My home town: how London changed under Conservative rule

As Labour takes power for the first time in 14 years, the Southall-raised novelist Jacqueline Crooks reflects on a more isolated and expensive city

As Labour takes power for the first time in 14 years, the Guardian has asked three writers to describe how their home towns changed under Conservative rule – and the challenges now facing Keir Starmer. Here, Jacqueline Crooks describes what has happened to London.

I grew up in Southall in the 70s and 80s not far from where I landed with my mother when we emigrated from Jamaica in the 1960s. I live in Camberwell now. As an author and the founder of a consultancy working with community groups across London, my work brings me face to face with people grappling with socioeconomic changes across the city.