E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSSAn actor from gangster movie "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" is giving walking tours of old gangland haunts in east London, where this month's Olympic Games are being held. NBC's Theresa Cook reports.
LONDON - A tall, menacing actor famous for playing gangsters waits in a bar named The Blind Beggar, once the scene of an underworld revenge killing. Welcome to East London, the diverse and often eyebrow-raising home of this month's Olympics.
Forget the usual tourist honeypots of Buckingham Palace and Big Ben: Most of the 300,000 additional international visitors expected in London during the Games will see a district that is still evolving from its impoverished, industrial past into a vibrant and appealing part of Britain's capital.
The main Olympic Park is well inside London's sprawling boundaries, only four miles from the city's heart. Athletes will live on the site but thousands of team officials, visitors and VIPs will travel each day from central hotels and through East London to the Games.
View East London: From gangster haven to Olympic zone in a larger map
"I don't know what they'll make of it," said Stephen Marcus, who played dodgy dealer "Nick The Greek" in Guy Ritchie's locally filmed 1998 gangster movie "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels."
Sneak peek at Olympic Village: 'Not a five-star resort'
During the Olympics, Marcus will be giving guided walking tours, offering athletes and ticket-holders the chance to re-trace the steps of the real-life 'East End' mobsters who terrorized London in the 1950s and 1960s.
It is more relevant than you might think: Escaping from poverty, sometimes by criminal means, has been East London's back story over the past five centuries.
/
A diverse community in East London will welcome the world to Britain for the 2012 Olympic Games. Meet residents and hear how they feel about having a huge, world stage in their backyard.
"Its downriver position on the Thames made it the city's gateway during Britain's maritime era and the industrial revolution," said Professor Miles Ogborn, head of the School of Geography at Queen Mary, University of London. "There were docks and sailors in the area, and everything you'd usually associate with that."
Filthy slums
With Britain's prevailing winds blowing industrial smog toward the east, London's 17th and 18th century developers headed in the opposite direction – establishing parks, theaters, royal residences and handsome squares in the west.
Click here for more London 2012 coverage
In contrast, the 'East End' descended into filthy slums for the diseased and destitute, earning a reputation as a den of immorality and inspiring many of the wretched characters in the novels of Charles Dickens. Not that its horrors were fictional: In 1888, five women who had turned to prostitution were murdered by a serial killer known as Jack the Ripper. The pub where he met his victims – the Ten Bells – is now a regular port of call for London walking tours.
"What is perhaps most shocking about those crimes, when you learn more about them, is the depth of poverty to which these women had fallen," said Ogborn. "This really was a terrible place to be."
But East London's darkest days came during the Second World War. Between September 1940 and May 1941, the German air force destroyed more than one million homes and killed 20,000 people in a bombing campaign known as The Blitz. The east, whose docks and factories made it a strategic target, bore the brunt of the attack.
'London's equivalent of Al Capone'
Instead of local redevelopment, post-war planners relocated many families to newly built towns and suburbs in the countryside. With the docks also in decline, derelict areas became a playground for career criminals, including the Krays – fearsome twin brothers and boxing champions who ran a casino and night-club empire on the back of protection rackets until finally convicted in 1968.
"They were London's equivalent of Al Capone," Marcus said. "They had celebrity guests and celebrity friends. They would've loved the Olympics, I'm sure ... they'd be at the opening ceremony in a VIP box."
Among the Krays' victims was rival gangster George Cornell, shot dead in front of drinkers in the Blind Beggar pub in Whitechapel in 1966. The bar, which sits on one of the main thoroughfares between central London and the Games site, will be the starting point for Marcus' tour.
Social improvement began with Victorian-era philanthropy – the Salvation Army was founded outside the Blind Beggar by Methodist preacher William Booth – and has since been tied up with major urban regeneration.
Oda / Getty Images
From Wimbledon to Wembley Stadium to The Dome, a look at the venues for the 2012 London Olympic Games.
The 1980s saw vacant docks transformed into Britain's second-largest financial center, complete with blinking 770-foot office tower One Canada Square and a light rail system. Canary Wharf is now home to the world or European headquarters of firms including HSBC, Citigroup, State Street, Clifford Chance, MetLife, Morgan Stanley and Thomson Reuters.
Alastair Jamieson for msnbc.com
Sandra Mjungwa, a store sales manager and East London resident, says the areas where the Olympics will be held is "unrecognizable compared to only a couple of years ago."
