ABSTRACT

Brick Lane, a busy thoroughfare of Spitalfields in London’s East End, has been a hub of religious, social and commercial activity for successive waves of immigrants for over three centuries. Over the past 30–40 years, the area has accommodated London’s largest Bangladeshi population, one of the UK’s poorest minorities. Initially, many Bangladeshis found work in the area’s long-established textile industry. But Spitalfield’s ‘rag trade’ was unable to keep up with global competition, pushing unemployment to new heights. From the mid-1970s, the street became the scene of periodic intimidation by right-wing race-hate groups; ugly images of these confrontations were communicated widely by the news media. Then, somewhat against the odds, a small cluster of cafés began to attract customers from the white majority culture as well as adventurous tourists. Bangladeshi landlords converted run-down commercial buildings into restaurants, and thus began a spectacular re-orientation of the local economy in the 1990s.