The Road to Kuti's Pier: A Modern History of Southampton

The dawn of the modern era saw writers such as Evelyn Waugh, Stella Gibbons, Arthur Ransome and P.G Wodehouse, amongst others, indulging in pre-emptive literary nostalgia, as though they had already perceived the shadow of future war and wanted to write in a way that would define the 1930s as a British golden age. Even Malcolm Durbrayn, the only writer from Southampton that anyone has ever heard of (who, as a lifelong fan of Oscar Wilde, was famous for approaching customs officials at the ferry port and announcing, “I have nothing to declare but the five bottles of gin in my luggage”), realised that events occurring in Europe throughout the Thirties weren't helping to found the securest future. His first and only novel, a rural idyll concerning witty, cider-fuelled yeomen and monocled, champagne-addled aristocracy, was not particularly successful when published in 1934, mostly due its title; but Durbrayn felt sure that he would be vindicated by history when he decided to call the book Enjoy The Prosperity And Gentle Social Intrigue While It Lasts Because We’re In For Six Years Of Slaughter and Atrocity Quite Soon.   

The philosophical community, however, was not so prescient. In 1936 the Southampton-born philosopher, Stanley Gizzard, famous at the time for attempting (and failing) to reconcile Socrates’ Theory of Forms with Mr Kipling’s Lattice-Pastry Matrix, convened a philosophical summit called The Meeting Of Celtic Minds, inviting Bertrand Russell of Wales, Ayers Dottle of Scotland, and Plat O’Chips from Ireland, to represent their peoples in a week-long discussion of Man’s near-future. Despite wide media coverage of the European rise of Fascism, international trends towards aggressive expansionism, and recent events like the Reichstag Fire Decree, the Night of the Long Knives, and the Catholic Church’s support for Franco in the Spanish Civil War, Stanley Gizzard viewed the next couple of decades optimistically, considering this to be the perfect time to initiate The Modern Age of Reason, Happiness, and Emancipation from the Tyranny of Deities and Dictators.

The philosophers’ first step toward this goal was to consider the experimental refounding of Southampton as a city free of religion and hypocritical moral dogma. Social taboos with roots in religious doctrine were to be overturned in favour of libertarian freedom. Fresh from founding the philosophical Beacon Hill School, Bertrand Russell suggested a less negative view of people who worked on Sundays. Stanley Gizzard suggested legalising homosexuality. Plat O’Chips encouraged a less judgemental view of masturbation. Stanley Gizzard then added that he thought incest should be legal too. Ayers Dottle expressed an interest in seeing people feel less guilty about the use of contraception, and then Stanley Gizzard wondered aloud whether the public acceptance of homosexual incest might be a bit too much to expect at this stage.

When Stanley Gizzard’s brother began attending the summit halfway through the week, the other philosophers were initially happy with his presence. He was useful to have around, often able to help lower the group’s stress level during heated debates by making the tea, preparing snacks, or giving shoulder and foot rubs. But then, in an unexpected fit of pique, Gizzard suddenly demanded that his brother leave when he started offering the other philosophers bathing assistance.

Eventually, after four long days of intellectual grappling, the philosophers felt almost ready to announce their intention to transform Southampton into a Hampshire utopia of the highest ideals, founded on the fairest democratic principles of laissez-faire government, in which even a few of the city’s less hysterical women would be allowed a vote. (Aldous Huxley, Ayn Rand, George Orwell and Yevgeny Zamyatin visited briefly to suggest an experimental dystopia, but the Celtic Minds just avoided eye contact with them and quietly puffed their pipes until the novelists went away.) And Bertrand Russell’s interest in wresting the freedom of human thought from the confines of theism, deism and faith-based dogma was to be the foundation upon which the group would build their new Extraordinarily Fair and Democratic Republic of Sharing and Equality.

But Bertrand Russell unexpectedly left the Meeting of Celtic Minds in disgust, excusing himself by muttering something about going off to disprove the Doctrine of Internal Relations, when Stanley Gizzard declared that the Southampton of this new Enlightenment should appoint a single man to lead its council as figurehead. Plat O’Chips and Ayers Dottle soon followed Russell along the Avenue out of Southampton when Gizzard suggested a list of privileges for this lucky new Mayor, which included criminal immunity, tax exemption, jus primae noctis, and the instalment of any one sibling as City Treasurer. And then Gizzard himself made a one-way journey along the road out of town at the will of his neighbours when, after assuming leadership of the Extraordinarily Fair and Democratic Republic of Sharing and Equality by default, he called a press conference to publicly declare himself Ultimate Lord High King Uber-Kaiser Numero Uno For Life.  

