Mapping movement

OneWorld UK

By Daniel Nelson

Immigration and xenophobia in London? Nothing new, as London: A Life in Maps shows. And maps played a part in the consequent controversies.

The text on an early 17th century map in the exhibition at the British Library suggests that the city owed its prosperity to German merchants. The response was not long in coming: a few years later another map boasts of Londons antiquity, wealth and natural advantage without mentioning any foreigners.

Some 250 years later religion was the issue when a Protestant mob killed and injured hundreds of people and set fire to Catholic homes and chapels. The rioters were only halted when they tried to take the Bank of England, observes the explanation on another exhibit. Some things in London are sacred, after all.

A map of Jewish East London charts a different minority, following the arrival of several thousand refugees from Poland and Russia: Their strange appearance, customs, Yiddish language and readiness to take on jobs at subsistence wages aroused hostility. Sound familiar?

Curator Peter Barber points out that the map accompanied a book that tried to give a balanced picture, but by featuring the few streets that were 95% Jewish, when the overall Jewish presence in Stepney was only 18%, the map probably fuelled the racism that led to the 1905 Aliens Act aimed at reducing Jewish immigration to a trickle.

Immigration from the countryside and from abroad was not a peripheral issue, he points out: it enabled London to survive during periods when living conditions were so bad that deaths outpaced births.

And today, immigration continues to be vital for London to replace those who move out.

If you still feel antipathetic to foreigners and newcomers, remember that the innovation that makes living in London possible the A to Z street guide - was first published by Phyllis Pearsall, building on the work of her father, Sandor Grosz, a Hungarian-Jewish émigré.

Although the exhibition, which runs until 4 March, is focused mainly on the past, it contains a map carrying A Warning for the Future. The Government says future expansion of London will be mainly along the so-called Thames Gateway, lining the shores of the Thames, from the Isle of Dogs to Southend. The 2012 Olympics will be centred on the Lea Valley in east London, also within this area. [This map] presents an alarming picture of the threat of flooding to precisely these areas: a threat likely to increase if global warming continues.