Speakers' Corner: HUE & DAVID TEAM UP

SPEAKERS' CORNER in the north-eastern extremity of London's expansive Hyde Park has, since the late 19th Century, been the place to speak freely, and hopefully engage with others of like mind.

Such a freedom, such as it is, was hard won. Following much social unrest and even riots, the government of the day made provision in an Act of Parliament in 1872 for a "designated area" for speaking in public and generally 'getting things off one's chest'. It was in effect a safety valve.

If the malcontents could be attracted to one place, how much easier for the State to keep an eye (or would that be an ear?) on the whole miserable lot of them. Bleedin' ungratefuls!

If the greatest aid to the spiritual awakening of Humanity has been the advent of the World WIde Web, then perhaps the greatest thing that has happened to Speakers' Corner... has been the invention of the Camcorder. Which, sadly, came a little late to capture the sincere utterance of Speakers' Corner's longest-serving Orator: the life-long pacifist Donald (later Lord) Soper.

"I've spoken at the Corner since February 1987," says HUE, "So I easily remember Lord Soper. And when he passed to spirit, aged 95, it was me who was asked to give a brief eulogy. The truth was, I didn't know much then about his life ~ he was aligned with the Methodist movement, and me with the New Age movement ~ but I admired him as a great orator, and noted that he had against him his own elite cadre of hecklers. How they missed him when he was gone!

"Although I haven't spoken there so much in the last decade or so, still there should have been something of me on YouTube. But seemingly not! Ain't it true? ~ you gotta blow your own trumpet. Or buy your own camcorder, as I did.

"On this video, I'm not paired with my old buddy Nicholas Scholes, but instead with another fellow Orator, the soldier-turned-anarchist David Cozens.

"Listen: if there's a nuclear war, or a catastrophic breakdown of society ~ stick close to DAVID. You might just be okay."