"The East End that I found when I arrived in 1970 was a different world to today's bustling, regulated prosperity. Bombsites and tumbledown, near-derelict housing were the unremarkable norm. Residents' main source of income had evaporated as the docks and their supporting trades closed down, racism festered among the older population of white workers whose community was being destroyed by a lack of jobs, and the area was abandoned. Tumbledown, leaky old houses made for easy squats or cheap rents and began to attract impoverished students, artists, political activists and young Bangladeshi men working in the rag trade. Slowly a younger population emerged, the little corner shops and cafés became busier, and life started to return to the streets."