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Thoughts stimulated by a walk around West India Docks yesterday

[Copied across from today’s Substack posting on Rewilding Markets]

Just over 50 years ago, at around 06.30 on a dark winter morning, I climbed over a dock wall in London’s West India Docks—intending to take photographs of derelict warehouses, cranes and other harbor installations for a project I was doing at UCL on the ins and outs of urban regeneration. 

Happily firing away with my trusty old Leica M3 camera I was suddenly on high alert as I detected movement behind me. Luckily, as it happens, I have always had acute peripheral vision. Behind, and offset on both sides, three dogs—two Doberman Pinschers and an Alsatian, or German Shepherd—had silently triangulated on me. Check mate.

Having read a few weeks earlier about precisely this mix of breeds tearing apart a young girl at her home, I froze and held my position—for almost an hour, though, as these things do, it seemed much longer. Eventually, a half-asleep security guard ambled up and, after a difficult exchange, I was allowed to go on my way.

Life of Phi

Such memories churned through my brain as I walked around West India Docks yesterday—particularly when I stumbled across the impounded superyacht, Phi. Apparently, the huge private vessel is registered to a company based in the Caribbean twin-island nation of Saint Kitts and Nevis, and sails under a Maltese flag. 

Hardly a configuration that speaks of innocence, indeed it struck me as blatant symbol of how extreme wealth now seeks to achieve the uncomfortable combination of look-at-me extravagance and stealth.

Half a century ago, I was trying to understand how much of the physical fabric of urban areas like Docklands, Covent Garden and Venice could be preserved without dispossessing all the original population as property prices soared. In the end, I concluded that it was always extremely challenging—and ultimately depended on visionary and hard-edged planners serving the interest of the community, not just of money.

In the case of Docklands, had the planners and local and environmental interest groups not stood their ground, the docks themselves would probably have been filled in to create more land for development. And yet so much of the character of the area today, in places like Canada Water and Canary Wharf, reflects the continuing presence of the water-filled docks.

Elizabeth Taylor’s taps

When I was doing the UCL project, I often wandered around the area, talking to local people, recording oral histories and even, on occasion, talking to security guards. One of them was standing guard at St Katharine’s Dock, hard by Tower Bridge. When we got talking, it turned out that he from the area and resented the way this development for the ultra-wealthy had turned physically and psychologically its back on the original communities. He told me that Elizabeth Taylor’s apartment had gold taps, in stark contrast to the plight of many of the communities round about.

Money doesn’t just talk, they say. Sometimes, it screams—or, at least, it builds skyscrapers from which the screams of normal people cannot be heard. As you walk through the Canary Wharf area, you spot the give-away names on the buildings: Bank of America, Barclays, Chase, Citigroup and so on through the alphabet. 

As it happens, I once found myself on the top (32^nd) floor of the Barclays HQ, One Churchill Place, to talk to their then CEO, John Varley. More or less at the time when he found himself (though acquitted) at the center of yet another scandal affecting Barclays. All I can say is that the views from the 32^nd floor were out of this world—and I could easily see how being elevated above the rest of the world in this way might go to one’s head.

An economic powerhouse

Ask AI how much the Docklands economy is worth, and it replies: “According to information available, the London Docklands economy, primarily driven by Canary Wharf, generates a significant portion of London’s GDP, with estimates placing its economic output at around £28 billion in the Tower Hamlets borough alone, largely attributed to the financial businesses concentrated in Canary Wharf.”

Across the Thames, the Millennium Dome (now The O2), where I was on the advisory council

The complexity of urban regeneration was underscored for me as I took a photo of the once-upon-a-time Millennium Dome on the south bank of the river. When it was being designed and built, I was on an advisory board alongside people like James Lovelock, though I doubt we had much influence on the eventual outcome. 

Looking the other way, on the other hand, I could almost make out the building where I served for six years as chair of the advisory board for the Export Credits Guarantee Department (ECGD), now rebranded as UK Export Finance. There were frustrations there, too, but I think we made real progress over that time in influencing money flows from the UK to other parts of the world. One of the most powerful spurs for progress was Nick Hildyard’s The Corner House.

Big Wealth is about control

But now Big Money is going into overdrive. The West may have tried to rein in Russian oligarchs, as in the case of Phi, but outgoing American President Biden warned of the looming risks associated with an American version of oligarchy, threatening the future of the nation’s democracy.

