ABSTRACT
The Umbrella Man was not a local resident but was there to express his support for the occupation and for local residents opposing the development. He was dressed in shorts, a white T-shirt covered with campaign badges, and a Union Jack hat. The Umbrella Man’s practice sits awkwardly at the boundary between “cultural” and “political” production, which it contests. The Umbrella Man himself was a committed trade unionist, until ill health forced him to retire from work prematurely at 48 in the mid-1980s. The Umbrella Man’s career as an activist is interesting therefore because it connects the two periods of trade union activism and decline; its background is precisely the fragmentation of formal working-class solidarity predicted as early as the 1970s. The Umbrella Man’s actions are effectively political, even if he has no formal links with institutional politics. One key to understanding the Umbrella Man’s practice is to see the constraints under which he works.
