English or British? All generations of our families identify as being ‘English’ rather than ‘British’, with the exception of David who identifies as ‘Welsh’ and his son Jason who refers to himself as ‘English Welsh’. But the generations are very different in how they understand ‘Englishness’. Our oldest generation, born between 1937 and 1963, are confident in their interpretation of ‘English’ as a cultural concept, encompassing a shared history, religion, food, values, festivals and cultural traditions such as Christmas, Guy Fawkes night etc. ‘British’ for them is a descriptive term defining where people live rather than their culture, for example ‘British Bangladeshi’ etc. The older generation have a dilemma; they feel solidly ‘English’ yet worry that calling themselves ‘English’ leaves them open to what they see as unfair accusations in a negative climate towards ‘Englishness’. Our middle generation, born around 1970, have expanded their concept of ‘English’ to include their childhood friends and neighbours (and, in one case, husband) of families originally from overseas, especially from the Caribbean. This group are rather concerned with communication with neighbours than shared practices. In contrast, our youngest family members, born from 1988 to 2002, tend to have a much broader and vaguer interpretation of ‘Englishness’, often including anyone born in the UK. This generation were a small minority of ‘White English’ in their school and class. Some feel very at-ease with this and see multiculturalism as advantageous, whilst others are uncomfortable. One has been inspired by the other faiths surrounding him, whilst another romanticises the area as it was in the past before migration took place.
Click on the Older, Middle and Younger generational flowers to
activate audio and transcripts of each family member.
Eve: People talk about a sense of community. Would you say that there was more of a sense of community in those days?
William: There was a greater sense of community spirit and a greater comradeship amongst the people that has now vanished forever I believe. The second world war certainly produced a generation of people totally different from other generations who had come through terrible hardships, a six-year war. They had a spirit … frequently heard as Dunkirk Spirit … they helped each other. They would look after each other's children for no money. The children played and went to school together. There were no drugs. All that came later with others who came here. Murders were perhaps two or three a year as people were hung in those days. Unfortunately, some were hung … some were hung who were not guilty. They were hung for murder and they were found not to have been guilty. But it was a deterrent and if someone were killed you were certain to hang or to be imprisoned for 20 years. Now even if you attack a police officer it seems to be a slap on the wrist for it. Travel was very limited. Every Street in the East End seemed to be a village and it seemed to be a village community. It's difficult to imagine that the population of London at that time was around 8 million.
William: You have to be very careful now what you say in this country because the term free speech no longer applies. Free speech no longer exists. The reason why racial laws were brought in was not to protect the foreign people. It was to isolate us as criminals for speaking the truth. You are unable to speak the truth and you can be sent to prison for telling the truth. Why is it that 74 million people died in the second world war for this purpose? For the right to vote, the right to choose, the right to pray where you like and the right to live how you like? Why were these things taken away from us?
Susan: The bands used to come through and if your mum said you’d been good you could follow the band to the church and they’d meet you there and they’d have like the children’s church and you’d go off and do drawings and that and then you’d have the grown ups in the proper church you couldn’t go into until you were old enough not to make noises. So although it was repetition it was good repetition because you knew
Eve: Yeah because you knew what to predict. Like Friday was shopping day.
Susan: Yes, you got excited because you knew this is what we was going to be doing. Church, then, most people was Christian, Church of England where I lived. You did have Catholics but you never knew because what religion you was, was never an issue. You just used to go to church, or you’d go to the Roman Catholic church, but no one cared what you did, and as I said because I lived so close to the docks, you’d see all the sailors. I mean when I was growing up, you’d see every colour. You’d see them in their big hats and their… what we used to call their nightdresses cos they’d all be in something white or stripey… white and blue… They’d be buying all the things to take home… clothes and all that to take home but you never thought of where they came from, all you knew is that they came off the ships but you never associated the ships with these countries that as you were growing older knew about these countries, so you didn’t sort of think, ‘Oh where’ve you come from?’ Because you never knew nothing about Africa. They was never bandied about where these people came from. They were just there. There was quite a lot of Chinese people
Eve: So you had quite a multicultural life but nobody really thought about it really?
