Once upon a time in Earl's Court...

Today's bustling inner-city suburb, cleft in twain by the traffic system,
was built up in Victorian times as a copy of the Belgravia we know from
the TV drama series "Upstairs, Downstairs". One house, one family (plus
small army of live-in servants).

It was in the nineteen-twenties, in the wave of social change consequent
upon World War I, that Earl's Court became characterised by furnished room
and floating population - the original bedsitterland.

This trend continued after World War II, when Polish presence made it known
as the "Danzig Corridor", until the sixties, when it acquired wider fame
- both as "Kangaroo Valley", a mecca for antipodeans; and as
the location of two world-famous pubs which made it a mecca for gays.
The place had a lively, raffish charm.

With the eighties, and the sudden easy availability of hard drugs, things
turned a bit sordid for a while. Something had to be done about one of the
local pubs, and in due course the police opposed its licence. The pub was
closed down, to reinvent itself as O'Neill's. A group of local residents
associations had something to do with this. So what?

Well, the residents associations got their first real taste of blood,
and it gave them ideas above their station - even the exalted ones:
if they could flex their muscles for the sake of the public good,
they could do so to a much more important end - property values!

For, along with the advent of heroin for the masses, the Thatcher years
had brought a property boom to Earl's Court - in many cases intensified by
right-to-buy legislation.

"Man the barricades!
Down with our scruffy neighbours!
Let us pretend Earl's Court is Surbiton!
Let us make our scruffy neighbours act as though they were living in Surbiton!"

The main culprits inside the 'Association of Residents Associations' are
Earl's Court Square Residents Association, with their opportunistic mouthpiece
on the Council - the busy and cadaverous Barry Phelps. Not Wanted notice refers.