East Anglian News

East Anglian News

East Anglian News

When London was first announced as Olympic City hosts in 2005, the bid was broadcast live in Trafalgar Square and the city erupted in a frenzy of jubilation. Coming off a year in which the nation had reclaimed the cricket ashes from Australia in swashbuckling style and had recently won the Rugby World Cup, England was on a sporting high. However the British government was waging an unpopular war in Iraq and public morale was low. A day later four youths blew themselves up on the city's transport system killing dozens and wounding hundreds of London commuters. In a time of global conflict one message was clear: the Olympics had brought world attention to London.

Forgotten in all the chaos of the London bombings was the original reason why the Olympics had been won in the first place, how London beat out - by just four votes - a strong bid by Paris. The fact remained an intriguing proposal had been tabled by Lord Sebastian Coe, a former gold medal winner in the 1980's Moscow Summer Olympics, which detailed a massive regeneration project in the London's East End, transforming a weedy, overgrown and bombed-out industrial wasteland into a world class sports park, giant shopping complex and housing site. With local Leytonstone golden boy David Beckham at the helm of the Olympic bid, citizens of the largely poor East End borough of Waltham Forest must have rubbed their hands with delight.

The East End, long famous for gangsters The Krays, Jack the Ripper, The Elephant Man and as a setting for countless British gangster films has always had a reputation for being down trodden so how would the disenfranchised citizens of Tower Hamlets, Mile End, Leyton, Stratford, Hackney and Leytonstone handle an international onslaught of tourists and media types beaming their history of misery and squalor to the world?