Evading the Laws of Juárez in Tlalpan

“Dios mediante” (God willing) said the nun at the end of our friend Chris West’s phone call. He had reserved two places for us on a tour of her convent’s chapel in Tlalpan, designed by Luis Barragán (1902-2988), probably modern Mexico’s finest architect, and blessed (not finished as the nun leading our tour explained) in 1963.

 

Tlalpan is an ancient district of Mexico City, rather off the main tourist itineraries and relatively untouched since Spanish colonial times by the concrete of developers. Its narrow streets are lined by the walls of many old buildings pierced by just a few windows behind sturdy metal bars, for the light is all interior, hidden from those of us on the streets. The entrance to the convent is an unprepossessing wall and a large wooden door.

The entrance to the convent on Calle Miguel Hidalgo.

 

The nun who led the tour, explained that the convent was originally located in a private home rented from a Spanish family, where the closed order could avoid “the laws of Juárez.”

Juárez, an “Indian” from Oaxaca in southern Mexico, as any school student will know is the hero of Mexican history who doggedly resisted the invasion of the forces of Napoleon III in 1862, and who fought conservative Mexican monarchists in the civil war provoked by the Laws of the Reform. Juárez’s laws decisively separated church and state, confiscated many church properties and restricted the liberties of the Catholic clergy. He may be a hero in school textbooks, but not in convents, monasteries and seminaries.

 

The legacy of the Reform could still be felt in the post-revolutionary Mexico of the 1920s and 1930s, particularly in western Mexico where a cruel civil war between followers of Christ the King and the federal government was fought. Barragán was born in Guadalajara in western Mexico and was profoundly Catholic. In 1955 he offered to convert the convent of the Clarisas Capuchinas into a modern complex, at the heart of which is the chapel and its associated spaces.

The altar and the santísimo. To the right the latticework separating the main chapel from the chapel of the faithful.

 

The chapel itself is a small, spare space quite adequate for the 60 nuns who then occupied the convent – there are now only 12, all of advanced years. Barragán designed the spaces, the colours of the walls, the latticework work and stained-glass that admit plentiful natural light, and the furniture. The altar is unusually simple for a Mexican religious space, pride of place given to El Santísimo (the Holy Sacrament). There is but one side chapel, to the left of the altar and shaped like the prow of a boat, a tall stained-glass window at its front, and a huge wooden cross at the rear. The. cross is lit directly on only one day of the year at Easter, when the nuns worship in the side chapel. On an upper level at the rear of the main chapel is the choir, no longer used because too few nuns are able to walk up the stairs, where more latticework work admits more natural light. There are only two small electric lights set in the ceiling to supplement the natural light, used only for vespers, which the remaining nuns no longer celebrate. In fact, there are probably no more than half a dozen electric lights in all the spaces designed for the nuns by Barragán. They must have the smallest electric bill in all of Mexico.

 

The side chapel, shaped like a prow, its stained glass and the cross.

 

Our tour took us to a corridor through which the priest enters for daily mass. Here there is a small wooden opening through which the nuns confess to the priest, who is seated in the confessional in the Chapel of the Faithful. The corridor leads to the sacristy where a mother superior ordered that a full-length mirror be installed because priests came to mass with their robes in disorder (Barragán made provision for no mirror). The Capuchins are the second order of the Franciscans (the first being the male friars/priests, the third the secular faithful). Technically, mass should be conducted by a Franciscan priest, but there are now so few that only one of the four priests who preside in the chapel is a member of the order. The remainder come from the Pontifical University in Tlalpan.

The altar seen from the side chapel.

 

Next came the Chapel of the Faithful, where the nuns’ family members and the public can gather on only two days a year (Christmas and Easter). The faithful have a full view of the altar and cross, but cannot see the nuns. The last two rooms visited were provided for family visits (one permitted every three months). The room for the nuns is small with sturdy wooden furnishings and two starkly modern paintings by Chucho Reyes (1880-1977). On one side is yet more latticework and behind it a solid wooden door that closes off a much larger room, again with one or two of Chucho Reyes’ paintings, which is opened to allow conversation between visitor and nun. Because there are now so few nuns, visits are no longer conducted in these rooms.

 

Barragan also designed a refectory (not open to the public tours).

