Saturday 24 June 2017

It Was The Property Developers Wot Dunnit!

Ed Vulliamy weeps for the 'community' he knew...
A contemporary free glossy magazine called The Hill describes the neighbourhood of my youth to its wealthy readers as “a no-go area for sure”. That’s not how I remember things; I think Notting Hill was a special place to grow up. It had its well established white working class, many of whom lived in poverty described by the politician Alan Johnson in his memoir. It had been largely built by the Irish, who had begun arriving in the mid-19th century and continued to do so. It was settled in the 1940s by refugees from General Franco’s uprising against the Spanish republic, and during the 50s by those arriving from the West Indies on boats such as the Windrush, shipped by then minister of labour, Enoch Powell, to provide a cheap workforce.
 I think there's a clue there. Can anyone see what it is?
My parents came from the latest influx, mostly white, of jazz-generation bohemians, into this minestrone population. Ironically, Ladbroke Grove was one of the few affordable areas in London for mum and dad – post-second world war and post art-school. In those days, people really did leave doors unlocked. Mothers used to swap children around between one another when they needed to work.
There's a great difference between that influx of mass immigration, and the current one. Maybe that's the reason?
Then came the people rightly called “property speculators” – now euphemistically described as “developers” – and their estate agents.
Ah. My mistake.
I joined forlorn attempts to rescue our local pubs – those indoor urban village greens where lifelong friendships and decisions were made, bets lost and sweethearts won, pints pulled, chasers downed, kisses locked and punches thrown. Tavern after tavern turned into luxury dwellings or snazzy bistros.
And the smoking ban, plus the increase in non-alcohol drinking population,  had nothing to do with that, right?
With the changes, lines have been drawn. The threads of that complex, convivial weave in which I grew up have been torn out and re-sewn, managed into a tapestry of brutal lines, on one side of which lies today’s road whence mum and I beheld the now skeletal Grenfell Tower.
A society can bear mass immigration, and we once did. But it depends who immigrates, and why they do so.

7 comments:

Sobers said...

Remind me again who destroyed more traditional housing in favour of concrete high rise monstrosities? Why, that would be the State, throughout the 60s and 70s.

staybryte said...

Sobers, there was a TV programme on a couple of years back focusing on the history of individual streets in London. The one about Deptford was an eye opener. The utter destruction of a functioning community by corrupt Labour councils in cahoots with developers. Left me absolutely raging. Gone, all gone, as Nineveh and Tyre.

Library-Gryffon said...

They do it in the States too. Just read up on the New London Development Corporation, a mess which ended up with a Supreme Court case. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London is a pretty good rundown of it. And after forcing people off their land, out of their homes, razing almost everything to the ground in the name of "urban development" and improved economics for the town (better quality housing and business pay more in tax), after well over a decade it's still mostly an eyesore empty lot.

The only good to come out of it was that most states now specifically prohibit using "eminent domain" to take property from one private person so as give it to another solely in the name of "economic development".

Anonymous said...

You are confusing London with what was once Britain.. Even on London the demography was largely unchanged.
As fr 'Windrush' and cheap labour! How would it be cheap with trade unions full of controlling muscle.

Pcar said...

@staybryte

BBC The Secret History of Our Streets - S01E01 Deptford

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=The+Secret+History+of+Our+Streets

staybryte said...

@Pcar

Many thanks.

JuliaM said...

"Remind me again who destroyed more traditional housing in favour of concrete high rise monstrosities?"

Hmmm, let me think.... The people who knew they'd never have to live in them?

"The utter destruction of a functioning community by corrupt Labour councils in cahoots with developers."

The ones that are always, always voted back in..?

"The only good to come out of it was that most states now specifically prohibit using "eminent domain" to take property from one private person so as give it to another solely in the name of "economic development"."

We should have had that here. HS2 would be a mad pipe dream, not an almost-reality.