BBC faces Twitter backlash over controversial documentary The Last Whites of the East End
The Last Whites of the East End received mixed reviews on Twitter last night, with some branding it the 'most racist programme I've ever watched' and others threatening to cancel their licence fee.
However, while not all were impressed with the show, some did applaud the BBC for giving an 'honest' insight into the east London borough of Newham where 73 per cent of the local population is now made up of ethnic minorities and Black British.
The programme looked into how cockneys are becoming an endangered species in the borough, with many moving towards Essex, after 70,000 immigrants moved in over the past 15 years.
Although many of the area's new residents consider themselves 'proper East Enders', some say the differences in culture and religion are creating divides, with ethnic groups sticking together.
It was this insight which was praised on Twitter by viewer Jeannie Juno, who said the programme 'encapsulates all that has happened to many urban communities throughout the UK.'
Jay Nottage agreed. 'People not liking this BBC documentary Last Whites of the East End, it's only telling the truth but I take it some people don't like the truth,' he wrote.
However, many viewers were quick to accuse the Corporation of 'racist views' and 'propaganda'.
Amy Wyatt wrote: '@BBC Are you pleased your programme has brought out Nazis justifying their racist views? Why should I pay for this?', before adding: 'Today I am cancelling my TV licence and won't be watching @BBC live again. I refuse to pay for propaganda against ME!'
Nicci Kay asked: 'Why are we forced to pay for racist views to get aired on TV? @BBC Zero attempt at any balance.
'TBH [to be honest] BBC gave an hour to some people saying 'I wish it was like the old days' and named it to inspire reaction, no?'
Meanwhile, Sharee said: '#LastwhitesoftheEastEnd is the most racist programme I've ever watched', and Connor added: 'BBC's Last Whites of the East End sounds like Britain first/white supremacist style propaganda.'
Amy Wyatt wrote: '@BBC Are you pleased your programme has brought out Nazis justifying their racist views? Why should I pay for this?', before adding: 'Today I am cancelling my TV licence and won't be watching @BBC live again. I refuse to pay for propaganda against ME!'
Nicci Kay asked: 'Why are we forced to pay for racist views to get aired on TV? @BBC Zero attempt at any balance.
'TBH [to be honest] BBC gave an hour to some people saying 'I wish it was like the old days' and named it to inspire reaction, no?'
Meanwhile, Sharee said: '#LastwhitesoftheEastEnd is the most racist programme I've ever watched', and Connor added: 'BBC's Last Whites of the East End sounds like Britain first/white supremacist style propaganda.'
Patrick Strudwick said: 'Grim name the BBC gave this documentary – suggests there's only a handful left, plays into racist lies.'
Another Twitter user, @ShadyLDNgirl, wrote: 'This is how the @BBC chooses to spend license payers money? Don't forget POC also fund your existence.'
Another added: 'This documentary the Last Whites of the East End tells me the BBC isn't bothered if we think it's racist. I mean are you f****** me?'
And one asked: 'Is the BBC really broadcasting a documentary called 'Last Whites of the East End'? When will society move past differentiation based on skin colour?'
Labour MP Stephen Timms, whose East Ham constituency includes parts of Newham, said the documentary seemed to have given a 'one sided' view.
He told MailOnline demographic changes had been taking place in Newham since the Second World War and 'probably before then'.
Before the 1990s the population had been declining as people moved out to Essex. Since then migration had pushed up the numbers living in the area, he said.
'My impression is it gave an understandable but perhaps one-sided view of what is going on,' Mr Timms said.
'I don't think there is a problem with discussing the issue.
'I am just anxious that it should be a full discussion rather than a partial one.'
Mr Timms said it was 'understandable' that people wanted to maintain local traditions and heritage.
'At the same time I think it is important to point out that a lot of the changes we have seen in London have undoubtedly been changes for the better not for the worse.
'For some people there is sadness about the fact that things have changed compared to the way they were in the past.
'I think it is important to highlight that there is a good deal more optimism.'
