[R-G] Goodbye to Grosvenor Square

[Anthony Fenton]

October 6, 2008
Goodbye to Grosvenor Square

By TARIQ ALI
http://www.counterpunch.org/ali10062008.html

The US embassy is withdrawing from its central London fortress. If  
only America would quit other parts of the world it occupies.

Grosvenor Square is about to be liberated. Tidings that the US embassy  
is moving to an unspecified five-acre location in south London may be  
good news for local residents (some of whom were renting rooms for a  
proper view of the rioting in 1968), but bad news for the unhealthier  
sections of the north London left. Till now, we could all meet happily  
in central London. A long march to south London is far less enticing,  
unless the San Francisco model of demonstrating on bikes becomes  
fashionable here as well.

Of course, we could be spared all this if the United States simply  
decided to stop bombing and occupying different parts of the world.  
Apart from anything else, they can't afford it any more, which also  
appears to be the reason for the move from Grosvenor Square. The city  
is owed £4m in rates – which might be the sale price of the building  
in these troubled times.

When it finally happens, Grosvenor Square veterans, particularly of  
the great demonstrations of 1968 calling for Victory to the NLF,   
should make sure there is a properly organized wake with proper music,  
etc. They should be sent off in style. Old memories must not be  
obliterated. This could happen if the fortress in the Square is sold  
off as apartments. Much better if the Imperial War Museum borrowed a  
few million from one of the Gulf states and purchased it as an adjunct  
devoted exclusively to US wars. The loan could be written off as a bad  
debt and Peter Mandelson, back in the cabinet, might help out here.

A worry remains. Why south London? Surely, it would make much more  
sense to ask the British to dissolve the Foreign Office, abolish the  
post of foreign secretary (each new incumbent worse than the one  
before) and offer the King Charles Street building to the United  
States as their Embassy. The advantages to both sides are obvious. It  
could be on a 50-year basis since, by that time, a party might have  
emerged in England that  needed a Foreign Office.

It would certainly make it easier for some of us to have  both the US  
ambassador and the prime minister within striking distance of  
protesting  crowds that assemble in Trafalgar Square.

Tariq Ali has given many fiery speeches down  the years in front of  
the soon-to-be abandoned US Embassy in Grosvenor Square. His latest  
book is The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power.