What Londoners can learn from Covent Garden 1809

The Theatre Royal, Covent Garden burned down in 1808.  Not an event that is much remembered these days, but I have been reading about its troubled refurbishment and re-opening the following year in a brilliant book called The Making of Victorian Values by the historian Ben Wilson.

When it re-opened in September 1809, the theatre-going public were outraged to find that the seats and the pit were much less comfortable, and up at the top the audience had to peer between pillars and through 'pigeon holes' to get a view of the stage.  The tickets also cost more.

The problem was that the refurbishment had been paid for by giving a better view to the private boxes and then selling them off to the rich and fashionable.  Before the fire, even the royal box was available to anyone else if the king wasn't using it.  After the refurbishment, the boxes were closed and permanently hired - even when they were empty.

On the opening night, the punters were so angry that they howled down John Kemble's Richard III.  On the nights that followed, they turned their back on the stage and watched impromptu amateurs, perrforming at the back.  Forr a period, anyone could be an actor.

The campaign became known as O.P. (Old Prices) and it continued until the end of the year.  There were banners saying OLD PRICES and NO SNUG RETREATS.  There were horns blaring and continual racket.  At one stage, Kemble and the management hired thugs to beat the most vociferous protesters.  Many of the tussles ended up in court.  Night after night, the punters turned up, paid half a shilling to get in - this was not a proest by the poor - and risked ending up in gaol for the night.

At the end of December, Kemble negotiated and finally the old prices came back and the private boxes and boudoirs were opened up.  And then, guess what.  The protesters asked him to a celebration dinner.  How very English.

These days the English are far more polite, whatever the Daily Mail might tell you.  They are far more timid in the face of authority.  Yet the O.P. protests are somehow terribly familiar.  We are constantly finding that resources are bundled up, the commons are handed over to the mega-rich, and the service for the rest of us reduced, and all in the name of modernity.

But I wonder, in the summer, whethere we might not be in a similar situation.  We will have special VIP lanes painted on our roads in the capital - just for the ubermensch in the international Olympics committees, and the corporate sponsors and their families, for the mega-rich again - where even ambulances answering 999 calls will be banned. 

I should not be surprised if some people don't remember the O.P. campaigners of Covent Garden in 1809 and show them what London really means.