The Giga Poll - Report - Page 8
BY ROS WYNNE-JONES
WHEN community leader Sacha Bedding sent me
some photographs he’d taken of the Dyke House
estate in Hartlepool at first I thought they were of
a riot. Union flags hung outside a church, but it was
the woman holding a red flare who caught my eye.
I had just returned from reporting on the
protests at the Bell Hotel in Epping — 2025 has
been the summer of flags and I’d seen enough for
one day. Then I noticed the child in the Union flag
bowler hat and the trestle tables, and realised
Sacha was sending a positive image.
“That was our Jubilee Street Party,” Sacha told
me. “More than 300 people having a great time. It
was such a good day!”
Sacha had predicted the 2024 riots stemming
from misinformation following the terrible
murders of three little girls in Southport. “I said
if something doesn’t change there will be civil
disorder in this country — it’s inevitable,” the
Wharton Trust CEO remembers. “I felt we were just
waiting for it. A result of the pressures that people
are living under, added to a lack of control over
their lives.”
But he also wanted to tell me something else.
That given some say over their lives and some
faith back in society, people in Dyke House just
wanted what everyone else wants — safety,
security and friendship.
“When people feel ignored, neglected, and shut
out, frustration builds — and history shows us the
terrible consequences,” Sacha told me. “In order to
fix the foundations of our democracy, we must act
boldly and do things differently. That means putting
real power and real resources in the hands of local
people. Not promises. Not gestures. Real Power.”
In the summer of flags, many of the protests
were driven by far-right groups and people with
extreme agendas hijacking genuine community
concerns.
They have made people of colour and people
from immigrant communities feel understandably
afraid, and even unwelcome.
But it’s also true that in the absence of real
power putting up flags became a way for people
to exercise some control over space they feel
they have lost. The antidote to that is real power
put back into the hands of communities. And to
reclaim our national flags, because they belong to
all of us.
POSITIVE LIGHT:
Street party fun
in Hartlepool
PICTURE: SACHA BEDDING
We are a
nation of
neighbours
ALMOST two miles from the ACC
conference centre on the Liverpool
Docks where the Labour faithful
are gathering this week, is an old
Victorian presbytery which acts as a
hub for the local refugee community.
On August 5th last year, Asylum Link
Merseyside, in Toxteth, had to board up its
windows after becoming the focus of farright protesters during a summer of riots
that set city centres alight.
The refugees and people seeking asylum
and sanctuary at the centre had nothing to
do with the horrific murders of three little
girls 20 miles north in Southport, but they
became the focus of public anger.
“People we know were spat at, called
horrible names,” explains Emma Leaper,
National Coordinator at the charity.
“Somebody from our community was
attacked,” she added.
But even as staff were boarding up the
windows, locking the doors and trying to
secure records inside the building, they
looked out and saw something incredible
– thousands of people converging on the
building with placards declaring love
MONDAY 29.09.2025
BY ROS WYNNE-JONES
Daily Mirror columnist
and support. “Thousands of people came
together in the city and actually came to
protect the building the night that the
fascists were going to come and attack us,”
Emma says.
Now the boards that were used to seal
the building have been painted by refugee
art groups and are proudly displayed as
messages of hope and support. “There is
more love than hate, in this city,” says Emma.
For the last 12 months, the Mirror ‘Real
Britain’ team – including Claire Donnelly and
the film-maker John Domokos – has been out
across the country, talking to communities in
the aftermath of last year’s riots for a special
video series called ‘Island of Strangers’.
The Giga Poll shows the lessons we
have learned. Most people love their
communities and consider them peaceful
and friendly. Only 16 per cent would not
want to know their neighbours better.
Two thirds of people (67%) believe the
Government should do more to improve
community cohesion in some of the most
divided communities – and 48% would
support a local campaign to promote
Britain’s multicultural society and help
people from different backgrounds connect.
Since the Southport riots and beyond, we
have allowed a small minority of Britons –
and powerful voices from abroad – to loudly
define who we are as a country. Politicians
have weakly ceded ground to the far right
and Reform UK whose only plan is division.
Working class communities are tired
of being demonised and characterised as
hostile and racist. The British working class
has been multi-ethnic for centuries. Every
corner of our country has been shaped by
waves of immigration.
These communities are in trouble.
Spending time in some of Britain’s poorest
places makes it easy to understand people’s
anger and lack of faith in politicians, as
the broken carcasses of their once proud
industries loom over a lack of progress in
modern times.
But deep down, most people know
immigrants are not the problem – these are
places which need real solutions not fascist
snake oil. They need power put back into the
hands of the community – Labour solutions,
if only Labour would govern as itself.
We hope that our ‘Island of Strangers’
films – shown over the weekend at the
Labour Conference, and across the Mersey
at Future Yard in Birkenhead – give a voice
back to real Britain.
On the St Mellons estate in Cardiff,
we found over-60s from a mainly white
Welsh
community
enjoying
music
and entertainment from people of all
backgrounds – black, brown and LGBTQ.
In Stockton-on-Tees people from the local
refugee community were helping create a
beautiful garden in an area plagued by antisocial behaviour.
A year later, we can definitely report that
we’re not an island of strangers – far from
it. We’re a nation of neighbours. This is our
Britain: friendship, community, solidarity.
And we want our country back.
Follow the films on YouTube, the
Mirror site and on social media using
#IslandOfStrangers
