- Memories of Doreen Massey
When Doreen died in spring 2016 it was a huge shock to all of us. As the raw emotion faded into a more settled form of grief, we began to think of our own ways to remember Doreen amongst the other tributes and events held to celebrate her life. For all of us at Soundings, friendship, scholarship and politics could never be separate from our work with Doreen. Many of us have found ways to share our thoughts and pay our respects - including through the finishing of joint articles, the writing of obituaries or the commissioning of pieces in the spirit of her political views. We wanted to share that opportunity with those who have had similar relationships to Doreen and her work. In this collection of short tributes, friends, students and colleagues recall how Doreen shaped their thinking and touched their lives through her writing and her comradeship.
The swifts of Kilburn James Marriott
It has been an exhausting day. The melancholy of returning to Kilburn for a memorial dinner three months after Doreen's death has made me listless. The constant assault from the media in the run up to the EU Referendum next week has drained me. Then the sudden news of the murder of Jo Cox smashes the foundations of my resolve. The conversation around the table of those gathered to remember their dear friend lifts me a little and, in need of a rare smoke, I step out of [End Page 114] the restaurant with a couple of others. It is a quiet street and above the hum of the city I can hear the Swifts screaming. Looking up I see packs of them chasing each other in the warm night air. I'm smiling at last, for Doreen is in the Swifts and the Swifts are in Doreen.
A Swift is like a black space in the sky. A sickle-shaped hole careering over the rooftops, out away beyond the chimney pots towards the fields and the woods. A Swift is completely of the air. When the young leave the nest they plunge into their element so joyfully that they do not touch ground for two years. For twenty-two months they remain on the wing, flying from England to Zimbabwe twice before they land. This is their route of migration, our summer in the skies above Kilburn, our winter feeding over Lake Kariba. Swifts have lived in this dance since the ice sheets withdrew from these islands.
Doreen loved the Swifts of Kilburn. She would watch for their arrival as others watch for Cuckoos or Daffodils. Her fighting spirit was angered by the possibility that changes to the design in the building stock would destroy nesting sites. She would stop in the midst of conversation to look up and comment on a passing gang of sickle birds.
That she should have loved Swifts is entirely fitting. They are birds who define their own home and defy given notions of territory and nationality. They feature in every book of 'British Birds' as British birds. But are they any more British than Zimbabwean? And what of all the countries in between? They defy the categories of centre and periphery. They scream just as loudly over the houses of the poor and palaces of the rich. And they are so free - delighting in their fierce agility as they shriek for joy. Just like Doreen. So free and her mind, so agile, so fierce.
I'm watching them in the air above the street and they lift me. They hurtle back into our skies each spring, again and again, with unquenchable energy. I think of the many victories and defeats that Doreen passed through, and none of them seem to have tied her down. By the time I met her she was in her 70s but still on the wing. She is sailing over the city, saying 'Rise up again, don't be bound to the ground. Rise and fly. Sing your joys and rage'. [End Page 115]
Football and feminism Beatrix Campbell
Doreen Massey changed my mind...