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This is the paradox; the inhabitants of the largest and most institutionalised of communities, the city, are the ones least liable to stay put; the city was never, isn't and never will be about tight-knit community. The current London Reclaim the Streets activists are, I suspect, sentimental archaists who do not understand the city. They want to village-ize it. Pathetically they try to turf over Whitehall. I don't know, but I suspect that, like so many citizens of London, these people are from the provinces and can't hack it in the city; perhaps that is what their protest is about. Piss off, please, back to the countryside with your turf and your seeds.

It was no surprise for me to discover that the lone nail-bomber of 1999 who targeted blacks in Brixton, Asians in Brick Lane and gays in Soho was….from a village in Hampshire. Clearly he doesn't know that we like heterogeneity, that we like it that way very much, thankyou. Not that this rural based bigotry is anything new: "I don't at all like (London)…" writes another provincial: "All sorts of men crowd together there from every country under the heavens. Each race brings its own vices….pimps…gambling…pederasts…beggars.."

This is Richard of Devizes in 1180. Devizes eh? I'm not surprised.

City sociability, the sociability of the streets can't ever be a cosy and convivial one; it is a sociability of the barest convenience; its gestures of affability are minimal, almost unspoken. A bleak view? No; it is merely that this is the city and how the city works. Those who have a problem with this may choose to go settle in the countryside. Good luck to them; let them enjoy their decade of ostracisation as "incomers"; we don't have that problem here in the city; move here and you're part of it.

Life for an incomer to the city might be hard and bitter; but you are undeniably part of the city; no membership needed. If I regret the smallness of London's population (barely seven million!) then I remind myself of the constant influx of immigrants. Welcome one and all; let's push those population figures back over the eight million mark of the nineteen fifties, (when London was the biggest city in the world). For there is always in London this massive influx of foreigners. London has always been a major world destination. The Pool of London in the nineteenth century; a huge mass of shipping: Engels was astonished:

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