However, there was still the establishment vision that the Docklands would become a second City, and eventually the site that finance and banking would flock to, even though this was failing to happen.
Covering the story of the apparent failure of the Docklands to ‘take off’, the Financial Times of 31 July 1978 suggested that the main reason why the area had degenerated into dereliction rather than rising in phoenix-like glory when the ‘City would move east’ had been the ill-thought-out policies of successive governments which had, in practical terms such as subsidy and development of infrastructure, forced firms and corporations to choose other places to site their businesses. This was written two years after the original planning report had first put forward the vision of the Docklands being the greatest opportunity for the reconstruction of London since the Great Fire of 1666, an urban development site, stretching east from the City on both sides of the river, totalling eight and a half square miles.
The government was already promising considerable investment in the area, but the fears, on all sides, remained. Where were the jobs and when would good, affordable housing schemes be created for the dispossessed locals?
By 1979, over ten years since the first dock closure, much of the area was derelict and had become, in fact, Europe’s largest area of urban desolation. In February the East London Advertiser was reporting the fears of the House of Commons Expenditure Committee that locals would not be among those who benefited from the eventual Docklands developments, as their interests were being ignored in favour of a concern with profit.
The next major blow for the local community came when the government assumed the power to impose Urban Develop Corporations wherever it saw fit. The London Docklands Development Corporation (LDDC) was subsequently created in 1981.
These corporations had the power to circumvent local government controls over housing and planning, including the right of compulsory purchase. Urban Development Corporations could, effectively, become sole land-owners in an area – not a very comforting thought for locals, when they discovered the specific function of the corporations was to sell or lease such land as it considered ‘expedient’ for the purpose of development.
No one was disagreeing that something had to be done, but the question still remained, for whose benefit were these actions being taken? When the Dockland’s Enterprise Zone, with a fixed life often years, was opened on the Isle of Dogs in May 1982 by the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Geoffrey Howe, releasing thousands of red, white and blue balloons in celebration, there were many protest groups at the ceremony. One, the Campaign to Restore Democracy in Docklands, was against the establishment of the Enterprise Zone, believing that it denied local people a say in what went on in their own neighbourhood and that the LDDC was able to operate without any accountability; while another group, from the new Billingsgate fish market in the Docklands, was protesting at being left out of the Enterprise Zone and so being excluded from the business benefits.
In the Hackney Gazette of 28 May 1982, Geoffrey Howe claimed that the Enterprise Zone was to be a ‘test area’ that would show how a ‘return to free-market principles’ would bring prosperity and jobs to the area, and that private initiative would prove to be the new heart of the local economy, and would thus play an important role in the LDDC’s strategy for regeneration of the whole Docklands area.
There were local hopes, at one time, that the existence of the Enterprise Zone would weaken the arguments for the necessity of an Urban Development Corporation and that more control would be retained by the local authority, but these hopes, like many others, were not fulfilled.
As with the Enterprise Zone, there was persistent ambivalence regarding the value of other initiatives being implemented in the name of regeneration. In 1984, for instance, the City of London Post was comparing the area to Venice, while Connie Hunt, the secretary of the Newham Docklands Forum, in a JDAG press release, was saying that, after compulsory purchase orders had been served by the LDDC on 1,000 acres, it was time to take the gloves off and no longer listen to the ‘soft soap’, because the people were ‘really against them now’ and wanted their homes back. And the Docklands Community Poster Project, with money from the local authority and the GLC, placed massive photomontages on billboards to express the fear that the Docklands would be taken away from the community altogether and handed over to big business, big money and big buildings.
After generations of supplying their labour and, in the not so distant past, giving their health to making a success of the riverside economy which had contributed so much towards making the City the financial world power it is today, and after having carried on and survived, in varyingly fair shape, the ravages of the Blitz, there was little wonder that East Enders from the dockside areas should be angry, suspicious and resentful.
