Have you ever heard of crab theory? It’s a human behaviour that mirrors the behaviour of crabs in a bucket, where one crab tries to crawl out, only to be pulled down by the other crabs. In short, it describes people trying to prevent others from gaining a favourable experience, even if attaining such an experience would not directly impact those trying to stop them. Everyone’s in the same bucket.
The older people of London are becoming crabs. Having experienced the fun side of London in their 20s, they are now intent on destroying it for everyone else, even if doing so will dramatically alter the appeal, culture and energy of their own city. They are dragging us all down to the bottom of the bucket.
These crabs tend to live around Soho and Central London, where they complain about the area dying but also take issue with people having fun outside, making noise, and generally enjoying themselves.
More recently, crabs have been cropping up around local parks. The kind of parks that host day festivals. Day festivals that generate hundreds of thousands for underfunded local councils. Day festivals that bring life to the area, and bring other people joy.
Tired of waving their pincers at us from behind their windows, the crabs have started to mobilise. One group is attempting to shut down the day festivals in Brockwell Park — Mighty Hoopla, Cross the Tracks, Field Day, et cetera — and has succeeded in a legal challenge that threatens festivals in other London parks. While the festivals this year will likely go ahead, now all the other crabs want to threaten their local festivals, too.
There is already a severe lack of community in London at the moment, but this movement is symbolic of just how much we hate each other.
People seem to have forgotten that the beauty of living in London is the people, and the cost of living in London is the people. Determined to shape the city to their own preferences, older Londoners have eschewed tolerance for campaigning and complaining.
Can no one see the impact of all these small, seemingly personal acts of NIMBYism? It’s far bigger than just you getting a good night’s sleep. It is stripping a city of its heart.
We’ve already gutted Soho so much that it’s just shops and tourists, forcing young Londoners to hang out in the wider “doughnut” of London, or go clubbing in industrial parks in Canning Town.
This parks protest will only do the same, pushing young Londoners further afield and forcing the festivals into more remote venues like Boston Manor Park and Lee Valley Park. What’s next, Notting Hill Carnival relocated to Enfield?
That might seem fine to the local residents right now, but don’t go complaining when you realise that London has been stripped of all its parts, a quiet and empty husk of a city. Instead of trying to shape each area of the city to your own individual needs, how about you practice tolerance, or even get involved?
And if you really can’t hack either of those, I guess you’ll have to move to the Cotswolds. At least it will give us a little extra room in the bucket.
Maddy Mussen is a London Standard columnist