 

After the tour, the nuns offer for sale a variety of items: some religious charms, bookmarks featuring Santa Clara (the patron saint of the order – hence Clarisas Capuchinas), assorted sweets, and a very Mexican drink, rompope (a sort of egg and cinnamon punch). The bottles had no labels, so I assume that they were made (and consumed?) by the nuns. A Japanese couple who took the tour and understood very little (they spoke no Spanish and understood only a little English) asked me to find out for them what was the mysterious liquid in the bottle.

 

The oratorio de Amaxalco.

Our next visit in Tlalpan was much less successful. The Oratorio de Amaxalco is an 18^th century chapel saved from demolition by the citizens of Tlalpan, but as we discovered, not open to the public. We could view it only through the iron of the gates.

Me and my MP

My MP replied to my letter about a new Conservative Party policy concerning public housing as follows (my original letter is copied below). His response ignores many of the comments I made in my letter.

Dear Mr Jacobs, 

Mrs Whateley’s views are entirely reasonable, in fact, they are the moderate position. A social home with a lifetime tenancy in London or Sunninghill, say, will in very many instances exceed a million pounds in its financial benefit. Very obviously non-citizens should not be eligible; to think otherwise is not an enlightened position, but rather a rejection of the concept of citizenship and borders. Any non-citizen requiring such a financial subsidy to live comfortably should return home. A majority of British people share her views – as do I

Yours sincerely,

Jack Rankin MP
Windsor

I responded:

Dear Mr Rankin,

Thank you for your concise response, from which I deduce that I am to be categorized as one of your unenlightened citizens. I am pleased to be so classified if it distinguishes my views from those of Ms Whateley and yours.

Sincerely yours,

Ian Jacobs

My original letter:

Dear Mr Rankin,

 

Your colleague Helen Whateley has just convinced me that I cannot in good conscience vote for any candidate representing the Conservative party.

 

My Saturday paper quoted Ms Whateley as stating the following:

 

“Making Britain your home should be earned by working, paying tax and integrating. It should not come with a free ride on the benefits system. Britain cannot be a cash machine for the world.

 

Labour has lost control of immigration and lost control of the welfare bill, and it is British families picking up the bill and sitting on waiting lists. The next Conservative government will make foreign nationals ineligible for social housing. Nearly 230,000 homes could go to British families.”

 

Perhaps you will tell me that Ms Whateley has been misquoted. However, on the assumption that she has been accurately quoted, I write to point out that this asinine farrago of prejudice and misrepresentation appalls me.

 

First, Ms Whateley implies that all foreign nationals who live in social housing came to Britain for a “free ride,” implying that they do not work, pay tax or integrate. How can she possibly know that this is true of at a minimum 230,000 people (assuming that only one householder per home holds a foreign passport) and perhaps as many as 460,000 (if there are two such householders in each home)? Is there any evidence that a significant proportion of these fellow human beings do not work, pay tax or integrate? I doubt it. Would you be encouraged to integrate if the government were to evict you from your home simply because you were not born in Britain?

 

The members of our communities who live in social housing might include retired couples or people in active employment who have taught our children, nursed us when we were unwell, cared for our elderly neighbours, whose children are in our schools, who are our neighbours perhaps attended the events that I help to organize in Sunninghill Library, or participated in activities in Cordes Hall. Would that constitute a failure to integrate.

 

Do you, as my elected representative, know how Ms Whateley will identify those she intends to evict from homes they may have occupied for a long time? If those who determine that a family should be evicted make a mistake (remember the Windrush scandal), will a candidate for eviction be allowed to appeal? And once evicted, if these unfortunate victims of Ms Whateley’s racism fail to find a home they can afford, will she ensure that local authorities have sufficient funds to house them, as they are legally required to do so? In this event, exactly how has Ms Whateley’s policy saved the taxpayer any money at all? Indeed, perhaps the cost will be higher because a private landlord will charge a high rent.

 

Persecution of people simply for being workers in a country of which they are not citizens, is a very personal matter for my wife and me, since we have two immigrant sons, one in Mexico and one in Japan. They earn salaries and are seeking to benefit their host countries with their talents. They both have access to the public health system in the country in which they live. Are they really personally responsible for any waiting lists in Mexico or Japan, and if waiting lists do exist should they be punished for the failure of the respective governments to manage an adequate health system?

