Luton’s Enough is Enough Rally Was a Powerful Show of Working-Class Unity
In a town consistently misrepresented as a hub of religious and racial tension, Luton's Enough is Enough rally was a clear reminder that what working class people have in common is so much more than what divides us.
Organiser Taj Ali speaks at Luton's Enough is Enough rally on 22 September 2022. (Enough is Enough)
My hometown of Luton hasn’t just been ignored and neglected for years by those in power. It’s also been heavily misrepresented by many people and institutions on many occasions. In reality, the myth that surrounds it—of a town divided along racial and religious lines—couldn’t be further from the truth.
There is, of course, a divide that concerns us greatly here in Luton, as in towns across the country. That is the British class divide: the divide between the haves and the have-nots, between the exploited and the exploiters, between those are worried about putting food on their table amid the current crisis and those who are profiting from it.
The reason for this is obvious. For many working-class people in Luton, there has always been a cost of living crisis. A jaw-dropping 46 percent of children in my hometown are growing up in poverty, and we have the highest rate of homelessness outside of London, affecting as many as one in 66 people. Life expectancy is a catastrophic eight years below the national average.
Recent times have seen our town rocked by the brutal cuts of the austerity years, and then by Covid-19, which highlighted just how deep those cuts had been felt and their devastating impact on our public services. Now we have yet another crisis on our hands. These events don’t just expose the class divide—they cleave the gap wider and wider.
It was, therefore, no surprise that hundreds of Lutonians turned up to the iconic St Mary’s Church last week. They were there to attend a rally to call on the government for real action on the cost of living crisis, to stand together, and to say loud and clear to those in power: enough is enough.
Community Engagement
During the day ahead of the rally, Coventry South MP Zarah Sultana and Deputy General Secretary of the RMT Eddie Dempsey, who would both speak later at St Mary’s, arrived at Luton and visited Bury Park.
Bury Park is the heart of Luton’s South Asian community, and every Sunday since November 2021, the local Sikh community has operated a soup kitchen out of Guru Nanak Gurdwara to fight hunger in the town. In partnership with local businesses, they have served something in the region of 5,000 meals.
Today, however, those involved in running the soup kitchen are increasingly fearful about their capacity to cope with the scale of the cost of living crisis. Zarah and Eddie met the organisers at the Gurdwara to help serve that day’s meals, and Gurch Randhawa, a professor of public health at the University of Bedfordshire, led them on a tour, during which he emphasised the Sikh community’s ethos of selfless service and equity.
‘Food banks shouldn’t be normalised,’ Randhawa told Tribune as we walked around the space. ‘Health inequalities have widened under both Labour and Conservative governments. They’ve not tackled fundamental structural issues like food, housing, and poverty, all of which impact upon health.’ These are problems felt as keenly in Luton as any other.
Eddie and Zarah then visited Luton’s Central Mosque, where students in evening classes were keen to hear about the rail strike and the role of trade unions in fighting low wages. There was a ceremony recognising the efforts of the students who have recently raised £12,000 for victims of the recent floods in Pakistan, despite the financial squeeze being experienced by most local residents.
‘We are always grateful for the opportunity to host such visits,’ said Ashfaq, who guided the pair around the Mosque. ‘We pride ourselves in having a very hospitable nature which helps foster excellent community relations.’
Along with Tribune, Eddie and Zarah then dropped by Kenilworth Road, home of Luton Town Football Club. Eddie is a Millwall man, and riots playing out between the two firms have wracked both local communities in the past, most famously in 1985. Years after those events, he and Luton-based activist Shaz Zaman came together to fight hatred on the terraces through Football Lads and Lasses Against Fascism.
We know that times of national crisis often provide fertile ground for the far-right to unleash new waves of racism and xenophobia, scapegoating minorities for society’s problems: Luton has seen its share of this process in action in the past. Today, though, the Enough is Enough campaign is building a progressive alternative, emphasising the need for a united response to the assault on working-class communities once again taking place across the country.
As journalist Aditya Chakraborty highlighted recently in the Guardian, ‘moments that could have been commandeered by Nigel Farage or the extreme right have instead been framed as a class-based conflict in which poor people of all ethnicities get screwed while utility bosses and their shareholders profit.’ This is a vital shift, and one that communities like Luton’s are proving key in driving home.
A Show of Working-Class Unity
In the evening, the Enough is Enough campaign was graciously hosted by the iconic St Mary’s, a 900-year-old Anglican church and the only Grade 1 listed building in Luton. Hundreds filled its pews, listening intently to messages of solidarity and unity as the sky outside grew dark.
At the start of the rally, Reverend Mike Jones and Peter Adams of the St Mary’s Centre for Peace spoke about the moral imperative to fight rising poverty and inequality. They explained why their Christian values had led them to support the Enough is Enough campaign.
‘I’m a Christian and I’m here with somebody that is a Muslim, and somebody with no faith,’ Reverend Jones said. ‘But we’re all saying it is about the communities we serve, and we share a common humanity.’
The rally that he opened was a huge success. Teachers, nurses, rail workers, and posties, including Royal Mail striker and cancer survivor Emma, took to the lectern to speak about their struggles. The theme of the night was one of collective strength, with a capacity crowd representing a cross-section of ages and backgrounds coming together in interest and enthusiasm.
The working class in Britain is multi-racial and, indeed, multi-faith—but far too often the narrative around social class doesn’t reflect that fact. The Enough is Enough campaign is determined to build a broad working-class coalition that reflects the real diversity of the communities being affected by this crisis—and rallies in places like Luton are a big part in that.
As Eddie Dempsey pointed out during his speech: ‘When times get tough, the people at the top will try to play the division card. We’ve got to be the voice of unity. We’re working-class people. It doesn’t matter what the colour of our skin is or what faith we’ve got. You’re not going to divide us. We’re going to stand together.’
As the winter months draw in, people of every background in every community are being hammered by a ruling class that considers their wellbeing expendable. Our rally in Luton shows it’s both necessary and possible to bring people together across boundaries that too often divide us—and fight for a better collective future, created and shared in by all.