Juxtaposition

I'd like to take a break from identifying cell organelles (yeah!...) to talk about the marvelously ironic country that is the United States of America. Flipping through the Wikipedia article on 31 January, you will discover that, on this day in 1865, the "United States Congress passes the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, abolishing slavery", yet on this day in 1876, a mere eleven years later, the country "orders all Native Americans to move into reservations". Huh.

America is a very interesting country. It's only been officially independent since 1776, yet in that relatively short time, it has risen to become the world's greatest superpower. (You could argue for days, I am sure, as to whether this is a title it retains, but it is very true to say that it was the dominant world power for almost all of the twentieth century.) A melting pot of many, many different races and religions, and containing immigrants who often arrived incredibly poor, America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had the potential to completely fail as a democracy, simply because of its diversity. From some countries, you had Catholics escaping persecution, other countries, Protestants and others still Jewish (and that's just counting the major European religions), yet these incredibly different groups of people managed to exist side by side once they were in America.

The sheer size of the country probably had something to do with this. There was enough room, if you so required, to pack up and move thousands of miles away from the people who were annoying you, and still be assured of land and space to call your own when you arrived there, unlike in the highly overcrowded European nations. Often, new states sprung up where people of the same religion congregated - Pennsylvania, for example, was founded (first as a colony, then later as a state) by William Penn, a very prominent Quaker leader, and the religion dominated the state's governance for decades; Utah was founded by Brigham Young, a leading Mormon and has retained that connection to the Mormon religion to this day.

Though there were instances of segregation such as these, there are other examples of many different nationalities and creeds living side by side. New York, for example, had a very diverse population simply because it was home to the largest immigration center in the country; California after 1848 had an equally diverse population because of the myriad prospectors arriving from all over the world hoping to try their luck in the gold rush.

This is not to say that the US was not without its problems. Slavery was not formally banned in the country until 1865, whereas most European countries had banned it much earlier in the century (Britain, for example had banned in 1833). Even after this point, treatment of black people, particularly in the Southern states, was often terrible - the so-called 'Jim Crow' laws continued right into the twentieth century, and the Civil Rights Movement was still (understandably) very active until over a century later, when ethnic minorities were finally granted equal rights.

Their treatment of the Native Americans was equally despicable - the forcible moving to reservations of the peoples was just the beginning of the end, with many "savages" having been treated as second class citizens since Europeans had first started coming over to the country. 

Women and other ethnic minorities were also often treated poorly, though in some cases, this was not much different to the rest of the world. Irish and Chinese immigrants were often little better than slaves, as they worked in highly dangerous occupations such as mining or building railways for an incredibly small wage, and no rights to protest, but, sadly, this was pretty much the same as the rest of the world. Though some states allowed women to vote in the late nineteenth century, the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution (which allowed universal women's suffrage) was passed in 1919, very comparable to most European countries. 

Obviously, the country was not perfect at all, particularly in their treatment of ethnic minorities, but it is truly remarkable that it was able to become such a dominant world power in so little time. They have often been held up as a bastion of democracy, and though clearly there are examples which can be found that illustrate that this was most definitely not true, there are plenty more examples to show that it is. Not for nothing do we still hold true the idea of the "American dream" - that a penniless man could come to the country, escape the rigid class systems of Europe, and make himself a millionaire. Naturally, these situations were very rare, but they did occasionally happen. Social class was much more fluid in eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth century  America than it was anywhere else.

It will be interesting to observe what direction the United States takes over the next few decades. Once a model of democracy, the right-wing Tea Partiers, such as Sarah Palin seem to be having more and more influence on life there - the recent shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the other innocent victims is directly attributable to the violent rhetoric that is more and more forthcoming from certain political leaders; and the new Republican congress wants to restrict abortion still further, even going as far as redefining rape (you can be 'forcibly raped' or 'not really raped it was just a bit of harmless fun and who says a woman should be conscious during sex anyway') as if women who have been attacked haven't been through enough. Ironically, we may see, in a few decades time, the Middle Eastern countries that the US has been determined to invade in order to bring democracy to, actually being more democratic and allowing women more rights than America itself.

But who knows? I am a historian, not a fortune teller, after all.     

War of Dried Fruit...oh wait

I am not the best person in the world at spelling, and rely heavily on computerized spellcheckers to ensure that my work is not riddled with errors. So when I read that on 4 January, 1903, Topsy the elephant was killed in the War of Currents, I immediately envisaged a couple of sultanas bravely facing an onslaught by a handful of raisins. In my defense, I should like to point out that the idea of AC and DC currents going to war with each other is just as nonsensical as dried fruit fighting (though in the interests of balance, fairness and embarrassing myself, I should point out that it was only after reading that Topsy was killed by Thomas Edison, via electrocution that it dawned on me that this particular war may have more to do with currents than currants...).

