A week ago I lived in Beeston.
Shortly after 9.00am last Thursday I opened an e-mail that would begin a week that transformed perceptions of the place I live.
Id forwarded one of the many Olympic jokes doing the rounds on the internet to my friend Steve who lives and works in London. A fellow sports enthusiast I knew hed be on a high after Londons famous victory in Singapore the day before. I expected his response to be in the usual vein of our contact: light, sarcastic, mocking. Instead there was no mention of the joke.
What's going on in London - we've no access to anything at the mo, sounds like 3 bombs have gone off this morning - anything you can tell us?
S.
As the mornings events unfolded I kept Steve up to date as best I could, through the early news of power surges to the gradual dawning, with the explosion on a bus, that Londons worst fears were being realised. This contact with Steve, and a few phonecalls to check on other friends in the capital, personalised the outrage, brought home the human face of global news.
After Thursday the news lost its personal relevance for me and became a story that belonged to the whole country, the whole world. Like everyone else I watched TV for updates feeling, by turns, shock at the death toll and admiration for the reaction to the attacks from both the public and the emergency services. Strangely, one of the overriding thoughts that came to me was of the foreign born people injured and killed in the attack; I felt a sense of pride that their mothers and fathers could rest assured that London had done right by their sons and daughters, had done everything it could to save them.
I appreciated my own good fortune that my lifes routine continued undisturbed by events in the capital. I could play with my daughter then go collect my son from school; go to work and return to my Beeston home. A humdrum but safe existence.
Then at the start of this week developments shifted the spotlight.
I was watching Sky News when they reported that police had raided five houses in West Yorkshire in an operation that was being viewed as significant. I got on the computer and passed the information to friends who were at work. We speculated on what might be happening and on where it might be happening. I took my eye off the news for a while so I could get on with some work on the PC. Another e-mail, this time from Tommy. Two words that would once again personalise the drama.
Its Beeston.
In the hours that followed I was bombarded with e-mails from friends around the country and around the world. I took phonecalls from family in Ireland. Everyone wanted to know what was happening. I started to feel guilty that I couldnt tell them anything, like in some way Id taken my eye off the ball.
Later, as police spoke at a press conference, it became clear that an unprecedented evil had been spawned in the streets where I have lived for over a decade. Suicide bombers. I struggled to make sense of what I was being told. And then I worried what it meant for this suburb that I love.
The truth is there are two Beestons, divided by Cross Flatts Park. Below the park is the multicultural area that you have seen so much of on your televisions. Taking the bus to work everyday through this area (and now wondering whether I had shared it sometimes with the bombers) the conversational rhythms are Punjabi and more recently French African and Eastern European. Above the park is different. Still solidly working class, the accents in the pubs are Yorkshire, Mayo, Glasgow; the faces are predominantly white.
And it is in these pubs that we may find the answer to how community relations will pan out in the coming months.
For all the platitudes Ive seen from cross-cultural community bodies, from religious leaders of all faiths, from MPs and councillors, saying we mustnt let what has happened derail community relations, I worry because of what I hear on the ground; in the streets, in the shops, in the pub.
The day after the bombs Id heard people using phrases like They should send them all back. Drinking last night the tone had hardened. Talk is of what might happen now. Asking a man at the bar what he knew I received the response I know theres a lot of worried Pakis down the road.
And yet I know that most of these people never come in contact with the Asian community. My next door neighbour is from Kashmir; our kids play together, we talk about Englands chances in the Ashes, we borrow each others tools and visit each others houses. But many of the people in the pub have no contact with them.
At a time when reports speak of the BNP handing out leaflets featuring a picture of the bombed bus tensions are running high.
And who is to blame? I have no doubt in my own mind that the fault lies squarely with the right wing press. The white working class of Beeston have been drip-fed reports over the last few years full of rhetoric about asylum seekers getting grants, greeted at newstands with lurid headlines speaking of illegal immigrants and Asian benefit cheats. The right wing media have made opinion tinder dry. Events and forces like the BNP are carrying a match.
The answer? I think community groups must try and engage the whites of the area in their activities and remove the vacuum of contact between the races. For the sake of our futures, all our children must play together.
I still live in Beeston. With the best will in the world we can all live here in peace and maybe the name of our suburb can have a new resonance.
