The 2012 Olympic Games And The Communities Of East London

摘要

I am going to write in this paper about the major contribution which I believe the 2012 London Olympics is going to make to the development and well-being of East London, which I have known and been involved with for over 30 years, first as a student, then as a Newham councillor, and now as the Member of Parliament for East Ham. My first visit to what is now my constituency was in 1976, when as a student I spent a fortnight in the summer helping out on a church project. I loved it-I had never been anywhere like it before. When I left college and got a job in London, I came to live in the area. It has changed a great deal over 30 years, but even in 1976 it already had the essential characteristics which mark it today. It had been shaped by the 19th-century Industrial Revolution-docks, gas works, railways, the sugar refinery. Its civic buildings and most of its housing were late Victorian and Edwardian. It was a low-income area which was in economic decline.