Newham was previously almost all white working class, with the majority dockworkers, but has now become the most multicultural place in the UK, with 147 languages spoken across the borough.
It has 66 primary schools and two decades ago more than half the pupils were white British.
But now one school - Drew Primary - has just three white British children per class, with 43 languages spoken throughout its halls.
Peter Bell has been secretary at East Ham Working Men's Club for more than 25 years and said it was one of the last strongholds of traditional East End culture in the area.
The club hosts everything from tea dances to boxing club matches and is trying to keep community spirit together.
Mr Bell, 66, told MailOnline: 'I think we are vital to the area. We try to keep as busy as we can and keep our traditions going.
'If we closed then I can't help but think where would some of these people go? Where would the old ladies who come here every week go? What would they have to look forward to?
'We live in one of the poorest boroughs in the country, and when you walk out of this club, what you see is essentially a slum.'
Mr Bell, who used to work in newspapers, added the different cultures in the area only caused divisions because people don't interact with each other.
He said: 'I mean no disrespect to the Muslim community, but I don't think they want to be part of the traditions here.
'I hear words like multiculturalism and community and I think it's nonsense. We are in an area that has massive unemployment and that is about to become overcrowded and you feel ostracised.
'People feel like they are being forced out. I moved to Hornchurch 12 years ago and I don't regret it one bit.'
According to the latest census, Newham's white British population has dropped from 34 per cent to 17 per cent in just ten years.
However, Newham council says that this is misleading since the population has increased.
A spokesman points out that the actual number of white British has dropped by a third, not a half — from 82,000 to 52,000 out of a total 308,000.
Newham's executive mayor, Sir Robin Wales, rejects the idea of an 'old white working class' being 'driven out'. 'This is London, things are always changing and people move. I have a German mother and a Scottish father.
'The main thing is that we get on and nearly 90 per cent of people here say they get on well together.'
But the fact remains that only just over half of the borough speak English as their main language.
NEWHAM AT A GLANCE
The London borough of Newham was officially formed in 1965 after the merger of East Ham and West Ham under the new Greater London region.
Traditionally it had a strong white working class population thanks to the Royal Group of Docks that were built between 1855 and 1921.
Named after Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and King George V, the docks became a core part of the local economy, even when they were damaged by German bombing raids during the Second World War.
But their decline started in the 1960s due to the increased use of container ships, and they eventually closing to commercial traffic only in 1981, causing widespread unemployment.
Many homes were destroyed in the area during the Blitz, leading to a huge development of tower blocks and an influx of immigrant workers to build them.
Now it is the most ethnically diverse borough in the UK, with white British making up just 16 per cent of the population in the 2011 census, dropping from 33.8 per cent 10 years earlier.
The 37.5 per cent drop was the largest of any local authority in England and Wales between the two censuses.
Newham was one of the six host boroughs for the 2012 London Olympic Games and was also home to West Ham United's Upton Park until the club left for Stratford's Olympic Stadium.
And it is beyond dispute that the traditional Cockney now accounts for less than one in five of the population.
Speaking on the programme, Mr Bell said the departure of West Ham United from its former ground Upton Park will be 'awful' for the area. The stadium is being turned into housing with the Hammers moving to the Olympic Stadium in Stratford.
He said: 'Selling Upton Park for housing is just going to cause overcrowding. Where are all these children going to go to school? Medically, where are all these people going to go to the doctors'?
'I would just love it if the Prime Minister or some of our MPs would come out of Upton Park station and then live in Green Street for two weeks. That would change their minds.'
He added: 'People who haven't been for many years come out of Upton Park station and say 'I can't believe what's happened here; it could be Baghdad.''
Eileen Kerslake, 88, said there would never be a true community in the area again.
Speaking to MailOnline, she said: 'East Enders are very friendly people and in the old days we used to have lots of activities going on. We had street parties all the time. But there's nothing like that anymore.
'I have nice neighbours who I speak to. But 90 per cent of the people who have moved here don't speak to anyone, not even to each other.
'It all started about 10 years ago, but it's worse now. It seems like there's been even more quick changes in the past year and everything is different.
