Market traders draw bargain hunters

EVERYONE knows an Arthur Daley. Pop into any street corner pub and you will find someone reminiscent of George Cole’s seminal character, holding court at the bar and offering to sort you out with something that may come in handy at a suspiciously low price.

It is the anti-hero of the TV series Minder that historian and author John Medhurst references in a new book offering a comprehensive and lively history of north London in the post-war decades.

John has written a definitive social history of a recognisable world via a mixture of first person storytelling, memoir and statistic-stacked explainers. He backs up his narrative with a social scientist’s eye and boots-on-the-ground experience through his work as a civil servant and trade union officer.

Noting how Arthur Daley, the loveable rogue, represented a special type of Londoner, John celebrates the times and place that produced the character, taking the reader through decades of working-class life north of the river.

He looks at work and homes, leisure and politics.

John was inspired to write the book by the 2016 Brexit referendum.

He noted offensive insinuations that working-class voters made a decision based on anti-European racism.

“There was a constant use of broad stereotypes,” he says. “It was annoying to see media commentators talk about the working class, who only exist in a mythical place called The North.

“They all apparently voted leave, and for reasons that were insular.”

Noting how his experience growing up on a Camden housing estate was unrecognisable to the narrative being peddled, the idea of writing a post-war history gained a sense of urgency.

“The people I grew up with, and am one of, are not insular or socially conservative,” he says.

“We grew up in cosmopolitan urban environment that is not just the preserve of a middle class. London has had migration from all over the world, so it should not be a surprise we have a multicultural working class that does not conform to an incorrect and lazy stereotype of a racist, white working class.

“It was one of the first places to become multi-ethnic and it gets little credit for that.

“London is politically different from the Red Wall seats – the multi-cultural, politically progressive working class of north London is crucial.”

By 1950, one in 20 Londoners were born abroad. In Camden, Greek Cypriot immigration reached a peak in the early 1960s, when 15,000 people settled annually, working in the clothing and catering trades.

“The Greek Cypriot community was not as large as the Irish-born Londoners, which across the city was 174,000, around five per cent of London’s total,” he adds. “Sacred Heart church in Quex Road was so popular it held 12 masses on a Sunday.”

John Medhurst

John scopes out his family’s experiences. His parents began a family in King’s Cross. By the end of the 1960s the Medhursts were living on the Regent’s Park estate and his father was employed by a Holborn-based building firm.

It is described by John as being “a colourful gang of highly skilled tradesmen, including Silent Lou, a carpenter whose prized possession was an immaculate toolbox he had made himself full of his polished tools carefully laid out, Enoch, the firm’s unflappable drainage expert, and Little Billy, whose talents were legendary, as Ted recalled 40 years later: “I saw him once, presented with a set of architects drawings by a cocky young site agent, take a Woodbine cigarette packet from his pocket and with a pencil stub copy one or two measurements on to the fag packet. With that skimpy information and a lifetime’s experience he then fitted a timber spiral staircase into position while the young agent looked on in disbelief.”

During this period there was a pronounced change in how a wage was earned. “In just a few years Camden lost all of its industrial icons,” John notes.

Gilbey’s Gin, the Carreras cigarette factory, the ABC in Camden Road and engineering firms in Parkway were gone by the end of the decade.

The loss of skilled manual labour had a further impact on neighbourhoods. Why live in a city centre flat if not for work purposes, when you could have a house and garden a little further out? This is shown by the fact that between 1961 and 1971, two-thirds of Islington residents either died or moved away.

“In 1961, 41 per cent of Islington’s workforce was employed in manufacturing – engineering, printing, clothing and brewing. By 1971, it had fallen by 10 per cent,” he adds.

As traditional employment declined, tumbledown Victorian streets began to attract families on higher incomes and creeping gentrification began to make a noticeable impact by the mid-70s.

Hackney-born Amanda Millhouse recalls being asked to babysit for neighbours.

“It was my first contact with middle-class people,” she tells John. “Their house had bare brick walls in the kitchen, a rough farmhouse refectory table and we were given fresh ground coffee. They also put out unsalted nuts, even though it wasn’t Christmas.”

This cheek-by-jowl social set up is identified by John as a north London trait. He recalls going to parties in posh Hampstead homes, mixing with teenagers from all backgrounds at the Duke of Hamilton pub.

“Ours is a working class that grows up and intermingles with the middle class,” he says.

“The same streets, same pubs, same schools. That experience of growing up, socialising, working, intermarrying with a middle-class equivalent is especially particular to north London. Mixing of social classes expands everyone’s culture and intellectual horizons.”

John’s family moved to Belsize Park in the 1970s, a time when NW3 was not stratospherically expensive. The cultural environment reflected this.

John’s father, Ted, spent time in the Load of Hay on Haverstock Hill and paints a recognisable picture.

It was “home to a collection of artists, printers, painters and decorators, working-class grafters and middle-class eccentrics.

“It was an amazing place, full of characters like Mick the Brick and Little Dave, self-employed builders whose clientele consisted for the most part of fellow boozers in various Hampstead pubs.”

Such asides underline the depth of original storytelling in John’s work. On any given page, a genuine north Londoner will immediately recognise something John describes as being part of our shared experience.

“The stereotype is of a coal miner or ship builder, living in a community dominated by one form of employment,” he adds.

“You do not get that in north London. Working-class people worked in a multiple of different, interesting and colourful occupations. It was about how to duck and dive and make money, and often not strictly legal.

“That is why we all laughed so much at Minder, why we loved Arthur Daley and Terry McCann. We identified with them. They were people grafting hard, and making the most of opportunities.”

• I Could Be So Good For You. By John Medhurst, Repeater Books, £18.99