One Year On: Has Birmingham Truly Healed?
It's been a year since that unsettling moment in Birmingham's Bordesley Green—when I, along with my Sky News team, found ourselves surrounded by a group of masked men while reporting live on the aftermath of national unrest. That day, tensions were high across the UK following the Southport attack, and fear had gripped this majority-Muslim community over rumours that far-right protesters were heading their way. The streets filled with locals who were trying to protect their area, and in that charged environment, our team became an unintended target.
As we attempted to leave, things escalated—a man even tried to slash our van’s tyre with a knife. It was chaotic, frightening, and reflective of just how frayed community relations had become. So, a year later, I returned to see if those wounds had started to heal.
What I found was a community still grappling with difficult questions. Naeem Yousef, a local resident, told me people had lost faith in both their elected officials and the police. Their presence on the streets that night, he said, was a form of self-protection. Another local, Tanveer Choudhry, put it bluntly—every community has its “idiots,” and no one can completely control what happens in moments of fear.
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Interestingly, many I spoke to didn’t believe we were targeted for being white journalists. “It was boredom, the heat of the moment,” one said. “They would’ve done it to anyone filming.” Still, others admitted that white people were being seen as ‘the enemy’ that day, which prompted some—like Gerry Moynihan—to stay indoors altogether.
What really struck me was the shifting conversation around identity and immigration. Joe Khann, a Muslim man born in the UK, told me he'd even consider joining anti-immigration protests—not because he’s against migrants, but because he feels the system is being abused and it’s impacting his own community. He knows he’d probably be seen as an outsider if he did. “They’d look at me and think I’m a migrant,” he said, despite being born here.
That frustration echoed in almost every conversation. Questions like, when will we be accepted? How many generations does it take? came up again and again. And while most didn’t blame individuals, there was clear resentment toward how Muslims are portrayed in the media and politics. Several men felt that when a crime is committed by someone who looks like them, religion gets dragged into it—turning Muslims into the national scapegoat.
Before I left, I went back to the roundabout where it all happened last year. Standing there, a man drove by and pretended to shoot at me with his fingers. It was a surreal moment—reminding me that while time has passed, healing is still very much a work in progress.
This is Britain. And for some, it doesn’t always feel like home—even when it is.
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