Stratford in East London is the kind of place that exists to serve other places. It wasn’t a destination in itself. Stratford had a specific function; any real human settlement there was incidental to this function, and did not long outlast it.
For a century and a half, Stratford’s business was conveyance. As we all know, Victorian London produced everything in terrifying abundance: too many people; too much waste; too many goods; too much brackish runoff. This all had to be sluiced in and out, somehow, and Stratford by dint of geography was nominated for this role. The great pumping station at Abbey Wood – one of the grandest in London – squeezed much of the city’s accumulated muck out of the sewage system and into the estuary beyond. Stratford was the main rail gateway for the East End into central London; and for London into Essex, up to Cambridge, and then onto Norfolk. The rail yards that grew up around the station built the trains that carried the passengers. As a place where byproducts of all kinds could be easily drained away, Stratford was a natural home for London’s chemical works – the other main employer.
Smog, sewage, sulfates, pressed people: all these conspired to produce what became known as Stinky Stratford. What amenities there were, like the department store and the Theatre Royal, were squeezed between the tracks and the canals. You weren’t really supposed to linger there. Stratford was an economically important place – but it didn’t get any of the usual desserts afforded to other exchanges, like Euston, or Victoria. There wasn’t any room for a park. There were no leafy squares off the high street, nor was it graced with any Victorian public school foundation.
Not that there was anything wrong with this – necessarily. Every advanced society needs places like Stinky Stratford, places where the function comes first; the people second. Keeping a modern city ticking over is no mean feat, and most really do have to devote entire districts to this purpose. It is places like Stinky Stratford that, ultimately, allow neighbourhoods like Highgate, Kensington, and Westminster to exist.
Stratford maintained its vocation into the 20th century. Here’s what Nairn’s London noted about Stratford in 1966: a factory; the pumping station at Abbey Mills; and the high street thoroughfare, which is described as a baffling helter-skelter of traffic bound out of London. Our author was reasonably confident that some kind of diversion would be built to spare residents from the din. It wasn’t.
By 1991 the rail yard was gone, so were all the chemical works. Stratford had a practical function, but no longer. Nor was it likely to acquire a new one. The Britain which began in 1997 does not see human settlements primarily as places where people live and work, still less as a means to generate money, but rather as moral and social statements. This society would now need a physical expression of its own; and it was Stratford that was nominated for this role, long even before the success of London’s Olympic bid.
Stratford is now the kind of place that exists to serve an idea. Every social order needs places like Stratford, places where the idea comes first; the people second. The Stratford City redevelopment, which is being carried out under the aegis of the Olympic Legacy Corporation, has been warmly welcomed by all factions national and local. It enjoyed something like a carte blanche. It could’ve been anything. What Britain’s governing classes elected to build in Stratford was a model city, one which stands for their particular idea of life in Britain in the 21st Century, an idea which had its Festschrift in the Olympics of 2012. Stratford was centrally planned out from above; like most such projects, its purpose is to freeze a social order in place. Britain’s rulers would make everywhere like Stratford, if they could.
For one, Stratford declares that the particular retail habits of the 20th Century must endure – forever. The centrepiece of the Stratford development is the Westfield shopping mall, which is now Europe’s largest. This 1.9 million square foot complex, which is within spitting distance of the City of London and Canary Wharf, was opened in 2011 – just as online shopping was making these kinds of places obsolete. Westfield Stratford City is a moral and social proposition, not a commercial one. It’s implicitly directed against the famed ‘decline of the high street’, which offends a certain idea of British biedermeier and so needs to be arrested. The rest of Stratford also speaks to this impulse. Most planned cities, like Brasilia, or Canberra, or Haussmann’s Paris, tend to favour the street grid and the broad avenue. But you’ll search in vain to find many of these here. The streets of new Stratford are almost invariably narrow, winding, and cute. And with awful results: the ‘ArcelorMittal Orbit’ observation tower and the London Stadium, two colossi, are traversable only through a narrow and wooded footpath – which caused a horrible jam when I was last there. This combination of hyper-density with narrow footpaths is simply medieval; what we see in Stratford isn’t so much urban growth, but the bucolic and walkable ‘New Urbanism’ of Charles Windsor.
