I grew up in Morley, a working-class Yorkshire town that in the 1980s had one of the largest memberships of the far-right British National Party. We lived just around the corner from the council estate where the local BNP leader had his house.
Every few weeks, nationalist flyers would appear through our letterbox, promising to “take back our streets.” I remember the confusion and anger of reading those words as a young boy, and my mum telling me not to answer the door when they came canvassing for new members. She was terrified of what might happen if they saw us.
In Leeds city centre, I was told to steer clear of the Scarborough Taps pub opposite the train station, historically a known meeting spot for BNP and former National Front members. Even as a child, you learned the map of danger, where not to stand or when to keep your head down.
I remember being followed around shops as a teenager, in places like HMV, M&S, and Debenhams, suspected of shoplifting for no reason other than the colour of my skin. My mum experienced it too. Her own grandmother suggested she put a clothes peg on my nose while I slept – to “keep it a reasonable size”. Racism wasn’t hidden, it was shouted on playgrounds and streets. The monkey chants in the park. I lost count of the fights and times I had to run.
By 16, I saw some of my schoolfriends – people I’d grown up with – change before my eyes; the bomber jackets, the shaved heads, the Doc Martens. They’d talk casually about “P***-bashing,” a deeply offensive phrase sadly commonly heard in the 80s and 90s, even with me in the room. That marked the moment I realised how racism seeps quietly into people’s lives and choices.
Ahley Mills, right. ‘Racism wasn’t hidden, it was shouted on playgrounds and streets. The monkey chants in the park. I lost count of the fights and times I had to run’ (Photo: Ashley Mills)For a mixed-race boy with no father at home, the message to me was clear: I belonged nowhere. My identity, pieced together, part Jamaican, part Yorkshire, fully neither. My mother was born and raised in Morley. She met my father at a blues party near Leeds. Her relationship with him was short-lived but it changed the direction of both our lives. Feeling a lack of belonging, the streets became my classroom and I learned early that survival depended on reading the room, listening closely, sensing danger before it arrived.
Those lessons never left me. But they taught me something that matters today: that resentment is rarely just about skin colour. In towns like Morley, the rage was racial, yes – but beneath it was something deeper. People felt ignored, left behind, invisible in their own country. Fast-forward to 2025 and the faces may have changed, but the disconnect feels, to me, almost identical. I live in Switzerland now but visit family and friends in Yorkshire a handful of times a year.
The ‘Unite The Kingdom’ rally on Westminster Bridge last month. Far-right activist Tommy Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) had urged supporters to gather in London (Photo: Christopher Furlong/Getty)Racism has always been prevalent where I grew up – quite blatant and unapologetic during the 80s and mid-90s – with a noticeable change between 2000 and 2014. Then came the decline again, accelerated around Brexit and Covid. The language may have changed but the sentiment has crept back. Now Reform UK is drawing support not just from extremists, but from ordinary families, people who once voted Labour or Conservative but now feel unheard.
I was shocked recently to see an ex-girlfriend from my teenage years posting proudly about attending the “Unite the Kingdom” march. She’s one of the kindest people I’ve ever known, not angry, just fed up with the state of the country. It made me realise how blurred the lines have become between protest and extremism, between frustration and fury.
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In my WhatsApp group of old friends, a dozen or so men, all educated and successful, I could feel the tension rising. Comments like: “It was a peaceful demonstration, just ordinary people expressing concerns. It’s only the idiots who grab the headlines.” The danger is that the conversation slides from empathy to endorsement without people even noticing.
The same cracks that appeared during Brexit began to open again: arguments about immigration, identity, and who’s really to blame. Even family members, who wouldn’t vote Reform, do sympathise with some of the arguments, mainly around fairness, opportunity, and being heard. Among my friends, though, I’d estimate 10 to 15 per cent will vote Reform. They’re not far-right (at all), they’re professionals, fathers, people with mortgages and good jobs. But they’ve lost faith in mainstream politics and feel that someone like them no longer has a voice.
It is easy to say Reform’s rise is only about racism. But that misses the point. Even as a child, I noticed something else. The same kids who hurled abuse at me were also the ones struggling at home, their dads out of work, their mums exhausted, their prospects dim. In a town scarred by closures, bitterness wasn’t only about difference, it was about scarcity. If you grew up with little, it was easy to see outsiders as a threat to what little you had.
‘Belonging is built in communities, where investment in youth clubs, sports, and mentorship gives kids a chance to be guided, not abandoned’ (Photo: Ashley Mills)Reform’s rise isn’t driven only by anger; it’s fuelled by absence. The absence of stable work. The absence of leaders who show up and listen. The absence of belonging that feels real to these communities. For those of us who grew up fatherless, the parallel is striking. When the traditional guide is missing, you improvise. Communities do the same. What we are living through is not just a political crisis; it is a leadership one.
Class and race collided in a way that left everyone feeling on the margins. I didn’t belong because of my skin. Some of my white friends didn’t belong because of their poverty. Reform now gives language to that shared sense of exclusion.
How can we fix this? The challenge for Britain is not whether identity matters, it clearly does. The question is whether we can build a story of belonging big enough for all of us. Belonging is not built by scapegoating immigrants. It is built in classrooms, where bursaries open doors for children without privilege. I know because an assisted scholarship changed the trajectory of my life, taking me from the chaos of the streets to an education that unlocked new worlds.
I was fortunate to receive a means-tested bursary that allowed me to attend Queen Elizabeth Grammar School in Wakefield, a world away from the environment I’d grown up in. I later went to university but dropped out after my first year, and I’m sure the lack of fatherly guidance played a part in that. Even so, the foundation built at school opened doors that would have otherwise been closed. I went on to work internationally for some of the world’s leading firms.
‘I was fortunate to receive a means-tested bursary that allowed me to attend a grammar school in Wakefield, a world away from the environment I’d grown up in’ (Photo: Ashley Mills)Belonging is built in communities, where investment in youth clubs, sports, and mentorship gives kids a chance to be guided, not abandoned. Flags and chants might make us feel unified for a day, but they cannot sustain a nation. What sustains us is the harder, quieter work of building institutions and relationships that tell every child: you are seen, you have a future here.
I grew up in a Britain that told me to leave, in a town that made me feel I didn’t belong. But I also grew up with neighbours who showed kindness, teachers who opened doors, and communities that, at their best, looked out for one another.
Reform feeds on absence, the absence of belonging and opportunity. If Britain is to move forward, it must reckon honestly with the fractures of race, class, and fatherlessness and reimagine leadership not as dominance, but as presence. Because only when people feel they truly belong will the anger that fuels movements like Reform begin to fade.
Ashley Mills, Built Without a Blueprint, is published on 6 November.
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