Louisa

I think social housing should be abolished altogether anyway. I do not think it supplies the people who need it most, and it usually ends up in shed loads of bureacratic nonsense. On a side note, the fact social housing is reducing on the Dulwich Estate could be a good thing. I do not want to encourage the council to build on the beautiful and unique greenery surrounding the villag and bordering us in ED. The ares will end up yet another inner London crime hotspot.

Sean i've never been inside 72 but i've looked in from the outside and i'd say the long beards and scruffy appearance of most of the student types who venture in would make it almost impossible to do racial profiling :)

I know the woman you speak of I think, she often goes into the off-licence/newsagents nexr to The Green on EDR, and she comes up with all sorts of fanciful tales about crashes, people dying you know name it she says it. I think she may well have a mental illness, as i've seen her a lot up at the bus stop by Maudsley Hospital in Camberwell talking to herself.

I love the idea of a Pie and Mash shop but I still think it's a shame more people do not visit the well established Manzes on Hill Street in Peckham. I hope Ahmed makes the place look and feel like a traditional Eel and Pie house with the tiled walls and straight backed rows of wooden benches.

The small frontal system sent off a heavy downpour round the low pressure system into France, but it swung straight back at us earlier! An active Atlantic is not unusual in the summer, but usually the Azores high will dominate our weather for at least a fw weeks here and there. No such luck this year! Whilst the world is predicted to experience it's hottest year on record, Britain is actually going to finish this summer on a below average trend. But we did have a relatively warm winter.

I think all the money pumped into Peckham was a complete waste of time. It did not solve any of the major issues and it did not attract any decent shops back to the area. What a waste of taxpayers money that was.. Oh yeah, you have a new library.. great!

The shoe shop on Rye Lane which used to be the counter service Sainsbury's pre-1954, is not a Clark's shoe shop as such. It does sell predominantly Clarks products, but I think it's a seperate entinity, very much like the place on LL.

South West London took it worst.. Teddington high street is currently a river

As for M&S and Sainsburys..

C&A did not leave the UK until 2000, so they were very much a mainstay of the British High Street back then. Clarks are still nationwide and indeed are the second largest shoe chain in the country. BHS remains a regular on almost every single major shopping area in the country, as does the Entertainer which is a large toy shop second only to Toys R Us. Richards and Rumbellows both closed down, but I believe that was many years after they left Rye Lane.

Keef, I remember you suggesting that LL was much wider back in day from the picture I posted on this thread? .... Well, I did some research and indeed it was wider, much wider.. The buildings opposite the Plough were all replacements following bomb damage. Before that in the early half of the century, that whole area was an open space unused leading onto a cobbled road.

Frisco - White Stuff is a national chain. M&S were closing less profitable stores in the late 80's but that was not the reason for their departure from Peckham. C&A, BHS, Sainsburys, Clarks, Richards, the Entertainer, Rumbellows, just a handful of the famous retail names to abandon Peckham between 1985 and 1990. Everyone - Race is not necessarily the sole issue at hand here, socio economic factors, transport links, class, they all contribute to the demographic changes experienced in an area over time. But I believe the changes we are seeing across London now are very different to those previously seen. We dont even have to put it in terms of Black and White, you could say it's an 'ethno-class' related issue. The movement out of London for working class whites (Peckham), the gentrication of an area attracting middle class whites (ED), and the situation left behind which leads to some areas being predominatly poorer, working class, and mostly ethnic minority. There are very few of the so called middle classes who gentrify an area from the ethnic minorities, they are mostly white. This isnt about labelling people, its about trying to understand in a logical way why people are not living and mixing together. The odd Black face in the EDT or the Bishop is not what I am talking about here either.

Ted Max, I am not suggesting that is all they want, but I am suggesting that is all they have offered speicific to their community, lets not get too pc about this.

missd, the Indian community in ED is fairly small compared to other areas of London, and even though there are Indian restauarants and newsagents makes little or no difference at all. I can think of other white majority areas with a few Indian restaurants and newsagents, that isnt unheard of.

Frisco, if I remember rightly, four major chains pulled out of Rye Lane within the space of about 2 years. This all followed on from the death of the J&H department stores. I know the threat of the channel tunnel rail link did force house prices down locally and indeed sent many retailers out of business, but I do believe that the North Peckham Estate contributed significantly to the demise of Peckham as a place to shop. The chains that spring to mind are White Stuff (they could easily open a fairly sizeable store along Rye Lane and opted for LL), potentially M&S who lets face it will move to ED (just a matter of time, probably the Somerfield site) despite the fact they closed a large retail unit on Rye Lane in 1988. Foxtons the estate agent moving into the area, I cant think of a single estate agent on Rye Lane. we have the co-op chemist, Iceland, William Hill bookies, Tesco Express, Sainsburys (again moved out of a large retail unit in Peckham).

