Sometimes, when compiling this column, I've scanned the news for interesting stories and felt a little envious of those who lived where the action was taking place. I've reflected that there seemed to be little chance of anything happening in my provincial English home city that would make headlines around the world, and I've wished that things could be different.

Which just goes to show that you should be careful what you wish for, because it might just happen. Bradford, where I live, has most certainly made the headlines around the world in the past few days. It has been the scene of the worst rioting seen in Britain for many years. A massive battle between crowds of youths and the police lasted for some nine hours on Saturday night and the early hours of Sunday morning.

Late on Saturday afternoon, the riot passed close to my home. The window of a charity shop opposite my front door was smashed, as were several windows in a row of shops in the next block. But my street got off very lightly compared to White Abbey Road, the street where the main pitched battle between youths and police raged all evening. There, petrol bombs and rocks were hurled at the police, and buildings and cars were burned out. By the end of it all, vast amounts of damage had been done, and around 200 police officers had been injured.

Exactly how it all happened has been the subject of much debate; but some facts do seem clear. The National Front, a loathsome neo-Nazi group, had announced its intention to hold a rally in Bradford last Saturday. A free concert had been scheduled to take place in Centenary Square in central Bradford to mark the end of this year's Bradford Festival, an annual multi-cultural arts event. The National Front were refused legal permission to hold their rally, but threatened to turn up anyway.

As a result, the police decided that they couldn't guarantee the safety of the audience at the free concert, and the event was cancelled. Instead, the Anti-Nazi League organisation held an anti-racist rally in Centenary Square, with speeches instead of music. But with the threat of a fascist invasion looming, the mood was tense. This year had already seen racial tensions boiling over into riots in two other northern English towns, Oldham and Burnley. Some press commentators had speculated that this day might bring Bradford's turn for trouble. But no-one anticipated the scale of that trouble.

The spark that set off the explosion of anger came when an Asian man was attacked outside a pub a short distance from Centenary Square. A few National Front supporters had indeed arrived in Bradford. Finding themselves heavily outnumbered, they'd sloped off for a drink, and were soon emboldened enough to pick on a lone victim. Word reached the crowd in the square, and immediately a mob was on its way to fight the fascists. Taken by surprise, the police charged off after them to try to restore order. They couldn't do so. All they could do was to herd the furious crowd out of the city centre and into the predominantly Asian area of Manningham, where the main confrontation took place.

Beyond these few established facts, there has been much debate and little agreement, as people have tried to make some sense out of what appears to be mindless destruction.

One much asked question has been: 'was it a race riot?' To some extent, clearly, the answer is yes. The presence of white racists provided the catalyst, and the bloody battle that ensued had a mostly Asian mob on one side and a largely Caucasian police force on the other. Some white racists have launched isolated attacks on Asian businesses during the nights since Saturday. There was also a confrontation between a stone-throwing mob crowd and police on a mainly white housing estate, though it never reached anything like the scale of Saturday night's battle in Manningham.

There is also absolutely no doubt that there are severe racial tensions in some parts of Bradford. There have been racist attacks by whites on Asians and vice-versa. There are places here where people from different ethnic groups live peacefully together, but at the same time there have been incidents where people have been harassed and driven out of their homes after moving into the 'wrong' area for their ethnic group. Even so, racial tensions don't provide a complete answer. A sizeable minority of those arrested on Saturday night and Sunday morning were white, and Asian-owned businesses and property was destroyed.

So was it just senseless violence, then? Again, yes - up to a point It doesn't seem to make much sense when people are destroying the areas in which they have to live. The riots certainly did no practical good and hurt the innocent. One of the saddest sights on Saturday was the Oxfam shop opposite my front door with its window smashed. Presumably the repairs will be paid for out of funds that should have been used to help save lives. There is no possible excuse for a lot of what went on.

But to suggest that the rioting was purely criminal violence and had nothing to do with deprivation, as politicians including Prime Minister Tony Blair and Home Secretary (justice minister) David Blunkett have done, is offensive and absurd. Are we expected to believe that it's purely coincidental that such disorder always breaks out in poor areas with high levels of unemployment? When there's a riot in Henley-on-Thames, Harrogate, Cheltenham, Beverly Hills or some similarly prosperous place, then perhaps I'll believe that there is no link between rioting and poverty.

No, I'm sure the Bradford riot was largely about young men (for the rioters were just about exclusively male) demanding attention. Sick of being ignored, they grabbed the chance to feel powerful and important, even if the power they were able to seize was temporary and ultimately self-destructive. They might have achieved nothing constructive, but the next day they would be able to tell themselves and others that they had fought to keep control of 'their' territory. Some local commentators have made much of graffiti in Manningham supporting the militant Muslim terrorist organisation Hamas. But this is surely nothing more nor less than the powerless, in an area where youth unemployment stands at around two-thirds, seeking to identify themselves with the powerful.

Reading the local newspaper's report of the riot on Monday, I was particularly struck by one resonant quote from a Bradford resident named Sajad Hussein:
'The government has got to learn the lesson. They wait for something to happen and then react. They have got to realise that the children throwing the firebombs have got nothing left to lose.'

But will they learn the lesson? It doesn't look that way. Ludicrously, rather than ask why something like this weekend's conflict should have happened, some politicians have busied themselves urging the use of water cannons and tear gas if a situation similar to that on Saturday night ever happen again. This seems like a case of one bit of stupid macho posturing, on the part of the rioters, prompting more of the same from the politicians. True enough, such tactics might have brought the weekend's violence to a swifter end and prevented some of the police casualties, but that would only have suppressed the symptoms. The underlying disease of deep discontent would have remained.