The main Games site has been created from industrial wastelands near Stratford, once home to toxic industries banished from more central districts by 19th century social improvement laws. A massive soil clean-up has allowed 740 acres of polluted low-value brownfield land to be transformed into the Olympic area – although a major sewage pumping station remains defiantly in place.
Stratford station, once a dingy calling point to be avoided at night, is now a flagship transport hub for the Games and a stopping point for trains on the high-speed London-to-Paris Eurostar line. There's also a new $2.75-billion shopping mall, which three-quarters of ticket-holders will have to walk through to reach the main venues for events like swimming, basketball and track.
"The shopping has already made a difference to the area," store sales manager and local resident Sandra Mjungwa told msnbc.com. "It's unrecognizable compared to only a couple of years ago when nobody would come here unless they had to."
Kychia Messenger, 18, an electrical apprentice from Stratford, added: "It's already a better area; you see more people putting litter in the bin and there are fewer gangs hanging around." (The jury's still out on her last point: The day after msnbc.com spoke to Messenger, a man was stabbed to death in broad daylight in the mall after a gang-related brawl only a few yards from the Olympic Park entrance.)
Get behind the scenes with our 'TODAY in London' blog
This has not deterred thousands of tourists from taking two-hour walking tours of the Olympic site perimeter, long before the Games have begun. "The tours are very popular – we do two on Saturdays now," said London Walks' guide, Kim Dewdney. "Prior to the Olympic redevelopment, nobody ever asked me for a tour of Stratford – but the Games has brought people here and hopefully opened their eyes to the local area."
Among those taking her tour on Friday afternoon was a family of Americans who had spent the morning seeing Westminster Abbey. Also there was Steve Venckus, in London on a business trip from Washington, D.C. "Even though I won't be here when the Games are on, I really wanted to see it all up close so I can say I've been there," he said.
Alastair Jamieson / msnbc.com
Kychia Messenger, 18, an electrical apprentice from Stratford, says there are now "fewer gangs hanging around" the area.
So can visitors expect a friendly welcome to East London? Since the arrival of Huguenot refugees from France in the 17th century, successive waves of immigrants have made the area their home: Irish weavers, Ashkenazi Jews from Russia and Eastern Europe and, most recently, Bangladeshis. Brick Lane – once home to fabric factories and bagel bakeries – is now known as London's 'curry mile'.
In the six official Olympic boroughs of London – Hackney, Newham, Barking & Dagenham, Greenwich, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest – 42 per cent of the population is from non-white ethnic groups, and the area is home to dozens of mosques.
'Challenges'
Diversity of wealth is even wider: Tower Hamlets, which takes in the banking zone of Canary Wharf as well as the government housing projects of Stepney, contains some of Britain's poorest neighborhoods as well as some of its wealthiest. "One hundred and twenty-six languages are spoken in our schools and we have some very rich areas while only a couple of streets away there are people who are just getting by; those challenges are what makes the area interesting," Lutfur Rahman, Britain's first directly elected Muslim mayor, told msnbc.com. "I hope visitors will take the time to see our parks and attractions on their way to the Games."
Visitors may also indulge in a bit of celebrity-spotting: Ralph Fiennes and Keira Knightley are among those following a crowd of hispters and artists into the resurgent districts of Hoxton, Shoreditch and Bethnal Green. Once ghettos, the areas are now sought-after addresses for anyone working in arts or the media – the New York Times described East London as "by far London's trendiest area". Sir Ian McKellen, who played Gandalf in "Lord of the Rings," owns a historic pub called The Grapes near his riverside home in Limehouse.
"Artists have sought out the disused industrial spaces and made them their own," said Ogborn. "In the middle of once-bleak areas like Hackney Wick there are suddenly independent shops and bustling cafes full of artists, like the Hackney Pearl for example."
Alastair Jamieson / msnbc.com
"I think local people will be proud of Britain at the Olympics," said James Hamill, 25, barman at the Princess of Wales in Stratford and a catering worker at the Games.
Marcus said: "It's a community here. No matter what the nationality, ethnicity, and cultural group, there has always been and always will be a strong community life."
Some of the more traditional characteristics of East London have been well-documented in the long-running BBC soap opera, EastEnders, known chiefly for its grittiness.