Susan: No, because my normal life, everybody was English and then you got the people off the ships that you’d see, but you’d just see them buying things and then they’d go. No one ever thought anything of them, never thought about their religion, they never thought about our religion. Everyone just rolled along. But we was English, and that was the thing because I know everyone now is British, but I’m not. I’m English and it annoys me cos my husband’s Welsh and he’s proud to be Welsh. I’m English and I’m proud to be English. I’m not British… But people that come to Britain come from all over the world and if you say to an Indian person, ‘What are you?’ They’ll say I’m Indian and I’m a British citizen, but I’m Indian.’ Well I’m English.
Susan: Cos the thing is at the end of the day, people that we take into this country now, it’s because of what our parents and our grandparents and their grandparents did to make this country what it is. So we should be proud because of what they did. I mean my granddad was in the Navy. He used to clear bombs, mines from the harbours and all that. He wouldn’t like to be called British because he was an English sailor, he wasn’t a British sailor and I don’t think he’d want to give up his country because all of a sudden he’s got to be British because it’s politically correct. But they didn’t fight for Britain, they fought for England
Susan: … it wasn’t until the early 60s that you began to see black faces and then all of a sudden you saw a family of black people and then you got more and more of them but even that wasn’t an issue because they still blended in with us. They came to church like we did. They came to the clubs like we did, they came to the schools like we did. They just blended in. The only difference was, they was black, we was white. But they told you where they came from and they was proud of where they came from and we were still proud to be English. They was proud to have come to England because England was giving them a future which they was proud to share and that’s how everybody mixed in. We just mixed in and that’s how we got on. There was no hostility. It wasn’t until later on we got more and more Asians here and they I won’t say took over but there seemed to be more Asians…
… But the problem I find now is, although I am still English they own our streets and they control this borough especially and now they’re all being taken over by the Eastern Europeans that are coming in to try and control what the Indians control. So there’s sort of like this war going on and the few English people that’s still here, let them get on with it. It’s the only way to be safe is to keep away from them because otherwise you know if you got involved, you could end up being stabbed, shot, your family killed so …. It’s a horrible way of life now.
Susan: This side (the neighbours) they’re from Lithuania but, you know you could go there and my next door neighbour the other side they’re from Africa, you could go there, so who they are now, where they come from isn’t a problem because we get on well, we mix well. But that’s only this little area. I wouldn’t trust any other area. I mean I’m lucky my daughter lives in the next road, so, I have her but it’s the trust of who you can talk to whereas when I was small, it was different. I mean we used to have a pub on the end where I lived and it had an off-licence and you could, and your mum would say… you could go to the off-licence, even though most in the pub were men, a few women, but you was allowed to go. You don’t have community things like that any more
Susan: I think it’s a shame because this borough went through a lot during the war and our parents, my parents, great grandparents fought for this to be what it is and there’s so many people coming from so many other places that have changed it beyond all recognition. I mean if my parents were alive now and you brought them and said to them, ‘This is where you used to live now go…., they wouldn’t know.
Eve: Do you think your children and grandchildren have any idea about what people went through here during the war?
Susan: No because my parents never spoke about it. I mean my mum worked in Tates’s during the war and the odd occasion she’d tell you about the doodle bombs coming over and she said when you used to leave early when you was on 2 to 10 shift, walking through, she said all of the sudden you’d hear it cut out and you’d think, ‘Where’s that going to land?’ Where they was by the docks obviously they got bombed nightly and they just used to hide under the table and under the stairs… I mean my mum used to make a joke of it and to my cousin, she asked what used to happen with the doodle bombs and she’d say, ‘Oh I picked them up and threw them back’, because how did you explain the horrors of what they went through to us children? We didn’t know horrors. We only knew the building sites.
