Bexleyheath has reintroduced lockdown measures in response to rumours of ‘TikTok-fueled looting’. In an op-ed for UnHerd, Doug Stokes reflects on his own experiences growing up in Hackney, and how London today is a far cry from the multicultural harmony he remembers. Here’s an excerpt:
Lockdown reportedly returned to Bexleyheath on Saturday. As rumours about an impending wave of ‘TikTok-fuelled looting’ circulated on social media, shopkeepers debated whether it was safe to unlock their doors. Eventually they did, but only after a dispersal order was issued, handing the police additional powers to snuff out antisocial behaviour. No doubt the Met’s officers hoped to avoid a repeat of the carnage that had unfolded earlier in the week, when gangs of children ran amok on Oxford Street, allegedly in the hope of ransacking a JD Sports.
Central London isn’t “safe anymore”, led one report after the mayhem. Countless others carried a similar message: that lawlessness had returned to the capital’s streets.
You will forgive me if I reserve my shock and outrage. I was born in Hackney, East London, in the early Seventies, when such scenes regularly played out in working-class communities to little or no media fanfare. My inner-city state schools were more like prisons, and by the time I was 18, I had seen more acts of violence than I care to remember. …
Despite the horrors, my memories of Hackney remain mixed. As violent and poor as it once was, there was always a sense of solidarity. The settled white working-class communities were nearly always at the sharp end of the policies imposed by successive post-war governments, almost all without democratic consent. Mass immigration radically altered those communities, but they largely muddled along as best they could, forming cross-cultural social norms. At my grandmother’s funeral, mourners from every race gathered to commemorate the life of a white working-class cockney matriarch. Born into desperate poverty to a widowed mum with seven kids in the thirties, she formed deep bonds with the first-generation Afro-Caribbean mums who, as they grew older, would look out for each other.
Read more: Why Looting Has Returned to London