'You have schools with 500 pupils but you don't see any white children and that's one of the reasons people move.'
Some families are moving away, including Leanne Oakham who lives on the same street in Newham as her mother Debbie and sister Amy.
Leanne, who is a sixth-generation cockney, told the BBC1 show: 'It's not like the old East End where everyone knew everyone and we all left our doors open. It's just scary now.
'Years ago people would have a fight with their fists and that would be it. Not anymore.
Now people will bring in knives.'
There are some multi-generation immigrants who feel like they are East Enders, like Usman Hussain, whose family moved to East London from Bangladesh in the 1930s.
Mr Hussain is a fifth-generation Londoner who said he was pleased to see more Muslims in the area but, at the same time, misses the white friends he knew when he was young.
Speaking on the documentary, he said: 'I do often think if my childhood friends were around right now they would say, 'He's more British than us. He's more proud of being an East Ender than us.'
'Everything this area stood for is being eradicated slowly but surely,' says this proud, sad fifth generation East Ender. 'In ten years' time, there'll be absolutely no trace of Cockney culture.'
Things used to be different, he says. 'I miss those days when everyone knew everyone.' Now his children are growing up with little knowledge of 'the British way of life'. These days, he says, some schools are more like 'Africa or Romania'.
He is not being particularly outspoken. In fact, it is hard to find anyone who was born and bred in these streets who would argue with him. No doubt, Shadow Europe Minister Pat Glass — who this week condemned an entire Derbyshire village after a 'horrible racist' voter dared to voice concerns about immigration — would like to have him carted off for re-education.
But what is really astonishing is that these remarks come not from some Alf Garnett-style Cockney dinosaur wailing into his pint down at the Queen Vic.
They are the thoughts of Usmaan Hussain, a dad with a young family, who is every bit as proud of his East End roots as his Bangladeshi ancestry. He loves West Ham United and has just started up a Muslim prayer group.
And he is one of many Cockneys whose moving lament for a dying way of life is the subject of a powerful documentary next week on BBC1.
It will make extremely uncomfortable viewing for all the main political parties, not to mention the local council — which is already disputing some of its assertions. And it seems that there are some within the BBC who are worried about this film, too.
I am sure the channel will issue plenty of health warnings before the start of Last Whites Of The East End. And they won't be referring to the swearing. If you're the sort of delicate flower who feels threatened by Germaine Greer's views on gender change or a statue of Cecil Rhodes, then you should switch channels immediately.
Take the story of bus driver Tony Cunningham, 39. He is moving out of the East End, he says, because successive waves of immigration have changed it beyond recognition. 'White people are given a very, very bad time round here,' he says. And he is not prepared to raise his baby daughter there.
'The first thing I think about when I get up is how to get her out of this area,' explains this gentle giant of a man as he drives through the London Borough of Newham, where a typical primary school has to cope with 43 different languages.
'Charlotte can't go to these schools. These schools will make her lose her identity.'
Respect has gone, he says, along with manners, Christmas cards and nativity plays. Christmas, he says, is 'just a holiday' these days.
We see Tony and his wife house-hunting out on the fringes of leafy Essex. The estate agent remarks how many people seem to be moving.
'We're running, mate!' he replies. 'We're not moving.'
Tony is a quintessential child of the East End, raised on pie and mash, West Ham and Nan's tales of the Blitz.
But much as Lefties might like to brush him aside as a moaning throwback from Ukip (or something more extreme), it won't wash. Because Tony knows all about that great liberal shibboleth, 'community cohesion'.
His mum was fourth-generation Cockney while his father arrived from Jamaica in the Sixties. 'We was called 'n*****' when we was growing up,' he says matter of factly. 'I had to educate my Nan. She had a cat called the same thing. She didn't really get the gist of it.'
He has friends from every ethnic minority and is married to Vally, a Romanian who came to Britain in search of a better life in 2007. They met when she hopped on his bus one day.
In other words, Tony needs no lessons in multi-culturalism. But as far as he's concerned, it has been handled abysmally.