So let's dive right in to battle, shall we? The war of currents (sometimes known as the 'war of the currents', because Historians are crazy and wild like that), began in the late 1880s, when alternating current (AC) was invented and decided to go to war with direct current (DC).

When Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb, he used the electricity created by DC to make it work. DC works by having a constant current flowing through a wire in a similar manner to the way water flows through a pipe - how much water you have in your bucket (lightbulb) at the end depends on how fast the water flows through the pipe and how long it's been flowing for. In terms of electricity, this worked really well if you had a light switch on the wall and a lamp a few metres away that you wished to light. You could even share your electricity source with your neighbours, and they could have light too! It was all rather jolly.

There were, however, some significant problems with the system. If you wished to transfer power from its source at the power station to your home, you would need metallic cables which conducted electricity to do so. However, it took a lot of volts to light a bulb, and do the other things electricity was used for, and DC cannot be altered - if you need a high voltage at the end, you have to have a high voltage at the start, and keep that voltage high whilst the electricity travels to its end point. This proved slightly problematic, as if the current had to flow for distances greater than a mile, the wires would get so hot (due to the wasted heat energy being produced) that they would often melt and stop working. 

Edison's solution was to install lots of wires which ran over shorter distances (leading one observer to point out that this left the city of New York looking like a spider's web) but this proved dangerous, as during high winds or severe snowstorms, common in autumn and winter months, the wires would fall, electrocuting the people stood below them. In a particularly severe three day storm in March 1888, around four hundred people were killed this way. It was clear that the system couldn't continue for much longer.

Luckily, a very clever scientist named Nickola Tesla invented Alternating Current (by methods that, if I attempted to explain them, would result in my brain leaking out of my ears, so please just take my word on this one). AC, as the name suggests, alternates - sometimes it's positive, sometimes it's negative. For example, if an alternating current of 50 volts were to be measured using a oscilloscope (a fancy voltmeter), it would produce a sine wave that started at 0 volts, went up to 50, came back down to 0, went even further down to -50, came back up to 0, then further up to 50 again, and so on. 

Whilst this was very interesting to scientists, the main benefit that AC has to us all is that this enables it to be transformed - which basically means it starts off at a very high voltage at the power station, before immediately going through a transformer, which uses magic physics to lower the voltage significantly, but not the power produced from it, which means that the cables no longer heated up and melted, and power could be sent over huge distances. It was clear to everyone that this was a Jolly Good Thing Indeed, and preparations were made to switch over to AC, so that hundreds of lives could be saved, as well as many, many miles of copper cables.

Edison, however, had other ideas. He had patented the DC system, as was busy making huge amounts of money off it. He knew, though, that Tesla's invention was much better, and would soon make his old system obsolete, and therefore did everything in his power to discredit it. He claimed that it was a terribly dangerous thing - "a torrent rushing violently over a precipice" - and electrocuted animals with it to demonstrate its great danger, which is where the story of Topsy the elephant comes in.

(This is actually a really sorry tale - it made me weep, but then, anything to do with animals dying will do that... Topsy was an elephant who was kept in a zoo to perform for people, but by 1903 she had killed three men - one of whom had tried to force a lit cigarette down her throat. For this reason, she was deemed too dangerous to live, and was electrocuted using 6,600 volts of AC  by Edison, in an effort to demonstrate its dangers. He even filmed the event, and the footage is available on Wikipedia if you want to view it, but please don't - it's quite distressing...)

Tesla took the admirable stance of not saying anything derogatory about his rival and using just his own invention to prove how it was the best one to be used to provide electricity for the country. In 1897, the organizer of the Chicago World Fair asked Edison to supply the electrics for the event, and Edison agreed, requesting $1,000,000 to cover the costs of cables. Tesla approached the organizer, saying he could do it for half the price, and managed this feat. Edison was so annoyed that he banned Tesla and his sponsors from buying lightbulbs which he had patented. 

The damage to Edison's invention had been done, however. Once people saw that Tesla's alternating current was much cheaper and safer than using direct current, the switch was made, and within 10 years of the Chicago World Fair, 80% of American electricity was produced using AC. 

Which is all terribly interesting, but I'm a bit disappointed at the lack of dried fruit pummeling each other...         

Aftermath

5 July, 1945. The war in Europe was over, and Britain had emerged the 'victors' of the Second World War, along with the other allied nations. For the first time in over a decade, the country prepared to go to the polls, to decide who would be the new Prime Minister. 

Leading the Conservative Party was Winston Churchill, the man who had led the country through the war and whose party had been in charge before the outbreak of the war. He was a hero - hailed as the man who had held together the uneasy alliance between Communist Russia and highly capitalist America, as well as providing a well needed morale boost for Britain with his now infamous speeches about fighting the Nazis on the beaches with blood, sweat, toil and tears, and so on.

