Handel to Tempah

This chapter explores how migrants have contributed to the evolution of music in London. Despite episodes of xenophobia in the London musical scene, xenophilia became stronger, partly driven by the fact that both music and musicians inevitably migrate. This is so that, while national traditions of music may emerge, the process of cultural transfer involving both sound and people mean that such traditions cannot remain sealed off from external influences, even if they may develop national-level identities, at least in the short run. While music and musicians crossed European boundaries, during the twentieth century both performers and their tunes have increasingly spanned global and consequently racial divides. The German assertion that nineteenth-century Britain constituted a ‘Land ohne Musik’ (land without music), while an exaggeration, partly explains the arrival of foreign musicians to Victorian London and the eras before and since. The constant settlement and visits by musicians to the British capital since the early eighteenth century meant that London did not become a city without music, even if the tunes and those who played them often originated from abroad.

Migrants and the Global City

This chapter considers three unique aspects in London's migratory history through a series of other interlinked features: demography, globality, employability, social mobility, and a revisiting of diversity. These five headings can provide a deeper understanding of the relationship between migration, globality, and diversity. This is especially seen through the prism of employment because the discussions have demonstrated that, while London has for most of the last three centuries constituted the political and financial capital of the world, this has fed into its importance as a global work centre. It has attracted people from Britain, Europe, and the rest of the world seeking employment in all sectors of the economy. This includes cleaners as well as hawkers, musicians, footballers, and political and financial elites.

The Restaurant

This chapter explains how migrants have impacted the eating habits of all sections of the population in both social and geographical terms. While the evolution of modern London remains inconceivable without the role of migrants, the chapter shows that they may have had a more profound impact upon eating out than any other aspect of the history of the city. In the first place they have opened and staffed some of the most famous restaurants in the world. But this only tells one side of the story because settlers from Europe and beyond have, at the other end of the scale, also opened up establishments which serve up the dishes that characterize mass consumption, from the first fish and chip shops in the East End to the Chinese and Indian restaurants of the post-war period and the vast range of foreign food establishments which exist in the global capital of the twenty-first century. While, on the one hand, these restaurants cater for the ethnic majority, which increasingly became a vanishing concept, many migrants have also opened up restaurants for their countrymen as such establishments form a key part of local ethnic economies.

Cheap Labour

This chapter focuses on migrant labourers. Here, millions of humble Londoners from Europe and other parts of the world have formed the backbone, skeleton, and flesh and blood of the city's life. It shows how the concept of cheap labour, associated not only with sugar bakers but, more especially, with Jewish ‘sweaters’, arose especially in clothing, shoe, and hat and cap manufacture in the East End before 1914. Cheap labour offers one explanation for the evolution of the concentrations of ethnic labour because, for example, the sugar bakers actually formed part of a migrant employment network, which brought Germans from Hanover in particular to work in this occupation. These networks have characterized numerous other migrant occupations in the metropolis, from German governesses to Irish builders and West Indian bus drivers.