It is mid–afternoon on a high street in one of the most deprived areas of Scotland and a young man is openly snorting cocaine in a doorway.
A few yards away, schoolchildren on bicycles are selling drugs while emaciated heroin addicts line up for methadone at the local chemist.
Dealers like to recruit children because the chances are the court will let them off with a slap on the wrist. And that means they could be back on the graffiti–fouled streets – back in business – within hours.
Overlooking the scene are the ‘multis’ – high–rise blocks of flats dating back to the 1960s, which are nicknamed ‘Fort Apache’ because of their violence and squalor.
Welcome to Lochee, a district of Dundee which was once a hub of the city’s jute industry but is now likened by many of its inhabitants to the Bronx. It becomes a ‘ghost town’ after 5pm because the law–abiding fear to tread the streets.
Lochee came under global scrutiny last Saturday after a confrontation was captured on a smartphone between two schoolgirls and a Bulgarian man outside Farmfoods, just off Lochee High Street.
A 12-year-old girl has been charged with possession of offensive weapons, and while the details of exactly what happened are disputed, the reaction was swift as Elon Musk and Tommy Robinson, among many others, seized on the video to claim the man filming the exchange was a migrant.
Others lauded the girl as a ‘Braveheart’ figure defending her homeland from a predatory aliens. Comparisons with the Asian grooming–gang scandals of Rotherham and Rochdale were cited.
A 12-year-old girl’s stand-off with a Bulgarian man has cast a spotlight on Lochee
Lochee’s ‘multis’ are known for violence and squalor, with the area like a ghost town after 5pm
The suggestion that the Bulgarian – Fatos Ali Dumana, 21 – had been harassing the girls has been debunked, but police delays in providing clarification of the circumstances stoked rampant online speculation.
For his part, strict Christian Mr Dumana, who says he came to Britain legally with his wife and their eight-month-old baby, told the Daily Mail this week that he was ‘praying for them’.
The fallout from the extraordinary episode comes as racial tension continues to rise across the UK amid asylum-hotel protests and the Labour Government’s failure to get a grip on the small-boats crisis – and there is no doubt those tensions exist in Lochee, as the Mail discovered during its investigation of the district, home to around 20,000 people.
Lochee is a microcosm of wider national decline, much of which took place under an SNP local authority – and an SNP government – which many locals feel has utterly abandoned them. This is despite nearly 60 per cent of the electorate in Dundee backing Scottish independence in the 2014 referendum.
It might seem an irony to some that the local SNP MP, pony–tailed Chris Law, lives in a 15th–century castle near Kirriemuir, about 20 miles from the city, and owns properties in Aberdeen and Dundee.
Lochee was historically a predominantly Irish enclave known as ‘Tipperary’, whose proud residents regarded themselves as living in a distinct community.
Famed in its heyday as the city of ‘jute, jam and journalism’, Dundee was a thriving industrial hub employing thousands in the production of flax and jute – the material used for sacking – until the mills closed in the 1980s, leading to rising unemployment and sowing the seeds of a drugs-death epidemic which still claims roughly one victim a week.
The park where the confrontation between the 12-year-old girl and Bulgarian man took place
Lochee was seen as the capital of ‘Juteopolis’, the city’s nickname.
Towering over Lochee is the 282ft Cox’s Stack, an industrial chimney constructed as part of the Camperdown Works jute complex which, at the time of completion, was the largest in the world – a symbol of Dundee’s power and influence in times gone by.
The only other structures looming over modern Lochee are the ‘multis’ housing a large number of migrant families and addicts – just yards away from the roadside verge where Mr Dumana crossed paths with the two girls.
And that’s not far from the spot where scientist Dr Fortune Gomo, 39, originally from Zimbabwe, died after an alleged street attack in July. A man has appeared in court charged with her murder.
Then there was the case of a 55-year-old taxi driver murdered in 2022 – again, nearby. He was killed by a serial thug who pushed him down a grassy slope who repeatedly kicked and stamped on his defenceless victim’s head before abandoning him to his fate.
So the denizens of Lochee are in no way surprised by the bleak tale of the schoolgirl and the migrant.
Shoppers at Farmfoods said weapon-carrying was ‘normal’ among children and it would be more unusual to find a teenager who didn’t carry a knife.
The 282ft Cox’s Stack is a reminder of Dundee’s power and influence in times gone by
One of Mr Dumana’s neighbours said: ‘We’re in Lochee – anything can happen.’
Near a rusting metal sculpture commemorating the area’s industrial heritage is Kelly’s Bar.
Standing outside, retired joiner Vince Mitchell, 66, said the neighbourhood has become a ‘ghetto’, adding: ‘There was once a real feeling of a community and everybody knew one another – but now that’s gone completely.
‘I don’t think most people are racist but they’re angry when they see migrants who seem to get everything handed to them, whatever the truth of it.
‘The multis are full of addicts and migrants, and the kids don’t fear the law. You hardly ever see the police.
‘No one cares about the state of the place, it’s been allowed to deteriorate and the SNP have done nothing for us.
