Over the past two years Elisabeth and I became a bit deranged in our support for the British Red Cross Christmas Market at Guildhall.  We saw Christmas market competition everywhere.  If you look around City streets you too will see some cheeky red signs for a chain of Christmas convenience stores.  Their name?  Pret a Manger!

So what were the results?  Well, here’s a photo of HRH Princess Alexandra opening the event with the Rt Hon The Lord Mayor Charles Bowman:

You can see two co-Chairmen, Elisabeth and me, in the background starting to become more relieved.  Overall, how could we not be delighted with the event?  The Monday night ‘production’ was superb.  The stalls, livery and commercial, were stunning and fun.  HRH Princess Alexandra shopped as never before – over two hours.  There were some hiccups, errant and elusive stall tablecloths on Sunday come to mind.  Credit card machines worked significantly better than before, and always a few niggles.

Total income was circa £155,000, slightly behind 2015 yet remaining slightly ahead of 2013.  The Monday night had significantly higher ticket sales than ever before, showing staunch City support. A few remarks about Christmas retailing may help place the results in context.  ‘Black Friday’ (US retailers giving sharp price reductions after Thanksgiving) has plopped itself down just before the our Christmas Market over the past decade, while ‘Cyber Monday’ (another severe discount day begun a decade ago to encourage online sales) has plopped itself down on opening day.  And 2017 is the first time since 2006 that Christmas itself falls on a Monday.  This ‘Christmas on Monday’ effect is quite important as major retailers typically find sales lag by approximate three days.  Against the background of increasingly tough competition and price wars, our biennial ‘amateur’ pop-up market amazes many professionals.

What made the whole event so special for both of us was our entire City community coming together for charity and comradeship in such a convivial and generous way.  It is impossible to imagine a more wonderful way to celebrate Christmas than doing something for the common good with dear friends.  We shall always treasure that memory.  And that welcome text in full:

Your Royal Highness, My Lord Mayor, My Lords, Your Excellencies, Aldermen, Sheriffs, Masters, Fellow Liverymen, Ladies & Gentlemen.  Welcome to the Wonderful 2017 British Red Cross Christmas Market at Guildhall.  Yet again we have our traditional festive market and innovations sucha as a German Weihnachtsmarkt and a Foodiefest.

We cannot thank so many supporters enough.  We extend our sincere thanks for the long-standing royal support, and dedicated shopping, of British Red Cross Deputy President HRH Princess Alexandra.  We thank the entire Red Cross team, represented here by Lady Lamport, and project managers Laura Deacon and Kerry Thomas who led the work programme these past 24 months.

There is a very special relationship between the British Red Cross and the City of London, starting with the City’s stalwart support of emergency appeals.  The Rt Honourable the Lord Mayor Charles Bowman and Lady Mayoress Samantha Bowman are Patron and Chairman respectively of the City of London Sector of the British Red Cross.  The late Lord Mayor, Dr Andrew Parmley, and his wife Wendy, conducted several appeals to help us raise funds for these two days. 

Over the past two years Elisabeth and I became a bit deranged in our support.  We saw Christmas market competition everywhere.  If you look around City streets you too will see some cheeky red signs for a chain of Christmas convenience stores.  Their name?  Pret a Manger.

The Corporation donates this magnificent and valued venue and our Civic Team turns up in force with our Sheriffs Tim Hailes and Neil Redcliffe.  Of course, Neil and his wife Emma were the former Chairmen and handed on this Market in wonderful shape back in 2015. Our Chief Commoner, Wendy Meade, is resplendent here tonight, yesterday in mufti along with numerous members of the Civic Team, Aldermen, Commoners, and Guildhall staff.

Our wider City community includes the Pikemen & Musketeers, The Light Cavalry, Colin Sayer of Seasoned Events, Livery Companies, Ward Clubs, the City Livery Club, Guild of Freemen, and City Guides – who have supported the Market these many years.  City stalls donate 100% of their takings to the Red Cross.

As Master World Trader this year, what distinguishes this event is that the Steering Committee and Main Committee, run a genuine market, and we thank the numerous Patrons who gave their support, their time, their goods, and their cash.

We also thank the stallholders, accountants, runners, lifters, drivers, and musicians.  A wonderful addition has been the numerous Embassies participating, while celebrities such as Loyd Grossman and Cyrus Todiwala give glamour to the Foodiefest and Aleppo Supper Club.  The BBC Antiques Roadshow Team are here in force, as is artist Jeremy Houghton.

Jean-Henri Dunant witnessed 40,000 dead or wounded at the Battle of Solferino, that led to him forming the Red Cross in 1863.  Just seven years later the British Red Cross began.  The British Red Cross helps people in crisis, whoever and wherever they are, as part of a global voluntary network, responding to conflicts, natural disasters, and emergencies.  Today the British Red Cross has 32,500 volunteers and 3,500 staff disbursing a quarter of a billion pounds annually.

But none of this would be possible without support from the public and you here tonight, all of us.  Our Christmas Market helps to make a difference. May the British Red Cross flourish until we do have Peace on Earth and Goodwill Toward Men.

So join me in wishing everyone here for these two days Merry Shopping and Happy Christmas.

Thank you.

