Class And Gender In British Labour History
Liz Payne hails a rigorous overview of women in the labour movement
A Guide To The New Ruins Of Great Britain
Owen Hatherley (Verso, £16.99)
Tuesday 19 October 2010
Printable
Email
Owen Hatherley visits a dozen urban centres, individual cities as well as Tyneside, the West Riding and Greenwich to examine the state of Britain's recent architecture and planning. It's a dismal picture, but painted with a raging energy that is exhilarating.
There's no need to visit any of these conurbations to see sound and architecturally interesting buildings being knocked down for development which is then delayed, the site laid waste or built over by something in every sense inferior.
New Labour, in the wake of Thatcherism, is blamed for much of what has happened over the last two decades, leading to what Hatherley wittily calls the accidental school of private finance initiative architecture.
Political, sinister, sometimes funny. We have seen slum clearances not to improve the lives of the inhabitants, but to lure yuppies into the inner cities.
Hatherley finds places to celebrate. Manchester, Sheffield, Glasgow come out of it pretty well, as does Cardiff. Cardiff, perhaps, because Hatherley does not know the Welsh capital that well.
The destruction of the Welsh Industrial and Maritime Museum to accommodate the Cardiff Bay development in the mid-1990s was an act of breathtaking intellectual vandalism. Had it been left where it was, it would have given the bay a focus without that great space in front of the Millennium Centre.
If you have enjoyed this article then please consider donating to the Morning Star's Fighting Fund to ensure we can keep publishing your paper.