Susan: Once the war was over and they started to rebuild, I mean they started the rebuilding in the 50s through to the 60s, you had the black people that came over and then in the 70s you got them from Bangladesh… so you had them come over, so you sort of … my children were born sort of late 60s, they had the black people and when they went to school they had the Bangladesh people the Indian people. So they were used to two cultures plus anything else that came in so that’s what they grew up with but I grew up in England, white England and you can understand how you get the rise of these people who say you should be proud to be English because you should be proud to be English, not because of the way they do it but we should still be proud to be English white because black people might be British but they’re not English.
Susan: It’s just how things were and that’s what we knew. You knew that in the street where my grandparents lived there was my nan’s 2 sisters lived either end of the street, so then they had their children, so you knew most people were related to someone, somewhere in these little streets and no one ever locked the door… you’d leave the door open no one cared
Susan: You had shops in your street. I mean across the road from my `nan there was a… she had a bakers, the butchers was round the corner and the greengrocers. She had a shoe mender’s, an off licence. So you never really went out of your street to get stuff cos it was there within a short walking distance
David: I think that's (multiculturalism) just a government sham. They say we're all integrating well but we're not. It's like there was a fella he was an MP in Denmark where they banned the bourka and he was saying, ‘Well, if they don't like it in our country they can go to London’ I said ‘Imagine saying that on the news!’. He said ‘They can come to Britain if they don't like it here’. Imagine! They must realise what it's like in Britain. Are we really that soft? I think it's something terrible. It's strange because when the situation is that we’ve been told that we must like things but in other countries it’s quite normal not to like them. In France and Belgium they've banned the bourka haven't they? If someone comes into work with the bourka where I work, we have to ask a woman to come from the office and take to take her into a room to check her identity and you think ‘That's all that fuss’, as sometimes you get 250 people to start the week and you have to start it with that. That is time consuming.
Susan: So our government, I think, they're frightened to upset people. You take Labour, they bend over backwards for the Asians because they know the Asians vote for them; the Tories bend over backwards for the middle class and for the rich because they know they vote for them, but then you think, ‘Who looks after us? us, poor silly English people down the bottom of the pecking order, and then when we all voted to leave the EU they were shocked and now they're making it sound as though we don't know our minds so they want to have another referendum and if it goes back to stay then us who wanted to leave will want the next one so when it comes to the 9th referendum by then you think, ‘Sod it. Let's leave it as it is’. You see those people who thought that we would just vote to stay in they didn't come and talk to us ordinary people. They just knocked on the door and when they heard that, they just didn't want to talk to us.
About the neighbours:
Mary: They’re Bulgarian… they’re lovely.
Overcrowding:
Mary: Well we was round talking to somebody yesterday, was it yesterday or the day before? She said they took ten beds out of an house across the road… We couldn’t live like that, could we?
Karen: I mean when my husband was growing up, he used to hang around with a load of black people. He’d walk and I mean he tells the story, doesn’t he and he’d go to like up London and go to a club and he’d be the only white boy there and he’s eight years older than me…. But nobody ever looked at that… I mean we’ve always said to them, ‘I don’t care who you’re friends with as long as you’re happy, that’s all’
Karen: … I like to … you know, if someone says to me ‘Where are you from?’ I’m always going to tell them… in respect of … you know be proud of wherever in the country you wherever in the world you’re from. Don’t ever be afraid of saying... well I’m actually. I think sometimes you sort of …but my family are such and such…
Karen: Maybe I’m ignorant. I just, I just let people get on and you leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone.
Karen: Yeah, I mean I’m very…. Once my door’s shut, and so is my husband, what goes on outside… I mean our next door neighbours, they’re, what are they.. what??
