2016 – A look back on the year we woke up as strangers in a strange land

Rarity: A pro-Brexit poster in Hackney

We are odd ones out, outliers, weirdos.

If 2016 has anything to teach, foremost among the lessons is that Hackney is not England. It exists on a different planet to it, if not to Britain entirely. In short, we are aliens, judging by the gulf between our collective worldview and that of our compatriots. We already knew we are more likely to cycle, more likely to oppose grammar schools, more likely to be vegan and statistically relatively highly likely to identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual. What we have recently discovered, however, is that people in large swathes of the country view us as martians, as metropolitan elite bubble-dwellers impervious to cosmic meteorite shocks rocking the political world.

A higher proportion of us yearned to stay in the European Union than in almost any other area of the country. In Hackney there were not just those pro-EU posters incorporating Union Jack colours on display in June but actual EU flags fluttering in front gardens. Some are still in situ. God help anyone so bold as to display a Leave poster.

And while most of Britain regards Jeremy Corbyn – somewhat of a eurosceptic – as a joke, here many venerate him. Local MP Diane Abbott certainly does, and the ranks of the Hackney Labour Party have swelled with new recruits singing his tune. Political commentator Dave Hill has observed that Corbyn’s leadership has probably lured many disaffected Labour supporters back into the fold locally. The year 2016 has turned things on their head. If Corbyn’s is the new New Labour, ex-Hackney councillor Luke Akehurst, seen as being on the party’s right, might now be rightfully described as Old Labour.

Jeremy Corbyn. Photograph: Gary Knight/Flickr (Creative Commons)

Newsflash: Some things in 2017 to be the same as in 2016

Here are three things that will remain constant, however:

Carry on regenerating: There’s no more pleasant way to snap oneself out of post-2016 despondency than with a burst of manifold humanity in Ridley Road. The spectre of regeneration looms, however.

At the start of the year Cllr Feryal Demirci (Labour) branded as “utter nonsense” suggestions the council was running Ridley Road down, but Cllr Abraham Jacobson (Liberal Democrat) warned it could become the preserve of “champagne socialists”, noting redevelopment threats posed by Crossrail 2. In a changing world, we can still rely on demolition and reconstitution forming a constant backdrop to our lives.

Red planet: 2016 now ends with national newspapers devoting column inches to the theory that red is the colour du jour. In Hackney it never went out of vogue, and it probably never will. The borough will be for Labour. For the foreseeable. Philip Glanville won the mayoral election by a massive margin.

The local Conservatives, the official opposition at the Town Hall, are the political equivalent of what in Stamford Hill they call a nebbish: ineffectual and weak. The Greens seem fated to forever get the votes but not the seats. What others may call a one party state, we may call political stability.

Another planet: Mars as seen from the Hubble Space Telescope

And quiet flows the Lea: Dirty old river, must you keep rolling / Flowing into the night.

The Kink’s lyrics about the Thames could equally apply to our own eternal watercourse. Carved out in the Ice Age, worshiped by Druids, navigated by Vikings, a foundry for empire and industry, the Lea endures, ever flowing, a meandering link between past and present. That, and the traffic on Lea Bridge Road is still bloody awful. Stupid river. Can’t they build more bridges? Bring back the ferrymen!

The River Lea near Hackney Marshes. Photo:© Tim Webb/RSPB