Which part of Nicaragua are we supposed to be solid with, a Cockney mum wondered as she pulled her child through the mud of Jubilee Gardens. True to the last, peace stalls were as prominent as street entertainers at the Greater London Council╒s final bash yesterday. For all the razzmatazz, the authority gave Londoners something to think about at its demise.
Wife to husband with child in pushchair: What╒s happening to the GLC then? Husband: Well, Maggie Thatcher╒s goosed them, hasn╒t she? By now she has, though Ken Livingstone, at the start of the frolics which ended at midnight, declared defiantly: ╥This is an interruption till normal services are restored after the next General Election.╙
Luckily the GLC had booked a bank holiday for its final blow-out; unluckily its powers had become so reduced that it no longer had control of open spaces: there was no one to deal with the mire of Jubilee Gardens, that small patch of green, overlooked by the Shell Centre and the Royal Festival Hall, on which the council staged its last stand.
For a last glorious 12 hours, the GLC basked in power without responsibility. Some would say, of course, that the council had been in that very stance since Labour won it five years ago. No matter: Livingstone was the right sort of cheeky chappie for the cheerful wake.
╥The last five years of my life have been the best, and that╒s because you╒ve been such a bloody wonderful city,╙ said Livingstone. The Capital is rarely addressed so directly, or in such eulogistic tones, except by poets. Wordsworth would have said it more prettily; Mayor Koch might have said it with more passion. Still, under a pewter sky and with the grey Thames sidling by, it wasn╒t a bad compliment from a politician who has tried to turn London into a fun city.
There wasn╒t much else that Labour╒s feather-weight administration could have done. No doubt Herbert Morrison would turn in his grave at the ú250,000 reputed to have been spent on the farewell festivities. But then, the last tenants of County Hall were very different from the old LCC Socialists.
So the GLC failed at giving London a sense of itself: how could it, when its powers in housing, transport and social services slipped away over the years. But its achievement was to give Londoners a sense of themselves.
All cities are patchworks of minorities; and the GLC tried to stitch together a constituency of several: women, blacks, gays.
It tried to make London a livable place for them. Grants showered like yesterday╒s hailstorm over the South Bank. That storm drove crowds into the Festival Hall and the Purcell Room. They colonised it like an urban Butlin╒s. All sorts of Londoners, coming together for reggae and trad jazz; Porgy and Bess and Haydn. It was a knees-up for brows of all levels.
And as such, it typified the last phase of the council╒s role: not so much a provider of vital services as an enabler, allowing groups to do their own thing. The flipside of the festivities is that, in municipal politics, London thinks little, not big. It is capable of spite: just as the Tories dismantled the GLC, its predecessor had to go in 1964 because it was a Labour power base.
In the end, the GLC╒s manor had shrunk to the South Bank, with its few pleasure domes and its austere offices. Livingstone lowered a flag on the Members╒ Terrace. There was a drinks party, and fireworks at midnight. The courts still have to decide the fate of the GLC╒s millions (it wants to give ú26 million to voluntary organisations). But there were no crowds through County Hall looking for treasure: it was not Marcos╒s Manila Palace, after all. And the power transfer was peaceful, too.