Jenny: I think they’re Serbians
Karen: They’re Serbians, and when my husband works nights, I feel so safe because he’s next door and I know for a fact, God forbid anything happened, I’d only have to go out the back and call him and he’d come out and we never had and there’s been times when he’s come out and goes, ‘Are you all right?’ and I go ‘Yes, yes, not a problem’. So I feel safe with ... knowing he’s next door and we’ve got, she’s from Jamaica the other side and she says to me … she’s only lived there a year and she says to me, ‘Oh I can leave my boy, knowing you’re next door’… I mean she don’t know me from Adam but she feels safe, but then saying that there might be a certain culture that’s come, that are, that I think, ‘I don’t like the look of you.’
Lisa: Nothing will ever stay the same, so there’s going to be changes, but like you said, the changes are… I personally think government have got no time for our kids growing up. They’ve got nothing, they can’t get no places, they can’t get on the ladder to buy a house
Lisa: That’s right so they’re not giving them the opportunities, because there’s not enough houses but.. it’s because it’s over populated…. There’s too many immigrants coming in and getting first dab of everything instead of the people that pay their taxes and work over here that is entitled to rent an house from the council instead of someone giving it to somebody else… and obviously …I’m not racist … Nicky’s not racist… she can’t bear nobody being be racist, but the government does make you think sometimes, ‘What about our kids?’
Nicky: I think the government makes people racist.
Nicky: . I know people who think cos he’s a Muslim, he’s going to get first dab and it’s actually like…
Lisa: Because those issues are there aren’t they?
Nicky: The issues are there and it makes you rebel against them. So I do think the government does make people racist.
Lisa: Yeah they do.
Nicky: Even to foreigners … they come over... like where my mate lives, there’s one vacant house… the next week erm a foreign person’s in there. They’ve come over and they’ve got a house: they can’t talk no English: they don’t work but they’ve got a house… it’s just like… ‘How did that work?’
Eve: So you think that because the government, well not the government, the council have given them a house, they make you…
Nicky: They’re a priority
Lisa: Yeah, they take priority don’t they
Nicky: It’s not that I’m racist but it does give you, everyone, that hate?
Karen (her mum) But then Jenny’s grown up with lots of different cultures, so for her…
Jenny: There’s no difference.
Eve: So by the time you were at school, there’s just lots of different faces.
Jenny: Yeah. They’re just people. It’s not like, ‘Oh I can’t hang out with you cos you’re a bit dodgy, or you’ve come into my… because it wasn’t mine. It might have been yours (mum’s) experience but it wasn’t mine. Everybody was already there… you was growing up with your people then other people come… it was never like that cos I just didn’t grow up with my people … but with everybody
Karen (her mother) So for Jenny, Jenny doesn’t know ‘English’. As far as Jenny’s concerned we’re British. So when you hear my… Er?
Jenny: I don’t think I’m British
Eve: So what do you think you are then?
Jenny: I guess English cos mum’s the one who goes on about we’re English not British, we’re from England
Eve: So how do you…?
Jenny: I think my version of English is different to mum’s version of English. Mum’s version of English is white people… my version of English is if you were born here. If you were born in England, you’re English. Your parents, wherever they’re from, they’re not from England, they’re not English, but if you were born here, you’re English… in my eyes
Eve: Yes, that’s…
Jenny: That’s just what I’ve been brought up with. But like, it’s not wrong to be the other way because that’s who you are. Like, if you’re born in England, … like when we were in school people would say, ‘OK write down where you’re from.’ Everyone would always say England or say like, ‘Oh my dad’s from Jamaica, so I’m Jamaican’. If you’re born in England, you’re English.
Jenny: I think a lot of them (don’t call themselves English). Probably some of them were like… a lot of people are very proud and their pride was worth more than the truth, I suppose… And sort of ‘My dad’s from here, so I’m from here.’ But I think a lot of people if they said they was from England, they’d be like, oh they sort of see it like something wrong or different whereas a lot of other people would be like, ‘Yeah I was born here so this is where…
Jenny: …. when you meet someone and you say, ‘Oh where are you from?’, they don’t ever say England, they always say where they were originally from and I don’t know whether that’s just because people nowadays sort of need to justify it in a sense rather than just saying… or maybe they just don’t, they think you’re talking about originally because if you live here then you’re obviously you’re from England, sort of thing…
Eve: There's another area I wonder if you could talk a little about. Susan's spoken quite a bit about being English and Englishness and it's an interesting area really, Englishness, because some people call themselves British and I wonder where you would position yourself in all of that?
