- The Guardian Sat urday 31 Aug ust 2019
(^18) National
Compasses
to point to
true north
for fi rst time
in centuries
Community urged to
take action as London
family buries third son
PA Media
At some point in the next two weeks,
compasses at Greenwich in London
will point true north for the fi rst time
in about 360 years. For some parts of
the UK, however, this may not happen
for another 20 years.
The angle a compass needle makes
between true north and magnetic
north is called declination. As the mag-
netic fi eld changes all the time, so does
declination at any given location.
Diane Taylor
Mourners at the funeral of a man
stabbed in north London in June have
been urged to take responsibility for
the epidemic of killings of young peo-
ple in their community.
David Bello-Monerville, 38, was
killed outside his north London home
in the early hours of 19 June.
It is the third time his parents, John
and Linda Burke-Monerville, have
buried a son whose life was lost as
the result of a violent killing. Joseph
Burke-Monerville was shot in 2013 in
a case of mistaken identity. He was 19.
Their eldest son, Trevor Monerville,
was stabbed to death in 1994, aged 26.
No one has been convicted of Tre-
vor or Joseph’s murders. Their parents
said David had been deeply engaged in
the campaign for justice in his broth-
ers’ cases at the time of his own killing.
Three men have been charged with
David’s murder.
Prof Gus John , an academic and
equality and human rights cam-
paigner, addressed the hundreds of
mostly black mourners, at a service
at the ARC church in Forest Gate, east
London. The family raised £12,110 to
pay for the funeral.
John called on the black community
to take action against the epidemic
of violence coming from within the
community.
“The responsibility for displacing
this scourge from our community is
Over the past few hundred years
in the UK, declination has been nega-
tive, meaning that all compass es have
pointed west of true north.
The line of zero declination,
which is called the agonic, is moving
westward at a rate of around 12 miles
a year, experts say. By next month, the
compass needle will point directly to
true north at Greenwich before slowly
turning eastwards.
The Royal Observatory Greenwich
was established in 1676 and, from
1839, hosted the specialised magnetic
observatory that made continuous
not Boris Johnson’s or the Metropol-
itan police’s. That responsibility lies
with ourselves,” he said.
“We attend these funerals with
numbing regularity. The number of
them suggests that we are a generation
of traumatised people, the inheritance
of the trauma of slavery is being revis-
ited on our children daily.”
He cited the deaths during the Trou-
bles in Northern Ireland but said that
the loss of young lives in the black
community was diff erent.
“There is no war causing this family
to have lost three of their children. We
are burying our children who are fatal
victims of people like themselves. Let
us not become desensitised to these
killings. Let us not see it as normal for
young people to bury young people
like themselves. We have the power
to do something about this.
“ We have to take collective respon-
sibility. History should never fi nd us
wanting. We have to ensure that young
people are not leaving their homes
intending to go out and be murderers.”
Pastor Nims Obunge also addressed
the congregation. “We stand with a
family whose trauma and grief cannot
be quantifi ed,” he said. “We must not
allow David’s death to be just another
death. No parents should have to bury
their children.”
Linda Burke-Monerville entered
the church calling out the names of
her three sons who lost their lives to
violence: “Where is Trevor, where is
Joseph, where is David?” she cried.
“My heart is burst like a riverbank .”
measurements from 1840 onwards. In
1926, the instruments were moved to
Abinger in Surrey, as electrifi ed railway
lines in London had made it impossible
to measure the magnetic fi eld.
Dr Ciaran Beggan, a geomagnetism
scientist at the British Geological
Survey’s Lyell Centre in Edinburgh,
said: “At some point in September,
the agonic will meet zero longitude
at Greenwich. This marks the fi rst
time since the observatory’s creation
that the geographic and geomagnetic
coordinate systems have coincided at
this location.
“The agonic will continue to pass
across the UK over the next 15-20 years.
By 2040, all compasses will probably
point eastwards of true north.
“It is, at present, impossible to pre-
dict how the magnetic fi eld will change
over decades to centuries, so the com-
pass may well point east of true north
for another 360 years in the UK.”
Beggan said zero inclination w ould
have no impact on daily life , add ing:
“Compasses and GPS will work
as usual. There’s no need for anyone
to worry about any disturbance to
daily life.”
▲ Mourners at the funeral of David Bello-Monerville in east London. The
38-year-old was stabbed to death in June PHOTOGRAPH: MARTIN GODWIN/THE GUARDIAN
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