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Note on I Am A Sweated Industry  

Written after a walk in the Whitechapel district in the early 1970s.  Some of the Jewish  shops were from an earlier wave of immigration, but Muslim shops were springing up too as a new wave of ‘ethnicity’ came to add a layer to many-layered England.  From the early 2000s, with populations on the move once more, questions about legal entry have become a hot topic again.  As I try to point out in this little sketch, there are fear and tradition on both sides but the movement of peoples is unstoppable.  Schmutter is an interesting Yiddish word: it means clothing, usually of poor quality, also rubbish of any kind, including loose or weak people.  Alternative spellings: schmatte, schmattah, schmatteh, schmotte; Leo Rosten, in The Joys of Yiddish, prefers the last and the pronunciation ‘SHMO-ta’.  Muslim meat is halal meat, ritually slaughtered according to Islamic traditions.

Alan Marshfield

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