A North London leftist in Portland reads about Harry and Meghan’s Nottingham visit and argues the most radical line in the piece is about the gold stick
Saturday, 24 October 2026. Portland. A church basement in Northeast, sorting donated tins for a food pantry, sticky fingers, 11.00am.
The Most Radical Paragraph In British Royal Coverage
Every Saturday morning I volunteer at a food pantry run out of a church basement in Northeast Portland. It is run by a retired nurse named Delphine, who is sixty-eight, wears a cardigan with more pockets than the Pentagon and has organised more mutual aid in this neighbourhood than every left-wing reading group I have ever joined put together.
This morning, between sorting tins of chickpeas, I read the report on Harry and Meghan’s return to Britain and their Nottingham charity visits. I expected to roll my eyes. I did not. The piece makes an argument I have been trying to make for years: that helping people does not require a constitutional apparatus, several thousand servants, a palace or an elderly gentleman carrying a gold stick. It notes that the charities in Nottingham appeared perfectly able to function before, during and after the visit. That is the most radical paragraph I have read in royal coverage, and I have read a great deal of royal coverage, mostly to be annoyed by it.
The Gold Stick As A Theory Of Value
The piece spends a joyous paragraph on the Gold Stick, a ceremonial post whose job is to carry a stick that is gold, with a silver one as backup. It imagines the makers of ceremonial gold sticks diversifying into walking canes and curtain rods. As an economist, I would like to point out that the Gold Stick is a perfect example of what a certain bearded German called the fetishism of commodities. The stick has no use. It has only meaning. The meaning is: some people get to carry gold sticks, and you do not.
Delphine, when I explained this, said she had a stick too. It is a broom. She uses it to sweep the basement after we close. It has a great deal of use and no ceremonial meaning whatsoever. She says she would not trade it for a gold one. I believe her.
Charity Versus Mutual Aid
There is a distinction we make on the left between charity and mutual aid. Charity flows down, from people with more to people with less, often with a photographer present. Mutual aid flows sideways, between neighbours who know that next month the roles might be reversed. Delphine’s pantry is mutual aid. Half the volunteers were once users. One of them, a construction worker named Tomas, came in for food after an injury two years ago and now drives the van every Saturday.
The Nottingham story contains both. The visit itself is charity, with cameras. But the work the visit celebrated, the community recording studio, the food poverty group, the young people mentoring each other, sounds a lot like mutual aid. The piece’s best line, for me, is that the children got something rare in British institutional life: the undivided attention of adults who seemed interested in what they were doing. That is not royalty. That is just decency, and it is available to everybody.
The North London Angle
I grew up in Kentish Town, and my mum ran a toddler group in a community centre on Leighton Road for fifteen years. She never met a royal. Nobody ever unveiled a plaque. Every Tuesday and Thursday she put out the same plastic toys, made the same weak squash and listened to the same exhausted parents. When the council cut the centre’s funding in 2015, she ran it from our front room for a year. If you want a royal visit, I will show you my mum’s front room. There is no gold stick. There is a very old Fisher-Price garage.
What I Want The Left To Learn
I write a lot on this diary about London, life and absurdity, like in my Dear Diary entry on London, life and the persistent absurdity of everything, and I keep coming back to one thing. My side is very good at criticising royals, billionaires and celebrities who do charity for the cameras. We are less good at turning up to sort the tins. Delphine is not interested in my analysis. She is interested in whether I will be here next Saturday at nine.
So here is my left-wing take on Harry and Meghan’s return, and it may disappoint my comrades. If they shine a light on a recording studio in St Ann’s, good. If a teenager feels heard, good. If a food charity gets more donations, good. The light is not the problem. The problem is when we confuse the light with the work. The work is in the basement, it smells of cardboard, and it starts at nine.
Around noon, an older man came in who had clearly never used a food pantry before. He stood in the doorway holding his hat, embarrassed, the way people are when they have spent a lifetime being the one who helps. Delphine walked over, did not ask a single question, handed him a bag and said, the coffee is in the corner and it is terrible, help yourself. He laughed. He stayed for twenty minutes. He left with the bag and a phone number for a tenants’ lawyer. No camera. No barrier. No gold stick. Just a woman in a cardigan who knows that dignity is the first thing you hand over.
Closing Time
We served sixty-three families today. Tomas loaded the van. Delphine swept the floor with her non-ceremonial broom. I ate a slightly dented granola bar that could not be given out and felt very proud of myself for reasons I cannot fully justify. Tonight I am going out in Portland with friends to dance and argue about whether dancing is political. It is. Everything is. Especially the broom.