Salvationist quits over ‘Muslim’ violence

A Salvation Army officer is quitting the neighbourhood project she set up, after being subjected to violence and abuse.

A grandmother and heroine of the London bombings, Captain JD who set up the Middlesex Outreach Project just three years ago, has recently raised a further £65,000 development funding for the work. Now she is losing the sight in one eye from an arterial bleed she claims is caused by stress.

An imitation gun was left on her doorstep last July, and she has suffered deliberate damage to her car this week, as well as violent abuse from well-heeled Muslim men.

‘xx has been like a tinder box since last summer. There are huge drug gangs coming in from all over the place. It’s just become a free-for-all’.

Things came to a head in December when a man Captain JD described as of ‘ Middle East appearance’ driving a Range Rover tried to park in a disabled space. Captain xx shook her head at him, as the space is reserved for a neighbour with cancer.

‘He was a young man with a baby seat in the back. He just began screaming at me – calling me a khuffar. He shouted that I had to get out of the neighbourhood; that I wasn’t allowed to talk to him, that this was a Muslim area, and that I did not belong there. His fists were going.

‘I just went into the house and collapsed in a heap, crying, shaking. I can’t take much more of this. I feel totally changed.’

Captain JD is no faint heart. She spent three weeks working out of Russell Square in charge of the Salvation Army Silver Command, arranging the rotas and the supply vehicles that responded to the 7/7 underground bombings.

She grew up in Portland, and used to deliver the War Cry to the seamen’s pubs – in the trade-mark bonnet of the Salvationists.

Later she became Business Development Manager of the Maersk Centre at Churchill College Cambridge, before being head-hunted by the QTON Centre at Cambridge Business Park.

She is proud of having set up a five-day-a-week centre from scratch for local people and increased respect in a deeply polarised community in xx Lane, catering for Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus and African-Caribbean people of all ages. Her co-worker, funded by Age Concern, is a Somali Muslim who wears the full niqab with only a slit for her eyes. It was Captain JD who arranged an escort home for the woman, following fears of a backlash after the bombings.

She said: ‘Much as I have loved the community and I have worked hard to get people to respect each other and each other’s faith, I can’t fight any more. You can only take so much.’

She says there’s nobody to replace her – and the area is becoming more ‘radicalised’.

She says Somalis fight over ‘the weed’ when it arrives at the qat rooms – the Somali narcotic that is chewed communally, and to which the authorities turn a blind eye as it is considered ‘cultural’.

‘You knew when it arrived because they would be fighting over it in the street. They would park where they liked. Two Somali guys, well-dressed – would use the disabled space opposite the centre - the guy’s dying of cancer - and I got mouthfuls of abuse. I had to walk away.

‘They told me they were going to smash my face in, beat me up. I told them to calm down, show a bit of respect. If you can’t respect me, then respect your community.’

Muslim separatism is being pandered to by the authorities, she claims. She was subjected to an ‘inspection’ for Christian symbols at her centre by the Somali representative of the Age Concern Steering Committee, while she herself was ‘chucked out’ of the local mosque when she visited because she was a white woman.

The local Methodist Minister’s wife – a black South African – has been threatened with a gun. She says there are big Somali gangs that ‘roam around mugging anybody’. A team of community police officers is being recruited to work on the buses which are used as transport by young men with staves and baseball bats.

The local workwear shop in xx Lane now stocks ‘stab vests’ – which it promotes on a large sign in the shop.

She claims that police statistics do not show up what is really happening. ‘People would not report things, they are afraid of the police going to their houses because they think that will cause more abuse.’