"There will be some moaning – some of it quite justified – but on the whole I think local people will be proud of Britain at the Olympics," said James Hamill, 25, barman at the blue-collar Princess of Wales pub in Stratford. "We'll be very pleased to see people here."
Micah Smith, Andrew Gee and Jeremy Paduano, NBC News in London, contributed to this report.
More world news from msnbc.com and NBC News:
- From soft power to drone attacks: What the world thinks of US
- Kids cross border alone, fleeing drugs and gangs
- East London: From gangland haven to Olympic showcase
- Pollution protesters halt work on $1.6-billion factory in China
- Afghan schoolgirls: poisoned or mass hysteria?
- Pakistan lets trucks roll into Afghanistan after Clinton apology
- Sneak peek inside Olympic Village: 'Not a five-star resort'
- Former Gitmo prisoner: How I see America
More London 2012 coverage:
- Disabled visitors face high hurdles to London Olympics
- Terror suspect's eye color? Flying cameras to spy during Games
- Londoners express hopes, frustrations as Olympics come to town
- Flagship McDonalds in Olympic Park becomes super-sized
- Olympic torchbearers race to cash in
- Will world's most expensive cable car be ready for Olympics?
- Now towering over London: 'The Godzilla of public art'
- Venues for the London 2012 Olympic Games
- Bad neighbors for Team USA? Occupy camp faces ax
- VIDEO: Olympic torchbearer proposes mid-relay
- Brits revel in gloom ahead of Games, but don't believe the gripe
- Olympic housing crunch: Landlords evict tenants to gouge tourists
- Slideshow: When the Olympics is your neighbor
- Go behind the scenes with our 'TODAY in London' blog
Leave a Comment:
Olympics?
What olympics?....tourists will be running 10 flat 100's to get away from pickpockets, tramps, and thieves...
if you go check out this... hang out...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_DhNLCyVss&feature=related
So where did the gang members go?
Where did the old gangsters go? They were supplanted by new savage immigrant criminals who beat up old White ladies and cripples.
So they gave them a mandatory eviction notice and knocked their houses down to build an Olympic park? I don't think they are too happy about that.
Does that not happen where you are from, "Eminant Domain"
This is more of British Olympics hype and propaganda to boost tourism.
With missile defense systems in a place, a place can't be worse!
There will be too many security checks.
As austerity measures London Olympics should have been cancelled!
When the games are over, will it revert back to business as usual?
if sharia law forbade receiving welfare no foreigners would be in England
Also not many Islamic radical and terrorist plans.
British imported huge numbers of Pakis. Then you can guess the net results!
East London is overrun with foreigners who do not care to integrate, their goal is to ultimately dominate, and all the while drawing government welfare. Anti-White sentiment is rife amongst these people, the sad outcome of an 'open arms' immigration ideology.
The 'Olde England' you see in the old movies is gone and the English 'characters' have been supplanted by people that think Britain owes them.
burt, I'm from East london. Please keep your ignorance to yourself. Integrate? How does one integrate into a multicultural society? It's the society that needs to become more tolerant of difference not the people who must become homogenous. Stuff your integration you eejit
Mark, if you are in fact from London then you know what I mean, don't cover it up. How is that 'multiculturalism' really working out? Hard to be tolerant when you become the target in your own country mate.
Britain does owe them, Burt. That's the price you pay for Empire.
ap-2718492: That is not the 'price you pay for empire'. It is however the price 'some people pay' for adopting self-destructing ethnomasochist policies.
All this nonsense will come to a head eventually.
Here in the US we are being torn apart at the seams by the same kind of multicultural nightmare where foreigners refuse to integrate but rather form enclaves and overtake entire neighborhoods.
The you OWE me thing is big here too!
Mark, Burt - I lived in London for 3 years, from 2006-2009. What Burt is saying is spot on. I find it hilarious that the top of this article shows two white guys to represent London's "gangland past". You'd be hard pressed to find a white person in East London right now (or after the Olympics leaves town). It's nothing but mostly North African, Middle Eastern and SE Asian Immigrants who are living off "benefits" from the govt. and their kids are always stabbing one another. A once great Empire, with a rich history, is being dragged down into the gutter by this filth! What a shame!
Mark Z. I understand your sentiment and agree with it wholeheartedly. A lot of indigenous and native communities are paying a high price for helping the White pilgrims instead of letting them die. They came, reproduced completely out of control. Killed off many indigenous communities by the millions and never cared to assimilate or become part of the people who lived here for thousands and thousands of years all while claiming to have "discovered" a "new" land.
