In my home town, I see teenage boys being pulled towards Andrew Tate and the ‘manosphere’ | Taj Ali

With inequality and insecurity growing, young men are vulnerable, but in Luton the community is showing them a real alternative

I was 12 years old when the far-right English Defence League (EDL) marched through my town of Luton. Teachers at my all-boys, majority Muslim state comprehensive told us to stay indoors. We were overwhelmingly working-class, the children of taxi drivers and factory workers for whom racist violence was a regular occurrence.

Many of us aligned with people organising the counter-demonstrations against the EDL and soon found other common ground. Alongside antifascism, the activists were vocal on foreign policy issues such as Iraq and Palestine, as well as the domestic issue of austerity.

Taj Ali is a journalist and historian. He is currently writing a book on the history of British South Asian political activism

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.