What’s also prominently featured in Stratford is that other great shibboleth of Late Elizabethan political economy: university education. Campuses of University College London and Birkbeck have been set up here, with the latter situated on a dedicated University Square. That this British model city would devote so much room to higher education is surely telling. It’s now taken for granted that modern Britain will earn its bread by marketing education services to others; this idea owes something to Harold Macmillan’s remark that we were now a Greece to America’s Rome, and something more to Harry Potter. It’s now become the main justification for Britain’s current system of migration, which at the last count admits upwards of one million people a year. What Stratford shows is the basic poverty of this model. Modern Britain makes much of technology and innovation, and is proud that its universities nurture lots of it. But seldom is it supposed that Britain might put these things to its own use, beyond charging an international student a five-figure sum for their degree. Stratford provides the campuses, sure, and the ArcelorMittal tower has a Tech frisson. But nowhere in Stratford – which used to be a manufacturing centre – do we find the new industrial estates or laboratories where these innovations might be brought to commercial maturity. It’s not surprising, then, that the products of these universities are whisked off, bought up, or choose to list themselves elsewhere.
Inevitably football is also here, in the form of the London Stadium, which was sold to West Ham FC on the cheap in 2016. What’s meant to be played at the London Stadium is not so much football, a sport, but rather Football™ – which is a cultural and communal symbol, and an instrument of British influence overseas. Britain’s governing classes can’t really conceive of any kind of proletarian identity beyond football. They vaunt football as a social institution in a way that earlier ages would find bizarre; by the same token, they absurdly over-police it. This is, also, why Britain’s rulers are so continuously shocked and dismayed by the Ultra Right, not to say Odinist sympathies of many of the London derbies. Still, football just had to be here, and this explains the frenzied search for a new stadium tenant after 2012.
Net Zero also gets a look in. The default terrain of Stratford is a kind of dry and scruffy grass; any buildings, stadiums, or plazas appear as punctuations to this plain. The newer builds in Stratford are obediently sprinkled with shrubbery and more grass. The implication of all this is clear: that human civilisation only exists by Nature’s sufferance, and shouldn’t be permitted to shape or master the world around it.
Architecturally, the Stratford redevelopment will also stand as a symbol of its era. The dominant style in Stratford is what one might call the Cameronite vernacular. Cameronite architecture developed out of the student accommodation blocks of the early 2010s. It is broadly allied to the project of Postmodernism, which seeks to add variety and flair to post-1945 construction. But Cameronite vernacular goes about this in a very inept way: instead of any kind of sculptural variation, Cameronite architecture simply takes a glass box, coats it in plastic cladding, and then flecks the outside with polygons of colour. These are timid methods, and the result always looks raw and unfinished, like freestanding wallpaper.
All ruling classes build monuments to themselves. But seldom has a monument been so heedless to the needs and realities of urban life. Even the builders of Versailles or the great complex at Giza had the good grace to do so out of the way, on the edge of town. By virtue of its location Stratford remains a centre of transport. In 2021, it became Britain’s largest railway station by number of passengers. But the whole redevelopment project has been a futile rebellion against this. Its opening act was the rooting up and burying of many of the area’s useful roads and rail lines. But the verdict of geography cannot be so easily overturned. As we’ve seen, Stratford is designed to be a walkable town, but it’s one that’s gouged by the still-intact motorways and rail lines. The result is only discordant, and it doesn’t work. The Olympic redevelopment forbids Stratford from serving a useful purpose; in so doing, it kills the area more comprehensively than decades of chemical runoff ever could. It replaces a real place with a theme park. Like Britain itself, Stratford is run at a loss. Stinky Stratford certainly wasn’t.
On a material level, what Stratford says is that modern Britain can safely forget the brass tacks of railways, factories, pumping stations, and laboratories. It proposes that first world living standards can be maintained with recourse only to the tourism; retail therapy; sport; sport science; postgraduate education; and leisure sectors. As a country that now has precious few laboratories, or even water reservoirs, it isn’t an idea that can endure much longer.