 

Closer to home, we have a friend of many years, a Muslim lady who worked alongside my wife in a university library, and who has continued to work in her “retirement years” while I live idly on my pensions. She was educated in her own country but in the British curriculum, speaks excellent English, volunteered during the Covid pandemic, is a friend of Kew Gardens, and a valued friend. Please tell me how I can advise her to integrate? She might well be the target of one of Ms Whateley’s evictions.

 

I hope you will excuse me, if I trouble you concerning one more vacuous statement, in this case something said by your leader Ms Badenoch. Many years ago (when the Poll Tax was so controversial that even Conservative Party members travelled to London to join protests), a Conservative canvasser for council elections called at my home. When I told her that I could not vote for the Conservative candidates, she said words to the effect: “Why not, it’ only bout emptying the bins.” I thought that this betrayed a profound ignorance of the duties of a borough councillor, but she was only a canvasser not the leader of the Conservative Party. However, I understand that Ms Badenoch justified her selection of a former Neo-Nazi for a council seat on the grounds that he would be concerned only with “parking, sorting out bins.” I know that you were once a councillor for RBWM, so I can assume that your knowledge of the functions of a council is superior to that of your leader. Perhaps you can explain this to her when you next see her.

 

I am sorry to interrupt your summer holidays with this matter. I wish you and your family a relaxing summer.

 

Sincerely yours,

 

Ian Jacobs

 

ICE in New Jersey

  

A friend in New Jersey responded to my last piece about prisons in the UK. Her testimony is both moving and appalling. She agreed that I could share it with you. She sent her comments in two messages.

 

Message 1:

 

Oh Ian, don’t even get me started on prisons. I’m part of a program from our church called “Eyes on ICE”. Not a protestor, not getting pepper sprayed or on the news, just standing outside the facility where they are holding the largest number of detainees of Homeland Security on the East Coast in a god forsaken area of Newark, lacking any shade or seats for the people waiting, unreachable for the poor families by any kind of public transportation and the rules for who can visit and what they can wear and what time they should show up change almost randomly and daily.  The other day in the paper they said this particular facility is the most restrictive prison in the state.

We’re documenting how the ICE officers are treating the families and visitors of the people inside — who may have overstayed their visas, who may have wandered across the border, or who may be perfectly legal and waiting for their hearing but just happen to be Spanish and swept up with others so they get to be thrown in with the other 1000 detainees. We also have food, grocery store cards and clothes for the visitors. Last time I was there a man came by UBER from CONNECTICUT and wasn’t allowed in so he got a hot dog meal before his long trek back. It makes me want to cry. So far this particular facility has had 3 deaths and of course haven’t really had anything announced about the causes of the deaths in what would be youngish men who may have not been getting whatever medicine they were supposed to be getting. It’s unbelievably cruel, and designed to be just that. I have no idea what the end game is for these guys, but after the second death this week they started releasing more almost every day. And today only announced the 3rd death happened a few weeks ago, although ICE considers that none of these were in their custody since they transfer them to the hospital when things go south. Along with another woman I drove home a man to Hackensack (since we were going that way anyway) who had been held for two weeks only because he lived with his cousin who was illegal.  I mean, WHAT HAS THIS WORLD COME TO????????.

 

Message 2:

 

I was so mad when I wrote that e-mail that I left out other facts you might want to know. Delaney Hall is run by a private company,  The GEO Co. which received a $1 billion, 15 year no-bid contract. As a federal prison they have so far not let any NJ state elected people in to see it, which has resulted in some arrests when NJ legislators have claimed it’s their right to go inside, and there was a short hunger strike this summer carried on because of poor  (and rotten) quality food, lack of medical help. Apparently two of the deaths that occurred happened when the detainees were not given their seizure and/or high blood pressure medications but then moved to a hospital so technically the deaths were not at the facility. When I was there last week only 2 visitors were allowed at a time and they must be family members. Thus, no lawyers, no any kind of advisors, church, or friend visitors. This is especially significant when they keep moving detainees around different prisons in different parts of the country. The clothing visitors wear must be approved by the guards on duty. No hoodies, no tee shirts with slogans, no ripped jeans, no crocs and no “skin showing” so when I was there last week an 8 month pregnant girl had shown up in a beautiful sun dress and we had her put on an extra large tee shirt and an extra large pair of gym pants over it, as well as exchanging her sandals for high top sneakers. She came in looking lovely but wasn’t nearly as pretty in her gym clothes to see her partner. Of course these rules change all the time, as does the visiting hours in 2 hour blocs — only twice a week, once during the week, once on the weekend — detainees are assigned certain visiting hours and it’s not uncommon for their visitors to show up (in an uber)  and find out that their particular visiting hour has been changed and is already past. And all further visiting for the day for all visitors can be cancelled at the discretion of the guards on duty. The whole thing is so secretive, and sneaky and cruel that it doesn’t even seem like the country I grew up in. I’m just horrified that people are treated like that.

