Saif Osmani And The Bengali East End Heritage Society Have Been Right For A Decade
Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat contribute reporting from somewhere off Old Street roundabout.
The Truman Brewery development on Brick Lane, the long-running and locally controversial proposal to build a five-storey office and retail complex on the historic brewery site, has now been a live planning issue for the better part of a decade. The Save Brick Lane campaign, the Bengali East End Heritage Society founded by artist Saif Osmani, and the activist group Nijjor Manush have, over multiple consultations, made what is by now a well-rehearsed argument: the proposal threatens the historic and cultural fabric of “Banglatown,” the southern stretch of Brick Lane that has, for decades, been a centre of Bengali and Bangladeshi East End life.
What Is Actually At Stake
According to Hackney Citizen and Hackney Gazette reporting, the Truman Brewery site is approximately 10 acres, the same landmass as the better-known Bishopsgate Goodsyard. Saif Osmani has said, on the record, that the owners have proceeded by developing “piecemeal” sections of the site without genuine community consultation. “We’ll use the word avoiding deliberately,” Osmani told reporters. The owners, the Zeloof brothers, have argued that current uses, including the food festivals and the annual pancake race, will continue.
This is, on the evidence, an argument about whose definition of “continuing” applies. A continuation that includes the food festivals but eliminates the affordable workspace, the unique character of the lane, and the cultural anchor for the Bengali community is not, in the local definition, a continuation.
The Banglatown Question
“Banglatown” is not a marketing term. It is the lived reality of decades of Bengali and Bangladeshi settlement in the south end of Brick Lane and the surrounding streets. The curry houses, the language, the festivals, the mosque on Brick Lane (which was previously a synagogue and before that a Huguenot chapel, in a sequence that is the East End), all of this is what gives Brick Lane its specific cultural weight.
The fear, articulated repeatedly by Osmani and others, is not that one development will erase Banglatown overnight. The fear is that the cumulative effect of multiple developments, each justified individually as “modest” or “compatible,” will hollow out the neighbourhood until what remains is the nostalgic veneer of curry houses operated by people who, themselves, have to commute in from Ilford.
What The Council Should Do
What the council should do, in my view, is treat the Truman Brewery proposal as a test case for how Hackney and Tower Hamlets handle the cultural-heritage element of “good growth.” The framework already exists in the Future Shoreditch plan and in Tower Hamlets’ parallel planning documents. What is missing is consistent enforcement.
The Bengali East End Heritage Society’s Framing Banglatown exhibition, which I would urge any reader to visit, makes the case better than I can. Cultural heritage is not, in this instance, a museum exercise. It is a living community whose continued existence depends on planning decisions made over the next several years.
What I Am Worried About
What I am worried about, frankly, is that the Save Brick Lane campaign, which has fought this fight for the better part of a decade, will eventually run out of organisational fuel. The Zeloof brothers have, on the available evidence, more time, more money, and more legal resources than any community group can sustainably match. The asymmetry is real, and the only counterweight, in practice, is sustained council willingness to enforce the policy framework that already exists. I would like to see more of that willingness.
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