Leading the Labour Party was a man called Clement Attlee. The uncharismatic leader was fighting the war hero at the height of his popularity. In the previous election before the war, the Labour Party had won a mere 154 seats. It was clear to everyone what was going to happen; throughout the campaign, newspapers, foreign ambassadors, members of the public - even members of the Labour Party itself - were positive that the Conservatives would win the election with the greatest of ease. Britain went to the polls on 5 July (although Churchill himself could not vote, due to having forgotten to register), then the country patiently waited three weeks for the result (they had to count the votes of hundreds of thousands of troops, many of whom were still fighting the war, some as far away as Japan, where World War Two was still ongoing).

Life carried on as normal. The News of the World printed a front page article stating that Churchill and the Conservatives had a working majority; and the leader himself flew out to take part in the Potsdam Conference (a meeting between the presidents of Russia and America, which divided up the map of Europe after the fall of the Nazi Regime, where large chunks of Eastern Europe were handed over to the Russians in return for Western Europe keeping Greece, the supposed center of western civilization). The results of the election were expected on 26 July, so on this day Mr. Churchill flew back to the UK, not even bothering to pack properly. Stalin and Eisenhower expected to see him return within a few days.

What happened, therefore, was completely unexpected. Labour won 393 seats; the Conservatives a mere 197. They had just under 50% of the vote - 49.7%, to be precise. Why? Who was Clement Attlee, and how had he - the rather unassuming, uncharismatic Deputy Prime Minister of the Second World War Coalition to Churchill's war hero - managed to win such a great victory?

Attlee was born on this day in 1883, in Putney (London), one of eight children. He studied at a private London school until the age of 18, when he won a place to the University of Oxford to study Modern History (hooray!). His first job, from 1906-09, was working as the manager of a charitable club for working class boys, which was run by his old school. Previous to this, he had been quite a conservative man, but what he saw there convinced him that only significant income redistribution by the state would suffice to lift these children out of poverty, and he therefore became a socialist, joining the Independent Labour Party.

He became involved in local politics, and supported a lot of the more left wing proposals by the Liberal government which came just before World War One - he famously rode a bicycle around the southern counties of England in the summer of 1911, explaining their new National Insurance Act. During World War One, he served in the military (he was heavily involved in the Gallipoli Campaign, which gave him much respect for Churchill as a military strategist), but quickly returned to politics after the conflict was over, becoming mayor for one of London's poorest boroughs. 

As mayor, he implemented many socialist policies, such as forcing the slum landlords to spend much more money on ensuring that their properties were habitable, and also wrote a book, The Social Worker, where he famously wrote that "Charity is a cold grey loveless thing. If a rich man wants to help the poor, he should pay his taxes gladly, not dole out money at a whim". In 1922 he was elected as an MP, and he became leader of the Labour Party in 1935, always remaining very much on the left of the party. 

This inherent leftiness was very appealing to the country in July 1945, though it was his endorsement of a report that had been written a few years previously by a rather old Civil Servant which probably really won the election for him. Sir William Beveridge was commissioned in 1941 to write a report on 'Social Insurance and Allied Service', a task so monumentally boring that he put it off for a whole year, then sat down and wrote something completely different to what the original memo had suggested. 

Beveridge proposed that, after the war, the British government set about making a national insurance scheme, old-age pensions, family allowances and a national health service available to everyone in the UK, stating that the nation needed to be freed of the five evils of 'Want, Ignorance, Disease, Squalor and Idleness'. The health service, he declared, would be free to all at the point of delivery and available to a person "from the cradle to the grave".

Upon reading the report, Churchill and the other leading Conservatives agreed that the report was a rather nice idea in theory, but in practice would be so monumentally expensive to actually implement that they immediately dismissed it. However, someone in the Ministry of Information didn't get the 'yeah, we're ignoring this one' memo, and thought that it would make a rather nice morale boost for the country.

It did. After being published, it quickly became an immediate bestseller, translated into seven different languages (though I can't actually find a list of what these languages were - I can hardly imagine a typical working class man wanting to read the report in, say, Latin, or worse - German.) and a special pocket edition was produced for troops and resistance fighters. And in the run up to the election, in the summer of 1945, the Labour Party basically adopted it as their manifesto. 

They also promised a return to full employment for all the troops who had fought in the war. This was of particular concern to them, as when their fathers had returned from fighting in World War One, there had been very few jobs available, and unemployment amongst ex-soldiers was rife.  The depression of the thirties was seen as the Conservatives' fault, so Labour, led by Attlee promised that they would help the British to 'win the peace, as well as the war', something which was popularly believed not to have happened after the First World War. 

