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Of course, within the New World Order of east London’s ‘radical
transformation’, little pockets of cultural diversity will
remain intact, they are after all what makes London such a frightfully
exciting place to live in, and, what’s more important, they
attract tourists, and tourists, as we all know, are our future prosperity.
Just take a little peek at Spitalfields, and if you’re only
a Londoner and you don’t like it, you can simply sod off.
Well, apart from Fresh & Wild, the corporate big boys haven’t
yet moved into Church Street, but look what’s happening to
Broadway Market and be warned. It’s the same avaricious landlords
and property dealers wreaking havoc there who have got their greedy
hands on Church Street (see the fate of the Old Vortex in back issues
of N16). But fear not, the Lord Mayor, with a little bit of help
from fellow gauleiter John Prescott, has got the answer: Heritage
London. It’s safe, sanitised and utterly sterile. Take a look
out back of Kingsland Dalston Station, Gillett Square, where the
New Vortex is located. Now, for as long as I can remember, short
of taking a flight to Lagos, Gillett Square was about as close as
you could get to an African experience. Basically it was only a
scruffy car park, but day and night it positively buzzed with life:
authentic, rough and ready. Hustlers hassled, deals were dealt,
beer boozed, weed wafted and the slap of foaming car-clean-leather
gave rhythm to the constant babble of banter and laughter. With
a less than generous one million pound donation from Prescott (after
all, it’s our money he’s playing with) it’s now
become one of the Lord Mayor’s ‘Open Spaces For London’,
and don’t even think about the loss of Hackney Marshes. Just
at the moment the square looks like a bomb site and is probably
every bit as dangerous. The Africans have been relocated, but the
computer-generated drawings show fountains, trees, tables, chairs
and a sparse scattering of humans, some of them, wait for it, black,
but not too many. Gentrification is, after all, a primarily white
concern. Now you can call Gillett Square urban regeneration if you
like, but I’d call it just another piece of cultural/class
imperialism. It’s the usual story: we, the people, make it,
and then they, the profiteers, take it.
Which, of course, brings us finally to the greatest perk of all:
rising house prices, rises of up to a staggering forty-five percent,
or so the East Londoner, via Your Move estate agents, informs us.
Fantastic, that should get rid of those few blacks in the computer-generated
drawings, and what’s more it should put paid to a lot of those
wretched cloth-capped, cockle-chewing, roll-up smoking East Enders
who so lower the tone of the area. Hey, it might even mean that
the rest of us can sell up and move out to trendy Crouch End. But
who’d be left to inhabit poor old Stokey? I’ll tell
you. Last week I gave Their Profit estate agents a ring and asked
them around to do a pricing. ‘Fabulous’, they said almost
before stepping inside, ‘it would make a simply wonderful
Olympic pied-a-terre. It’s so bijou. There’s going to
be a big demand. Media types, sports buffs, you know.’ ‘But
isn’t that a bit short term?’ I asked. ‘Climate
change? Oilfields running dry?’ they responded glibly. ‘Grab
it while you can, it isn’t going to last.’ When they
left, an African parking attendant was taking a shot of their natty
black Smart estate-agent-carrier with her natty silver digital camera.
They’d got the ticket at last, and wasn’t I pleased?
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