American, defined by artificial borders established by foreigners, is changing once again and is it's demographics. America won't mean "White" for much longer... Everything will gradually return to normal.
In seven rather unremarkable lines - A person can learn everything that there is to know about you. Minds ruined by liberal propaganda are all pretty similar.
Perhaps 'everything will return to normal' at least your brand of normal. If true, then you can say good bye to civilization and say hello to the dark and cold brutality of those 'innocent' and 'noble' savages. Perhaps if irony has its way, one of your great great grandchildren will be sacrificed to the 'Sun God' at some hellish point in the future. Have fun.
I know you're a liberal, but have a safe and sane 4th of July - after you light the firecracker - don't forget to let go of it.
God Bless America.
I'm no liberal... No one dislikes or has a deeper disdain for Bumma' as I do. I just can't stand whinny, bitchy White people. Next time you see someone who's indigenous and truly Native to these lands make sure to thank them, if it wasn't for our ancestors your sorry as$ wouldn't exist. You're own stolen land never forget that Whitey! Oh no the Mexicans are coming... Speaking of irony, you now get to witness history repeating itself. Who would have thunk it? Whites murder, steal, rape and displace the true owners of "America" and now an endless wave of Brown people are doing the same to Whites. Oh the entertainment!
Seems you're pretty hung up on "indigenous" people. Apparently you are ignorant of the Kennewick Man fossils. Long before the Asians crawled to North America and became 'natives', The White Europeans were here first. Does that help or hurt your "indigenous" fixation? A brown skin and a bad attitude and everybody owes you something, just because you're brown and grumpy,...well congratulations you made it! - you have become the stereotype, bravo!
I take responsibility for myself and my own personal actions alone and will take care of myself and kin. I don't need the 'gubbmint' holding my hand cradle to grave, come and see.
And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not
Burt Z: For a change, some British are accepting the realities.
These are due to blunders of reckless immigration of Muslims through asylums, relations marriage and so on, especially from Pakistan.
Many were criminals and terrorists wanted in their own nations!
Look at that backstabbing and ungrateful criminal Gen Mush wanted in his own Pakistan!!
Even the polls have suggested that majority have become national liabilities from all angles!
Jonathan-1982062 Every word you wrote, was absolutely true. The average man now knows it and even the most liberal politicians now know it. The constant 24/7 liberal propaganda permeates everything and truly affects and informs how daily life is lived. Propaganda and the underlying social engineering behind it has caused tremendous psychological harm to all - but it cannot alter reality, and reality eventually seeps through. When that happens - people become very disturbed and erratic. Cognitive dissonance usually festers for a while and then ultimately explodes into violence.
The average man is awakening, he has seen all the tricks and lies and is now immune. If suicidal liberals persist down this road, we will see a Balkanization of Western Countries within 30 years, probably sooner.
The truth is our ally.
So, is "Common Sense Isn't Common" a Native American? If not, then he/she is just as much an "invader" as us evil white people!!!
b0bab0ey: "Common Sense Isn't Common" is most likely one of them people who has been spoon fed all this anti-American, anti-White, anti-European nonsense,..all the way back to grade school. I'd bet my last dollar he/she is not even an American Indian. Most of these characters think or wish that they had some 'native' blood in them, but don't. Their walls are full of polyester 'dream catchers', crappy tourist grade kachina dolls and old indian blankets made in China. Probably has a closet full of 'Billy-Jack' hats too!
Sadly, in this country almost every 'pro-ethnic' group gets its real identity from being anti-White, instead of celebrating their own accomplishments. Some people need to 'create' an identity to give wheels to their hate.
When it all gets stripped away, only the truth remains.
I remember "Paki Bashing" was an issue years ago.
You guys are all hilarious. Thanks for the laugh . Top of tha moning to ya govena. lol
I think I saw Fagan! lol
I think you're mixing up your stereotypes there. "Top of tha morning" is an Irish phrase.
Also, we're no longer in the 19th Century, so people in London don't talk as if they're in a Charles Dickens book anymore.
But London is crime free and has no gangsters. Ever since they banned the ownership of private firearms, went and confiscated everything from pistols to collectible weapons, vintage heirloom firearms (some of them handed down from ancestors) because they posed such a danger to society, England has been a model of a crime free place where citizens walk day and night and live in countries and cities with no fear of crime. It's only the US where every urban home may one day turn into a hell hole of murder that we have those problems.
