London: The Modern Babylon

This programme contains very strong language.

LAYERS OF PEOPLE SPEAKING DIFFERENT LANGUAGES

SIREN BLARING

You could call it the capital of the world.

AIR RAID SIREN BLARING

MUSIC: "London Calling" by The Clash

# London calling to the faraway towns

# Now war is declared and battle come down

# London calling to the underworld

# Come out of the cupboard You boys and girls

# London calling Now don't look to us

# Phoney Beatlemania has bitten the dust

# London calling See, we ain't got no swing

# Except for the reign of that truncheon thing

# The ice age is coming The sun's zooming in

# Meltdown expected The wheat is growing thin

# Engines stop running but I have no fear

# Cos London is burning and I live by the river

# Now get this!

# London calling Yes, I was there too

# And you know what they said? Well, some of it was true

# London calling At the top of the dial

# And after all this Won't you give me a smile?

# London calling... #

-NEWSREEL:

-London calling the Empire.

# I never felt so much alike. #

HOOVES CLOPPING AND HORSES WHINNYING

At the beginning of the 20th century London is the capital city

of the most extensive empire the world has ever seen.

On her dominions the sun never sets.

Unrivalled power siphoning vast riches from its far-flung colonies

in all corners of the globe, back to its imperial centre.

# It's the Piccadilly drop, drop, drop, drop

# Now the rain's in town

# It's the Piccadilly drop, drop, drop, drop

# See us strolling all up and down

# With a pretty little girl What, what, what?

# It's the time for heartbreak

# But it's fine, fine Simply divine!

# Grab yourself a girlie and pull right into line

# That's the Pic-Pic-Piccadilly drop! #

Like the spokes of a wheel,

converging streams of human life flow into this agitated pool.

Horses and carriages, carts, vans, omnibuses, cabs -

every kind of conveyance cross each other's course

in every possible direction.

Twisting in and out by the wheels and under the horses' heads,

working a devious way,

men and women of all conditions wind a path over.

Now the streams slacken and now they rush again.

All London converges into this focus.

There is an indistinguishable noise.

It is not clatter, hum or roar...

..it is made up of a thousand thousand footsteps

from a thousand hooves, a thousand wheels...

..and no attention can resolve it into a fixed sound.

London is a modern Babylon...

..this is a vortex and whirlpool...

the centre of human life today on the earth.

I was born in the Borough of Hackney, 1905...

..my parents were Orthodox Jews.

They were immigrants.

Queen Victoria opened her doors to the Jews of Central Europe

that were being persecuted.

WALTZ MUSIC PLAYS

SEAGULLS CALLING

# When I go out the people shout

# "Oh, here he comes, clear the way!"... #

I can still remember Father going down to the docks

to examine the cargo as it came up the river.

I used to like to watch the Tower Bridge going up...and down.

That was an outing.

Mother, on Thursdays, used to go to Petticoat Lane

cos that was where she used to buy her two chickens

for the weekend meals.

CHICKENS CLUCKING

# I'm as happy as the Prince of Wales

# Although I'm stony broke... #

The poverty in that part of London, a lot of children were barefoot.

They had to share shoes,

so they couldn't go to school every day of the week.

There was nothing, really, for them to eat.

# If you think I am a millionaire With the clothes I wear

# Think that I ride in me carriage

# And hare round Leicester Square To make folks stare

# I've got no hoof but I always play spoof

# I'm a rickety-rackety bloke

# I'm a slitter, a dasher The up-to-date masher

# I'm Percy from Pimlico! #

MUSIC: "Born Slippy" by Underworld

This melancholy London,

I sometimes imagine that the souls of the lost

are compelled to walk through its streets perpetually.

One feels them passing, like a whiff of air.

People tended to walk to work...

..because they worked near their homes.

Dalston Junction was a road I had to cross getting to my school.

HOOVES AND WHEELS THUNDERING

The horse-drawn buses frightened the life out of me!

And I'm trying to think...

what happened to the horse manure.

As soon as you got it, wallop, it went on the roses.

ENGINE RUMBLING

# If you fancy it that's understood

# And suppose it makes you fat I don't worry over that

# For a little of what you fancy does you good. #

# There used to be trains Not very quick

# Got you from place to place

# But now there's just jams half a mile thick

# Stay in the human race

# And fings ain't what they used to be... #

I remember as a child asking my governess

how I was going to spend my life.

Her answer came without a moment's hesitation.

"Until you are 18, you will do lessons.

"And, afterwards, you will do nothing."

In fact, to be an Edwardian debutante

was rather like being an athlete in chronic training

for a perpetual boat race.

There were five to eight balls every week,

and there we danced through the long summer nights till dawn.

I can remember my stepmother solemnly warning me,

to drive back home after a ball with a young man spells doom to any girl.

Men are afraid of clever girls.

-CHILD:

-Little girls should be seen and not heard.

# Oh, bondage, up yours! #

One, two, three, four!

# Oh, bondage, up yours!

# Oh, bondage, no more!

# Oh, bondage, up yours!

# Oh, bondage, no more! #

We did a lot of smashing, in the prison, of windows.

# ..I consume you all

# Chain gang, chain mail... #

We went on hunger strike, of course. And we were forcibly fed.

A tube was inserted in the nostril.

MAN: How often, Miss Marsh, were you forcibly fed?

139 times.

-HETTY BOWER:

-Two sisters in Stepney were active suffragettes.

We used to go there, Saturday afternoon,

without my parents knowing.

# ..Thrash me, crash me Beat me till I fall

# I wanna be a victim for you all. #

I do remember thinking, well, I shall be agitating when I'm older.

EXPLOSION

NEWSREEL: London's East End,

land of the foreign gaolbird, harbours aliens, anarchists

and criminals who seek out our too-hospitable shores.

For more than seven hours, two Jewish members of a Latvian anarchist gang

have held out against more than 500 police and soldiers in a Sidney Street tenement.

For the first time, newsreel film companies are on hand

to record the event for posterity as it unfolds before their cameras.

GUNSHOTS

Home Secretary, Churchill, informed of the incident in his bath,

has arrived to take charge of the operations.

Rumour has it that a bullet passed through the silk of his top hat.