 

With the end of the decade came war, and Southampton became famous as the town with the lowest number of soldiers killed – or even wounded – in enemy engagement. However, the emerging myth of the indestructible Hampshire super soldier was dispelled when it was also revealed that Southampton contributed the fewest number of servicemen to the armed forces. This was partly due to the townsfolk’s endemic obesity, but mostly due to the fact that the majority of the city’s male population disappeared overnight on 2^nd September 1939 (although the Southampton census recorded a surprise doubling of the female populace that year). And when army recruiters began lifting the skirts of the city’s suspiciously swarthy women, the few hundred men (and several surprised ladies) who were conscripted, and the few who survived basic training, were returned barely a fortnight later under court martial for mass desertion.

But whatever percentage of its population Southampton saved in soldiers' lives was lost several times over through civilian fatalities during countless nights of bombing by the Luftwaffe. It was not until after the war that examination of the decisions made by local authorities during the six-year conflict unearthed reasons for the city’s catastrophic levels of damage.

The first and most obvious cause was the Hide In Plain Sight With No Blackout During Air Raids policy, implemented when one the city’s councillors walked into a wall one dark night (although the councillor’s wife felt that this policy wouldn’t help because the light had been on when he did it). An added clause decreed that, during nights of particularly heavy bombing, the city’s lights would be left on in a specific pattern that spelt “Fuck you, Fritz!” when viewed from above.

The second reason for the successful German devastation of Southampton was the appointment of a man named Otto Von Heil Deutschland to the position of Managing Director at the Ordnance Survey, which had moved its cartography team to new offices in Southampton in 1938. The Ordnance Survey’s maps were world-famous for their accuracy and detail, and a secret new headquarters in Hampshire was considered essential to preventing infiltration by hungry Nazi spies. Recruitment of the team’s new manager by Southampton's local government was delayed for a couple of days when one or two local people said they thought Otto Von Heil Deutschland had “shifty eyes”; but everyone was reassured when Otto declared, “Ich bin as English as Sauerkraut, Southampton untermensch!” followed by several minutes of maniacal laughter.

The mystery of how Ordnance Survey maps of Southampton and its strategically important docks ended up in the hands of the Luftwaffe, leading to the most accurate, and most devastatingly ironic, carpet-bombing ever recorded, was not solved (or even considered) until 1994, when Southampton historians concluded that Winston Churchill must have been a spy all along. But then, in 1995, better historians from somewhere else revealed the surprising true identity of Otto Von Heil Deutschland as a German spy deep under cover. It is not known what happened to Otto after the war, but when the historians visited his former address, a house in Northam named Lebensraum, during their research, its elderly occupant denied anyone access to the house with a sharp “Nein!”

 

Post-war recovery in Southampton was hampered by almost a decade of near poverty when the local Communist Party enjoyed landslide election victories nine years in a row. The Marxists claimed that their successes were due entirely to the popularity of their economic policies, though a few of the city’s deeper thinkers began to suspect that the way in which the Communists had listed themselves on the ballot paper, as the Naked Nubiles Will Pleasure You And Give You Money If You Vote For Us Party, might have helped them maintain power.

So, beginning to realise that Southampton seemed almost incapable of governing itself due to the ill-luck suffered by successive councils (a run of misfortune first documented in the Fourteenth Century, when the city fathers began recommending that people should keep black rats in their pockets as good-luck charms during outbreaks of the plague), government of Southampton was divided between the Winchester and Bournemouth City Councils from 1955 to 1999. The scheme seemed to work well, with Southampton eventually showing slightly lower levels of unemployment, school truancy, violent crime, industrial accidents, human trafficking, famine, piracy, incest, prostitution, genetic mutation, ethnic cleansing, spontaneous human combustion, leprosy, fetish-related deaths, under-age pregnancies, political assassination, slavery, zombie-infestations, housework-related amputations and ritual sacrifice.

But the years of external government had helped introduce residents of Southampton to knowledge of the outside world, and when dozens of the city’s denizens (instantly recognisable by their smell and unique feeding habits) began appearing in other Hampshire towns, self-government was restored to Southampton at the start of the new millennium – but only upon the acceptance of two conditions. Firstly, that anyone seen travelling further than five miles from their home in Southampton would be instantly recalled; secondly, that everyone born in the city would be tagged and monitored, thereby preventing any Southampton resident from ever leaving the city again.

© Mark Crutchfield