Editor's note: ...exposé of urban inequality, portraying a city where suffering is etched into every face and reinforced by what he calls "mind-forged manacles", the internalized limits imposed by power and social hierarchy. Blake connects the misery of exploited children, soldiers sacrificed to political ambition, and women driven into prostitution to the institutions that govern society, sharply implicating both Church and Crown. His image of blood (Blake wore a red bonnet while wondering the streets of London) running down "palace-walls" is a pointed accusation that royal authority (power is pathological) rests on the suffering of ordinary people. More than two centuries later, Blake’s poem still resonates as a critique of how entrenched power can normalize injustice and make it seem inevitable. London was a "nightmare city" of the rich and the poor just as in some respects London is returning to today. The concept of "Charter" means we have to be given permission to be on certain streets, we have to be there by "charter." All these social horrors are allowed by "charters" from Blake's poem
London. Chartered CCTV cameras. Chartered surveillance systems. Chartered access.
_________
London
I wandered through each
chartered street,
Near where the chartered Thames does flow,
A mark in every face I meet,
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.