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But Kostas Apergis, village historian, writes of the diminished celebration in Ano Korakiana of 25 March - Greek Independence Day. He mentions that 'the sympathetic settlers' or, perhaps, 'charming colonists' - συμπαθέστατοι έποικοι - have not yet devised their own contribution to what in earlier days was a richer event:

Με τη φυγή του κόσμου, το κλείσιμο των μαγαζιών και την αδιαφορία(;) όσων απέμειναν έσβησε κι αυτό, οι δε συμπαθέστατοι έποικοι ακόμη δεν ύψωσαν τη δική τους. Ελάχιστοι πια θυμούνται τις μέρες αυτές το εθνικό μας σύμβολο.Έχει απομείνει, μετά τη δημιουργία του Δήμου και τη μεταφορά των εκδηλώσεων στον Ύψο, μια βιαστική Δοξολογία στον Άη Γιώργη και μια πιο βιαστική «παρέλαση» του Σχολείου και της Φιλαρμονικής κατά την μετάβασή τους στον Ύψο και την Πόλη. Στο πέρασμά τους από τον κεντρικό δρόμο του χωριού ακουγόταν και κανένα εμβατήριο, έτσι να θυμίσει στους γέρους και γενικά στους ανήμπορους, που παρέμειναν στα σπίτια τους το ξεχωριστό της ημέρας.

Democracy Street ~ 25 March 2010

But there is another dimension to this story. Leftheris has told me, and it's confirmed by Thanassis and Katya as well as by Hilary Paipeti, that neither Ano Korakiana's band nor the band of Kinopiastes, the village south of Corfu town, were wont to join in annual celebrations of the anniversary of enosis with mother Greece on 21 May 1864. Perhaps this lack of enthusiasm for the event in May extends to the celebration of Greek Independence on 25 March - anniversary of an event in 1829, 35 years before the Ionian Islands became part of the Hellenic Kingdom. This is not, as some might claim because many Ionians didn't want the British to leave - an imputation that applied to relatively few - but because there was a robust aspiration among a much larger part of the Ionian population, originally driven by the rizospastai, especially Ilias Zervos from Cephalonia, to become an autonomous republic - the Septinsular Republic of the Ionian islands - a situation for which there was a conditional precedent between 1800 and 1807 (for background see my YouTube slides on the Ionian Protectorate).

While the majority rejoiced in enosis and the departure of the British, there were others no less radical who wished the British had stayed on long enough to negotiate a departure, not from an Hellenic Kingdom enlarged by the acquisition of the Ionian Islands but from a Septinsular able to fly its own flag.

*** *** ...and this is how Independence Day was for TeacherDude, British citizen-journalist in the streets of Thessaloniki.

* * *

The electricity wouldn’t come on at 208. A customer at our shop phoned the electric company in Corfu town for us. “For less than €50 they won’t cut you off” he said. I phoned Ian, electrician. He was round in an hour to test the meter. “No power to the meter. I saw the first swallows yesterday. The thermals have been right for them. Ring 1050 - the emergency number.” I was answered in seconds and we could speak in English (try that in UK). “It’s very busy but someone will be out to you later today.” Yes, we could run a cable to the neighbour’s supply to power our fridge, but Sally, up the street, gave us space in her freezer. We walked our shopping there and while chatting I got a call from a lineman. “Check the power now.” I ran back up the street, mobile to my ear, gasping “nearly there, nearly there.” Still no power. “OK. Wait by the school. Two men in a black truck will be with you in 5 minutes.” I waited; they came; checked the meter again.

One with climbing claws on his boots checked a cat’s cradle of wires at the top of a nearby street pole, turning off neighbouring supplies in turn. Still no power. Then one of the men, with a ladder, checked along our supply cable and found the wire overstretched just above the meter. Wind and weather had severed the wire inside its sheathing so it didn’t appear broken until a gentle tug pulled it apart. All sorted before dark. ** ** **

I was in Scotland yesterday, with councillors from Dumfries and Galloway. I woke in my guest house to gaze on the lowland landscape and see lambs hurrying to suckle under a dour sky and distant hills. It was a good day's work with a dozen councillors working hard and intelligently on ways Overview & Scrutiny could improve their council's service to the public, preparing - after Audit Scotland's Best Value and Community Planning audit last March when the Chairman of the Accounts Commission, John Baillie, said:

There are serious weaknesses at Dumfries and Galloway Council which would be of concern in any circumstances. They are even more concerning given the significant challenges facing the council. These make it essential that action is taken as a matter of urgency to move the council forward.