Of course, it wasn't Attlee who was directly responsible for bringing in the new National Health Service - that monumental task fell to Aneurin Bevan in 1948 - but his principle of Britain as a Welfare State remains to this day, though it is weaker during times of Conservative rule. Attlee also continued his progressiveness after his government had fallen from power - in 1955 he was elevated to the House of Lords, and three years later he established the Homosexual Law Reform Society with Bertrand Russell, a group which aimed to decriminalize being gay, and after nine years of campaigning, succeeded. Sadly, Attlee did not live long enough to see this victory, dying in October 1967, but his post-war reforms live on today, a legacy which earned him the title of Greatest 20th Century Prime Minister by a poll in 2004.  

A Tax on your Strangeness

So on New Year's Eve, 1695, a window tax was introduced in England. This was, literally, a tax on windows (but not, as I first misread, widows...). In honour of the fact that this was not nearly the weirdest thing to have been taxed, here is a list of 10 very odd taxes.

1) Window Tax:

Now, I am quite a fan of windows. They allow me to, y'know, see stuff that's outside without actually having to go into the outside, which is quite nice, especially when it is snowing or raining. They also are a very good means of keeping bugs and other unwanted objects away from my personage. Of course, being a modern, twenty-first century type, you know this already, and I am sure you are a fan of windows too. In 1695, many of the rich men and women of England also were fans of windows. 

 

However, when their King, William III decided that, under the Act of Making Good the Deficiency of the Clipped Money (yeah...that...uh...), windows should be taxed, the elite of England decided to brick up their windows so they wouldn't have to pay the tax, which is, I suppose, one way of getting around the problem. The tax itself had been introduced because the government was in need of money, but unable to pass a law which allowed them to collect a simple Income Tax, as  it was believed by many that disclosing your personal income to the government was an act of unacceptable intrusiveness into your personal liberties (an excuse I fear wouldn't go down too well today with HM Revenue and Customs).

The rate of tax was 2 shillings per house, with houses with more than ten windows incurring a variable rate of tax, and wasn't repealed until 1851, when 'House Duty' was introduced. 

2) Beard Tax:
In England, in 1535, King Henry VIII introduced a tax on beards. This was actually quite a clever idea to raise money - obviously the King and his government needed money, but it was often hard for them to raise it. However, anything that the King was seen to do or wear suddenly became highly fashionable, as people were keen to show the ruler what an excellent idea His Majesty had had in choosing to play bowls/wear clogs/learn the lute and so on. So naturally, when Henry grew a beard, those of his courtiers who were able to immediately followed suit (imitation is, after all, the sincerest form of flattery). Henry then introduced the tax, knowing that no one would dare shave off their beards in case they were seen as being against something the King believed in - which was a pretty clever way of thinking, actually.

The tax was variable, and those with more income paid more, rather that those with larger beards paying more. However, when Elizabeth I reintroduced the tax a few years down the line, she taxed every beard of more than two week growth, which must have been very hard to measure, though I'd imagine that 18 year old weedy boys managed to get away with not paying it for several years...

3) Beard Tax, the sequel:
The beard tax was introduced again in 1705, but this time by Peter the Great of Russia. All men with beards were required to pay a tax, and carry around a token which stated that they had indeed paid their tax. The token was inscribed with two phrases - "the beard tax has been taken" (fairly self explanatory), and "the beard is a superfluous burden". The tax had been designed to encourage Russian men to get rid of their beards, as Peter believed that their hirsuteness meant that they weren't as forward-thinking as other Western European countries, and Russia could only become truly modern when the men were clean shaven like their clean-shaven fellow Europeans, which is a real shame.

4) Cooking Oil Tax:
Now, anyone who has seen the pyramids or Tutankhamen's death mask knows how much the Pharaohs liked their extravagances, but even though they were considered literal Gods on the Earth, they still had to find the money to pay for all the jewelery, fancy palaces and eyeliner. Possibly the strangest way they thought would allow them to collect this money from their subjects was to tax cooking oil - or rather, force their citizens to buy cooking oil only from the Pharaohs themselves. The scribes (Ancient Egyptian taxmen) would go round to all houses to ensure they were using enough oil and, in possibly the oddest twist, refuse to allow them to recycle the used oil, instead binning it and forcing the people to buy new, Pharaoh-approved oil.

5) Hat Tax:
By 1784, it had become apparent that the Window Tax in Britain was not enough to keep the country afloat, and so new methods of taxation were introduced. The government, led by William Pitt the Younger, once again tried to introduce an Income Tax, but were once again prevented from doing so by a public who believed that this was an outrageous infringement on their right to privacy, and so decided to introduce a tax on hats.

