From Eastern Europe to the East End

November 2013

Miner's eyes revolved. This is how the Polish dream house slips out of sight. His girlfriend wants to stay. London has left its Polish builders feeling emasculated. A labourer earns £7 an hour but a cleaner makes £10 an hour. Workmen unable to speak English have little choice but to chase Polish girls they cannot afford the cocktails for.

Not everyone will get lucky like Miner. In 20 years he will still be here, probably in Streatham. He will have a cocky son with literary or financial aspirations in a sixth-form college, flaunting a fashionable Polishness.

The luckless in Polish London drink. Half-vagrants hang around outside Polish clubs and churches looking for work. Every builder has a vodka horror story. Like the builder who tried to hide from his boss in a gutted house by lying under a plasterboard in the rubble.

Drinking blights the Polish countryside. This has now come to the streets of London. The majority of tramps in the city are Polish and Lithuanian. There are at least 5,000 of them. Over 3,000 have been bussed home over the past five years.

There were Polish tramps in north London who were forced to work unloading trucks for Turkish shopkeepers. These villains paid them in the tramp's drink of choice — the cider White Ace. I cannot describe how bad it tastes. Others were found roasting rats in back alleys in Tottenham and Haringey.

These humiliated tramps are hiding. They are hiding from their families. Unable to bear the shame that London turned out to be a soiled mattress under a flyover. They send emails from Kurdish internet cafés for one begged pound, saying they are better than ever. They sleep mostly by the river. It is calm there. Huddled up, they can sing romantic Lublin hobo ballads and roll cigarettes out of pavement butts in peace. They toast handwash cocktails and curse their naivety for thinking you could night-bus it to a better life. To mix these cocktails, tramps sneak into hospitals and surreptitiously squirt the alcoholic liquid from dispensers into Coke bottles. It really hits the back of the head.

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Anon

January 25th, 2016
1:01 AM

Whatever you might think of Beckton, his lurid description of urban decay is a total misrepresentation, as is his historical analysis. Get off the DLR and walk around.

Dave Carling

March 21st, 2015
7:03 PM

Can't say I agree with "well written"? You come across like a sixth form student who's had a day out in London and "knows it all". Should your livelihood come from freelance journalism, it's likely you'll end up living in Beckton.

Nat

November 27th, 2013
11:11 PM

Well done for selecting various anecdotes that do nothing more than reinforce Eastern-European stereotype. I would expect a bit more insight and knowledge from someone who supposed to be a specialist on the region. I could easily be as selective as the author and get similar stories from English or as a matter of fact any nation in the world. Of course writing about those who have been successful, have good jobs, pay taxes and do not open a can of Tyskie on their way home would not be as ‘interesting’ as this article, but probably could do a bit more good, than drawing such a sad and depressing view on Eastern-Europeans. We are not all cleaners or builders, waiters or bouncers. As a matter of fact, even some of the builders and cleaners had more education than one would expect. Not all of them were fired or could not get by in Poland, so they decided to come to the UK, blurred by a vision of gold pavements. Some of us worked hard, study hard and committed ourselves to be a part of this great society. As other polish professionals, I am invisible to the rest of society, because I do not generate stories like this. One could wonder, if it was worth trying to make a difference by working hard for my position as British ‘upper class’ is still dividing Europe according to the Cold War rules. Opinions like this make me wonder, if the prize for taking on board British culture is dealing with such comments about your country and nation every day. One could say that probably not and actually start drinking a can of larger. What is the point of change, if stereotype is what people are looking for?

maz

November 22nd, 2013
12:11 AM

Awesome story. Luckily it doesn't end up like that for everybody. I lived in London, met people like this and I realised I'm ashamed of who they are. They would be the same sad losers back home. We are not all cleaners and builders, trust me.

Bruce Davies

November 16th, 2013
4:11 PM

This is incredibly well written. I enjoyed it from start to finish.

Anonymous

November 16th, 2013
11:11 AM

"The owners are in Russia dipshit. The gooks are the maids." Great ear for Polish immigrant cadence. Not. Lithuanians get building. Americans get media. (note to editor: freelancers need subs.)

Paul

November 16th, 2013
6:11 AM

I left the recession dominated, job starved North East of England in the late 1980's to go and work in London (Mr Tebbits advice which did me no harm). Construction work was my choice of employment because I'd never been able to get much else at that time and it got me of the social security cycle. The money I earned put a roof over my head and my standard of living wasnt too bad. During the early to mid 1990's I began to notice that builders and agencies were starting to employ more and more (cheaper) Eastern Europeans rather than British or Irish building workers. This snowballed to a point where I, like a lot of others became unemployable. Eventually I had to leave London because it was almost impossible for me being a British worker to find any work. It was a shame because I loved living in london, one of the great cities of the world. I now reside in Australia a country where they seem to value their own people far more than the British do and a country where employers pay livable wages to their working classes.

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