Hoxton Street has been a regular destination for several years now as I venture up to mentor at the Ministry of Stories behind the monster supplies shop 🤫Its market-like atmosphere – traders and proprietors lining the stretch, all ages from around the borough rubbing shoulders – feels like a real throwback to a bygone age. And it can be a reassuring one.
I am usually in a rush, quite head down, but even I have noticed changes on the way from the overground, not least the loss of football coach and youth mentor Errol McKellar's garage on Cremer St. The carpet shop closes down, then an old pub. A craft beer spot pops up, then a handmade bike shop, both run by migrants (which becomes relevant later). A 150-year-old bakery shutters, a deli arrives in its place that has all the gourmands salivating for an overpriced salt beef bagel. Arty folk spill out of a gallery more exclusive than welcoming, a comics-themed bar lands like "pow!" Meanwhile imposing stacked apartments loom in the distance and £2m penthouses are up for grabs.
Change is inevitable in cities, as it is in life, but you do wonder whether councils, developers and planners think hard enough about what an existing community loses when they're trying to quickly lure a new one with all the mod-cons and a hefty price tag to go with it. How these different elements could/should co-exist in harmony…
What are we talking about it here? Gentrification and rising inequality, of course. And there are few better recent micro-studies of this phenomenon than photographer Zed Nelson's The Street, which I finally got round to watching the other week.
Nelson was raised in Hackney and began the project in 2015, dismayed at how he could be doing a plush photoshoot just round the corner from where an innocent young girl (Agnes Sina-Inakoju) was shot in a fast food shop during a gang feud. He placed himself on the street, wandered into stores and began to talk to locals about their memories of the area and how it's changed.
Joe Cooke's family has been in the pie and mash business for more than 100 years. He's one of several memorable East End characters in the documentary aghast at the influx of foreigners, ponces and hipsters inflating the cost of living and destroying its character. Might he be referring to people like the Nathan Barley-type figure who strolls into a media agency, wangs on about his art and being “on a journey”?
“You can’t live in Hoxton unless you’re absolutely wedged to buggery," Chingford resident Cooke later told East London Lines. Colleen is another gem, lamenting a loss of comfort in familiarity yet unwilling to budge from her flat.
Nelson filmed for around three to four years. During that time, he was able to document the crippling impact of austerity, the build-up to – and fallout from – Brexit and the Grenfell tragedy. My heart sank when I saw one of the victims, the talented artist Khadija Saye, being interviewed while serving an internship at the local Peer Gallery which now has a garden named in her honour. An indelible stain on this Government's record of neglect.
The Street offers a non-judgemental portrait of an increasingly fractured locale as inequality shoots up and aggrieved locals feel they are being pushed out. At the end of 2019, The Guardian reported that average house prices in London rose from less than £100,000 in 1990 to nearly £500,000 in 2015. Since the Thatcher government’s Right to Buy policy in the 1980s, the number of council homes in Britain has fallen by nearly 70%.
A decade of austerity cuts (more than £30bn nationwide) reduced Hackney council’s budget by 45%. Meanwhile, Knight Frank was touting neighboring Shoreditch as "the world's most expensive tech district". The documentary reveals that insurance company Aviva has bought up multiple sites on Hoxton Street and in Hoxton Square, most recently Grade II-listed Curtain House. How to maintain a foothold against this backdrop?
We see people eating from a soup kitchen outside a trendy art gallery. An estate agent boasts about "boutique lifts" in new residences while a man struggles to live in a flat barely bigger than a prison cell (one-third of a split-up ex-council house) for which he is charged £235 a week. These frustrations prompt anger and locals are quick to point the finger at foreigners, new independent business owners and the like, instead of the ones reshaping the landscape and setting new rules.
There are no real heroes or villains in this situation. Even Nelson, a largely anonymous figure in his narration free-film, feels complicit. In a 2019 panel discussion at Bertha Dochouse, he recalled how he would scowl at hipsters in one of the newer coffee shops before catching his own reflection in the window as he sipped his small-batch brew or the equivalent. An aggrieved resident or two admits the coffee's not bad in such places.
The past few decades have brought some benefits including the reduction in National Front activity as Reverand Gloria from the Bethel Tabernacle Church tells us. “It’s heaven compared to what it used to be.” (Here’s NF leader John Tyndall addressing a crowd on Hoxton Street in the 70s.) Today there is a relative calm on the street but that doesn't negate the genuine disaffection that many feel. The pathetic level of affordable housing in now desirable areas like this, coupled with crippling rent increases tells long-time residents (not just the elderly working class) you have a lo-to-no stake in this city.
There are other Hoxton Streets around London and beyond where a particular generation of working-class folk feel left behind. Nelson's film offers few answers but does give us a good insight into local sentiment and the roots of discontent in cities where rampant capitalism threatens to unpick the fabric of society. It also challenges us to go beyond simple clapbacks such as, “they’re just racist” or “they won't move with the times”.
Another thing to bear in mind is that kindness can bridge most divides. Just because you are from a different generation, perceived class or wealth doesn‘t mean you should be treated with suspicion. Ex-River Cafe chef Robert Hunningher ran a soup kitchen outside his Humdingers Bakery in 2020, feeding more than 700 people during the lockdown. How about we reserve greater scrutiny for the council and developers such as Blair Estates who threaten to disrupt daily life for local customers and deprive them of a much-loved Iceland store.
Hackney council pledged to build 2,000 homes between 2018 and 2022 (with 50% offered at affordable social rents, shared ownership and Hackney Living Rent, without the need for government funding). They are confident about meeting this target having repurposed sites previously occupied by derelict garages and car parks on estates such as St John’s. There and on the Wenlock Barn Estate, families in most urgent need will be able to move into new homes without leaving their communities. That is the magic word.
Watch on Apple TV or Amazon Prime.
