It may look like a happy melting pot to commentators on the outside, but Peter Whittle feels alienated in an area carved up by immigrant groups

Much like everywhere else in the country, the local parade of 40-odd shops in my part of suburban southeast London long ago lost its traditional butcher, baker and fishmonger to the onward march of the big food boys. But one thing it never seemed to have much need for was a shop offering international money transfers.

However, walking through this tatty but reliable street on my way to Woolwich Arsenal station recently, I noticed that among the fast food outlets, specialist barbers and newish halal butchers, there are now three such outlets. Three in just 40 shops? There must be an awful lot of demand.

It’s a very different place from what Rod Liddle dubbed in The Spectator last week London’s “golden crescent”. Just 10 miles north of Woolwich this arc of influence (not to mention affluence) stretches from Ealing in the west, through Notting Hill and Hampstead, to Islington in the east. It is home to the UK’s media, academic and political cognoscenti who decide how we should feel about multiculturalism but have a warped experience of how it works.

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