That's why he thinks the old East End is doomed and why he wants out.
This is a beautifully made film which neither patronises nor sensationalises its subjects. And it does not mince its words — which may explain why the BBC has put it in a late-night slot at 10.45pm and given it minimal pre-publicity.
No doubt, if it was about Tory cuts or the bedroom tax or the arts or was presented by the ubiquitous cross-dressing potter Grayson Perry, it would enjoy loud hurrahs on Newsnight or Radio 4. But I have yet to see a single trailer.
The BBC high-ups would probably prefer it to receive a minimum of fuss. After all, it leaves you realising that the East End we see on its flagship soap, EastEnders, is all wrong.
Albert Square is a fantasy land, a period drama, a time warp in which you might still find old geezers reminiscing about East End life under the Kray Twins. It bears little resemblance to the Newham of today.
Even one of the BBC's own drama chiefs has admitted that the soap is 'significantly white compared with the real East End'. Now, if the producers of ITV's Coronation Street filled it with pigeon-fanciers in flat caps with whippets and string round their trouser legs, there would be uproar across the North.
But it's fine to have a show full of Cockney stereotypes. After all, there aren't many Cockneys left to complain.
'Newham is home to a tight-knit white working-class community who have lived here for hundreds of years,' says the opening commentary.
'But over the past 15 years, something extraordinary has happened to this Cockney tribe. More than half of them have disappeared.'
'The life that we knew is finished,' says one elderly old lady at the East Ham Working Men's Club.
The manager goes further: 'People who haven't been back here for many years say: 'I can't believe what's happened here.'
'They come out of Upton Park station and [say]: 'I could be in Baghdad.'
One old chap puts it another way: 'People who pass opinions about immigration and how wonderful it is for us — they should spend a day or two in Newham. If they think that's good for England, well I'm a Dutchman.'
We see the fifth-generation Oakman family reduced to tears, as daughter Leanne and her young family prepare to follow the well-worn route out of the East End and over the border into Essex where her children can grow up 'with their own people'.
We see Eileen Storey, newly widowed at 90, abandoning the only place she knows for Norfolk.
We meet Darren Loveday, 29, a local boxing champion who grew up here with mum and four siblings. Dad was in the clink and Darren learned to use his fists.
It served him well the day a gang told him: 'White boy, drop your phone and walk off.' He left them all on the floor, whereupon they accused him of racial assault.
The episode spurred him to leave for Essex, too. 'I hate this f****** area,' he says, though he still comes back for boxing matches.
Yet this film, made by Lambent Productions, throws up some important positives. The people in it have no problem with the immigrants themselves. It is the system which dismays them.
Eileen Storey talks lovingly of her Somalian neighbours. It is a very poignant moment as she gives them a hug before leaving for East Anglia. 'I hope my next neighbours are as nice as you are,' she tells them.
Darren, the angry boxer, doesn't blame the incomers but the supine authorities. 'Everyone's moving in,' he says. 'They're not taking over. We're letting them.' According to the film: 'Fifteen years of mass immigration and white flight have brought Newham to its tipping point. It now has the lowest white British population of anywhere in the UK.'
According to the latest census, Newham's white British population has dropped from 34 per cent to 17 per cent in just ten years.
However, Newham council says that this is misleading since the population has increased.
A spokesman points out that the actual number of white British has dropped by a third, not a half — from 82,000 to 52,000 out of a total 308,000.
Newham's executive mayor, Sir Robin Wales, rejects the idea of an 'old white working class' being 'driven out'. 'This is London, things are always changing and people move. I have a German mother and a Scottish father.
'The main thing is that we get on and nearly 90 per cent of people here say they get on well together.'
But the fact remains that only just over half of the borough speak English as their main language.
And it is beyond dispute that the traditional Cockney now accounts for less than one in five of the population.
On present trends, that could soon be less than one in ten. Would you Adam and Eve it? — as absolutely no one says round here. For I have followed the advice of the old boy in the working men's club.