GUNSHOT

Stand and deliver!

MAN: Ever since London truly began as a city, in the early 18th century,

they were always terrified of that one, simple word...

Anarchy!

..the mob.

The London mob.

And they've always tried to police it, channel it,

to throw it into workhouses,

to yuppify it, to teach it and, now and again,

the mob breaks out.

Best of luck, old chap.

-HETTY:

-Oh, World War One - I was nearly nine years old.

That was really the turning point in my life.

There was this Lord Kitchener and his finger.

Your King and country need you!

But they didn't need me. I didn't like him, and his finger.

# Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag

# And smile, smile, smile

# While you've a Lucifer to light your fag... #

Oh, I cheered them at Dalston Junction -

the men going off, in uniform.

And we waved.

And then I didn't like what I saw when they started coming back.

Men with crutches and an empty trouser leg, rolled up.

Took time for Roehampton to make all the artificial limbs.

That was the new industry after World War One.

A favourite cousin was killed.

Sammy.

He was my favourite cousin.

And he never came back.

Mm.

Unreal city

Under the brown fog of a winter dawn

A crowd flowed over London Bridge

So many, I had not thought death had undone so many

Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled

And each man fixed his eyes before his feet

Flowed up the hill and down King William Street

To where St Mary Woolnoth kept the hours.

WESTMINSTER CHIMES

WOMAN: Men were pouring out of the services.

They'd had a terrible time in France.

They all wanted to get married, so every man you met proposed to you.

It was frightfully exciting.

LIVELY MUSIC

And you danced because it was the relief the war was over

and it was like after an earthquake, people make love in the ruins,

because it's a sort of relief. We all danced and danced.

We danced at breakfast, we danced all day.

The West End, that was like going into a new world.

Lyons restaurants were our palaces.

West Central started to flare and squirm

in a blazing vein-work of neon tubes,

bursting like inexhaustible fireworks.

The million coloured bulbs of the electric signs

blazed in perpetual reoccurrence over the face of the West End.

CAT YOWLS

I went to a marvellous party, with Nounou and Nada and Nell.

-MAN:

-I was born in 1925.

I lived in Millbank, in an old, Victorian house on the Embankment.

This was my childhood.

I looked out in the morning and that was the view I saw every morning.

-I heard the tugs going by.

-TUG HORN BLARES

# A room with a view

# And you... #

When I was young, I was told that when a tug hooted,

I thought it was asking my permission to go by.

I used to say you could go by now.

MAN: You ever wake up at eight o'clock,

catch a Tube and see how many people are on it?

Like, looking tired, everyone looks in the same uniform.

Off you go again to the zombie train. Want something different.

# Finchley Central

# Is two and sixpence from Golders Green on the Northern Line

# And on the platform... #

You're kind of in your own bubble.

People are either reading their papers

or they've got their music playing. They're zoned out.

I think that's just how, in London, you kind of survive.

# ..For hours I waited

# But I'm blowed, you never showed

# And Finchley Central Ten long stations

# From Golders Green Change at Camden Town. #

The walk from Cannon Street to my office

is neither too long, nor too short.

A healthy little perambulation along streets crowded with commuters,

all proceeding to their places of work

on the same orderly schedule as myself.

Their lives, like my own, are regulated nicely

by the minute hand of an accurate watch.

MEN SHOUTING

MAN: The City may have been the bank,

but the East End was the engine room of the empire.

London was certainly buzzing.

It was the gateway to the world and you had the world and his wife

travelling through it.

Time was when ships used to dock at Tower Bridge

and sailors who jumped ship could disappear without further ado

amongst the streets and courts of the East End.

SONG: "The Laughing Policeman"

-MAN:

-When I was very young, you were taught at school

there were only two sorts of people in the world,

the British and foreigners, and there were an awful lot of foreigners.

SONG: "The Laughing Policeman"

I think that feeling of the British Empire as the centre of the world

was sort of built into you when you were young,

because that was the way the world was explained to you.

HE SNIFFS

MUSIC: "Hong Kong Garden" by Siouxsie And The Banshees

# Harmful elements in the air

# Cymbals crashing everywhere

# Reaps the fields of rice and reeds

# While the population feeds

# Junk floats on polluted water

# An old custom to sell your daughter

# Would you like number 23?

# Leave your yens on the counter, please

# Oh-hh

# Oh-oh-oh-oh

# Hong Kong

# Garden

# Oh-hh

# Oh-oh-oh-oh Hong Kong

# Garden

# Oh-oh-oh-oh. #

As a child, you didn't have any fear.

We played in the street.

You could be two streets away and you weren't in the danger

that people try to make out you're in today.

Someone bound to know who you are.

And someone to say, "Oi!" and it'll soon get back down your home.

KNOCK AT DOOR

People don't realise we had a beach alongside the Tower of London

where, when the weather was with you,

Mum used to take you down to the beach at the Tower and play

and it was a day out.

In them days,

it wasn't unusual for the bigger kids to swim across the river.

It was our playground,

as well as where we lived, you know what I mean?

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

# There's some folk who always worry

# And some folk who never care

# But in this world of rush and hurry... #

This is London calling.

London. City of contrasts,

where rich and poor rub shoulders.

# That certain night The night we met

# There was magic abroad in the air

# There were angels dining at The Ritz

# And a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square. #

-WOMAN:

-I was the 13th child.

We had ten in our house, an old, slummy house.

Oh, God, there was one big bedroom at the top

and my mum had five single beds, for my five brothers.

I slept over the back of my mum and dad.

We didn't have nothing,

but we was happy.

I reckon the conditions of living in these little slums is a bit hard.

Got a wife and besides my seven children,

bringing them up in the one room.

We're hoping the council liven their ideas up and get the flats ready,

so that every working-class man will have a hygienic flat to live in.

We just got on with life, quite honest with you.

It's the only place you could live.

Lovely to talk about "wouldn't it be nice to have a nice house and garden",

but it just wasn't there,

so it's no use dreaming about something that ain't there, is it?

WOMAN: We went to see the new houses and they're lovely.

But here, it gets on your nerves, where everything's filthy.

And the vermin in the walls? It's wicked.

Well, I tell you, we're fed up.

