One year after the riots, there are still reasons to be optimistic about race, even in towns like Burnley, but a failure of leadership has allowed racist myths to flourish.

Shahid Malik
Sunday June 30, 2002

A year ago this week I lay in a hospital bed, handcuffed and guarded by two police officers after having been assaulted by some of their colleagues. And all this while playing a peacekeeping role during the Burnley riots - a rude awakening indeed for someone who had began to believe his own rhetoric, namely, that 21st century Britain was a society at ease with its diversity.
Prior to the riots, Burnley had been famous for two things, its cotton, and of course its football. It was said that the weavers of Burnley wove for the country before breakfast and the rest of the world after breakfast. And in terms of football, who could forget the FA cup final victory where we beat Liverpool one 1-0. Admittedly that was 1914.

Burnley's riots were of course preceded last summer by Oldham's race riots, and followed by those in Bradford, where some 140 police officers were injured. Just when we hoped it couldn't possibly get worse, May's elections we saw the BNP capture three council seats in Burnley - with a staggering near 1 in 3 Burnley people voting BNP.

Even for the most hardened band of eternal optimists, and I still count myself as one, the last twelve months have proven to be a profound test of faith.

During this period, issues of race, immigration, asylum and national identity have been both confused and often confusing - either due to attempts to conveniently merge them or to pretend that they are mutually exclusive.

Sadly it appears that all this is an action replay of the kind of race discourses we had in the 60s and 70s, which also lacked width and depth. Equally depressing perhaps has been the lack of any real will to act on the part of many in local leadership positions, paid or elected. Inertia and paralysis rule.

We are told that the problem is apparently that we are segregated society in terms of race and faith and that " blacks lead parallel lives". And the rocket science solution - integration. Of course the headlines could quite easily have read "whites lead parallel lives", but here, alas, lies the crux of the tension - do we want integration or is the objective simply the assimilation of various ethnic minorities into the ethnic majority culture.

If the latter, then what is this majority culture? Politicians will often speak about the need for ethnic minorities to adopt British norms. Stop and ask fifteen white people on the street, what are these British norms, you will invariably get fifteen often very different responses. The reality is that there is a need to assimilate all cultures into a new as yet undefined and ever evolving British culture.

Integration of course is part of the solution but in isolation it can be meaningless. As a commissioner to the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland I can tell you that there are many educational institutions which are mixed, and yet the propensity for individuals to engage in sectarianism is no less prevalent. Merely squashing people together will not work.

If we are serious in terms of education then our curriculum, materials, teachers and senior management need to reflect the local community in all its diversity, and help develop a common set of core values that draw young people together and turn them into healthy adults.

The biggest obstacle to racial harmony in this country is the pervasive institutional racism that exists, while we don't appear to have a responsible and committed local leadership that can challenge it.

During the Burnley and Oldham riots, one of the key issues was regeneration funding and how it was alleged to disproportionately target ethnic minorities. The reality in both areas was that nothing could be further from the truth. Unfortunately nobody bothered to tell the people of Burnley and Oldham this.

Yes, it has to be said that the local media was at best over-zealous in putting to print the malignant voices of right wing discontent - it makes for good print. But blaming Burnley Express or Oldham Chronicle is too easy - the reality is that local leaders had failed to rebut the lies and half-truths that had become endemic. Failure to crush myths ensured they become a reality for far too many people.

Progressives have not won the argument about our society. We have not created an environment where people are happy allow public funds to go to deprived areas - irrespective of the ethnic origin of its inhabitants. The issue here is not one of preferential treatment or positive discrimination or political correctness - whatever that means. It is about creating a society that accepts that public funds should prioritise those in greatest need and that, when we successfully do so, we all benefit.

So one year from those damaging race riots - what is the impact on community life? Some four weeks ago the leader of the BNP in Burnley was quoted in the local press saying that racist chanting was harmless and part of the spectator sport of football - responding to Burnley football club's laudable decision to dish out life bans for anyone caught using racist chants.

And the response from the local leadership? Well we're still waiting for it. Sadly, this has become the depressing norm for far too many in local leadership positions across the country - either because of the fear of challenging the far right or because they subscribe to the deeply flawed belief that the best way to deal with the likes of the BNP is to pretend that they don't exist.

This unwitting collusion between local leaders and the far right over a sustained period has delivered handsomely for the BNP at the ballot box.

If we are to defeat the far-right then our leaders must challenge them at every opportunity. The real battle for hearts and minds is on the doorstep and that means leaving the comfort of the armchair and shifting from the esoteric discourse with those already onside.

In spite of everything that has happened this year, perhaps we can find a glimmer of hope, not least from football. The beautiful game has for far too long the BNPs recruiting ground of choice - in part because it habitually excluded Britain's ethnic minority communities from both its pitches and its terraces.

The World Cup has been a revelation with Japanese England fans outnumbering our own, with turbaned Sikh's flying St Georges' flag from their cars, with British mosques saying special prayers for the England team - itself a powerful image of a multicultural nation united. Can the connection be made? It will require much stronger leadership on race than we have seen so far.

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