Fear, loathing and prejudice in Blunkett's back yard: A deeply disturbing dispatch as the ex-Labour Home Secretary warns of race riots over the Roma influx in Sheffield



As many as 900 Roma families have moved to the suburb of Page Hall

Mr Blunkett, who grew up in Sheffield, earlier said the area could 'explode'

There have even been reports of Roma trying to sell babies for £250



Speaking in a loud voice, the bearded man in traditional Pakistani garb gave a short speech, which was greeted with enthusiastic applause.

He was addressing a meeting in the community centre of Page Hall, a shabby grid of terrace streets in Sheffield, and giving voice to what many in the audience had long thought - but dared not say.



‘We want to claim our streets back. Tensions are building here. We need to do something or it will be too late,’ pronounced 34-year-old Kashmir Malik, a local restaurant owner from an immigrant family who grew up in Yorkshire and is a successful businessman.



New faces in Page Hall: Ivan Kandrac, Marian Sandor and Dalibor Ziga stand in the street

That meeting of 100 local people just a few weeks ago was a significant one for troubled Page Hall.



Mr Malik had captured the mood of the vast majority of English and Pakistani people who live and work in this ordinary suburb, which has been utterly overwhelmed in the past three years by Roma migrants who have settled here having left a poverty-stricken part of Slovakia.



The number of arrivals has been huge.



Community centre staff estimate that up to 900 Roma Slovak families have now made the Page Hall area their home. The area, say locals, has reached ‘breaking point’.



This week David Blunkett, the MP for this part of Sheffield and former Labour Home Secretary, took the hugely significant step of warning of possible riots if the newcomers do not change their anti-social activities.

He told the BBC that Roma groups from Slovakia who’d settled in a district of the city were behaving like they were living in a ‘downtrodden village or woodland’ where there were no toilets or litter collections.



They were dumping rubbish on the streets, loitering late at night and causing ‘friction’ with residents, he added.



Blunkett, who was born in the city, said Page Hall could ‘explode’ in the same way that ugly street warfare broke out in other Northern towns between Asians and whites two decades ago.

Influx: A Roma family walk down Popple Street in Page Hall

He accused the coalition Government of ‘burying their heads in the sands’ over the sheer scale of gipsy arrivals.



Talk to the locals for two days, as I did, and the Roma are accused of anti-social behaviour - littering the streets, playing excessively loud music and gathering every night on pavements while their toddlers also play outside, often unsupervised, long into the evening.



There are unsavoury tales of Roma boys stealing from local shops, urinating in alleyways and even trying to steal groceries from supermarket home-delivery vans when the driver is unloading.



Sceptics say this is all anecdotal and hearsay, and typical of stories that circulate about incomers.



But there is no denying the mood of tension, or that the authorities are taking it seriously.



As a result, a night ‘curfew’ has been introduced in an attempt to quieten the streets - under Home Office rules allowing the dispersal of any group that may cause trouble.



It means anyone under the age of 16 found on the streets or parks between nine at night and six in the morning can be taken home to their parents.

But residents say the Roma gipsies ignore the rules and the police do not use the order often enough.



Such things would have been unimaginable in Page Hall 30 years ago, when this was a smartly scrubbed area that shared homogenous values.



Gathering: Mr Kandrac, Mr Sandor and Mr Ziga are joined by two unnamed friends

Ah well, you might argue, such changes are inevitable in a fast-changing Britain. But the locals don’t see it that way.



There are lurid accusations on local website messageboards of Roma teenage girls turning to prostitution (charging £3 for every minute of a sex act on the Page Hall main street).

Locals complain about crowds of unruly men spending their days and welfare handouts in the local betting shop and about aggressive gangs of youths pushing old people into the road as they barge past.



It is difficult to distinguish truth from prejudice.



For example, this week the revelation that police are investigating claims about the attempted sale by a teenage Roma boy of a baby, thought to be three or four weeks old, to a couple who own the local fish-and-chip shop further tarnished the reputation of Page Hall.



