Author: Paul Wilkinson
Publication: The Times
Date: April 20, 2001
A Powerful undertow of ethnic hatred
between Bradford's whites, Muslims and Hindus fuelled the riots which left
two pubs fire-bombed, shops looted and eight people injured last weekend.
The trouble was ignited by a series
of racist taunts by drunken whites to guests at a Hindu engagement party
on Sunday night. Their ugly intrusion into the multiracial Lidget Green
area of the city in turn provoked a crowd of Muslims into retaliation.
But the Muslims soon turned their attention to Hindu targets, reflecting
the city's ethnic tensions.
The first hint of trouble on Easter
Sunday came at 7pm when a up to 50 young men, mainly whites but with some
Afro-Caribbeans, arrived at the Coach House pub, where the Hindu engagement
party was taking place. They had already been seen drinking in pubs elsewhere
in Bradford.
Police reject suggestions that they
were outsiders, saying much of the group 's conversation was about the
area's two leading soccer teams, Leeds United and Bradford City. They also
describe as speculation the suggestion that the group included members
of a soccer hooligan gang called Bradford Ointment.
The whites proceeded to disrupt
the party organised by a Hindu Leeds businessman, Maji Thia, to mark the
engagement of his daughter Joioti to her Bradford boyfriend Gareth Williams
by hurling racist insults. Blows were exchanged and the trouble boiled
out onto the street.
Across the road at the Bilal Takeaway,
owner Mohammed Amin, 20, called the police after stones were thrown through
his window. West Yorkshire Police logged their first emergency call at
7.59pm and were on the scene four minutes later. They separated the rival
groups and ordered the whites to clear the area.
But as the police tried to disperse
the crowd, they came under attack from a hail of stones, bricks, bottles
and even traffic cones. They called up reinforcements equipped with riot
gear, but because it was a Bank Holiday many of the additional officers
had to be called from areas some distance away.
By 9pm the situation worsened when
a crowd of Muslim youths gathered in the street, determined to defend what
they saw as "their" territory from the white incursion. First the Coach
House and then the Second West pub came under fire-bomb attack. At 11.10pm
fire crews were called to the Per-Medic pharmacy half a mile away. The
pharmacy is owned by one of the city's most prominent Hindus, Hasmukh Shah,
spokesman for the World Council of Hindus. The chemist's was ransacked
and torched. Officers in riot gear had to protect the firefighters from
stone-throwers. For two hours police fought skirmishes and finally reported
the trouble under control at 2am.
For observers of Bradford's ethnic
troubles, the problems have been long in the brewing. Last year the city
council commissioned Sir Herman Ousley, former chairman of the Commission
for Race Relations, to lead an investigation into racial tensions. More
than a fifth of the city's population is of immigrant extraction, including
70,000 Muslims. Most live in inner-city areas where unemployment is twice
the national average.
His report, to go to the council
this month, is expected to tell of growing divisions not just between white
and black, but also among Pakistanis, Indians and Bagladeshis. It will
say that, without substantial investment of cash and effort and the provision
of opportunities which can "uplift" those who feel disadvantaged, more
discord lies ahead.
Mr Shah said yesterday much of the
destruction was the work of Muslim youths. "There are elements in the Muslim
community who will never accept a pluralistic society. For Hindus in Bradford
it is like living in Afghanistan under the rule of the Taliban. We cannot
celebrate our festivals with comfort and ease."
But Sayed Abdul Quaddas, of the
Bradford Council of Mosques. said: "Hindus are my brothers. The violence
was the work of hotheads who do not listen to their elders. They must be
punished."