Sean I agree, London has traditionally attracted wave upon wave of immigrant community to speicific areas of town, that isnt something I dispute. But where we are getting into new territory, which is very worrying, is the white community becoming the minority, and feeling they have to gravitate to a certain area and stick together to live, which I believe to be very different to immigrant communities who want to settle in an area and then disperse at a later date. White people doing it is slightly different and can lead to an element of racism, in most cases unknowingly I admit, but it can and probably will happen. This is not a good thing.

Frisco, I would say the Sainsburys i've been to in Horsham is more ethnically mixed than the one on DKH, no word of a lie. Sainsburys 10 years ago on DKH was very ethnically mixed, but I would say comparably to somewhere like Somerfield in Camberwell or Morrisons in Peckham, it is very much a white majority in there. A visble one too, which matches the sitution along LL as well. Only a few shops along Grove Vale attract the black community into the area, and those waiting for buses near the DKH Estate.

Government intervention has taken place in some areas, Brixton and Peckham two good examples. Firstly the transformation of community relations with the police and then the great big economic handout from the EU to make Peckham seem more fluffy. Non of this has solved the issue of segregation in my opinion. If whites are becoming the minority, then this is yet a further problem, because middle class and upper class whites will restrict themselves to certain isolated wealthy communities within London, 'white flight' will continue from working class areas, and in 20 years the white community will be happily living in gated leafy communities dotted around poorer degenerating ethnic neighbourhoods.

Frisco, the steep decline of Rye Lane was accelerated following the closure of Jones & Higgins which came about as a result of high rents and indeed the notorious North Peckham Estate. But that place was relatively well mixed back then, the white population has shifted out of Peckham in droves from the late 1980's onwards and it has not at all helped community relations. Yes Peckham had its problems back then as many areas do, but the demographic changes I believe resulted in the black community feeling further isolted, despite the millions pumped in by the EU regeneration scheme. The fact many high street retailers refused to stick with Peckham did not help either, as it suggested that Peckham was obviously not worth worrying about because it was beoming so ethnically mixed. The irony is that many big chains are now considering ED even though it has less retail space along LL, simply because it has a high earning white middle class population, and it will not consider opening up on Rye Lane with larger retail units, because it does not have this clique. Its shocking and shameful.

I am not at all suggesting Government intervention. How is that going to work? What I am suggesting is a mix of shops to attract people from all ethnic and social backgorunds to an area, a mix of social as well as private housing to promote all different types of people into an area. The sink estates you are talking about have been improved upon in the Peckham area, so I do not see that as the issue at all. I think it is a case of different ethnic communities feeling the need to stay seperate and we need to find out why that is. I do not think it is a problem at the moment, because as you say mockney London is still functioning (just about), but the problems will come in the future when these already marginally segregated areas become even further seperated and isolated. Outside of London in towns like Blackburn and Luton the visible signs of demographic change have gone a step beyond. You now have whole taxi companies with exclusively white and/or Asian drivers appealing to their respective communities. It is just ridiculous. This will happen in London given time. By the way London as of 2001 census was 69% white and 31% ethnic minority.

I think a quick analysis of population trends over the past 20 years shows just how dramatically two comparable areas have changed. In 1991 Peckham and East Dulwich were almost identical. Both were reasonly mixed areas with a white majority population and a mix of shops and relative average rates of crime and violence eg. It's only been in recent years the marked changes have occured. Comparing the 1991 census to the 2001 census, Peckham had in the space of a decade lost 50% of the white population. I believe these to be mostly white working class people who are linked to the whole 'white flight' debate. That is fair enough, and yes it did result in major chain stores moving out of Peckham and lots of smaller ethnic stores opening up to suit the needs of the population. similarly, post 1997 changes started to take place in ED which attracted a large middle class white population 'gentrification'. These two neighbouring parts of London have seen dramatic swings and roundabouts in population trends, but what is clearly and visbly obvious is that the white population of Peckham shrunk and transformed the area, and the Black population of ED has shifted abroad or to other areas of town following the gentrification. How you can say its not an overring concern is beyond me mockney. I believe to have two areas less than a couple of miles apart where one area is becoming whiter and the other blacker is just ridiculous and damaging to community relations. If both sides do not make an active effort to integrate and move closer together then this country will be heading down the path of ghetto communities like those in the United States. The next census is in 2011, and it will very interesting to compare and contrast what has happened in ED in that time. the 1991 census puts the minority population of ED wards around 30%, by 2001 this had fallen to 26%, and I am damn sure it will have fallen further by 2011. The Village has over 90% white population. And all this happening at a time when Britian has been experiencing mass immigration. It seems bizarre to me.

