'Race,’ Space and Multiculturalism in Northern England: The (M62) Corridor of Uncertainty [1st ed.] 9783030420314, 9783030420321

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PALGRAVE POLITICS OF IDENTITY AND CITIZENSHIP SERIES

‘Race,’ Space and Multiculturalism in Northern England

The (M62) Corridor of Uncertainty Shamim Miah · Pete Sanderson · Paul Thomas

Palgrave Politics of Identity and Citizenship Series

Series Editors Varun Uberoi Brunel University London London, UK Nasar Meer University of Edinburgh Edinburgh, UK Tariq Modood University of Bristol Bristol, UK

The politics of identity and citizenship has assumed increasing importance as our polities have become significantly more culturally, ethnically and religiously diverse. Different types of scholars, including philosophers, sociologists, political scientists and historians make contributions to this field and this series showcases a variety of innovative contributions to it. Focusing on a range of different countries, and utilizing the insights of different disciplines, the series helps to illuminate an increasingly controversial area of research and titles in it will be of interest to a number of audiences including scholars, students and other interested individuals. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14670

Shamim Miah  •  Pete Sanderson  Paul Thomas

‘Race,’ Space and Multiculturalism in Northern England The (M62) Corridor of Uncertainty

Shamim Miah School of Education and Professional Development University of Huddersfield Huddersfield, UK

Pete Sanderson School of Education and Professional Development University of Huddersfield Huddersfield, UK

Paul Thomas School of Education and Professional Development University of Huddersfield Huddersfield, UK

Palgrave Politics of Identity and Citizenship Series ISBN 978-3-030-42031-4    ISBN 978-3-030-42032-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42032-1 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © transport picture library/paul ridsdale / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgements

This book draws on our empirical research in the M62 corridor region of northern England (where we all both live and work) over many years, much of it made possible by regional research funders, collaborators and respondents. Whilst the analysis and perspectives expressed here are our own, the book and our previous research work it builds on would not have been possible without that help and support. So, in no particular order, we acknowledge that support: Kirklees Council have been a long-standing research partner, both around community cohesion (Thomas and Sanderson 2013; Thomas et  al. 2015, 2018) and around the Prevent strategy (Thomas 2008; Thomas et al. 2017a, b). Calderdale Council co-funded the ‘Understanding Concerns about Community Relations’ project (Busher et  al. 2015), whilst Rochdale and Oldham Councils supported the ‘Youth Identity Project’ (Thomas and Sanderson 2009, 2011, 2013). Oldham Council and voluntary youth organisations in Oldham facilitated research into how youth work was enacting community cohesion, whilst local authorities facilitated access to schools to enable research around Muslim experiences of integration in education (Miah 2015). Schools and colleges across West Yorkshire enabled our research into the Prevent duty in education (Busher et  al. 2017, 2019), and the Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats (CREST) funded our research into ‘Community Reporting Thresholds’ around the response of community v

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members to the involvement of an ‘intimate’ in violent extremism (Thomas et al. 2017a, b). We thank all the local authority officers, civil society organisation staff, front-line youth workers, community workers, police officers and school and college staff who have participated in our research and facilitated access to community members. Above all, we thank the young people and adults from communities across the M62 corridor region who have given their time and shared their opinions and experiences so openly. There are some individuals we personally thank for their help in making the research outlined above, and the further research for this book, possible: Dave Bacon, Jodie Barber, Carol Gilchrist, Mike Green, Tahira Iqbal, Andrew Pennington, John Tummon, Abdul Karim, Ali Akbor, Neil Gibson, Fazal Rahim and Father Phil Sumner. We thank Poppy and all her colleagues at Palgrave Macmillan for their help and support, and above all for their patience in seeing this book to completion. Shamim thanks Musa Shafi for bringing so much joy and light into his world, Nazma Bibi for her constant inspiration and support, and Talha and Hannah Shafi for humour and laughter. This book would not have been possible without also the encouragement from colleagues and input from former and current students who have taught us so much about the lived realities of the M62 corridor. Pete thanks Hilary Sommerlad for advice, intellectual and moral inspiration, and some very important specific ideas and references, and Jess Sommerlad and Jyoti Basuita for supportive listening and encouragement. For support and challenge in early years of thinking about these issues he thanks Yusuf Ahmad, Lal Ahir and the students on the Language People and Work course at Bradford College. Paul thanks his dad, Mel Thomas, for teaching him the importance of history at a young age, and Bev for everything, and especially for putting up with him working on another book when he said he would never write another one!