Community and trade union opposition continued. Meetings were held, pamphlets printed, industrial action taken. With the PLA’s decision to scrap the upstream docks – the West India and Millwall Group in the Isle of Dogs and the Royals Group in Newham – it meant, according to the Action Committee on Jobs, that east London would lose an immediate 4,000 jobs and many tens more thousands throughout the community as a direct result of the closures. In an area already suffering from high unemployment, this would be a disaster. Instead of closure, the call from the community was for modernization that would not see government spending money to destroy their livelihoods, but would instead save taxpayers’ money and create new employment opportunities. But the PLA claimed that this was not a viable option, even though there was a strong argument that investment in a rail-served heavy lift berth for specialized cargo for the new types of ship, along with upgraded servicing, would save this area in the heart of London’s East End. But this was not to be.
From the mid-1980s, land prices began to rise and private capital began to be attracted. By 1987, a new airport specifically aimed at the business market had been opened. Offices, shops, restaurants and other leisure facilities began to attract home-buyers who could afford houses and flats that were not even a possibility for most locals, many of whom had been displaced – from both homes and jobs – for the redevelopment of the area. And much of the postmodern-inspired buildings of the Docklands were not intended for the existing community anyway.
There was a ‘joke’ around at the time that went something like this:
Tower Hamlets was so poor it couldn’t even afford social workers to tell homeless families it had nowhere to house them. But with the coming of Docklands the council had lots of money. Unfortunately, all the land had been given away to developers. Still, it could now afford plenty of social workers to tell the homeless people there were no homes for them.
But the mini-boom was short-lived. When the stock market crashed, in October 1987, the newly lively Docklands property market slumped once more.
The roller-coaster of Docklands history, however, continued: following the general election in 1987, there was a change in the relationship between the LDDC and the local authorities, who decided to try cooperating more with the Corporation and to negotiate funding community programmes. This small sign of hope was also dashed when, in 1990, the LDDC made its first loss and the new funding strategy was one of the first to suffer.
The LDDC’s problems had begun with a hike in mortgage rates and the City’s continuing reluctance to move into the Docklands, and were then followed by so-called Black Monday and the subsequent recession. But, as is the way with high finance, optimism returned to the markets and, at last, businesses began moving into the Docklands.
Then, in February 1996, there was the tragic bombing at South Quay, when two people were killed and many more injured. Antagonism became very public after this terrible event, when local residents – the remaining members of the traditional riverside community – claimed that their rehousing needs following the devastation were being ignored while big business was being pandered to. This argument was still having to be put forward in the summer of 1998. A
television crew, interviewing residents of one of the damaged blocks for a local news programme, found the same complaint: big business was the priority. And those who had been rehoused had not been put together; their close-knit community had received the final blow of dispersal.
The housing pressures in east London, exacerbated by the high cost of luxury developments, rising levels of unemployment and companies’ reluctance to employ locals, have been described as ‘growth accompanied by increasing inequality’.
In 1998, with the collapse of the so-called tiger economies and, despite the strength of the City and the buoyant pound, the threat of yet another recession j ust around the corner, many of the ‘investment’ properties bought in the Docklands over the past five years have been put back up for sale. That said, those with glorious river views and secure parking – many incomers never do feel quite safe in the area, according to the conspiratorial whisper of one local estate agent – are apparently still being snapped up if the sold notices are anything to go by.
An area without an established community needs to have purchasers who can afford to live there almost on a whim – because it’s close to where they work or because the views are great – not because they want to live close to their extended family.
It has become increasingly accepted that the Docklands has a future all right, but not one which will benefit many of the people who were living there before the closure of the old docks.
Across the river, the situation is similar. The Hays Galleria has replaced the old Hay’s Wharf, once a valuable source of work for local people, and is now a luxury shopping complex for tourists, popular as a place to browse after they’ve visited the London Dungeon.
Bibliography, Further Reading and Suggested Sources
All the books are published in London unless stated otherwise.
