High Profile East End

I don’t know if its because the Olympics are just around the corner but the East End is everywhere at the moment!

It all started a few weeks ago with a BBC programme on the changing character of Billingsgate Market (an East End fish market). It profiled how the changing demographic and economic climate in East London had affected the market and its patrons through the eyes of real people whose lives were affected by the change. It was interesting to see how national and international phenomena (fish stocks) affected the individual.

In the newspaper I read that the Cockney sparrow is now near extinct from competition in East London, and the number of real Cockneys (born within the sound of Bow Bells) has also declined severely because noise pollution in the city means the sound can barely be heard beyond Shoreditch Market (read it here). If the East End were a UNESCO site they might be about to lose their funding for failing to meet its cultural definitions! I guess this means we have to look for new definitions of an ‘East Ender’ based on our modern spatial markers, like within sight of the Gherkin, something increasingly difficult to do when we are less spatially distinct. Although I did hear someone say on the Tube the other day that ‘London is still a number of separate towns’; the districts of the City are still indeed distinct but summing them up into one statement of their cultural identity would prove difficult. The districts of London continue to fascinate me.

I have also read a book about the East End recently called, ‘The Sugar Girls’. It was about a group of girls who all worked at the Tate and Lyle factory in Plaistow, not so far from Billingsgate. The book was based on a memory project carried out by the authors, Barrett and Calvi, in Old People’s homes and Community centres, noting down ladies’ stories. It was interesting to see the patterns that pervaded throughout the book for the women of the factories relating to independence, careers, love and friendship . Whilst recognising that things had changed with technological advances and immigration to the area the women retained a great fondness for their area and the friends they had made. The book made me keenly aware of the CSR function that factories used to have towards their own workers; taking them on holidays to the seaside and ensuring women under intense pressure took paid leave to recuperate. The authors also did humour really well in their storytelling.

Somewhat tenuously I wanted to add my trip to see Sweeney Todd into this blogpost. The story of The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is expertly told at the Adelphi Theatre; Michael Ball and Imelda Staunton were good but my major support goes to Gillian Kirkpatrick who played a mad woman excellently. Although theoretically Fleet Street is w1 it still just about meets East London and the portrayal of London culture in the musical was really interesting, Mr Pirelli perhaps being the Victorian East London archetype, and provoked much internet searching as to what a ‘Beadle’ was. Even the bustle of the streets as portrayed in the musical is reminiscent of much of London life, all that shouting and a fair deal of coarseness, street food provided because there is no time to sit down, running because there is no time to walk and lots of smoke; this came into its own in the smog last week, I finally understand why it is called the ‘Big Smoke’.