A gigantic Big Fat Robin two meters-wide, cleverly constructed from wire and tissue paper, sits looking a little lopsided and forlorn in a courtyard just outside Luton town centre. Last week, looking a good deal perkier \u2013\u00a0 and powered by a bicycle \u2013 it led the Winter Wonderland parade in a town, which like most other places in Britain, is doing its best to be cheery in a winter which is bleak not just in terms of icy roads but also in economic outlook on the eve of Christmas 2010.<\/p>\n
Only don\u2019t say Christmas, at least not in the presence of the man behind the giant robin redbreast.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople think there\u2019s exclusivity in the idea of Christmas and we want our winter festival to be more than that,\u201d says Paul Anderson. \u201cWe host people coming together, rooting models of engagement to attract new generations,\u201d he adds with deft ear for jargon which befits a man used to making applications for funds from the Arts Council, European social fund, and soon-to-be-abolished regional development associations<\/p>\n
Paul Anderson is the chief executive officer of the UK Centre for Carnival Arts which is based in Luton \u2013 the town that is home to the largest one-day carnival in Europe.<\/p>\n
But that is not what most people think about when Luton is mentioned these days.<\/p>\n
The town is synonymous with Islamic fundamentalism, according to the received wisdom of the British media. The Stockholm suicide bomber was radicalized here, Muslims from Luton have died fighting with the Taliban, a member of the fertiliser bomb plot gang was a Lutonian. Muslim extremists here jeered at returning British soldiers with banners calling them \u201cbutchers of Basra\u201d. It was at Luton railway station that the 7\/7 bombers left their car and boarded a train to London to kill 52 people on the capital\u2019s transport system in 2005.<\/p>\n
On the other side of the coin Luton is where the far-right anti-Muslim English Defence League was founded. It was to Luton that the extremist US pastor Terry Jones, who wanted to burn the Qur\u2019an but never quite got round to it, invited himself to address an anti-Sharia rally in February \u2013 until he was told that even the EDL thought he was too far off the loony-tunes scale for them.<\/p>\n
But much of this is media construct, or reality filtered through a pre-set media agenda at the very least. What of the reality? I set out to discover whether Christmas 2010 in Luton is a season of misery, division and ill-will \u2013 or whether it is not that much different from that of any medium-sized British town.<\/p>\n
The square at the heart of Luton is named after St George. And if there seems an irony in that you should remember that though he is the patron saint of England the historical St George was thought to be a Palestinian.<\/p>\n
All week it has been covered in show. Blue lights, matching the Roman numerals on the art-deco town hall clock tower, contour the steps at its side, hinting at the salient features which lie buried beneath the icy whiteness. A sludge path cuts a triangular grey line through the winterscape heading, inevitable, for The Mall , which was called the Arndale Centre when it was opened as Europe\u2019s largest shopping centre in 1972. Today it squats like a huge consumer citadel in the hollowed-out heart of the Victorian town. It is a place, which Pevnser, the great architectural guidebook, once said displays \u201can absence of visual character\u201d.\u00a0 Snow covers a multitude of sins.<\/p>\n
The Mall sends out mixed signals. It has just opened a huge glass pentagonal atrium which towers over St George\u2019s Square. Silver and purple twinkling Christmas decorations dangle down 70 feet or more. Some \u00a320m has been spent creating it, even during the height of the recession.<\/p>\n
The media is full of bleak midwinter stuff: on top of the snow, the cold and a rising flu epidemic there loom cuts in public services, widespread job losses, the VAT rise and increases in gas and electricity bills. A survey by the Samaritans telephone helpline last week revealed that 2010 was considered a bad year \u2013 or the worst year ever \u2013 by 30 per cent of the population. Nearly six in 10 British adults are worried they won\u2019t have enough money to live comfortably in 2011. A third fear they may lose their jobs. More than half expect to be hit by cuts to health, education or welfare next year.<\/p>\n
