Our beloved city bounced back from the Plague and Blitz — it can do so again

Samuel Pepys recorded the aftermath of the Plague in 1665
Getty Images
Tristram Hunt26 June 2020
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"Lord! How empty the streets are and melancholy, so many poor sick people in the streets full of sores; and so many sad stories overheard as I walk … two shops in three, if not more, [are] generally shut up.”

So the great Restoration diarist Samuel Pepys wrote in 1665, in the aftermath of the plague.

And that was even before the Great Fire of London. Almost three hundred years later, the author J G Ballard arrived in London at the end of the Second World War.

He found “heaps of rubble, an exhausted ferret-like people defeated by war and still deluded by Churchillian rhetoric, hobbling around a wasteland of poverty, ration books and grotesque social division.”

Time and again, the “doomsters and the gloomsters,” as the Prime Minister calls them, have bet against the resilience of London — and lost. In the aftermath of plague and fire, the City of London overtook Amsterdam to become the leading metropolis for finance, trade and science.

And when the fog of post-war Britain lifted, it was London which embodied the Swinging Sixties as the epicentre of fashion, music, and culture.

Today, the pessimists are predicting Covid-19 will decimate our beloved city.

The property website Rightmove has again reported a surge of interest in house-hunters keen to relocate, with Whitby in Yorkshire and Newquay in Cornwall the hot favourites.

Tristram Hunt
Getty Images

And a report has highlighted clubhouses rather than offices, suburbia rather than downtown, as the business locations of tomorrow.

No one should doubt that living with coronavirus means that change is coming: digital hangouts superseding physical meetings; staggering of rush hours; a painful thinning out of the high street.

It is exactly this prospect which require us to double-down on what makes London great — in short, we have to get the bustle back. It is the energy, chaos and serendipity of urban life that ultimately generates creativity, wealth and happiness. And that is what we are in danger of losing.

Because businesses are kidding themselves if they think distance working and Zoom-athons are going to deliver a step-change to productivity.

British companies have succeeded by feeding off years of accumulated cultural capital of office-life: human relationships are already in place which allow for the swift pace of meetings or accelerated decision-making.

Without the trust which had previously been developed in water-cooler moments and Friday evening drinks, then the digital transition would have been much more problematic.

London’s success is built on the intelligence and industry of its citizens. So we also desperately need the next generation to restart studying and training.

One of the most remarkable achievements of the last two decades has been the transformation of London schools into Britain’s most effective vehicle for social mobility, with exam results outstripping the rest of the UK.

If we are going to counter the out-of-town tendency, then this September every London school child has to be back in the classroom.

The Mayor, trade unions, Ofsted and council leaders need to be round the table now to ensure no more knowledge is lost.

This week’s announcement that pubs, restaurants, galleries and places of worship can reopen from July 4 is the first step towards the city reclaiming its competitive advantage.

For whether it’s designer-makers in Holborn, researchers at Imperial College, or bankers at Canary Wharf, our edge is dependent upon an ability to mix disciplines and ideas. In bars and cafés, festivals and shops, cities generate the type of creative, inspiring collisions that foster new businesses and transform thinking.

Our cultural institutions have a particular responsibility in bringing together different traditions.

For as we have seen in some responses to Black Lives Matter, there is today far too much communal division — fuelled by echo-chamber social media — in modern London.

After the anxiety of lockdown, London has to reclaim its places of unplanned congregation where divergence can be negotiated in a generous and engaging manner. And we, at the V&A, certainly look forward to reopening later this summer.

After the Plague and Blitz, this world-city came back stronger. If we revive our businesses, schools, and great cultural attractions it can happen again.

Success sits in our hands: either we manage out fear, celebrate urban life, and rebuild the bustle — or end up undone by clubhouses outside Bracknell Forest.

Tristam Hunt is director of the V&A

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