The New East End: Kinship, Race and Conflict

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The New East End is a wide-ranging analysis of life in one of the most diverse places in Britain. Returning to the East End four decades after ‘Family and Kinship in East London’, the authors bring together a history of community life which has implications that stretch nationwide.

Four decades after his classic study with Peter Willmott, ‘Family and Kinship in East London’. Michael Young returned to the East End with new colleagues Kate Gavron and Geoff Dench to investigate its recent past. Their findings reveal what life is really like in one of the most divided communities in Britain – and the implications of their analysis stretch nation wide.

The East End of London has always been the door to Great Britain: it was a haven for Huguenots fleeing persecution in France and Irish escaping from famine, and welcomed Jewish refugees from central and Eastern Europe. And in the second half of the twentieth century their descendants have been joined in Tower Hamlets by Bangladeshi immigrants – who now represent the largest concentration of a single minority group in any borough in Britain.

The place of newcomers did not play a large part in Michael Young and Peter Willmott’s hugely influential sociological study of 1957 Family and Kinship in East London, but it became fundamental to the new research of Young and colleagues. Here they present their findings, which explore the changes in the interim and the way real East-enders live now.

They analyze the roots of white hostility towards Bangladeshis, explain where blame lies of policy failures and question the ‘culture of entitlement’ brought about by the development of the welfare state. Hundreds of interviews give detailed insights into ordinary lives and reveal the ways in which – after the arrival of a young white middle-class – tension exists along class as well as ethic lines.

Revealing what life is really like in one of the most divided communities in Britain this is ‘one of the most important books I’ve read in a long time’ according to Trevor Philips, Chair of the CEHR whilst David Willetts MP believes that ‘everyone who cares about the future of our cities should read it.’