Upton Park - 2 stops short of Barking

The flat seems quiet today. The feeling of new life from the week-end is fading. The dog keeps looking up and around as if she can sense the ghosts of our visitors.

TODAY'S GUEST BLOG
As someone who had quite a few members of my mother's side of the family living in Barking, I sort of grew up there alongside almost-Cockney aunts and uncles and old friends of same. One of the pubs where I conducted my romantic bits was there also. Although it was not Alf Garnett land, it was close. So, I was sad to see the claims of a Labourite (friends of the common people eh?) government as to how an election might pan out. However, seems I am not the only one.

I couldn't help linking my experience on Sunday with some of the stuff in the weekend papers about the BNP - it was sad to see a Posh Lady in the cabinet talk about how the likes of Barking have changed as if she'd only just realised it, and you have to wonder what's wrong with our education system when people grow up that stupid to think that voting for a bunch of Nazis is acceptable.

Because here was a world that's about to disappear - that old white working class community, the one that drinks together, looks after each other - under threat from economic forces and other factors. Did these old folk really want a world in which their children and grandchildren couldn't afford to live in the town there were brought up in? Did anyone ask them if they wanted to see the fabric of their home town change totally within a decade? Of course not. Will anyone campaigning in the local council elections recognise this? No. Their fears will go unchallenged, helping the wicked lies cooked up by the far-right spread.

So it can't be a surprise when they end up turning to a bunch of fruitcakes and nasty bastards who can put on a better show of "listening" than anyone else. Think it couldn't happen here? In Ireland, Sinn Fein uses the same tactics and is now a serious political force as well as the friends of terrorists. Voting for Nazis is never, ever acceptable - but it hardly takes a degree in politics to realise why people are being pushed into their embrace

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