Warning Mr Blunkett, the former Labour Home Secretary, has warned the increased Roma presence could spark riots

Colin Barton, 54, and his wife, Nichola, say they were shocked when the boy of 16 or 17 walked in with the baby wrapped in a blanket one afternoon in August and said: ‘Do you want to buy this?’



Mr Barton told me: ‘The boy then said the price was £250. I turned round to Nichola and said: “I don’t believe this is happening.”

'When I looked back he was walking out of the shop to a teenage girl and an older woman from the Roma community who were waiting outside.’



The couple reported the matter to a police community support officer, and two formal statements were later taken from Mr Barton by detectives.

His wife was so worried about the baby that she cried this week as she recalled in detail what happened.



The incident was raised by residents at a Neighbourhood Watch meeting held at Page Hall this autumn when formal minutes, which I have been shown, were taken.

They document that the police community support officer at the meeting said ‘investigations were ongoing - this matter was in police hands’.



I have been told that hospital maternity wards in the Sheffield area were alerted and birth records searched by officers anxious to trace the baby-sellers.

Members of the Roma community told me they think the teenage boy was from the Romanian, not Slovakian, gipsy community living in another part of Sheffield.



The extraordinary story was followed by claims this week about a second incident.



A 57-year-old former teacher and grandmother who runs a retail outlet in Page Hall - and was unaware of the fish-and-chip shop incident - said she had been approached in a local park, during the summer of 2011, by a Roma woman who offered to sell her a child.



‘I was walking in Peace Gardens with my grandson when this young girl came up to me and said: “Do you want to buy a baby?” I said: “Excuse me?” three times. I couldn’t believe my ears. I told her she couldn’t just go around selling babies and started to give her a real lecture.’



Dispute: Roma Marian Sandor listens to complaints from locals

The former teacher asked not to be named for fear of retribution. She said: ‘I reported it all to a policewoman soon afterwards but I don’t know whether it was investigated.’



Of course, in Page Hall, where rumours about the Roma spread like wildfire, the baby-selling stories may have stemmed from some kind of misunderstanding.

Yet they have heightened awareness of tensions in the area.



After David Blunkett’s comments about the Roma, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, MP for a neighbouring Sheffield constituency, also spoke out on the issue.

He said the Roma must avoid ‘intimidating’ residents and be ‘sensitive to the way that life is lived in this country’.



He said people find some of the Roma’s behaviour ‘offensive’ and ‘difficult to accept’.



The scale of the problem is shown by the fact that Roma organisations in the UK have estimated that 300,000 Roma - from all over Central and Eastern Europe, but mainly the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria - now live here, as they are entitled to under EU law.

Other more conservative tallies make it 200,000 and rising.



What is certain, though, is that many more thousands are expected to come to settle in Britain when all UK border controls for Romanian and Bulgarians are lifted in January under EU rules.

(At present, those from Romania and Bulgaria can live here only if they are self-employed - many sell the Big Issue to get residency status and be able to claim housing and child benefits.)



And as in Page Hall, communities are bracing themselves for the influx.



Tempers flaring: The dispute becomes more heated as Mr Sandor is confronted by Andrew Harra, 63

Every week, more Roma, mostly from three towns in a poor region of eastern Slovakia, turn up seeking housing, healthcare and school places. This brings inevitable problems.

For example, tuberculosis, once eradicated in Britain, has re-emerged in Sheffield and community workers say there have been cases of children with vitamin D deficiency, which can lead to rickets.



No wonder the locals in Page Hall are worried. Local businessman Kashmir Malik says: ‘We are a civilised community. The last thing anyone wants is riots.



‘What we are saying, though, is this problem can’t go on. Elderly people are too scared to go to the shops as half-naked children run around on the streets.’



The shrinking number of indigenous English people who still live in the area find themselves siding with the Pakistani population who have now been here for three generations.

For their part, the Roma say they have done nothing wrong and they are victims of racism by people who don’t like their gipsy culture.



Marian Sandor, 37, an unemployed Roma father with five children, is indignant at the suggestion that the Roma are causing trouble.



Offering me Slovakian coffee and cakes at a relative’s house in a litter-strewn terrace street, he said: ‘We are not causing trouble. Yet whenever we hang out in the street, the police scream at us to go inside.’