More thoughtful commentators have highlighted the deep racial divisions in some areas of Bradford life. Most of the time, the different ethnic groups get along pretty well. The people of Bradford have repeatedly shown themselves to be capable of working together and - when the city's cultural festivals come around - of playing together. But still the divisions remain. Some schools, because of their catchment areas, end up teaching children from one ethnic group almost exclusively, which hardly helps the cause of multi-cultural understanding.

How can this state of affairs can be changed? More integration is certainly needed, but that would take goodwill on all sides; and after last weekend, that seems in short supply.

Superficially, things seem almost back to normal now. Most of the shops and pubs have re-opened. The mass of vehicles and officers waiting around the main police headquarters in the city centre is the only obvious sign that things are not as they should be. But there is tension in the air, and we know Bradford's troubles are far from being over. After all, this week's news bulletins are hardly likely to encourage investment in Bradford; so the economic conditions that fuelled last weekend's disorder seem unlikely to improve.

Here's a final, cruel irony. Over the past three months or so, I've been slowly but surely assembling a Guide Entry on Bradford. It was intended to highlight the good things in the city without denying the problems that exist there. Before the riot, I'd almost finished it. I still intend to do so. But somehow, I don't think that now would be the best time to submit it for Peer Review.

I think I'll wait for a month or so, in the hope that by then people may be able to think of Bradford without immediately thinking of a hail of petrol bombs raining down on police officers in riot gear.

Perhaps the stress of this past week has addled my mind, but I could swear that I've read a report of President Bush saying something reasonable and liberal. Speaking at a meeting on Ellis Island, New York - the point of entry for 12 million immigrants who moved to America between 1892 and 1954 - Bush announced plans to relax the the USA's immigration laws. He committed America's Immigration and Naturalisation Service to a target of processing all applications for US citizenship within six months, and expressed his support for moves that would allow would-be immigrants to file for legal residency in the USA without having to return to their country of origin.

Addressing an audience including many recent immigrants, Bush said:
'Immigration is not a problem to be solved, it is a sign of a confident and successful nation. Their [immigrants'] arrival should be greeted not with suspicion and resentment, but with openness and courtesy.'

I don't know to what extent these welcoming words are reflected on the ground, in practical policy. But the contrast in tone between Bush's apparent benevolence and some of the rhetoric we've heard from British politicians lately could hardly be more striking.

Here, during the recent General Election campaign, we had the main parties competing with one another to see who could make the harshest noises about 'asylum seekers'¹. The Conservatives declared that if they came to power, anyone coming to Britain and claiming political asylum would be thrown into a detention centre while their application to live in Britain was being processed.

Thankfully, they lost the election; but the Blair administration gets in its own quota of foreigner-bashing. Asylum seekers are needlessly humiliated by being denied the right to work and being given most of their welfare benefits in food vouchers, so that when they go to the supermarket, they're forced to draw attention to their immigration status.

I've often noticed people using the vouchers whilst queuing at the checkout of my local supermarket in Bradford; and with the racial tension in the city being what it is at present, I'm sure it's more than usually uncomfortable for them. The voucher system seems like an entirely unnecessary difficulty imposed on people who are already in an uncomfortable situation a long way from home. I can't see that it would hurt Britain to let them have their pittance in cash.

However, in another area of British political life, there are signs that the liberal point of view is finally winning a long battle. The Blair administration is nothing if not responsive to public opinion, and it appears that someone there has finally twigged that the UK government's inflexible refusal even to debate the possibility of legalising cannabis no longer reflects the will of the people.

First, some of the contenders for the Conservative Party leadership had expressed support for further discussion on the subject. Then Peter Lilley, the former deputy leader of the party, explicitly called for cannabis to be legalised, saying:
'We are forcing cannabis users into the arms of hard drugs pushers. It is that link I wish to break.'

As recently as last week, the Government was sticking to its traditional hard line on the subject. Asked for an official response to Lilley's remarks, the Prime Minister's official spokesman said on Friday:
'Cannabis is dangerous, it does cause medical problems, cancer, hallucinations - therefore the position has not changed... The government is aware that there is a debate going on. But the government has made its position very clear.'

But public discussions on the subject repeatedly support the movement to change the law. Here at BBC Online, a vote on legalising cannabis has produced a towering majority in favour of legalisation². It strongly suggests that either those of us who spend a lot of our time on BBC Online are exceptionally decadent and dope-addled, or that the government is out of step with the public.

By last Sunday, Home Secretary David Blunkett was taking a much more ambivalent line than the PM's spokesman had done just two days previously. In a TV interview, he said:
'There is room for an adult, intelligent debate but it isn't "are you for or against?" It's let's think, let's consider, let's not be pushed by articles in newspapers or hysteria.'

He stressed that nothing was about to change overnight, adding:
'I have no intention of making a change in government policy out of the blue. If I have anything further to say on the issue I will do so in a considered fashion in my own time.'

But Blunkett has already expressed his approval of the experiment in Lambeth, south London, where the police have announced that they will no longer prosecute people found with small amounts of cannabis. Occasionally, in a democracy, a law ends up being changed because it is so unpopular and so widely flouted that it brings the whole rule of law into disrepute, and becomes more trouble than it is worth for the authorities to try to enforce it. I get the distinct feeling that, for the present British cannabis prohibition law, that time has come.

Ormondroyd

12.07.01. Front Page

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