-MAN:

-The '30s were a terrible year

for the ordinary working-class people.

We, in the East End of London,

campaigned against racism and fascism.

Some people consider Mr Hitler a madman!

I beg to differ!

-HETTY:

-'There were a lot of people that were anti-Semitic.

'The children would call after us.'

Sheenies, shonks, sheenies.

MAN: The battle of Cable Street is one that unifies us all.

I took part in Cable Street.

Oswald Mosley's big march.

He and his followers did...not...pass.

GLASS SMASHES

Well, I'm the youngest of ten German Jewish refugee children.

We came in 1937, 1938.

From my first day at Newham School,

there was I in this terrible hurl of kids,

immediately brandishing cruelty and incomprehension

at this new boy who wasn't a cockney and who had a strange, foreign name.

And I was fighting for my life. I was a little titch, short, quite puny.

But I put everything I could into punching back at these creepy bullies

so then they called me Hard Punch Horovitz.

I'd go with the gang. I'd want to relate with my yobbish kids,

because they, after a little bit of culture conditioning, accepted me.

# People cry and walk away

# Think about the fateful day

# Now they wish they'd given Jack

# More affection and respect

# Those little children dressed in black

# Don't know what happened to old Jack

# Grocer Jack, Grocer Jack Is it true what Mummy says?

# You won't come back, oh, no, no. #

Brixton, before the lights went out over Europe,

was the hub of a wheel of theatres, music halls,

empires, royalties.

You could tram it all over from Brixton.

The streets of tall, narrow houses were stuffed to the brim with stand-up comics,

Adagio dancers,

conjurers, Shakespeare heroes, fiddlers,

speciality acts with doves, dogs, goats - you name it.

Dancing dwarves, tenors, sopranos, baritones and basses.

Oh, really.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

I am speaking to you from the Cabinet Room at Ten Downing Street.

This morning, the British Ambassador handed the German Government a final note

stating that, unless we heard from them by 11 o'clock

that they were prepared to withdraw their troops from Poland,

a state of war would exist between us.

I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received

and that, consequently, this country is at war with Germany.

If you have a child of school age and wish to have him evacuated,

you should send him to school tomorrow, Friday,

with hand luggage containing the child's gas mask,

a change of underclothing, night clothes, shoes,

spare stockings or socks,

a toothbrush, a comb, a towel, handkerchief

and, if possible, a warm coat or mackintosh.

-MAN:

-I was evacuated to a place called Dunstable.

Where did they put me?

Right next door to the Vauxhall factory, so there was the place to be in the war, wasn't it?

EXPLOSION

Well, my father came back home one day and he went,

"I'm not having this, we're going to get killed,

"we'll all get killed together."

So we copped all those dangerous nights

when it really came down on the East End.

On the darkest night, the gleaming river may yet betray London.

AIR-RAID SIREN BLARES

-TONY BENN:

-I was in London during the Blitz

and I remember it very vividly, because every night the sirens used to go off.

And when I hear an air-raid siren now,

it still sends a cold chill through my body.

NEWSREEL: The whole of the skyline was lit up with a ruddy glow,

almost like a sunrise or a sunset.

The flames are leaping up in the air now.

The dome of St Paul's is silhouetted blackly against it.

It's almost like the Day of Judgment is pictured in some of the old books.

And, if this weren't so appalling, I think it would be one of the most wonderful sights I've ever seen.

We didn't realise the danger we was in, at that age.

It was more an adventure.

We went down the Tube, went with the air raids, you know, the bunk beds

and people who'd hated each other as neighbours were having to muck in together

and making tea and hot water bottles in the Tube stations.

And, of course, all sorts of things went on,

but we were too young, and all them sort of things.

UPBEAT MUSIC

'I have observed that the psychological effects of war

'include not only hysteria and shock,

'but what also might be described as

'jaunty behaviour, brought about by heightened anxiety.

'Many apparently normal people are drinking indecent amounts of alcohol

'and sexual desire, especially in women, is much intensified.

'During the Blitz, many of my male patients complained to me

'about their wives making excessive demands.

'I personally know many women who have been unfaithful

-'to their husbands.'

-WOMAN: Bottoms up!

Coming out and seeing houses of people we knew

shattered by the bombs, to us, it was strange,

but it was still an adventure.

In the morning, I thought it was particularly exciting

because I got up earlier

so that I had the biggest collection of shrapnel.

I was always called to the front of the class. "Let's see what Molly's found now."

Shrapnel. Big lumps of it.

-What have you got behind your back?

-Nothing.

Frankie!

'I remember this danger, the thrill of leaping across

'bits of buildings that had got destroyed,

'and being dared to jump, and seeing this huge, impossible

'Olympic feat with a great ravine.'

HE SCREAMS

'So that was the sort of adventure playground that we grew up in.'

# We shall defend our island

# All the land and all the sea

# We shall fight them on the beaches

# On the hills and in the fields

# We shall fight them in the streets

# Never in the field of human conflict

# Was so much owed to so few

# Because they have made our British Empire

# A better place for me and you

# And this was our finest hour

# As Vera Lynn would say

# We'll meet again some day

# But all the sacrifices

# We must make... #

I remember meeting a woman from Greenwich

who said that her husband was in the War

and she was left with two children. And one summer day in 1940,

she decided she'd have a little party for the children,

so she went and bought a cake,

-and as she left the cake shop...

-EXPLOSION

..she heard a bomb go off, and actually,

the bomb had struck her own home. Her friend and her children,

and her friend's children were all killed.

And you realised the suffering there was

of many thousands of people who were killed and injured during the War.

I think Londoners are proud of their role during the Blitz

because it was very determined, nobody was ever discouraged.

We didn't know at that time whether we would win the war or not.

Looking back on it,

I think it solidified us and brought us much closer together.

And I think London has gained from the experience in the War.

CROWD CHEERS Hoorah!

# ..Any evening, any day

# You'll find us all

# Doin' the Lambeth walk

# Any time you're Lambeth way

# Any evening, any day

# You'll find us all

# Doin' the Lambeth walk... #

Well, with the War being over, you couldn't believe it,

the sense of excitement was so enormous.

