The Unknown City: Contesting Architecture and Social Space

Part IV: Tactical Filters
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Patrick Keiller
ployment, or freelancing tend to forget about the United Kingdom’s
wealth. We have been inclined to think that we are living at a time of economic
decline, to regret the loss of the visible manufacturing economy, and
to lower our expectations. We dismiss the [Conservative] government’s
claims that the United Kingdom is “the most successful enterprise economy
in Europe” but are more inclined to accept that there might be less money
for schools and hospitals, if only because of the cost of financing mass unemployment.
There is something Orwellian about this effect of dilapidated everyday
surroundings, especially when they are juxtaposed with the possibility
of immediate virtual or imminent actual presence elsewhere, through electronic
communication networks and cheap travel. Gradually, one comes to
see dilapidation not only as an indication of poverty but also as damage inflicted
by the increased centralization of media and political control in the
last two decades.
In the rural landscape, meanwhile, the built structures at least are
more obviously modern, but the atmosphere is disconcerting. The windowless
sheds of the logistics industry, recent and continuing road construction,
spiky mobile phone aerials, a proliferation of new fencing of various types,
security guards, police helicopters and cameras, new prisons, agribusiness
(BSE, genetic engineering, organophosphates, declining wildlife), U.K. and
U.S. military bases (microwaves, radioactivity), mysterious research and
training centers, “independent” schools, eerie commuter villages, rural
poverty, and the country houses of rich and powerful men of unrestrained
habits are visible features of a landscape in which the suggestion of cruelty is
never very far away.
In their book Too Close to Call, Sarah Hogg and Jonathan Hill describe
the strategy behind the 1992 Conservative election campaign.
Throughout the summer [of 1991], Saatchi’s had been refining
their thinking. Maurice Saatchi’s thesis went like this. In retrospect
at least, 1979, 1983 and 1987 appeared to be very simple elections
to win. The choice was clear: “efficient but cruel” Tories versus
“caring but incompetent” Labour. The difficulty for the Conservatives
in 1991 was that the recession had killed the “efficient” tag—
leaving only the “cruel.” While the Tory party had successfully
blunted the “cruel” image by replacing Margaret Thatcher with
someone seen as more “caring,” Maurice did not believe that John
Major should fight the election on soft “caring” issues. 12
In the subsequent period the Conservatives were seen as even less efficient
and even more cruel. The shackling of women prisoners during labor, and