ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses that the East London's textile trade in and around Aldgate had been an immigrant-dominated industry since at least the 18th and 19th centuries when the arrival and incorporation of the Huguenots transformed Spital fields into a dynamic centre of the silk-weaving industry which was gradually replaced and reinvigorated by Jewish tailoring towards the end of the 1800s. As immigrant settlement spread further East to Newham and Walthamstow, factories as diverse as steel and rubber production plants, engineering firms and flour mills began to absorb the labour power of subsequent arrivals. In 1974, however, the current principle British statute governing the conduct and management of occupational health and safety was introduced. Asian women workers thus played an important role in meeting the needs of demand for cheap labour in an industry that boomed for much of the 1970s and 1980s.