This isn't actually as absurd as is sounds. The theory was that, the richer you were the more hats you would own, and the better quality these hats would be. Whereas a poor person might have just the one hat, which wasn't of a very good quality (and so wouldn't have to pay very much tax at all), a member of the aristocracy would have a lot of very expensive hats, and so would have to pay a lot of tax. The problem with this, though, was that it was very unpopular, and apparently led to people insisting that what they were wearing on their head wasn't actually a hat at all, so they wouldn't have to pay the tax ("Oh, this? It's not a hat, no not at all...it's er...a kilt! Yes, a kilt. I'm embracing my Scottish heritage! Och aye, and all..."). 

6) The 'anything-but-Income-Tax' Tax:
As people were so very unwilling to admit their income to the taxman, the government of the eighteenth century introduced many taxes on various household items, in an attempt to raise revenue this way. Some of the items they taxed included taxes on building materials such as wallpaper and bricks; taxes on leisure items, including dice and almanacs and taxes on clothing and make-up, such as glove tax, perfume tax and hair-powder tax (though the Royal Family and their servants, and clergymen were exempt from paying this particular tax). The British people responded to this by not purchasing any more hair-powder, and walking around with very greasy hair for a good number of years, until someone worked out how to invent shampoo.

7) Urine Tax:
Not a tax on those who produced it, but on those who sold it on (er, of course...). In ancient Rome, it became very easy for the owners of public toilets to sell on the urine they collected to tanners and cleaners, who used the ammonia in it (yum...). Officials noticed how rich the toilet owners were becoming, and, on discovering why, introduced a tax on urine.  

8) Salt Tax:
As salt has so many uses in our lives, it has always been taxed, in India as much as anywhere. However, when the British took over India as part of their Empire they raised the tax extortionately. From 1858, the Indian people were forced to pay an incredibly high rate of tax on their salt - something which continued for another 80 years. During March 1930, Gandhi led the first Salt March to Dandi. This was his very first non-violent protest against British rule of India, and though it didn't actually do anything about the Salt Tax, it did help to increase the levels of awareness of the Indians' plight, and gave them international support for their campaign for independence.


9) Artistic Exemption:
This, in fact, is the opposite of tax - in 1969, Ireland brought in a rule which stated that income derived from the sale of art (books, music, paintings, sculpture, film and so on) was exempt from taxation, allowing us to perpetuate the image of a starving artist. The act was introduced to allow artists who had fallen on hard times to recover more easily, but ended up being a bit of a problem when it became apparent in the mid 2000s that Irish rock group U2 were paying no tax on their millions. The law was modified so that only those artists with an income of less than 250,000 euros were exempt, and Bono and co. moved their savings to the Netherlands, so they ensure that they still didn't have to pay tax. Huh. 

10) Poll Tax:
A Poll Tax is very popular with governments because it can be implemented at any time, very easily, and is very unpopular with the public because it can be implemented at any time, very easily. In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher tried to introduce the tax, but was thwarted by the rioting and protesting of the public who were outraged at it's unfairness. (Anyone who doesn't think it's fair should imagine that I have 100 gold coins and am asked to pay just 1 in tax; whereas you, who have only 2 gold coins, are also asked to pay 1 in tax, and then consider its fairness...) Though they may have gotten their History a little bit confused ("Yeah! We're rioting in the spirit of the revolting peasants of thirteen-something who didn't want a Poll Tax either so they forced Queen Victoria to sign the Magna Carta and that's why Henry VIII broke with Rome!") but I can't fault them for their passion, and they did help strongly contribute to the ousting of Thatcher as PM, so it definitely wasn't a bad thing.                     

Monopoly

So I was just talking with a friend about everybody's favourite board game - Monopoly - when I happened to chance upon an article on the game in today's Guardian. The article mentioned that the game itself will be turning 75 this week, so this seemed as good a time as any to list 75 (or thereabouts) facts about the streets and stations featured on the UK edition. Let's go! (Award yourself £200...)

Old Kent Road:

Originally, Old Kent Road was part of a Roman road which ran from Dover to Holyhead, which is quite a way. Roads were vitally important to the Roman Empire, because they were the lines of communication and supply, the two most important things for a conquering army. Famously, they were built in dead straight lines, with no corners, as this was believed to reduce the number of attacks on lone travellers, as would-be attackers would have nowhere to hide behind, which is quite a sensible idea. I still wouldn't want to walk all the way from Kent to Wales, though... Old Kent Road is the only street in what is considered South London to be included on the Monopoly board, and in 1550, was regarded as the limit of the City of London's authority.

Whitechapel Road:

The oldest manufacturing company in Britain is located on Whitechapel Road - the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, which you may not be surprised to learn, makes bells (mostly for churches) and 'bell accessories' (though I'm not quite sure what they are...fancy rope from which to ring the bell? Who knows...). The company officially dates back to 1570 (though there were people making bells there at least as early as 1420) and it has been located in its present premesis since 1670, in a building which is now Grade II listed. The bells in the children's rhyme Oranges and Lemons were all produced here, as were the bells of Westmister Abbey, Big Ben, many churches and cathedrals - some as far away as Australia - and the Liberty Bell.

