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Police see politics in Oldham riots

Shyam Bhatia
India Abroad Correspondent in London

British security forces are still investigating the race riots that have hit parts of the country in the past few weeks in a bid to establish whether the unrest was premeditated or the result of spontaneous anger in some towns and cities of northern England.

The worst affected area has been Oldham near Manchester where at one stage last month some 500 Pakistani youths hurled petrol bombs and bricks at the police who tried to keep them apart from racist supporters of the British National Party and the National Front.

Since then the far-right BNP has made significant gains in last week's general election by polling 16 and 11 per cent of the total vote in two Oldham constituencies.

Police believe there is a link between the election and the rioting in Oldham, a town populated by poor whites and a diverse ethnic community dominated by Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Indians.

In the Oldham neighbourhood of Glodwick, where the disturbances first started, unemployment is estimated at 40 per cent and signs of poverty stare visitors in the face.

The South Asian communities that live here have accused successive British governments of ignoring their plight.

"When the Asian youth of Oldham start throwing petrol bombs, fighting the police and roaming the streets in search of fascist gangs, it's no good telling them to go home and be proud of chicken tikka masala," says renowned Indian television producer and critic Farouk Dhondy.

"Instead one should recognise that this is an immigrant community whose history has been governed by the death of Britain's manufacturing base."

Dhondy warns that the next stage for these disaffected British Muslims will be to identify and join up with Islamic fundamentalist groups.

"They are Muslims," explains Dhondy. "When they get fed up with being characterised as unemployed, unskilled, uneducated and unemployable, the lure of Islamic fundamentalism will be at their elbow."

Urban affairs analyst Charles Brocklehurst, a former government consultant on inner cities, does not share Dhondy's pessimism. "The problem with places such as Oldham is that they have lost their raison d'etre," he explains. "There are so many northern towns that are tired, ancient places whose industry has all but disappeared. Oldham is dominated by a 1960s road system and lots of dreadful housing."

But Brocklehurst believes there is hope. "It's tempting to write it off and say 'Nuke the place', but it can be changed. Look at Halifax with the Dean Clough project. Clapped-out mills can be transformed to make new workspace. Newcastle-on-Tyne has found a way through culture and leisure and planners haven't stopped executive housing from being built. Leicester is a big Asian town and it's humming, with every inch taken up by thriving businesses. Outside investors pick up on the self-confidence and like it."

British politicians deliberately distanced themselves from the race issue during the election. In fact, there seemed to be an unwritten agreement between Labour leader Tony Blair, Conservative leader William Hague and Liberal Democrat Charles Kennedy to ignore the subject. None of them found it convenient to visit Oldham on the eve of the election.

"What is really amazing and weird is that you have a riot in the middle of an election and nobody skips a beat -- they just carry on," says Gary Young, a black columnist with one of Britain's leading daily newspapers. "It's like some kind of child dies at your feet and you just walk over it."

The race problem was alluded to indirectly by both Blair and Hague, who talked during the campaign of the need for stricter anti-refugee policies. Britain has become to some extent a multi-cultural nation, incorporating non-white immigrants from the Caribbean, Africa, the Indian subcontinent and China.

Last year, more than 100,000 people applied for political asylum. Not all of them were genuine. Many were using allegations of political persecution to apply for better-paid jobs in booming Britain.

The arrival of new immigrants has helped to uncork the racist genie in British society by threatening historical national feelings of superiority over non-white foreigners.

"There is a deep inheritance of racist ideas in British culture," says Chris Myant, a spokesman for the Commission for Racial Equality, which monitors the government's record on race. Myant, who is in his mid-50s, says as a child he was raised on books "full of racist messages based on the assumption that we were top of the world and rightly so".

But for the new generation of non-whites, such glib assumptions of the past are totally irrelevant and unacceptable. Second- and third-generation immigrants may look Bangladeshi, Indian or Pakistani, but they speak with thick Manchester accents and, unlike their parents, consider themselves British enough to fight back when provoked.

Their consistent complaint is that the establishment is biased against them, like the police in Oldham, and tends to give more weight to whites against non-whites.

They cite as an example the Oldham Evening Chronicle newspaper whose offices were burnt down during the recent troubles. The complaint against the newspaper is that it failed to print reports that were fair to both sides of the colour divide.

"There is a feeling that the police have been heavy-handed," says Tanvir Hussain, secretary of a mosque in Oldham. "Most Asians will not go forward to the police when they are victims of racial harassment because they won't be taken seriously."

As if their own troubles were not enough, members of the South Asian community have also become targets of a racist hate campaign led by political groups such as the National Front.

The BNP on the other hand has taken a more overtly aggressive role by exploiting a recent incident in which three Asian teenagers attacked an elderly white man in suburban Oldham.

BNP extremists are also believed to be behind a series of raids on shops and other properties belonging to Asians. As the summer unfolds they have declared their intention of holding high-profile rallies to attract more supporters and deliberately provoke the Asians into confrontations.

"People could get killed," warns Dr David Baker, a Warwick University expert on the British far right. "In race politics lives are on the line and this is the first time in quite a few years that one has felt that."

Like Baker, senior police personnel also forecast a long, hot summer. "It is like lighting a fuse and then running away to watch the bomb go off," says one police source. He, however, denied allegations that police are more sympathetic to the white community.

Yet one of Britain's senior policemen, Chief Superintendent Eric Hewitt of the Greater Manchester police, is quite blatant about where responsibility lies for racial unrest in his area in and around Oldham.

Referring to a number of incidents in Oldham where some whites were attacked by Asian youths roaming the streets, Hewitt said: "Whites are being attacked with knives, blocks of wood, bats and bricks. I am afraid that because of the number and severity of attacks, someone will be killed. I am concerned that unless people take some really positive initiatives in supporting the police, there is a very real danger that in some no-go areas this could happen."

EARLIER REPORTS:
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Oldham race riot continues for second day

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