Dear Readers,
Good evening to you all. The headline news is that we have ordered 1,000 copies of Issue 9, which will be with you in early November. Issue 8 and Issue 7 sold out within three weeks; if you subscribe today, you will ensure your copy arrives promptly. In rather less interesting news, the printing costs have increased significantly, as the cost of paper has increased this year. It’s sometimes very tempting to change tack, and to pivot to operating a Substack with a tote-bag emporium attached, but we’re devoted to print for a whole number of reasons too extensive to list here.
To business. Fergus Butler-Gallie, vicar, author and The Fence’s very own editor-at-large, has decided to chance his arm as a lobby hack, and brings us a dispatch from the Labour Party conference in Brighton. There are also some featurettes on Mick Jagger, Daniel Craig and the jazzers of 1950s Soho. But first, here’s Fergus.
Still Waters Run Deep
On my way into the loos at the Grand Hotel, I heard a consistent dull thud. Two Shags redux? Wishful thinking on my part. At the face of the porcelain, a delegate made polite, easy conversation with me: ‘I’ve never known it so wet’ he said. On my way out, I took a closer look into the source of the thudding. It was the repetitive drip of a leak from the ceiling above.
I was at the Grand; surrounded by a small gaggle of journos, an even smaller slick of lobbyists, a lumpen coagulation of trade union leaders wearing short sleeved shirts and sullen stares and – most tellingly – absolutely no MPs. One source told me that many had stayed away: COVID concerns providing a blissful excuse to avoid the membership. One constituency chair I spoke to told me he spent most of his time trying to conceal the true nature of the Labour Party from his small remaining brick in the Red Wall. ‘If they knew what it was like, we’d be fucked’.
The big papers still did send people – many of whom convened in the excellent fish restaurant just opposite the Grand itself. In the hotel I stayed in, they only bothered to put three print publications out: the Guardian, the Mirror, and the Morning Star. There were very few lobbyists too, they were all saving their powder for Manchester next week. One of the few who had come told me. ‘To be honest – from an actual contact with people-in-power point of view – we’d probably be better off coming to one of your church fetes’.
There were some MPs there – the front bench, of course, risking the biblical weather front to sniff out the two or three BBC cameras that had bothered to turn up. We were also joined by a group of malcontent MPs there as well, who, until 2019, had been the front bench. They largely eschewed the main conference hall, but they were hardly alone in doing that.
Back to the Grand, people were wandering out – or rather staggering out. It was as if the weirdest kids and the strangest teachers had had their punch spiked at a school disco and now were involved in a weird drunken shimmy to avoid one another. The only security presence were two uniformed officers standing awkwardly next to a big pile of vomit outside the main entrance. The scene of Thatcher’s near-demise was now policed no more heavily than a provincial Wetherspoons. Sick transit gloria mundi.
All the in-crowd were at the Metropole, but you needed a pass for that. Or at the Mirror’s party at Vodka Revs, but you needed a sort of latent ennui for that. The night before my arrival there had been a karaoke night where Momentum superstar and safe-seat-sniffer-outer, George Aylett, had delighted party goers with a zeitgeist-fresh rendition of the England fan favourite Three Lions (Football’s Coming Home). Who said nationalism and socialism couldn’t mix? Actually, better not answer that. There was some debate about whether The Red Flag would be sung. There was a piano in the Grand’s lobby that was briefly commandeered by a young delegate, which sent a scurry for phones amongst those gathered there. Conference’s one viral TikTok moment? No, I was told they were all looking for the words. Fortunately, the hotel staff came over and politely put everyone out of their misery.
At the heart of outsiders observing a party conference is comparing it to other things. Simile, metaphor, and all the rest of it. This isn’t a sketch of what happened at the Labour conference, but a sense of the atmosphere it inflicted on Brighton, normally the south coast’s outpost of sunny forward-thinking optimism. This is a sketch of Labour’s vibe.
Similes are ten a penny in conference land. They wave furiously at us like a CLP delegate in the back row wanting to raise a point about due process in leadership elections during a debate about the minimum wage.
Unlike Margaret Beckett, I find taking notice of them hard to resist. Labour Conference is like many things. Like watching one of the third or fourth series of Big Brother: where a group of maladjusted individuals are thrown together, with absolutely no contact with the outside world and are still convinced that the country is run by Tony Blair.
I lie in my hotel room that evening and they keep coming. Labour’s residency here is like many things. Like a demented aunt rattling round a crumbling Kemptown mansion. Like a cross between Betjeman and Edgar Allan Poe. Like Chekhov performed by the Tweenies. Instead, I think metaphor is our friend. I arrived in Brighton as the city was lashed by wind and rain. Only the Labour Party could manage to have a fallacy so pathetic. Was it a judgement on Sir Keir? I doubt it. You have to ask yourself: why would God, Mother Nature or an unidentified area of high pressure go to all that bother?
Endless running water wasn’t only found in the Grand Hotel. It gushed down little side streets and swept along the grand promenade. Most delegates looked like they’d been put in a sack and then chucked in a canal out of pity. Perhaps they had been. They scuttled drenched to fringe events, they eyed each other up across hotel bars, they clustered in doorways, studiously ignoring the more long-term residents of the city’s streets whose tents were lashed and then flooded by the squall. A Brighton-based church worker told me the homeless community was up in arms about the failure of delegates to help out.