How many prisons do we need?

  

I remember learning on my publishing travels that once upon a time the budget of the excellent California State University system exceeded that of the state prison system. However, as tough on crime policies became popular the budget for imprisonment exceeded (and still exceeds) that for education.

 

Another anecdote. A professor I called on at a Mississippi Delta Community College introduced me to her husband, a photography teacher in the art department. He showed me a portfolio of photographs taken in the local state prison: he photographed inmates on admission and on release. Since Mississippi had the death penalty his second photograph of a prisoner sometimes included those about to die. The photographer told me that the prison once provided basic education for the prisoners. However, a Mississippi legislator discovered that the education of a prisoner cots more than the education of a student in a state high school. He proposed to eliminate this disparity by removing funding for education programmes in state prisons. He cannot have been successful, since the state’s prisons do provide education programmes, but I imagine that the legislator may have attracted popular support.

 

My British friends will already know that there is much controversy here about a government policy to release a substantial number of prisoners before their planned release date. The reason is that our prisons are almost full and may soon be unable to admit any further prisoners. Our government that tells us that its finances are very constrained, but nevertheless reassures us that the problem will be resolved by building more prisons at considerable expense. I am no criminologist, but I am not sure that I value a government by its ability to build prisons.

 

A couple of weeks ago Jan and I returned from a short trip to Manchester by train. At Oxford a man boarded the train and began to address the passengers in a loud voice. He asked whether anybody had any cocaine; or did anybody want one of his cookies (he walked up and down the carriage offering them). He informed us that he had been in jail for five weeks, convicted of a second offence of driving while banned from doing so, and that he hadn’t had a cigarette or a drink in five weeks. He also entertained us with some football chants: “Who are yer? Who are yer? Up the Seagulls [Brighton & Hove Albion], fuck the Palace [Crystal Palace].” He was in a hurry to get home to his wife and thought he might get a taxi to Brighton where he lives. He was not short of cash because he had gone from prison to a Wetherspoon’s pub (for my non-British friends, popularly known simply as Spoons), where he had clearly made up for his five weeks without a drink, and had also won a lot of money on a slot machine – hence his ability to pay for a taxi from Reading to Brighton. He would have left prison with a standard £76 maintenance grant and a rail ticket to Brighton, so he must have invested his subsistence in drinks and the slot machine. As the train arrived at Reading station (where we changed trains) he informed us that “Old Bill” was waiting for him. As we left the train, we saw him in conversation with three or four police officers who were checking his papers.

 

In short, this man had occupied a scarce prison space for five weeks, and upon his release had headed straight for the pub, become very drunk, and was possibly detained by the police within a few hours of his release. His driving offence may have been very dangerous and required punishment, but I wonder whether five weeks of imprisonment (cost c.£6,000) and of police officers detaining him at Reading Station was a sensible use of scarce resources. He disturbed the quiet of our journey, but harmed nobody except perhaps himself.

Me and my MP

 Dear friends,

 We live in distressing times. I sent the following letter to my Mp this afternoon:

 

Mr Jack Rankin MP

House of Commons
London
SW1A 0AA

 

9 August 2026

 

Dear Mr Rankin,

 

Your colleague Helen Whateley has just convinced me that I cannot in good conscience vote for any candidate representing the Conservative party.

 

My Saturday paper quoted Ms Whateley as stating the following:

 

“Making Britain your home should be earned by working, paying tax and integrating. It should not come with a free ride on the benefits system. Britain cannot be a cash machine for the world.

