The East End London on Film

NARRATOR: 'East of Tower Bridge, London becomes a very different city.

'You leave behind the political capital, the financial centre,

'the cultural headquarters,

'and you come to a working town based on a river.'

'It was, it is, the melting pot.'

NARRATOR: 'For the sound and smell of the bazaar,

'come to the romantic East.

'The East End.'

The East-Ender lives and dies football, the real Cockney.

Yeah.

Do this thing, East London, yeah.

RAPPING: Get what I'm saying, I'm representing the clubs and the

flats and I'm telling everybody East London is back,

it's not long when I jump on the track

so I'm telling everybody East London is back.

I've got words that are hotter than a Bunsen, your favourite MCs -

I'm amongst them, I've got a brand new sidey for them

and I'm telling everybody East London is back.

This is where I was born. As you can see, there's no plaque.

We couldn't get grass to grow here,

if a weed grew, my father used to rush out and water it.

We had a telegraph pole that grew in the garden and that was

the envy of all the neighbours, not that we had a telephone.

But it made a marvellous clothes line.

We were poor but we didn't know we were poor,

we thought the whole world was poor.

Our idea of posh was curtains in the windows.

In fact, we were very embarrassed about putting our dustbins out

because we had nothing to put in them.

The old East End was a civilised place

because although it was poor, it was very, very human.

It was overcrowded,

but the overcrowding meant that people lived close together.

Because they lived close together they had to behave themselves,

they had to be nice to each other, they had to be civilised.

So, except from the Friday nights when they used to get

drunk in the pubs, and I don't blame them for that

because life WAS hard for some, it meant that we lived closely,

almost a village-like atmosphere.

I could play on the streets at night and there was no danger at all

and it was, as I say, a very, very happy life.

Right, this is the street. They're calling it Lukin Street now.

Doesn't look like any kind of street.

Oh, God, there's old people walking up and down,

but it's just corrugated iron.

It's grass behind everything.

Grass in there when it was once cobblestones.

Kids playing on the streets.

We never saw grass, I never saw me first cow till I was evacuated.

I had some really good times here.

Then, of course, we went to the underground shelter

at Tilbury Docks and we came back one morning

and there our house was... Gone.

EXPLOSION

NARRATOR: 'Of all the bombs scarred London, the East End was hit worst.

'They were never down in the dumps, these big-hearted folk.

'Now they were in real East End high spirits.'

'After German bombers had been over this London district, we endeavoured

'to find out how the raid had affected the morale of the people.

'We wished Hitler could see and hear the interview with

'a woman whose house had been demolished.

-Miss Higgins?

-Yes, sir?

-Where were you when the bomb fell?

Well, in bed! Where did you think I was?

-And...

-What happened?

What happened to you?

-It blew me out!

-Blew you out of bed?

It must have blew me out cos I don't remember no more.

-Did you manage to get out of the house all right?

-Yes.

Has it hurt you at all, do you feel any effects of it?

No, only a bit shook.

I had to find me own way out

and I was trapped every time, time every way I went.

And you still feel you can carry on?

Yes, apart from being a bit shaken I feel all right. Fine.

-NARRATOR:

-'At a site in East Poplar,

'the first of London's pre-fabricated huts take shape, and rapidly,

'for two men can build these houses for Doodlebug-victims in three days.

'Each with a living room, two bedrooms and a kitchenette,

'they'll accommodate families of five with a little extra room to swing a kitten.

'Wood and asbestos are the main ingredients used.

'The tabloid fireplace, together with heating plugs,

'will provide the necessary warmth in winter.

'Finishing touches to the Lilliput house -

'Mr Scott and his daughter say goodbye to their old

'and badly damaged house, and with their furniture,

'move off to Doodlebug Village.'

'John Kane hadn't heard that for helping to save seven

'lives in a London blitz, he had won the George medal.'

Well, buster, I'm very proud of what you did, I congratulate you.

-Thanks, guvnor.

-Now, tell them all about it.

-Righto, guvnor.

We went in the factory and we seen seven men laying in a pit.

So me and a policeman helped to get 'em out.

After we got 'em out, we brought them out on doors,

and after that I went and had a ginger beer in the pub.

Here we go.

# I got home the other night and what did I discover?

# The law's been around again to see me little brother

# Big sister's gone and got in trouble with a lover

# I've had a bleedin' nuff of it with one thing and another

# I should have listened to me dear old mother

# She was a good old girl God love her

# Find a wife and settle down she'd say, but, brother

# You know how it is what with one thing and another. #

Quiet, please, eyes on the ball, the first man's on the mark.

-60!

-Correct!

-45.

-Correct.

-Would you like a paper this evening?

-Certainly, my dear.

Thanks very much, God bless you. Tis cold tonight, isn't it?

-Yes, very cold. Cold on your rounds, isn't it?

