It’s time to abolish the City of London

Jarelle Francis, Green Party London Assembly Candidate for Enfield and Haringey, calls for an end to the financial district with a dark history

CITY OF LONDON: Jarelle Francis, Green Party London Assembly Candidate for Enfield and Haringey, has joined calls for an end the financial district to be abolished (Photo: Richard Baker/In Pictures via Getty Images)

IN 1565 Thomas Gresham founded the Royal Exchange. As Britain’s first specialist commercial building it financed a variety of endeavours that made the city rich. But from it’s creation the international financing of slavery was a major driver of it’s wealth. That legacy is why we must abolish the City of London Corporation.

The role of the City of London in this dark period of history is uncontested. The financial hub invested in many “expeditions” charged with capturing and transporting Africans in awful conditions. Up to 3 million people were trafficked by British ships over the hundreds of years slavery was legal. 

This brutality was fuelled by our country’s hunger for tea, coffee, sugar and our imperial ambitions. These atrocities forever changed the world, creating a long legacy of social injustices. These injustices still very much live on. So great was the amount paid out to compensate enslavers for abolition that £20 billion worth of today’s money was paid out from 1833 until 2015. Money paid out by the Bank of England in the City of London.

“If this city is to become more equal and more fair it starts with demolishing relics like the Corporation”

Today the City of London stands as an undemocratic and shadowy body in the heart of our city. Instead of a council the “square mile” is run by the City of London Corporation. Businesses and residents get to vote in the local elections, but corporations are granted incredibly more voting power than residents. And the Corporation sits on £2.3 billion worth of assets, whilst countless other councils have been devastated by governmental cuts.

Just as troubling is the role of the City in the world’s finances. Four-hundred years ago the City funded a genocide against Black people. Today the City plays a huge role in corruption, money laundering and funding climate breakdown. The House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee has well reported that the City is a major conduit of ill-gotten Russian oligarchs’ money

The unique structure of the corporation aids and abets these crimes. Unlike anywhere else the City has its own police force. A police force that, by its own admission, finds itself overwhelmed by the scale of financial crime. The unique legal rights of the corporation mean that financial institutions get to pay less tax and shield many of their practices. Undoubtedly helping make our capital a favourite of those looking to protect dubious assets.

Slavery

In many ways history repeats itself. Merchants in the City were at the forefront of fighting the abolition of slavery. It was their lobbying that won the outsized compensation the traffickers received. Today the City has millions to splash around, lobbying the government to protect it’s venerated legal status.

The Green Party has long campaigned for the abolition of the City of London. The worldwide awakening on racial injustice should underline those calls. The end of the City of London would give residents a much needed democratic voice, ending the inequity that corporations can outvote people. Meanwhile the City’s voluminous assets could be used much better by the democratically elected Mayor of London to address chronic poverty and inequality.

Because the reality is that merely seconds away in Tower Hamlets child poverty is the highest in the country. Children go to bed hungry and poverty cripples social mobility. The City of London represents a dragon’s hoard. Years of historical wrongdoing accumulating huge wealth, but accountable to no one. 

These calls are not new. For hundreds of years the Labour Party championed the end of the city. Herbert Morrison, the grandfather of Peter Mandleson, lambasted the City as the “devilry of modern finance”. and that it should be “wiped off the municipal map”. But since Tony Blair’s government calls to scrap the City from Labour have died and Sadiq Khan has nothing to say regarding the institution. 

Sian Berry’s campaign for Mayor of London represents an opportunity to challenge the status quo. If this city is to become more equal and more fair it starts with demolishing relics like the Corporation.

Jarelle Francis, is a young entrepreneur who has previously run his own business, and currently works as an independent art curator, with a focus on making arts and culture more accessible to young people, and communities outside the traditional art world. He lives in Wood Green and is the Green Party London Assembly Candidate for Enfield and Haringey.

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