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References Busher, J., Choudhury, T., Thomas, P., & Harris, G. (2017). What the Prevent Duty Means for Schools and Colleges in England: An Analysis of Educationalist’s Experience. Huddersfield: University of Huddersfield. Busher, J., Choudhury, T., & Thomas, P. (2019). The Enactment of the Counter-­ Terrorism ‘Prevent Duty’ in British Schools and Colleges: Beyond Reluctant Accommodation or Straightforward Policy Acceptance.  Critical Studies on Terrorism, 12(3), 440–462. Busher, J., Christmann, K., Macklin, G., Rogerson, M., & Thomas, P. (2015). Understanding Concerns About Community Relations in Calderdale. Huddersfield: University of Huddersfield. Miah, S. (2015). The Groomers and the Question of Race.  Identity Papers: Journal of British and Irish Studies, 1(1), 54–66. Thomas, P. (2008). Kirklees Preventing Violent Extremism Pathfinder: Issues and Learning from the First Year. Huddersfield: University of Huddersfield. Thomas, P., Busher, J., Macklin, G., Rogerson, M., & Christmann, K. (2015). Understanding Concerns About Community Relations in Kirklees. Huddersfield: University of Huddersfield. Thomas, P., Busher, J., Macklin, G., Rogerson, M., & Christmann, K. (2018). Hopes and Fears – Community Cohesion and the ‘White Working Class’ in One of the ‘Failed Spaces’ of Multiculturalism. Sociology, 52(2), 262–281. Thomas, P., Grossman, M., Miah, S., & Christmann, K. (2017a). Community Reporting Thresholds: Sharing Information with Authorities Concerning Violent Extremist Activity and Involvement in Foreign Conflicts. Lancaster: CREST (Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats). Thomas, P., Miah, S., & Purcell, M. (2017b). The Kirklees Prevent Young People’s Engagement Team: Insights and Lessons from Its First Year. Huddersfield: University of Huddersfield. Thomas, P., & Sanderson, P. (2009). The Oldham and Rochdale Youth Identity Project Final Report. Huddersfield: University of Huddersfield. Thomas, P., & Sanderson, P. (2011). Unwilling Citizens? Muslim Young People and National Identity. Sociology, 45(6), 1028–1044. Thomas, P., & Sanderson, P. (2013). Crossing the Line? White Young People and Community Cohesion. Critical Social Policy, 33(1), 160–180.

Contents

1 Introduction: ‘Race’, Space and Place in Northern England  1 2 Failed Spaces of Multiculturalism? 29 3 Parallel Lives? 65 4 Policy: From Assimilation to Integration? 99 5 Black, Asian and the Muslim Cool139 6 From the Oppressive Majority to Oppressed Minority? Changing White Self-Identifications173 7 Educated to Be Separate?213 8 Conclusion: Not Such a ‘Failure’: A Multiculturalist Space in Development245 Bibliography251 Index281 ix

List of Tables

Table 1.1 M62 corridor region events of the 1980s 8 Table 1.2 M62 corridor region events post-2001 9 Table 7.1 LEAs adopting the policy of dispersal 215 Table 7.2 Independent Muslim school sector, Bradford 235 Table 7.3 Typology of Muslim school sector 236 Table 7.4 Total number of independent Muslim schools on the M62 corridor237

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Multiculturalism: Mundane Yet Politically Problematic? The large-scale translocation of people over the globe stemming from colonialism, the labour migration of a ‘globalised’ world economy, and the large-scale refugee crises prompted by violent conflict have resulted in the fact that for most states in the world ‘multiculturalism’ is, as McGoldrick (2005: 34) points out, a statistical fact, even where it sharply contradicts the communitarian imaginary around which national identity is often constructed. Certainly, for all Western democratic states, and increasingly for all cities and regions of those states, multiculturalism is more and more a ‘mundane reality’ (Hall 2000) in that populations are becoming increasingly diverse in terms of ethnicity, national family origins and faith. Yet, apparently multiculturalism is facing ‘crises’ (Lentin and Titley 2011), has supposedly been rejected by states that embraced it politically, such as the Netherlands (Sniderman and Hagendoorn 2009) and the UK (Back et al. 2002), and has been condemned by major political leaders as an ‘utter failure’ (Cameron 2011; Weaver 2010).

