14


but, more importantly, drew upon the ready supply of animal refuse from local slaughterhouses in full knowledge that they were unlikely to be prosecuted under legislation restricting the operation of so-called noxious and offensive trades in London. Some fi rms – including Gibbs, Bell & Co and Jenson & Nicholson – spawned industries of national importance. Stratford’s strategic location was further


5 & 6. Crew from Stratford Railway Works, 1955 7. The entrance to the Great Eastern Railways works at Stratford in the early 20th century


emphasised by a frantic expansion of railway lines reaching into suburban Essex. Branches were constructed to Woodford and Loughton, and later to Epping, Ongar and Walthamstow. By the 1870s these lines were providing frequent services and when, in the ensuing years, the companies laid on increasing numbers of cheap workers’ trains enabling people to commute, the north-easterly expansion of London took off. Links were improved by the introduction of horse-drawn, then electric, trams, which ran frequently between Whitechapel and Leytonstone, and in 1903 the Central Line of the London Underground reached Stratford. Anticipating the town’s growing importance,


in 1847 the ECR had decided to move its locomotive and carriage works from Romford to Stratford. The works cost £100,000 and initially occupied 20 acres of land just north of the station. Production increased rapidly with the railway boom, and new


premises were erected on reclaimed marshland to the west of the original site. By 1900 the Great Eastern Railway (GER) – as it now was – occupied 78 acres, boasted an output of a carriage a day and an engine a week, and employed no fewer than 7,000 people. The industrialisation of Stratford transformed


the political culture of the area. At its peak in 1919, branches of the National Union of Railwaymen in Stratford had in excess of 5,000 members; these were to play a vital role in the ascent and subsequent domination of the Labour Party over local affairs. It was this constituency that was largely responsible for the remarkable growth of the cooperative movement. In 1903 the Stratford Cooperative Society had


nearly 13,000 members; by 1918 it stood at over 44,000. Together with the Royal Arsenal, it was the only such society in the metropolitan area that could challenge the traditional strongholds of cooperation in the north, and it would provide the inspiration leading to the formation of the London Cooperative Society in 1920. During the interwar years the industrial


landscape of West Ham reached its zenith and then, seemingly too slow to adapt to new demands and manufacturing processes, entered into a period of protracted decline. This was particularly evident in


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