Absolutely right that the history is not at an end though I think that because large numbers of people are no longer physically arriving for settlement at the docks by the East End that we won’t see that particular square mile of East London – where it meets the city – being identified culturally with one particular group much more than others, as it has been in the past. Go to Brick Lane these days, and while many of the shops/eateries in the middle section are largely Bangladeshi you will find people of many backgrounds and languages walking and inhabiting the street.

You are spot on about the pedigree of racism – but to look at it positively, that racism has been challenged in the East End, when Jewish workers and some left wing groups challenged the British Brothers league at the turn of the 20th century, through the united efforts of Jewish and Irish communities against Mosley, to the 1970s and 80s, when Altab Ali was murdered and Bengali youth with many allies from white communities challenged the NF neanderthals who used to stand outside a Jewish shop on the corner of Brick Lane and Bethnal Green Road on a Sunday morning.

Where are the NF/BNP types now in the East End? They barely get a look in. though no doubt they would be a bit cheered by some of the more ignorant comment here.

One of the points about the November 15th event is that it does bring together people across different communities/backgrounds/identities who are committed to the common humanity of the people of the East End past and present and believe we have something to learn from our experiences and from each other.

These areas of London are a kaleidoscope of histories and surely, that history is not at an end? The descendant’s of those who came and settled here have moved on and integrated (by choice) into the rest of society. This process is well known and observed.

Almost all the negative comments above about Islam and the east end of London can be replicated in newspaper articles and letters written about ‘Hebrews’ coming to live in London in large numbers in the final years of the 19th century. Prejudice – let us be frank about it – has a pedigree too.

I have some sympathy with those who return to familiar haunts and find themselves alienated by what they see. I had a similar experience visiting that part of London where I was born and brought up sixty years ago. I found that Yuppies and speculative developments had robbed me of my life as I stood and tried to remember the raggedy kids playing in the street now lined both sides with smart cars. No longer tiny old women dressed in Edwardian era widows weeds or some fat man, braces worn over vest, wandering to the corner shop on a sunny Saturday afternoon.

Of course people have a ‘right’ to be nostalgic.

But such conservatism seems a tad pathetic when it reeks of looking at the past through rose-tinted glasses, of a fear of any sort of social change, or of grumpy internet miserablists simply venting their frustration with the world around them.

Please read some Aristotle and follow it up with some Aquinas, Maimonides and Averroes.

No I am not.

Now repent. For I am a jealous God.

Different God entirely, though I will change my mind the next time a Jew blows himself up on the tube.

Amie, I’m sure Bill retains a progressive view on empowerment of women, but what I always saw when walking with him was him greeting Bangladeshi shopkeepers, people on the street, or emerging from the mosque with “assalamu aleykum”.

Especially in his book “The Streets of East London” Bill shows how everything that he feels warm and positive about in the Jewish East End of yesteryear – the values, the community feeling, the workplace culture, the street life, has been reproduced and continued within the Bangladeshi community. In my conversations with him he has always valued the changing nature of the East End while missing some of the particular characters from different communities that the area has produced – he would miss characters like the community organiser Tassadeq Ahmed as well as missing the poet Avrom Stencl.

Where I have picked up inferences of regret from him is when he talks of suburban Tory Jews who look back with embarrassment at their famiies’ humbler origins in the East End. For Bill the message of the East End experience of the different communities is support and care for each other and fight poverty.

Health permitting, Bill will be coming at lunchtime the event to sign copies of his books.

ronronron thanks for responding to the ignorant remarks about Ansar. He has done great work locally over the years and I ‘m sure his talk will be fascinating.