A History of Hampstead by Simon Shawarma - Episode 1: "Serve and Obey"

The Trash is proud to host our Historical correspondent, Simon Shawarma, in his new three-part series on the long and eventful history of Hampstead's past.

Established in 1898, the Haberdasher Empire quickly found its roots in Hampstead, with Tsar Aske I laying in-roads to the town of Cricklewoodgrad. However, Tsar Aske I was not to hold the Hampstead throne for long, and died soon after, leaving his kingdom to a long line of successors. It was Abdi XXIII who decided to establish a democratic system in the Haberdasher Empire, whilst still retaining the monarchy, which came to be known as the School Duma, but was largely criticised by the Haberdash public (or 'peasants', so called after a dignitary mispronounced "They're pleasant") as being a thinly-veiled autocracy (so unlike the modern Hampstead). This event was the beginning of the unravelling of the Haberdasher Empire.

Far from the glory days of the old empire, the reign of the last of the great Haberdashian dynasty of Abdinovs was seen as particularly malevolent, and under Abdi the Umpteenth of Abdinov's rule, the people of the Haberdashers were particularly impoverished. To add to this, when the local Sainsbury's joined the opposing side of the Great Mandem War, the internal cookie market of the Empire collapsed.

In abject poverty, the people of the empire turned to violent revolution, against their Tsars. After mass demonstration, the Tsar introduced a democratic parliamentarian system for the empire, however, this system was found to be very ineffective, unrepresentative, and rigged (sound familiar?). Soon the monarchy collapsed.

Out of the ashes of Tsar Abdi the Umpteenth rose several new futures for the school. On one hand, the Bolshevikss promised social democracy and moderate policies, but the much more radical left took the stage, with the Bolsheviks usurping control in the October Revolution, winning the Civil War against forces that wanted to reinstate the Tsar and anarchist ones, influenced by the anarchist teachings of Bakuninnan, and led in part by Petr Kropotkinnan.

Led by a bald man, generally liked by lots of people (sound familiar?), the Cricklewood Comprehensive Cess Pool, or CCCP, was established. However, not all was well. Following an attempted assassination, at the hands of those who wanted to put an end to the shrinking of the jellies, the bald man died of a stroke, leaving his vast empire to the hands of his two successors, the "pragmatist", and the "idealist".

It was a political battle fraught with losses, but after many years of the Idealist, Dame Trotsky Imison, being seen as the natural leader of the communist state, the pragmatist, Josef Sztalinkowski, took power. To many peasants (now lawfully know as Comrade Year 7's) this was the darkest chapter in the history of the CCCP. Soon many of Sztalinkowski's plans were enacted, leading to various 5-Year-Trends, such as one promoting agricultural productivity in the Ecology area, as well as what came to be known as The Great Purge, in which over 1.5 million Year 7's were lost to the IEU.

Before long the Second Mandem War had broken out, plunging the entirety of Norf Weezie into battle once more. CCCP forces, under the command of Sztalinkowski, took great swathes of "the endz", such as the siege of the territory which came to be renamed under the communist regime as 'Red pitch'. Come the end of the war the CCCP empire stretched from Back Cagegrad to what came to be known as the Eastern Block, to the communist mandate of East Quad. By 1961, the Wooden Curtain had fallen over Hampstead.

Don't forget to read the next instalment of Simon Shawarma's History of Hampstead - Episode 2: Quadrophenia - which will be available very soon.