He is adamant that Roma girls are not working as prostitutes. ‘We came here for a new life and for our children to have an education.’



Explaining how they came to Britain to escape discrimination in Slovakia, where they had no electricity or roads to their houses, he said he was shocked to find further discrimination in Sheffield.



On patrol: Some residents have said the police do too little to manage the Roma community

Mr Sandor says most Roma pay rent of about £500 a month to live in small terrace houses but he was angry about the way Pakistani landlords take their money but also want them to leave.

‘They want to throw us out of the British streets they call their own. Yet they are immigrants, too. It does not make sense.’



Up the road, in a semi-detached house, lives Paul Downend, a 46-year-old retail manager, and his wife, Alison, 51, who works at a Yorkshire hospital.

They have watched over the years as immigration has transformed the area.



Paul’s family have lived in Page Hall for five generations but he says it is now ‘becoming a ghetto’.



‘We have welcomed a succession of immigrants over the years - from Pakistan, Somalia and the Yemen. But the Roma are different.

'They are not interested in integrating with the rest of us and want to live in the same way as they did back home.’



He predicts that Page Hall could become a ‘no-go’ area if nothing is done to make sure they change their anti-social behaviour.



Giving one example, he says Romas drive around in cars, speeding, ‘with their children climbing over the seats with no belts on’.



He says his relatives are afraid to visit him because they are frightened of the groups of men on the streets. ‘The authorities like to pretend everyone is getting on together but really it is pandemonium here.’



Outspoken: Local Pakistani Kashmir Malik has expressed the thoughts of many on their new Roma neighbours

Paul is not the only one fearful for the future. Susan Mason, 60, has lived in Popple Street, in the heart of Page Hall, for a quarter of a century.

Today, nearly 30 per cent of houses on this one street are rented by Roma families and some have ten people crammed in them.



Susan says: ‘For me, the boys kicking the footballs at our walls and doors all day and all evening is the worst.

‘You tell these Roma children to keep quiet and they don’t take any notice. You call the police but they don’t turn up.



‘We feel angry because no one in authority is taking any notice of us. We can’t move either because our house prices are dropping by thousands of pounds each year as the Roma move in.’



It’s easy to dismiss such views as small-minded intolerance but a walk down the main shopping street of Page Hall, and countless others, confirms she has plenty to grumble about.



On one street corner, near the halal fish-and-chip shop where the Roma baby was, apparently, offered for sale for £250 three months ago, is a betting shop and a couple of fast food take-aways.



I watched on Wednesday night as up to 30 Roma men gathered, shouting, smoking, laughing, and drinking fizzy soft drinks from cans.

Beside them, a group of teenage girls, in tight mini-skirts and make-up, pirouetted around a large litter bin as darkness fell, waving to passing cars.



Children looking as young as five or six ran in and out of the crowd.



Passers-by, including some in burkas, were forced to step onto the road to avoid the crowds.



Occasionally, a police car went by but never stopped. While I was watching, not a single police officer tried to disperse the throng who, finally, went home.



The head of the local community centre, Gulnaz Hussain, explains that the meeting hall was originally set up with a team of advisers to help newly arrived South Asian migrants to Page Hall.

It is now helping the thousands of Roma, too, and David Blunkett is a regular visitor.



Gulnaz hopes the former Home Secretary’s fears about rioting in the streets will prove unfounded.



‘We are trying to get all the different people to live in closer harmony,’ she says. But she admits there is ‘tension between locals and the Roma and that it has been growing’.



She says that she and her colleagues try to tell the Roma what kind of civil behaviour is expected of them.



‘It is not acceptable for seven-year-old children to be running in the park at 9pm without their parents. It is going to annoy other people if you walk along the street and drop litter when there is a bin.’



Other locals are not so restrained.



They say, quite openly, that they wish the Slovakians had never come to Page Hall and would like them to return home.



Aladar Dunka, a 58-year-old Roma man living on Popple Street with his wife Zdenka, 28, and their two children, has a simple answer to that.

