Page 79 - Culture Media Language Working Papers in Cultural Studies

68 SUBCULTURAL CONFLICT AND WORKING-CLASS COMMUNITY

was no longer available as a safe playspace, under neighbourly supervision. Mum
or Auntie was no longer just around the corner to look after the kids for the odd
morning. Instead, the task of keeping an eye on the kids fell exclusively to the
young wife, and the only safe playspace was the ‘safety of the home’. Feeling
herself cooped up with the kids and cut off from the outside world, it wasn’t
surprising if she occasionally took out her frustration on those nearest and
dearest! Only market research and advertising executives imagine that the
housebound mother sublimates everything in her G-plan furniture, her washing
machine or her nonstick frying pans. Underlying all this, however, there was a
more basic process of change going on in the community, a change in the whole
economic infrastructure of the East End.
In the late fifties the British economy began to recover from the effect of the
war and to apply the advanced technology developed during this period to the
more backward sectors of the economy. Craft industries and small-scale
production in general were the first to suffer; automated techniques replaced the
traditional handskills and their simple division of labour. Similarly, the
economies of scale provided for by the concentration of capital resources meant
that the small-scale family business was no longer a viable unit. Despite a long
rearguard action, many of the traditional industries—tailoring, furniture making,
many of the service and distributive trades linked to the docks—rapidly declined
or were bought out. Symbolic of this was the disappearance of the corner shop;
where these were not demolished by redevelopment they were replaced by larger
supermarkets, often owned by large combines. Even where corner shops were
offered places in the redevelopment area, often they could not afford the high rents.
There was a gradual polarization in the structure of the labour force: on the one
side, the highly specialized, skilled and well paid jobs associated with the new
technology and the high-growth sectors that employed them; on the other, the
routine, dead-end, low-paid and unskilled jobs associated with the labour-
intensive sectors, especially the service industries. As might be expected, it was
the young people, just out of school, who got the worst of the deal. Lacking
openings in their fathers’ trades, and lacking the qualifications for the new
industries, they were relegated to jobs as van boys, office boys, packers,
warehousemen and so on, and to long spells out of work. More and more people,
young and old, had to travel out of the community to their jobs, and some
eventually moved out to live elsewhere, where suitable work was to be found.
The local economy as a whole contracted, became less diverse. The only section
of the community which was unaffected by this was dockland, which retained its
position in the labour market and, with it, its traditions of militancy. It did not,
though, remain unaffected by the breakdown of the pattern of integration in the
East End as a whole vis-a-vis its sub-community structure. Perhaps this goes some
way to explaining the paradoxical fact that within the space of twelve months the
dockers could march in support of Enoch Powell and take direct action for
community control in the Isle of Dogs!