Study of the Thames. JMW Turner, Tate Museum. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.
We can’t seem to keep away from the River Thames. Though a current of contradictions, it offers so much— even around the bend in the Channel is Keir Starmer in a slickly branded naval fleece on board the flagship aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales, talking to sailors, aviators, soldiers and Royal Marines.
His most newsworthy moment when he finally hit back at Trump’s latest attack on Zelenskyy.
The fact elephants roamed the Thames riverbank in 12,000 BC—when the UK was still connected to Europe by land—seemed all of a sudden secondary now that this other elephant in the room had at last been outed—namely that continued sycophancy to Moscow could still lead to an all-out European war.
Further, Marco Rubio had already decided not to show for last week’s arranged talks here in London. Steve Witkoff developed cold feet too. It told us all we needed to know about the state of the US chilblains. Most of the action at the beginning of last week was between Washington and Moscow.
Imperial ambition is a crazy thing. From the moment the Romans founded Londinium in 43 AD, the Thames became a pipeline for precisely this type of thing. It carried luxury imports for the elite and, simultaneously, the labourers and slaves who made such wealth possible. Needless to say, this duality—one river, two destinies—has repeated itself over and over.
By the way, it now seems Trump will not be gracing us until September for the state visit. It will be interesting to see by then how US-Russian anti-Brit bashing is hanging. In medieval and early modern times, kings and queens floated past cheering crowds in gilded barges—awaiting Trump is an equally impressive guard of honour, a carriage procession, and a state banquet—while downstream, unacknowledged, the poor scraped together what livelihoods they could.
While Trump is not expected to be cheek by jowl with fishmongers, ferrymen, tanners, and washerwomen during his visit, it would be a shame if he came just to witness privilege.
Some quarters of our press remain ready for the Demander-in-Chief: ‘The world’s most powerful man is using his office to punish journalistic organisations that won’t follow his orders or who report critically on his policies. Donald Trump’s actions against the press include bans, lawsuits and hand-picking his own pool of reporters.’ The Guardian may not be everyone’s cup of tea here but those were the words of its editor-in-chief Katharine Viner last week.
It was 19th century industrialisation that transformed London into a proper global metropolis. With no real sanitation, it also became an open sewer, choked with waste from factories, households, and slaughterhouses. This became a public health crisis. Cholera outbreaks hit overcrowded working-class neighbourhoods, while the rich withdrew—as they do—to cleaner districts uphill and upriver—the effluent effectively replacing the affluent.
Hence the Great Stink of 1858. (Sounds Pythonesque.) The air around Westminster became so unbearable that something had to be done—not out of concern for the poor, but because Parliament said it could no longer function with it. Enter engineer Joseph Bazalgette who designed a brand new sewer network for everyone, only because the discomfort of the powerful happened to align with the needs of the vulnerable.
Anyway, despite the riverside air being replaced with smoke from the Blitz by the time of the Second World War, Norway had just moved its government here, with Brits and Norwegians plotting together daily against the moustachioed Austrian. I say this because Donald Trump—whose father was a reported Hitler fan—met at the White House last week with Norway’s present prime minister—Jonas Gahr Støre—who had just allocated close to $8 billion to Ukraine. When asked probingly about the staunchness of Norway’s support for Ukraine, Trump said he had ‘no allegiance to anybody’—and his acolytes all nodded.
Even former Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown makes an interesting point about Trump’s circle. In a recent interview with Ed Cumming, she said: ‘They’re all so tepid and timid. Why are they all so frightened? I think with all these Republican congressmen and senators, is their job really so great that they will just eat worms all the time? There has to be something you would quit for.’
It was in a hospital by the Thames that Trump’s former best mate Boris Johnson was on a ventilator machine during Covid. Well, Johnson fired off some pretty spicy criticism of Trump last week, using surprisingly confrontational language, stating for example that under the US president’s present terms Ukraine would ‘get nothing’. He posted: ‘What is there in this deal that can realistically stop a third Russian invasion? Nothing. If we are to prevent more atrocities by Putin then we must have a long-term, credible and above all properly funded security guarantee for Ukraine–a guarantee issued by the UK, the US and all western allies.’ Could this honestly be evidence of a concerted Macron-Starmer-Johnson campaign actually beginning to feel joined up?
The river’s story is one of resistance. In the late 19th century, the docks of the East End—once the commercial lifeblood of the British Empire—became places of agitation and organising. The Great Dock Strike of 1889, led by casual workers demanding fair pay and dignity, was considered a watershed moment for the British labour movement. It was also later on the Thames of course that the Sex Pistols staged their infamous 1977 boat protest, a subversive counterpoint to the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, in which God Save The Queen sales went through the roof.
To this day, climate activists, trade unionists, and artists use the river as both a stage and a message board, with regularly projected images, often onto Parliament itself.
Meanwhile, Steve Witkoff was back by the banks of the River Moskva again despite—or because of—escalated nightly Russian airstrikes on Ukraine. This was on the same day a senior Russian military official had been killed by a car bomb in the region.
It could be that Witkoff simply likes it there. His parents after all were Russian. And everyone sincerely hopes that peace can be the outcome of what is now four recent visits to Moscow, even if some of these are for business as well as peace deals. Conceding Crimea was certainly on the agenda again, with memories of Czechoslovakia giving up Sudetenland to Hitler to stop World War Two never that far behind.
Zelenskyy meanwhile was met with applause at the Pope’s sun-baked funeral in Rome—Trump was only a few meters away. The two had just had a private chat—‘Pope Francis’s last act’; ‘funeral diplomacy’—in St Peter’s Basilica, with Vance thankfully not there to fire Trump up.
They were soon joined by Starmer and Macron, after which Trump surprised many by saying he now feared Putin may be ‘tapping me along’. He also said: ‘There was no reason for Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities and towns, over the last few days.’ As a caveat, this did follow a much longer rant about a New York Times reporter and the lowest ratings for a president in 70 years ahead of his 100th day. As for Putin’s absence at the funeral, it seemed in keeping with a man responsible for the destruction of over 600 religious sites since the start of his ‘sacred’ war. No wonder Putin announced a three-day ceasefire in Ukraine between May 8 and 10–he’s not exactly flavour-of-the-month in the world right now outside of a few headlight-blinded folk who probably should know better. If I’m wrong, why not a ceasefire immediately?
Archaeologists and mudlarks still uncover relics along the Thames: Roman coins, medieval pins, Victorian toys. The river, it seems, never stops revealing itself. If it has one defining characteristic, it is that of witness. And as the tide comes in and goes out, twice daily, it reminds us that nothing stays hidden forever—maybe not even what has for a considerable period of time been feeling like a stitch-up.
