EXCLUSIVE We live in Britain's 'valley of strangers': Inside Muslim-majority northern town where locals say there is 'no point speaking English' and others say 'no one talks too each other'

Daily Mail​

17-05-2025

Tariq Hussain admits he knew nothing about Keir Starmer 's plans to get tough on immigration, mainly because he's been preoccupied with more pressing concerns lately.
His day job selling traditional Asian female clothes takes up a lot of his time and business has been slow. And when he gets home, he is on the phone to relatives and friends in Pakistan to check on their safety following recent tensions between the country and neighbouring India, which almost led to war.
But there is another more troubling reason why Mr Hussain was completely oblivious to Sir Keir's pledge to overhaul a 'broken' immigration system, despite the fact that it could directly affect him and his family.
Speaking in his native Punjabi he confessed: 'I speak little English even though I have been in this country for quite a long time. I don't watch the British news because I don't understand it, so what's the point?
'All my work involves dealing with other Pakistani people and my friends are all Pakistani so I don't need to speak English. If I do, I get somebody to help me.'
Suggesting that his lack of a formal education in Pakistan where he was born might be the reason for his failure to master the language, he joked in broken English: 'No knowledge without college.'
But Mr Hussain, 57 is not alone in Nelson, Lancashire the town he has called home for the past 20 years.
Once famed for its cotton weaving industry and confectionary factories Nelson made its name and fortune during the industrial revolution, thanks to its strategic location close to the Leeds and Liverpool canal.
But now it is known for something radically different - the local authority in which the town is located, Pendle Borough Council has the highest rate in the UK of residents who cannot speak English well or at all.
Census figures showed that 10.5 per cent of over-3s in Leicester couldn't speak English well or at all – the highest rate in the country.
Similarly high rates were recorded in the London boroughs of Newham (9.4%), Brent (8.5%) and Haringey (8.2%).Yet this analysis, covering every council in England and Wales, included everyone brought up speaking our mother tongue.When looking solely at populations whose main language wasn't English, Pendle topped the table.
Almost 38 per cent of that specific group of over-3s in the Lancashire borough spoke little to no English - and the vast majority of those people live in Nelson.
In some wards in the centre of the town, made up of rows of tightly packed Victorian terraced homes inhabited almost exclusively by people of Pakistani origin, as many as 20% of residents have poor mastery over English.
The former mill town has become a microcosm of the immigration debate raging in the country in which the English language has become central.
Labour have signalled plans to raise English language requirements across every immigration route into the UK in an attempt to increase integration with Sir Keir warning that Britain risked becoming 'an island of strangers.'
But in Nelson some locals claim that it is already a 'valley of strangers' in reference to the lush Pendle Valley on which it was built.
Pakistanis first started arriving in the 1950s and 1960s as mill owners recruited from the country to make up for labour shortages.
In recent years, the town has undergone huge demographic changes. Census data from 2011 showed that 57.8% of its residents were white with 40.4% Asian, almost all of them of Pakistani heritage.
But ten years on to the last census in 2021, the white population now stands at 43% with Asians at 52.6%, making Nelson, which has a total population of just over 33,000, a British-Pakistani Muslim town.
Many of its white residents have either left for outlying areas or moved to Marsden, which is located on a hill at the top of the Pendle Valley and looks down on central Nelson. Two main roads that run through the town have effectively divided it along racial lines.
Take a walk though Nelson's pedestrianised town centre and the sound of Punjabi and Urdu fills the air along with the languages of more recent arrivals: Dari, Kurdish, Arabic, Romanian and Albanian, to name but a few.
Zafar Ali, 65 who moved to Nelson in 1968 was busy rushing to the Lazeez Grill for his lunch and cried in a broad Lancashire twang: 'A lot of the new arrivals from Pakistan and other countries don't make much effort to learn and speak English but it wasn't like that in my day.
'I worked in the mills all my life and after they closed, continued to work. Of course, speaking English is important. But the immigration system is so messed up that they let anybody in, and no Government is bothered if people integrate or work. It's all wrong.'
The popular eatery serves traditional Pakistani delicacies such as masala fish and chapli kebabs, made of finely minced meat. As crowds of diners tucked into the dishes, Mr Ali joked: 'If you like a curry or kebab then Nelson's the place for you.'