But the lights are brighter and the air is warmer in The Mall where white, Asian, Chinese and Afro-Caribbean faces mingle and there is far more wintry than religious headgear. In two days I see only one woman wearing a face-covering niqab<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cIf you hadn\u2019t told me there was a recession I wouldn\u2019t have known from retail sales,\u201d says the shopping centre\u2019s general manager, Brian McFarland. \u201c We had 481,000 people in here last week, measured by cameras at the entrances, compared with 499,000 at the same time last year. It\u2019s down slightly because of the snow \u2013 but nowhere near as much as out-of-town centres like Brent Cross and Bluewater . Up to 40 per cent of our customers come by foot. The train station is next door. And overall this year we are one per cent up on last.\u201d<\/p>\n Two new shops have just opened which means that he centre is now full. One is a hotdog and milkshake outlet called Moondog. The other, Dr Spafish, offers \u201cdefoliation of the feet\u201d in which, at \u00a310 for 15 minutes, shoppers can sit with their feet in fishtanks and have little grey fish nibble the dead skin from their feet. It was arousing considerable interest already.<\/p>\n Some of the shoppers voiced caution. \u201cWe\u2019re spending \u00a3400 to 500 less this year,\u201d says Maureen Hallet, a support worker out shopping with her daughter Marie Chirombo, a full-time mum with three kids in tow. \u201cWe\u2019re apprehensive with the VAT rise round the corner.\u201d Ben Oduru, 31, a receptionist, says he will be spending about a third less than last Christmas\u00a0 on his wife and two children, despite the fact that he expects the economy to improve in 2011.<\/p>\n But others were more upbeat. \u201cI\u2019ll spend about the same as last year,\u201d says Michael Smith, 26, a self-employed kitchen-fitter. \u201cThings have picked up a bit in the last six months. I\u2019m not busy like two or three years back but things are much better than at the start of the year and I\u2019m optimistic it will pick up more next year.\u201d<\/p>\n And others displayed a characteristically British mixture of talking gloomy and acting the opposite. \u201cWe\u2019re spending more than last year,\u201d say two 19-year-old nursing students Yasmin Wacey and Aleisha Lascelles. \u201c but that\u2019s only because we were at college then and now we\u2019re on an NHS bursary. \u201cI\u2019m spending a lot more because everything is dearer and I think prices will go up again next year,\u201d grumbles Danielle Andrews, 19. She will spend around \u00a3200 on presents this year though \u201cI don\u2019t think much of these shops. I don\u2019t really like Luton,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n It is not the view of most Lutonians who have a warm affection for the place that the local vicar, Canon Nick Bell, of the 800 year old flint-faced checker-board church of St Mary\u2019s in the town centre, describes as \u201c a northern town in the south\u201d.\u00a0 \u201cThe atmosphere reminds me of Oldham where I had my first ministry,\u201d says the Revd Bell, who is white. \u201cIt\u2019s a friendly industrial town, not Home Counties posh like St Albans, Harpenden, Bedford, Hitchin and the surrounding towns\u201d.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n On the road to Hitchin is the Baltistan restaurant. It is named after the mountainous region of northern Pakistan and India bordering on China, rather than the balti<\/em> cuisine which many curry experts believe originated in Birmingham rather than the sub-continent. In the restaurant a small office party has begun. The celebrants are swimming instructors, all female, all white, and all clad in black.<\/p>\n How has 2010 been for them? All right, fine, could have been worse, we\u2019re all in work at any rate, they chorus simultaneously. \u201cMy husband has taken a 10 per cent pay cut,\u201d says one. \u201cWe\u2019ve noticed. We\u2019ve cut back a bit but nothing major. We\u2019ve just switched from Kellogg\u2019s to Asda own brand.\u201d<\/p>\n They are united too in proclaiming Luton a nice place to live. But disagreement creeps in when they speak of relations between the town\u2019s different communities.<\/p>\n Luton has more than 27,000 Muslims in a town of 184,000 souls. According to the 2001 Census, 60 per cent of the inhabitants say they are Christian and 15 per cent Muslim. All the shoppers in The Mall had said that relationships between the communities were good or, at least, without tension. \u201cPeople are good in Luton,\u201d Ben Oduru, who is black, had said. \u201cHotbed of extremism? Luton is nothing like the press make out. I don\u2019t even see it as an issue.\u201d<\/p>\n But in the Baltistan the youngest of the swimming instructors disagrees. \u201cThere were problems in the sixth form when I was there,\u201d she says. She has not long left and is training to be a primary school teacher, giving swimming lessons part-time. \u201cThe place self-segregated into different factions. It sometimes got unpleasant.\u201d<\/p>\n It is when other communities are seen as favoured that the resentment begins. \u201cI taught in an all-boys school,\u201d says the oldest of the group. \u201c By the time I left there were only four white pupils. It was a state school but the timetable had been altered to accommodate Ramadan \u2013 which I didn\u2019t object to \u2013 but the council told us we couldn\u2019t have a Christmas tree \u2013 which I did find offensive. What you do for one you should do for everyone. That\u2019s a real issue.