Labour's love lost?

See E. P. Thompson in Review of Security and the State (London, Julian Friedmann Books, 1978). Kingsley Read of the National Party had been charged with incitement to racial hatred after a speech following the murder of Asian Gurdip Singh Chaggar in which he said, ‘one down, a million to go’.

The McDonnell family was the first to be evicted, in 1985, from public housing after their unceasing campaign of racial harassment against their Newham neighbours.

Roger Hewett and Phil Cohen, for example, in examining white young people's racist behaviour and attitudes, end up blaming multiculturalism and anti-racism for white working-class youth's loss of identity. See Liz Fekete, ‘New approaches to tackling youth racism’, CARF (No. 40, October/November 1997), for a critique of Routes of Racism: the basis of racist action by Roger Hewitt; and Liz Fekete, ‘Let them eat cake’, Race & Class (Vol. 39, no. 3, 1998), for a critique of the work of Phil Cohen.

‘If the authorities regard [community] spirit as a social asset worth preserving, they will not uproot more people, but build the new houses around the social groups to which they already belong.’ Michael Young and Peter Willmott, Family and Kinship in East London, (Abingdon, Routledge, 1972), p. 166.

In fact, some commentators thought the authors oversold this view and tended towards romanticising the class.

Liz Fekete quotes from Happe's interview in the Guardian (23 February 1990) and recounts the Liberal Focus's electioneering strategy in ‘Europe for the Europeans: East End for the East Enders’, Race & Class (Vol. 32 no. 1, 1990).

David Goodhart, ‘Discomfort of strangers’, Prospect (February 2004).

A. Sivanandan, ‘Race against time’, New Statesman and Society (15 October 1983).

The 'sons and Daughters scheme‘ of the Liberal Democrats gave special preference to the children of parents who had lived in the borough for a certain period; it was widely criticised as indirectly discriminating against Bengali families. In effect it resurrected old practices that had been thrown out as discriminatory. The authors of The New East End imply that white resentment understandably arose out of the way in which housing priorities changed. According to their view, housing allocation under the new welfare state was, first, a kind of recompense for what people had given to their community. Second, tenancies were seen as something that could be passed on to one's children – rather like the Sons and Daughters scheme. Subsequently, housing waiting lists became the norm. But at the national level, residence qualifications came to be seen as discriminatory against newcomers. The idea of need was added to waiting-list criteria. In effect, this became a points-based system in which other factors were added to length of waiting time. In addition, the Homeless Persons Act 1977 meant that local authorities were obliged to find housing for the homeless first: they were in greatest need.

The issue of racism in the housing allocation policy in the borough, which involved an investigation by the Commission for Racial Equality and a case which went to the High Court, receives two pages in this book. But for a fuller discussion, see Gary Hewett and Mark Adams, The Race for Power: an investigation into the racist housing policies of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets (London, 1994).

See Danny Burns and others, The Politics of Decentralisation (Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1994). This study is given a credit in terms of its coverage of white tenants' reactions, but there is an overall disapproval of the interpretation of data.

Michael Young co-wrote (with Herbert Morrison) the election manifesto on which much of the welfare state was later based.

After Michael Young's death, the Institute of Community Studies merged with another organisation to become the Young Foundation. Geoff Mulgan was appointed its director in 2004.