Councillors were also aware of Audit Scotland's report on Improving Public Sector Efficiency - anticipating some of the deepest cuts in public service expenditure any of us have experienced.

The lowlands from Southpark House, Locharbriggs

* * *

I've received - via the web - a most useful and intriguing document on the economic value of public parks. It's been done in Philadelphia in Pennsylvania. The eponymous report is a godsend for defending urban green space during recession.

Prepared two years ago (why've I not come across it earlier?) it's swirling among professionals as well as campaigners for public parks, like Birmingham Open Spaces Forum. Ten years ago I wrote a few pages for a government committee about the value of urban green spaces. This report by The Trust for Public Land’s Center for City Park Excellence has garnered a swaithe of professional jargon - assessing the value to the city of stormwater management, air pollution mitigation, community cohesion, health and wealth value to citizens including 'property value from park proximity' and from tourism - to support more lyrical arguments for parks. Thus does political rhetoric transmute into managerial and professional language.

** * **

Lin's been working later icing the various layers of Amy and Guy's wedding cake made by her mum, Amy's nan. We've been immersed in argument's about planning - invitations, accommodation, travel to the Highlands in May, and cakes. The last row between Amy and her mum took two days to simmer down; both refusing to back off and apologise while I attempted mediation. Now they've made a truce perhaps I'll cycle into town and donate some blood.

*** *** *** Email from the blue:

Dear Simon Baddeley. I found your contact from a blog by John Tyrrell while I was trying to find something on the 'Black Patch' Birmingham. The reason for this I am trying to build a Smith Family Tree and I have found that my Grand Father who lived in Ladywood , was known as 'Darkie Smith' and came from Gypsies or associated with them. He was called Darkie because he had a slightly darker skin. Since talking to my brother in law he said Gypsies were know in a place called the Black Patch. Do you have any other information on the history of this place or know of anybody who does. Best regards. Martin Smith, Antwerp, Belgium

Black Patch, c.1890. Gypsies criss-crossed England from as far away as Armenia, Serbia and Greece, finding work on farms, helping with the summer harvests.

Dear Martin. Delighted to hear from you. Try contacting Ted Rudge who wrote a fine book some years ago (out of print at present) called Brumroamin: Birmingham and Midland Romany Gypsy and Traveller Culture and refers, on his local history blog, to our successful campaign to prevent building on the park . See also this clip of a petition about the Black Patch and this song about Queen Henty, who lived with other Gypsies on the Black Patch and a wikipedia article on Black Patch with more links you may find useful. My stepfather was Jack Hargreaves who died in 1994. One of his good friends was the late Len Smith who wrote about Gypsies in and around the New Forest - Romany Nevi-Wesh. I hope this is helpful. Ted Rudge is your best source. I hope you can get in touch with him. Best wishes. Simon

Rain

We are surrounded by mist, thunder, and the pleasant sound – for us who trust our roof – of rain pattering, occasionally drumming, on the tiles, flecking the windows, drops dribbling at random down the pane, water streaming from the gutters down the paths to the drains. I get up with a light heart to do easy routines – restarting the stove until it roars merrily, wearing my long raincoat to rescue a lineful of washing from the garden, spinning it and hanging it to dry on a frame by the stove, bringing in wood kept covered and dry and feeding the fire that is no longer smoking, cleaning a pan that had soaked overnight in the kitchen, making myself porridge topped with dark sugar and cream, and calling Lin to wake for a mug of coffee. There’s a Bal Masque for in the Agricultural Co-op tonight on the lower road. We’d seen chairs being delivered. Natasha showed us her costume as we chatted over the fence yesterday. Then on 14 February there will be Carnivali in the village.

Yesterday Lin and I started work filling in the staircase in preparation for closing it altogether from the room through which it passes which we are making into a bedroom. The room next to the kitchen is to be a downstairs dining room, conveniently next to the kitchen and cooler in hot weather.