Jason: I've got an interesting take on that. I think it's quite a bonus, me having grown up with people from different cultures and faiths like this is, ‘cos working in TV there’s quite a drive at the minute or at least there’s quite a big concern about diversity. I don't get the point because I've never really been one to prejudge or have an issue about mixing with people of other cultures and backgrounds but it seems there is a real group of people especially the old guard in TV who struggle to associate themselves or familiarise themselves with different cultures so I do see it in my professional life as well as the local area as well me being able to mix easily with different people because of growing up around them a lot.
Eve: So as far as Englishness or Britishness is concerned what would you call yourself? How would you refer to yourself?
Jason: I would say I'm English Welsh with my dad being Welsh and my mum being English I would see quite a strong divide between those two even though most people don’t. Most people associate English with British. Even though I’ve been brought up here, my dad is strong Welsh so I've always seen quite a clear divide between the two.
Eve: That’s interesting because you do distinguish between English and Welsh and the different Nations of the United Kingdom.
Jason: Yes, I don't think many people do. I just think of British as encapsulating the whole four without any cultural difference between them. I definitely think there is. So I would automatically go to me being English Welsh rather than British I think.
Eve: Would you not see that people call themselves Bangladeshi British rather than just British, so what about English people? Is there anything we can call ourselves? Should we call ourselves English?
Jason: Yes, definitely, we should call ourselves English because I would say my description is English Welsh, but I think it's good to be particular about what you are, you know, whatever your background culture is, as it forms you. Saying you're British doesn't really give you an identity but saying what the specifics of them is gives you that identity, so that's why I think English is different from Welsh and Welsh is different from Bangladeshi or whatever else.
Eve: Yes, I agree. I wanted to talk to you about it because sometimes English can be seen as being something we shouldn't something we shouldn't call ourselves.
Jason: Yes, I think the media does make it appear, like to be English affiliates you to some extreme group. Yes, I think that does happen. The reality of it is, I don’t think many people care. I think most people just try and get on with their lives without being concerned about the politics of it. They just try to get on with their existence, they just try and get on with this.
Jason: There is a real difference I see in the people who grew up here in East London and the people who didn't. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what it is. I feel very privileged to have met many different people who have different backgrounds at university and my middle class friends from Portsmouth and I’ve worked next to people who went to Oxford University and in Parliament etcetera but having grown up here it gives you a slightly more practical view of life and a bit more of a, not rougher view, but more of a view that you're trying to find a resolution to things because people have always had to graft. And again it comes back to that poverty issue of income and it's about trying to make ends meet and that mentality carries into the work space and you come in and you think, ‘What are we trying to achieve here and how are we are we going to do it?’ and I think that comes from growing up here. It's been very interesting to meet different people who have different backgrounds and see how they can be a bit more relaxed and laid back about things.
Jason: You’ve seen the City and the difference in the people there and the people here. It's definitely noticeable, though it's hard to pinpoint exactly what, but there is definitely a difference in mindset and approaches to life and approaches to just simple solving of issues. It's very different.
Eve: Living in India, living in India is not like living in London I assume well of course.
Brian: Yes, you do have to adapt quite a lot. I do, I have found after living here (in India) for a year, although I'm very much, I'm not here to make European friends, I want to make connections with local people but I have found myself realising how European I am in certain things. I've really become aware of where I kind of fit in terms of identity issues and I'm quite surprised at how English I am in certain things, and, yes.
Eve: Do you think you've got that from your parents principally or maybe you got it a mixture from your school and parents and everything else and just growing up in Britain?
