Them, and Us

Last weekend I took the tube from Finchley in North West London to Seven Sisters in Tottenham. I moved from Tottenham to Hornsey when I was 15 years old. This was a huge step for my mum, sister and I as we moved out of our cramped flat into a three bedroom house. Both were still the property of Haringey Council but not only was the house larger, we now lived in an area, which bordered the leafy areas of Crouch End and Muswell Hill.

If I left my house, walked to the end of the road and turned right there was essentially no difference between Hornsey and Tottenham. Opposite my house was a large council estate, a school, which unfortunately had a bad reputation, and a high street where the major landmarks were a fried chicken shop, an off-licence and a kebab shop.

However, if you turned left the view was a postcard for middle class London. Large Edwardian period properties that retained their original features, a village vet and tennis courts. Catching the 144 bus from Hornsey to Muswell Hill would take a scenic tour through tree lined roads, it would climb a steep hill and until it terminated at Muswell Hill Broadway. The first time I made the journey and got off the bus it felt like I'd entered a different world. There were beauty salons, estate agents selling million pound properties, cafés and eateries.

By contrast you could also catch the 144 from the Broadway, back down Muswell Hill and to Wood Green, where high street brands were frequented by people who lived in Tottenham and Green Lanes. The difference in the demographic was stark. Wood Green was populated by working class Black and Eastern Europeans whilst Muswell Hill was frequented by White middle classes.

I felt like an observer to both these worlds, which were separated by a mere 1.7 miles. By the age of 16, I was a determined A’level student. Education had become so important to me that my peers struggled to understand my drive. I became a bit of an outsider because I didn’t confirm to the stereotype of a young black male. It's easy to think I was the only one, and for a while I did. The reality is that there were others but it wasn’t acceptable to make a virtue of this difference so we hid behind sport, music, the dress code and walk. 

I also worked a part-time role in a supermarket in Muswell Hill, which was fascinating. There were essentially three types of people who worked in Sainsbury's. Full-time workers who worked on the till or replenishments. They rarely lived in the area and would commute from Finchley and Green Lanes. Part-time workers who did live locally but were students; many of whom didn’t need to work but their parents felt it incumbent upon them to equip their children with some real life experience. And then there was us, also students but living in Tottenham or Edmonton for whom the job at Sainsbury’s was a life line. One of these was a friend who like me had very little money in his family, which meant his parents couldn’t support his A’Level studies. So he had resorted to stealing study guides and selling them at the further education college we attended. 

Working at Sainsbury’s was my first interaction with people who lived a very different life. The customers were rarely rude, far from it, but working on the till or stacking shelves you were almost invisible, not really a person but part of the display only coming alive when a customer wanted to know where the organic foods were kept or when they had to pay. This meant you were privy to their conversations. 

‘Rupert was accepted into all his first choice universities’, or ‘we got another quote for our loft conversion, which was so much cheaper’.

When I finished my shift, I would head home with the other students and part-time workers, we’d get on the bus and head back down Muswell Hill. The conversation, which filled the bus was now about sending money back home and the results from the day's horse racing.

I traversed these two worlds through university and then in the corporate world, but rarely did they intersect. For a long time I kept them separate. I must have been about 23 or 24 years old and had been at home from work for a couple of hours. I heard raised voices, a scuffle and then distinctive bang. A shooting, right outside my house. When the I woke the next morning a police tent has been erected with the tape attached to my fence. Yet I had to walk past it and get on the tube to the office. My boss was asking me what was wrong but what do you say?

It wasn’t until a few years later that these two worlds began to collide. Gentrification isn’t new.  The term was originally coined by British sociologist Ruth Glass in the 1960’s to describe the displacement of White working class residents by the White middle classes. It’s only more recently that the term has tended to be associated with the displacement of minority residents in the US and the UK.

When I was young Hackney was a no go area. Partly because being from Tottenham meant that you could inadvertently get caught up in a postcode rivalry but also because the area faced the same challenges as socio-economic challenges as Tottenham. Why visit Hackney when it was just the same? Visit Hackney now and it's transformed. The borough is in Zone 2, which means it’s easy to get to central London and the streets are lined with large period properties that remain intact and not split into flats.  But I'm often amazed as the people who live there now have no recollection of the Hackney of old and it does leave me with mixed feelings. 