* * *

Lee Southall at Handsworth Park has circulated a nice poster advertising one of my history tours of the Park on Sunday 21 March. I fear he and his colleagues are under terrific pressure to make and take big cuts in their budgets, and their own jobs. I've written to local councillors across Handsworth and Perry Barr:

Dear Councillors and friends

Handsworth Park under threat from new

proposals for re-organising Ranger Services

These proposed changes to the management of Birmingham’s treasured parks – in particular Handsworth Park - are very troubling, especially as they include reduction in the Ranger Services.

As someone involved in writing the history of Handsworth Park and, with many others, campaigning for its restoration since the 1980s, I learned a lot about the contribution of parks to city life – especially their indirect contribution to health and education and the resulting contribution to community safety. It did not take long for my researches to catch up with something that the public has long known, that you cannot realise the public good of parks without park keepers – now the Ranger Service. Crime, like fire, prevented is very difficult to measure, thus the peacekeeping role of the Rangers in all our parks cannot, in a time of desperate purse tightening, be accurately assessed against the cost to the city of their wages. That failure in accounting practice will bear very directly on all who have come to enjoy what for the last 10 years has seen a renaissance in public parks.

As an almost daily visitor to Handsworth park before and after the Rangers arrived about ten years ago I, and others in my position, can attest to the 1001 incidents that might have gone from petty to serious which have been nipped in the bud merely by the presence of a ranger patrolling, let alone their many direct interventions that have prevented crimes in the park. In addition, our Rangers, in liaison with teachers, local police and community support officers, have participated in a whole range of actions with schools designed to catch potential problems long before they become those that once allowed our public parks to deteriorate into spaces from which the larger public – young and old - were barred by crime and anti-social behaviour.

We hope very much that local councillors and our MPs will be able to come together to press for damage limitation, especially as it was understood as part of the Heritage Lottery Fund grant for the restoration of Handsworth Park that revenue for its continued maintenance and staffing was guaranteed for at least 10 years from the time of the grant. There are still still a few years to run, By cutting back on services especially the ranger service in Handsworth Park the Council may be acting contrary to its agreement with the Heritage Lottery Fund. Can councillors please make urgent enquiries this and make appropriate representations?

I would also appreciate knowing whether we must anticipate any collateral impact on the opening and managing of the new Victoria Jubilee Allotments next to Handsworth Park. Best wishes, Simon

* * *

My talk at the Durrell School about relations between the British and the Ionians in the 19th century went well mainly because an indulgent audience of friends put up with me struggling to cover more information than needed for a 20 minute talk about Lord High Commissioners and the British Protectorate. I managed to cover all but Gladstone, whose role was well filled in during questions by Richard Pine who'd invited me to do the talk. Despite my detours we had a good hour of discussion about character and motives of quite a few of the participants in that 48 year episode in which the Ionians hoped they'd got a Protectorate while the British, with notable exceptions (Nugent, Seaton, Gladstone) assumed they had a colonial possession, getting down to why the British were here in the first place and whether the British, when they left in 1864, were pushed or chose to jump, and the shrewd politics of the Ionian Radicals about whom I’ve learned so much from Eleni Calligas’ work

Slides for my talk - pause the film to read the small writing; click on the image to get full screen on YouTube

Paul came with Lula. There were at least two other Greeks in the audience, which was good, as well as Irish. I felt I’d traversed some mined ground unscathed with kind remarks from a full house on a chilly winter’s evening. The thing is the honour of being invited to give such a talk after being here only a few years. The subject gets richer as I learn more about it. On the way back to our car in the Spaniada we heard a Scops owl hooting right over our head in one of the trees that line the esplanade. Lin, to my relief, said “That wasn’t too bad. I could've kicked you when you went off on one of your diversions.”

Afterwards Richard took us for a meal. “Nothing special. Just basic” “Suits us” Lin sat in a corner by a shuttered window onto Theotoki Street. “That's where Lawrence Durrell used to sit” said Richard. A French tourist had once thrust a copy of Prospero's Cell through this window and asked the author to sign it. We had beef and potatoes, chicken and chips and the local red. “So what of the economy?” I asked.

“Papandreou, having consulted with Samaras, spoke to the country on TV last night. ‘We are in for very tough times. We must all work together otherwise – the abyss.’” We realized the biggest cuts must be in the Hellenic public sector. “KKE won’t buy this. They have significant seats in parliament.” “So?” With a left unwilling to back a one nation response to the problems of the economy there'll be demonstrations. The EU watches; the Greek diaspora too. I mentioned my concern at the news that Birmingham City Council is to make big cuts in its Park Ranger Service. “Well they’ve done that in California...and without rangers the state might close Yosemite National Park”.