Brian: Yes, I don't know if it's just parents. I wouldn't even say it's just English. I'd even put it as wide as being European in certain things, like sometimes I think my Italian flatmate, where she comes from, Italy’s less multicultural. She's less exposed. It's less of a culture shock for me, even the first time I come to India it was like, I know that but I bet she doesn't but it surprises me in a sense.
Brian: I mean I'm definitely now, my thinking of religion is that it's not a positive thing for the world, but growing up, I had a big interest in religion did my undergraduate degree in world religions.
Eve: Your parents weren't religious, were they?
Brian: No, they weren't. I had an interest in Islam for a while and then I had an interest in Eastern religions, in Hinduism. I've actually studied Hindi. I studied Hindi for two years during my undergrad work. I don't know how much influence that was, being in the area that I was in. Some people thought it might be. But I don't know how much of an interest I got because of that.
Eve: What was your thesis about?
Brian: My MA dissertation was a completely different topic. My undergraduate dissertation was on the representation of Hasidic Jews in the media which had a bearing on the area which I am in. With religion, when I was growing up, maybe because I was living in a multicultural area and you had a source of exposure maybe you're forced to think about religion, coming from English people and generally not being very religious, but I noticed that religion was a very important part of people's identity when I was growing up and the Muslim community being very strong in their identity and other communities were very strong in their identity in comparison with those of us with no religion perhaps more so than the other side of being a migrant maybe that's where it all comes from that interest.
Christopher: .… when I was in secondary, even I remember maths class I was in in one year, actually I was the only white English person I think.
Eve: Yes, that doesn’t surprise me.
Christopher: It’s not very good cos you felt alone in a way. I talked to some of them like, but I never got close to them. You’d never really be close to them cos they’re not from your back ground or... I know it’s weird to say but you’d never… so you didn’t really have any close friends… the only close friends I knew were from primary that they‘d gone into secondary as well.. so in a way if I can, `I don’t want her (his baby daughter) to go to school, round here… I want her to you know… a good school where she can make friends. I felt I couldn’t really have any friends… I had friends I’m not saying I didn’t have friends but I … you didn’t really get on with a lot of people if you know what I mean.
Eve: Was the secondary more sort of … they call it diverse now don’t they. Was that more mixed with different nationalities than the primary school then?
Christopher: It was cos as time got on, it has got. worse
Eve: It is continuing in the last twenty five years where there’s been a huge influx of people hasn’t there
Christopher: Yeah, I mean there’s cos in primary you know I did notice a couple of nationalities but it wasn’t as bad, it wasn’t… as soon as it started getting to the secondary, that’s when…
Eve: It hit you, yeah.
Christopher: There was quite a few nationalities. Yeah, I would have loved to have seen what it was like to … even at my dad’s age going to school… he talked about all the friends he had. I only had half or about a quarter of the friends he had… cos not everyone gets on. I like to be … you shouldn’t be that way but a lot of people just don’t, just don’t get on with each other I suppose.
Eve: . It’s interesting the way people do tend to sort of stick to their own ethnic cultural group isn’t it.
Christopher: They do yeah. Yeah, don’t get me wrong, I had a really close good friend, he was from Serbia, but apart from that, you do, for some reason you just stick to your own to be honest.
Eve: I suppose you understand people more easily.
Christopher: You know the heritage of the country and I don’t know…there ain’t much of it left really.
Eve: No not round here there isn’t.
Christopher: No, there are no British values and they don’t really care about British values. They’ve obviously died out a lot.
Eve: What would you call British values?
Christopher: Erm, it’s hard to explain really, you know the British way of life and the typical East End way of life as well. I’d love to have seen that and I’ve never really seen that … I seen them on TV and on documentaries. I like watching documentaries and all that, seeing how it used to be. There was recently a programme about even the blitz, the … It showed you somebody getting bombed, showed you even then probably it was a better togetherness, even during the war which is quite sad. If I see there was better togetherness during the war. You wouldn’t get that now. Even if something like that you wouldn’t get togetherness now… no one to help you out which is quite sad.