The MP George Galloway, who grew up in Lochee, bemoans the loss of community there
A boarded-up pub is emblematic of Dundee’s decline since its industrial heyday
‘A lot of people wanted independence and I voted SNP but I never would again – next time I will vote Reform.’
Nigel Farage’s party is clearly picking up votes in Lochee, though Reform wasn’t able to put up any representatives for interview. Its candidate for Dundee Central at the last General Election is based around 20 miles away in Perth, the site of protests last weekend over a hotel housing asylum seekers.
Former Labour MP George Galloway, who grew up in Lochee and visits regularly, said support for Reform is a ‘mile wide and an inch deep’, though he admits his own Workers Party of Britain has failed to gain much traction.
He said: ‘We always regarded ourselves as being from Lochee – nobody in the area would say they were from Dundee, they would say they’re from Lochee, back in the 1950s and 1960s.
‘I was in a teenage gang called the Lochee Fleet which was relatively benign – we certainly never carried machetes or axes, which seems to be the case now.
‘What we saw in that viral clip was a very sorry sight. When I lived in Lochee, there was a great sense of community, which has been lost.
‘The demographic has changed utterly – there wouldn’t have been a single person of colour when I was child.
‘Inevitably, when local people are poor and helpless and live alongside people of colour, the blame for their poverty and helplessness gets transferred to them. Meanwhile the SNP has presided over a really steep decline.’
The percentage of people in Dundee with a minority ethnic background increased from 10.6 per cent in 2011 to 16.6 per cent in 2022, higher than the Scottish average of 12.9 per cent.
Dundee has an unemployment rate of 6.4 per cent, almost twice the national average
Lochee is home to a wide mix of nationalities which, according to locals, is largely Eastern European.
The percentage of people living in the city who were born outside the UK increased from 9 per cent to 12.9 per cent between 2011 and 2022.
The largest increases were from ‘other European Union’ nations and countries in Asia and the Middle East.
Sitting in a bar on the high street – a patchwork of bookies and charity shops – Galloway’s friend David Martin, 64, said: ‘People are terrified to go out on the streets and you only ever see the local police when they go to the bakery to pick up their lunch, then drive off again.
‘We used to have a mill employing 6,000 people but a lot of people who grew up here moved away long ago, and the place is so dangerous that it becomes a ghost town in the evenings – you won’t see anyone around.
‘There’s no sense of identity and when you have kids going round with weapons and no one really thinks it’s much of a surprise, that tells you all you need to know.
‘I don’t vote but the SNP has done nothing – and we’ve got an MP who lives in a castle.’
A homeless man walking the streets with his dog said he gives the centre of Lochee a wide berth because of large groups of migrants, sometimes drinking alcohol. He said: ‘The only way to survive is keep to yourself – I just keep walking.’
Another drinker in one of the handful of pubs on Lochee High Street said the only evidence of entrepreneurial spirit was a brothel operating in a nearby house. It was generally believed to be staffed by Thai women, he said.
According to the Office for National Statistics, around 4,300 people aged 16 and over in Dundee were unemployed in 2023, a rate of 6.4 per cent.
That’s an increase from 5.2 per cent the previous year. Across Scotland the unemployment rate is 3.5 per cent. But in Lochee, nearly a fifth of the working–age population is jobless.
Dundee City has a male life expectancy at birth of 74 and 79 for women, well below the UK average of 79 for men and 83 for women.
Cycling by the pharmacy which keeps the local addicts topped up on heroin substitute methadone, another resident said: ‘I regularly get approached by kids offering me crack cocaine – “do you want some white?”
‘The dealers know nothing will happen to these kids if they’re caught – they’re not old enough to shave but they’re selling crack in the streets.
‘Crack cocaine is without doubt the biggest problem in this place – not immigration.’
There were 46 drug–related deaths in Dundee City in 2023, up from 38 deaths reported in 2022, part of a nationwide addiction crisis which has seen Scotland have the highest number of drug fatalities in Europe.
Dundee is second only to Glasgow for drug–related mortality.
Strath Martin, 63, said addiction was a far greater problem than immigration and the area was being exploited for political ends.
He said: ‘The area has its problems and like a lot of other places it has seen decline but I don’t think race is the biggest one, it’s drugs.
‘When you see young people with weapons, you have to remember they probably grew up around addict parents and saw violence, which they then copied.
‘Drugs are a huge problem. A lot of people do what they call “wake and bake” – they get high on whatever drugs they can before they get up, so they can tune out as they can’t face the day without it.’
Mr Law, SNP MP for Dundee Central, failed to respond to our enquiries. Neither did any of the four councillors for the ward (three from the SNP and one representing Labour).
In the flat where he lives with his wife and baby, Mr Dumana said he was praying for the girls who, like him, have been plunged into a still-raging social media firestorm.
He said: ‘They are only girls – this should not be happening. But there are many dangerous people here, and so much addiction.’
That simple assertion remains perhaps the only fact beyond contention amid the toxic swirl of misinformation surrounding the bleak events of last weekend.
