World War II Memorial Garden
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The World War Two memorial garden was built in memory of East London civilians killed in the Blitz, during the Second World War. This was when the Germans, realising the importance of the docks for British trade and industry heavily bombed this area. A sculpture symbolizing the dove dominates the memorial garden, representing hope for the future. The shape of a dove is cut into a black background expresses absence and remembers the loved ones who were lost in the war.
It is often assumed that the Second World War was a fight against fascism, or a response to the plight of the Jews. However, a glance at the old docks tells a different tale of both political and economic power struggles that provoked and shaped a war of global proportions. By the 1870s while Britain retained its economic supremacy, it was experiencing problems of falling profitability in the domestic market and growing competition from the U.S. and Europe. It is for this reason that radical historians have referred to the period from the 1870s onwards as the epoch of imperialism. It is a time when the global scramble for spheres of influence really began, in order to secure new markets and gain access to cheaper raw materials. This is when the development of monopolies started to take pace, in order to stave off competition. Industrial capital began to merge with banking capital too, to encourage investment and offset problems of impending economic recession.
It is during this period that the scramble for Africa began. This was the race by a handful of rival European powers to carve up the entire African continent, with the exception of Ethiopia and Liberia. From the 1880s until World War One, Britain and other countries such as France and Germany all took a piece of land from Africa. Britain acquired the Cape colony on the southern tip of Africa, Sierra Leone and commercial enclaves in Western Africa. Germany was a relative latecomer to the scramble and in general tended to lose out to its rivals. It is this rivalry and the quest for spheres of influence that many historians now recognize as the key drivers behind both the first and second world wars.
International war between major economic rivals is today unlikely since all of those involved have an interest in maintaining the status quo. The shift in production to the emerging economies whose financial flows sustain the British economy and service American debt, for example, ensures that even present day China-bashing is unlikely to lead to outright conflict.
