Working-Class Youth and the Social Transformation of Post-war London

Abstract

London’s physical renewal was accompanied by a social transformation, which soon began to leave its footprint on the cultural production of working-class youth. The arrival of migrants from Commonwealth countries, along with the first signs of gentrification and the subsequent relocation of working-class communities within the city, provided new opportunities for teenagers in London to ask what it meant to live in a post-Victorian Britain that was becoming multicultural at the same time as reorganising community life through the building of new forms of mass housing. This chapter first examines the racist climate in which working-class kids were growing up, at a time when black children who had been born in London were reaching adolescence, and attempts to reconstruct the ways in which working-class youth formulated contradictory answers and reactions to migration, and how Britain tried to absolve itself of structural racism by making young working-class people exclusively responsible for racial tensions. Following on from the notion of distinctive working-class identities, this chapter investigates how kids involved in London’s vibrant youth scenes identified themselves with an imagined but influential working-class culture, and the ways in which they were able to do so thanks to the narrative espoused by the media in relation to the stereotypes of urban working-class life. Further it examines in detail the modes of cultural production among working-class youth and their associations with working-class traditions. Using strong links between the formation of modern youth cultures and young people’s class affiliations, this chapter continues by demystifying the notion of a decline in London’s sense of community, which influential sociologists warned might come about as a result of the social effects of mass housing and the building of council estates, which were considered a poor substitute for the intimacy of an imagined urban working-class community. This chapter argues that council estates engendered new modes of cultural and social life, gave rise to new forms of self-determined cultural activity, and provided space which young working-class dwellers were able to use, though not without controversy, for cultural production.KeywordsBlack LondonRacismNotting Hill RiotsRace relationsBlack youthWorking-class LondonColour barWorking-class neighbourhoodCouncil housingMass housingYouth serviceTenants’ associationsCommunity-buildingLocal identityEveryday lifePost-war LondonYouth cultureGentrification