 

Labour has lost control of immigration and lost control of the welfare bill, and it is British families picking up the bill and sitting on waiting lists. The next Conservative government will make foreign nationals ineligible for social housing. Nearly 230,000 homes could go to British families.”

 

Perhaps you will tell me that Ms Whateley has been misquoted. However, on the assumption that she has been accurately quoted, I write to point out that this asinine farrago of prejudice and misrepresentation appalls me.

 

First, Ms Whateley implies that all foreign nationals who live in social housing came to Britain for a “free ride,” implying that they do not work, pay tax or integrate. How can she possibly know that this is true of at a minimum 230,000 people (assuming that only one householder per home holds a foreign passport) and perhaps as many as 460,000 (if there are two such householders in each home)? Is there any evidence that a significant proportion of these fellow human beings do not work, pay tax or integrate? I doubt it. Would you be encouraged to integrate if the government were to evict you from your home simply because you were not born in Britain?

 

The members of our communities who live in social housing might include retired couples or people in active employment who have taught our children, nursed us when we were unwell, cared for our elderly neighbours, whose children are in our schools, who are our neighbours perhaps attended the events that I help to organize in Sunninghill Library, or participated in activities in Cordes Hall. Would that constitute a failure to integrate.

 

Do you, as my elected representative, know how Ms Whateley will identify those she intends to evict from homes they may have occupied for a long time? If those who determine that a family should be evicted make a mistake (remember the Windrush scandal), will a candidate for eviction be allowed to appeal? And once evicted, if these unfortunate victims of Ms Whateley’s racism fail to find a home they can afford, will she ensure that local authorities have sufficient funds to house them, as they are legally required to do so? In this event, exactly how has Ms Whateley’s policy saved the taxpayer any money at all? Indeed, perhaps the cost will be higher because a private landlord will charge a high rent.

 

Persecution of people simply for being workers in a country of which they are not citizens, is a very personal matter for my wife and me, since we have two immigrant sons, one in Mexico and one in Japan. They earn salaries and are seeking to benefit their host countries with their talents. They both have access to the public health system in the country in which they live. Are they really personally responsible for any waiting lists in Mexico or Japan, and if waiting lists do exist should they be punished for the failure of the respective governments to manage an adequate health system?

 

Closer to home, we have a friend of many years, a Muslim lady who worked alongside my wife in a university library, and who has continued to work in her “retirement years” while I live idly on my pensions. She was educated in her own country but in the British curriculum, speaks excellent English, volunteered during the Covid pandemic, is a friend of Kew Gardens, and a valued friend. Please tell me how I can advise her to integrate? She might well be the target of one of Ms Whateley’s evictions.

 

I hope you will excuse me, if I trouble you concerning one more vacuous statement, in this case something said by your leader Ms Badenoch. Many years ago (when the Poll Tax was so controversial that even Conservative Party members travelled to London to join protests), a Conservative canvasser for council elections called at my home. When I told her that I could not vote for the Conservative candidates, she said words to the effect: “Why not, it’ only bout emptying the bins.” I thought that this betrayed a profound ignorance of the duties of a borough councillor, but she was only a canvasser not the leader of the Conservative Party. However, I understand that Ms Badenoch justified her selection of a former Neo-Nazi for a council seat on the grounds that he would be concerned only with “parking, sorting out bins.” I know that you were once a councillor for RBWM, so I can assume that your knowledge of the functions of a council is superior to that of your leader. Perhaps you can explain this to her when you next see her.

 

I am sorry to interrupt your summer holidays with this matter. I wish you and your family a relaxing summer.

 

Sincerely yours,

 

Ian Jacobs

 

Twinned toilets in the new capital of the North

Jan came out of the ladies' toilet in the reception area of Luther King House with an interesting observation: it was twinned with a toilet in Honduras. A photo on the wall showed her that the Honduran toilet was a small corrugated metal shack. The twinned toilet had been selected by the students of Luther King House.