-Yes.

I hope you'll read it!

-We always do.

-That's the children's one.

-If we don't the kids always read it.

-That's good.

That'd do me, I can't read!

BOAT HORN BLARES

NARRATOR: 'A boatman makes his way up Wapping Old Stairs

'for a drink in the 500-year-old Town of Ramsgate Inn,

'where pirates drank a last tot before being rowed

'down river to be hanged in chains at Execution Dock.

'It was in this bar that the infamous Judge Jeffreys was caught

'when he nipped in for a quick one

'while trying to flee the country back in 1688.

'Today's customers are hard-working men, whose future is the future of the river itself.

# Well, I used to be a doctor and in the surgery

# Come a nice, young girl with a vaccination plea

# Well, I'll vaccinate you darling I said I willing are

# I'll vaccinate you darling with the end of me old cigar

# With the end of me old cigar Hoorah hoorah hoorah

# I'll vaccinate you, beauty where you couldn't see the scar

# And as she stands and shows the boys around the public bar

# Saying look at what the doctor's done for me

# With the end of his old cigar

# Yes the end of me old cigar hoorah hoorah hoorah

# I walked down Piccadilly and they think that I'm a star

# I ain't because I'm handsome or I'm a la-di-dah

# But I tickled the lady's fancy with the end of me old cigar. #

That's it.

Oi!

APPLAUSE

And now, ladies and gentlemen, it's bubbles time.

So why don't you all join in with a rip-roaring chorus

of I'm For Ever Blowing Bubbles?

# I'm for ever blowing bubbles

# I will always follow follow everywhere... #

'The success of the West Ham team had gone to the heads of some of the supporters.

'And the crowd, who haven't had much to cheer about in recent years,

'made the most of it.

'The mayor, Mrs Marjorie Helps, looked to have forgotten the dignity of her office in the excitement.

'The first player on the balcony was 17-year-old Paul Allen.

'The youngest man to appear in a Cup final.

'Trevor Brooking, the scorer of the West Ham goal, has seen it all before.'

FANS CONTINUE TO SING

'They are a great team of street footballers down in the East End.

'One day, they are going to be top of the league. The champion centre forward of the future

'is young Alfie, but he finds it tough going.

'That no hands rule was meant for bigger chaps.

'Oh, dear, he has fallen down again and the game goes on without him.

'Why do the goals always get scored when Alfie's out of the running?'

'This type of football that's played in the streets,

'is a rough and tumble affair whereby the boys

'create instinctive dribbling ability to get out of the way of a lunging tackle.'

These natural talents and keenness are the things that make them stand out from the other boys in the team.

It is at this time that we hope that one of these boys

one day may wear the colours of West Ham United.

It's just everything I wanted.

I always wanted to be a professional footballer

so I jumped at the opportunity.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

OK, lads, let's just work on some individual skills. First of all,

we will work across and then back to this side of the gym.

Then work backwards with your ball, pulling it towards you,

right the way over. Nice touch.

Right the way over. Off you go. There and back.

That's it, Derek, nice and sharp. Well done, Ray, that's good.

I chose West Ham more because of the atmosphere.

When I went to other clubs, they seemed to treat you as a nothing.

They wanted you and that's all they wanted.

They wanted your name on that form.

When I came to West Ham, it was completely different.

# Fortune's always hiding

# I've looked everywhere doo da doo da doo da doo

# I'm for ever blowing bubbles

# Pretty bubbles in the air

# Pretty bubbles in the air. #

They don't bite, do they?

The only time they have bitten me is when I chop their heads off and they're wiggling about the boards.

-They bite then, do they?

-Or they snap you.

-They're snapping all the time.

-It's just the nerves.

-Yeah.

If one of them grabs hold of you, it shakes you up a bit. Just the head like.

# Cor jellied eels, jellied eels woggling about like wonky wheels

# Why just frown? They look so sickly

# Slide them down your throat and quickly

# Don't bring up any empty gut I knows just how you feels

# When you gets a taste you won't want to waste your lovely jellied eel. #

'In less polluted times, Thames eels were cheap - a valuable part of the daily diet.'

I should say eels, they must be the most nutrimental food there is.

'The days when eels were easily trapped in local rivers are long gone.

'But since the craving for them remains, they are flown in from overseas.

'Wherever they come from, Ireland or New Zealand, they have to be alive when they reach London.

'The eels are stored in tanks until their hour has come,

'and then they are slithered into boxes ready for execution.

'As any Cockney will tell you, the best way to eat eels

'is to boil them for about 20 minutes until they are tender.

'Tubby Isaacs knows by the feel, when they are ready to be poured into bowls,

'where they'll be entombed in their own jelly.

'Although you can get jellied eels in certain West End restaurants,

'they are at their best when eaten standing up.

'Most of them are taken in big enamel bowls

'to be sold in markets, at dog tracks, street stalls all over London.'

