LIFE IN LONDON

Greymouth Evening Star, 12 February 1947, Page 4

LIFE IN LONDON

STILL A STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE “LAUGHTER A LITTLE FORCED” By’ Irvine Douglas, Sydney Morning Herald Correspondent in London. London is attempting to recapture the careless rapture of the days of peace—and finding it something of an effort. The laughter is a little forced and the attempts at amusement a little overdone, because the fields of amusement are limited and life is still something of a struggle for existence. London is such a vast, sprawling haphazard city that the newcomer at first sight fails to realise the changes that war has brought or the slow efforts to revive the old spirit of the place. I-Ie sees row upon row of dirty houses, begrimed with soot, and with the paint falling off in great strips; and he. believes they were always like this. Of course they were not. Before the war most of London had an annual spring cleaning, and such magnificent Regency buildings as the beautiful Carlton House Terrace, facing Tha Mall, would receive yearly a coat of paint. No Paint Since 1939

But they, like most of the rest of London, have not been painted since 1939, and will not be painted until thousands of bomb-damaged buildings throughout the city have been repaired.

. Actual rebuilding is confined almost exclusively to dwellings, and as these are hopelessly in arreas because of the shortage of man-power and materials, it will be a long time before the gaping spaces of the City proper, where already young trees are growing, will be covered with handsome business premises. Yes, London presents a dull face to the world.

Perhaps I cannot do better than describe the buildings where, after a heart-breaking search, I eventually obtained the lease of a flat. It is in what was once a fashionable quarter, but which to-day has fallen from its high estate.

| My flat is on the third floor of what used to be a large house, and the flat, as London flats go, is right enough once you are inside it. i Two doors away, in the same row of adjoining buildings, there is a bomb-gutted building, where ceilings sag and loose boards flap in the wind; where you can see through the smashed front windows right through a broken wall to the back. Beside this derelict house there is a great area of nothing where scores of buildings fell victim to high explosives. Like all the rest, the building in which I live has the paint peeling and on one of the pillars at the entrance, indelibly fixed, is part of a notice which once said the place was unsafe and forbade entrance.

This description is given in detail because it typifies tens of thousands of London homes, which have been patched up, but which must await the completion of more urgent work before permanent repairs can be made to them. Those of us who live in them consider ourselves lucky. £1,000,000 Damage During the war, bomb damage in Britain totalled £lOOO million in the London area alone, 1,400,000 buildings, mostly dwellings, were damaged, and of these 200,000 were a total loss. When you look at the housing problem of Sydney or Melbourne, caused solely by the cessation of building during the war, without any destruction of dwellings, you get a fair idea of why the rehousing and rebuilding of London is such a tardy process, and why it will be years before anything approaching normality is reached.

By the middle of last year there were still 400,000 damaged houses awaiting repair, and there is still a considerable lag. Last year about 150,000 families were rehoused in London, many of them in colonies of prefabricated houses, which are little better than huts—and some in former Service camps.

The rebuilding of London as a city is a long way off. The blueprints are there. The Abercrombie Plan, devised by Sir Patrick Abercrombie, worldfamous town-planner, and other schemes, provide for complete remodelling of the city, with boulevards and stately buildings, gardens, concert halls, a National Theatre, and a great youth centre on that part of the south side of the Thames at present occupied by unsightly industrial buildings and wharves. It is expected that this plan will be completed in 50 years, but the Lord Privy Seal, Mr. Herbert Morrison, says it can be done in half the time. It has yet to be started. Slum Clearance

There is another plan to remodel the notorious slum areas of Stepney 'and Poplar at a cost of £45 million. But that, too, is still only a plan. | Homes of any sort is the present all-pressing cry. I There you have the background to London’s attempt to revive its pre- . war life. The theatres are mostly booked out every night, and so are the restaurants and night clubs. So many wardrobes have been lost i to the bombs, or the moths or the mere march of time, that formal attire for men in the still rigorous days of clothes rationing is the exception. You can still dine at Claridge’s or the Savoy in a lounge suit and no one will bat an eyelid. Even at the Buckingham Palace garden parties, which were revived last year, formal dress was optional. Sport is booming in post-war London. You have to queue early to get a ticket for a seat at an important football match or fight. If your fancy runs to the dogs, you can be sure to find many thousands of others like you at White City, Harringay, Wimbledon, or the many other dog tracks.

London, despite the partial relighting of streets and the absence of illuminated signs in Piccadilly Circus, is valiantly trying to regain its former joyousness. It is a joyousness, of the masses, rather than of the social few as before the war. Much of it undoubtedly is a form of escapism from the eternal queues, restrictions, and food shortage.