Locals play down Harlow’s reputation as hate crime hotspot

Monika Stockiene had never felt unsafe in Harlow since moving from Lithuania seven years ago. But after a Polish worker was killed by a group of teenagers near a local shopping centre she is having second thoughts.

“Now even my friends from Lithuania are calling me because they are concerned about my safety. It’s really strange,” the 32-year-old said, overlooking a pile of flowers laid down in memory of Arkadiusz Jozwik.

Recent events in the town, 30 miles north of London, have raised concerns for the safety of immigrants living in the UK, particularly from the eastern parts of the EU.

The Polish foreign and interior ministers were flown into the UK on short notice on Monday to seek assurances on the safety of their countrymen, after two Poles were injured in Harlow in a second attack just hours after a mass vigil for Mr Jozwik, whose killing is being investigated as a possible hate crime.

But while the town has taken centre stage in the media as a symbol of the growth in hate crime, many locals shrug off the political significance of recent events.

“Why are they trying to make it political now?” asked Vivian Bisoni, a retired nurse, who has been living in Harlow for more than 60 years. “We have had trouble here for many years and no one ever wanted to know anything about it.”

Constructed as a so-called new town in the aftermath of the second world war, Harlow ranks as the second-most deprived local authority in Essex. “It’s not a very nice place to die,” said Ms Bisoni, pointing out the dirty pavement around the flowers laid out for Mr Jozwik.

For many locals, the attacks are the outcome of years of neglect on behalf of the authorities rather than a sudden mounting of racial tensions.

Hayat Amini, who runs a pizza takeaway a few yards from where Mr Jozwik was fatally wounded, said he had dealt with a hostile environment for years.

“A couple of years ago they threw a brick into the window of my shop,” he said. “The kids have been causing trouble here for a while. But I don’t think it is necessarily racially motivated. When they are drunk and high on drugs anyone can turn into a target. It could have been you or me.”

But the attacks in Harlow come against the backdrop of an increase in hate crime across the country following the UK’s vote to leave the EU. In the month after the referendum on June 23, police registered a surge of more than 20 per cent in reported hate crimes.

Assaults on the Polish community, the UK’s largest immigrant population, have been widely reported, since a community centre in the Hammersmith area of London was vandalised just days after the vote. The Polish embassy pointed out this week that its consuls had to intervene 15 times in the past weeks in “xenophobic incidents” that included “arson, physical assault, hateful graffiti and intimidation”.

Witold Waszczykowski, Polish foreign minister, insisted during his visit that the “hardworking” Polish community in the UK “deserve[s] to be protected” after a “very heated” referendum campaign.

But back in Harlow, Jacek Gora, who is running the Polish deli where Mr Jozwik used to shop, said relations between immigrants and natives had not changed since the Leave vote.

Still, Mr Gora worried that the attacks could lead to mounting tension in the local community: “The danger is that the Poles are angry now because of what happened, but if we are too loud, that might make the English angry in their turn.

“I am just afraid that the one thing that happened could destroy everything.”

Additional reporting by Henry Foy in Warsaw