A colleague of mine grew up in Hackney. Her parents were typical of people who lived in area, West Indian and had arrived in the 1950’s as part of the Windrush Generation. They had purchased a house just off Mare Street in Hackney. She said they had paid ￡2.5K for the property and now owned it outright. Hackney became an enclave for migrant West Indian communities and it’s easy to see why her family felt at home. Friends and relatives all lived the area and it was a simple walk to the shop to buy hard dough bread, yams or any other foods, which West Indian families cooked.

The other side to Hackney however was the high rate of violent crime rate. A good friend of mine moved into the area, probably about 15 years ago, before the area became popular. He was a film producer and liked the area because it was close to central London and the rent was cheap. I remember at the time he moved in asking with incredulity why are you moving to Hackney? He said it that yes the crime rate was high but sadly it was usually amongst the black kids in the area, which meant he could go about his business unencumbered. This was a privilege I couldn't afford, if I wasn't wearing a suit no-one could tell if I was friend or foe.

What quickly followed the artists were younger professionals who liked the cheap rent but also the short commute to central London. And what followed the young professionals were shops catering for their needs, coffee and artisan bakers and estate agents who seized upon the opportunity to make some money. As a consequence retail landlords put the rents up because their properties were suddenly in demand but this was expense of the smaller shops catering for the needs of the locals. A statistic that is often referred to is about Hackney and other gentrified areas such as Brixton is the lowering of the crime rate. There is a clear link between socio-economic conditions and crime and despite what many would have you believe this is a much stronger than the link between race and crime. But although the crime rates decreased, the underlying causes were never dealt with, the poor people remained poor. Some who had managed to purchase their properties took advantage of house price inflation and sold up, but many were re-housed on outskirts of London. Those that were left remained in the same socio-economic conditions but now felt alienated in the place they had once called home. Unable to afford the expensive food which was now on offer and with a decreasing circle of friends. 

I understand that young professionals can't be necessarily be choosy about where they can afford to live, and that an influx of new residents can boost an area. Deprived areas need investment but this should also be to the benefit of the communities who live there. So when I heard a colleague at work say she was going to buy a property in Tottenham I wanted to see the impact for myself.

Seven Sisters tube station has two exits. When I was young exit two would take you directly into onto Tottenham High Road. The sight that had always greeted me was a record shop called Body Music. Body Music, or a it was rebranded Every Bodies Music, was more than a record shop, it dominated the high street and was placed right on the corner, almost a gateway from Tottenham Hale, Stamford Hill and Wood Green. It stocked vinyl, mostly reggae, but more recently Hip-Hop and RnB and was a signal of the areas cultural heritage. When you walk up the stairs from exit two today Body Music is no longer there. Perhaps this is result of the onset of digital streaming and the decline of the high street, but its replacement is a Costa Coffee.  West Green Road used to have about three different barber and hair care product shops, which catered to the large Black community. These are gone. And if you go into the Costa Coffee the customers and the staff are predominately Eastern European, Kurdish to be precise. Most of the Black residents have moved out.

Where Body Music once stood.

So I wondered if the area was still poor but now represented by a different demographic. However a short walk to Tottenham Hale reveals a very different picture. Construction site after construction site of new build properties have sprung up, many of which are gated. 

Tottenham Hale.

I spotted a guy walking and called to get his attention. He was cautious at first but relaxed when I explained that I was a blogger. He’d lived in Tottenham his whole life, I asked him how he felt about the change in the area and the new properties. He got animated. It’s for them, he pointed to a group of people, probably in their mid 20’s who were laughing and joking and leaving an independent coffee shop. Us? We got offered three or four properties that we can’t afford. I guessed that some of the properties were social housing but probably only a limited amount.  They never come into Tottenham, meaning West Green Road, they stay here. 

I’d never really tied my career to this experience. I do feel that the world of finance stimulates economic growth but the direct benefit is to the people who well, work in finance. By working in the industry felt I was being a role model, somehow proving that it could be done. It's now clear to me that this isn't enough. I'm also aware that I can now afford to live in a different area of London, maybe I have a responsibility to give back. Areas such as Tottenham are prevalent across the UK and the residents often battle similar challenges, higher rates of obesity and crime and low educational attainment. Many will state that finance has no business solving these problems, perhaps not alone, but the industry should play a part. If not for the greater good than because the population has grown tired of the industry I work in extracting wealth from society and seemingly giving little back, if we don't put their needs at the core of our purpose they'll vote with their feet. We've had to respond to climate change, innovating new investment products and solutions, perhaps we should also be responding to societal change. Until then I’ll agitate from the inside and will continue to write. Maybe ‘them’ and ‘us’ will eventually become ‘we’.