As the world has watched North American banks withdraw from Mark Carney’s Net-Zero Banking Alliance and tech billionaires elbowing one another side to bend the knee to the incoming Trump regime, the role of Big Money in politics has been very much in the spotlight. 

Then, at this year’s World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, an extraordinary grouping of wealthy people—the Patriotic Millionaires—sent a letter to world leaders warning that “the phenomenon of concentrated and extreme wealth” is hurting the world, urging them to “draw the line”.

As The Guardian reported, the letter is signed by more than 370 millionaires and billionaires spanning 22 countries, including the film producer and philanthropist Abigail Disney, the musician Brian Eno and the film-maker Richard Curtis. “Wealth is no longer simply about worth. It is about control, the letter says. “If you, our elected leaders, continue to neglect the crisis of wealth extremism, the fractured foundations of our hard-won democracies will face further harm,” the letter said.

“Across the world,” the letter continues, “some of those who enjoy the same economic status as us also enjoy untold levels of influence and power. A handful of extremely wealthy human beings control the media, which cajoles, persuades and sometimes misinforms; they unduly influence our legal systems, transforming justice into injustice; and are helping manage our democracies into decline.”

For those of us who talk about the need for system change, we should understand that the system is now changing, profoundly, and in the wrong direction. 

And to end where I started this post, with superyachts, I am currently reading a book by Grégory Salle, translated from French by Helen Morrison. Its title is Superyachts: Luxury, Tranquility and Ecocide. And its concluding lines run as follows, quoting a convicted fraudsters speaking from aboard a superyacht: “If the rest of the world learns what it is like to live on a yacht like this, they’re gonna bring back the guillotine.”

Having worked fairly hard on the new book in recent days, focusing on ways to slow, stop and reverse what I am calling the Extinction Express, I suddenly thought that it would be a useful antidote to visit Kew Gardens – which I have always seen as an Ark, a counterforce to extinction.

We drove across and found the gardens relatively uncrowded. On a whim, I suggested we walk down to the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art, where we stumbled on the exhibition of ceramic works by Felicity Aylieff. We were completely blown aways. After walking through the Temperate House and environs, we headed across to The Botanical Brasserie and had a delightful lunch, a a celebration of the year gone and the year yet to come.

Other than that, and the work on the long introduction to the book, including laying out the structure of the work in piles in the front room, I have been tidying up, attending to my filing backlog in the studio today.

Among the books I had read to date over the holiday period have been The Scapegoat (a life of the Duke of Buckingham), by Lucy Hughes Hallett, Unit X: How the Pentagon and Silicon Valley are Transforming the Future of War by Raj M. Shah and Christopher Kirchhhoff, Revenge of Rome by Simon Scarrow, various books by Agatha Christie (inspired by the research for my new book), including The Mystery of the Blue Train and Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore Folly, Kevin Barry’s utterly stunning The Heart in Winter, and, now, Earth To Moon, by Moon Unit Zappa.

On TV, we have watched number of series, including the last part of the Wolf Hall series, The Mirror and the Light, The Diplomat, The Day of the Jackal, and Black Doves.

Apart from all of that, I have been fairly carefully nursing the foot that I damaged before travelling to Brazil, several months ago, which has been a considerable brake on my movements, and which I have had treated a couple of times with acupuncture – which seems to be working.

And so into 2025, Trump and all, with fireworks already bursting across the London skies…

But one I’m quite pleased with

It’s almost a month since I last posted here, though I have been rather more active via my Rewilding Markets channel on Substack. Since then, I have spoken at a major event organised in Ghent by the Round Table on Responsible Soy, done a panel session for NBC Universal (the people behind the latest version of The Day of the Jackal and old favourites like Downton Abbey), done a virtual session for NTT Group in Japan, done various podcast interviews, attended a double eightieth birthday party, and so on. At the same time I have been tackling various health issues, including enjoying another MRI scan of my head yesterday. But this GoodGeist podcast released today captures me in somewhat upbeat mood.

Still routinely amazed by the Elizabeth Line, which I took this morning to arrive early in Woolwich for the 2024 (fourth) edition of the Blue Earth Summit. And the regeneration of this area of Woolwich itself proved a very pleasant surprise, given that it’s probably more than 50 years since I was last here, when I was looking into urban regeneration while at UCL. The process seems to have been wonderfully well handled, at least aesthetically.

