"# Oi, do me a favour!" "# They've changed our" "# Local Palais into a bowling alley" "# And fings ain't what they used to be... #" "For a good life, there are some basic needs..." "# And Debs in coffee houses... #" "Someone to love..." " # What they used to be... #" " Somewhere to live..." "Somewhere to work... ..and something to hope for." "Love, home, work, hope - beliefs, expectations, which have helped us define the health of British society for generations." "# Now, fings ain't what they used to be... #" "Now, there's an election coming and, over a series of four Panorama special reports, we'll be finding out if politics and politicians can really deliver what Britain wants." "Mariella Frostrup reports on the meaning of home in modern Britain," "Clive Myrie on our working lives," "John Humphrys on whether we can hope for a better Britain... ..and I'll be exploring what is, for me, the biggest political idea of all - love." "Love of family, community and country." "It's what binds us together and drives us to change society for the better." "Here in East London, the passing of a life lived in love and celebrated." "As a sister, aunt, neighbour, 89-year-old Margaret Frost was engaged in the lives of others." "MAN SINGS "DANNY BOY"" "Her love made a difference to those around her." "SOBBING:" "We're here for Meggy, our sister, who we loved...very, very, very much." "It's only when someone passes, you realise how much they did for us in our lives - all of us." "She touched everybody." "She was kind." "She was generous." "She was a really, really lovely sister." "And now, Margaret, may the road rise to meet you, may the wind be always at your back. may the soft rain fall gently..." "Margaret Frost lived all her life in London's East End." "In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen." "Rest in peace, now and always." "By the time she died, she was one of the last of her family to live there." "That's Margaret, with me and my sister." "She, sort of, looked after us and we felt confident, loved, cared for." "Nearly all my cousins lived within, probably, half a mile." "So we had a big family and, so, we knew everybody." "You need to be part of a community." "We need to be able to share." "We need to be able to be friends with neighbours, family, because sometimes, family can be the most difficult people, sometimes, to satisfy, as we all know." "So, no, anyway, that's what I believe community and love is - it's being part of a whole." "You might think that politics has nothing to do with love and relationships, but I'm going to argue that it always has and still does." "As one politician recently put it, where there's a lack of love, there's real trouble." "And we, in the media, are constantly telling you what that trouble looks like." "NEWSREADER: 'Britain is at risk of being permanently divided between 'the haves and have-nots.'" "'Investigating claims of a hardline Muslim takeover at some schools 'and said there WAS evidence of a campaign.'" "'New research suggesting that those living alone will rise by 65% 'over the next 16 years.'" "I've come to the East End because it's an area that's seen massive change and is facing some of the most serious social problems in Britain, but it's also a place where people have been inspired, by love, to fight for change in their lives." "It's incredible, the amount of homes that we really do need." "People are just not being able to afford that." "'Chrissie Townsend has lived on' the Teviot Estate in Poplar for most of her adult life and is fighting for social change." "The community has set up job-creation projects, like this hair salon." "In terms of the, kind of, classic problems faced in areas like this, all over Britain, spell them out for me, the, kind of..." "I think unemployment, high overcrowding, housing, crime are the main issues around any estate." "The action group that Chrissie runs tries to provide opportunities for young people." "We've got Canary Wharf, but you have to be very skilled to work in Canary Wharf." "It doesn't come down to the grassroot people and I just feel that, if there isn't groups like ours helping those people, then, I feel, it can only get worse." "Along the river, I met Mohammed Ali, 22 years old and jobless." "The unemployment rate here for British-Bangladeshi men, like him," " is 39%." " You don't want to be the one sitting around not doing nothing." "You want to be the one that's out there, being proactive." " Do you feel a failure?" " I..." "At times, I do, but, I think, if I keep on thinking that I'm a failure, then I will just be a bum and I won't be doing anything, apart from staying on" "welfare benefits and staying on that the whole of my life." "It's hard enough doing it now." "Mohammed feels that if he gives up searching for work, he'll fail himself, his family and community." "People tend to think that jobless people always wake up late." "Every day, when I wake up, the first thing I do is look for work." "Within London, you always get the feeling, as long as you're working and if you're doing what you're supposed to be doing, you'll be more than welcome within the community." "Two weeks after we met Mohammed, he got the break he needed - an apprenticeship with an estate agent." "The fight to sustain a sense of community through cycles of decline and boom is well known to the watermen." "They've worked the Thames for centuries." "The river runs through poverty and wealth." "We're London's last community." "We've seen the print