We were going to apply the same principles

that we applied in wartime

of single-minded determination to meet the needs of peace.

# ..Any evening, any day

# You'll find us all

# Doin' the Lambeth walk... #

We were voting for Attlee just after the War.

-We didn't want Churchill, did we?

-No, we didn't want Churchill after the War.

# Vote, vote, vote for Mr Attlee!

# Punch old Churchill in the eye

# If he comes round the door

# We will punch him in the jaw

# And he won't come voting any more... #

But the other bit was...

# If it wasn't for the King

# We would do the bastard in

# And he wouldn't come voting any more! #

Oh, bugger off! Bloody women!

London looked like the moon's capital.

Shallow, cratered, extinct.

Those bomb sites were like sores, you know,

cancers on the skin of the city.

The main rebuilding was... the council house building of London

was rehoused in the post-war years.

It was nice to move out to a nice place.

It's quite nice to spread out a bit, you know, have room.

Nice to have the toilet inside!

You didn't see fat people around ever.

It's interesting, that.

CHEERING

And queuing, well,

we were brought up in a war where queues were necessary,

so to live, you queued in a respectful manner.

Not like today. A bus pulls up and wallop,

you're pushed out of the way,

especially older people.

There was this awful thing of conformity.

Everybody dressed the same and had the same set of values...

..and spoke in the same way.

'Hello, Belgrave 007.

'Hello, Frobisher 1942.

'Hello, Primrose 666.

'Mayfair...'

I suppose people might say, well, yes, this is how it's meant to be...

..but it bored the shit out of me, I can tell you.

MUSIC: "I'm Trying To Make London My Home" by Sonny Boy Williamson

There he is, follow that cam. Zoom in on Oxford Street.

During the War,

England could not defeat Germany on her own

and she asked the Empire

for men and material.

In those days, you rule a quarter of the world the way you want to rule it.

And we, the colonies, just had to take what you threw at us.

And when I was 18, I was blessed and joined the Royal Air Force.

# Rebellion and war. War... #

We genuinely felt that law and order

and democratic Christian values

stemmed from Westminster.

When I wanted to stay in England, they said, no, you have to go back.

I was totally disappointed.

I think it was not cricket.

They were not playing the game.

-May I ask you your name?

-Lord Kitchener.

-Lord Kitchener.

Now, I'm told that you are really the king of calypso singers, is that right?

-Yes.

-Will you sing for us?

-Right now?

-Yes.

# London is the place for me

# Dum, dum, dum

# London, this lovely city... #

# ..You can go to France or America

# India, Asia or Australia

# But come back to London city

# To live in London You are really comfortable

# Because the English people are very much sociable

# They take you here and they take you there... #

I came to London, I was just 15.

I was so excited because I really recognised that

I didn't have any real future in Trinidad and Tobago.

I thought white people were magical,

because they seemed to have everything, and we had nothing.

And I didn't know what to expect, but I was optimistic.

-# I was there

-At the coronation

-# I was there

-At the coronation... #

What do you want?

I can't let you in. I've got 14 English boys in here.

-14 English boys?

-Yeah.

-So you don't want...?

-I can't, I can't mix. I'm ever so sorry.

I would myself, but if I let you come in, all my boys would leave.

Everywhere I go, I get no job.

Would you go back home, if you could?

Yes, I would like to go back home, if I could pay my fare home.

But I haven't got any money to go back home.

Now, why is it that there is a prejudice here against coloured men?

-Oh, there's no prejudice.

-Why is it that they're not taken, then?

There is this much about a coloured man,

they are apt to lose their temper and resort to tactics

that the average white man would not resort to.

-Have you ever worked with a coloured man?

-No, I haven't.

# When me just come to London town

# Me used to work 'pon the Underground

# But working 'pon the Underground

# You don't get to know your way around

# England is a bitch... #

Now, set your machines to three pence. Three pence,

and six thruppenny tickets, please.

# ..England is a bitch

# There's no escaping it

# England is a bitch

# There's no running away from it... #

My grandad came over in the early '50s from Calcutta.

He jumped on a boat with his cousin.

Culturally, it must have been a complete blast.

It must have been a big shock for him, but he got on with it

and he brought part of India

to a white working-class estate in South London.

In those days, the pub was the centre of our local community.

It was an extension of our front room.

It was to get away for a little while

from all the stresses and strains of family life indoors.

# She's 21 today...

# I'm 21 today I've got the key of the door

# Never been 21 before

# Father says, you can do what you like

# So shout, hip hip hooray!

# For I'm a jolly good fellow

# I'm 21 today!

# ..Knees up, Mother Brown!

# Oh, my! What a rotten song!

You...

# ..Oh, my! What a rotten song!

# Oh, my! What a rotten song!

# What a rotten singer too! #

-CHEERING

-Oi, hands off! All right?

Filthy little tea leaves! Fuck off!

WHISTLING

BIRD SQUAWKS

My first impression of London

was probably how grey and cold it was.

'Owing to weather conditions,

'a fog service will operate this evening

'and the following trains will be affected...'

A foggy day in London town Had me low and had me down.

'In December last year, in the county of London,

'4,000 people died in three weeks because of fog,

'a fog caused by a pollution of the atmosphere

'worse than anything recorded in 20 years.

'Londoners will never forget it.'

HE COUGHS

Will you close your eyes, please?

'I didn't become totally myself until I went to art school,

'and then a whole world - bohemia -

'opened up the very first moment I stepped inside.

'Any originality of thought or appearance

'was applauded as being outside the norm.'

Oh! What's that?

What's what?

'I had aunties who wouldn't talk to me

'when they learned that I was drawing people with no clothes on.

'Life was still very moral then.

'Even leaving art school, I was still a virgin.'

Oi.

I wanted to come to London, only London.

It's this contact with people that I always wanted.

It was like a sort of seventh heaven when I first came.

It was like a sort of dream.

# ..Meet me in Battersea Park... #

Everything was opening up. Coffee bars, bistros,

people eating and drinking coffee out.

Whereas it used to be high tea at Lyons Corner House,

those seemed dated places now.

Oh, a cup of tea, please, dear, and ten Oliviers.

We don't do tea, only coffee. Expresso or cappuccino?

