I have always lived in the West Country, but from a boy to a man; I have always had a fascination with London. From a paperboy saving his hard earned money, to catch the train up to London to watch the football all over the capital, to visiting London to see the sights or going to the West End to watch a show. I’ve always loved the likes of Covent Garden and Craven Cottage.
I had to read this book … and I loved it. This is what the likes of the day tripper never sees, though we do of course read snatches of it in the papers. This book is much, much more than that. A hundred barrel loads more than that.
It is broken down into 25 London areas; here he discusses the lives of the various immigrant populations, their ways, and their work. The book throws in many eye-watering stats about the disappearing ‘white Brit’ in London and the various migrants that now call Britain their home. Many are here as part of our previous ‘Empire’ but there are now close on 1,000,000 here illegally!
Beautifully written, you find yourself connecting easily with the multitude of interviewees he eases his notes from. The book has a lovely warm, genuine feel. For those who have a very ‘one dimensional attitude’ towards immigrants, you should read every page of this … it will change your view and give you a much more rounded view of their lives, especially their hopes, fears, prejudices… just how bad a lot of their lives really are and how many were conned here by the traffickers?
I found the read absolutely fascinating and absorbing, it is easy to get drawn in by their tales. You feel their warmth, honesty, pain, their apprehension, their battle to simply survive. Yes, there is crime; there are definitely issues by having them here for sure. However, make no mistake, this book implores you look at the bigger picture – would we put up with the life that many of them have to contend with?
Here we read about so many of the races that make up ‘multicultural’ London. We meet: The Roma, a Nigerian Policeman, rich Arabs & Russians, an illegal immigrant from Afghanistan, we meet a multitude of cleaners, Filipino maids, prostitutes, care workers from Africa and a Muslim working in the local morgue to name just a few of quite wonderful characters. We visit the underpasses, the mansions, we ride London buses, meet the cleaners on the underground, there is wealth but plenty of abject poverty too. We visit the bookies and the regular losers, the illegals queueing for building work at dawn outside the builder’s merchants … and all around London, rich and poor, the drugs, drugs, and evermore drugs! Everyone seems to be on drugs and the likes of the Vietnamese skunk dealers are getting very rich.
This book is interesting and diverse, but mostly for me … when you meet some of these characters ... very, very heart-warming and connecting and I loved it. It has given me so much more awareness of how the parts of London that I'm not familiar with function in the twenty first century.
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REPORTER'S GUIDEBOOK TO THE XXI-ST CENTURY CITY
Ben Judah reports on London we know very little about, but which now accounts for 55% of the capital – the city of immigrants: recent and not, naturalized and illegal, professional and unskilled, hopeful and desperate. In order to study the inner mechanics of this new social formation Ben had to live in a doss house and tout for work with migrant workers, spend nights with city cleaners and Ilford Lane ladies, even sleep rough with the Roma people. From all these experiences comes a raw and striking autopsy of the new London which offers no solutions, sometimes compassion but always truthfulness and eyewitness accuracy. Must-read for everyone especially those Londoners who do not venture beyond TfL zone 1.
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