I initially thought Peter Burke’s Assembly sculptures down by the river wall were Antony Gormley’s. Given that many of the figures seemed to be slightly eviscerated, I also thought the piece might be a commentary on the damage caused by the Arsenal’s weaponry over the centuries. But I appear to have been wrong on both counts.

Very much enjoyed the session involving Jamie Arbib of RethinkX – and fascinated to hear from him about his forthcoming new book. Very much aligned with where my own brain seems to be headed these days.

Then came our session, on ‘The Future of Environmentalism’, where I moderated a panel consisting of Bella Lack, Clover Hogan, Dominique Palmer (who spoke at our 2020 Tomorrow’s Capitalism Forum, chez Aviva Investors) and Will Travers of the Born Free Foundation.

My opening words: “Hello, Earthlings, or perhaps I should say Blue Earthlings!”

To kick things off I asked how many people in the room considered themselves “environmentalists” – noting that I had tried very hard to avoid people slapping the label on me when I was working into the business world in the early stages of all this, because of the discount factor they would likely then apply to anything I said on related subjects.

Most hands shot up – and when I then asked whether the influence of environmentalists would increase over the coming decade, an even larger set of hands went up. No great surprise there, perhaps, given that natural selection was at work across our audience, but an interesting baseline.

Proved to be a great panel and wonderful session. Indeed, it’s very tempting to conclude that the future is now in safe hands and hand over, but the nature and scale of what confronts us all makes this very much a pangenerational task. Time to play the role of the “perennial”, as sketched in Mauro Guillén’s provocative book, The Perennials.

While in Woolwich, I bumped into a wonderful cacophony of people, known and not. Had lunch, among others, with Julia Hailes and her son Connor. Grabbed the chance to catch up with Jenny Poulter of Volans on our new nature-focused initiative, and with Volans team member Stirling Powers, son of Hugo – whose Riversimple hydrogen car was prominently displayed outside.

Great, too, to catch up with people like Nick Hounsfield and colleagues from The Wave – and with Ramón Van De Velde, who as CEO of The Lost Gardens of Heligan kindly hosted a Volans away day last year. He’s now involved in surf therapy – as his top boldly declared.

Did something of a whistle stop visit to Belfast yesterday and today, to speak at the Sustain Exchange event organised by Kevin Kelly and his team at Podiem at the ICC Belfast. First time I had been back to the city since the 1980s, when I visited as one of the judges of the RSA”s pollution abatement technology awards, having also spent three years as a child in Northern Ireland in the 1950s, near Limavady.

Rather moving to see an exhibit in memory of the flax and linen industry (whose legacy, via a carpet of wriggling elvers, triggered my foundational epiphany at age 7) on the floor above the one in the ICC venue where our event was held. That experience led on to many things, along them by ongoing support for the Sustainable Eel Group, including a memorable moment in 2014 when I helped release 30,000 elvers into the River Severn.

Really enjoyed speaking alongside the likes of Lucy Siegle, who chaired the event, and Chris Hines of Surfers Against Sewage (who among many other things showed a slide of the event in 1992, I think, when he turned up at our book launch at the Portland Baths in a wetsuit covered in condoms and other debris), alongside Eamer Manning of the National Youth Council of Ireland, Chris Martin of Danske Bank and Katrina Thompson of Artemis Technologies.

The Artemis story, focused on decarbonising marine transportation, was particularly interesting.

After the event, alongside Marc Duffy, I did a session with masters-level students from the University of Ulster Business School, the first day of their course – and they all got a copy of Tickling Sharks for their pains. Very enjoyable exchange.

Then, as Philippa Spiller of Podiem drove me back out to the airport, we talked of everything from Bentley racing cars through to family backgrounds – and, among other things, I mentioned my father Tim’s time during the Battle of the Atlantic with the CAM (Catapult Aircraft Merchant) ships, where he was a Hurricane pilot on convoys to and from the Soviet Union.

Having said goodbye, I trundled towards the airport – and, out of the blue, spotted this memorial to a couple of CAM ship squadrons. Though here CAM was translated as Catapult Armed Merchantmen. It was almost as if someone was dangling clues and cues around me. History can be weird. And a bit of digging suggests that “Armed” is the right version. In any event, can’t wait to go back.