workers come and go out of Fleet Street, we've seen Covent Garden come and go." "We're still here." "We still exist." "Chris Livett is the fifth generation of his family to be a waterman." "The East End, what changes have you seen there?" "Massive." "Huge changes." "I've seen it decline to nothing," "I've seen dereliction, poverty, hardship, over there, and now I've seen it come back up on the scale - big developments, communities coming back." "When we knock on the door, people say hello." "It is happening," " slowly." "Very, very slowly." " I hope you're right." "Yeah, it has to." "People have to communicate, don't they?" "Or do we think we're going to live on a planet where we don't say hello to each other, any more?" "No." "Chris Livett is an optimist." "He's created nearly 100 jobs for others, but the love he has for his work and community is rooted in realism." "My future is never guaranteed and neither is yours." "I wasn't born with a job." "I had to go out and work it, at 16 years old, get up at three o'clock in the morning." "That was toil, that was hard work." "We are in the capital of the world." "The opportunities here are immense." "We are in a fantastic country." "That "fantastic country"" "has drawn millions of immigrants from across the world." "Many have come here, to the East End." "There are people from 200 different countries here." "The majority are Bangladeshi." "There's a real energy and edge in this place, but to imagine that it is, or has ever been, a multicultural paradise of tolerance would be naive." "'Passing the Tower of London, '5,000 fascists rally at a march through the East End.'" "97-year-old Beattie Orwell, a Jewish East Ender, was a teenager when she fought the fascists in the Battle of Cable Street, in 1936." "It was vicious." "Absolutely vicious." "They'd walk along and smash the windows in Bethnal Green Road." "I was frightened at first." "When I was walking round," "I was frightened." "But then, you know, you were with a crowd." "You all moved together." "That was about the Cable Street." "Each wave of migration brought its own tensions." "'Inevitably, the people who have been rehoused in modern 'council flats are predominantly white." "They complain the Bengalis 'lower the tone of the neighbourhood." "'The result is tension and sometimes violence.'" "And clashes continue today between Islamist hardliners..." "Go away from the mosque, now." "Muslim patrol." "..and nationalist far-right groups." "This is our country." "You want to live here, you abide by our laws." "A minority?" "Yes." "A reason to panic?" "No. but still a significant challenge to the values of tolerance." "When you take that, along with the actions of young Britons going to fight in Syria, like the three schoolgirls from this community recently, you can see the challenge facing those who argue that love, tolerant and non-violent, must be at the heart of our communities." "It does mean that people like you and in your community need to keep speaking out, doesn't it?" "Yes, the way the communities have become now, compared to when I was little, myself, is that no-one really... neighbours don't talk as much." "No-one really has interaction with each other, as much as they used to." "If there's a disagreement." "no-one really speaks to each other, so there is not really a community there, any more." "Nearby, in the Teviot Estate, the challenge of forging community out of difference and suspicion is being faced, but with difficulty." "We've heard of love thy neighbour." "We love our neighbours, but it's not going to be long before there is segregation." "If we don't work at that and we don't break that segregation down, it will become wider and wider." "On this and other social issues, neither Labour-supporting Chrissie nor her unemployed grandson Jack feel that politicians, across the board, are engaged in the reality of their lives." "It's important that politicians take on board what they're being told." "I find that incredibly hard to understand why they're not." "They're all for theirself." "They don't help our young kids out." "So, what's the answer to that?" "What do you do about that?" "To put more effort in for kids." "Evidence points to growing disillusionment with politicians." "A third of people didn't vote at the last general election." "But what does that statistic mean to Beatty Orwell, who was born in 1917, a year before women first won the right to vote in a general election?" "When you hear people nowadays saying that they don't want to know" " about politics, that they don't want to vote?" " Make me sick." "Makes me sick, because they should learn history - what went on and what is going on." "People don't want to know." "The politicians recognise the scale of disillusionment." "ED MILIBAND:" "We will all have heard it on the doorstep..." ""You're all the same." "You're in it for yourself." ""It doesn't matter who I vote for."" " DAVID CAMERON:" " The reason people don't vote is not because it's too complicated to go down to the polling station." "They don't vote because they don't think it makes a difference." "But that doesn't mean we've fallen out of love with politics." "There's been a great revival of politics built around causes, like the million-strong march in London against invading Iraq." "David Babbs was one of those on the march." "We didn't have much faith in politicians, but that didn't mean we were apathetic, didn't mean we weren't interested in politics." "That sense of there being a