The fight to save the East End

THE EAST END of London was once a smelly, dirty and noisy place. Large families were squashed into cramped houses, sanitation was poor and cholera was rife. Living conditions were exacerbated by housing built next to polluting industry. Many lived in poverty.
This was Jack the Ripper territory; an area with rowdy pubs, crime and loads of prostitutes. It was quite simply an unpleasant place to live.

Now parts of the East End are rejuvenated; slums that weren’t destroyed in World War Two have been pulled down and some neighbourhoods have become quite trendy. One end is a stone’s throw from the city of London so house prices have shot up.
It’s still a noisy place. But rather than the sound of industry you hear the middle classes enjoying themselves in fashionable bars, restaurants and cafes.
The wonderful Victorian architecture of the old Spitalfields market remains but the wholesalers have moved out; they’ve moved to a new facility further out to the east of London. Today the high canopies keep diners at chains like La Tasca, Giraffe and Las Iguanas dry.

Nearby Brick Lane was once the centre of the rag trade. Now its home to more than 60 curry houses, most fully geared to Westerners. The street, with the highest concentration of such establishments in the country, has become some what of a tourist attraction.
For some the transformations, and the influx of the middle classes, call for celebrations. After all, here many neighbourhoods were rundown in the 1960s and 1970s. Now, in the streets nearest the city of London, live wealthy sorts in their stylish loft apartments.
But at the same time the modernisation is a threat to our cultural heritage in Britain. Some feel that the East End is losing (or has lost) its identity as London’s early working class suburb.
It was in the streets to the east of the square mile that dirty industry like tanneries was located, away from the commerce. Nearby new docks developed as the central wharfs became jammed. And as trade grew working class communities expanded. Over time the area became very densely populated and living conditions worsened.

Communties to the east of the Tower of London grew very quickly in the 1600 and 1700s (until the 1550s urban London extended little beyond the Tower).

Parts of the old East End tell the story of immigrant London. Many migrants have arrived here and settled, before being replaced by other groups. Buildings that illustrate and symbolise this history must be retained.

In the late 1600s it was the Protestant Huguenot refugees fleeing persecution in Catholic France. Many made their fortunes in the rag trade. They spent their earnings building lovely Georgian terraces. The properties, near Spitalfields market, fetch millions of pounds as they are so close to the city.

But it wasn’t that long ago that these buildings were threatened by the bulldozer. Action groups were set up in the 1970s to stop the developers moving into destroying perfectly good homes in Spitalfields.

Over time the Huguenots became assimilated into the community. Then in the late 1800s an influx of Jews fleeing persecution in Europe arrived in the East End. A thriving Jewish community with synagogues, shops, schools and places of entertainment sprung up.

This was frontline London, an area that the authorities often felt they had little control over. Stalin is said to have visited and you can still trace the spots were radical protests formed.

By the 1970s the Bengalis, that had fled their homeland after India was divided into two, dominated in the East End. The make up of shops changed and bigger mosques were needed. In 1974 the first curry house opened on Brick Lane; today the street is filled with them.

The big influx of Bengalis came after the 1960s, but many had arrived in the 1800s as well; they often crewed boats from India to Britain. Sometimes boats were held up returning and so they were laid off. So many never returned. Whole families and friends also often came over so it was often like transporting neighbourhoods virtually intact across to the other side of the world.

The Jamme Masjid mosque dominates in Brick Lane, it is indeed one of the largest in the country. The building stands as a symbol of the social history of the East End. It started out as Protestant church in 1743, then in 1743 it became a Methodist church, in 1898 it became a synagogue and then in the 1970s it became a mosque. Who knows what it will become next.

For some the invasion by the middle classes is just another phase in the area’s long history. The site where the Jamme Masjid mosque stands can only be used as a place of worship so perhaps one day it will be a church again. Many Bengalis are already moving to other parts of London, the poorer people have been pushed onto the Tower Hamlets estate.

But for others the East End is under threat. Some conservationists resent Tower Hamlets council branding the area ‘Banglatown’ in the 1990s in a bid to emulate the commercial success of Chinatown. They say that culturally important streets like Brick Lane are being ruined by the neon lights and all the tourists.

Of course, not all of East London has developed as much as Brick Lane and Spitalfields. You can still walk down Whitechapel and feel like you’ve entered another world, for example. But the big question is how far will the trendy restaurants and loft apartments spread in years to come? Let’s fight to keep at least some of the East End untrendy.