LUTON — Across the United Kingdom, Luton is known for two things: its international airport — a hub for budget flights — and racial tension.
Luton is one of the few places in the U.K. where those identifying as “white British” are in the minority (45 percent). Located 50 km north of London, its population of 200,000 has been shaped and reshaped by waves of immigration over the last 100 years: Irish, Caribbean, South Asian, Eastern European.
Around a quarter of the population is Muslim, mostly originating from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. There are no reliable statistics for the exact number of Eastern European immigrants in the area, but it is widely accepted they have made up a significant proportion since 2004.
Traditionally, Luton was considered a bellwether town: Until 2010, when a Labour MP was elected, the seat for Luton South was won by the party that went on to form the national government in every election since 1951.
As voters headed to the polls in June to cast their vote on whether the U.K. should leave the European Union, national divisions were reflected in Luton. A large portion of the town’s white working class population is disenchanted by immigration, and many support the far right. Meanwhile, its sizeable immigrant community were largely expected to vote Remain.
And yet — even as national debate became increasingly racially charged and politicians fanned fears about immigration — Luton voted to leave the EU by 56 percent, significantly more than the national average of 52 percent.
A United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) poster is displayed on April 26, 2014 in Luton, England | Oli Scarff/Getty Images)
“Everyone is worried about work, worried about their jobs,” says Darren Carroll, a painter-decorator in his 50s. “They’re looking for someone to blame, and that’s why they voted out.” Formerly an English Defence League (EDL) activist (the far right movement was founded by his nephew), Carroll is now a member of the British Labour Party and is dedicated to improving community cohesion.
While Luton used to be an industrial town — known for its hat-making factories in the 17th and 18th century — it has become impoverished since the local Vauxhall car plant shut down in 2002 after years of declining profits. Several of Luton’s districts are now ranked among the poorest 10 percent in the country.
Today, it is an island of deprivation in a sea of affluence. Bedfordshire, the county in which Luton is located, is home to mostly leafy, green constituencies, a far cry from the deprived estates of this former manufacturing hub.
“There’s an overall sense of disempowerment,” says Peter Adams, a Christian anti-racist activist and Luton resident.
“In some estates you’ve got three generations of unemployment, and people feel like policy doesn’t represent them anymore. The vote was about Westminster as much as it was about Brussels.”
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As one makes the roughly one-mile journey from the town center to the predominantly Asian neighborhood of Bury Park, pubs and England flags give way to Pakistani clothing stores and Indian supermarkets.
Luton’s Muslim community is largely based in Bury Park, while the white working class community lives in the high rise estates of Farley Hill, slightly further to the north.
The EDL, a violent street movement, was born in Luton in response to a demonstration by the Islamist group Al Muhajiroun, also based in the town. The anti-Muslim group Britain First has raided Bury Park’s mosques.
Tensions between Asians and Eastern European immigrants are rising, especially as the new arrivals move into what had previously been Indian or Pakistani enclaves.
While the U.K. as a whole experienced a drastic spike in hate crimes in the week after the referendum, police did not note a similar increase in Luton. Many in the town believe that might be because tensions were already high before the vote.
“To be honest, for Luton, hate crimes and expressions of discontent with the immigrant community are such a regular feature of life,” says Adams.
On top of the long-running racial standoff between the town’s white and Asian communities, tensions between Asians and Eastern European immigrants are rising, especially as the new arrivals move into what had previously been Indian or Pakistani enclaves.
“You hear a lot about Romanians being dishonest and stealing,” says Mohammed Akhtar, the owner of an Indian restaurant in Bury Park. “I can’t say about that, but it’s strange for us when they are drinking and socializing on the streets, because we aren’t used to it.”
Nationally, about a third of South Asians in the U.K. voted Leave. Ironically, one factor may have been stringent immigration controls imposed by Theresa May as home secretary.
“It’s a racist immigration policy, in my opinion,” says Akhtar. “Anyone can come here from Poland or Bulgaria or Romania and do what they want, but now I can’t bring one chef or waiter here from Pakistan or Bangladesh. It’s hard for business.”
Our community has been here long enough to consider ourselves British, even if our skin isn’t white” — Farhana Ahmed, Luton resident
But in Luton, class concerns — cutting across the town’s disparate ethnic groups — may have played a more decisive role in driving the Leave vote. The vast majority of jobs on offer in Luton are low-skilled. Both white and Muslim Asian communities are worried by the wage depression caused by Eastern European migration.
“Since the Vauxhall plant closed down, there are fewer and fewer jobs around unless you work at the airport, or in retail,” says Safia Iqbal, who works in one of the many clothing stores selling salwar kameez on Bury Park’s main thoroughfare.
“I actually voted Remain but my whole family voted Leave. They can’t see that Europe’s done anything for them. All they see is fewer jobs and more competition.”
Farhana Ahmed, an older woman browsing in the shop, agrees. “Our community has been here long enough to consider ourselves British, even if our skin isn’t white,” she says. “Many people, especially the older generation, don’t see it as a contradiction to complain about newer immigration. It happened suddenly.”
“The working-class Muslim lads are working-class Muslim lads,” says Carroll. “They’ve got all the same problems and social issues as white working-class people. It’s everyone.”
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There may be no better example of the complexity of Luton’s ethnic diversity than the fact that one of the town’s most prominent UKIP politicians is himself an immigrant.
Yasin Rehman, a tall, sharply dressed man, came to the U.K. 29 years ago, aged 14, from Pakistan, but today sees excessive immigration — primarily from Eastern Europe — as one of the main problems facing the U.K.
“I came through a controlled system,” he says. “I went through a process.”
It’s obvious, he says, why ethnic minority voters would vote for Brexit. “Immigration and a lack of resources. The shortage of housing. People are living in bedsits, living in hotels, hundreds of them. The result obviously is you feel left out, and you have this automatic resentment that, ‘I’ve been here a long time, I’ve been a taxpayer, and now I’m not getting my kids into the school next to my house, I’m not getting the housing allocation I was waiting for, because someone else has come here.’”
However, not everyone agrees. At the Luton Central Mosque, an impressive brick building in Bury Park, Tanvir Munir, its general secretary, described his astonishment at discovering that Luton had voted to leave. “We’re immigrants, or the children of immigrants, and this country has given us the opportunity to become part of the society and culture and feel British,” he says. “So why should we exclude anybody else?”
With time, however, he thinks he’s understood why some members of his community voted Leave. “A lot of Muslims here are working class, doing low-paid jobs, and they believe it’s a small island,” he says.
Samira Shackle is a freelance journalist based in London.