In the Mirror’s brand new YouTube series Island of Strangers, Real Britain’s Ros Wynne Jones meets the community leader flying all the flags to help rejoin the divisions in his beloved Rotherham
“If you’re going to do flags, do it properly,” Abdul Majid says, turning on the lights at Rotherham’s Unity Boxing Centre. The gym, housed in converted offices vacated by the town’s once-famous steel mill, is decorated with the flags of dozens of countries, glowing in the strip-lights.
“Everyone’s welcome in here,” the 6ft 3 boxing coach says, explaining the flags are a way of recognising the different backgrounds of the hundreds of boxers, young and old, who train here, and of “showing a bit of love to their country”.
Watch the first episode in the Mirror’s extraordinary new series Island of Strangers
The 29-year-old takes us on a geography trip around the flags, laid out above murals of boxing heroes, including his older pro-boxer brother Kash Ali, a European Champion. “We originally started off with England – that’s where I’m born,” Abdul says, pointing up at the flag of St George. “My granddad fought for Britain in Burma in World War II – my dad was very proud of that – and his family settled here.”
He points to the next flag. “My forefathers are from Kashmir, Pakistan,” he says. “Then I remember a kid coming in who was Yemeni… Then we had a Pakistani kid, we had Lebanese kid, we started having Welsh, Romanian gypsies, Poland, Palestine, and then we got up to Turkey and Jamaica and, bit by bit, more countries are coming…”
Abdul told us that after his dad died at the age of just 50, he found his grief wouldn’t lift – and he found new purpose in supporting young people at the gym. “When you look around the gym it’s unity in here,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what country you’re from, what background – we’re all one.”
In the literal and metaphorical shadow of the old steel mill’s still-imposing brick chimneys, the boxing gym in Rawmarsh – an area rich in industrial history but high in deprivation – defies Rotherham’s well-documented divisions.
Once known for its steel, glass and flour mills, in recent years the town has been synonymous with a child sexual exploitation and grooming scandal. The Far Right and other groups have been quick to exploit anger and mistrust.
Last August, during riots based on misinformation following the horrific murder of three little girls in Southport, the Holiday Inn Express in nearby Manvers – which housed people seeking asylum – was violently attacked. 60 police officers were injured, and residents forced to sleep terrified in the woods.
“I think there’s always going to be tests and trials in this town,” Abdul tells us. “There are things in Rotherham that have caused a bit of a divide, from Far Right marches to grooming. So, it’s important we have a positive impact.”
I first visited the gym earlier this year with my colleague Claire Donnelly and the film-maker John Domokos to film for the Mirror’s new ‘Island of Strangers’ video series, which launches today on YouTube. In the aftermath of last summer’s riots, our aim was to listen to communities that had overcome divisions and help them to tell their stories.
We have spent months getting to know four very different corners of the country – Teesside, Merseyside, South Wales and South Yorkshire. Unity Boxing Centre has an extraordinary story to tell. Around 200 young people from Rotherham’s different communities attend sessions that run every day after school under the keen organising eye of Emma Sharp. Coaches include Atif Shafiq – a former professional lightweight boxer who trained with Sheffield legend Brendan Ingle.
But over this summer, Rotherham found itself once again pulling apart. Just as in other towns across Britain, England and Union flags were springing up everywhere, as part of the Raise the Colours protest. Bus stops, roundabouts and white road markings were all turned into England flags. Asylum hotel protests began to spread beyond Epping.
Across Britain the temperature was rising for the second summer in a row. Then, we saw a post from one the Unity Boxing Centre’s coaches, Shahid Shad, on social media. Overnight, someone had graffitied red crosses on to the outside wall of the Rotherham Central Mosque where Shahid helps out.
“As Muslims we’re not offended by the St George’s Cross, but what does offend us is when two cowards come to the mosque and spray paint on the wall,” Shahid said in the post.
“If it was a flag, like I said, we’re not bothered – come and put a Union Jack up, we’re in the process of putting a flag up ourselves – but you come and graffiti the mosque – a place of worship? It’s not nice.”
When we saw him at the gym, he explained to us that as the mosque was being graffitied, a community elder had been locking up. “If he had seen them, he would have said something,” Shahid said. “It could have been a different story.”
Shahid explained people at the mosque were still haunted by the brutal murder of 81-year-old grandfather Mushin Ahmed by two white men because of the colour of his skin. He had been on his way to prayers at the mosque when he was attacked.
We found Abdul struggling with a second summer of unrest. “There’s a lot of division all this stuff going on with the flags, the marches,” he told us. “It’s not a nice place at the moment – social media is very powerful and pushing a lot of people to stand up for the wrong stuff,” he told us. He said he felt Rotherham was on the brink of “going up”.
Coach Atif told us: “It’s like open season isn’t it, people can speak openly about what they feel and there’s no consequence or remorse.”
While we were filming, Douglas Carswell, a former Conservative and UKIP MP who now lives in Jackson, Mississippi, tweeted: “From Epping to the Sea, make England Abdul free.”
But Abdul was drawing on his own motto – “I don’t call it a loss, I call it a learn – win, learn or draw… I never say loss because we’re always learning.”
At the gym, we found the teenagers coached by Abdul, Atif and Shahid, were the ones buoying up the coaches. On a previous visit, Harley Saeed, 18, had told us how the gym had taken him from being a kid who was always expelled to a “proper, real person”.
Now he told us: “I have white friends, Pakistani friends, Arab friends, black friends, I get ideas from them all. Like I’ve got a few English friends who say ‘oh I don’t like this’ and because I’ve got a Pakistani coach I’ll try and even things out. Everyone’s arguing with themselves, but we all bleed the same. It’s not that deep.”
His own journey had mirrored the gym’s. “I’ve had a bit of an injury on my elbow,” he told us. “Not coming here has thrown me off track a bit. I was on a high but now I’ve gone on a dip – but it’s all to get back up to where you were. You’ve got to push and hopefully you get higher. Being here is the most important thing.”
We also met up again with teen twin boxers Leona and Cody Nasser, two of the stars of our film. Cody tells us, “a loss is a learning experience”. She smiles shyly: “They do teach us more than boxing.”
Abdul, unconsciously, echoes her words. “My dad taught us a lot more than boxing,” he says. “Being good human beings, showing love, helping people, trying your best every day to be the best version of yourself.”
Ever the fighter, Abdul added: “What’s happening gives us a push to do more. To show people the positive side.”
Douglas Carswell is wrong. England needs more Abduls.
*You can donate to Unity Boxing Centre through goodhub.com/go/unity-boxing-club-cic
Watch the full Mirror Originals film Rotherham: Searching for Unity on YouTube