As Britain entered the 1990s, the character of East London was changing rapidly. The docks, once the mainstay of the area, had closed and the London Docklands Development Corporation was building a vast new financial district on the Isle of Dogs – Docklands. Further east, the new London City Airport, a university campus and new housing and shopping developments had arisen in Beckton. There was massive investment in transport infrastructure to serve these developments with new rail and bus links. Meanwhile the effects of deregulation, introduced in 1985, were transforming bus services, with many new operators bringing a wide variety of liveries and fleet names in place of the former red monopoly of London Transport. Then in 1994 came privatisation with the sell-off of London Transport in area ‘slices’. With all this variety, it was an exciting time to be a bus enthusiast – but it was not to last. With this, the second of three books featuring the buses of East London, Malcolm Batten examines the last decade of the twentieth century through a wealth of previously unpublished images.

Born in 1952, Malcolm Batten has lived in East London all his life, and has always had an interest in the local transport scene and the history of Newham. After a boyhood of trainspotting, he started taking photographs in 1969. Since then he has recorded the local buses and railways, in an area which has seen enormous change.