Hacker Cinema
Secret City
2012 · Film · documentary · 72 min
Directed by Michael Chanan
London and the City of London are not the same place. London is a metropolis of 8 million people. The City of London is the famous square mile in the middle, with about 7,000 residents but many more businesses. A Corporation older than Parliament, the City of London has played a key historical role in protecting and promoting the interests of finance capital. Secret City investigates the power wielded by the Corporation of London over British economic policy, through which it sustains London's prime position at the hub of global finance capital - not least through control of the majority of the world's tax havens.
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The City is fascinating in the UK context, it really is more like a different country. It's strangely archaic being more of the 1200s than the 21st century. It can alter its own constitution, still permits business voting long abolished in the rest of the UK, and avoided much of the modernisation and reform elsewhere.
There's now only about 10,000 residents - most of whom are in a single estate - the Barbican. Business votes now far exceed individuals.
That doesn't touch on freemen, livery companies, and all the other archaic complexity.
Secret City covers a lot of it, but the film is as much about the financial crisis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London