September 6th 2024

The destruction of a group of magnificent London Plane trees in London's Bloomsbury district to make way for another office block is imminent. One local resident gives this passionate arguement for the trees to be saved.

The trees are sacred.

They are thirteen in number

Beneath these boughs walked the Reverend Dr Martin Luther King, Jr., there he walked on his path to the Baptist Church.

It was in Bloomsbury that he delivered his sermon, the first on British soil. That walk he walked in the cool of October 1961. Desecrate these trees and you desecrate the walk to his inspirational sermon. Remember, but seven years later, he was assassinated.

In seven years, a passing moment, and see all that he achieved. Seven seasons of bloom, seven seasons of autumn leaves, seven seasons of summer blaze, and seven seasons of dreams.

Beneath these same boughs walked the Bloomsbury Set. A collection of the brightest minds, of writers, philosophers, economists and artists. Men from Cambridge, women from Kings College: Virgina Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, EM Forester, Vanessa Bell and Lytton Strachey. 

Here, they painted circles, lived in squares, and loved in triangles

In the Bloomsbury air, softened by the Plane trees' exhalation, and from those lungs a realisation permeated, the arts be revered, the creativity of Bloomsbury held in the highest, and from there, the warmth, compassion emanated - be it written, painted or spoken.

To them, we owe a celebration of their influence on Literature, Aesthetics, Criticism and Economics.

They changed minds and attitudes. They made a radical difference towards Feminism, Pacifism, and Sexuality.

These thirteen trees need to be held in memory of these individuals.

These creative men and women, who each individually, and collectively, walked, talked, and breathed beneath their boughs.

Here, they brushed the silvered trunks with an open palm; they walked upon the undulating form, a path given by roots nourished with our same Bloomsbury soil. 

These are the trees that then take acrid combustible fumes and convert to our cleansing oxygen.

It is their exhale that we now inhale.

Let their place be preserved and their continued growth be one of jubilation.

No chainsaws.

No desecration of these memories, no desecration to the values of the individuals that prescribed a better way of living and loving.

Let them stand.

The fate of the trees will be decided at the High Courts of Justice, Monahan v. Camden on 10th September 2024.