Whitstable Weirdness: Is Canterbury City Council the Situationist International?

Recently Whitstable was flooded with brown envelopes purporting to come from an organisation calling itself “Canterbury City Council”.

Maybe you remember it.

It was a very strange letter. To all intents and purposes it appeared to be a consultation letter about the impending reconstruction of the play area in Cornwallis Circle. This is odd in itself as the real Canterbury City Council would not normally bother to consult the people of Whitstable about anything.

It offered the opportunity to win £50 worth of shopping vouchers (an obvious ploy) and contained a link to something it described as a “young person’s website”: www.notbored.org

It is here, on this website, that dedicated investigators will discover the true purpose behind this letter.

To quote: “NOT BORED! An anarchist, situationist inspired xeroxed magazine from New York.”

Pardon? So “Canterbury City Council” is actually based in New York. And what is a “situationist” anyway?

The website itself defines itself in these terms: “The Situationist International has its base in Copenhagen and is controlled by the security and espionage police of East Germany. Their general headquarters is secret but I think it is somewhere in London. They are not students, but what are known as situationists; they travel everywhere and exploit the discontent of students..”

So now you know. The organization calling itself “Canterbury City Council” is, in fact, the front for a highly organized group of international revolutionaries out to exploit the discontent of the toddlers and young people of Whitstable for their own nefarious ends.

Their tactics are clear. By removing the climbing frame on Westmeads rec, and then putting the play area in Cornwallis Circle out of use, these dedicated anarchists hope to arouse the people of Whitstable to such a state of frustration that they will rise up and overthrow all government and institutions in the North Kent area.

As it says on the website: “People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and positive in the refusal of constraint, have corpses in their mouths.”

You heard it here first.