Once the post-war economy began to improve, Leytonstone and Leyton became less attractive
as a place to live for those with a little money. From the 1970s onwards most largest
houses were subdivided into flats which were typically sold to ‘first time buyers’,
young couples with little savings purchasing their first property. The remaining
bigger houses were often occupied by people with left-wing views, displaying CND
posters in a front window 1. The loss of better-off people to other areas accentuated
the character of Leyton as the home of people lacking coventional ambition.
In this period London lost its leading position in British manufacturing and distribution
of goods and materials. Into this economic and social disaster came large numbers
of immigrants from former colonies. Many people who had grown up in Leyton moved
out.
Jerry White, a former Chief Executive of Hackney Borough Council, writes : “Population
turnover in inner London was immense. In Islington, the very crucible of change,
it was clear by the early 1970s that a major transformation was taking place in the
class make-up of its population. Skilled working-class people, the district’s backbone
for fifty years, were moving away to the new opportunities in New Towns or the outer
metropolitan areas of Hertfordshire, Essex and elsewhere. Their place was being
taken by a polarized population of middle-class gentrifiers and unskilled workers,
many of them newcomers from the Caribbean, Africa and the Mediterranean. Two-thirds
of Islington residents in 1961 were no longer there in 1971, having died or moved
away, and it is certain that turnover increased during the 1970s.” 2 Something similar
happened in Leyton in terms of an exodus of skilled working-class people, but little
of Leyton was attractive to middle-class gentrifiers.