 

We were visiting Manchester to meet a friend who Jan met at university in Pamplona in the 1970s, and who was attending a course in Manchester. One of her last names is Roca, a name that will be familiar to any of you who have visited Spain. Roca, a firm founded by her engineer father with his two brothers, makes just about all the bathroom and toilet fittings in Spain (originally, they also made tiles, but decided that it was better to dominate one industry rather than compete with others in tile manufacture). The three brothers divided the labour of setting up the business: one took a job in a factory France where bathroom fittings were superior to those in Spain to study manufacturing techniques; another was in charge of marketing and distribution; and our friend’s father designed the products.

 

Our friend is the eldest of eleven children. She grew up in a home in Barcelona where her father designed four sets of literas, bunk beds: four sets of three beds to accommodate eleven children. The family was profoundly Catholic; several of the sons are now priests. Our friend is a numeraria of Opus Dei, a Catholic order. Numerarias are celibate women who devote their lives to God.

 

Our friend was staying in Coniston Hall, a female only student residence managed by a Christian educational trust. A short walk from the hall is the Elizabeth Gaskell House, the home of the 19^th-century novelist and her husband William Gaskell, assistant Unitarian minister of Cross Street Unitarian Chapel, who she married in 1832. William was also Chair for thirty years of the Portico Library. The library summarizes its history thus:

 

“The Portico Library was established by 400 founding subscribers in 1806, during Manchester’s emergence as ‘the first modern city’. Early readers and associates included word-famous authors, future Prime Ministers, leading scientists, and educators. Built with wealth derived from the Industrial Revolution, British empire-building, and colonial expansion, the Library amassed a collection that reflects the innovations, but also the exclusions and inequities of its time.

 

The Library’s early members—all men until the Married Women’s Property Act of 1870—included people of various political positions, from Radical and Liberal abolitionists and anti-poverty campaigners to exploitative factory owners and textile traders. Many members were non-conformists and several wrote influential books, such as our first Secretary Peter Mark Roget, who wrote the first English thesaurus, and founder of atomic theory, John Dalton. Celebrated Manchester author Elizabeth Gaskell used the Library while her husband William acted as its longest-serving Chair.”

 

I can heartily recommend a visit to the Gaskell House. Although there are a limited number of exhibits that belonged to the Gaskells, the house has been carefully furnished to give visitors a vivid impression of the house in Gaskell’s time. Similarly, the garden (much reduced in size from the Gaskells’ Garden) has been planted based on scanty evidence gleaned from Gaskell’s letters and novels. Where possible, varieties from Gaskell’s time have been planted. The volunteers are uniformly enthusiastic and well-informed. The Gaskells were much involved in education and social causes in Manchester. In addition to his preaching duties, William provided education to some of the city’s poorest children, and (he spoke German) taught the city’s German workers English. The Gaskells taught poor children from a local school Sunday school lessons in their home.

 

The Gaskell House.

 

 

Their home was also functioned as a salon welcoming those involved in the arts, intellectual life and social issues. Charles Halle, founder of the famous Halle orchestra taught their daughters piano, and two daughters trained as painters. Charlotte Brontë visited the house and Charles Dickens was Elizabeth’s editor – some of her novels were published in the journal Household Words, edited by Dickens. Apparently, she was not very good with deadlines and exasperated Dickens.

 

The Gaskell House drawing room.

 

 

The volunteer in the dining room, which also functioned as a study where Elizabeth wrote her novels, told us the touching story of Elizabeth’s death. She was a great traveller and travelled to Europe several times with her daughters (her passport for a tour of Italy is displayed in the Drawing Room).  A few paintings by her daughters suggest that they had the full Grand Tour experience. William, on the other hand, showed no interest in foreign parts and limited his excursions to walks in the Lake District, Peak District and Scotland.

 

William evidently had no desire to be anywhere other than Manchester. Nevertheless, Elizabeth plotted a surprise. She evidently had enough accumulated wealth to buy a house in Hampshire for their retirement. She arranged this in secret with one of her sons-in-law (since by law she could not own property). She travelled with him to Hampshire where the contract was signed; there she had a heart attack and died. William never moved to Hampshire and the house was eventually sold.