Still, as my time in this weird world drew to a close, it rained. Of course, the sound of running water has another psychological effect which takes us back to where we started. Early the next morning and in the loos at the railway station, there are two delegates locked in a very earnest discussion about international politics. I wonder whether they talk about the Labour Party much in Ramallah and Pyongyang. Probably not, I conclude; it’s just too depressing.
You can follow Fergus on Twitter here.
Blini Babies
If you ignore the petrol station queues and empty supermarket shelves, then life seems to be fizzing again in the centre of London, as ritzy shops are filled with glad-handing smoothies exchanging pleasantries over lukewarm glasses of Pinot Grigio. Which is great news, of course, for the freeloading community, who are back in action after almost two years out of the game. In London, the Lord of Liggers is the bowtie-sporting David Pun, who is such a ubiquitous presence on the party circuit that select readers send in photos of him to a tribute Twitter account appropriately titled ‘Where’s The Pun?’. Where indeed?
Answers on a Postcard
Why have broadsheet movie critics given the most recent James Bond films glowing reviews? Can one of you help us out here? Are you being given bungs from the Broccoli family? Genuine question.
His Satanic Majesty
In a video posted on Instagram, the Rolling Stones frontman shows that his velvet hips can still snap in his 79th year. Lots of people like to pretend they don’t have time for Mick Jagger, which is strange, as he’s one of the most interesting people on the planet. Has there been someone who’s been so famous for their work (and not the fact of their birth) for so long? Picasso? Bertrand Russell? It does dizzy the mind how long Jagger has been operational for. On November 22, 1963, the Stones taped an appearance on the show Ready, Steady, Go! in Manchester, which was the same day that John F Kennedy was shot, so Mick and Keith Richards had to comfort the American band the Shirelles, who were playing the same bill as them, but were crying on stage. Next Monday, 4 October 2021, they perform at the Heinz Field, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Hit ‘Em Up
1,000 print subscribers by the end of the year remains our vaulted target. We are currently at 684. Since we’ve started these entreaties, a disproportionate amount of women have signed up as subscribers. So, come on, boys. A lot of you read this mail-out start to finish every week, and quote-tweet TF articles approvingly. We need your help to keep this thing free to air for those who can’t afford it. £25 pounds per year for 52 free newsletters and four 52-page print magazines is a radically generous deal: please do subscribe today.
Mimetic Energy
Steve Coogan is going to play Jimmy Savile in an upcoming BBC TV series. What else is there to say apart from ‘no comment’?
In Case You Missed It
‘Every time a woman says she will call you on the way home, text you when she gets in, or share her location with you, she is not reducing her chances of being attacked, she is increasing your chances of finding her body’. Nicola Thorp addresses the depressing response of the UK police force to the murder of Sarah Everard.
If you've missed the ongoing fallout from Ozy Media, Ben Smith's exposé of incompetence, grift, and a conference call disaster that will make you squirm out of your skin is the best place to start. Then dig deeper in the undergrowth via Joshua Benton's additional reporting.
Ever hear the one about how the German translators of Terry Pratchett's novels were published with ads for Maggi instant soup worked into the text?
Sarah Maslin Nir charts the unbelievable story of a woman whose New Jersey home was overtaken by sovereign citizen ‘paper terrorists’.
Reza H. Akbari explores the ingenious reworking and social effects of cheap plastic footballs in Iran.
Sophie Haigney dips a nib into the vintage heirloom inkpot that is Dark Academia and TikTok and Englishness.
Cyclist and Drum & Bass DJ Dom Whiting has been doing some excellent work combining his two pleasures for the spectacular Drum & Bass On The Bike, and his latest ride through central London was BIIIIIIIIG
And Finally
Last week, one of us went shopping for a book about Soho, only to find the shelves exclusively stacked with volume upon volume of Dan Cruickshank wanging on about fluted architraves and corniced dentils and all the rest of it.
Thank God, then, for YouTube, which has recorded in aspic one of the most fascinating, charming short documentaries that we’ve come across this year. Archer Street – where The Fence currently hangs its hat – was the centre of the music industry in the 40s and 50s, and the home of Club 11, the country’s first jazz club. In the programme, which was filmed sometime in the mid-80s, gathers the old crew together to watch clips, crack jokes and chug cigarettes. Of the eleven figures gathered, the only well-known name is Ronnie Scott, founder of the eponymous nightclub, but all of them had their part in ushering in a much-needed modernity into post-Blitz Britain. Sadly, all of them are now dead, with the last to pass being the bandleader and drummer, Laurie Morgan.
It’s a beautiful record of a London that’s just slipping out of living memory, but also has a couple of very, very funny stories during its 28-minute duration. Do watch it.
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Next week, Fergus Butler-Gallie will bring you a dispatch from the Conservative Party conference, and we will share the fruits of his labours next Friday.
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You can get in touch with a member of the editorial team by replying to this email, to shoot the breeze, chat shop or whatever. Enjoy the weekend.
All the best,
TF
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