I have come to spend a day or two in Newham. And I don't hear a single word of Cockney rhyming slang from anyone. No one talks about going down the 'frog and toad' for a pint at the 'rub a dub'. You might still come across this sort of banter in chi-chi media joints in fashionable parts of town where a spot of Mockney is good for one's credentials — 'Golly, I'm cream-crackered after my yoga class'. But it's as elusive as a Pearly King singing Roll Out The Barrel here at the Queen's Market on Green Street.
'No one uses rhyming slang any more — except in prison,' says Fahim Chaudhry, 25, who describes himself as 'a proper Cockney'. He is a great ambassador for East End multi-culturalism, too.
Born in the borough, he is from a Kashmiri family and runs a shop selling African-Caribbean beauty products. He says that life might have been hard for ethnic minorities some years ago when 'there was a bit of racism', but not any more.
'The whites are the minority now. It's ridiculously small. It's gone too far the other way,' he says.
What infuriates him most are immigrants who 'don't speak a word of English and don't bother to try'. So does he actually live round here? 'No, we moved to Wanstead [on the edge of Essex],' he says. 'It's the best thing we ever did.'
On the other side of the market, Ronnie Hoadley, 63, is the last of the old white fruit 'n' veg stallholders — and he hasn't lived round here for years. How many Cockneys does he serve each day? Blank looks. 'If I get ten in a week, I'd be amazed.'
A few yards down the road, the Boleyn Ground, former home of West Ham United, dominates the landscape. This grand old stadium is somehow emblematic of the Cockney exodus. This month, the Hammers played their last game here, against Manchester United, ahead of next season's move to the shiny 2012 Olympic stadium.
For the locals, though, it was like losing a member of the family.
'Match days have always been very big for us and we have had the same loyal customers for years,' says Richard Nathan, fourth generation boss of Nathan's Pie and Mash restaurant just round the corner on Barking Road. 'Then just before the match, all the fans in here stood up and just started applauding us. It was very emotional.'
His pies are all homemade (and they are superb), the jellied eels are cooked on the premises and the place is immaculate.
It's a proud slice of old East End life which Richard runs with a loyal team including his mother, Chris, and Pam Baldock, who started working here 23 years ago. Without the football club, life is going to be harder for the Nathans.
The dwindling band of Cockneys and the long-established Caribbean community love his food. The Asians and Eastern Europeans, who make up more than half the local population, do not. But Richard, 44, hopes his regulars will keep on coming.
'One of our busiest days is the day before Mother's Day. Because you get all these Cockneys who've moved out coming back to see their mum or going to the cemetery.' It's no surprise to find out where Richard and his young family live. 'We've moved out to Essex,' he says. 'People do when they have kids.'
The loss of the football club is going to hit another Cockney staple — the boozer. Ron Bolwell, 78, runs two, the Denmark Arms and the Queen's. The latter, he says, used to take £12,000 on a West Ham match day. 'It was the cream which kept us going.'
Without the football club, he says, he might pack up and go back to his native Wales.
Migration has already hit business hard. 'Most Asians don't drink and a lot of the Eastern Europeans just drink in the street,' he says. He has recently taken to charging non-drinkers 20p to use the lavatory. 'Otherwise, they just walk in and pinch a toilet roll.'
Nearby, at the Boleyn Tavern, bar manager Nikita, 30, says that the old East End is long gone. 'You used to know everyone on your street and you could leave a key on a string.
'Now, a lot of people don't speak English and everyone else is terrified of being called a racist,' she says. Life is much more nuanced and complicated than the likes of Labour's Pat Glass might think.
'My family's all mixed — we've got blacks, Filipinos, Scottish,' says Nikita. 'But we just can't keep on letting more people in.'
Finally, just up from the old stadium, I meet Tony Cunningham, the bus driver in the programme. Since the film was made, he has completed the move to Essex. He couldn't be happier. 'My wife says I'm a changed man,' he says. 'My mum's still round here but, if it wasn't for her, I don't think I'd ever come back. It's just not the place I knew any more.'
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