Category: London

A Live Aid for the 2020s?

Forty years on from the ground-breaking Live Aid concerts, what would another event or campaign focus on now? Global co-operation is under pressure, so no matter what issue most needs global attention, who could turn disparate worries into large-scale, well articulated public consensus?

Who wouldn’t want to go back just for one day? To 13 July 1985, when the nation’s coolest rock musicians came together and electrified the 72,000 people filling Wembley Stadium and millions more viewers at home, and galvanised the British public to give around £50m for victims of the Ethiopian famine.

There is a lot to celebrate in BBC2’s Live Aid at 40: When Rock ’n’ Roll Took on the World. The three-part series has pulled in an impressive run of interviewees that included organisers Bob Geldof and Bono, Sting, Midge Ure, Phil Collins; politicians George Bush, Condoleezza Rice and Tony Blair, the head of Ethiopia’s Relief and Rehabilitation Commission, Dawit Giorgis, former Nigerian President Olusegun Obansanjo – and Birhan Woldu, the woman who as a near-dying young girl had become the face of the Ethiopian famine at Live Aid.

The series transports you to a time when our tiny island was doing what it loves doing best: punching above its weight

The interviewees and footage provide a multi-dimensional look at the event and its second punch, 2005’s Live 8, from British, American and crucially, African, perspectives. (Slightly awkward triangle of locations, mind – it rings a bell of some sort.) They built a picture of how the concert helped to raise the profile of aid in public awareness and foreign policy and how it was followed by an understanding of the need to articulate and address the causes of poverty.

Accompanied by a zinging soundtrack, it transports you to a time when our tiny island was doing what it loves doing best: punching above its weight. Geldof’s Live Aid concert inspired a similar concert in Philadelphia and more around the world, and leading efforts that ultimately raised a total of £150m.

Somewhat alarmingly the series is categorised as “history”. Then again, it did make history: technologically, socially and politically

Somewhat alarmingly the series is categorised as “history”. Then again, it did make history: technologically, socially and politically. The British public, today worn down by “scandal-hit” this and “broken” that, can look back to when quality BBC journalism led to the creation of a charity song that raised £8 million and pressured the Government of Margaret Thatcher to allocate food aid to a forgotten corner of a then-Marxist African nation.

Campaigners at the 2005 Make Poverty History rally in Edinburgh called on G8 leaders to address Western-linked causes of poverty in Africa
Campaigners at the 2005 Make Poverty History rally in Edinburgh called on G8 leaders to address Western-linked causes of poverty in Africa. Photo: One.org


In 2005 Geldof issued a new call to action for Live 8, the campaign focused on Western-linked causes of extreme poverty and on the G8 summit that the UK would chair that July. A-list musicians prepared for concerts in Wembley, Philadelphia and in the other G8 nations and an estimated 30 million viewers worldwide tuned in to watch. (We learnt that South Africa’s event, at which Nelson Mandela spoke, was an afterthought, to the organisers’ embarrassment.) Meanwhile public opinion was galvanised through the affiliated Make Poverty History campaign for which NGOs and their supporters marched for clear asks on trade, aid and debt. Some 225,000 people took part in the march in Edinburgh. G8 leaders – including Vladimir Putin – pledged to increase aid, cancel some debt and reduce trade barriers. The documentary shows Tony Blair reflecting that that was the last time that world leaders acted together for the common good.

What would a third event or campaign focus on now? What cause would it champion and who would it lobby?

The question it left me with was, what would a third event or campaign focus on now? Surely it would involve more artists of colour because there are more top-selling British artists of colour, and there would be little tolerance for a mostly white line-up. But what cause would it champion and who would it lobby?

After all, as the world begins to re-arm, areas for global co-operation are shrinking and, as aid budgets get funnelled to defence, ploughshares are being turned into swords.

Act now, change forever. Promotional text of the Mass Lobby encouraging people to speak to their MPs about climate change.

A big cause of suffering making headlines is linked to so-called “natural disasters” such as flooding and droughts. As I write, the death toll from the Texas flash floods stands at at least 109. We know such disasters are becoming more likely due to climate change. (Indeed, to the extent that they are caused by climate change, how much longer can we call them natural?) We can ask our leaders to re-commit to the Paris Agreement or hasten their nation’s path to Net Zero, share-holders can make their environemntal concerns known to companies, but a lot of the commitment comes back to individuals. Can anyone picture a stadium of 70,000 concert-goers waving their hands to show they commit to slashing their carbon footprint and boarding a plane only in emergencies?

Charities are urging the public to meet with their MPs today at an event called the Mass Lobby to assure their elected leaders that they still really want politicians to make choices to reduce the impact of climate change. Nearly 5,000 people have signed up to take part. I hope politicians will listen, with or without celebrity big guns. A greater push is needed to get from 5,000 to 70,000 or 225,000 – or indeed the millions needed to demonstrate widespread consensus and move the global dial.

Unlike a famine, which can be ended if the international community has the will, preventing the climate from breaking down is an ongoing commitment that costs more than the price of a record or a concert ticket or a one-off donation. Are we up to the challenge?

