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Foreign Correspondent: Aug 30

Foreign Correspondent features a story in which some Brits claim to be losing their England and are determined to resist change.

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A potentially-contentious episode of Foreign Correspondent this week features “Last Whites of the East End” in which some Brits claim to be losing their England and are determined to resist change.

For the first time ever, white Britons are a minority in London. This film delves into the lives of the dwindling cockney tribe of the East End as they struggle with immigration, “white flight” and loss of identity.

For centuries, Newham in London’s East End has been home to a tight-knit, white working-class community. But over the past 15 years something extraordinary has happened.

We’ve lost our community. We’re foreigners in our own country now – Doreen, East Ham Working Men’s Club regular

More than half the white community has disappeared as Newham has welcomed more new residents than anywhere else in the UK. It now has the country’s lowest proportion of white Britons.

This documentary tracks the thoughts, fears and experiences of locals who have made the painful decision to join the “white flight” and leave the place where they have grown up.

I want to feel like I’m living in England and belong there really again to be honest, back to the old east London how it used to be, being there with your own people and fitting in again – young mother Leanne, who is leaving Newham for “a better life” in Essex.

I think these schools around here will make her lose her identity. The schools, they terrify me around here – Mixed race Tony, who wants to send his daughter to a school where there are fewer Muslim kids

But for some, multi-racial schools are the glue that binds a diverse community.

Schools and children can be a fantastic way for people assimilating into a society because children don’t see colour, children don’t see religion, children don’t see all of those things that adults may see – Emma, Australian principal of local primary school.

This is a story that gives voice to people who cling to old ways and are struggling with seismic change. It was controversial when it aired in the UK. But it does shed light on how immigration is reshaping some local communities – and influencing a nation that has just voted itself out of Europe.

Usmaan’s family came to London from Bangladesh in the 1930s. He’s Muslim and proud of his Asian heritage. But he’s equally “a proud East Ender” who misses his white mates who have up and left. As he sees it, there’s no turning back for the East End.

Ten years’ time, maybe not even that, there will be absolutely no trace of cockney culture. No trace of British culture… Everything this area stood for is being eradicated, slowly but surely – Usmaan

9.30pm Tuesday August 30 on ABC.

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