Article

Change

Community

Politics

8 July 2024

6 min read

Camden: what’s up in Keir’s backyard?

The new Prime Minister’s constituency has valuable lessons for the country.

Simon Walsh

Simon Walsh is a communications consultant, journalist and non-stipendiary priest in the Diocese of London.

Kier Starmer walks along a residential development's path with two other people.

Starmer and local councillors in Camden.

‘What good ever came out of Nazareth?’ was asked of Jesus. The same might now be said of Camden, which lies at the heart of the Holborn & St Pancras constituency. A safe Labour seat since the 1980s, its present incumbent is Sir Keir Starmer who has been handed the keys to Downing Street in the General Election.

His wallet apparently has on it ‘Take me home to Kentish Town’. Two buses link Kentish Town, where he lives, with Whitehall – a route of about four miles. He will go into government with a very full in-tray, and many of them are issues he knows first-hand from his own constituency. I know them too, having lived there for 20 years.

Sometimes I cover services for a clergy colleague in the nearby parish of St Mary’s, Somers Town. The church is on Eversholt Street which runs along the eastern side of Euston station, incidentally the capital’s first mainline railway terminus. Last year, as I arrived for a mass one rainy Saturday morning, a random group of people sheltered in the doorway. They were, I discovered, addicts waiting for a drugs drop. Towards the end of mass, one of the group – a young woman – came into the back of church and found a pew in which to start preparing her fix. Once I had disrobed, I asked if she wouldn’t mind doing it somewhere else.

Another time, in the same church, a young woman from Spain was asking for money. She had answered a job advert on social media to come and work on a chicken farm. Having arrived and paid her accommodation for a week, she found there was no chicken farm, and trying to find other work was almost impossible because of paperwork. What could we do to help? The church itself is in dire need of financial support too.

St Mary’s Flats... were among the first examples of public housing in the country to have electricity and Jellicoe became something of a social housing celebrity.

Somers Town was transformed 100 years ago when its energetic parish priest, Fr Basil Jellicoe, created the first housing association. Dismayed by the squalor of Victorian tenements, he set about raising funds for The St Pancras House Improvement Society. Jellicoe was only in his mid-20s but had a solid Anglo-Catholic background founded on mission and a heart for the poor. The cramped and filthy conditions with extreme poverty were ‘an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual disgrace’ – for him, the opposite to the sacraments.

By the time Jellicoe moved from the parish in 1934, the slums had been cleared and a number of the new blocks built, the first being St Mary’s Flats, with others given saints’ names. They were among the first examples of public housing in the country to have electricity and Jellicoe became something of a social housing celebrity. Tragically, having worn himself out he died at the age of 36. His legacy is one of praxis – active Christianity meeting social problems where they are – and his model became the blueprint for many other housing associations since.

No surprise, therefore, that families struggle to afford to live in the area and migrate further out. As a result, schools have started to close.

The area remains a swirl of social problems in addition to the drugs. Mental health issues are rife. There are plans to redevelop St Pancras Hospital which houses mental health services. The area suffers from traffic and noise pollution, and lacks communal spaces. Camden Council recently saw fit take one corner of a public green in Somers Town on which to build a tower block of multi-million pound flats, handy for nearby St Pancras Station. Crime rates are high with muggings and mobile phone thefts a daily reality. Last year, as mourners left a funeral one Saturday afternoon at St Aloysius Church just a few streets down from St Mary’s, a drive-by-shooting injured six people. Starmer called the incident ‘appalling’ and spoke of ‘extra patrols and community support’ after a conversation with police.

The area has become highly expensive. Local businesses are being priced out by increased rents. Very little social housing has been built this century. The average house price in NW1, which encompasses the Nash terraces of Regents Park, the council blocks and social housing of Somers Town, is £1.3 million. A two-bed flat is in excess of half a million quid. No surprise, therefore, that families struggle to afford to live in the area and migrate further out. As a result, schools have started to close – four in as many years recently. In his acceptance speech in Camden Council’s offices near St Pancras station, close to the world-renowned Crick Institute and Facebook’s UK headquarters, Starmer namechecked the mythical ‘girl from Somers Town’ and his hope for her future.