 

Our lodgings, Luther King House, originated with the Baptist Theological Institution, founded in 1871. In 1964 Manchester Baptist College and Rawdon College of Bradford merged to form the Northern Baptist College. The original Victorian building was replaced with a very 1960s brick building. In 1984 the college was renamed Luther King House to provide an inclusive training base for Baptist, United Reformed, Methodist, and Unitarian traditions, alongside providing accommodations and conference facilities. It grants MA and PhD degrees through Durham University. Its facilities include 50+ simple bedrooms, an important theological library, a peaceful cloister and a chapel.  The warm welcome of its staff makes up for what it lacks in boutique luxury. Frequent yellow Bee buses take visitors to the universities and city centre.

 

Luther King House cloister.

 

 

Birchfields Park and Platt Fields Park are a few minutes’ walk from Luther King House. Platt Fields is a large park with an historic house (Platt Hall), a lake, a cycle hub, a community orchard, a market garden and a Shakespearean Garden, which alas we lacked time to find. Also nearby are the many restaurants on Wilmslow Road (Indian, Turkish, Middle Eastern, a Mexican grill and so on) and numerous jewellers selling elaborate gold jewelry. We had dinner in a Palestinian restaurant, decorated with a neon-lit 3-D model of the Dome of the Rock at the far end and a prayer room. Famously of various ethnicities were playing with their children in Birchfields Park and strolling to dinner on Wilmslow Road. This is the Britain that our far right parties would rather had never existed.

 

Our new Prime Minister held his first meetings in the No.10 of the North in Manchester today (24 July), the day after we left, so he was, alas, unable to meet us. Had he done so we would have given his city the thumbs up.

90 Years Ago

  

This morning the BBC Radio 4 programme, Sunday, devoted its edition entirely to the 90^th anniversary of the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. If you can find it on BBC Sounds or elsewhere, I heartily recommend it.

 

The British historian Sir Paul Preston related an incident of which Jan and I were entirely unaware, the evacuation of Málaga in 1937. The people of Málaga fled East from the city as the Nationalist forces threatened to overwhelm is Republican defenders. The fleeing civilians were bombed and strafed by German and Italian aircraft and fired at by Nationalist naval vessels. This atrocity, I discover, is known as the Desbandá (a word that implies a disorderly panicked flight from danger).

 

Preston referred to a book, Behind the Battle, by T. C. Worsley, a British volunteer ambulance driver who had gone to Spain with the poet Stephen Spender to assist the Republican cause. I found a Spanish translation of extracts from Worsley’s account in a chapter of an exhibition catalogue written by Preston. Here is my translation of a few extracts back into English:

 

“The refugees continued to fill the road and the further we advanced the worse their conditions. Some wore rubber sandals, but most had wrapped their feet in rags, some were barefoot and almost all were bleeding. […] We had travelled 120 kilometres ahead of a desperate multitude, dying of hunger and exhaustion and the river of human beings gave no sign of diminishing. Bethune [Norman Bethune a Canadian volunteer who had organized a blood bank] said: “Ten thousand, no; thirty thousand; forty thousand. Poor devils, we can only imagine their suffering.” […] Then they heard the buzzing of the bombers. The kerbside, rocks and the beach filled with refugees, who crouched face down in any hollow, pressing themselves against the ground. Children, lying flat, raised their eyes to the skies, their hands over their ears or curled into a ball to protect their necks, the most vulnerable point. Everywhere groups of people sought shelter; mothers close to exhaustion protected their children with their own bodies, pressing them into any recess or depression in the ground, pressing themselves flat on the stony ground while the planes roared ever closer. Bethune said: “These poor people have suffered other bombardments and know all too well what they should do.”

 

Worsley and Bethune decided to open the ambulance doors to provide shelter for children:

 

“Instantly we became the centre of a fevered mass of people who shouted, prayed and begged us at the sight of this miraculous apparition. The scene seemed unreal, with the vociferous faces of women who held their naked babies above their heads, imploring, weeping and sobbing with gratitude or disappointment.”

 

Preston quoted this passage on the radio:

 

The women’s eyes were full of puss and mucus, their faces stained with tears, dust and anguish. The babies that they held mostly had a small garment and their legs and buttocks, which were uncovered, were a mass of sores and infections. […] The lorry was full, crowded almost to the point of suffocation, and the people below were still surrounding us, begging  and begging: “It’s not for me, comrade, it’s not for me that I ask. But take the child, save my child.”, “Holy Mary, save the little one”, “Mother of God, don’t leave my child behind”.

 

Imagine Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, Sudan. TODAY.