But the nearby Lord Nelson pub was doing anything but a roaring trade, which for landlady Samantha Barrett amounted to 'business as usual.'
Five regulars sat around a decrepit bar sipping pints that cost £2.25 each as a 1980s song played in the background. The peeling paint on the walls revealed layers of colours beneath suggesting that the Lord Nelson had seen better days. The soulless atmosphere somehow reflected the town's wider challenges.
The pub is one of only two in Nelson still operating. At one point there were 13. And to further underline the dramatic population change the town has undergone, there are 19 mosques within a 20-minute walk of each other.
Ms Barrett, 39 who has lived in Nelson all her life revealed: 'Business is always bad but then we are a pub in a Muslim majority town so it's never going to be good. Nelson was once a very busy and lively place, but I'll be honest, there's not much mixing between the communities.
'The town centre is dead, a lot of people who live here don't speak English and they certainly don't like a drink.'
She revealed that she rarely has more than six or seven drinkers in the pub at any one time and only one Asian customer who is of Indian origin. On a good day she is lucky to make £500.
Pub regular Sam Bowler, who has lived in Nelson for more than 40 years was harder hitting. She fumed: 'Nelson's a s**thole. There's no community here because people don't speak to each other, and I mean that literally.'
As she stood outside puffing on a cigarette a 12-metre-high weaving wheel threw a long shadow over the town square. It was erected to symbolise Nelson's textile heritage and is jokingly referred to by locals as 'Nelson's column.' But beyond it, there is little evidence remaining of the town's former grandeur.
Empty shops adjoining small independent ones with dated signage offer a range of goods aimed at its predominantly Asian clientele.
A local estate agent displays properties available in central Nelson with the prices highlighting the despair and neglect it has fallen into. A two-bedroom flat costs around £450 per month to rent while some houses are available to buy for around £20,000. It also ranks in the top 10% of most deprived areas in England.
Women in hijabs headed to the Suraj Bazar, which contains dozens of outlets selling a vast range of glittering shalwar kameez, ornate costume jewellery and bright, colourful fabrics. The town's main shopping centre meanwhile located opposite, which once contained mainstream British High Street outlets has been earmarked for demolition.
Azhar, an official at a local mosque and community organiser sat in a local café sipping a steaming hot karak chai, a rich, milky brew made from a variety of spices.
He insisted that he did not want to reveal his real name because he did not want to cause any offence to anyone as he tried to explain the reasons why so many of his fellow citizens have poor English language skills.
For Azhar, a fourth generation British born Pakistani the problem lies with specific groups and not those like him.
He said: 'A lot of our women don't speak English because they don't go out to work and in recent years, we've had a lot of Pakistanis from European countries settling in Nelson because they feel more comfortable here. They might not speak English but they're fluent in Italian or Spanish.
'We've also had a lot of asylum seekers settling in Nelson and people from Eastern Europe. All these groups have pushed up the figures for poor English language speaking. I work closely with all of them so have to be careful what I say.'
Afghan asylum seeker Umid Ehsani was standing outside Mo's barber shop killing time as he clutched an English language study book, having just finished his weekly English language class.
He has only been in Nelson two months after arriving in the UK on a small boat but said that he has dreams to be a professional boxer one day.
Speaking through a fellow asylum seeker friend who has been in the town for six months and speaks more English than him he said: 'One day I want to be fluent in English but at the moment I can't speak with anybody apart from my fellow Afghans.'
Four pensioners of Pakistani origin sat on a bench in the afternoon sunshine and echoed some of the concerns raised by fellow residents of the town.
Basharat Ahmed, 72 who spent all his life working in a mill and then driving buses when it closed said: 'Nelson is a great place, but it's definitely become more divided over the years and a lot of that is because of the new arrivals who have trouble speaking English.'
But for one new arrival, life in Nelson has been surprisingly enjoyable, despite its economic and social problems.
Baligha Sahfi, 24 arrived from Pakistan in 2023 after getting married to locally born man Azmaht Shafi and admitted that she was initially shocked at what she found.
She said: 'I couldn't believe that there were people living here who didn't speak any English. Before I came, I did a course in English and am now trying my best to improve my English language skills because this is now my country.
'I love Nelson and living in England, especially the food. I like fish and chips and cheese and onion pies.'