Charles Dickens went to school around here and knew these streets well. His 1848 novel Dombey & Son detailed the destruction and chaos caused in the area by the building of the railway line through it. 175 years later, it has been HS2, the great White Elephant which has dug up streets, seen whole blocks of accommodation and hotels demolished, diverted roads, and axed much-loved institutions like the Bree Louise pub. There has been no benefit to locals so far (quite the opposite, in fact) and it is a stain on both Labour and Conservative administrations. Sir Keir says he is furious at the ‘big hole’ left by the down-tools project. There is fear now that the redundant land will be subject to a ‘gold rush’ as developers circle to pick up some prime real estate.

Interviewed in June by the Camden New Journal, Starmer said: ‘The government has earmarked money for Euston. I want to see that money and obviously, if we come into power, we’ll see through all this money – and not stripped away from other projects which is the usual trick.’ He also said: ‘The other thing is we need housing. Camden desperately needs housing as many places do. So we will use it – if we are privileged to come into power – as part of our plan for 1.5 million homes.’

His manifesto has five pledges:

Kickstart economic growth

The cost-of-living crisis is biting hard here and the inequalities are stark. People need real money.

Make Britain a clean energy superpower

It’s going to need more than a few on-street charging points for electric vehicles. And the carbon footprint of that HS2 project?

Take back our streets

He wants to halve crime rates but London has around 106 crimes per 1,000 people and his own constituency feels less safe than it used to.

Break down barriers to opportunity

Camden already ranks highly in the deprivation index where barriers are concerned: schools, homes, jobs…

Build an NHS fit for the future

Again, the hospitals and GP services are cracking – high demand combined with under-investment is deadly.

A prophet is not welcome in his own country, it was said. Although the new Prime Minister was elected with a majority in his home seat, it was down to 18,884 votes from the 2019 endorsement of 36,641 votes – a drop of almost 50%. In this election, an Independent candidate called Andrew Feinstein polled 7,312 votes with his pledge to improve life for local residents. Starmer’s constituents will be counting on him to fix the nation along with the problems on their own streets. Otherwise, safe seat or not, he may no longer be welcome in Camden either.

Review

Culture

Film & TV

Holidays/vacations

3 June 2025

5 min read

Race across the world: you can go fast and go far

Forget the tight travel connections; it’s the human ones that enthral us.

Lauren Westwood

Lauren writes on faith, community, and anything else that compels her to open the Notes app.

Contestants in Race Across the world stand in front of neon-lit Chinese street scene

Ready to race.

BBC.

After years of peer pressure, my husband and I have joined the bandwagon and become Race Across the World evangelists. The BBC series, currently in its fifth season, follows five competing duos on an expedition between far-flung locations with limited resources and no forward planning.

Viewers love the show wherever they are in the world. In America, The Amazing Race, which has a similar format, is now on its 38th series.

‘No flights, no phones,’ boast the rules – but Race Across the World is a far cry from retreating to simpler times before smart devices and online banking, nor does it shy away from the complexities of modern life. Though there is a cash prize, the format of Race Across the World prioritises connection over competition. Each episode is a picture of messy, frantic humanity and examines how we cope in an environment where all we really have is each other.

The challenge is real. In the current series, the couples trek across China, Nepal and India, the start and end checkpoints spanning more than 14,000km. This cohort is an eclectic mix: two sets of slightly estranged siblings, teenage sweethearts from Wales, former spouses and a mother and son. Their vulnerabilities, as well as their triumphs, take prominence. In their conversation and in confessional, each person demonstrates a remarkable willingness to face the hard stuff of life with resilience, tenacity and enough convivial spirit to please the production team.

This emotional depth maps the physical and logistical demands of the race, as the viewer follows the pairs’ fast-paced journeys, stopping occasionally to enjoy some wonderful view amid countless train stations and overnight busses.