* * *

DEMOCRACY STREET AS SHARED SPACE

On main roads people drive fast, tailgate, overtake on bends and hoot to hurry up dawdlers, yet when Lin stops the car on Democracy Street, in a spot even narrower than the rest of the road through the village , above the steps down to our house so we can unload before she goes on to a parking space, other drivers who happen to come along – in either direction - will invariably wait politely. All along Democracy Street, as it winds through the village, drivers have learned just where to give way (wider spots we now know), wave another car on or proceed themselves, making judgements about width, sometimes folding in their mirrors to clear a wall, yet very seldom inconveniencing those on foot. Democracy Street, along with the narrow sinuous main streets of other villages is a shared space – an idea about roads being laboriously recovered in settings where for decades politicians and professionals have favoured the view that roads are for cars and sidewalks or pavements for those on foot – building in traffic lights and occasional crossing spaces to allow pedestrians to enter, at least briefly, a space separated off for people in cars. Thus it is on Corfu’s main roads and indeed on their pavements where despite prohibitions drivers, who would noisily resent a similar encroachment by walkers on their space, will often park their cars. In the middle of many villages here there are often no pavements. Network of narrow streets are often plaka’d to remind visitors that the space between houses are to be shared by everyone on foot, cycle, scooter, car, truck and bus; that indeed walkers are also ‘traffic’ - a word that in the years of the combustion engine has defaulted to exclude cyclists, horses, donkeys and people on foot, moving, sitting or leaning on walls. Everyone can own the street and it generally works, with opportunities for regular acts of civility as people negotiate their way through. Civility that is the essence of this process is largely abandoned on main roads. The human-to-human negotiation of Democracy Street is replaced by automatic regulation of the highway. It was long ago discovered that you can’t use eyes to engage politely with another human once both of you are likely to be passing each other above a certain speed – about 15mph maximum. Thus is the shared space of the village abandoned to the individualised space of the open road. Human eye and the repertoire of non-verbal language that lubricated social interaction was replaced by traffic lights, warning signs, designated crossings, barriers and remote surveillance by camera. What was worse, though it hasn’t happened in many villages here, is that the so-called ‘open road’ instead of just running between communities, was often forced through them, and motorised traffic was encouraged to speed through newly widened and straightened roads between demolished homes, getting their drivers more swiftly from A to B but blighting those settlements that lie between (see: community severance and shared space). * * * * Lin, unable to sleep in the early hours, rose and watched the dawn. That very bright light on the Albanian shore had been out for several days but is there again now.

Work and play - learning about the Rizospastai

Keith Kelly, Research and Publications, Yoko Miyamoto, Assistant Director and Noboro Fujishima, Director of the Japan Local Government Centre in London at the Bullring. They came as our guests to Birmingham, to get a glimpse of our city's regeneration from Jon Bloomfield, Head of European Policy at Advantage West Midlands, 10 years Head of Re

gional, European and International Division at Birmingham City Council.

After two hours walking and talking round the centre, we had lunch at Bank Restaurant, then taxi'd to Edgbaston campus so they could see where we run their October programme for young local government managers from Japan - an event I've run for over a decade.

The recession is eating into the momentum of regeneration. Not dramatically, not obviously. The effect is in the small indicators. Decreasing business start-ups, abandoned leases of commercial premises, to let and for sale signs, construction work slowed or stopped, fewer and fewer tenancies of city centre residences being taken up and others abandoned. It's too quiet.

* * *

On Wednesday I was in Cumbria - there and back overnight - to animate a session on new ways of doing scrutiny. Then on Thursday I started to meet the Ionians involved in opposing the British presence in the islands through finally starting to read Eleni Calligas' dissertation The `Rizospastai': politics and nationalism in the British Protectorate of the Ionian Islands 1815-1864. After the British Library told me they had no idea when the thesis would be on-line, Calligas' doctoral supervisor pointed me to the Institute for Historical Research. "There may be a copy there." It's right below the tall Senate House of London University and I was there by 9.30. The librarian bought me the dissertation. I started reading. I ran through references, scanned the chapter list, began to get a feel for how the thesis had been put together.

