Echoes of Terkel

I suspect my new blog obsession will be Spitalfields Life, an anonymously-written journal of London's East End. Today's post is on fourth-generation (but now former) dockworker Colin Ross:

The London Docks were closed by shipowners who wanted to move to new container ports as a means to break the unions and introduce casual labour, and make short-term profits by selling off their warehouse spaces. Yet the final irony lies with Colin, because anyone who has travelled upon the Thames – the silent highway, as they once called it – recognises the absurdity of the empty river when it is the obvious conduit for transport of goods as the roads grow ever more overcrowded.

The oral narration aspect can't help but remind me of Studs Terkel, the great man I never met yet find myself missing all the time.