London is the best city in the world.

London Icons

We are here to celebrate it, and to talk about the best bits.  Which include :

• The awesome London 2012 Olympics
• The wonderful London Marathon
• More historic buildings than you can ever hope to visit : more than 9,000 at Grade 1
• More ethnic and cultural diversity than any other city on earth
• Top class sport
• World class opera and classical music
• Shows and plays that start in London’s West End then travel the world
• Endless excellent places to eat and drink and party.
• Iconic modern architecture
• World-class historic architecture
• The place where historic events happened

The World’s Business Centre

London has always been a trading and business centre.  Trade is the reason it exists.  It’s the lowest point at which the Thames can be crossed by a bridge – until the recent mega-bridges.  That makes it a natural meeting point for land-borne and water-borne traders.

Globalization and containerisation means the shipping trade has moved down river and the docks have been re-purposed, but London is still a world-wide wolrd-class centre for business.

The World’s  Second Home

Whatever nationality you are, you will find compatriots in London.  Quite likely you’ll find restaurants and bars just like back home.  Or a community centre and school just like the one you grew up in. Or a church, mosque or temple like the one your parents took you to.

London is genuinely cosmopolitan, that is, a world city.  People from all over the world know of London, and make their homes here.  The streets are not paved with gold, but the incomers know they will be given respect, equal rights, and the same  chance to make their way in the world as anyone else gets.  Which is more than can be said for their home countries, in many cases.

The City of Stories

London has been home to some wonderful stories, and some wonderful story tellers. Chaucer’s Pilgrim Progress starts just outside London.  Shakespeare wrote and performed many of his plays in London. Dickens wrote many of his stories in London, and used it’s endless supply of characters and places to put London into many of his stories.  Jeckyll & Hide, and Homes & Watson, knew London’s streets well.

More recently, characters from Harry Potter to Paddington Bear and Cruella DeVille have brought different parts of Imaginary London to the pages of books and to films.

London, The Place Where It Happens

The Palace of Westminster – home of the Mother of Parliaments

Crucial events in the history of the UK, and the history of the world, happen in London.  Kings and queens are crowned here.  On occasion, they are overthrown, deposed, or even beheaded here.  Both war and peace are declared here.  One of the few bits of Braveheart that was in fact true was that William Wallace dies in London – but not in the manner portrayed in the film.

For better or worse, the government is in London.  Once an empire was ruled from London.  Now a disunited kingdom is.  Perhaps soon it will be just England.

What if Guy Fawkes had got away with the biggest terrorist attack in history?  His aim was not just to kill the king, but to remove the entire system of government by taking out the Houses of Lords and Commons as well.

The Common People Make Their Voices Heard in London

When people protest, they do it in London.  Some are successful, and some are not.  The Women’s Suffrage Movement was successful, after a long hard struggle.  The more recent demos against the invasion of Iraq, or the ban on fox hunting, were  not.

Some are peaceful, and some are not.  The poll tax riot of 31 March 1990 brought a scary level of violence to central London, which was repeated throughout London in 2011.

Protest, including violent protest, is a historic London tradition.  In 1381 the Peasants Revolt managed to get inside the tower of London and kill the Lord Chancellor and the Lord High Treasurer.  For centuries the London Apprentices were always ready to follow a call to uphold their rights as they saw them, as a violent mob if needs be.  They rioted against foreigners in 1517 and against their poor conditions in 1590, and against King Charles 1 in 1641, amongst many others.

Self-obsessed left wingers mythologise the Battle of Cable Street, an 1936 scuffle between a few thousand of Oswald Moseley’s fascists and a rather larger number of their opponents.  The aim was to stop the fascists walking down Cable Street.  The protesters succeeded.  Moseley did not mind.  Many people saw it as a battle between communists and the police.  Preferring the police, thousands rushed to join the fascists.

The People’s Vote anti-Brexit march in 2019 was a complete contrast to the Peasants Revolt, Cable Street and the Poll tax riot.  Around a million people did what Brits do best: queued up politely, and laughed at each other’s jokes.  The Black Lives Matter demos in June 2020 were mostly dignified, with a small minority of those who like to use such occasions to pick fights with the police.  The “protect our statues” counter demonstrations were just the opposite, and showed the worst of UK life to the world.