The Report - 15/07/2010

In a special edition of The Report for Radio 4's London Season, Mukul Devichand asks whether the city's white working class has been left behind. In cosmopolitan inner London, he finds schools belatedly trying to engage with low achievement in an ethnic minority: the white British population on free school meals. As central and local government begin to change their approach to the "white working class", Devichand re-tells the history that has seen the oldest community in London slowly move out. It's a tale of alienation and a dark poverty of aspiration, and a place to ask pointed questions about the dreams and realities of those who feel left out in an increasingly globalised London.