Harry Beck (1902-1974)

Leytonstone is a long way from the target rich environment of central London. A journey east from Stratford rather than the rather more usual West - OK so we'd earlier trailed around the Spitalfields Vintage Fair - parting with the folding stuff only for a leather flower for M and a story in a box "Not all who wander are lost" for me from - https://www.facebook.com/littleiudea . Worship Road is a thoroughly unremarkable terraced street and in many ways the blue plaque that marks number 14 may seem out of place. It marks the birthplace of Harry Beck, an engineering draftsman with London Underground. Just another working Londoner who adapted his knowledge, of electrical circuits to create what was voted in 2006 as the second favourite British design of the 20th century - the Tube map. Used thousands, tens of thousands of time a day by Londoners and others to navigate the capital - and many many times more when you see the influence that it has had on various other Metro maps from around the world (Beck also worked on designs for the Paris Metro map). This influence is traced in Mark Ovenden's excellent "Metro Maps of the world" and has also been cited in comparison with the work of Piet Mondrian as a nexus of art and commerce. And its freaking everywhere - we ourselves have a London Underground bedset not to mention a copy of the London Game (strongly recommended in assisting the small people in London navigation). The map came about as a sparetime project that Beck embarked upon in the early 30s. He submitted the idea to Frank Pick, the then head of London Underground and responsible for the creation of the iconic LU designs that persist to this day - a fact acknowledged in Beck's blue plaque utilisation of LUs house font - New Johnston. It was revolutionary in that unlike pretty much any other map it doesn't represent geographical accuracy. Beck reckoned, quite rightly that for your average commuter what was important was how to get around the city: how to get from one station to another, and the changes needed to manage that feat. A side effect of this that I've found is that many Londoners are blissfully unaware of how close some Tube stations are to each other. His idea was initialled trialled in 1931 and given its first release in 1933. It has of course been continually updated and that is where the trouble started. In 1960 the Victoria Line was added to the map without his knowledge by a publicity officer, Harold Hutchinson, this and numerous other tweaks angered Beck. He embarked upon legal proceedings, trying to regain control of his creation. This stress adversely affected his wifes health. He gave up the fight in 1965 and the responsibility for the map passed to another designer Paul Garbutt. In his redesigning of the Underground map Garbutt returned to Becks earlier ideas while taking account of the increasingly complicated reality of subterranean London. Beck however continued to work on designs for the Underground map until his death in 1974. Sadly his work was only recognised posthumously - every LU map now bears the legend "This diagram is an evolution of the original design conceived in 1931 by Harry Beck". He has a locomotive named after him, and has been featured on stamps and a substantial presence in the London Tansport museum in Covent Garden - but surely his most meaningful memorial are the millions of safe journeys made on the tube.

13 minutes and 37 overs

There are those who will say that todays posts is a blatant attempt to draw attention away from a dismal England performance at Lords, and they may very well be right. 37 overs with Stuart Broad batting at number 8 top scoring with 25 runs is simply not good enough. Not against a mediocre side, and Australia while not in the pantheon of earlier Ashes teams are not that. After a couple of days away from work we had a quiet day at home today - well M did. It was open day at the Abbey and I wandered into town and took a stroll around the theatre of screams. I decided to pick up this seasons away strip. Theres something something vaguely transgressive about black football shirts even in the modern eras of technicolour refs. I didn't however linger as I had a date at the Arts Picturehouse. For once it wasn't one Casablanca to look forward to but sadly will be missing Sunset Boulevard in a couple of weeks time - don't think well be giving A Clockwork Orange a go. It was Oliver Hirschbiegel's 13 minutes. Hirschbiegel's Downfall is a terrifying insight into the last days of the Reich. 13 minutes an account of its establishment and the bravery of anyone swimming against the stream in those kinds of circumstance. It has the dreaded words "based on a true story" attached to it - words that send a chill down anyone with two braincells to rub togethers spine. It equates to an admission of "OK, so we sexed it up a little" on behalf of the filmmaker. The real Georg Elser, the focus of the film, seems a rather more nuanced figure. Elser attempted to assassinate Hitler on 8 November 1939 in the early stages of the second world war. His motives seem unclear - the film seems to cast him as a conflicted Christian who was trying to avoid greater bloodshed by disposing of Der Fuhrer. The truth seems somewhat more confused. Elser was a member of the Federation of Woodworkers Union and the Rotfrontkämpferbund, the Communist paramilitaries that opposed the Nazis in the politically polarised 1930s but Elser attested that he never attended any more than a couple of times. While he voted Communist it was only because he felt that they defended the rights of German Workers. His Christian credentials seem less than convincing as well. He was raised as a Protestant but dodnt regularly attend church until his plans were in motion. In short he seems what I guess we would now call a lone wolf killer. Someone who saw the Nazis and Hitler in particular as sure to lead Germany into darkness. After seeing Bonhoeffers plaque a while back I couldn't help but see parallels - although of course the two men tried to oppose Nazi tyranny in very different ways. I guess that 13 minutes asks that hypothetical - if killing one man could save millions would you do it? Of course Hitler didn't die - 8 people did. however. Elser shared Bonhoeffer's fate - on 9th April 1945, in the death throes of the Reich he was eliminated perhaps at the personal behest of Hitler at Dachau where he had been transferred after spending the war years at Sachsenhausen.