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s the issue that Paul Anderson, whose ethnicity is Western African and Estonian, sees his Winter Wonderland parade as addressing. \u201cChristmas is a really important part of the year but we don\u2019t stress Christmas because that goes against what we are trying to do,\u201d he says. \u201cLuton is a community of communities \u2013 we need to break that up and create an opportunity for them to share\u201d.<\/p>\n By \u2018we\u2019 he means the UK Centre for Carnival Arts. The organisation now works nationally and internationally, to promote the carnival as an art form, but it has its roots in 38 years of carnival in Luton which began with a hat parade when the hatting industry was the town\u2019s economic mainstay. Over the last century that gave way to the car industry, with Vauxhall as the town\u2019s main employer. It recruited immigrant workers from all over the world but especially the Indian sub-continent.<\/p>\n Since the decline of what was once the UK\u2019s largest car plant Luton has diversified into a range of employment with EasyJet, Luton Airport, several significant IT companies and a university. That economic diffusion is matched by Luton\u2019s ethnic diversity.<\/p>\n Paul Anderson stands in front of a range of extravagant costumes from the parade \u2013 a Chinese dragon, Ghanaian drums, a giant flower from the local Samaritans and an image of Shiva from the Gujarati community which is fighting to preserve the Bengali tongue. \u201cIf we went for the usual connotations of Christmas, Santa and elves and all the rest, many people would say: \u2018That\u2019s not for me but for some other group\u2019. We\u2019d relegate the centre in the minds of the many. We wanted something that connects more,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you get the different Muslim groups wanting floats, it all ends up with people shouting and waving rival national flags and sometimes with violence. We want to avoid religion and getting into fights with mullahs and priests about how we have represented Jesus and all that. We look for ideas that can bring people together. Anyone can see the importance of the Robin.\u201d<\/p>\n \n ***<\/p>\n Not anyone. Across the churchyard at St Mary\u2019s Nick Bell sees the Robin as a symbol of an approach that has been tried and found wanting. \u201cWe\u2019ve come full circle,\u201d says the vicar. \u201cTwenty years ago when I first came to Luton there was a general acceptance that Christmas was a Christian festival. Then 10 years ago there was a move by the council to make it a Winter Festival and water down the Christian content in order to avoid offending anyone. Things have changed under the present chief executive of the council and his predecessor. This year when the Christmas lights were switched on I was invited to say a prayer from the town hall balcony.\u201d<\/p>\n The church is even invited to register a Christian presence among the shoppers. Two prayer trees stand in the centre of the Mall on which shoppers are encouraged to pause for a moment and hang a prayer and a gold bauble on the trees. It is the third year the church and the mall management have co-operated in the scheme.\u00a0 \u201cOne tree was filled to overflowing so we now have two,\u201d says the vicar. \u201cIt gives people an opportunity to pray without going to church.\u201d<\/p>\n Space has now been found for the building of a multi-faith chaplaincy in the heart of the shopping centre. In addition to prayer space it will have counselling rooms which are being funded by Luton Borough Council which is concerned at a threefold increase in demand for counselling in these bleak times. The town centre police are assisting too. \u201cThey see it as a way of us taking problems that would otherwise land with them,\u201d says Nick Bell.<\/p>\n The revival of faith at the heart of these public spaces is intriguing. Nick Bell sees it as an indictment of the lowest common denominator approach that was tried in the Nineties.<\/p>\n \u201cIt waters the truth of religion down to a degree where it means and achieves nothing in an attempt to offend no-one \u2013 though that in itself offends religious people.\u201d<\/p>\n Over by the flagging Giant Robin the man behind the Winter Wonderland is defensive. \u201cIt\u2019s not about not wanting to offend but about establishing something that communicates to everyone,\u201d says Paul Anderson. \u201cWe want to uncover the new. Our robin is an emblem of the need for people to do things differently.