"Every street had a midwife - if someone was having a baby,"go and fetch Mrs so and so", and that's how it was, and you would help each other out any time. I've had to go and knock on doors "Can Mum borrow this, or that" and people have knocked on our door "can I borrow half a cup of sugar till Dad gets home with his wages", but no- one thought anything of it because that was the way of life and if you didn't do that you was a right meanie and you were uncaring and people had that said about them.
"Community spirit then it just evolved, there was no organisers, no funding for this and funding for that, you just organised yourself and it worked well. I suppose it still could today."
- VT
"We were always hard up, my mother used to take in washing - there was a really close community which nobody has now. I remember my mother with a group of women, at birth, you would see them going off with their bundles, there was no one to call so the women would get together and help out. People managed all those occasions in the community. No doors were locked, there was nothing to nick anyway, but there was this solid community spirit which over the years I tried to re-create."
- BD
There was a really close community which nobody has now
"I got involved with the local church in the early 50s and I became interested in working with the young people in the area. By this time I had a motorcycle, and in those days a lot of the young lads 16 and 18 year olds were getting motorcycles. I formed a motorcycling club in the church room at St Barnabas and then the local vicar got me involved in running things. When the old King died, it was the Queen' s Coronation we held events to raise money. I remember the Mayor a chap called Patton would come along to support us."
- BD
"West Ham was the cradle of the modern trade union movement, and socialism. The first Labour council in the country elected to power in 1898, and in 1902 James Keir Hardie elected to serve as the first Independant Labour Party Member of Parliament for South West Ham. His election victory was seen as a triumph for socialism and the working class. Local politics and Labour party activists have always played an important part in Newham's history: as BD recalls in his first introduction to local politics.
"One evening a man appeared on my doorstep named Cllr Murphy who lived in Knights Road he ran the local ward Labour Party. He announced on my doorstep that he was leaving the area. There was no one around who could pick up the Labour Party books and with that he said to me, "Well, you are the only person who lives around here with an interest in the area, here's the books for the Custom House and Silvertown Labour Party ward, I'm off" and he dumped them on my doorstep. And that was my introduction into political life. By this time the motorcycle club had grown quite large and had lads from all parts of West Ham. I took the books to a meeting of the motorcycle club, and I said "We got these books, I don't know what to do with them, what shall we do?" We decided to do something about the housing, we went round the streets knocking on doors and held our very first public meeting in the school."
- BD
"I'm from Stepney. When we moved to Silvertown it was all prefabs the area had been so badly bombed during the war. When I got married, we then moved to Silvertown I worked for the Electricity Board so for me I could get to wherever I was working by public transport. I thought it was great and I really enjoyed The Royal Albert pub. I used to play for the darts team, I got really involved in the team and from Christmas up to June we would have all different types of competitions. It was more like a village then. You knew everybody so the social life was busy. And talking of noise, on New Year's Night, the boats in the docks would blow their hooters from half past ten until three o'clock in the morning. It was really good, we would meet in the pub and never got out of there until the early hours of the morning. It was good because at that time everybody knew everybody, a very, very good atmosphere. People seemed happier more content even though they had it hard.
"I got to know everybody because I used to take in sewing so I got to know people through that. Some had lived here for so many years, it was very different then you had shops around the corner. We would sit outside in the evenings and have a chat with our neighbours, everyone knew everyone and all their gossip, but it was good. I really enjoyed it the kids would play outside but now all the old ones have died and the flats were built and that changed it all, people just don't mix as much now not like it used to be. You could go out, you could let the kids play out, leave doors open. Now you can't."
- BR
You knew everybody so the social life was busy
"I met my husband in a pub in Upton Park, he used to help his friend run it, his friend was the Manager. I went in there one day with a friend and we were introduced and when he said he lived in Silvertown, I said "People don't live in Silvertown, it's the docks" and he said "Oh, yes they do, I was born there". And of course the biggest surprise I had was that there was a whole community round here, I never knew this, although I'd been through a couple of times on a bus, going to the ferry, I didn't realise how many people actually lived here. My first thoughts of Silvertown were horror, when I got off that train and looked around, this was twenty-two years ago."
- RG
