Memory, community and the end of empire on the Isle of Dogs, 1980–2004

Abstract

How might we best understand the place of imperial memory in contemporary British history? Recent scholarship has tended to characterize this through one of two binary categories, pointing to either imperial ‘amnesia’ or imperial ‘nostalgia’. This article contends that sustained and detailed case studies can offer us a more sophisticated and nuanced understanding of the production of memory. It uses the example of the Island History Trust, established to help local residents of London’s Docklands protest and later adjust to the losses brought about by deindustrialization, outward migration and financialized redevelopment overseen by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government. Within this narrative of social and economic displacement, however, was hidden another story: residents’ lament for the empowerment and enrichment that they had in earlier life derived from their proximity to the imperial port. The Trust’s left-wing practitioners had a complex relationship with the foundational place of empire in local identity; while they perceived it as being connected to an ‘endemic’ racism among residents, they also knew it signified great pride and dignity for many. This article traces the Trust’s shifting representations of empire over time. They celebrated the imperial port when it signified residents’ enrichment, criticized it when addressing the far-right British National Party’s popularity and obscured its connection to racism when mourning the disappearing community for posterity. The article argues that case studies like this can help begin the vital work of moving past simplistic and binary analyses of imperial ‘amnesia’ or ‘nostalgia’, and towards a history of imperial memory that appreciates its fluidity, messiness and political contingency. This, it argues, is vital if we are to effectively understand the politics of imperial memory in the present.