It was a filthy day in Rotherham as Storm Bram swept through the town earlier this month. Roads had turned into rivers and sodden St George’s flags flapped from lamp-posts at half mast.
Inside the community centre, the heating was turned up, the bacon butties were on order and the tea was brewing. It was time for some Difficult Conversations. Some of them, it turned out, about those soggy flags.
A group of about 15 military veterans were gathered for their weekly natter. One jovial man sported a Christmas jumper that said “When I think about you I touch my elf”. Another, an ex-SAS officer, was in a black polo shirt bearing the insignia “Taliban hunting squad”.
The group likes to trade war stories and exchange the sort of near-knuckle banter that, they freely admit, “civilians find offensive”. But recently the group has been working with a charity called Who Is Your Neighbour?, which facilitates conversations in white working-class communities along the general topic of “things you can’t say any more”.
Who Is Your Neighbour? is one of five charities partnering the Guardian in its 2025 Hope appeal, which supports grassroots organisations whose work brings communities together through practical projects that create hope and pride and provide an antidote to division and despair.
This area of Rotherham is 94% white, a community that sprang up around a mine that closed more than 30 years ago. Grievances run deep. Inside the centre is a wall of black-and-white photos of the battle of Orgreave, where miners were beaten by police officers. They like things smart here, especially on club nights. A sign on the door reads: “Please note! No one will be allowed into the club as from immediate effect wearing tracksuit bottoms on a Friday/Saturday.”
The morning’s discussion covered, what does it mean to you to be British? And what does the union jack or English flag mean to you? Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian
Two miles away is the hotel set alight by protesters in the summer of 2024 when asylum seekers were inside.
Brad and Anna, the two facilitators from Who Is Your Neighbour?, announced the morning’s discussion topics: what does it mean to you to be British? And what does the union jack or English flag mean to you?
For the next 45 minutes, the group drank tea and shared their thoughts. There were disagreements, one woman, Jane, said afterwards, but no fallings-out. “We’ve disagreed on a little bit, haven’t we?” she said, smiling at Ali, the only Asian person in the group, a veteran who served in Afghanistan.
“Do you know the child sexual exploitation that happened in Rotherham?” Jane explained. “I was saying, why do Pakistani men and Pakistani boys see white girls as trash?” Ali did not take offence. “The guys who got arrested and all that kind of stuff, they were my generation,” he began. He objected to the labelling of the abusers as Pakistanis. “They say Pakistani boys but they’re born and bred here, most of them. Which is quite scary.”
Ali told the group how “since the flags went up”, Rotherham feels increasingly hostile to people with brown skin. Just the other week he was in a park and was “told to get out of the country”. He told the person shouting at him that actually he was born in Britain and had served in the army. “When I tell them I’m a veteran then they go: ‘Oh mate, yeah, yeah, brilliant, you did good for the country.’ But that’s too late because they’ve already judged me by my colour and because I’m Muslim and I’ve got a beard.”
Who Is Your Neighbour? was formed in South Yorkshire in 2010 after various community activists noticed they were hearing the same thing when they talked to people, particularly in the most deprived neighbourhoods: a complaint that people “weren’t allowed” to say what was on their minds.
A lot of it was about immigration. A sense that their community had changed, quickly, and it no longer felt like theirs. The solution? A programme where people could have conversations in a constructive, thoughtful way.
Who Is Your Neighbour? works on three principles. One: “Better out than in” – they invite people to say what’s on their mind. Two: “Most people are alright” – they don’t judge and they start from the assumption that nobody in the conversation intends harm. Three: “Curiosity is good” – they don’t aim to preach or push forward an agenda.
The group doesn’t let racism go unchallenged, but the facilitators gently prod to find out what might be behind a comment. Very few people are deliberately racist, says the charity’s chief executive, Tariq.
He said: “Most people are sincere and good-hearted and well-intentioned and don’t want to set out to cause hurt to other people. But where we are now, this time that we’re living in, the voices of not wanting us to live together are really loud. Social media, media, it’s so loud.
“We’re being told everything’s shit: ‘Look at this shoplifting!’ ‘Look at them lot just having a row about nothing on the street!’ ‘Look at that bus stop where people aren’t in a queue.’ And along with ‘we can’t get on together’ is a narrative that’s all about ‘this lot that’s been brought in’.”
But we can get on together, Tariq insisted. “At the end of it and the bottom of it and the top of it is: we all – most of us – want the same thing. I want my family and the people I love to be safe and looked after. And I don’t want harm for other people. A group of people in a room going: ‘We’re really struggling with how everything on our streets changed, but we want to figure out a way to make it work’ is not racism.”
What Who Is Your Neighbour? does is simple – and yet rare. “We give people a voice,” says Brad, one of the facilitators. “We give people the chance to speak on subjects many of them feel like they can’t discuss”. And they do it, says participant Sue, “without anyone falling out”.
* All names of participants have been changed