The Angel Islington:

The only street in Monopoly to not actually be a street, Angel is a district of London which is part of the borough of Islington. The Angel Inn, which lies on the Great North Road, is believed to be where Thomas Paine wrote parts of the Rights of Man (he stayed there for a while after returning from France in 1790), which was a book defending the French Revolution, which states that "popular political revolution is permissible when a government does not safeguard its people, their natural rights, and their national interests", which is something I believe we should all get behind, with this current government...

Euston Road:

Officially opened as part of the New Road in 1756, Euston Road was built in the 1740s as London's first bypass, and its primary function was to allow sheep and cattle to be easily driven to Smithfield Market. It was only given its current name in 1852, by the Fitzroy family, who owned all the terraced houses along it, and who decided that it needed to be named after their luxurious country mansion, Euston Hall, which I'm sure those who were dwelling in the back-to-back housing really appreciated.

Pentonville Road:

Wikipedia doesn't have an entry on Pentonville Road There was little of Historical interest to ever happen here, so there's very little I can say about it, other than the fact that it was given its name in 1857. Moving on...

Pall Mall:

In the early nineteenth century, Pall Mall was the centre of the arts scene in London. The Royal Academy, the National Gallery and Christie's auction house were all once located along here, but by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the street had lost its reputation for being a high class arts centre, and gained a reputation for being home to the most Gentleman's clubs in London... 

Whitehall:

Whitehall today is synonymous with the civil service and government in Britain, and a lot of very important government buildings are situated along it (Downing Street itself is one of the roads which leads off it). As well as this, it is also famous for being the place of Charles I's execution (royalists still commemorate this regicide every year on the anniversary of his death - 30 January), and housing the UK's principle war memorial - the Cenotaph.

Northumberland Avenue:
Northumberland Avenue was long associated with the Percy family, who later became the Dukes of Northumberland. The first Duke of Northumberland was a Tudor courtier who was Lord Protector to Edward VI when he was too young to rule alone, and father in law to Lady Jane Grey, who often stayed in their London property (the original house was knocked down and replaced in the 1650s). Jane was England's famous 'Queen for nine days' - by all accounts a very reluctant monarch, who was beheaded by the Catholic Mary when she assumed the throne so that she wouldn't prove a Protestant 'rallying point'. 

Bow Street:
Bow Street is a thoroughfare in Covent Garden, which today is most famous for the Opera House situated there (which was opened in 1732). The street is also famous for being (surprisingly enough) the foundation point of the Bow Street Runners, London's first professional police force, founded in 1749 by Henry Fielding. They solved petty crimes and made arrests of criminals for a fee, and helped inspire the Metropolitan Police Force. The officers themselves never called themselves 'runners' as they believed the term to be derogatory.

Malborough Street:
Originally a very fashionable area of London, where much of the aristocracy lived, by the mid-Victorian period, Marlborough Street had become very commercial, and remains so today. It's main 'claim to fame' (other than being a Monopoly street) is that Malboro cigarettes' (today the biggest selling brand in the world) original factory was based on the street.

Vine Street:
Poor old Vine Street doesn't seem to have a lot going for it. It's very short and narrow, and mostly contains the back entrances of buildings which open onto more salubrious streets. It is also the only street on the Monopoly board not to have a single pub, which proves very annoying for those who are trying to participate in the Monopoly Pub Crawl (which sounds like a lot of fun...) 

Strand:
Another street with a very old History, the Strand was originally part of a Roman road, and is recorded in 1198 as being Stronde and in 1220 as la Stranda, both Old English names which mean bank or shore (referring to the fact that it was originally along the edge of the then much wider River Thames). By the late middle ages however, it had become the main route which linked the City of London (the Civil and Commercial areas of the city) and the Palace of Westminster (the political centre of the city, and the country as a whole). It is also home to a very large number of aristocratic houses and palaces.

Fleet Street:
Obviously Fleet Street's most famous resident is it's demon barber, Sweeney Todd, but it has also become synonymous with the British press. It was the home of British journalism until the 1980s (the last news agency to move out was Reuters, in 2005) with almost all major national papers at one point having an office there. Even today, with no remaining papers situated there, Fleet Street remains a metonym for the press.

Trafalgar Square:
Possibly the most famous Square in the UK, Trafalgar Square was named after the Battle of Trafalgar, Britain's great naval victory in the Napoleonic wars. Today, it doesn't really serve any purpose other than being a tourist attraction - it is often used in background shots of films and TV shows to suggest a generic London location, and for celebrations, such as New Year's Eve parties and welcoming returning sports victors. 

