My early morning walk in Battersea Park proved quite a challenge today- my quest for some measured, free-roaming exercise and tranquility amidst nature turning early on into an endurance test , once I had entered through the Sun Gate. (see my photographs posted on facebook).
Preparation for this weekend of open-air concerts has involved an invasion of heavy vehicles, security staff, scaffolding, and metal fencing and transformed one of the most leisurely open spaces in the capital into a cross between Salisbury plain during a busy military exercise and Guantanamo base. It was also a very soggy scene, given the wet weather. Tracts of green turf are now a mud bath, made worse by predators.
The concerts, according to advertising circulated by Wandsworth Council, promise a weekend of FREE music from all of Asia-part of the Olympics’ River of Music festival-in fact it will cost you £3 just to find a squeeze yourself place to stand and watch.
We are told that events like these will help draw Londoners together and get the capital into the celebratory spirit of the Olympics. Hyde Park which has a long history of ‘mass gigs’ dating back to the Stones in the Park presumably makes a lot of money out of such events which it needs for its upkeep.
Hyde Park is managed by The Royal Parks, an executive agency of the Department for Culture, Media and Sports (DCMS). The FT informed us earlier this week that London’s eight Royal Parks (of which Hyde Park is the flagship) have for the first time generated more money than they receive in grants from government, in a sign that events such as Tuesday’s Madonna concert in Hyde Park are becoming important revenue earners for the agency.
My former colleague James Pickford, the FT’s London correspondent, reported: Income from events, cafés and other sources reached £18.7m in 2011-12, against £16.4m in government grants. In the previous year grants came to £17m against £13.8m in self-generated income. Fees from events alone made £4.8m in 2011-12, up from £3.2m. However, tensions between the park’s role as a public green space and a big-ticket entertainment venue came to the fore last weekend when organizers pulled the plug on Bruce Springsteen, the US rock star, and Sir Paul McCartney, a guest performer at the concert, after they overshot the curfew.”
Among those incensed by the organizers respect for local residents was one Steven Van Zandt, a guitarist in Mr Springsteen’s E-Street band, who took to Twitter to complain that England had become a “police state”.
Well, Steve, man , I’m an old rocker myself and enduring fan of Bruce and Paul, but over the years I have come to realise that the worst repression begins with stamping our right, as urban dwellers, to our own genuinely ‘free’ space and peace, and polluting the precious green spaces we have in our cities with noise and commerce and mindless mass adulation.
As Simon Jenkins argued in the Guardian on Wednesday, this craving for massive live events-recently under the cover of the Olympics-surrenders to circus economics that did no good for Nero’s Rome and today belongs to a Big Brother society not a democracy. London Mayor Boris Johnson thinks this is all jolly good fun, and enhances London’s and our sense of proud nationhood. But as Jenkins puts it, “the commercialism, the heavy-handed security , the ostentatious plutocracy and phony patriotism of the modern Olympics are out of all proportion to the cause.”
For myself, one of the initiatives I feel most proud to have been part of is in helping found, back in the mid 1980’s, the charity, The Friends of Battersea Park to help maintain and improve this historic and very popular green space as an oasis of tranquility, natural beauty, and recreation. If this charity has grown as an organization and won increasing respect in the local community it is because it acts as a responsible conduit between the wishes and interests of park users and the park’s manager Wandsworth Council.
Such civil cooperation has extended to the private sector and has shown up in some positive developments in the park such as the creation of a beautiful Winter Garden, and a new avenue of trees. It is a pity that the Council resists our demands for a regular and detailed update of income and expenditure in the park, so that rate payers could get a better sense of how important commercial events like this weekend’s help pay for maintaining trees, plants, and wildlife, at a time of stringent public sector cuts.
Arguably, there is a fine balance to be struck between the need to protect our parks and for those responsible for their management to find ways of raising money which may put the quality of the environment at risk.
However I remain committed to valuing and defending my local park as a unique open and green space in the midst of our hectic urban setting. Community spirit and sustainability must be inseparable priorities of whatever is planned. Battersea Park, with its wonderful variety of natural life and free leisure opportunities, is a vital respite from the stress that lies beyond its gates.
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