But the cultural project of Stratford rattles on. And it’s one of very limited horizons. It is a mausoleum to a sporting event that ended 11 years ago. However much the 2012 Olympics meant to Britain’s governing classes, the fact that the athletes’ dormitory district will now become a permanent neighbourhood of one of the world’s great cities is something that will only baffle future generations. Sensible countries quickly forget about their Olympic games, and let sites like these fall to ruin. Even the streets are myopic and incestuous; named after marginal figures from the political class like Tessa Jowell.
More than anything else, Stratford declares that the society that produced the 2012 Olympics will stand forever. ‘Beyond the Games’, ‘Olympic Legacy’ – these are not promises, but commands. It’s a fortress of consensus, ranged against its now-defeated rival Canary Wharf – which represents commercial independence – and at county Essex, the most ungovernable of England’s provinces, which saw the first stirrings against this consensus in 2014. It’s a deadening physical presence, directed against everything live, heterodox, or even useful in this part of England. It is urban counterrevolution.
It’s a counterrevolution that is succeeding. The other great sites of development in London – Vauxhall, Croydon, North Greenwich and White City – all now take their stylistic queues from Stratford, not from Canary Wharf or The City. For their part, the Docklands and the Square Mile now hope, too, to rebrand themselves as leisure and hospitality destinations. ‘Beyond the Games’ will spread out from Stratford, and will cover the whole country. Stratford is an anachronism, but it’s an anachronism that looks increasingly like the future.
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I agree with the author, especially as she says that if an able-bodied athlete is not permitted to compete in the para-Olympics due to having an obvious unfair advantage, the same should apply to anyone with a Y sex chromosome being excluded from women’s events. Hence why it’s imperative to move away from what is written on somebody’s passport ( what the IOC are doing ) and commence with sex testing via a cheek swab. It’s the fairest way.
Here is an interview article of the former athletics coach for Canada talking about when three biological men, including caster Semenya, all got medals at the 2016 Olympics in the 800m, and the athlete he was coaching came in 4th, robbed of her gold medal. It also shows the pressure coaches and athletes are put under, with threats to stay silent on the issue, which does give some indication as to why athletes cannot ”just refuse to compete”. They’ve an awful lot to lose if they do so;
”Athletics Canada’s former head coach has come forward to reveal that he was threatened by the Canadian Olympic Committee lawyers after expressing discontent with the results of the women’s 800m at the 2016 Olympic Games. The competition saw three biological males take the top spots, displacing the female Canadian bid to fourth place.
Peter Eriksson, the record-making former head coach for the Canadian Olympic and Paralympic program, spoke to Reduxx about what happened at the 2016 session in Rio, and the consequences he faced if he spoke out on behalf of Canadian athlete Melissa Bishop. Bishop placed fourth after three males competed in the female division.
“I was the first one to see Melissa after the race and what do you even say in that scenario? ‘You’re the best woman in the race?’ You don’t get a medal for that,” Eriksson says. “This was such an injustice I wanted to speak out, and then I got a call from the Canadian Olympic Committee’s lawyer saying that if I opened my mouth, I would be banned for life in sport.”
Eriksson explained that, at the time, World Athletics claimed there was a lack of evidence on the advantage possessed by DSD athletes, but that there had been no confusion on the ground about what Semenya and the others were.
“Everybody knew Caster Semenya, for example, was a male. Everybody was aware of it, but I think that World Athletics didn’t want to do anything,” Eriksson says. “This is now also documented in court records. [He] has very high testosterone and is XY. A few years earlier [he] had tried to lower [his] testosterone and began to perform poorly, so [he] stopped.”
