Review: Is London British?

Writer Bonnie Greer

Earlier this week, Hackney author Iain Sinclair talked identity politics with fellow writers Bonnie Greer and Yang Lian at the Round Chapel in Clapton.

The big questions of the evening were: ‘Is London British? How does your environment shape the way you think and who you are?’

Greer had taken part in a similar discussion on the BBC’s Question Time in October – alongside the British National Party leader, Nick Griffin, and the show put under severe scrutiny Griffin’s fundamental beliefs on what it means to be British.

Born and raised in the USA, Greer emigrated to London in the ‘80s – chasing a dream of “incredible diversity, a myriad of accents”; whilst Lian is a Chinese poet who now lives in London and has recently published Lee Valley, a book of poems documenting his walks through the marshland.

The discussion ranged from an analysis of the Britishness of London to an examination of the idea of Britishness itself.

“No-one here can say ‘I am a classical, typical English person’. It’s the same in China. We are all a mixture – it depends on your understanding – how do you understand your mixture?”, asked Lian.

Responding to Greer on how, as a society, we regard the ‘other’, Lian briefly outlined the predicament regarding identity: “White, Chinese, Black – are all notions given by other people,” whilst Greer suggested the notion or construction of ‘white’ itself needs to be investigated: in a multicultural community, there is no space for pigeonholing people, “London mutates, it changes”. Lian agreed. “We have to discover ‘the other’ inside ourselves.”

“Our leaders are in the Victorian or the Edwardian Ages, they are trying to put us in little boxes, categories – but the spirit of London can’t do that, it’s bursting out of the box,” said Greer.

“Diversity is too weak a word to describe London. Definition, change, movements – that’s what this town is about – that’s why I love London.”