Old
London Syndrome
London has become in the past few years increasingly a
multicultural city. Most parts of the city are home to many people of various
cultures having absorbed several waves of immigration, the most recent being
the waves of Eastern European immigrants mainly Polish people who came with the
old European Union expansion.
Thos however has not been achieve without some cost as has
been borne out by the rapidly changing fortunes of various parts of London.
A good case of this is Bermondsey where up till about twenty
five years ago it was very difficult to survive if you came from anywhere
outside. The local people were very clannish and distinctly did not welcome
outsides to their domain.
Their resistance to incomers was legendary and there was
often a problem even for people from England who were not born behind a biscuit
factory in Bermondsey. In the mid eighties I remember visiting a pub in that
area with an Irish friend who complained
about the distinctly unwelcoming atmosphere in there. At the time a spokesman
for the local authority has visited a tenants meeting and complained about the
overtly racist tone of many of the residents complaints. This was the land of
the traditional pie and mash shop, The so called Cockney culture (They were not
born within the sound of Bow Bells) and an absolute resistance to anything or
anybody who has come from outside.
To its credit the local authority persisted in its policy of
allocating housing to other people not of this group ad would not be dissuaded.
Hat these people had to however endure was something else. Stories of threats
and excrement pushed through letter boxes were legion. Everything was seen as a
cultural attack by the majority there. Anybody from outside was distinctly
unwelcome particularly people of a different colour.
In some ways this was a last stand because today the area is
as multicultural as any other in London. In fact places that were racist haunts
at that time have completely changed and now welcome everyone. In one of the
great seismic shifts that has happened in London integration became the norm.
As the old working class culture was pushed aside and more
people moved in helped by the government at that time trying to develop the
docks and attracting private money a wave of gentrification happened. While it
did not spread everywhere the culture changed somewhat and the older people
became somewhat dispersed, many joining the flight to the suburbs and commuter
towns beyond. Bermondsey became a multicultural area just like all the rest.
Today intolerance is restricted to a few old people who
mutter about being in a minority to anybody who will listen. Chinese and Indian
restaurants are legion and the area is no longer the white Londoner preserve
that it was. People from all over the world and all over the country come to
live in Bermondsey. The old racist and xenophobic intolerance is just a memory!