https://reduxx.info/an-injustice-former-canadian-olympic-head-coach-speaks-out-against-results-of-2016-olympics-calls-for-sex-segregated-sport/
Here is the race in question;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psxr58zKi6g&ab_channel=Olympics
I’ve followed several of these cases with some interest Mogs. The clincher for me was that after most of the furore regarding Caster Semenya had died down, he fathered two children with his wife, despite having undescended male parts. Inside, he was a sperm-producing man. Unfortunate as it might be personally for Khelif in being allegedly raised as a female, all the biological evidence confirms he’s a bloke, quite aside from his build and appearance (a la Semenya). The craven pusillanimity of the IOC in pandering to political correctness over womens’ safety is nothing short of disgusting
Yes, indeed. Sharron Davies is over in Paris now working on the Olympics and she’s talking to these female competitors. It’s not just the boxing that’s been infiltrated by XY chromosome-owners ( what the heck do you call them? DSD people?? ), it’s, criminally, the other contact sports. What does that say about the Olympic committee and what they think of women? Terrible;
”I have spent time this week with many female combat sports women. There are other males in different womens fighting sports here at the Olympics. It is negligence & pure insanity. A dereliction of duty of care to female athletes health. The IOC HAVE been told over & over again.”
https://x.com/sharrond62/status/1819677130034213164
It was never a trans issue. Nobody reliably ever claimed it was a trans issue. Most of that obfuscation appeared to come from the TRAs, attempting to queer the pitch, and then paint their opponents as being the confused parties.
It is unfortunate for these athletes, but there are no grounds for allowing them to compete against women.
*reliable
I just wanted to say that I really found this scientific medical information fascinating. I had no idea of the physical manifestations of a developmental chromosome misstep in this way – so thanks for a really interesting article.
Good article; thanks
The Hashimi “sisters” from Afghanistan look extremely suspect in the women’s cycling road race. Broad shoulders, little hips and waists, significantly taller than the competition and are currently working together to reel in a breakaway. These Olympics are a joke.
Thank you Isabella!
The Olympic Movement does seem to be tying itself in a huge knot on what should otherwise be a very simple issue. According to them they’re an organisation seeking “to contribute to building a peaceful and better world by educating young people through sport practiced in accordance with Olympism and its values.”
What are these ‘values’ exactly? Well they include, among other things, “respect for international conventions on protecting human rights” and specifically the “rejection of discrimination of any kind.”
This is all very virtuous but for decades sport’s intended reach includes vulnerable sub-populations which in most places continues to include women. Thus, the Olympic Movement intends to “encourage the regular practice of sport by all people in society, regardless of sex, age, social background or economic status,” and holds out “gender equality a top priority.” Its “two main aims” with respect to gender equality “are to make access to sport in general and the Olympic Games easier for female athletes, and to increase the number of women in sports administration and management.”
This huge, and ever increasing, knot can easily be undone by defining what they mean by ‘sex’, ‘gender’, ‘female’ and ‘woman’. If there’s ever a need for a sex taxonomy update it’s now. The irony here being women were once excluded from sports based on sex, only to come almost full circle to be excluded again!
The Olympic Movement is speaking out of both sides of its mouth. It is impossible to encourage, prioritise and grow woman’s sport while at the same time erasing biological reality and replacing it with gender identity. Sex discrimination should always be met with skepticism and challenged, but in sport it is an absolute that’s required for women to compete. In this instance, discrimination is lawful, sensible and required to achieve the Olympic Movement’s goals.
To conclude, due the Olympic Movement’s desires to elevate women (rightly so), and the inherent physiological differences between the sexes, this goal cannot be met without continuing to separate the sexes using lawful and sensible discriminatory practices against biological men, men with DSDs and trans women.
https://olympics.com/ioc/theme-gender-equality
“…..includes vulnerable sub-populations which in most places continues to include women.”
Ooh steady on or you’ll trigger the wrath of the resident misogynists, with their tedious pathological obsession with blaming everything on feminism and/or women on general.
Apparently if women call out the unfair treatment experienced in sports we’re accused of claiming “victim hood” or told “it’s your own fault!” Go figure!
Thank the gods for the decent men sticking their heads above the parapet and calling out the injustice though. I see the sacrifices and the hard work that goes into playing sports at a high level for ALL sportspeople but there can be no doubt that what’s going on currently is negatively impacting females alone. If people want to make disparaging remarks when this reality is acknowledged then it just highlights how unhealthy their attitude is towards females and trivialising what girls and women are enduring in wider society or coming up against in a sports environment.