First synagogue since the reformation

It isn't just the Christian faith that's commemorated around Spitalfields and Brick Lane of course. For centuries the area has been a haven or incomers and their faiths. First the Huguenots fleeing persecution in France made it their home, then came the Jews. By the time that Jack was plying his trade in the area the majority of Jews thereabouts were Ashkenazi, from Central Europe their impact can be seen in language - they gave us schmutter and schmooze, schtick and spiel. Earlier, in 1657, in the middle of Cromwell's protectorate Jews were allowed to resettle in England after their expulsion from the country in 1290. They, of course brought their faith with them and the plaque at the corner of Creechurch Lane and Bury Street commemorates the first synagogue, these were Sephardic Jews from the newly Protestant Netherlands. The vast majority of plaques in the city are devoted either to churchs or the guilds and this dissent makes a nice change. Their are still synagogues in the area, Bevis Marks (complete with guard :( )and others now gone such as the Great Synagogue in Dukes Place although the general population of the area has changed markedly over the last half-century as indeed have their surroundings - a process that is still ongoing the entire area is under reconstruction at the moment. Wayne and I managed to negotiate the construction areas and found our way to Mitre Square, which up until reacently housed another plaque, one to the Priory of the Holy Trinity, founded by the Black Canons in 1108 until it was dissolved by Henry VIII. It is however perhaps better known, at least in the modern consciousness of the place where Catherine Eddowes, the canonical fourth victim of Jack the Ripper was found inn the early hours of 30th September 1888. She was the second victim attributed to the killer that night an indictment of the conditions in the area at the time. It was on this night night that the contentious "Goulston Street Graffiti" was found and although it was never properly recorded, pre-dating police forensic procedure. It was feared that the graffiti which reportedly ran along the lines of "The Juwes [sic] are the men that will not be blamed for nothing." would inflame anti-Semitic feeling in the area and so it was erased by the police. Again this speaks to the kind of conditions and tensions extant in the area at the time, indeed it was felt that no Englishman would be capable of these kind of acts and therefore must be in some way a "foreigner". Anti-Jewish demonstrations were staged and there was a real danger of social unrest. As outsiders Jews were used as hate figures as we can see from Dickens depiction of Fagin and some of the oft bandied suspects for the Ripper murders are Jewish - reflecting of course the demography of the area.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945)