possibility for British people working together." "The march helped to inspire a new generation of activists, fighting on many fronts." "Groups like 38 Degrees." "On that occasion," " we all came together..." " And completely failed." " Yeah, exactly." "It didn't work." "So, I guess 38 Degrees is an attempt to find ways that people can come together effectively and can get organised, beyond just the flash of a march, almost as if, all the people who had been on that demonstration against the invasion of Iraq" "had swapped e-mail addresses at the end and were now using the internet to organise themselves." "Online, on the streets, 38 Degrees mobilises on a wide range of issues." "It helped halt the privatisation of England's forests and claims support from people with diverse political views." "Some of our members would vote for the Conservative Party or Ukip." "Really?" "You get Ukip voters?" "In terms of the reasons that people often talk about for voting Ukip, one of them is often a sense that the main parties aren't listening, that they are sick of the same people always holding the strings of power." "That's a sentiment that 38 Degrees members share." "But politics driven by campaigns runs the risk of becoming a chaotic marketplace." "Elected politicians will still need to arbitrate and lead." "Excuse me, could you sign our petition?" "38 Degrees campaigns on everything from zebra crossings to the NHS." "Jonathan and Anna want safer roads near their East London home, though some politics-weary locals wonder what difference it will all make." "It's all right getting everyone to sign things and do all the rest of it, but the decision comes down to the government and..." "Convince them that this is going to make a difference." "I think it will." "As I say, there are places in Hackney where people have got a zebra crossing in next to a school and they stood outside and got a lot of signatures." "They put it to the council," " they talked to people..." " I think love, optimism, a belief in humanity as a force for good is really at the heart of what we do, but not in a, kind of, starry-eyed, idealistic way." "In a really down to Earth, sensible way." "Politics doesn't have to be something that's so disappointing, so detached, so removed." "It's about real decisions that affect real people." "And there's hardly a more profound example of the power of love in a political campaign than this..." "# Get me to the church!" "#" "..a campaign which went to the heart of British ideas about love and family." "We met online and I saw her posed pictures on the profile and I was like "Boom!" "That's it!"" "Priya and Paula got married in Hornchurch, east of London." "It feels amazing for me to sit here and think, "I'm married"." "It's something you never knew if that was going to actually happen." "Until recently, they were denied a right taken for granted by the rest of us." "When I came out, my parents were absolutely amazing about it, but they did have to go through, I would say, almost a grieving process and my dad got a little bit upset." "He thought, "Oh, she's not" ""going to get married." Obviously, it is not the case. 15, 16 years later, he's there on my wedding day." "I love Paula a lot, so to be united in something that is recognised by the government and by law, it's the most incredible thing that's ever happened to me." "Love - celebrated through a marriage made possible by the power of politics." "The sheer pace of social change can create the sense that the country is losing its way." "We're offered evidence that the family, the basic unit of a strong society, is breaking down in many communities." "I'm going to meet a young mother who is answering the challenge of providing a stable environment from tough circumstances." "Jade Wilkinson left home at 16 and ended up, a year later, pregnant and living in a hostel." "She's had two sons " "Joshua, aged two, and four-month-old Logan." "I didn't even want one!" "But..." "I don't really agree with, like, getting rid of them." "I thought, when I had my second," ""I've had the experience, so I might as well."" "Britain still has the highest rate of teenage pregnancy anywhere in Western Europe, even though the numbers are falling." "Jade, now 20, is providing a loving home for her two children." "What do your kids mean to you?" "Everything." "They are always with me." "I love them." "I can't think of my life without them because, before them," "I wasn't really in a sturdy place." "Now, I feel like I know where I am." "I'm here to look after them and, erm, support them." "Jade's being helped by local volunteer mums." "This might not look like politics in action, but it is helping her to feel part of a community." "I feel less isolated." "It gives me the opportunity to be around other people... ..and I've made friends by coming here." "It's nice to be around other young parents, like myself." "She now lives in social housing and is supported by welfare benefits and, as a parent, by the father of her children." "What do you want for him when he grows up?" "What do you want for this guy?" "I want to make sure he's in a safe home, a safe environment." "I want him to have friends and, potentially, find love of his own one day." "I want him to always know that there's unconditional love, no matter what happens." "The people I have met along this journey have, in their different ways, refused to give up on the idea of a better society." "It is not an idea that belongs to left or right." "Nor does