The IOC are a shambles and come across as dreadfully unprofessional, prioritising all things woke over fairness and safety of the female athletes. I don’t think I watched any of the previous Olympics so I can’t compare it to what’s occurring presently in Paris. Was it as bad as this?
Anyway, great post.
The statement “We cannot blame individuals like Imane Khelif” sits awkwardly with the statement “It’s important to consider the fact that Imane Khelif entered the Olympics likely knowing that they are a natal male (XY).” Perhaps Khelif doesn’t understand that he has considerable physical advantages over XX women – and perhaps he does. The pre-fight swab idea is a good one, but swab or not, you just need to look at this individual to know that he shouldn’t be in a ring with a woman. This isn’t prejudice – it’s common sense – a rare commodity, I’m told. Apparently Khelif has been boxing since he was 13; maybe he looked more like a girl back then – a lot of boys do at 13. But, er… they change; and just the fact – sorry, I’m making various assumptions here – that a girlish boy of 13/14/15 starts to find that he’s not up to being in the ring with 100% male fighters, doesn’t mean he should start thinking about having a crack at the ladies instead. As I say, this is a slightly mischievous assumption – but how else to explain how a sane person can look at Khelif now and say yes, that’s a wonderful, beautiful woman who has the perfect right to break other women’s noses? It’s beyond me. (As an argument, it reminds of conversations I’ve had with gay friends who tell me that they’d have loved to adopt a child but didn’t feel they had the ‘right’ to insist on doing so, no matter what less conservative people told them; they accepted that people often make sacrifices, that all things are not given to all people in this life, and that if the possible or likely outcome of not making those sacrifices might include harm to others, they should maybe exercise some restraint in their actions. Big of them, I’d say, and said at the time.)
The ability to discern in Imane Khelif a woman fighting a fair fight with another woman is an ability enjoyed only by leftist utopianists, who see things that don’t exist other than in their dreams. That dream-world is a problem that makes things difficult in most areas of life, but nowhere quite as starkly as in the boxing ring. Leftists are cruel – they gloss over much suffering in their pursuit of ideology; what was the look on Khelif’s face during and after this ‘fight’? Well, I’m afraid I saw only self-satisfied condescension – a hint of scorn perhaps – contrasting somewhat with the look on Angela Carini’s face after only 46 seconds of a revolting spectacle.
By the way, while the author’s conclusions make sense to me, I don’t understand the capitulation to this absurd habit of using grammatically confusing pronouns – especially since there is an overt understanding that the person under scrutiny is in fact male (“This means that Imane Khelif is biologically [natal] male.”) Subsequent language used by the author can be confusing as a result: “We cannot blame individuals like Imane Khelif. They were misclassified at birth” – Does this refer to Khelif only, or to others like him? Does such a detail matter? It certainly might.
Being churlish for a moment, on the question of confusion, the article would be easier to follow if it were better written; this one is one of the worst I’ve seen in the DS pages. Sorry, it just is. (eg, “This way there would be no confusion about who should be allowed to compete against each other” = This way there would be no confusion about who should be allowed to compete against whom“? Sorry, reigning in pedantic instincts…).
Finally, here’s someone who would love to get me in the ring (although I wouldn’t fancy her chances): https://x.com/IrishWomens/status/1819372791050686556 – Who knows what goes through the mind of a lady rugby player…
The ability to discern in Imane Khelif a woman fighting a fair fight with another woman is an ability enjoyed only by leftist utopianists, who see things that don’t exist other than in their dreams.
What makes you think the people behind this believe in their own cover stories? Khelif has doubtlessly been put in his place by people who knew perfectly well what they were doing. That’s part of the plan to demonstrate to us how powerless we are wrt to accepting this nonsense.
I make no reference to the people “behind this”; I mean only that the tendency to see things that don’t exist is a tendency of the Left in general. A pretty straightforward reflection on the general nature of Leftist ‘thinking’ (for want of a better word). You may well be right about the “plan to demonstrate” etc – I don’t have a strong view on that.
Thank you very much for this clear explanation of the medical basis for this situation. All we get from the IOC and media is just dream land rhetoric.