\u201d<\/p>\n At the heart of this divergence of opinion is the debate between multiculturalism \u2013 allowing different groups to celebrate their own cultures, and often doing so out of the public purse \u2013 and a cross-culturalism which searches for transcendent values and images all groups can share. It is a more sophisticated version of the disagreement between multiculturalists and integrationists which has taken on new impetus since 9\/11 \u2013 in which many who like to think of themselves as liberals are exhibiting a new intolerance of racial and religious difference, and are demanding that minorities should assimilate more.<\/p>\n In such a context it is revealing that in Luton it is not the vicar who talks most about the need to restore the religious element to the Christmas festival. Nick Bell wears on open-neck shirt, talks about the church being \u201crelevant\u201d, gets involved in social issues as well as interfaith dialogue and speaks proudly of the Palestinian Muslims who visited him with gifts that included a Christmas crib made of olivewood from Bethlehem.<\/p>\n No, the man who speaks up most forcibly for Christmas is Dr Fiaz Hussain, a university lecturer who is spokesman for the Luton Council of Mosques. \u201cIt\u2019s utter nonsense to say that Muslims might be offended by celebrations of Christmas. That idea does not come from the\u00a0 Muslim community,\u201d he says. \u201cWe respect Jesus, peace be upon him, and his miraculous birth, and value his life and what he stood for. He is one of the greatest men who every lived and is a role model for everyone, and so is his mother. We are on the same page as the Christians in wanting it to be celebrated for its true sense<\/p>\n \u201cYou can talk about a winter festival but that does not mean much if it hasn\u2019t got a heart.<\/p>\n A festival needs to have a happy home from which it can be shared with the wider community. The Christian message of Christmas has something to say to enrich the whole society. We want that shared, just as at Eid we hold dinners to which we invite the whole community to share the message of Eid. It\u2019s important that we are who we are. If we all are, that adds to the richness of the town.\u201d<\/p>\n He could be preaching from a Christian pulpit as he continues: \u201cFor too many people Christmas is too commercialised. The word they associate most with Christmas is shopping. But there is another \u2018s\u2019 word \u2013 spirituality. That needs to be amplified in the contemporary Christmas. Shopping is important because giving gifts is an important part of the celebration. But there is much more to it. Christmas means knocking on your neighbour\u2019s door to see if they are OK, need the snow clearing from their drive, or food fetching from the shops. It\u2019s about loving God and other people. Resolutions should start with Christmas not New Year.\u201d<\/p>\n A Christmas card from Nick Clegg and family stands on the mantelpiece in the home of Councillor Qurban Hussain, a modest terraced house in the Bury Park area of Luton which is home to most of the town\u2019s Muslims. \u00a0\u201cI don\u2019t send cards out but we do say Happy Christmas to people and go to Christmas parties within the party and community,\u201d says Mr Hussain, who is soon to be elevated to the House of Lords as a Liberal Democrat peer. \u201cWe join in the festive mood.\u201d<\/p>\n Shopkeepers in Bury Park have clubbed together to fit festive lights to the streetscene. \u201cThey are switched on for Eid, Christmas, Diwali. We celebrate all cultures,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n The truth is that, if there has been an attenuation of the values of the traditional British Christmas, it is very little do with the arrival of ethnic minorities on these shores \u2013 whatever politically correct council officials may think.<\/p>\n The globalisation of economics has been driven by a distinctly Anglo-Saxon form of capitalism. The individualism which flourished with the affluence of the 1960s after a decade of postwar austerity had nothing to do with ethnic minorities. The decline of forms of social solidarity including the family, trade unions and the church are greater among the white than minority communities. The ethic of materialism which has undermined notions of society and the common good \u2013 and turned us from citizens into consumers \u2013 has been led by whites. So was the rise of secular scientific rationalism. So was the Thatcherite elevation of the free market above traditional values in conservatism. So is the tabloid culture of sex, fear, greed and speed evidenced in everything from the Sun<\/em> to the loathsome Jeremy Clarkson.<\/p>\n All of which is not to say that there are no problems between different ethnicities in Luton, and places like it. But on the ground the day-to-day evidence is that the vast majority of people are working to make Luton, and their world, a better place.<\/p>\n \u201cOf course there are a few extremists but not many,\u201d says Qurban Hussain, \u201cbut their voices are magnified by the media. In my 17 years in Luton \u2013 I came from Rochale \u2013 I have fought six elections and knocked on thousands of doors and never encountered anything but civility.