Top: The official Live Aid poster. Eil.com, fair use, via wikipedia

Visiting the Thames Barrier – the fiddliest daytrip in London

Its gleaming gates rise from the murky waters of the River Thames, and next week one of the country’s most under-sung feats of engineering will receive a visit from one of its highest-profile fans, the Emperor of Japan. But for most of us, planning a trip there is unbelievably fiddly.

Its gleaming gates rise from the murky waters of the River Thames like towers in a medieval castle wall, and next week one of the country’s most under-sung feats of engineering will receive a visit from one of its highest-profile fans.

The Emperor and Empress of Japan are making a private trip to the Thames Barrier before the engagements of their state visit next week. According to a touching article in The Times, Emperor Naruhito, when crown prince, devoted his postgraduate thesis to the river while at Oxford University in the 1980s.

And why shouldn’t they? To stand only metres from one of those giant rotating gates is awe-inspiring.

Except, unless you’re the Emperor of Japan and have imperial levels of administrative support (well, access to private boat trips and chauffeurs), the planning is unbelievably fiddly. In which case, read on.

For the steel-gated super-structure is surprisingly inaccessible.

I wanted to go because my five-year-old son is a budding engineer, into steam trains, diesels, modern trains, trams, buses and so on – and his grandparents were visiting us.

We needed a rainproof daytrip with multi-generational appeal, ie suitable for differing concentration spans and levels of mobility: one member of the group would want to run around constantly; another member would really not.

Even in five years, minus the lockdowns, we’ve ticked off many London attractions. So I cast my mind east and settled on the Thames Barrier. It’s one of the largest movable flood barriers in the world, according to the Environment Agency. And climate change is only making flood defences more topical. The other adults assured me they wouldn’t find it too nerdy.

That was the easy part. I imagined there would be a visitor centre just next to the barrier, from where a boat-trip would take visitors right up close. And a shop where you could buy postcards, cups of tea and books about Charles Draper, the engineer whose cooker’s gas taps gave him the inspiration for the rotating gates.

I adjusted my expectations when I found the barrier isn’t obvious from Google Maps. Que?

And if you want to pass between its gates by boat, the nearest pier is more than 1.5 miles away from the visitor centre car park.

Let’s start with the boat part.

You can take the Uber Clipper, which sails through the barrier, to Royal Woolwich Arsenal, disembark, have a quick coffee, and sail back the other way. There is a Thames Barrier Park on the other side of the river, so, on your return trip you’d need to hop back only one stop to Royal Wharf Pier, and then it’s a 15-20-minute walk away. Apparently there’s a great café there and some eye-impressive topiary, but we didn’t get there because the mobility issues put it out of our reach.

Yours to print out and draw on any missing elements

So accustomed am I to Google’s omniscience that I feel cheated when it turns out to be fallible and I should have consulted other, more British maps, such as Streetmap. So Royal Woolwich Arsenal, for example, is not just the old military buildings turned into tidy streets of private residences. A coffee shop is squeezed into one of two Grade 2-listed guardrooms, and the large Visitors’ Book Café, which has a full brunch menu, sits just the other side of a courtyard adorned with sculptures. Neither of these was obvious in advance. Had they been, we could have enjoyed some shakshuka or avocado on sourdough – tastier than a hasty sandwich on the boat.

Between the pale grey sky and murky grey river we sailed, and passing through such powerful gates was a privilege, if a fleeting one. The Thames Barrier Park being out of our reach, we opted to pad our day out with a quick stop at Greenwich, where the grounds of the Cutty Sark, with their benches and ice cream vans, are clearly more accustomed to welcoming visitors.

There is a visitor centre, next to the barrier, but it’s only open – and its phone is only picked up – for five hours on a Saturday. The boat stops a further 1.7 miles away, so if you want to visit, you’ll need a bus or a car. We returned to Royal Woolwich Arsenal, picked up our car and drove east down a busy A road through a markedly unloved part of town that has you questioning your eyes and your memory. Did I really see a sign? Did it really point down here?

Past the tired garages and up and down over untarred roads finally looms a tall, more promising sight. Sadly, having wanted to prioritise the boat trips, we arrived at the centre at 3.37pm to find it shut. Peering through a window of the centre I saw a notice that said the centre was only open by prior appointment.

Finally paying homage, from the Thames Path beyond the shut Visitor Centre

Nonetheless, being close to the steel that was dazzling in the sunlight that had finally broken through, reinforcing the awe of seeing the structure from the water. The Thames Path bears an attractive mural of the course of the river from its source, though that its main audience when we visited – joggers – looked straight ahead. As for our five-year-old, awe-struck as he was, he also really enjoyed the little play park outside the visitor centre.

This last part will be less important to Their Majesties, but I hope their visit sparks a new interest in the structure that leads to it becoming easier to admire up close and be inspired by. There are some great things to see and do here, but it took perseverance to make them align. And the next time I go to an attraction and inwardly grumble that its marketing is too slick, I’ll remember what a hassle it is to visit something less joined up.