Caught in the relentless one-way system that coils around Leeds city centre, I wind down the car window and ask a chirpy delivery driver which is the simplest route into Beeston. For the record, this is what he says: “Take the M621, come off at junction 2a and it’ll take you right into Paki Central . . . Don’t worry, love — you smell it before you see it.”
I was surprised by this exchange. First, Beeston doesn’t actually smell of curry, which rather spoils the van man’s punchline. Second, this was the first racist remark I had heard in a day and a half spent talking to people on the streets of Leeds. To be honest, I expected more. This is where three of the 7/7 suicide bombers lived, plotting their killing spree while masquerading as regular members of the community; this is where they set up a chemical factory to make the bombs that murdered 52 innocent people. If anywhere was ripe for a spot of rampant bigotry, you’d think it might be here.
But while Beeston — and Leeds — may have their problems, they existed long before the bombers loaded their rucksacks. There are plenty of people here who accuse Muslims of not integrating enough, of “ghettoising” areas with extended families and living in bubbles of their own culture, and agree with the 51 per cent of the general population who told The Times’s poll that they believe Islam treats women as inferior to men.
But rather than drive people further apart, the bombings seem to have made the communities more determined to get along. A few days after the bombers’ homes were raided here last July the local residents in the Hyde Park area of Leeds walked together in a mass peace march to send a message that they refused to turn on each other. A year on, much of that spirit remains.
Andrew Mitchell, 32, an IT worker who lives in a relatively middle-class area of Leeds, admits that he has no real Muslim friends and barely gave local integration a thought before last year’s atrocity. Since then, however, he has made a conscious effort to get to know local Muslims. “Rather than just grunting hello at the Asian people who I buy my paper off in the mornings, I go out of my way to talk to them . . . asking about their kids and telling them about stuff in my life,” he says. “I know it sounds soft but I’d hate them to think that I’m looking sideways at them now. And people are pleased if you just cross that initial barrier.”
Walk through the ramshackle streets of Beeston, where every other Muslim car and house seems to be bedecked with England football flags, and you eventually come to Cross Flatts park, the place where Shehzad Tanweer, 21, played cricket the night before he blew up his Tube carriage at Aldgate. Here Deborah Sutherland, 40, says she too has thought a lot more about the Asians in her community in the past year. “I find myself doing a lot more smiling at people than I did before. Maybe I’m over- compensating to let them know I’m not suspicious of them. In the end I think we all have to make an effort with each other or we’re in trouble.”
Sutherland, too, has no Muslim friends — in keeping with 66 per cent of the general population — although she is on friendly terms with the Pakistanis who run her local shops. “My sister has Muslim friends. They are mainly other mothers whose children go to the same school as hers. But they are just not on my landscape, really. There’s nothing deliberate about it, it just hasn’t happened. I used to know a couple of Muslims in my old job but they didn’t really socialise after work, which was a shame. The pub culture in this country is probably to blame for that.”
Anne Francis, 51, a mother of five, describes herself as mixed-race and has lived for most of her life in the multi-ethnic area near where the bomb “factory” was found. She was in London on the day of bombings and heard the bus explode. “Why would young lads want to waste their lives like that?” she says. “Don’t they ever ask themselves if suicide bombing is so great why hasn’t Osama bin Laden done it himself? Why is he so desperate to avoid death?” But, like 90 per cent of people around here, she insists that 7/7 has not increased tensions or made residents more suspicious of each other. The same, however, cannot be said of the police. “Last year my nephew was going on holiday with a gang of mates and he was pulled off the plane by the police for no reason,” Francis says. “He and his friend were the only two black lads and they got taken off and treated awful. In the end they had to get a later flight.”
Francis has many Muslim friends and is an enthusiastic member of the local community, yet she is sceptical of government efforts to encourage people to integrate more. “The Government has spent years driving us apart, giving us labels to tell us how different we are — you are white, I am ‘dual heritage’ — and now they want us to forget all that and integrate. Why tell us we were different in the first place?”
It is the authorities, she says, that create divides. Take the local community hall, which is supposed to be for everyone’s use, yet if anyone tries to book it for a wedding, say, or a party they seldom can. The council, she claims, is worried about loud music and alcohol offending Muslims, yet the point is that Muslims round here wouldn’t be offended. “They create problems where there aren’t any,” she says. “People live and let live here. We genuinely do respect each other.” Does she think different dress codes have an effect? “Young kids probably wonder why they get banned from shops for wearing hoodies yet people can go in wearing veils but I really don’t think it’s an issue.”
The next day I ask Tom, an elderly man with a weathered face, why integration seems to work here. It is, he says, partly because whites see themselves as the minority. “I think it’s because white people here don’t kick off,” he says. “Anyone who doesn’t like blacks and Asians has moved out. The ones who stay either like it this way or they just accept it.” So is there no simmering resentment? He laughs. “Course there is. People see Asian families running profitable businesses yet they are still living in council houses. Why is that? A lot reckon it’s because they are sending all the money back to Pakistan or wherever and meanwhile this area gets run down. But what can you do about it?”
Richard Tyler, a retired lecturer who lives in Headingley, is confident that local relations are no worse for the 7/7 bombings. “In a way we were swamped with things to bring us together,” he says. “There are so many people desperately not wanting it to cause conflict that it had the opposite effect.”
As a former teacher, however, he doesn’t think it a good idea to let Muslim children wear religious clothes to school. (The Times poll shows that 47 per cent of the population agree with him). “On balance I think no,” he says. “On the whole I think extreme forms of dress are unnecessarily provocative: it’s why children aren’t allowed to wear hoodies to school. I find it antisocial when Muslim women wear clothes that cover everything apart from their eyes. I think more integration will happen and it should be encouraged. But I’m dubious about home secretaries preaching British values; they could stop doing things to deter integration such as having faith schools.”