-Oh, all right, I'll have a white one, with no froth.

-No froth?!

The night was glorious up there.

The air was sweet as a cool balm.

The stars were peeping nosily behind the neons

and the citizens of the queendom were floating down

the Shaftesbury Avenue canals like gondolas.

# ..Golden years

# Gold... #

Everyone had loot to spend and nobody had broken hearts.

And I thought, my Lord, one thing is certain,

and that's that they'll make musicals one day

about the glamour-studded 1950s.

# ..Nights are warm and the days are young... #

GLASS SMASHES

# Come and walk the streets of crime

# And the colour bright-lit corners of low repute

# See the dazzling nightlife glow

# Beyond the dawn and burning

# In the heart of Soho... #

If you get Soho-itis,

you'll stay there always, day and night, and get no work done ever.

You have been warned.

I was inextricably drawn to Soho,

because that's where the street culture was.

When Soho goes gay it makes a meal of it.

Thank you kindly.

# Oh, no, what's happened to Soho?

# Oh, no, where will all the reprobates go?

# Oh, no, what's happened to Soho... #

Everyone thought they'd invented the '60s. They thought,

"Nothing like this has ever happened before. The dreary old '50s."

Well, a lot of the '50s were dreary old '50s,

but there are places which weren't, like Soho.

Grave's great dark is fed on thoughts alone.

You whom my heart...

This trouble that you've been going through will very soon pass,

as soon as Neptune has moved out of this degree that it's in now.

HE CACKLES

I knew there and then

that this was the place that I wanted to be in.

# Oh, no, what's happened to Soho?

# Oh, no, where will all the reprobates go?

# Oh, no... #

We went to a basement club - that music was unbelievable.

We spent the whole night, hours of it, dancing and dancing.

That's the Flamingo, right there, where I used to hang out.

That recall back memories to me, I will never forget it.

Ladbrokes shop has taken over.

We just walked in, smoking ganja, taking pills,

and all these beautiful girls were so nice.

We started to make friends with them

and start dancing, white and black was mixed together,

like brother and sister.

We'd laugh, dance and enjoy. We never had fights down there.

It wasn't, "Oh, here we are, white and black together,"

it was, "Here we are, having a ball."

Just as people, together.

Well, all the pimps and the gangsters used to go down there

and we used to have a good time.

Most clubs were very respectable,

I don't think there's any trouble at all in them. Except occasionally.

They use to have all the prostitutes, you know,

they used to work in Park Lane.

And when they finished work

they came down there and picked up the black guys.

They just liked the black guys, the way we used to dress nice.

With suits and things.

The other white folks didn't like it.

In those days they used to call us pimps,

and all these beautiful girls used to go around with us.

They used to pay us to go with them, you know?

They bring all the money when they finished work.

You got a lot of celebrities,

MPs and posh people,

and they come down there for kicks.

Meet the black guys and say, "Oh, I need some cocaine."

The guys used to get it for them and then they said,

"Well, I would like you to go with my wife.

"I pay you some money and you go with my wife." You know.

They go and have a doodah.

About five o'clock in the morning when the Flamingo was over,

we headed for Ladbroke Grove,

jumping in a car - at that time we had nice cars.

And we just head for the blues dance,

and just get high.

You'd have heroin that was taken with needles

and they used to have purple heart, blues,

opium and hashish.

And heroin and ganja.

Then when we're done,

we would go up to my house and go have fun. Have some sex.

# And if a woman ever tell you That I ever left her dissatisfied

# She lied, she lied, she lied... #

The empire really struck back.

The empire was really coming to Britain from Asia,

from the West Indies.

We had an influx of West Indians who came in and brought culture in.

If that hadn't happened,

I wouldn't have had access to a lot of Caribbean music.

That culture brought in a whole lot of good things.

Soon there'll be so many people here,

there won't be enough houses and jobs to go round.

You've got coloured people living in council flats

and a white person walking the streets.

And a coloured person shouldn't have them houses. A white person should have them houses first.

You just had to take your chances with your landlord

and if you couldn't pay they were severe.

They would want you out.

-Were there any black kids at your school?

-Two.

Two. Right. There was none at mine from five, when I went to school,

till 15 when I left.

I was an honorary white man.

I was accepted, but I could hear them

talk about the golliwogs and the coons and all that.

-"Not you, right? You're all right."

-That's right!

You know, it got to me after a while.

My 11-plus. I passed my 11-plus, it was given to another guy.

And I found out from other black guys I know

that the same thing happened to them,

that their 11-plus places were given to other, more-deserving white boys.

These things really hurt.

I am in my 60s now, and this still hurts me

that I didn't get my education.

I think my ambition in life is to be famous. I'm not quite sure.

My ambition is to be happily married, have lots of children,

and look after them all myself.

My ambition is to be rich.

Well, I mean, if you've got money you've got everything, haven't you?

Well, I don't suppose I've got an ambition.

# Strike up the band and make it hot

# Mr Drummer, give it all you've got

# Beat out the music with a sock

# So everybody rock to the London rock... #

About this acting tough,

it's no good creeping down the road door to door, all meek and humble,

because a fellow is just going to say,

"Well, look at that punk, let's have him."

When you put it on, it gives you a superior feeling,

a confidence, like.

And people look at you. It definitely attracts the birds.

# I don't need Manhattan

# Just give me Leicester Square

# Cos I know that the rock'n'roll

# Is universal everywhere... #

Teddy boys - I don't like them.

I don't like their style of dress,

its just to prove what they are, and they're very ignorant.

I was going to the chemist the other day,

it was rather a deserted street

and there was about six of them coming along,

and they thought they'd have a go at me.

But I singled out the ringleader

and I gave him a real good punching on the nose.

-What do you like doing?

-Drinking.

-What else?

Well, a couple of girls now and again.

-A fight now and again.

-Against who, another gang?

-No, usually Irish.

-What does your gang do?

Anyone. LAUGHTER

'Something new and ugly raises its head in Britain - racial violence.

'An angry crowd of youths chases a Negro into a greengrocer's shop.'

'The crowd gathered here and they shouted.'

You're shite, we're white!

And I'm quoting their words exactly,

"Let's get him, bring him out, and lynch him!"

