With the 3rd of March, the ‘Fird of the Fird’ or ‘Speak Cockney Day’, rapidly approaching, it is time for Andy Green and Saif Osmani to get ready for the next run of their Cockney Cultures events.
Andy and Saif have been organising activities and talks around Cockney dialect and culture for several years with a steadily growing public interest and audience. The success of the past years has inspired this year’s Modern Cockney Festival upstaging previous events with a variety of speakers and activities at different venues all over East London, including the Museum of the London Docklands, all through March.
Andy is a Cockney by heritage but has lived most of his life on Barry Island, Wales, the home of his wife. ‘It’s a Gavin and Stacey story’, he tells me, referring to the 2007 sitcom about the relationship between a London boy and a Barry girl and their families. Saif grew up in ‘Banglatown’, the Brick Lane area in the East End, and lives in Stratford. They met at one of Andy’s early Speak Cockney Day events and have since founded the initiative Cockney Cultures together.
‘There isn’t a Royal Institute of Cockney – and nor should there be’, Andy says, ‘but there needs to be a space to give people permisson, to reflect and explore and express what Cockney means to them’. ‘So we’re creating this Festival as that sort of space, building upon the fact that we have identified three types of perceptions of Cockney: There’s a Cockney traditionalist, the Cockney diaspora, and a tiny group that fits the Cockney stereotype racist’.
It is this negative Cockney stereotype that they are aiming to ‘counterbalance by a more open Cockney idea’, Andy tells me. He is dismayed that in the ‘cultural strategy’ by the Mayor of London, ‘the word ‘Cockney’ is not mentioned once’. ‘We believe it could be to avoid these sorts of [racist] implications’. According to Andy, this ‘leads to bad policies, for example, when it neglects the indigenous cuisine, artisan cafes; there is no mention of pie and mash, no cultural strategy to promote it. There’s no trade book for pie and mash shops.’
So the Festival is for Cockney traditionalists, who believe that Cockneys are only the ones living in the East End, Cockney diaspora from Essex or further afield. But it is also aimed at unconventional or new Cockneys, like Saif, who is ‘starting to increasingly call myself Cockney’. ‘Cockney Sylheti’, to be precise, which often ‘sparks a conversation’. ‘I’m visibly probably not traditionally Cockney-looking’, Saif says with a smile, ‘and I feel like people are trying not to make that a point in the conversation, so there’s this interesting tension. But I actually quite like having those uncomfortable conversations to break those barriers.’
They think it is natural that the label ‘Cockney’ evolves with society. ‘Instead of growing up with just a ‘telephone voice’, today, identities have become much more multifaceted. What we’re witnessing in London, the so-called decline in Cockney, is that identies have become a bit more complex, and within that mosaic, our task is to fly the flag for a Cockney facet, rather than saying ‘you are exclusively Cockney’, Andy explains. ‘We’ve stumbled upon this from an earnest desire to share a positive sense of pride.’
Andy’s and Saif’s Modern Cockney Festival kicks off tomorrow at the Museum of the London Docklands and offers talks and activities all through March. Check the event’s homepage and the Facebook page for updates.
LONDON TALKS 