Oldham, the British town tolerance deserted

New Zealand writer JANE PHARE reports from the riot-torn streets of Oldham and finds the roots of the racial violence.

The approach to Oldham off the motorway from Manchester City has a this-can't-be-so-bad sort of promise.

Modern blue motorway signs, arched street lighting, a new "retail park" at the entrance, smooth roads and landscaping all speak of a prosperous town.

The backdrop is the Pennine Hills; not far away is Holmfirth, the picturesque setting for Last of the Summer Wine.

But somewhere along the road into the town itself, the money and the promise start to peter out.

The skyline is dotted with huge, crumbling brick buildings built in the early 19th century - a legacy of a once-booming cotton mill industry.

Anywhere else, some enterprising developer would fix the broken windows, clean up the brick and turn them into trendy apartments.

But in Oldham they just loom, depressing hulks deteriorating in the same way as the cotton industry did.

It was to these mills that cheap labour came from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh decades ago, a population English people lump together under the term "Asians."

Today it is the second and third-generation offspring of that cheap labour who are angry - angry enough to riot, throw bricks, smash windows, make petrol bombs and hurl them through the broken glass.

On the other side are the white English, also angry, also unemployed, also rioting.

Stirring on the sideline are two far-right groups, the National Front and the British National Party, groups which one Oldham councillor described as "race haters."

The Daily Mirror reported Nick Griffin, chairman of the BNP, as saying he wanted a new Berlin Wall built to separate whites and Asians in Oldham.

The Cambridge-educated extremist says non-whites should be given money to return to their country of origin.

Elsewhere in Manchester, people read their local newspaper, watch the riots on TV and shake their heads.

They can't believe what they're reading and seeing. There's never been trouble like this before, and just a few miles away.

But walk the shabby back-streets of Oldham, between the rows of neglected, brick terrace houses (think Coronation Street, only shabbier), and it's not so surprising.

It's school holidays this week and there are not many places for the kids to hang out. So they play cricket on the street, between two rows of terrace houses and rubbish in the gutters, many of the boys wearing traditional Pakistani dress with a little, round flat-topped cap.

Racial tension has been simmering for years but whereas the parents and grandparents of the non-white population have put up with snubs and racist remarks, the young will not.

These kids, and often their parents, open their mouths and speak with broad Lancastrian accents. Yet they don't think they are treated fairly by the police or the community.

Their sense of culture is very strong, something that irritates white English people. The few shops in the back streets sell halal meat and groceries, or saris and fabrics.

Next door to Oldham's St Marks Church is a lovely old chapel. It is now the Kashmir Superstore, selling halal meat and poultry. Great sacks of onions sit in what once was the entrance porch.

On foot an outsider can sense Oldham's tension rather than see it. It's what you don't see that is unsettling.

The streets are eerily deserted, in spite of the warm, early summer weather. Lace curtains draped across the front windows are still but you get the feeling eyes are watching. It's as though Oldham is holding its breath to see what will happen next.

On just about every street, sheets of pale golden chipboard have been hastily nailed across broken windows. Cars with spiderweb breaks in their front windscreens wait to be fixed or are still being driven. Pub owners pick glass out of their red velvet seating.

But it's not the physical signs of the anger that has raged through Oldham these past few nights that point to the tension. It's a feeling of suspicion and resentment, of fear and unease. A few, mainly Pakistani, men cluster on street corners, watching reporters, photographers and camera crew from all over Europe watching them.

During the day, the Greater Manchester Police keep a low profile. But come nightfall, they arrive in big numbers and adopt zero-tolerance tactics.

There's talk of "no go" areas for whites, and not just by the establishment. A Pakistani man told me not to walk any further up a particular block, both for my safety and because my presence, with a notebook, might stir up more trouble.

"A camera crew were attacked last night," he warned. "It has not settled yet. You shouldn't be here. You shouldn't be talking to our young people."

Others are happy to talk to a newspaper from far away. They feel resentful towards the local paper, the Oldham Chronicle, which they say doesn't report Asian news, overplays incidents involving "English" people being attacked by non-whites and underplays incidents where non-whites are attacked by white locals.

That resentment boiled over and resulted in rioters smashing the Chronicle office's front windows and hurling a petrol bomb, an incident that the paper reported under a heading: "Yobs attack the Chron."

Behind the boarded-up windows, the Chronicle is open for business as usual and is doing a brisk trade selling copies of its special riot edition for 30p ($1).

The editor, Jim Williams, is in the building but is not available for interviews. Philip Hirst, the managing director of the paper's parent company, is doing back-to-back interviews with foreign media, denying that the paper reports unfairly.

