Paul Kirkley: In the dark over audacious ‘heritage crime’
I’m not one for glamourising crime, readers – I can’t even watch Peaky Blinders – but I must admit to experiencing a small thrill of excitement at the audacious theft of three historic ‘Richardson candle’ street lamps from Cambridge city centre.
For a start, it’s a crime that brings new meaning to the phrase ‘in broad daylight’ – as you can’t steal lights at night, for obvious reasons. And turning up with a cherry picker in the middle of a bustling city centre street certainly takes some chutzpah. Especially when you’ve done it three times (one more Richardson candle, and they’d have had a Two Ronnies sketch).
But what I really love about the story is how very Cambridge it is. The fluorescent lamps, which were unique to the city and enjoy listed status, were designed in the 1950s by the renowned architect Sir Albert Richardson, who ‘disdained more conventional street lighting’. Because of course he did.
As a result, the thefts have been designated a ‘heritage crime’ by Historic England. Which I know doesn’t make them any more forgivable – it’s just that ‘heritage crime’ sounds a lot more posh, and therefore less scary, than knife crime or people trafficking.
For that reason, it’s tempting to think of the culprit as a dashing gentleman thief in the Raffles mode. Or perhaps a high-end art thief with a wealthy buyer who’s now storing the lamps in a Swiss vault alongside his stolen Picassos and Van Goghs.
The truth, of course, may well be more depressingly prosaic, and the lamps were actually nicked by a gang of roughnecks in a Transit van, before being melted down for scrap. But that doesn’t sound nearly as much fun.
On a wider note, I’ve always rather admired Cambridge’s resistance to adequate street lighting. The stygian gloom in parts of the city centre – particularly the area from Trinity Street/King’s Parade down to the Backs – really adds to the town’s ‘medieval citadel under siege’ vibe. Though I appreciate this is a somewhat privileged, male point of view, and women out alone at night may well find the situation less charming.
Last year I wrote in this paper how an unprecedented famine in East Africa was going largely ignored by the Western media. (It wasn’t one of my more hilarious columns, to be honest, and it was certainly stretching the definition of ‘local news’.) And the reason I thought it was probably being ignored – even on Comic Relief – was squeamishness about ‘poverty tourism’ and ‘white saviour complex’ and all the other university faculty buzzwords that have come to dominate the discourse. (Discourse being another one.)
And now, wading into the debate comes Suffolk’s most celebrated African studies scholar, Ed Sheeran, who says he didn’t give his approval to appear on the new ‘supercut’ of Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas?
In a statement that takes ‘luxury western beliefs’ to a whole new level of self-indulgence, the Galway Girl singer said his “understanding of the narrative” around the song had changed since he took part in the 30th anniversary version 10 years ago. This learning journey, he added, had been inspired by the British-Ghanaian rapper Fuse ODG’s comments that Band Aid was guilty of “showcasing dehumanising imagery” and “perpetuating damaging stereotypes about Africa”.
Instead, Fuse would like to “reclaim the narrative, empowering Africans to tell their own stories, redefine their identity, and position Africa as a thriving hub for investment and tourism”.
All of which sounds fine and dandy, in an ideal world where all Africa’s problems have been fixed. But – newsflash – they haven’t been fixed. In fact, in many ways the situation is more desperate than ever.
But don’t take my word for it (I know about as much as Ed Sheeran does): the United Nations reports that parts of Africa are “facing a food crisis of unprecedented proportions”, as climate change increases water scarcity and desertification. “Hunger and malnutrition” remain among the most urgent issues facing the continent – and this is the UN saying this, remember, not Sting – along with healthcare, peacekeeping and conflict resolution (there are currently more than 35 armed conflicts in Africa).
In fact, 20 years after Tony Blair promised to “end the obscenity of African poverty”, the estimated 163 million people currently facing acute food insecurity on the continent is a depressing all-time record. But you probably won’t have seen much about it on the news. Because, far from “perpetuating damaging stereotypes”, the Western media largely prefers not to report on it at all these days – quite possibly for fear of landing themselves in hot water with the faculty theorists. I wonder, if Michael Buerk were to do his “dawn lights up a biblical famine” BBC news report now, would he be accused of “showcasing dehumanising imagery”?
And yes, of course, not all Africa is like this. A continent of 1.4 billion people has many stories to tell. But we’re not talking about the ‘thriving hubs’ here. We’re talking about the parts where people are very much not thriving. Because they are dying. And who on Earth does it help to pretend that they’re not? “Hey, don’t look at all those starving people – here’s a really inspirational story about a Nairobi tech start-up!”
For millions of people, wretched exposure to an ever more inhospitable climate is a simple a fact of geography – exacerbated, without doubt, by a legacy of colonial asset-stripping and exploitation. Having taken everything we want from the continent, is now really the time for the West to turn its back on Africa? And would they really thank us for it? (“Before I accept these vital drugs to save my child’s life, can I just double-check that they haven’t been used to perpetuate a victim narrative at any point?”)
As for Band Aid, of course the song is comically tin-eared, and the line-up of talent was staggeringly un-diverse, even for 1984. (I don’t know if you’ve heard about the role of black people in popular music? Apparently it was a pretty big deal.) But at least Bob Geldof and Midge Ure actually did something. And doing something, it seems, is the least fashionable approach to anything in 2024. Far easier just to hash together a few campus slogans into a posturing statement, then bask smugly in the praise for your ideological purity. That way people will think you’re much cooler and edgier than Bob and Bono and all those silly old dinosaurs.
It won’t stop anyone dying, though.
There’s something highly appropriate – and mildly dispiriting – about Cambridge Dictionary choosing ‘manifest’ (verb: to use methods such as visualisation and affirmation to help you imagine achieving something you want, in the belief that doing so will make it more likely to happen) as their word of the year.
From TikTok to Trump (and the millions who voted for him), it’s a word that reflects the fashionable view that you can create your own narrative just by wishing hard enough, regardless of what happens when those wishes impact with the brick wall of reality. Hence our kids constantly being told they can achieve anything, if only they want it badly enough.
Here in Cambridge, the home of empirical data, we know such wish-upon-a-star thinking to be nonsense, of course. In truth, a person’s chances of success are more dependent on socio-economic factors that can’t easily be overcome by self-belief, or tapping your ruby slippers together three times.
For that reason, I prefer one of the words of the year chosen by Collins Dictionary: Delulu – adjective: utterly mistaken or unrealistic in one’s ideas or expectations.
Anyway, Merry Christmas, I guess.
Read more from Paul every month in the Cambridge Independent.
