"Ah, the East End ... Where's That Exactly?"
Email: 
Share: 
Notes From Abroad
April 10, 2008 - 11:00pm“Don’t ever go out alone. Ever.”
These were the parting words of my airport shuttle driver, moments after arriving in London, in reference to my school’s location. Every so often, over the rare drink in the even more rare club in the more posh (read: more touristy) area of central London, I’m asked where I live. After a brief internal investigation of whether said asker is a stalker, I answer, “At Queen Mary.”
Blank stare.
“In Mile End …”
Unconfident nod.
“East London?”
This is generally met with several categories of confusion. Queen Mary is not one of the best-known of the 15 Universities of London, like UCL or King’s. This is likely and unfairly due to its unknown if not for stereotypically dodgy (read: less touristy) location in Mile End, one of the many unique London locales swallowed up by an unacknowledged fog that hovers over all of England, with the exception of the sun that’s always smiling on Central London and its West End.
When a Londoner doesn’t know where east is, the fog is pretty thick, supporting the theory of history that no city has ever successfully expanded east. Yet, the rapidity of development — in the last ten years alone, the East End has become the most densely populated area in London — is proving the theory, as a portrait of the Eastern borough of Tower Hamlets stated, “a spectacular piece of nonsense.” The fog is thinning, allowing greater visibility for an area with as rich a history as any other in England, and with a population as socially and multiculturally diverse as any in the world today.
Tower Hamlets, the borough of less than eight square miles in East London where I live, so named for its origins in small clusters around the Tower of London, has been inhabited for 2,000 years. With a history going back to the Roman Invasion of 43 AD, I have no hopes of detailing it here, don’t worry. The more East London marshland that was drained, the more people spread south, to Spitalfields and Whitechapel, Blackwall and Poplar.
These areas are more than funny-sounding names. The United States’ Liberty Bell was first cast in the Whitechapel Bell Foundry (ironic?). The Grapes, a pub built in 1720 in Poplar, is known for both watermen drowning drunks in the river and selling their corpses for medical dissection, and also for a young Charles Dickens being forced to stand on a table and sing.
My personal theory for the general ignorance of anything east of King’s Cross is based on population statistics for Tower Hamlets: only 42 percent are White British, of which 60 percent are over 30 years old. This makes over half the population “non” — with 33 percent of that category Bangladeshi (half of whom are under 20 years old), seven percent of African or Caribbean backgrounds and the rest “other.” This theory is also based on my observation that 100 percent of the persons asking me where the East End is have been white.
Yet, correlation does not equal causation, and the reasons for the migration east are not strictly economic. Artists, initially attracted by the vibrance of the area — traditional pubs, street markets, and the Tower of London mingle with the smells of the United Kingdom’s “Curry Capital,” Brick Lane, and the imposing views of its “Manhattan on the Thames,” Canary Wharf — have made the East End the “trend sector” of London, with dozens of galleries and award-winning architecture.
The view from my kitchen window alone spans London’s inescapable history and undeniable re-centering. To the right are Queen Mary’s blue gates, entrance to a campus built on the rubble of Blitz bombings that targeted the thriving docklands industry. Beyond the gates the more modern towers of London’s financial district draw the eye. This district represents over 40 percent of all employment in Tower Hamlets, but it is still one of the most deprived areas in the country.
What is absent from this view, though just two miles away, is the site of the 2012 Olympic Games. This past weekend, I witnessed the Olympic torch passing (barely) through the streets of London on its way to Beijing. It was hard to see for the Chinese and Tibetan flags, picket signs, and 37 arrests. The Olympics, meant to unite the world by sport, have united many for a cause: criticism of a country with a questionable human rights record. When the torch returns to London in four years, it will still represent the Olympic ideal of unity and bring much-needed economic growth to the East End, and it may burn through this fog so all of London, with its diversity and divisions, can be seen as clearly as through my kitchen window.