"Nick" wrote in message
...


London heritage??? We have been part of Kent for generations, and only
sucked into the Greater London experiment so the Tories could take control
of London government (well, mostly). I am sure the overwhelming majority
of
residents in Bexley describe, and want to describe themselves as living in
Kent (me included). Maybe those of us in metropolitan Kent will one day
escape from the clutches of central London and determine our own affairs
without inteference.

I loathe Bexley being described as "south London", it really is NOT. We
are
part of the Greater London administrative area, that's all, for all other
purposes we are people of Kent. I know "Londoners" find this hard to
believe, but many of us don't wanty to be part of your high-density
overpopulated sprawling urban gloom.

Nick



Blimey, got home form work and found that I never got my original question
answered, but am glad to have kicked off such a lively debate!

I am afraid that I have to wade in and take issue with my fellow Bexley
person. The heritage in question is London's world-famous red buses. Their
expansion into Bexley did not occur with the creation of the GLC but has
existed as long as London's transport has been co-ordinated, whether by
LPTB, LT, TfL etc. Indeed, it predates centralisation and nationalisation of
bus services, as the private London General Omnibus Company opened Sidcup
garage with red buses in 1924.

So, Bexley was a part of London's transport network generations before the
GLC was created. Hence, taking our red buses away went against our local
heritage as a part of the London transport network.

(Note the Bexley was always going to be a part of the Greater London county
due to its location within the metropolitan built-up area, which was on the
cards from the 1930s as the LCC couldn't do a proper job when they only
collected rates from the poorer inner city and was unwinnable for the
Tories; the Tories did however try to elbow more of Surrey inside the GLC
boundary such as Epsom and Banstead to make it safer Tory ground, but those
areas resisted and hence the GLC became marginal.)

In terms of your general criticism that Bexley is not in London, can I put
the following forward (and much of this goes for other parts of outer
London):

1) The suburban sprawl across Bexley did not arise out of thin air, but
occurred solely as a result of the accessibility of cheap housing close to
the railways into London. The population of Bexley did not materialise out
of thin air, but people moved out from other parts of London where
conditions were poorer and more crowded. Thus demograpically in the 1920s
and 1930s the borough changed from a rural area where most people were
brought up locally to one with a population massively imported from outside
the area.

This distinguishes the population enormously from 'other' parts of Kent
outside the metropolis, where growth was slower and more organic, based more
upon the growing populaiton generally and drift towards the nearest
town/industry. Already you have a situation where not only is Bexley
physically joined to London (which should be sufficient in anyone's book to
make it a part of the metropolis) but there was by WW2 a cultural difference
between metropolitan Kent (Bexley, Bromley etc) which largely grew as a
result of an influx of polulation from the inner London and the rest of Kent
(i.e. outside Greater London today).

2) The 20 years up to WW2 both physically and culturally changed Bexley, so
much so that when the country's civil defences were being organised, Bexley
and Bromley were under the control of the London Civil Defence Region, not
the South Eastern Region which was responsible for the rest of Kent. One
reason for this was that Bexley and Bromley have always been a part of the
Metropolitan Police District, another generations-old distinction between
the heritage of the metropolitan and rural Kents which predates not only the
GLC but also the LCC.




You say that Bexley is a part of Kent for "all other purposes". What are
these purposes? As far as I can tell Bexley is in Kent for:

a- Postal address. Although as another poster pointed out, the county can be
omitted, or indeed London can be used provided the postcode is correct- this
precedent was established by the Royal Mail due to the number of county
changes that followed a decade after London in 1974 when a great many people
demanded the right to choose to use either the traditional or new county

b- Cricket. No county of (Greater) London exists, hence (broadly) SE London
is covered by Kent (who have had grounds in Blackheath, Catford and
Beckenham) , SW London by Surrey (The Oval), W and N London by Middlesex
(Lords, Southgate, Uxbridge) and E London by Essex (Ilford, Leyton).


Wheras I can count these for London:

a- Administration. London Borough of Bexley, Greater London Authority,
London Mayor, London Region European Constituency.

b- Civil organisations. Metropolitan Police, London Fire Brigade, London
Ambulance Service, NHS.

c- Transport (already waffled on about that above!).

d- Culturally. Yes, I'm sure some will raise eyebrows at that (!), but while
Bexley residents may not have much in common with the average resident of
inner city London, they certainly have more in common with fellow
commuterland residents of Bromley, or Sutton, or Finchley etc. than they do
with the countryfolk in the county of Kent across the M25. Indeed, as many
of the people who populated the thousands of new houses in the 1920s or
1930s as commuters came from inner London, many more have historic family
roots in inner London than in Kent whether they realise it or not, whereas
most residents of Kent itself can probably go back many generations in the
county.

e- Economically. Suburban Bexley is entirely dependent on the economy of
London, whereas Kent itself has a stronger relationship with agriculture in
the centre/south, tourism in the 'Garden of Kent', some traditional industry
(incl shipping) along the Thames and Channel coast and towns are
self-sufficient to a much larger extent. Bexley is a suburb, which has
little industry and sugnificantly fewer jobs than its population requires,
hence the dominance of commuting to the centre of London, which makes it a
suburb and not a distinct self-sufficient urban settlement.

f- Telecoms. Don't know about anyone else, but I think our FOOts Cray phone
number was replaced with an 01- code at the same point in the 1960s as
everyone else in London's. (I realise that due to the nature of the telecom
lines, this is not a very precise measure, with bits of Greater London still
outside 020 (Erith, Uxbridge etc) and bits outside within (Ewell, Loughton);
but clearly there's a very good match with the Greater London boundary.)

g- Geographically. Well, just look at a map- Bexley is a part of the
built-up area of London, which should really settle the issue regardless of
the above.