Sean I think it's an issue we have to discuss, shying away from it certainly wont help anyone. In the days of apartheid in South Africa and pre-1960's USA, these things were forced upon people. Now we all have a choice, and yet I still see whole ethnic communities choosing to remain seperate. I dont know if its an issue of class, maybe there are more white middle classes in London and so they become more noticeable on the streets. Perhaps black middle class people have moved to ED too, it's just they have not been noticed because there is so few of them. your comment about community events is an interesting one. The Notting Hill carnival was once very race speicific and was attended almost exclusively by the black community. That is now not the case, and it is probably equal numbers now. But this is sadly the exception to the rule (probably because of its history and publicity). Other events are only attended by certain people. The Dulwich Festival is almost always a white majority event. I saw a gathering of parents and children on Goose Green yesterday afternoon taking photographs and having what appeared to be a picnic. Every single parent and child (at least 50 people) were white. It's a big problem that has to be sorted with further integration. We could be heading down a very sticky path otherwise.

Bob I believe that the Black people who own their owns homes in ED (especially of the older generation) have started to sell up and move back home to retire (I know of a few neighbours who have done this) and because the housing market is so strong, White middle class families have bought these properties and moved into the area. It's a shift which isnt race speicific, but I would suggest most of the people who have been able to afford to make ED their home in recent years are white and middle class. I think the whole 'white flight' argument is very controversial, as many people decide to move out of an area and retire elsewhere because they are getting old and want an easier life. The only problem has been that this shift from both Black and White amongst the older generation has created blatant ethnic divides in certain areas of London. Some Black people remain in ED and have probably always lived here, and many own their own homes. But the very oldest Black people are moving out and its creating a problem. Equally in Peckham as older White people move out, it seems that Black families are buying homes there. I dont know why this is, maybe it's to do with housing, maybe certain communities want to remain close to one another if they have a large family in that area. I do not know, but it is a problem for our community I think. I certainly think gentrification in ED has been race speicific, and it's more than likely as a result of younger people and families from the home counties wanting to live and work in London being priced out of Putney and Islington and the like.

*minor correction - I believe there is a Green/Turkish deli next to the bookies and Cheners and also I think SMBS sells some ethnic produce. Grove Vale still has a few ethnic shops. But these are becoming less and less. (I believe all of these shops serve both communties and thats why they remain open and do not have a mostly black clientel)

I would hardly describe East Dulwich as gritty urban reality, even 10/15 years ago! I think the gentrification thing isolates areas. I mean one observation I have made in recent years, (and it's an important one so i'm going to make regardless of what anyone thinks),is the marked ethnic divide that I believe has sprung up in the last 20 years in London in particular (with ED and Peckham being prime examples). From the very first wave of mass immigration to arrive from the Caribbean on these shores back in the late 1950's, areas like Brixton and Notting Hill took on large Black communities. But the areas themselves integrated over time (despite early difficulties) and became vibrant places to live. In Peckham 20 years ago, you had a white majority population with a large Black community and eveyrone lived reasonably happily, decent shopping area along Rye Lane, it all seemed to work perfectly well. In ED, very similar situation, working class area with a mixed population where it all seemed to work (despite LL being so lifeless apparantly). From about the mid 1990's the Black population in Peckham has doubled, with white people moving out (census 2001), and the whole area has lost chain stores and taken on an ethnic flavour. In ED, after years of blatant multiculturalism, the area has now gone the other way, with white people moving in on mass, and the number of black faces I see along LL has gone down dramatically. The few Black shops like the afro barbers and the Jerk Rock place have now all gone. LL has no ethnic food stores left! This is a problem as far as I am concerned because I believe whole areas of London are becoming segregated between wealthy white people and poor ethnic neighbourhoods. It is a problem I dont believe has been widely discussed and I think it is the root of all the problems with gun crime and drugs in Peckham, and the middle class gentrification of ED. It's almost as if the lovely folk in the Village felt they had to act fast and buy up half of ED to ensure it remains a white enclave in an ethnically diverse part of south London. It is a worry as far as I am concerned because I think ED is now very clearly a white majority (overwhelmingly compared to a decade or two ago) and equally Peckham is now very much a Black majority community.