It’s no surprise to me, as someone who was mostly dragged up in A Town Called Malice – sorry, Luton, ‘jewel of Bedfordshire’ (aka Crappest Town in Britain 2004 [1]) – that something like the neo-fascist streetgang called the English Defence League has come out of the place, born of the knuckledragging fans of Luton Town Football Club who, now that the club’s been relegated out of the Football League, have no ‘firms’ to fight anymore, so are looking for a scrap elsewhere, and angry jihadists are just the job.
According to the Independent on Sunday:
“The EDL, originally formed by football supporters in Luton, claims to be a non-violent group campaigning against Muslim fundamentalism but is alleged to have links to former hooligan networks and known British National Party agitators. It was formed in March in reaction to barracking by Muslim protesters at soldiers from the Royal Anglian Regiment parading through Luton on their return from Iraq.” [2]
Luton is that kind of town, where a low-level racism is so pervasive that it’s part of the miasmic atmosphere of the town, whose inhabitants have the political consciousness of jellyfish. It’s not that Lutonians are, on the whole, actively hostile to non-whites, it’s more that they take racism as such a fact of life that they really don’t understand that it’s racist to talk of, say, going down the “p*ki shop”, or carrying out a bit of “p*ki-bashing”, or getting a takeway from the “chinky”. It’s in such a fetid sea that the real racists and fascists swim so freely and occasionally, as has happened with the EDL, pop their heads above water. Not that most of the EDL will be fascists – they’ll be too stupid to understand the term. They just know that they don’t like “darkies” and “mozzies” and that they like a good ruck. They’ve probably practiced on matchdays, as they parade through Bury Park, where the Kennel – sorry, Kenilworth Road – is located, abusing and intimidating the Asian residents on the way.
As a (now armchair) Watford fan, I quite literally got it in the neck growing up in Luton, and saw first-hand genuine Loo’n ‘ooligans in their natural habitat. On a Monday at school after a Saturday’s ruck, they’d boast about making the opposition “run”, beating up some hapless kid who happened to be wearing oppo colours, doing a bit of “p@ki-bashing”, bricking houses in Bury Park, and so on. Knuckledragging scum you’d think, yet many were in the top form at school and came from ‘respectable’ middle-class backgrounds – I could name quite a few former classmates in A1 who were, frankly, violent psychopaths and virulent racists. The nature of Luton fans hasn’t changed much since those days, with Watford fans in particular getting vicious treatment at home matches, so I for one had little sympathy for the club’s rapid decline into the football conference – if, as I believe, a club is its fans, for better or worse, then LTFC deserves its demise.
I was determined to leave that dump, and after a false start I finally escaped in ‘84 oop North. The best thing to come out of Luton is the M1 going Northbound.
References
[1] Luton was famously voted Crap Town of 2004, and with good reason. See Luton voted Britain’s worst town. BBC News Online, 27/9/04
[2] Anti-islamists target Palestinian rally in central London. Independent on Sunday, 13/9/09