Banton, M. P., The Coloured Quarter (1953)
Barnardo, Thomas, Three Tracts (1888)
Barnett, H. O., Canon Barnett: His Life, Works and Friends (2 vols., 1918)
Beer, Reg, ‘Matchgirls’ Strike, 1888: The Struggle against Sweated Labour in London’s East End’ (National Museum of Labour History pamphlet, 1971)
Beer, R., and Pickard, C. A., ‘Eighty Years on Bow Common’ (pamphlet, no date)
Bermant, Chaim, Point of Arrival (1975)
Besant, A., Annie Besant: An Autobiography (1893)
Binder, Pearl, The Pearlies (1975)
Bishop, E., Blood and Fire (1964)
Black, Graham, ‘The Archaeology of Tower Hamlets’ (Inner London Archaeological Unit, no date)
Booth, Charles, Life and Labour of the London Poor (1892–7)
Booth, William, In Darkest England (1890)
Branson, Noreen, Poplarism, 1919–1925 (1979)
Briggs, Asa, and Macartney, Anne, Toynbee Hall: The First Hundred Years (1984)
Brooks, Peter F., Pearly Kings and Queens (1974)
The Campaign to Restore Democracy in Docklands, ‘Heseltine’s Docklands: The First 6 Months (Joint Docklands Action Group, May 1982)
Chadwick, Edwin, Report on the Sanitary Conditions of the Labouring Population (1842)
Choo, Ng Kwee, The Chinese in London (1968)
Clayton, P. B., and Leftwich, B. R., The Pageant of Tower Hill (1933)
Clout, Hugh, ed., The Times London History Atlas (1994)
Coates, T. F. G., The Prophet of the Poor (1905)
Cunningham, Hugh, ‘The Metropolitan Fairs’, in A. P. Donajgrodzki (ed.), Social Control in Nineteenth-century Britain (1977)
Department of the Environment, ‘The Proposed London Docklands Development Corporation’ (memorandum, 1980)
East London Employment Study Group, ‘The East London File’ (GLC pamphlet, 1982)
Eddy, J. P., The Mystery of Peter the Painter (1946)
Farrell, Jerome, ‘The German Community in Nineteenth-century East London’ (Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archive, May 1990)
Fishman, W. J., East End Jewish Radicals (1975)
Fishman, William J., with Nicholas Breach, The Streets of East London (1987)
Gartner, L. P., The Jewish Immigrant in England, 1870–1914 (1960)
Gilbey, Alun, Up the Docks (1974)
Goodman, Jonathan, The Christmas Murders (1985)
Historians’ Group of the Communist Party, The Poplar Story, 1921 (1953)
Hitchman, Janet, They Carried the Sword (1966)
Hobsbawm, Eric, The Age of Revolution (1996)
Holme, Anthea, Housing and Young Families in East London: Report of the Institute of Community Studies (1985)
Holmes, Colin, ed., Immigrants and Minorities in British Society (1978)
Holroyd, J. E., The Gaslight Murders (1960)
House of Commons Expenditure Committee, Environment Subcommittee, Minutes of Evidence, session 1977–8, ‘Redevelopment of Docklands’. Huddleston, Trevor, Naught for Your Comfort (1956)
Jackson, John A., ‘The Irish in East London’, East London Papers, vol. 6, no. 2, December 1963
Keating, P. J., Working-class Stories of the 1890s (1971)
Kray, Charles, Me and My Brothers (1976)
Latham, Robert, ed., The Shorter Pepys (1993)
Law, John, (pseudonym of Margaret Harkness), In Darkest London (1889)
— Out of Work (1888)
Lawton, John, 1963. Five Hundred Days: History as Melodrama (1992)
Lees, Lynn Hollen, Exiles of Erin: Irish Migrants in Victorian London (1979)
Leff, Vera, and Blunden, G. H., The Story of Tower Hamlets (1967)
London, Jack, The People of the Abyss (1903)
Lovell, John, ‘The Irish and the London Docker’, Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History (1977)
McDonnell, Kevin, Medieval London Suburbs (1978)
Mackay, J. H., The Anarchists (Boston, 1891)
Massey, Doreen, ‘Docklands: A Microcosm of Broader Social Economic Trends’ (The Docklands Forum, April 1991)
