LONDON LETER:The Labour Party uses code carefully in its attempt to get votes from whatever quarter
FROM THE 1950s, Oldham near Manchester drew in large numbers of west Indians and Pakistanis to work in the town’s mill, followed in the 1960s by immigrants from Bangladesh.
In time the mills went, but the immigrants remained – poorly educated, discriminated against and unwilling or unable to integrate, leaving the town with a toxic racial mix to seethe and live unhappily apart.
In April 2001, three Asian youths mugged a 76-year-old, white, second World War veteran named Walter Chamberlain as he walked home from a rugby match, leaving him lying on the pavement badly beaten and with broken bones.
His family did not believe it was a racially inspired mugging, but photographs of his battered face appeared in local and national newspapers.
"'Beaten for being white: OAP, 76, attacked in Asian no-go area", read the Mirror's headline. The Mailsaid: "Whites Beware".
In May that year, riots came to Oldham’s streets, the first of a series that summer in northern English towns, although Oldham’s episode was described as the worst for 15 years.
The mugging was seen as the spark for the riots – a view fuelled by the British National Party – but it could have been any one of the dozens of incidents that had occurred in the town, with victims of all colours and creeds.
The centre of the disturbances was Glodwick, in the town’s south-central district, which had become ethnically polarised in the years before and described as a no-go area for whites. Other parts of the town were barred to Asians.
Millions of pounds was invested in the town by the Labour government in the years afterwards, while report after report was written about the town’s undeniable social, economic and political problems.
In 2006, Prof Ted Cantle praised the efforts that had been made, but said many did not want to change. “Segregation and divisions between Oldham’s communities is still deeply entrenched,” he said. “If you want to change a community, the community must want to change.”
Some community leaders were not doing enough to help because they were worried about losing their local power-base, remaining stubbornly unwilling “to get out of their comfort zones”, Prof Cantle warned.
Segregation was rife: 98 per cent of Grange School’s pupils were Bangladeshi, 1 per cent Pakistani, and 1 per cent white.
In Breeze Hill, 94 per cent were Asian or black. In Counthill, the situation was reversed, with 93 per cent white. Four-fifths of Pakistani and Bangladeshi primary school pupils are in mostly non-white schools. No matter how bright the children, standards are low, with just a quarter getting five GCSEs – the equivalent of a pass Leaving Certificate in Ireland.
The town’s racial background is key to understanding the decision of Labour Oldham and Saddleworth MP Phil Woolas to accuse his Liberal Democrat opponent of having ties to extremist Muslims in this year’s election. Everyone, or at least anyone in Labour who should have known, knew of his tactics, because local campaign literature was reported on at the time and collated by internet monitoring websites during the campaign.
Last Friday, High Court judges barred him from holding his seat, saying he knew his allegations were false, and found him guilty of misrepresentation, not racism. Ordering a byelection, they barred him from being a candidate for three years.
Labour’s leadership has washed its hands of Woolas, with Harriet Harman saying that telling lies in election campaigns is not part of what Labour does.
Many MPs, mostly Labour ones, are furious, believing judges have opened a Pandora’s Box where future election results will be contested by the score in the courts.
Labour MPs accept Woolas pushed the immigration issue to its limits, fearful he would lose his seat unless Sun-reading whites in the town came out to vote.
However, he played the race card openly, while his party played it more surreptitiously: remember Gordon Brown’s 2007 declaration to keep “British jobs for British workers”.
The Woolas team’s campaign to “get the white vote angry”, says Dan Hodges of Labour Uncut – a website run by Labour party members – was not an aberration They were deploying a localised variation of a national strategy.
“When we, as a party, call for British jobs for British workers, or a ‘debate’ on immigration, we are speaking in code. And when the code is deciphered it says, ‘We think you’re racist, but we don’t care. We want you to vote for us anyway’,” he said.
Oldham and Saddleworth is now without an MP. Woolas, cut adrift by his party, is without a salary and struggling for funds to pay for his Court of Appeal challenge next week, although MPs are chipping in to help him.
The only bright spot is Oldham council’s decision earlier this year to merge its segregated schools or move them to new locations to ensure a representative racial mix so the next generation grows up accustomed to other cultures, rather than being taught in enclaves, even if little can be done to change the ways of parents and their older siblings.
