The Death of Cockney London?
Walk out of the London Bridge Underground Station, on the south side of the River Thames, and look around. You’ve landed in the middle of Southwark, or is it South Bank? At any rate, it’s the side of the river that is historically working class. The home of the Cockney. Here, there are not nearly as many monuments and historical structures. You might expect markets and slightly seedy bars and docks, representative of this hardscrabble side of the river. Possibly some ancient stone buildings and churches, but in a bit of disrepair.
What you actually find is a bustling street bordered by glass buildings stretching skyward. Take a few steps away from the station and look over your shoulder to see the thousand-something foot Shard towering over its lesser neighbors. Professionally dressed office workers hurry by carrying disposable coffee cups. Okay, maybe some of them have tea. The street level is lined with sandwich shops, coffee shops and retail stores, all designed to make you feel at home, regardless of where home might be. Pret a Manger, Starbucks, Caffé Nero are sprinkled throughout. The pubs around here are so clean, so stereotypical, so clichéd that they might as well be designed by Disney Imagineers. Shops, restaurants and cafés are all designed in that just-right early 21st century style to make you feel comfortable. In fact you feel so at home that you could be in New York, L.A. or Singapore. It’s all indistinguishable. You have to work to find the British-ness. The markets and authentic pubs are still around, just a little hard to find amid the modern clutter.
Walking to the Thames, things become a little more of what you might expect. To the right, there’s Tower Bridge. Over on the northern bank is the Tower of London and farther to the left is the dome of St. Paul’s. Even here things have changed. The Tower and St Paul’s used to dominate the view. You’d notice them in a quick glance. Today, you often have to peer around the glass monsters to see the dome. While the Tower still has a little bit of elbow room, the modern city is rapidly encroaching. After walking across the bridge and looking back to the south bank, it’s the same story. The anachronistic Globe Theater was always easy to pick out. Now it’s shoehorned among its neighbors. One neighbor is London’s new city hall, looking like a glass jenga tower that’s been left leaning by an unskilled player. We had been told that London is going through a high rise boom. Seeing this brought it to life.
Take a riverboat from Tower Bridge to Greenwich and the transformation is huge. As you head east you enter the docklands area. On both sides of the river are the entrances to docks that have long since fallen idle. Ships would turn from the river and pass through these entrances. The waterway then opened into inland marinas and wharves containing a series of docks ready to unload cargo shipped from all reaches of the Empire, and then to reload outbound freight. Warehouses surround the docks. Bars that catered to sailors, longshoremen and pirates are wedged among the warehouses.
At one time, the Port of London was the largest in the world. There were around 1,700 wharves in this area. Today there about 70, and all farther east. As container ships became too large for this part of the Thames, the area became derelict and poverty ridden. Sections of the East End, like Poplar, were rife with unemployment. In time, the East End became synonymous with the decline of Britain. Britannia once ruled the waves. By the 1980’s, the waves of change were figuratively submerging the docklands.
Then, as the city continued to grow and economic times changed, rejuvenation and renovation came to the East End. The skeletons of a vanished era were repurposed as condos and shops. The dock areas became vibrant marinas with houseboats and restaurants lit with strings of festive lights. Poplar is now dominated by Canary Wharf, a vertical metropolis of glass, looking for all the world like Superman’s Fortress of Solitude. Every major bank one can think of has its name emblazoned atop one of the dozens of high rises; each one taller than the next, each one striving to make its name more visible than its neighbor, each almost desperately displaying its wealth and stability.
Behind the glass, you can see rows of cubicles populated with investment bankers and loan processors. All in their dark suits. All looking earnest and serious. At rush hour, the intrepid financial warriors flock to the train platforms, wireless earbuds firmly in place, still looking earnest and serious, all headed to a bar by a marina or to their shiny condos built on the rubble of a nearly forgotten era.
What hasn’t been turned into glass towers and trendy restaurants has been converted to condos and apartments. Developers have revitalized, modernized and rebranded the shoreline. The crew on the boat we took to Greenwich only half joked that by changing a name from “XXX Dock” and “XXX Quay” they were able to add an extra zero onto the end of their asking price. And there doesn’t appear to be any shortage of people willing to pay that price.
Between the invasion of Pret a Manger and Starbucks, and the infestation of bankers, it makes me wonder where the tradesmen and laborers have gone. You certainly don’t see them in the areas where they used to inhabit. A University of Lancaster study has said that the cockney accent will probably disappear within the next 30 years or at least be pushed farther east of the city. I suppose it’s the classic story of gentrification: the poor displaced from the places where at one time no one else would live.