Marchmont Street Moments
Posted by jonathanfryer on Tuesday, 24th April, 2007
Just a couple of minutes’ amble from my teaching at SOAS, on the corner of Russell Square, I was able to join the inaugural Pizza and Politics of the Holborn Branch of Holborn and St Pancras Liberal Democrats, at which Camden Council Leader Keith Moffitt and constituency PPC Jo Shaw were the star speakers (and I tossed in my twopenny worth on the Middle East), in the Marchmont Community Centre in Marchmont Street. One of the most civilised things about such LibDem gatherings is the way that discussion can glide seemingly effortlessly, and intelligently, from Neighbourhood Watch to Iraq. Having pledged to peg Council Tax since taking taking control of the Council last May, the LibDem-led coalition administration has had to take some tough decisions, but it has lived up to its manifesto commitments. It will be interesting to see if the electorate endorses that in the Haverstock Ward by-election on July 12 (as they did in Kentish Town, a few months ago).
Just two doors down from the Marchmont Community Centre (which particularly caters for Bengali, Chinese and Somali groups in the area), is the remarkable Gay’s The Word Bookshop, which without idle boasting calls itself the ‘little bookshop with big ideas’. Manager Jim MacSweeney and his team have made it a haven not just for an LGBT clientele, but also for a whole gamut of academic and general readers, with its intelligent and comprehensive range of titles, fiction and non-fiction, travel and the Arts. The bookshop has come under commercial pressure recently and is soliciting both sponsors and customers. But I have to issue a warning: no matter how hard I brace myself, I can’t go in there without emerging with at least two new tomes under my arm.
Links: www.camdenlibdems.org.uk and http://freespace.virgin.net/gays.theword/