And about those people who watched,

I saw something new to me,

they didn't even seem to enjoy themselves particularly,

I mean, seeing all this.

They didn't shout or bawl or cheer,

they just stood by,

out of harm's way, these English people did, and watched.

Just like at home in the evening, with their slippers at the telly.

The objects of the White Defence League

are to keep Britain the white man's country that it has always been.

And preserve the white civilisation,

which is the product of our race,

and preserve our Northern European blood,

which in our opinion is our greatest national treasure.

Salsa!

We believe in the bold, vital step

of stopping all coloured immigration into Britain

and repatriating, with every humane consideration,

the coloured immigrants who are already here.

And what about Jews?

We regard them as coloured people.

And if mass coloured immigration continues, as it is doing now,

it will inevitably mean

a coffee-coloured half-breed Britain of the future

and we are going to fight to stop that.

Oswald Mosley stood in this area, Notting Hill Gate,

and played on the fact that

if you were homeless and you saw that a black family had a home

you said, "Why have they got a home and not me?"

There is only one way to do this.

The way that Germany showed us - the National Socialist way.

Now came the arrival of the great leader himself.

They cried, "Down with Mosley!" And down he went.

The city was called Londinium before,

and for the first 500 years

English didn't exist, and people talked Latin.

Nihil expectore in omnibus.

No spitting on the public transport!

75 per cent of the British people

originally came walking from the Iberian peninsula.

So in reality, most of the British people are like us Iberians.

What a country!

And we have more than six kings and queens

that come from Spain or Portugal.

Catarina de Braganca, for example,

she's the lady that popularised tea and forks.

Because before her, nobody drinks tea, or nobody uses forks.

The people used to eat with their hands or with their knives.

# I'm Henry VIII, I am

# Henry VIII, I am, I am... #

DRILLING

Excuse me, may I interrupt you?

Do you think that the Irish like yourself

have any more right to be here than any other people?

-I don't think so.

-You don't think so?

-No.

-Why not?

Well, why should we?

Excuse me. Could I interrupt you? Sorry to interrupt you.

All right, sorry.

Do you think that the Irish in Britain

are entitled to special treatment by the British Government?

Well, it's a hard thing to say, you know,

but I think we are!

# And down the glen rode McAlpine's men

# With their shovels slung behind

# And in the pub they drank the sub

# And up in Camden Town you'll find them... #

The first time ever I landed in England,

England was the saddest and the loneliest country

ever an Irishman could ever put his foot in it.

Go down to Camden Town in the morning,

go up to the Archway,

and ask me who is jumping on the wagons.

Who is doing the work in this country? They're all Irishmen.

# I worked till the sweat nearly had me bet

# With Russian, Czech and Pole... #

And I've heard English men to say, and English women,

"My God, are they not savage,"

when they used to see the lads with their vests off, working with just the trousers.

But them lads couldn't help it, they were working hard.

# And if you pride your life Don't join, by Christ

# With McAlpine's fusiliers. #

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

My mum and dad are from Ireland

and they came here in the late '50s.

My dad built parts of the Jubilee Line.

I like the idea that my dad had to dig tunnels,

doing the kind of jobs that other people don't want to do,

and then one generation later, then I can make art about it.

In the '60s, London suffered more damage

as a result of property development and misguided councils

than Hitler had managed to inflict during the whole of the war.

Sharp-eyed wheelers and dealers bought up vacant bomb sites

and made a fuckin' fortune!

I act for a number of property millionaires,

and the extraordinary thing is

that most of them have made their fortunes in the last 10 or 15 years,

with not a penny piece to start off.

When we first acquired this site, everything was perfectly all right. What's gone wrong?

The snag relates to the news vendor,

he's got a sort of hut on wheels

and he's situated just about there.

The whole building could be relocated at that end of the site.

Hmm, I see what you mean.

# Get your bowler hat at Lock

# Look around you See how they surround you

# Get that hat at Lock... #

'As Churchill made his final journey away upstream,

'the Thames that day was a tide of memory,

'a body on the River,

'and a whole country combined against the relentless flow of time.'

CLOCK CHIMES

Do you feel out of place as a success

because you started from ordinary working-class beginnings?

No, why should I?

I don't think it really matters what class of family you come from.

If you're good enough in your job you make it anyway.

# Have you seen your mother, baby

# Standing in the shadow?

# Have you had another, baby

# Standing in the shadow?

# I'm glad I opened your eyes

# I'm all alone Won't you give

# All your sympathy to mine... #

I think London's very exciting,

because you know that you're not missing anything.

Everything that's new is starting here,

and you're always in the middle of it.

The worms are turning,

the rebellion of the long hairs is getting under way.

A 17-year-old, David Jones, has just founded

the Society For The Prevention Of Cruelty To Long-Haired Men.

We've had comments like "Darling"

and "Can I carry your handbag?" thrown at us.

And I think it's just had to stop now.

London was the place where it all started.

People came from all over the world and sucked on it, as it were.

Sexual boundaries were being broken.

Women started with the pill and they now could behave like boys.

There was the greatest freeing time for women.

CAR REVS

# You've got this strange effect on me

# And I like it

# You've got this strange effect on me

# And I like it

# You make my world seem... #

What we need to do is get a shirt for summer

that will sort of flow in the wind, completely free of any attachments.

Sort of tight round the ribs, but flowing as it gets to the hips.

-Yeah.

-As long as you don't move in straight lines, it all flares out as you move about.

You could have lettering embroidered with it,

messages for people on the shirts.

In Middle Eastern embroidery

so that no-one really gets the message at all.

# Call out the instigator

# Because there's something in the air

# We've got to get together sooner or later

# Because the revolution's here

# And you know it's right... #

'I'm not a curtain by any means,

'but to me, the idea of short skirts and things like that...'

# And you know that it's right. #

We seem to have lost a certain amount of moral...

fibre, I suppose you'd call it.

It's to do, funnily enough, it may sound ridiculous,

with the loss of the British Empire and stuff.

That's why London perhaps is now cool and hip.

'If you're going to kick authority in the teeth,

'you might as well use two feet.'

# Because there's something in the air. #

The only things swinging in London were handbags.

