In Greenwich the proximity of far-right racist parties was not just a political one – it was also geographical. In the south of the borough some of the most expensive housing developments were interlaced with old and ageing, council-owned public housing estates. This itself was part of the balance of electoral forces that played out in local politics by returning the Conservative candidate for Eltham frequently to parliament and Labour majorities usually in the local council elections. In the 1990s central and southern Greenwich were – as they largely remain – unambiguously white with very few non-white families and no non-white ‘communities’. Just to the south of the more ethnically mixed areas of north and north-east Greenwich, these areas fray, on their northern and eastern flanks, into enclaves and spits of white territory that look for their identity southwards towards the county of Kent – ‘the garden of England’ – and the imaginary white hinterlands. And just into the next borough, Bexley – the last metropolitan borough before Kent – sat the ‘headquarters’ and bookshop of the British National Party (BNP) from 1989 until 1998. The direct electoral impact of the BNP was minuscule, but its symbolic significance was very relevant to the way racism and community were interpreted in Greenwich. It said things some wished to hear. It was not respectable. It was associated with violence. It was very far from being a populist or neo-populist party.