If jellied eels are the traditional food of the East End, which they are,

the traditional way to eat them is with pepper and vinegar

and in the open air. And one of the best places is down here in Aldgate at Tubby Isaacs' stall.

Tubby, somebody told me once that jellied eels were an aphrodisiac. Any truth in that?

They've been known to be an aphrodisiac.

This was one of the things they blamed the high population in the East End of London for.

One of our cries used to be, when we was flogging our wares in the old days,

was, "Every one's a baby. Come and have a basin!" This used to be a regular call of ours.

# They're loving their jellied eels! #

'This is the department store of Mrs Smith down East,

'only for departments say barrows,

'for lifts and floors, think of steps along the pavement.

'Noisy and colourful, but kindly and thoughtful too.

'Under the open sky, Mrs Smith goes shopping as a friend of friend

'with the storekeepers - knows them by name.

'Knows there's no under-the-counter business on a barrow.'

Come here, girls. There's no business like grow business.

Don't waste all your money on food and clothes when you can have flowers in the garden.

# They are all very fine and large

# They're fat and proud and prime

# If you fancy you can beat them it'll take you all your time

# They're the finest in creation and I make no extra charge

# Who'll chance at a dozen or two? They're all very fine and large... #

Who's got another giant bag there for 10p?

The first customer, yours or mine, for 25.

Never mind about six bob, a dollar - four bob.

Who will give me three bob for four of them?

# ..To be too modest nowadays is not a thing that pays

# It is best to shout what you've to sell in these advertising days

# I add to that, you all well know the public always pays

# They are all very fine and large They are fat and proud and prime

# If you fancy, you can beat them It will take you all your time

# They are the finest in creation and I make no extra charge

# Now, who will have a chance at a dozen or two? They are all very fine and large. #

MAN: 'I can remember when it was crowded with stalls

'and they would be shouting out, "Penny a pound for pears." It was friendly.

'You'd come up here with your mother and it was a shopping expedition and it was a social expedition.'

-WOMAN:

-'It seems to me that Petticoat Lane personifies the fact

'that all races and colours can live easily and comfortably together if they are just left alone.

'All my young life I'd seen new groups of immigrants

'constantly arriving in the East End and very quickly calling themselves Cockneys.'

JEWISH MUSIC

'Whitechapel Market, that few hundred yards of pavement

'which Abraham Nahum Stencl, the Yiddish poet, called sacred.'

IN YIDDISH

'What you can buy here, buy it dirt cheap.

'All bargains. An ox for a penny.

'Buy. Buy. Buy.

'Above the singing gramophone records, the voice of the barkers rises harsh.'

MAN IN YIDDISH

IN YIDDISH

'With a needle in his lapel,

'with wife and child, fleeing the Kishinev pogrom,

'a tailor has come.

'In a foggy street in a dark tumbledown house,

'an open door where he felt at home.

'At each window sings a Singer machine,

'accompanied by the press iron's hiss and glow.

'Jewish workers live here, as the children of Israel did

'in the land of Gulshan long ago.'

'Most Jewish family businesses have left the area now,

'moved on to better things,

'but Solly Shamroth likes it here and chooses to stay.'

We can send that one up to Newcastle.

'His right-hand man, Danny Tabi, was born and raised in the Lane

'and joined Solly 25 years ago.'

It was a Wednesday afternoon, actually.

I was just walking down the road.

I walked in and asked for a job and he said, "Start the next day."

And that's how I got into the fur trade.

'When Brick Lane was a Jewish Ghetto,

'it was the heart of London's rag trade.

'In that respect, little has changed.

'But the Jews have all gone now

'and Bengalis have quietly taken their places.

'Often at the very same sewing machine.'

People used to have small factories.

Now there is different styles around.

It is harder for the workers now and the money is going down.

I have to get my own business.

If my father was running this shop, nobody would be talking.

You cannot walk down Whitechapel

without seeing suffering, drama and misery.

And it's unfortunate that I'm drawn like a magnet to that place.

When you see a man rolling on the pavement in Whitechapel,

drunk out of his mind, you have got to ask yourself the question,

why is he drunk out of his mind? Does he have a reason?

You start asking yourself a lot of questions.

Do you mind if I do a quick picture of you?

-You can do what you want.

-Ah, you are very nice.

-I'm only killing time.

-You haven't got any other commitments?

No, I'm only an ex-merchant seaman.

Can you look, would you look at me?

After 20 years, I haven't stopped coming back to this district

because I think it's the most visually fascinating district

in the whole of London. In fact the whole of England.

We're sitting in the best reservoir of photographic images

that you could ever want for.

I take about a square mile and I walk it

and I absolutely kind of walk it.

I criss-cross it, I double back on myself,

I behave like some of the people I photograph.

You become paranoid after several hours of walking.

