Notes
This essay is partly based on an earlier paper of mine, “The Political Articulation of Community and the Islamisation of Space,” in Religion and Ethnicity: Minorities and Social Change in the Metropolis, ed. R. Barot (Kampen, Netherlands: Kok Pharos, 1993).
1. The Census confirms earlier estimates showing the rapid increase of the Bangladeshi population during the 1980s and its concentration in the western wards (Census Update, October 1992). See, e.g., Tower Hamlets 1987; Rhodes and Nabi 1992. [BACK]
2. See the East London Advertiser, November 27, 1970. The newspaper noted then that the alteration of the interior was already an issue. The reporter claimed that the “Pakistanis wanted to pull down the three inner galleries and Tuscan columns to provide the open space needed for their services.” However, it was also noted that the Greater London Council was “unlikely to favour this alteration to such an historic building.” Significantly, perhaps, the refurbishment took place after the demise of the Greater London Council. [BACK]
3. Local estimates claimed that of approximately 40,000 South Asian / East African settlers in a borough of over a quarter of a million residents, only about 5,000 were Muslims. Two mosques had been established in Old Southall, one of which has recently been refurbished and expanded in a more demonstrably Islamic mode. [BACK]