28 HANDBOOK OF CULTURAL GEOGRAPHYWe’re being treated like terrorists but all we’re doing is showing that we’re a bit pissed off with
the way things are. I am just here to make a stand because people don’t seem to have a voice anymore
but even when we’re standing in the street they just section us off so we can’t mingle with ordinary
people. (p. 4)While agreeing with this, it might be observed that the protesters were actually
‘ordinary’ people. The day was not organized by one overarching group or political agenda,
but was disorganized by diverse people with different aims – and this is very ordinary. Of
course, dressing up like Mary Poppins is not an ordinary act, but the wit of such acts draws
on a carnival spirit that is ordinary. The spirit on the day drew on this ordinary spirit of frus-
tration, injustice and playfulness. Within the Circus itself, after hours of detention, a small
group playing drums began to sing various songs. Once they had been through a medley of
protest songs, they began to strike up other popular songs – perhaps the loudest of which
was ‘We All Live in a Yellow Submarine’.
At this point – the profound idea that we do live in a yellow submarine – I’d like to step
back from these stories and locate them within various geographies. Some of these will have
already occurred to you, but the basic point I am trying to make is that these events provide
a point of contact for a variety of overlapping geographies. It is not that these geographies are
simply there, but that these events are formed out of the overlap of these geographies. In other
words, reducing the above events to a single geography is to misunderstand the spatialities at
play in their formation, and their motivation. There is one further idea. Geography is not
neutral politically. The stories I have given above do not suggest that one geography is
radical and another not: instead, we should say that geography is something to struggle over
as well as struggle through.
Entangled in these stories are geographies of power (following Sharp et al., 2000). It is
possible to track these power relations through their different manifestations, some of which
are fairly hideous. To begin with, there are geographies of ‘otherness’ here. London is no
exception in drawing in people from well beyond its administrative borders. There is no city
in the world that contains a homogeneous population: they all gather in peoples, though
through specific lines of migration. However, settlement within cities is often strongly
marked by segregation, often most visibly along divisions of ‘race’ and class (see Pile et al.,
1999), but also by sexuality, gender and other kinds of difference. There is clearly a link
between social relations between divergent groups and the spatial interactions (or social
distances) between them. Now, it may at first glance appear that the separation between
groups socially and spatially implies that there is no interaction – or no good interaction –
between people of different backgrounds. Indeed, it has been speculated that David
Copeland’s background in predominantly white suburban areas contributed to his hatred of
London – and all the diverse groups that London accommodates. Nevertheless, London also
mixes up people from different backgrounds. So, when Copeland bombed Brixton to maim
and kill black people or the Admiral Duncan, his attacks fell indiscriminately on all different
kinds of people. Indeed, two of the three who were killed in the Admiral Duncan were a cou-
ple celebrating news of her pregnancy,the third victim being a friends of theirs. Not that
Copeland cared: anyone in the pub, or in Brixton or Brick Lane, was guilty simply by asso-
ciation. His disgust knew no bounds: London was simply guilty, all Londoners guilty.
So, from these events, we can witness not just geographies of separation, geographies of
interaction and mixing, but also geographies of hatred and disgust. These geographies are
incendiary, and not just in London. Race wars have geographies all over the world and they3029-intro.qxd 03-10-02 5:17 PM Page 28