Brixton: Multi-Cultural London

Welcome to Brixton

Source: www.speakup.combr

Language Level: Intermediate

Standard: British Accent

Jay Brown, a 38-year-old Black Londoner, set up a tour company and gave the British media a big surprise. Her company, Brixton Tours, offers tourists the chance to see an area that no one previously thought of putting on the tourist map, even if as she told me, everyone has heard about it:

Jay Brown:

(Standard British accent)

I got the idea for Brixton tours from travelling: I’ve been to Bali, I’ve been to Rio de Janeiro, I’ve been to India, I’ve been to Copenhagen, I’ve been…travelled quite extensively round Europe. And from travelling and meeting people and they ask you where you’re from, I was really surprised that most people had heard of Brixton from one way or another. So, from knowing that, I thought, “Oh, my God, people are so interested in where…” wherever you go, people are always interested in where you’re from and, with Brixton, I realised that I live in a place which is quite unique and quite special and has so much to offer.

THOSE RIOTS…

Jay Brown found that people around the world know two facts about Brixton. One is that it is a black area, a long-established Afro-Caribbean neighbourhood and a national symbol of minority culture, but Brixton is still a highly unusual tourist destination. The other characteristic of Brixton that everyone members is rioting. In 1981, and again in 1985 and 1995, local youths, fought battles who the police destroying building and cars and creating an enduring reputation for lawlessness. Not to disappoint expectations, Jay Brown takes her tours along the roads where these riots took place, although she says the area is now greatly changed:

Jay Brown:

On my tours I take people down the street where the riots actually happened to show them, and now you’ve got cafes, you’ve got internet store(s), you’ve got restaurants, you’ve got a shoe store called Elephant Foot for people who can’t find shoes in a particular size, but there’s so much. They’ve really invested in the area. And there’s lots of people starting business, because there’s lots of young people in this area as well. You know, it’s attracted musicians, artists, Brixton’s a very creative are and it’s very good for business, because people come here and set up, you know, little shops within the market of bigger stalls on the street. So it’s good: it’s entrepreneurial, it encourages people to be creative and Brixton’s a very creative area.

GENTRIFICATION

Investment, along with Brixton’s central locations and its convenient Underground station, have also attracted many entirely conventional uncreative middle-class residents, but it remains a great place for exploring more exotic cultures. Jay Brown’s tours also go pas the stalls of Brixton market, where an extraordinary selection of international produce caters for a remarkable cultural diversity. As well as Afro-Caribbean fruits like ackee, plantain and callaloo, there are Columbian specialities and African produce like giant land snails.

A NEW EXPERIENCE

Of course, not all these cultures welcome curious visitors. The athletic young drug dealers hanging out on street corners with their mountain bikes certainly do not welcome the attention of strangers, unless they are potential customers. Nor is this an ideal to take photographs with an expensive camera. But, having lived here for 15 years, Jay Brown, is sure that anymore touring the area with her has nothing to fear. In fact, in her company, she says Brixton is an essential part of any visit to London:

Jay Brown:

People should come on Brixton tour because it would get them out of the West End, which is really boring, and it’ll bring them to a place which offers them culture, music, food, entertainment, bars. There’s just so much here that people need to just leave the West End behind and head to south London and do a Brixton tour.

A troubled Neighbourood 

Brixton's streets reflect 200 years of London History. Over the last century it has been famous both as a community of actors and artists, and as an important retailing centre where the first British department store was built and where a shopping arcade was lit with eletricity for the first time. Today, however, Brixton is known for its Afro-Caribbean community. Since the 1950s - when immigrants from the West Indies were invited to Britain to help rebuild the economy shattered in the Second World War - Brixton has become a symbol of Britain' most colourful cultural minority. 

The new lives of early West Indian immigrants were often hard. Painful encounters with racism were almost inevitable and until 1976 there was no legal protection against discrimination.

The Riots

At times the hostility of London's white working classes became violent. Opposition to Britain's first wave of "mass immigration" come to ahead in August 1958, when mobs armed with knives and iron bars appeared on the streets in search of what they insultingly called "niggers." After several black men were beaten unconscious, armed gangs of West Indians retaliated with similar violence. Brixton has been devastated by riots on several occasions, in 1981 thousands of young Afro-Caribbean men reacted to aggressive policing by destroying buildings and burning cars. In 1985 similar scenes of destruction occured after a policeman searching for a robber broke into his house and shot his mother, leaving her permanently disable. Again in 1995 Brixton's street witnessed violent confrontations after the death of a black suspect in police custody.

LONDON'S MELTING POT

Today, despite problems with guns and crack cocaine, Brixton is calmer. Like the Notting Hill riots, which inspired the Notting Hill Carnival, Brixton's riots had positive long-term effects. By drawing attention to local problems, they inspired official efforts to combat racism and diminish poverty. In the years since the riots the West Indians community has also established itself as a valued element of national life. Black fashion now shapes all of Britain's culture, with Afro-Caribbean men and women making a prominent contribution in music, fashion, sport and entertainment. 

In recent years Brixton's association with the West Indies has also began to weaken. As the area lost its reputation for lawlessness, it began to attract a growing number of white professionals. Some locals resent their arrival, but they are just part of a growing diversity - a mix of cultures now being enhanced by an influx of French, Spanish and Portuguese-speaking immigrants from Africa.

BRIXTON GUIDES

For those of you wishing to discover Brixton's past, the Brixton Society visit http:www.brixtonsociety.org.uk publishes guidebooks and provides guides for walking tours. And if you want an insight into the lifestyle of Brixton's black community today, contact Jay Brown of Brixton Tours. Website: http://www.brixtontours.co.uk E-mail: jaybrixton@hotmail.com 

Tel:      +44 (0) 1843 840737

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