'People were so caught up in the pop culture that I don't think

'they really paid much attention to the political issues

'that were changing Britain.'

MUSIC: "London Town" by Donovan

# Before you go

# Back to London town... #

'Grace lives in one furnished room and pays 51 and six a week for it.

'The furnishing is meagre.

'A table, a double bed, an old studio couch

'and two hardback chairs.

'She gives the room a bizarre gaiety

'with photographs of nudes and the Royal family.

'There is no hot water, no draining board, no bath, no larder,

'no refuse bin, no carpet and worst of all, no space.

'The room smells of damp, gas and dog.

'We've never built housing for people like Grace.

'She has to take the leftovers, rooms like this.'

Well, it is only average, but I could do with a nicer room,

but of course, I'd say, you can't get rooms now when you want them.

'Attractive modern wallpaper

'now replaces Grace's cut-outs and photographs.

'The young couple, Mr and Mrs Blair, who bought the house, have divided

'Grace's old room into their bedroom and built on an adjoining shower.'

What condition was it in when you first looked over the house?

It was completely derelict.

Just two tiny, dark little rooms.

It was infested with cats and tramps and all sorts of rubble

and broken glass.

# If when you get there

# Maybe you will find... #

'It's damp.'

I think this space, in any case, should be condemned.

Because there's three of us in the family that suffer with our chest.

The whole of the basement had to be gutted

and hacked right back to the bare brickwork.

-What would you really like?

-A council flat.

Have you got any chance of getting one?

No, not yet because we haven't been successful

in getting on the housing list at all.

# Could thee stop moving

# Maybe settle down

# If things worked out for you

# In London town... #

'It's a complete class distinction in the area.

'The people don't blend together

'as well as the original people that was here.'

# Tell me who you love

# Tell me who you love

# Tell me who you love. #

We need everybody, we need bus drivers, we need office cleaners,

we need architects, we need doctors, we need everybody.

And if you drive the lower-income groups farther out,

they will never come back to the city.

You will have a dead city

and you will have a horrible upper-middle-class area

in which I don't want to live,

whilst I'm very happy living as it is in the middle now.

TRAFFIC AND BELL-RINGING

'Yes! I am that worm soul

'under the heel of the daemon horses.

'I am that man trembling to die in vomit.'

Not in fascinated fear, as moths find the light,

as though the atom were the monster.

'There were 16 poets from nine countries...'

Na! Julio! Julio!

'..and 8,000 people chanting back to an Austrian sound poet,

'who articulated a sense of community

'like none of us had dreamed of.'

Julio! Julio! Na! Na!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

You had this sense of huge potential change at hand,

so those were halcyon days.

You had nakedness, anarchy, wildness, people using four-letter words,

people smoking dope openly.

# Everybody must get stoned... #

As they say, if you can't remember the '60s, you weren't there.

# Oh, escargot... #

I think that young people's attitude is only for themselves.

I think they care much less for old people now than they used to.

# Everybody must get stoned... #

RAPID GUNFIRE

BROADCASTER: That's the trouble with trends. Something's got to go.

MUZAK PLAYS

METAL GRATING

VARIETY OF SPEEDEDUP SUPERMARKET SOUND EFFECTS

Let's face it, our society is getting to be rubbish.

'144 Piccadilly.

'It's a bit run down since the days when royalty lived next door

'and no distinguished visitor ever had to use a drawbridge.

'But run down or not, it's home for the hippies, now that the cool autumn nights are drawing in.'

CHANTING: Ho Chi Minh! Oh, oh, Ho Chi Minh!

Oh, oh, Ho Chi Minh!

MUSIC: "Street Fighting Man" by the Rolling Stones

# Everywhere I hear the sound

# Of marching, charging feet, boy

# Cos summer's here

# And the time is right

# For fighting in the street, boy

# But what can a poor boy do

# Except to sing for a rock n roll band?

# Cos in sleepy London town

# There's just no place for a street fighting man... #

I don't think you have to be violent to overcome this,

but some people do, and when they're violent against the police,

it's just the only way they have of showing it.

RADIO DJ: 'And I quote the one and only Doug.

'Right, now I can relax and this is a record

for you all, from the people who sent the messages.'

MUSIC: "Children of the Revolution" by T Rex

# Yeah!

# Well, you can bump and grind

# It is good for your mind

# Well, you can twist and shout

# Let it all hang out

# But you won't fool the children of the revolution

# No, you won't fool the children of the revolution, no, no, no

# Well, you can tear a plane

# In the falling rain

# I drive a Rolls-Royce

# Cos it's good for my voice

# But you won't fool the children of the revolution

# No, you won't fool the children of the revolution, no, no, no

# Yeah! #

The bulk of the people came when Idi Amin

in 1971-72, threw out a lot of the Asians from Africa.

Initially, when our parents came here,

they had to take off their turbans,

they had to cut their beards because they wouldn't get employment.

There were a couple of factories in Southall, who would not just

encourage Sikhs as employees, but would encourage Sikhs

with their identity, which was very rare at the time.

Well, the whole of Southall is Asians.

They've got three cinemas and Hindu temples and things like that.

Shops in Southall are just shops for Asians,

selling saris and curries and things like this.

I think if they come to this country,

they should be prepared to change and to live the way we do.

MURMURS OF AGREEMENT

The way they dress and the way they talk,

when you walk through Southall and hear them talking, you think, "What are they on about?

"Are they talking about me?" This I don't like.

Our only hope is to be able to get away from Southall, away from it all.

All our friends have gone. There's nothing left for English people in this town any more.

The Jamaicans and the Africans do integrate themselves more with us.

They're prepared to change, to accept our ways.

But not the Asians. The Asians just keep themselves to themselves and that's it.

They're just prepared to live their own little life, have their own little shop corner

and make their own little pile on the side, which really annoys me.

You have to watch everything that you do,

because the slightest little thing will set off the whole of Southall gossiping.

My parents care a lot about what people think

and I love my parents and I don't want to hurt them in any way.

I do not remember ever telling her not to do whatever she wants to do.

-Well, all right, I'll have to say this, then.

-Yeah.

