Geoff Dench - Minorities in an Open Society

Since the Middle Ages this corner of London has been an important focus and symbol for the outcast and dispossessed in British society. Haunt of Jack the Ripper, and birthplace of the Kray Brothers, the East End has a long history of exclusion from respectable society, which is intimately tied up with the emergence of capitalism. The western flank of the area comprises the neighbouring districts of Bethnal Green and Stepney. These lie adjacent to the City of London, and are still linked to it by the medieval entrances of (respectively) Bishopsgate and Aldgate. Over the last six or seven hundred years the development of the City and East End have unfolded in parallel, involving progressive and in many ways symbiotic polarisation. As the City evolved into the centre of capitalism, it periodically exported its more polluting economic activities to just outside the city walls, where their benefits were still easily available but did not offend the dignity of the City itself. Starting in the thirteenth century with the movement of the leather and skin trades (which are to this day centred on Bethnal Green), followed by clothing and furniture trades generally, then shipping and the distribution of goods, those activities involving material goods and services became excluded from the City. This concentrated its own activity around high status financial activities dealing only with the abstract essence of trading value which allowed the maximising of wealth and power. Together the City and the East End became the hub of the British imperial trading system. Commodities were bought and sold in the City, and handled through the docks and warehouses of East London.