My sympathy derives from a belief that I would fare horrendously as a contestant – I think my excellently organised, exceedingly patient husband would flat-out refuse to compete with me. But the wider response to Race Across the World is one of empathy. Unlike similar shows, we are not called to blindly favour for the frontrunner, but to enjoy spending time with and bearing the burdens of all. We feel every frustration of the missed shuttle that just departed. When the ferry disembarks late due to poor weather, our response is not to scoff, but to share, in some small way, their lament. As their successes and failures are magnified, so is our compassion, willing them not to get lost in comparison’s snare but to keep moving forward.

Race Across the World exhibits the reality of community, speaks to the ache of life’s unpredictable nature, and extends grace for struggling humanity. We learn, alongside those racing, that the point is not always to fix our frustrations, but in being able to sit with them, to acknowledge disappointment rather than dismiss it, and to allow setbacks to spur us onto the next step. Sometimes, things get hard and we acutely feel that a situation is beyond our control. What have we then? Still, each other. Still, communion. Still, God.

Most of the time, the competitors’ issue does not disappear; they arrive at the checkpoint 24 hours late, they board the wrong train, the persistent typhoon ruins their chance of first place. But this hardship renews their strength and determination, promoting the notion that while suffering is never easy, it somehow shapes us. We endure and, in that endurance, we are refined and strengthened in ways we never thought possible. In the testing of our own endurance (or lack of), it turns out that some things actually are immovable.

This resilience permeates to the heart of who we are, forming us into people who can carry disappointment and hope simultaneously. It is an unwavering, defiant hope that finds us and never leaves us stranded. From this new position, fresh possibilities arise out of a deeper satisfaction, a greater victory, than found in being first place. This hope is rooted in something deeper, and it cries from the other side of difficulty: ‘Here I am, not lost.’

In his poem, Vow, Roger McGough reminds us that when,

Things seem to go from bad to worse,

They also go from bad to better …

Trains run on time,

Hurricanes run out of breath, floods subside,

And toast lands jam-side-up.’

It speaks to how the relatively small disappointments help us cope with the bigger stuff of life, the stuff we feel we will not emerge from. In the gritty, heavy, unfair stuff of life, we appreciate the weight of the enduring hope we possess, manifested in the belief that things not only can, but will go from bad to better. This is not a fragile optimism, but a fortitude and faith that sees the world as it is yet maintains that good and better is possible.

In the same way, Race Across the World urges us to consider what we can handle – not in our own strength, but in community, in reliance on another. Though our complex, strained humanity may attempt to deter us, life’s hardships are eased when shared, whether on a televised journey or from our sofas. We are strengthened in, by and through devoted community. In keeping pace with another – slowing down or rushing to keep up – we are mutually inconvenienced, and that is a source of beautiful fellowship. In letting go of the things that enslave us to self – ambition, insecurity, pride – we encounter the gift of each other, and give life to love that serves. We commit to community; we choose connection over competition.

The saying goes, ‘If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.’ In Race Across the World, significant effort is understandably made by competitors to go fast and to go far, to place first and take home the cash prize. But the viewer’s delight is not so much in seeing the winning duo cross the finish line, as in witnessing the journey of two muddling through, sharing the load, bearing burdens and multiplying joys.

In our lives, too, the road can be unpredictable, full of detours, missed buses and, yes, a few painfully overpriced cabs. Yet it is in the community of fellow travellers we learn the worth of endurance, the refining possibility of suffering, and the hope that is cultivated in its place.

Join us behind the seen

Since Spring 2023, our readers have enjoyed over 1,000 articles. All for free.
This is made possible through the generosity of our amazing community of supporters.

If you enjoy Seen & Unseen, would you consider making a gift towards our work?

Do so by joining Behind The Seen. Alongside other benefits, you’ll receive an extra fortnightly email from me sharing my reading and reflections on the ideas that are shaping our times.

Graham Tomlin
Editor-in-Chief

Join now