The East End served as a port-of-entry for immigrants and housed the working class families dependent on the employment Londons many docks provided. Port volume increased greatly in the eighteenth century. This increase in trade from the booming British Empire created a need for new docks, and in the early nineteenth century they were built. This expansion of the docks caused the demolition of many buildings and the displacement of 10,000 to 15,000 people. However, the expansion did create employment for the many people living in the East End. Dock labor did not pay very well, so there was much poverty in the East End. Many Londoners wanted to rid the city of this poverty because they believed it bred criminals.
The East End has, for many years, served as a landing place for immigrants. An example of the succession of residents can be seen in the use of Spitalfields church. It was built in the eighteenth century as a French Huguenot church and taken over as a Jewish synagogue in the 1880s. Recently it has served as a mosque for the Bangladeshi population living in this area since the mid-twentieth century.
Since the East End was also a landing place for many immigrants it was not planned like the West End, and it developed very much on its own.Many of the people living in the East End were dependent on the employment provided by Londons docks. This held true until only a few decades ago.
Between 1967 and 1981, many of Londons docks closed and moved downstream to coastal harbors. This left a large section of empty land, in fact, by 1980, 40 percent of the Docklands area was derelict land.
In 1982, Prime Minister Margaret Thatchers government established a tax free enterprise zone and organized the London Docklands Development Corporation (LDDC). The LDDC is a government appointed agency that has sweeping powers to buy and sell land and to control land previously held by other public bodies such as local authorities.
In the mid-1980s a North American property developer proposed a wall street on the water scheme as the way to regenerate the Docklands. A Canadian firm, Olympia and York took this idea and expanded into a grandiose plan for a new central business district in London.
By 1990 there were 25,00 people working in the Docklands. The residential population had increased from 39,000 in 1987 to 60,000 in 1990. The tallest building in London was now located in the Docklands area, Canary Wharf to be more specific. Canary Wharf has 71 acres of high rises and as much office space as Kansas City. However, this success did not stop Olympia and York from declaring bankruptcy in 1991, claiming that they were 900 million dollars in debt.
More information on the Docklands.
Information obtained from the book: London: Problems of Change, Hugh Clout and Peter Wood, 1986.
Beth Uittenbogaard