The East London docks area was also where wave after wave of immigrants landed in Britain, especially Jews from Europe fleeing from Hitler and post-WW2 immigrants from all over the former British Empire (esp. from the Caribbean and the Indian sub-continent). Once off the boats, these immigrants worked in the sweat shops in East London which were located there to take advantage of the arrival of hundreds of thousands of cheap unskilled workers, bur of course their ambition was to get out of that locality as soon as possible and move West into the more pleasant parts of London where the better paid jobs were. The Jews were very successful in that respect – and the green, pleasant and intellectually flourishing suburb of Hampstead (north of central London) is where so many of their descendents now live.

However, many immigrants (esp. the ones from the Caribbean and the Indian sub-continent) did not make it out of East London and so it has remained for generations a poor and underprivileged area with high rates of unemployment and crime. It remains to be seen if the massive investment in the OG will change this.

To date the only effort to improve the area east of "The City" was the Canary Wharf project of expensive offices and expensive housing but for years the hoped-for move of banks and other financial firms never happened. Huge financial inducements and concessions had to be made to attract firms to CW and the original investors went bankrupt. In the end, after many difficult years, CW has become a financial centre, but it is far from being a favoured area in which bankers etc want to live. Why? Because all the amenities, theatres, good shops,
restaurants, clubs, night-life and especially GOOD SCHOOLS etc are in Central and West London.