ABSTRACT
I… very much doubt whether there’s ever been a community which within a matter of five years has gone from our present size … going up to 150,000 coming in daily…. What kind of impact does that have on the community? … Suddenly it becomes a major centre in Western Europe for banking [and] finance … and because building technology is such that you can get these things up in five years you’ve got historically a new situation — the social change it just erupts like a volcano. It doesn’t happen gradually…. Very very difficult to envisage what will happen because it’s got so many things happening at the same time — you’ve got the ethnic thing, you’ve got a weak local authority you’ve got all sorts of problems. (One of the first “newcomers” who had lived on the Island for twenty years.)
