the boats and their racks and stands which get set up on and are traversed across the road by crews of future cabinet members and ‘captains of industry’ with impunity. Try doing that on any other stretch of public, sorry, Queen’s highway in London and see what happens. Even the embankment railings are painted in light and dark blue.  

The conservatories attached to some of these enormous houses are bigger than many a typical London house. Of course the people that live in them are not the sort that throw stones. Others that may see a minor disruption to a boatrace which is undoubtedly symbolically elitist by a lone swimmer as too much like performance art could be of a different mind, given the way things are panning out.

Painting :   Hammersmith Bridge on boat race day by Walter Greaves @1860