Leicester Square:
In the early 17th century, the 2nd Early of Leicester bought the area around what is today Leicester Square, built a house and closed off the grounds to the local residents of St. Martin's Parish. This meant that the commoners were not allowed to use the common land - a tradition which dated back to Norman times - so they appealed to King Charles I in large numbers - such large numbers, in fact, that Charles was supposedly fearful of what would happen to him should he refuse their demands. It was therefore ordered that the area of land surrounding the house be reopened to the public, and it became known as Leicester Square.

Coventry Street:
Apparently, someone has measured that, at the weekend up to 150,000 people walk along Coventry Street. This has to be one of the most random statistics ever... Coventry Street is most famous for being the home of Charles Hirsch's Librairie Parisienne, which between 1890 and 1900, ran a clandestine trade in expensive pornography, with the help of Oscar Wilde. It is claimed that Hirsch and Wilde wrote Teleny, or, The Reverse of the Medal together - the first work of homosexual pornography. The book is still in print, if you are curious...

Piccadilly:
Until the 17th Century, Piccadilly was known as Portugal Street. However, during the later part of this century, a tailor named Robert Baker was able to amass a large fortune by selling piccadills - "stiff collars with scalloped edges and a broad lace or perforated border" - which were very fashionable at the time. He made so much money that he was able to purchase much of the land on the street, and renamed it after his large property, Piccadilly House. Well, I guess they already had a Baker Street...

Regent Street:
After the Great Fire of London in 1666, when a large part of the city was destroyed, there was a desire by leading figures of the day to impose order on the city's medieval streets, which were a complete mess. Whilst some areas were rebuilt quickly, the Regent Street area wasn't touched until 1811, when the architect John Nash designed and built a new area of London, which completely ignored the old street layout and redesigned the streets so they lay parallel and perpendicular to each other. This idea didn't really catch on in Britain, but really took off in the new cities which were being built over in America. It was also one of the very first areas of London to be built primarily as a shopping district. 

Oxford Street:
Like it's neighbouring street, Oxford Street has been known as a shopping district since the nineteenth century and today is home to 548 stores, making it the busiest shopping area in Europe. Most of the UK's flagship stores are situated along it, and it is also home to Marble Arch, one of London's most famous landmarks.

Bond Street:
Bond Street technically does not exist - it is actually two separate sections, Old Bond Street  - the southern section - and New Bond Street - the northern section - (though you can see why no one really bothers to differentiate between the two). Originally just consisting of Old Bond Street, which was named after Sir Thomas Bond who developed the area in the late 1600s, New Bond Street was tacked onto the end in later years when it became clear just how fashionable the green squares area was becoming.  

Park Lane:
Considering it is the second most expensive property on the Monopoly board, Park Lane doesn't actually have that much going for it. Until the early nineteenth century, it was literally just a lane on the edge of Hyde Park, where it became a fashionable residential address and later home to Grosvenor House, the residence of the Duke of Westminster, which, when it was first built, was the largest privately owned home in London. And that is literally it - today it's famous for being a place where rich people lived, and being a free through route in the congestion charge zone, which feels slightly anticlimactic... 

Mayfair:
As on the Monopoly board, the Mayfair area has one of the highest rent prices in the UK. These days, it is home to many commercial and corporate headquarters; private banks and hedge funds and government embassies - most famously the United States' UK embassy. Though the area is so obsessed with wealth, it is actually named after the May Fair which originally happened annually in the area until the residents complained that it 'lowered the tone of the area' and demanded it move elsewhere. The fair organisers obliged, but the name had already stuck.

If you got to the end of that, I would like to take a moment to congratulate you, and offer you a further £200 - you deserve it!

     

                           

Rosa Parks, hero

Today marks 55 years since Rosa Parks, a black seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama, refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white man and was arrested for refusing to abide by the city's racial segregation laws. The law stated that black people must sit at the back of the bus and fill up the rows from the back to the front. If a white person got on the bus and wanted to sit in the seats at the front, the black person must go and stand at the back and give them their seat. I remember learning that, when I was six years old in primary school, and being amazed that such a law should  have existed at a time when my parents were children.

Explaining why she took the action she did, Parks wrote (in her autobiography): "People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.
 
When Parks was arrested, she was ordered to appear in court on 5th December. To show their solidarity with her cause, the black citizens of Alabama boycotted the buses for the day, encouraged to do so by Jo Ann Robinson, who was head of the Women's Political Council. Despite their actions, Parks was found guilty of disregarding the "law" and was fined $10 with an additional $4 court costs - a lot of money at the time, especially for a poor seamstress. Undeterred however, she decided to challenge the ruling.

The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) decided to use her case to test the segregation laws in the state. Interestingly, they had tried to do something similar the previous year, when a black girl named Collette Colvin had been arrested for exactly the same crime. However, as she was fifteen years old and pregnant, she was deemed an unsuitable candidate for advancing their cause, whereas the older, employed, married Rosa Parks, who had excellent standing within her community was seen as someone who would make their case winnable. 