Shortly after 9.00am last Thursday I opened an e-mail that would begin a week that transformed perceptions of the place I live.
Id forwarded one of the many Olympic jokes doing the rounds on the internet to my friend Steve who lives and works in London. A fellow sports enthusiast I knew hed be on a high after Londons famous victory in Singapore the day before. I expected his response to be in the usual vein of our contact: light, sarcastic, mocking. Instead there was no mention of the joke.
What's going on in London - we've no access to anything at the mo, sounds like 3 bombs have gone off this morning - anything you can tell us?
S.
As the mornings events unfolded I kept Steve up to date as best I could, through the early news of power surges to the gradual dawning, with the explosion on a bus, that Londons worst fears were being realised. This contact with Steve, and a few phonecalls to check on other friends in the capital, personalised the outrage, brought home the human face of global news.
After Thursday the news lost its personal relevance for me and became a story that belonged to the whole country, the whole world. Like everyone else I watched TV for updates feeling, by turns, shock at the death toll and admiration for the reaction to the attacks from both the public and the emergency services. Strangely, one of the overriding thoughts that came to me was of the foreign born people injured and killed in the attack; I felt a sense of pride that their mothers and fathers could rest assured that London had done right by their sons and daughters, had done everything it could to save them.
I appreciated my own good fortune that my lifes routine continued undisturbed by events in the capital. I could play with my daughter then go collect my son from school; go to work and return to my Beeston home. A humdrum but safe existence.
Then at the start of this week developments shifted the spotlight.
I was watching Sky News when they reported that police had raided five houses in West Yorkshire in an operation that was being viewed as significant. I got on the computer and passed the information to friends who were at work. We speculated on what might be happening and on where it might be happening. I took my eye off the news for a while so I could get on with some work on the PC. Another e-mail, this time from Tommy. Two words that would once again personalise the drama.
Its Beeston.
In the hours that followed I was bombarded with e-mails from friends around the country and around the world. I took phonecalls from family in Ireland. Everyone wanted to know what was happening. I started to feel guilty that I couldnt tell them anything, like in some way Id taken my eye off the ball.
Later, as police spoke at a press conference, it became clear that an unprecedented evil had been spawned in the streets where I have lived for over a decade. Suicide bombers. I struggled to make sense of what I was being told. And then I worried what it meant for this suburb that I love.
The truth is there are two Beestons, divided by Cross Flatts Park. Below the park is the multicultural area that you have seen so much of on your televisions. Taking the bus to work everyday through this area (and now wondering whether I had shared it sometimes with the bombers) the conversational rhythms are Punjabi and more recently French African and Eastern European. Above the park is different. Still solidly working class, the accents in the pubs are Yorkshire, Mayo, Glasgow; the faces are predominantly white.
And it is in these pubs that we may find the answer to how community relations will pan out in the coming months.
For all the platitudes Ive seen from cross-cultural community bodies, from religious leaders of all faiths, from MPs and councillors, saying we mustnt let what has happened derail community relations, I worry because of what I hear on the ground; in the streets, in the shops, in the pub.
The day after the bombs Id heard people using phrases like They should send them all back. Drinking last night the tone had hardened. Talk is of what might happen now. Asking a man at the bar what he knew I received the response I know theres a lot of worried Pakis down the road.
And yet I know that most of these people never come in contact with the Asian community. My next door neighbour is from Kashmir; our kids play together, we talk about Englands chances in the Ashes, we borrow each others tools and visit each others houses. But many of the people in the pub have no contact with them.
At a time when reports speak of the BNP handing out leaflets featuring a picture of the bombed bus tensions are running high.
And who is to blame? I have no doubt in my own mind that the fault lies squarely with the right wing press. The white working class of Beeston have been drip-fed reports over the last few years full of rhetoric about asylum seekers getting grants, greeted at newstands with lurid headlines speaking of illegal immigrants and Asian benefit cheats. The right wing media have made opinion tinder dry. Events and forces like the BNP are carrying a match.
The answer? I think community groups must try and engage the whites of the area in their activities and remove the vacuum of contact between the races. For the sake of our futures, all our children must play together.
I still live in Beeston. With the best will in the world we can all live here in peace and maybe the name of our suburb can have a new resonance.
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Hope you are fine xx
J