it deny the immense challenges that we face." "It is about recognising the power of those who refuse to sub-contract out all responsibility for change to politicians." "In family, community, society, we've seen how love, in its different dimensions, can be a powerful unifying force." "This young woman loves her religion and she loves Britain, but there are some who feel alienated by the way she dresses and make assumptions about what she represents." "I'm born here, so I feel like I belong here." "There is no reason why I wouldn't." "But, sometimes, I do feel that there is intolerance towards me and the way that I dress or..." "It honestly is on face value." "Sometimes, I will get insults or people will look at you funny." "It is quite aggressive, the way people come across." "The only reason I could see is because they don't know me." "So it could only be from how I dress." "Rabia is studying law at Queen Mary University in the East End, a very modern institution, built around an historic Jewish cemetery." "My mum always put an emphasis on being educated and, you know, taking into consideration everything before you make a judgment." "Her upbringing served her well and helped inspire an important gesture of welcome." "As a Muslim, and just as an educated individual, I've been taught that, when something is wrong, it's wrong, no matter which race or group it's directed towards." "Rabia invited a survivor of the Holocaust to speak to her fellow students." "Hannah Lewis came to England as a refugee from Poland in 1949." "She was seven when she witnessed her mother being murdered by the Nazis." "I remember standing, looking at her, as they were, sort of, being lined up by the well." "She didn't look at me." "She didn't look back at the house, she didn't look at me and I thought it was a bit strange." "And I was just, literally, deciding that I would go down and take her hand and they gave the order to fire." "And she was in the front row." "And I saw her fall." "And I saw the blood on the snow." "And in that second, I grew up." "When you heard her story, that night, what was your own reaction to it?" "It was really emotional." "It was..." "It is always different to hear someone's story first-hand and to hear it, because you hear the pain in their - not just in their words, but in their silence." "There were moments where she couldn't speak and, like, you could feel it in the audience." "'Hannah didn't know she'd been invited by a Muslim student 'until she met Rabia on the night.'" "I was dumbfounded, and I said to her, you know, as we got chatting," ""How does your family feel about you doing this?"" "And she said, "Oh, my family are behind it." ""They think I should do it."" "I thought that it was important for students, as the future, they're future politicians, doctors, lawyers, to hear what happened to Hannah so that it could inspire them to make a change." "Across Britain, there are many thousands of individuals, families, civic organisations, who are translating a feeling of love for their communities into positive action." "It's what 97-year-old Beattie Orwell has been doing all her life." "As a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother." "'As a political activist and local councillor.'" "I can ask you this because you're 97, you've seen" " a huge amount of life..." " Yeah." "What is the secret to a happy life?" "To be with your family." "To be with people." "Not to be sitting all on my own all day." "I wouldn't be happy with that." "But once the family come here I'm happy." "Beattie now lives alone, as do almost four million older people." "After her husband died, Beattie started coming to this day centre run by the organisation Jewish Care." "There, she was reunited with childhood friend Amelia, whom she hadn't seen for 50 years." "I've had my ups and downs." "Unfortunately, I lost my daughter." "And I lost my grandson." "You keep thinking it's not real." "You can't believe it, that it can happen." "I had a large family at the beginning, cousins, everybody, and now all I've got is just a few of us." "Life still has to go on." "You can't sit brooding all the time, thinking." "So, now and again, I keep phoning Beattie, and, er, I get by." "Loneliness makes us ill and costs the country millions every year." "Here, friendship and volunteers work to make a difference." "The word "love." What does love mean to you?" " If a person says to you, "I love you..."" " Yeah." " Surely it must mean something." " Yeah." " I love you." " THEY LAUGH" " Eh?" "That can mean friendship." " Yeah." "What can you say?" "Yeah." "Love can mean anything." "The politics of love isn't based on grand rhetoric or big promises." "I don't think we should just be silent and, like, allow intolerance between people, because then we'd never get along." "It's actually something very British - pragmatic, reasonable, an idealism rooted in reality." "Every generation wants a better life than their parents." "We all aspire, I'll always have aspirations." "If you don't have aspirations you'd just stop, wouldn't you?" "You'd just stand still." "It fights to create a more engaged electorate." "You've only got to look around this community." "There's a lot of love." "There's a lot of people working together, there's a lot of people that you would never have believed would work together." "Love at the heart of politics can only make for a stronger democracy." "Next week on Panorama, Mariella Frostrup reports on what" ""home" means in modern Britain."