 

the bus on which Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat 

They therefore decided to extended the boycott of the buses until Parks had won her case. A young preacher named Martin Luther King addressed a crowd at Parks' local Baptist Church where this idea was put forward, and the boycott soon spread throughout the city of Montgomery, eventually lasting 381 days, ending in late December 1956. The NAACP demanded that all bus passengers be treated courteously by bus drivers; that seats be allocated on a first come, first served basis (ie black people should no longer be forced to give up their seats for white people) and that black men should be allowed to be employed as bus drivers, and until these rules were instated, the black community (all 40,000 of them) would not use the city's buses.

The white community did not make this easy for them. When black car owners organized car-sharing schemes so that those who did not own a car were able to get to work, they pressured the local insurance companies not to ensure cars which were being used in the scheme. When black taxi drivers allowed black men and women to ride with them for only 10 cents (the price of a bus ticket), the council passed a law saying that all taxi drivers must charge passengers a minimum of 45 cents, or face a fine. Four Baptist churches, and the homes of Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy were firebombed.

There were some positive stories, though. Black communities all over the US raised money to pay for bicycles and new shoes for the people of Montgomery, and when King was sent to jail for two weeks for "hindering" a bus in June of 1956, the protest started to gain national attention. Pressure was put on the state of Alabama to remove the 'Jim Crow' segregation laws, which, eventually, the Supreme Court ruled that it must. On 20 December, 1956 it became law in the state of Alabama that black people should no longer have to give up their seats for whites - Rosa Parks had won, and helped to initiate the Civil Rights Movement, and draw national attention to Preacher Martin Luther King.

 

Sadly, she did not initially have the happy ending she deserved. She lost her job and faced so much harassment in Montgomery that in 1957 she moved to Detroit, where she worked for John Conyers, a Democratic Congressman until she retired in 1988. She died in October 2005, a hero.

(If you are interested in reading the original BBC newspaper report of Parks' arrest, it can be found here.)

Ellen Wilkinson and the Jarrow March

Seventy four years ago today, on October 5th, 1936, 200 able-bodied men from the north-eastern town of Jarrow set off for London. Over the next few days, they marched 300 miles, accompanied by a second-hand bus which carried their cooking utensils and bedding. Whilst marching, they sang songs and played mouth organs to keep up morale, and carried an oak box with gold lettering, containing a petition, signed by 11,000 citizens of the town. Signatures were  also collected on a second petition from the numerous sympathetic people they passed on their way down to London. The march was hard, but medical care was provided by the Inter Hospital Socialist Society's students. 

Why were they marching? What did their protest hope to achieve?

About a year previously, the main employer in the town - Palmer's shipyard - had been closed down. In Jarrow, as with many towns in the north-east, employment rates were at 70%. The men of Jarrow were dependent on their wives' or daughters' wages (themselves hardly substantial), which was not something that was culturally acceptable at that time. The town itself was in dire shape. In the words of the local MP, Ellen Wilkinson, it was 

"... utterly stagnant. There was no work. No one had a job except a few railwaymen, officials, the workers in the co-operative stores, and a few workmen who went out of the town... the plain fact [is] that if people have to live and bear and bring up their children in bad houses on too little food, their resistance to disease is lowered and they die before they should." [source]

Wilkinson herself is a very interesting figure. Born in 1891, she won a scholarship to the University of Manchester, never married, was briefly a member of the Communist Party, often visited Spain (during the Civil War there) and Germany to protest against Fascist groups - especially the rise of Hitler - and as Minister for Education during the post-war Labour government, managed to get the school leaving age raised to 15, despite the huge demand for extra buildings and teachers this would require. All in all, she was an amazing woman, achieving more in her lifetime than most people could in several. I would very much like to be her.

 

Ellen Wilkinson MP, 1891-1947

She also went on the march with the men of Jarrow, and presented their petition to parliament for them. As the shipyard had been closed, due to the worldwide economic downturn (sound familiar?), the men demanded that a steelworks be built to bring employment back to their town. The government, despite being largely Conservative, were not unsympathetic to their plight - nor indeed the similar plight of other men in the working towns who had been laid off due to the Depression, but there was very little they could do. There was a general lack of response to the Jarrow situation (though a ship-breaking yard was established in 1938), although their policies of  increasing domestic consumption and implementing a cheap mortgage scheme which lead to a house building boom did help boost the economy slightly.

Ultimately, though, it took World War Two, and the need for armaments and the like to give industry the boost it needed, and therefore lift the economy out of depression. I do not pretend to understand economics at all, and will defer to almost anyone's knowledge on how to avoid recessions and depressions, but surely, surely there must be a way of finding enough jobs so that everyone is employed and can afford to put food on the table, without having said jobs involve making weapons to kill others? I hope that that is not just wishful socialist thinking...