The streets where revenge brews Peter Wilson, Leeds July 16, 2005 "THIS is just the beginning, this place is going to go off," Alex muttered as he glared at a group of English-Pakistani youths standing curiously beside a police cordon on a street corner in the Leeds suburb of Beeston.
A burley 37-year-old white man in a loose-fitting tracksuit and dirty T-shirt, Alex was not angry at the police over the disruption their bombing investigations were causing, but at the locals of South Asian descent he blamed for all the trouble. Whites would soon be taking revenge on "the Pakis" in the rundown streets that produced three of the central London bombers, he said. "The whites are going to do something because these people already walk around as if they own the place. Now they do this!" All of Britain's mainstream political parties have called for unity and calm after the discovery that this run-down stronghold of Leeds's Muslim population has produced three of Britain's first home-grown suicide bombers. But Alex is not the only one who thinks race relations are in for a tough time. Muslims throughout Britain are worried they will face precisely the sort of backlash threatened by Alex, a former security guard who shifted several kilometres away from Beeston three years ago and admits he had contemplated violence even before the shocking events of last week. "A few years ago I went to some National Front meeting where we planned to do a few things to get rid of them. We didn't do anything in the end because we decided it wouldn't work, there's too many of them. "But now it will be on for young and old," he adds, with obvious relish. Alex's complaints, which were backed up by heart-felt nods and grunts of assent by two equally resentful unemployed white friends, had a familiar ring to them. "Asians get everything. If you're Asian the Government gives you a free home, a car and a mobile phone as soon as you get here. If you're white you get two fingers and not a penny." The police had evacuated more than 200 people from their homes for the day because they feared explosives were in a shop-front office run by the Hamara multi-faith community youth group in Lodge Lane, 200m from the home of 22-year-old bomber Shehzad Tanweer. Beeston and the rest of south Leeds has generally avoided the ethnic clashes that have occasionally broken out elsewhere in northern England, but there are few ethnically mixed groups in these streets, or on the playing fields of Cross Flatts Park three blocks away. The rubber cricket pitch, where the two youngest bombers, Tanweer and 18-year-old Hasib Hussain, used to play, was busy in the clear evening light with a loud and friendly game, using a light ball and no pads. But all 16 players were of South Asian descent. On the adjoining basketball courts, 10 of the 12 players were black. Every player on the four tennis courts was white. "The problem is that there are so many Asians around here that they congregate, they don't integrate," said Nick Cass. Mr Cass, a former professional squash player, is the regional organiser of the fiercely anti-immigration British National Party, which is accused by mainstream political parties of trying to take advantage of the discovery that three of the London bombers were British-born Muslims. The BNP has already infuriated other parties by issuing a pamphlet carrying a photo of the shattered No30 double-decker bus in London under the headline: "Maybe now it's time to start listening to the BNP." Mr Cass is the party's chairman in the nearby electorate of Dewsbury, home to bomber Mohammed Sadique Khan. He predicts an increase in the party's return at the last election of 13per cent, which was its best in the nation. "Our policies simply become more viable in situations like this, with home-grown terrorism," he told The Weekend Australian. "The fact that they were home-grown, not just asylum-seekers or something like that, proves that the multicultural society we live in just doesn't work. "We have always said that if you bring en masse another religion into our society there will be either civil war or terror attacks and probably both." Phil Edwards, the BNP's national press officer, said the bus-photo pamphlet was justified as "it shows what the price of voting Labour is". "In Australia you are more tuned in to what we are saying," he said. "You don't like asylum-seekers and the rest. But people here are only just waking up that heavy immigration means you are importing a Fifth Column, a culture within a culture." Two blocks from the park, a 29-year-old Muslim cricketer, who was too scared to give his name, said he was one of the few locals to play in an ethnically "mixed" team, but he had already been advised by his white team-mates to shave off his beard to avoid recriminations. "When I walked out to bat this week the other side said, 'Here comes Osama', and a lot of people have been getting harassed this week. But it's not all like that. "Last night we were just sitting here (outside his home) and an Irishman I don't know stopped and shook my hand. He said, 'I am part of this community and so are you and I'm sorry about what's happening'. "Then he cried. I was bloody embarrassed, bro."