When I wanted to go and see Desmond Dekker at the White Hart, you wouldn't let me go.

-Because I did not know that you wanted to go in a pub, you know?

-Well, it was...

Society still struggles with the concept of a dual identity.

You have to be one or the other.

That sense of not really belonging anywhere.

You blend in, but you don't belong.

It doesn't matter how much you try to be a part of one,

you're never good enough.

# Bewildering world

# With no end or start

# I am Indian in skin

# But English of heart. #

RECITES MUSLIM PRAYER

When I was a kid,

a big wave of Bangladeshis arrived at my council estate

and there was a lot of fear and suspicion.

National Front newspaper.

Vote for the Front.

Just clear off.

No good hiding your face, son, we got you already.

We know where you live. We'll come and get you.

SUGGS: It's only through experience you realise

that's happened to every wave of immigrants to London, including the Irish.

-They were seen as hooligans and lunatics.

-Will you give me the fucking bottle?

It's just great to get to the age of what I am, 50,

to have seen that happen a few times with various waves of immigrants

and to realise it's just a process, man.

And then they get taken in and become part of the city itself

and change the city. That's the whole point - the place keeps changing.

You try this perfume, you put a little bit in the back of the tart's neck tonight,

I bet you'll finish up having twins. Just smell it, guv'nor.

-Oi!

-Sorry, mate!

'In the doorway of an amusement arcade,

'a boy who claims he's become a male prostitute -

'one of the Dilly Boys, as they call themselves.'

When you came to London in the first place, what did you hope to do?

I hoped to get a proper job, a straight job,

but I got ripped off at Waterloo Station.

Just started sleeping rough. I met a geezer.

He said, "It might sicken you a bit, but try it.

"It's an easy way of making money."

# Jean Genie, let yourself go Whoa! #

-Cos I'm not gay.

-But there are other things you can do. You could have got a job, couldn't you?

-Show me them.

-Ow!

-But what do you feel about yourself?

-I feel disgusted.

# Oh, Jean Genie.... #

What do you reckon of London, as a city?

-I think it's a shithole!

-Why?

Because it's full of people like me - homeless.

So how do you survive? What do you do?

I get high!

# Let yourself go Oh, oh, oh. #

We brought the Port of London

successfully into the '70s

and now we're building for the '80s,

the '90 and to the 21st century.

But the thing that is of the most importance to us is our people,

and it is our people who will continue to make us a truly great

and international sea port.

It was a big social transformation when the London Docks began to close down,

because the central industry, which had sustained a community

and a whole tradition for a very long time, ceased to exist.

# Well, it's rainin' on

# The Isle of Dogs... #

You know what I miss of the river?

New Year's Eve, when all the ships used to sound their sirens.

God Almighty, it was like music.

FOGHORNS BOOM

Hundreds of ships. It was like tomorrow's a new world.

Well, a disastrous effect, obviously,

because there was no social planning in the closure of the docks.

Unfortunately, we got all these ideas and property developers,

and they saw eight and a half miles of dock being derelict

and an opportunity of moving in and making a kill.

Where was their "make room and let live"?

It was not, it was about greed, financial greed,

and we will pay for it in the future.

This is where they were going to build the 1988 Olympic Stadium?

Can you imagine nig-nogs doing the long jump along these quays?

# Remember, remember, the 5th of November

# Gunpowder, treason and plot

# We see no reason why gunpowder, treason

# Should ever be forgot! #

EXPLOSION

SIREN WAILS

The blast ripped through the Houses of Parliament at 5am this morning.

The bomb is thought to have been placed in the men's lavatory, off the viewing gallery.

The blast paralysed the capital.

There's been a terrorist bomb attack at the stock exchange.

The blast pushed out concrete and marble cladding onto the pavement.

After a statement claiming to be from the IRA,

it said the ceasefire was called off.

London by the mid-'70s was on its knees.

Peeling, crumbling, falling apart. There was no way out.

Signs in Piccadilly were not illuminated tonight

and they certainly won't be tomorrow night.

There were strikes, power cuts, total social chaos.

There we would be, these ugly monsters stuck right in the middle of it.

Skint, bored shitless, stalking the King's Road.

# My old man's a dustman

# He wears a dustman's hat

# He wears cor blimey trousers, and he lives in a council flat. #

All those in favour of strike action, reach up.

# London pride has been handed down to us

# London pride is a flower that's clean

# London pride means our own dear town to us

# And our pride, it for ever will be

# Whoa, Liza, see the coster barrows

# The vegetable marrows and the fruit piled high

# Oh, Liza, little London sparrows

# Covent Garden market where the costers cry

# Cockney feet mark the beat of history... #

You go to work, you come back, you go to bed.

Get up, go to work, come back. I don't enjoy it, but I do it.

Sometimes I wonder if there isn't any point.

If you didn't have any money you might as well kiss your fucking life

goodbye, cos you weren't going to amount to nothing.

# We're so pretty, oh, so pretty

# Vacant!

# We're so pretty, oh, so pretty

# Vacant!

# Don't ask us to attend cos we're not there

# Don't pretend, cos we don't care

# I don't believe illusions cos too much is real

# Stop your cheap comment

# Cos I know what I feel!

# We're so pretty, oh, so pretty

# Vacant!

# We're so pretty, oh, so pretty

# Vacant!

# We're so pretty, oh, so pretty

# Ah, we don't know and we don't care

# Pretty vacant

# Pretty vacant

# Pretty vacant

# We don't care. #

SCREAMING

MUSIC: "Land of Hope and Glory"

CHEERING

Where there is harmony, may we bring discord,

and where there is hope, may we bring despair.

SIREN WAILS

# Get up, stand up

# Stand up for your right

# Get up, stand up

# Stand up for your right. #

I've lived here a long time, so I feel like I'm part of the country.

When you go for a job and things are being brought up like your colour, you are put in a shell.

# Don't give up the fight. #

The country itself is all right, it's just there are some people

who make life very hard for a black person.

My experiences were being arrested for sus,

for being suspected of being about to commit a crime,

which is basically being black in the wrong place at the wrong time.

-Have you been stopped and searched before?

-Yes, regularly.

Always on suspicion of possession of drugs or drugs being in the vehicle.