Warnings a decade ago that Barking was becoming a segregated home for extremists

THE London borough of Barking and Dagenham, where 12 people were arrested yesterday in connection with the terrorist attack, has struggled with racial tension for decades.

Dame Margaret Hodge, the Labour MP for Barking since 1994, warned as long ago as 2006 that the area was becoming ghettoised, one of the problems identified by Theresa May as she responded to the terrorist attack.

Mrs May said the “public sector” had to play its part in ensuring that society was integrated rather than being “a series of separated, segregated communities” where extremist ideology could take hold.

Aides said the Prime Minister was referring to councils taking responsibility for ensuring their tenants were housed in mixed neighbourhoods, rather than concentrating Muslims.

Last year an independent review into integration carried out by Dame Louise Casey, on behalf of the Government, warned that “community cohesion” was not as strong as it should be, and that “a more integrated society... would improve our resilience in responding to extremism and terrorism”.

According to a report by the Henry Jackson Society, which examined every terrorist attack and plot in Britain between 1998 and 2015, militants most commonly came from highly-segregated and heavily Muslim areas, with one in 10 terrorists coming from five local authority areas in Birmingham.

Almost two thirds of terrorist offenders lived in areas where Muslims made up more than 20 per cent of the total population.

Fewer than one in 10 offenders came from areas where Muslims made up less than 5 per cent of the population. Dame Margaret said in 2006 that the “allocation of public resources” was stoking tension in Barking, because the indigenous white population felt they were being pushed to the back of the housing queue by migrants.

She wrote at the time: “[They] can’t get a home for their children, they see black and ethnic minority communities moving in and they are angry.

“This is about a rebalancing; listening and responding to a strongly felt sense of unfairness in the allocation of public resources.

“In lancing that boil, we could do much to promote understanding which leads to better tolerance and integration in our society.”

She said the perceived injustice was fuelling the rise of the BNP in Barking, which went on to take 11 of the 51 seats on the local council in 2006.