The paper has not received any complaints about its coverage, he says, and the attack took everyone by surprise.

But it was no surprise out on the street. Not far away in Roundthorn Rd, Sajad Hussain is trying to pull a corrugated-iron roller door down over the smashed front window of his Datta Superstore. It's the equivalent of a corner dairy and a meeting spot for locals who stop to speak or shake his hand with an air of watchful protectiveness.

As he and I clear great shards of broken glass from behind the roller door, the Chronicle's delivery van pulls up outside.

"That caused the problem," he says, pointing to the pile of papers being unloaded. "The local media and the police. The people are angry."

It was at Hussain's shop and nearby houses that the trouble first started last weekend. Locals say two carloads of white men pulled up and hurled bricks through the front windows of two houses owned by a Pakistani family.

They also smashed Hussain's shop window, damage which he heard from his house behind the shop but could do little to stop. The cost of the plate-glass shop front will come out of his pocket and he can't afford to fix it yet.

Angry at an alleged slow police response to the attack, about 200 Pakistani youths retaliated by rioting. Down the road from Hussain's store two quaint pubs on opposite sides of the road are boarded up and closed.

Since then, trouble has flared every night in Oldham. Go on a pub crawl around the area and just about every pub has boarded-up windows, the result of smashed windows or firebombs.

One publican has tried to retain a sense of optimism. After the Bridge Inn - a little old brick pub that would have been on the edge of the canal before it was filled in - was attacked, he boarded up the windows but painted curtains, windowsills and flowered pot plants on the outside.

Nearby the tenant of the ironically named Live and Let Live pub, Paul Barrow, is finding it hard to be optimistic.

Dressed in a red waistcoat with matching tie, he looks every part the jolly publican, apart from an exhausted face and unshaven stubble.

Barrow has been up half the night helping to clean up glass and debris left after his pub was attacked.

He's been doing extra shifts for staff who are too afraid to come to work until racial tension in the area settles down.

Barrow took on a three-year tenancy in April, never dreaming that just a few weeks later he'd be sitting in his near-empty pub, still open for business but with all the front windows smashed and boarded up, the carpet and curtains singed from a fire bomb.

A handful of regulars are sitting at the bar, despite the dark interior, and the talk is about the riots and who saw what. There's not much tolerance in the telling. Attacking an Englishman's pub is akin to attacking his castle.

Barrow was on duty when a mob of angry rioters - mainly Pakistani and Bangladeshi youths - surged through the doorway, attacking patrons with bottles, glasses, stools and bricks. Two hours later they came back, this time smashing the pub's front windows and hurling a petrol bomb inside.

Barrow put the fire out with an extinguisher but could do little to stop the rioters wreck cars parked outside, set one alight and ram it into the pub wall.

Barrow tried to get his German shepherd dog, Ben, from his upstairs flat but in the panic managed to break the key off in the door and later had to climb over the roof to get in.

"You should have seen it [the carpark] this morning before it was cleaned up," he says. "It was like bloody Beirut out there."

Just about every pub in the area has been targeted. Barrow's sister, Jean Chapel, runs the Westwood Inn nearby. Her pub was attacked and firebombed, and rioters attempted to throw a firebomb through an open bedroom window.

"She's petrified," Barrow says. "She won't be opening again until after it has quietened down."

Barrow plans to keep the Live and Let Live pub open but he's decided against hiring security guards.

"I think it would incite more trouble. I'll just have to be vigilant and hope they leave me alone."

Barrow agrees with the criticism levelled at the Oldham Chronicle.

"Lots of racial attacks don't make the paper. They're trying to keep the statistics down."

He thinks local Pakistani youth don't have enough to do and don't listen to their elders any more.

They're not allowed to drink because of their Muslim faith and therefore don't come to the pub.

"There must be nine mosques within a quarter of a mile of here. But what they need is a community centre or something."

Barrow says he does have some older Pakistani customers ("they're not supposed to drink here but they do") and a few were in the pub the night it was attacked.

Likewise, shop owner Sajad Hussain says he has Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Indian and white customers, many of whom live in mixed areas.

But he would never venture into an all-white area of Oldham called Holts.

"If I would go there, say with a delivery, they would bloody kill me, definitely."

People such as Barrow think immigrant populations have not done enough to integrate into British way of life. They keep to themselves and their communities, live in clusters, speak their own language, stick to their customs and their dress.

"The English are intolerant," says Barrow. "It's a matter of self-preservation."

He doesn't know the answer to Oldham's racial tensions.

"It's frightening. I have to stick it out. I put all my savings into this tenancy. I'm not going to walk away and see it go down the pan."