Mayhew, Henry, London Labour and the London Poor (1851–62)
Merrifield, Ralph, ‘Roman’, in The Archaeology of the London Area: Current Knowledge and Problems (Special Paper No. 1, London and Middlesex Archaeological Society, 1976)
Morrison, A., Tales of Mean Streets (1894)
Museum of London, ‘Summaries of Excavations Carried out in Tower Hamlets since 1985’ (no date)
Nott-Bower, Sir William, Fifty-two Years a Policeman (1926)
O’Neill, Gilda, Pull No More Bines: An Oral History of East London Hoppickers (1990)
Palmer, Alan, The East End (1989)
Pankhurst, Sylvia, The Suffragette Movement (1912)
Pimlott, J. A. R., Toynbee Hall: Fifty Years of Social Progress (1935)
Preston, William, The Bitter Cry of Outcast London (1883)
Reaney, G. S., article in Arnold White, The Destitute Alien in Great Britain (1892)
Rose, Millicent, The East End of London (1951)
Rumbelow, D., The Houndsditch Murders and the Siege of Sidney Street (1973)
Samuel, Raphael, East End Underworld, 1887–1947 (1981)
Schama, Simon, Landscape and Memory (1996)
Shadwell, Arthur, ‘The German Colony in London’, National Review (26 February 1896)
Sheldon, Harvey, ‘Excavations at Parnell Road and Appian Road, Old Ford, E3’, reprinted from Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society, vol. 23, part 2 (1972)
Sheridan, Michael, ‘Rowton Houses, 1892–1954’ (Rowton Houses Ltd, 1956)
Stedman-Jones, Gareth, Outcast London: A Study in the Relationship between Classes in Victorian Society (1992)
Stow, John, A Survey of London, reprinted from the text of 1603, with introduction and notes by Charles Lethbridge Kingsford (1908, reprinted by Oxford University Press, 1971)
Taylor, Rosemary, Blackwall, The Brunswick and Whitebait Dinners (1991)
Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class (1979)
Thorne, G., The Great Acceptance: The Life
Story of F. N. Charrington (1912)
Thorne, W., My Life’s Battles (1926)
Tillett, B., A Brief History of the Dockers’ Union (1910)
— Memoirs and Reflections (1931)
Wensley, F. B., Detective Days (1931)
Williams, A. E., Barnardo of Stepney (1945)
Zangwill, Israel, Children of the Ghetto (1892)
The following newspapers and journals were of particular interest: Bethnal Green News, City of London Post, Co-partnership Herald of the Commercial Gas Company, Daily Graphic, Daily News, Daily Telegraph, East End Life, East End News, East London Advertiser, East London Observer, Evening News, Evening Standard, Financial Times, Gentleman’s Magazine, Guardian, Illustrated Police News, Independent on Sunday, Jewish Chronicle, The Link, Local Municipal Review, London Argus, Morning Star, Municipal Journal, New Statesman, Observer, Pall Mall Gazette, Punch, Reynolds News, The Sphere, The Star (London evening paper, now defunct), Tailor and Cutter, The Times, Women’s Dreadnought.
As to archives, exhibitions, public records, other printed materials, general information, suggestions and referrals to further resources and agencies, the following are useful, though some records can initially be difficult to locate as the notion of what constitutes the East End is constantly changing: Bishopsgate Library, British Library, Commission for Racial Equality, Corporation of London Records Office, Guildhall Library, London Metropolitan Archives, London Museum of Jewish Life, London Research Centre, Museum of London, Newham Local Studies Library, Newspaper Library, Public Record Office, Ragged School Museum, Tower Hamlets Local History Library.
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