So far I've been studying this story from the British perspective. Now I discover figures - vital to the radical movements that developed and diverged in the Ionian islands in the years leading up to the end of the British Protectorate - roughly 1840s to 1860s. Up until now the Rizospastai* have been a clamour in the wings of an English theatre. Now, thanks to Calligas, another dimension of Ionian history begins to emerge - especially the important part played by political activity on the other Ionian Islands; Zakinthos [Ζάκυνθος, Zante] and Cephalonia [Kefallonia, Κεφαλλονιά, Kefalonia, Cephalonia, Kefallinia] in particular.

Ilias Zervos lakovatos (1814-1894), editor of Fileleftheros, leading Rizospastai

Calligas' thesis is that Zervos, from Cephalonia, was a radical who wanted to end the Protectorate so that the Ionian Islands - Ιονίων Νησιών - could become an independent self-governing republic. After British reforms and imprisonment and exile had temporarily silenced Zervos and his companions, another radical - Constantinos Lombardos [Κωνσταντίνος Λομβάρδος] - from a different Ionian island, Zante, emerged. Lombardos campaigned vigorously for the end of Protectorate in the name of union with the Greek Kingdom.

Constantinos Lombardos 1820-1888

As enosis approached, Zervos and his fellow radicals, free again, found themselves in the anomalous position of appearing to oppose it, when in fact what they wanted was to ensure that the terms of the union would affirm their radical principals. What they feared was that the British would cede the Ionian islands to the Greek Kingdom without setting conditions for the realisation of those principals. Lombardos was more pragmatic, less of an intellectual. For him and his followers enosis was an end in itself. Lombardos and Zervos were both radicals but they were very different personalities.

Iosif Momferratos, [Ιωσήφ Μομφεράτος] 1816-1888, Risozpastai from Cefallonia, editor of Anagenissis

I've enjoyed finding pictures of Lombardos, Zervos and Joseph Momferratos. Other names are Gerasimos Livadas, George Typaldos, Typaldos Pretenteris, Ioannis Menagias, Frankiskos Pylarinos, Stamatelos Pylarinos...

*disambiguation: Rizopastis - Ριζοσπάστης - is the name given to the official newspaper, started in 1916, of today's Greek Communist Party

*** ***

I was pondering recent remarks made by a celebrity arguing that, unlike democracies, dictators "get things done!" Hm? I suppose dictators are more efficient at ensuring, through fear and enchantment, that their subjectivity is accepted as objective - a phenomenon captured long ago by Hans Anderson's tale of shared delusion, The Emperor's New Clothes. So called 'strong leaders' can reduce a messy plurality of opinion to a party line. They're efficiency is in suppressing evidence of inefficiency. In a democracy you can try and find your way to something approximating truth via many lies, spins and half-truths, in a dictatorship there is one truth, and that is not a truthful way to understand the world. How can you debate the difference between democracy and fascism? A paragraph from the first page of 'The Conflict of Fascist and Democratic Ideals' by Melvin Rader in The Antioch Review, Vol. 3, No. 2, 1943, p. 246:

I suspect it's an impossible argument. If Hitler had been efficient he wouldn't have forced the inventor of atomic power to join the other side.

** ** **

The TV has been showing the procession of hearses bearing the flag draped coffins of young British soldiers coming home to Brize Norton from Afghanistan. The country appears to be divided on whether or not we should be fighting this war in Afghanistan. I feel that Bush and Blair weakened our moral standing as well as time and lives with their ill-planned duplicitously justified invasion of Iraq, when we should have been putting all our energies into fighting a war in Afghanistan.

Anyone doubting the international connection might watch this video about the refugees camped in Patras or read the story in Kathimerini 14th July '09 by Pantelis Boukalas: In a book called Musaferat, or The Thousand and One Nights of a Refugee Camp. Patra-based lawyer and author Vassilis Ladas comments that:

a city needs to have its rubbish swept away, not fellow human beings...the camp in Patra in which our fellow humans reside is inhuman and its brutal "cleanup" cannot mask the huge responsibility that the government and local authorities shoulder to serve humanity and the basic responsibilities that are binding on them by virtue of European and international agreements....'

These passages from Ladas' book were featured in newspapers in Patra on January 31, 2008; signed by seven writers who live in the city who sensed the onset of events...