There are many wars. There are wars that concern bullets and guns

and there are wars that take place in cities which I call social wars.

I put just as much energy

into showing the misery of these social wars

as I do of the wars that involve guns.

When I see a man like this sitting in a shop doorway cold and freezing,

there is no way I'm going to walk past him

and not make a statement about it.

Do you think you can just look straight into this camera?

-Do you think I could make a portrait of you? Do you mind?

-No, not at all.

I prefer to go in with a wide angled lens

because I like to be right up at the front.

I am what I consider to be a confrontation photographer.

I don't like to be deceitful about it.

Some of the people here

have got the highest kind of qualities as human beings

and it doesn't mean that because you live in an area like this,

you don't have any dignity.

I come here as a photographer

and I am just pursuing the social image

and there is a lot of drama here. It's social drama.

It's just as...it's not as bad as a war

because you don't actually see people with bullet holes,

but you see a lot of misery and you see a lot of pain here.

What part of the world are you from?

I come from London. I am a Londoner.

I've seen you around a bit, haven't I?

-Oh! I'm an Ulsterman.

-Can I make a portrait of you?

-Yes, definitely.

-That's very kind of you.

An old soldier of the last war.

There we are in once was a hive of industry.

This is a part of the London docks and this is known as Shadwell Basin.

This was served by 3,000 boat-registered workers.

'Dockers, tallymen, checkers, stevedores,

'hatchmen, winchmen, samplers, grain porters,

'timber porters, teamers, tacklemen,

'yard masters, shunters, pilots, tugboatmen, foyboatmen,

'fresh watermen, blacksmiths, boilersmiths, masons, bricklayers,

'joiners, shipwrights, 'pattern makers, ship chandlers,

'gangers, tractormen, coopers,

'bank riders, weighers, dock watchmen,

'dredgermen, launchmen, needlemen, jetty clerks, warehousemen,

'measurers, coal trimmers, lightermen, lumpers...

'and just as you think you've named them all,

'up goes a crane driver to his seat in the sky.'

There'd be 300 or 400 on call of a morning,

because you had to get there around about seven o'clock

to hear the whispers

because you would want to know where the work was.

Used to have a system where they had some little brass tallies.

If they gave you a brass tally, they didn't ask your name,

if they gave you a brass tally,

you was employed for a day's work

or half a day, whatever it may be.

Now the thing was, when you got that brass tally in your hand,

you had to grab it quick

because if you didn't, what used to happen,

someone else'd knock it up and away go your brass tally

and whoever picked that brass tally up got the day's work.

And at night, my house, which is now bombed, it's all gone,

it used to overlook the West Garden Gate of the London docks

and I could see the funnels

and the cranes and the mast,

and you used to hear the sirens at night

and this was one of the most romantic feelings in the world.

I'm certain it's one of the reasons that led me

to become a foreign correspondent. I used to dream of far away places.

Very hard to picture that one day it would be like this.

And now it's like, when you remember the old Western films

of the ghost towns, that's exactly what it reminds me of

as I'm looking at it now.

'My grandfather found this little house in Spellman Street

'just off the Whitechapel Road

'and he and my grandmother lived here till the day they died.

'I used to come every single day for lunch from school around the corner.

'The house is now occupied by immigrant Cypriots.

'Maybe in five years' time, it will be Pakistanis.

'And who knows after that?'

I can't believe this is the same place that I knew at all.

This was the, erm... this was the front room.

The weddings and the Passovers we held. I don't know how we all got in!

And the big family meetings were held in this room.

My grandfather used to sit at the window

and watch everybody go by all the time. He knew everybody.

He was one of the elders at the synagogue and knew the street

and people were always coming up to ask his advice on this or that.

This is Custom House, south Canning Town.

Custom built for the poor. The first joke I ever wrote,

"They've pulled down my old house and built a slum."

I thought it was funny then.

'The Isle of Dogs isn't really an island.

'It's a U-shaped bend in the River Thames

'riddled with so many locks and canals linked to docks

'that it's almost cut off.

'It's also a depressed and deprived area.

'Officially listed as needing urban aid

'and being an educational priority area.'

'A vast area of land and water was released for redevelopment

'right in the heart of the city.'

'Since the docks were closed,

'derelict warehouses have been converted

'into flats and penthouses at prices only the privileged few can afford.'

This is the penthouse,

the most expensive flat we have in the building.

What will it set me back?

We can sell it to you for 310,000.

I always saw my future as living round here

and when this land was built on, there'd be a house for me.

Either to buy cheaply or to rent. And I was really shocked.

None of us say that we want to live in the past.

There is a kind of nostalgia for the past,

but the past was bloody hard for most people

and everybody wants to see changing better life,

but it depends upon the price that you have to pay.

'It's one thing to dream of a bright new city by the Waterside.

'Another to create it.'

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd