External Perceptions of the ‘Delinquent’ Area

Abstract

Chapter 2 described the decline of Luke Street from the mid-1950s until the early 1970s. Central to the processes involved in that decline, but only dealt with indirectly in the earlier chapter, was the reputation that the Luke Street neighbourhood, along with the other Saint streets and the now empty Cambridge Square, gained during that time. By the early 1970s Luke Street for local people had been located and identified as ‘the worst street in Crossley’ and the ‘dregs of Crossley’. Outsiders had produced a definition of the social nature of the area and the residents were powerless in putting their own effective definition onto the position in which they found themselves. Luke Street was seen to consist of an homogeneous group of people who lived ‘down there’ and whose problems and way of life were distinct. The residents of the neighbourhood and their behaviour were seen externally as either consistently abnormal or consistently problematic. The whole area and all the residents had come to be associated with certain kinds of behaviour. And against this belief the occasional protests that ‘there’s some good people down there’ were relatively powerless.

‘They’ve all got a bad impression of us down here. As soon as you say the West End, a bad impression springs to mind.’

Mr P.