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe have one of the best interfaith relationships in the country,\u201d says Dr Fiaz Hussain, who set up the Luton Faith Walk which processes annually from a church to a mosque to a Hindu devalayam and a Sikh gurdwara to a synagogue. He is also a key bowler in the Luton Council of Faiths cricket team, where the vicar confesses himself an indifferent all-rounder. Recently all the faiths attended the opening of Luton\u2019s new synagogue.<\/p>\n In Bury Park, where in the mid-90s, tensions did arise between the Kashmiri newcomers and the more longstanding Caribbean, Irish and Italian residents, an equilibrium has been reached. \u201cTheir religion is different; we leave them to it and stick at ours,\u201d says the woman selling Jamaican patties in G\u2019s Afro-Caribbean Foods who worships in the Calvary Church of God in Bury Park. \u201cWe get on OK with the Muslims. When they go fundraising for people affected by the war in Iraq and Afghanistan we are happy to make a contribution.\u201d<\/p>\n Ironically enough inter-faith relations improved after 9\/11. \u201cIt was turning point,\u201d says Nick Bell. \u201cIt brought people together. It is now a town where strangers can feel at home\u201d.<\/p>\n In O\u2019Shea\u2019s Irish Bar in Castle Street the owner Michael O\u2019Shea, who is second-generation Irish,\u00a0 and his mother Della, who retains her accent, are enjoying a quiet drink as the snow-bound pub approaches closing time.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a significant Irish community here. And there\u2019s been a Polish club here for 20 years, plus a big Italian influence after the war, \u201d he says. The bar serves excellent Guinness but the owner, who was brought up in Britain, has assimilated to lager. Luton has seen wave after wave of immigration over the years. \u201cIn the end everyone gets on,\u201d he says. \u201cLuton is a very friendly place.\u201d<\/p>\n That is not to say there will not be tensions along the way. \u201cMy family came over from Ireland in the 1930s,\u201d says Scott Ross, the maintenance man at The Mall. \u201cIt\u2019s natural for people from other countries to come here to better themselves. I don\u2019t resent them. But the politicians have let too many in at once. It\u2019s not the immigrants fault; it\u2019s the bloody politicians who should\u2019ve taken greater control.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s why you\u2019ve got people like the EDL stirring up trouble. It\u2019s all kids kicking off. It\u2019s an outlet for their negative energy. When I was young we had illegal raves to let out our frustrations. These kids have nothing going for them. There\u2019s no jobs for them. Same as there\u2019s no money for people like me. I had no pay rise for 4 years and then less than inflation for two year \u2013 which effectively means I\u2019ve had a pay cut every year for the last four years.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd where has the money gone? To the bankers who have been given \u00a364bn of our money \u2013 that we\u2019re going to have to pay back over the next 10 years. That\u2019s the root of the problem. And the politicians let them get away with it.\u201d<\/p>\n Over in Bury Park you can hear the mirror image of the same diatribe from Iftikhar Opel.<\/p>\n He came to Britain 43 years ago to work for Vauxhall and now runs a letting agency.<\/p>\n \u201cThe past year has been terrible,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd the change of government has made things much worse. \u00a0I voted for these people \u2013 the Conservatives \u2013 but the banks won\u2019t lend. They look for a clause in the contract that will enable them to wriggle out of lending. Before I was paying 1 per cent over base rate; now it\u2019s 5 or 6 per cent over. I have no problem with the white community. It\u2019s those buggers the politicians.\u201d<\/p>\n There are some things, it seems, on which everyone can agree.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n from the Independent<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A gigantic Big Fat Robin two meters-wide, cleverly constructed from wire and tissue paper, sits looking a little lopsided and forlorn in a courtyard just outside Luton town centre. Last week, looking a good deal perkier \u2013\u00a0 and powered by a bicycle \u2013 it led the Winter Wonderland parade in a town, which like most […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,39,20,37,41,38],"tags":[269],"class_list":["post-3122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atheism","category-culture","category-immigration","category-politics","category-religion","category-society","tag-multiculturalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3122"}],"version-history":[{"count":31,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7441,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3122\/revisions\/7441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
***<\/p>\n