From behind the counter of his chippie, Tanner Ahmed is wrestling with the notion that the regular stop-off point for fans attending Luton Town’s nearby football ground could be in a “no-go zone” for white people. Outside, on the day after a shadow Conservative Home Office minister had claimed there were “no-go zones” for white people in Luton, there was a hum of activity on Dunstable Road, a thoroughfare lined with restaurants, jewellery stores and shops selling pakoras and other snacks. Further along, shoppers of different races trundled trolleys through the car parks of Sainsbury’s and Lidl.
Blake Stephenson, the MP for Mid Bedfordshire, who lives in a village 15 minutes away from Luton, had claimed at the Tory party conference on Monday that the town was “a very dangerous place” where some communities “live in ghettoes”. As the home town of the far-right activist Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, it is also where the English Defence League (EDL), the street movement he used as a springboard to semi-celebrity status in likeminded circles, was launched. International far-right figures have eagerly seized on his depiction of the town.
The Australian senator Pauline Hanson joined him there in July for a walkabout filmed by a major Australian TV network. The 2021 census found that 54.8% of Luton’s population were non-white, making it one of four places outside London at that time where the majority of the population was from minority groups. A day after Stephenson’s comments, there was little sign if any that Bury Park was a place where any group might fear to tread – even those giving out parking tickets.
Among a smattering of white faces on Dunstable Road was a traffic warden, who declined to give their name but said: “I’ve always felt perfectly safe, and if ever there has been a minor incident, generally a member of the public or a shopkeeper has come to my aid.” Joshua Bozier, 36, a homeless man, said: “To be honest, I feel safer here in Bury Park than in the town centre. I know everybody here, whereas I’ve been spat at and urinated on in the centre. I’ve lived all over and Luton’s not what it’s made out to be.” He said Robinson “spilled a lot of shit”, but he did point to the past conduct of some Islamist activists in the area, who in 2009 demonstrated against the Royal Anglian regiment’s homecoming parade from Afghanistan.
Only a tiny proportion of the town’s Muslim community were involved, but the incident became a useful symbol for the far right. Dr William Allchorn, an associate professor at Richmond American University and an expert on the far right, said the relationship between the EDL and the Islamist activists “was mutually reinforcing and for people looking for a European example of the supposed consequences of multiculturalism, Luton came with an unusually ready-made set of images, personalities and stories. The police and crime commissioner for Bedfordshire, Labour’s John Tizard, wrote to the Tory MP to say: “These statements are not supported by evidence and bear a troubling resemblance to far-right agitators seeking to divide communities.” Luton’s independent mayor, Javed Hussain, said he was baffled by Stephenson’s claims as he strolled through Bury Park, pointing out Christian, Sikh and Muslim places of worship and emphasising local regeneration.
Not unsurprisingly, community relations are never far from the lips of local policymakers. While proud of the aspirational ethos among second- and third-generation British Asians in Luton, including his own family, Hussain said: “Look, if there was something I wish we could do more of, it would be to support children from council estates that are predominantly white. There is always more to do.”
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