Another Christian (and I use the word advisedly) gentleman is memorialised just round the corner from Brick Lane - Dietrich Bonhoeffer was pastor at St. Paul's German Evangelical Reformed Church from 1933-1935. The dates are as always significant. He left Germany in late 1933 after opposing the Deutsche Christen who wished to appoint the Fuhrer as head of the German Church and assisted in setting up the rival Confessing Church. St. Paul's Church was bombed in 1941 and the site is now part of London Metropolitan University. Trying to find an exact date I found the rather scary http://bombsight.org/ which maps the sites of bombs falling on London during the Blitz and gives and impression of what the population of London underwent at this time. Dietrich Bonhoeffer however had returned to Germany despite being aware of the Nazi party and the possible, even probable consequences for him of returning. The Confessing Church which also had as a member Pastor Niemoller , he of the poem - First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me. highlighted the gap between Chrtistian behaviour and the tendency of the church to be bound up with the state - particularly the Nazi state. Cue the oft quoted belt buckle of the SS - "Gott mit uns" - God is with us which they wore while committing their atrocities. One thing that I think the US have got spot on is the requirement to separate church and state - the House of Lords - particularly those members of the Lords Spiritual have to my mind a way too much influence on this end of the pond. In 1935 Bonhoeffer returned to Germany, heading a seminary in Findenwande, in modern Poland. After the Gestapo closed the seminary in 1937 Bonhoeffer travelled, creating a seminary on the run. The Confessing Church opposed the persecution of Jews and the Nazi euthanasia programme - a silent Holocaust which prefigured the Nazis final solution to the "Jewish Question". The Church assisted the concealment of Jews - promoting non-violent resistance to the vile regime and Bonhoeffer became involved in the organised anti-Nazi resistance through the Abwehr, German military intelligence which had a significant anti-Nazi element. As he was required to enlist he left for the US in 1939 but, haunted by regret returned to Germany before the war started thinking that he could only assist from within. He joined the Abwehr, aiding the resistance by acting as a courier. He travelled to Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland as the resistance attempted to engage in dialogue with the Allied powers. He was arrested and imprisoned in Tegel prison by the Gestapo on 5th April 1943 where he continued to his religious work. In September 1944 after the Stauffenberg plot against Hitler's life the Abwehr's anti-Nazi activities became known to the authorities and Bonhoeffer was transferred to the SS Reich Main Security Office in Prinz Albrecht Strasse, a road that we visited a couple of years back when we visited Berlin. In February 1945 he was transferred to Buchenwald and later to Flossenburg concentration camp where on 8th April 1945 two weeks before the Americans liberated the camps he was condemned to death. He was hanged the day afterwards although accounts of his death are now questioned as the witnesses, all Nazis, sought to minimise their culpability. His legacy however can be noted in religious opposition to unjust government - particularly that of the Civil Rights movement in the US.

Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, 1st Baronet

Nearly 2 years, how did that happen; actually I know exactly how that happened. Last years study of 2 small courses taking over the summer is how it happened. This year however I get a summer, hard to believe looking out the window on the longest day but yes it is the summer. Time to chillax with my housies, take a breath before starting it all over again in October. And so a visit to the big smoke was embarked upon, M elected to indulge in retail therapy in Westfield while I tubed it to Liverpool Street to meet up with Wayne who was up for a wander around an area of London that he didn't really know. We settled on Whitechapel - an area that I know fairly well. M and I had done one of the excellent London Walks - http://www.walks.com/ a year or two ago focusing on the few remaining relics of Jack the Ripper's London and I'd taken mum on another one focusing on the East End and its Jewish heritage - a heritage that has left its mark on the area. Given this I decided to print off a DIY walk that I found on the web - probably a mistake but hey...a focus for our meanderings. Looking at the gentrification of the area now it is a world away rom the warren of tiny alleys that contained a million or so Londoners in the nineteenth century - many of them immigrants - particularly those fleeing pogroms in the East. But it is there - they may have a new coat of paint but the soot-stained high terraces are still there - lurking. And in this squalor there was found a philanthropism that seems entirely lacking for modern political life - a fact brought home by those outnumbered by the police there to shepherd them gathered to protest against the latest round of austerity cuts handed down by the rich and brainless. This was slightly to my discomfiture aligned along a religious axis. I point you towards Sir Fowell Buxton commemorated at Truman's Brewery on Brick Lane, home of some of the best curry houses in the capital - a legacy of later immigrants - those from Bangladesh. Sir Fowell Buxton's mother was a Quaker a religious sect that I have a great deal of time for having met a few on various demos in the past and who seem rather more focused on improving the situation down here rather than saying to those who have not "never mind, you'll get your reward in heaven". He was however not involved in the temperance movement - being a director of what was then Truman, Hanbury and Company who were the largest brewer in the world in the mid-19th century. He financially supported the local weavers who had been effected by mechanization and cont4ributed to Elizabeth Fry's campaign for penal reform. He was elected to Parliament in 1818 and continued to work for penal reform, fighting to abolish the death penalty - although this wasn't achieved in his lifetime the number of capital punishment offences were decreased to 8 from over 200. He was also a founding member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 1824, an event also commemorated in plaqular form. His do-gooding (and when was it that "do-gooder" became a slur to be levelled at someone?) however did not stop there. In 1823 he founded the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery, taking over the stewardship of the issue from William Wilberforce who retired from public life in 1825. Buxton introduced a bill to Parliament calling for the abolition of slavery throughout the British Empire calling it - "repugnant to the principles of the British constitution and of the Christian religion". Further to this he lobbied for treaties to be made with African leaders to outlaw the trade feeling that slavery should be replaced with legitimate trade - a precursor of the modern call for fair-trade. For his efforts he was made a Baronet in 1840. He died in 1845 disappointed though having failed to effect this change in policy.