Obama better than Bush. They have far less murders per capita don't they?
They dont need no stinking guns to be hoodlums.
"The day after msnbc.com spoke to Messenger, a man was stabbed to death in broad daylight in the mall after a gang-related brawl only a few yards from the Olympic Park entrance"
I don't blame you. obammy is a waist of the U.S. but crime has gone up 22% in London and has been rising since 2006. Just got done reading it on google. I typed in''' persentage of cime in london"" That is the percentage it came up with. So mate I have to agree with you on obammy being a Communist but As we say in the States thats bull@!$%# as the rise in crime in london,,,,,,LOL P.S. The crimes involved knifes and guns!!,,,Amagine that!!!!!!
When you talk to a Brit Just dont look them directly in the eyes, They think that you are being aggressive.
Idiot,
I spent time in LA, look someone in the eyes there.
When a people travel the world over in search of things that look, taste and feel good a people will sooner or later encounter natives they consider exotic, uncilized of savages. The ones they consider exotic become slaughtered and or pets and brought back. Sooner or later these exotic pets, savages and uncivilized natives find their way to your front door to dwell among you. You reap what you sow.
I didn't 'sow' anything. Did you? Do you feel guilty about something that you did not do?
How does one go through day after day under the dreary cloud of false guilt conjured up by socialist propaganda? Must be excruciatingly painful.
What's a "tony" Olympic zone?
Heyday for has-beens. What about this for a truly British Pentathon
1. Soccer hooliganism
2. Fox Money Channel analyst tai kwan do
3. Gunga din sack race
4. Faulkland Islands yacht race
5. Beer snobbery
I don't care what this article says I wouldn't be caught dead in East London.
Yeah, I agree East London was considered a rough place when I was growing up and I believe it is worse today!
Don't take this the wrong way, I don't care how people live, or do there own thing, but that Olympic facility they put together sucks big time.
I think the bed thing was way too small.
I quit, find someone else to win your bloody medal, I'm going to the nearest YMCA England style where I can get some real sleep, and meet lots of interesting people from all over the place, and have a good drink.
Why don't they kick the FN Queen out for a month, she has too many bathrooms, and has done sweet f---k all for the people, or there country.
I mean SWEET F----K ALL! GOD SAVED HER MONEY, BUT NOT THE PEOPLE'S NATION.
Just to make one thing clear I don't believe in any religion so f----k off with this BS God saved or God bless BS.
Mankind saves himself, or destroys himself with his own hands.
How they cleared the "gang" members (young black males) in L.A. before the 84" Olympics is very interesting ,just listen to some NWA to see how some L.A. residents felt about it.
The Olympics are a bad and expensive joke.
"You can run and jump and swim really fast ?" ...... even doing all that with a ball it's still just a major EGO trip and childish.
It's all about the $$
"You can run and jump and swim really fast ?" ..... I don't care , now get back to work....ha ha ha
"East End Boys... West End Girls" .......
Will people be enticed to visit London to see and experience the muslim rape gangs, Afro-Carribean drug gangs, overpriced food/lodging/everything, a good quality religious riot or race riot, or hordes of worthless, politically correct, and corrupt police that look like walking highlighters?
So they demolished a poor neighborhood to build venues that will be packed for 17 days and then rarely used again?
I can imagine when the Olympics come to Chicago there will be guided tours to the site of the St Valentine's Day Massacre while the bus plays Talking Heads ("The sound of gunfire, off in the distance, I'm getting used to it now") Why would anyone believe what a host country says about the Olympics?
I've been to both cities and Chicago ain't no London,believe me!They only wish they had the character,class and everything that London has! When was the last time Chicago got the Olympics ? Probably before the gun was invented!
It's all Obama's, immigrants, liberals, Muslims, minorities, poor people and women's rights activists fault!!!
Oh sorry I jumped on the wrong bandwagon!
You forgot the queers!!!LOL
Oh Yes ,the red line of the underground! I ridden that line from one end to the other.Very diverse!From Epping to West Rulslip!Great line to move about London which intersects or is readily accessible to every other line!Tottenham Court Road,Oxford Circus(Selfridges...ummmm)Covent gardens,(walking distance) Great City! I miss it,very much! If you are ever there, be sure to check out the theater district and take in a play or musical! Love you London!