Where are the people? Where are the people of Newcastle?, W.'s question, which he asked in despair by the new courts on the quayside, finds an answer. Wending down The Side from the station, there they come, boozy and colourful, full of noise and banter and exuberance. W. feels at home among the shirts and skirts, even as we push up towards town in the opposite direction.
Aren't these the descendants of the people banished to outlying estates? They're coming back to reclaim the quayside, W. says. To redeem the new ghettoes for the rich. It's theirs! The city is theirs!
The people of Newcastle! It's no surprise that Robinson, from Kieller's great films, found his utopia here. How have the people survived the technocrats? How the destruction of half the city in the name of traffic management?
Yet here they are, the descendants of the original workers, W. says, the anchorsmiths and salt-panners, the rope-makers and brewers whose faces were once covered with a film of coal-dust and smoke. They're the descendants of the keelmen who ferried coal down the river, of the glass-makers and waggon-drivers, and of the innumerable poor who lived among the wharfs and the warehouses, the taverns and coffee houses. Wasn't this always a city of workers?
A city of workers, and of those who thought they knew better than the workers what they really wanted. Of workers and those who feared workers, and even worse, the ragamuffins among the workers. Didn't they build the barracks, close to the city after the French revolution? Didn't they have the army marching in formation through the streets?
No revolution here. No revolt, and no monuments to the industrial past. The quayside redevelopment instead. The new art factory - not a gallery, but a factory – instead. Art in the international style, for the tourists. And the new music centre – at least they didn't call it a music factory!
And luxury apartments, apartments for investors. Apartments empty, awaiting tenants, awaiting the richest of tenants, who will never come, W. says. Because they were never going to come. Because all this, all this madness, is based on the fantasy of unlimited growth. Of the cycle of ever-expanding credit and debt.
No revolution here. No chance of revolution, as the bars fill and the clubs fill, and the streets resound with the click clack of stilettos. But it's enough that the people are here, W. says. Enough that the streets are filled and the streets owned even as the world turns towards destruction.
Lars Iyer's Blog 