Remarks to: Worshipful Company of Mason’s Livery & The Associate Companies

Toast from the Guests by Alderman Professor Michael Mainelli, 1 November 2017, Mercers’ Hall

Master, Wardens, Aldermen, My Lord, Masters, Fellow Liverymen, Ladies & Gentlemen.  May I start by thanking the Renter Warden for his generous remarks. Peter Clark kindly honoured the World Traders at our Installation Banquet last week, and in turn I am honoured to sing for his supper tonight.

For a modern livery master at number 101, it can be daunting to address a venerable Company at number 30 that dates back to at least 1356, but certainly earlier.  Your deep history makes your future seem more certain, to the point that we modern companies can feel a bit expendable.  I happen to know a story about expendability.

A man once reproached the Canadian actor William Shatner, who played Captain Kirk in Star Trek: “On your show, you had Russians, Chinese, Africans, and many others – why did you never have a character of my nationality?”  Shatner supposedly comforted the man, replying, “My dear fellow, you must understand that Star Trek is set in the future.”

Amongst Masons, Ironmongers, Fishmongers, Costermongers, Cheesemongers, and even Fearmongers, should we be called WorldMongers or GlobeMongers?  My catchphrase this year is “Psssst.  Hey Buddy, want to buy a planet?”

The great gag writer Barry Cryer tells a marvellous story about the comedian Tommy Cooper.   When Tommy Cooper was on military service with the Horse Guards he was assigned palace sentry duty but fell asleep standing inside his sentry box.  While in the middle of this court martial-able offence, he half opened one eye to see that his Commanding Officer and the Regimental Sergeant Major were fast approaching to discipline him.  Closing his eye again he looked for a single, killing word that might free him from this predicament.  He shook himself, drew to his full height, opened both eyes and then said the one word that could save him –  “AMEN.”

If I had to describe the Masons with one word, what might it be?  Actually that word might well be ‘fellowship’.

There is no better name for a Master Mason than ‘Peter’, “on this rock…”  Your Master has a challenging year, some of which has required personal forebearance, and our thoughts are with him and his family.  He has focused on ‘fellowship’ to great success from what I’ve heard from his fellow Masons.  Success has led to a few nice remarks along the lines that “that fellow who knows it all is especially annoying to those of us who think we do.”

I should like to spend a moment on the wider fellowship amongst all our livery companies.

The livery represents simultaneously both Continuity & Change.  Our traditions date back at least some 1,500 years to the Saxon guilds, yet we would be close to unrecognisable to our forebears.  We constantly change, striving to make ourselves relevant to the City of London, to our nation, and to the world.

They say there’s a lot to be said for the fellow who doesn’t say it himself.  Again, your Master is an expert on Continuity & Change.  He is an Old Mercer, that is one of the last of the students at the Mercers’ School that was at Barnard’s Inn by Holborn.  For those who don’t know, the Mercers’ School was an independent school in the City of London with a history going back at least to 1542, and perhaps much further. It was operated by the generous owners of this glorious hall, the Worshipful Company of Mercers and was closed in 1959.  The Old Mercers Club itself intends to wind down gracefully in 2020 due to old age.  I had the honour, as a former Mercers’ School Memorial Professor of Commerce at Gresham College of being made an honorary Old Mercer some dozen years ago.  The Old Mercers received, and they gave.  Continuity & Change.

In a Brexit world, with an isolationist America First, inequality, climate change, a planet almost three times as crowded as when the Master was born, our liveries have to change, we have to remain relevant.  We have been here before.  There were enormous questions in the Victorian era about the seemingly privileged role of the livery.  But privileges should be tools for good.  I might point to an enduring benefit of those questions.  In response in 1878, the City of London Corporation and 16 Livery Companies created the national system of technical education and established The City and Guilds of London Institute, where I happen to sit on Council.

A Mason by name, the US quipster Mason Cooley once said, “The question you’re not supposed to ask is the important one.”   Today, questions about the livery, our traditions, our charitable status, and our governance are rising.  There are good answers to these questions, but we need to articulate them.  There are also better answers to these questions, and we need to create them. 

The Mercers, led by their Master and Clerk, have helped to incubate a new Pan-Livery initiative mimicking that of 140 years ago.  There are a number of work strands looking at the three traditional livery roles, commerce, community, and charity with particular attention to jobs, diversity, and education.  All the more necessary with social, technical, economic, and political change accelerating all around us.  In a working City of London of 450,000 people, with 18,000 businesses, 16,000 of them SMEs dear to the Master’s heart, we nearly 45,000 liverymen are the cogs that keep things functioning well together.  It’s not just the nearly hundred million pounds of charity giving each year, rather it’s the deep volunteer commitment to community and civic duty.  An example to a nation that needs to energise its local communities to face global challenges, not leaving everything to central government.

I commend the Pan-Livery initiative to you with a stick and a carrot.  The stick is that we will face increasing questions.  The carrot is that by working in fellowship together we, our City, and our nation are stronger, more resilient, and more effective.  Continuity & Change.

You Masons know better than any of us how to strengthen foundations and fellowship.  And thus it is, Master, from all your guests tonight – we celebrate your theme this year, “fellowship”.

Guests and Masons, it gives me great pleasure to ask you to rise and drink a toast of fellowship coupled with the name of the Master, Peter Clark, “to the Worshipful Company of Masons, root and branch, may it flourish forever … and to Peter Clark.”