© The Author(s) 2020 S. Miah et al., ‘Race,’ Space and Multiculturalism in Northern England, Palgrave Politics of Identity and Citizenship Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42032-1_1

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This apparently confusing disjuncture can, of course, be explained by distinguished sociologist Stuart Hall’s ‘double meaning’ of multiculturalism; here the term represents both a mundane reality of increasing ethnic diversity in society and, separately, specific policy approaches states may (or may not) take to address that reality of ethnic diversity and the position of distinct ethnic, faith and racial groups within society. Whilst the relationship between the state and such groups conceived of as ethnic or religious minorities is configured very differently in different jurisdictions and is partially dependent on the characteristic origins of diversity (e.g. whether it is the product of White settler colonialism or economic migration), the dilemmas of reconciling group and individual rights, and of reconciling respect for difference with the desire for social or national cohesion appear universal. ‘Multiculturalism’ as a political project or practice, as opposed to an ideological stance or a statistical fact, has taken many forms in different states, but has been subjected to increasingly harsh criticism across the globe as the politics of difference has become a fulcrum of national politics. The assumption underpinning many of the critiques, both academic (Lentin and Titley 2011) and political (cf the Munich Security Conference speeches of Cameron and Merkel cited above) is that tolerance of diversity has been demonstrated to be socially corrosive globally and trans historically. Indeed, some have argued that the growing ethnic diversity is indeed increasingly problematic for societies because of the context of post-industrial economic decline (Schaeffer 2014), the nature of welfare settlements underpinning many democratic states (Goodhart 2004, 2017) and the supposed incompatibility of Muslim minorities to the broader value base and ‘way of life’ of these states (Scheffer 2011).

 hat This Book Isn’t About and What It W Is About At this point, you may well be thinking ‘Oh no! Another book about the crises and supposed failures of multiculturalism’! Don’t worry—that’s not what this book is about. This is partially because there are already many good and important books (e.g. Lentin and Titley 2011; Modood 2013)

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and journal articles available on this, both about the changing multiculturalist philosophies, political discourses and policy models of specific states and ones that offer helpful and insightful internationally comparative analysis of such issues. It’s also because that we didn’t want to write such a book. Our motivation for instead writing the book that we have produced was twofold. First, the international policy and academic discourse over multiculturalism’s supposed failure, defeat, retreat (or any another negative verb you may want to insert) has focussed heavily on states that have supposedly ‘recanted’ on multiculturalist policies, such as Britain. Within such states, there has also been a focus on the supposed wider social failure of multiculturalist ethnic diversity itself in situated, geographical ‘failed spaces of multiculturalism’ (Khosrokhavar 2016; Jones 2013), for instance, the M62 corridor region of northern England and towns within it, such as Oldham, Bradford and Dewsbury. The fact that all three of the authors live, work and research in this ‘M62 corridor’ region has given us a particular, personal motivation to examine the specific and situated histories and current realities of multiculturalism, in both its meanings, and of how these fevered debates about the crisis, decline and death of multiculturalism might be understood in this space and place. Whilst the book therefore focuses on a specific and highly contested region of northern England, its concern with supposed ‘failed spaces of multiculturalism’ is an internationally relevant one. As Scheffer (2011: 177) identifies: ‘the social reality in Malmo, say, does not differ from that of Bradford, Marseille, Rotterdam or Frankfurt’. In particular, we were driven by two key research questions. First, why and how has the M62 corridor as a region come to symbolise (at least in political and media discourse) Britain’s supposed problems with ‘multiculturalism’, and how accurate is this characterisation? As discussed below, this has certainly grown from the mid-1980s onwards, when ‘Muslims’, ethnic tensions and the north of England as a region took centre stage in political and media discourse over British multiculturalism and has then accelerated markedly in the post-2001 era of concern over ‘parallel lives’ and Islamist extremism. Second, how have state multiculturalist (law, policy and practice) approaches to cultural pluralism and the identities involved in this changed and adapted in the M62 corridor over time, from the 1960s until present? What events and changing perceptions have fuelled such

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changes? When explored in the context of theories of cultural and legal pluralism, what are the characteristics of UK policy that can be described as ‘multi-cultural? In particular, how have characteristics of state policy that can be described as ‘multicultural’ been experienced, understood and operationalised distinctively in this area of the north of England? These overarching research questions have shaped the book’s focus and analytical framework, which is outlined in more detail below. The first key aspect of it is this notion of the M62 corridor as one of the ‘failed spaces of multiculturalism’ (Khosrokhavar 2016; Jones 2013). Here, we acknowledge that there has been a lot of important empirical academic research over several decades about the community experience of ethnic diversity and multiculturalist policy work in specific towns and cities of the north of England, such as Bradford, Dewsbury, Oldham and Liverpool (Ben-Tovim et al. 1986; Kalra 2000; Thomas 2011; Husband et al. 2016; Fazakarley 2017). We know this, because we have contributed to that body of work through our own research (see below), as well as drawn on it in our own writing. It struck us, however, that there is something of an evidential and discursive gap in the multiculturalism debates between national (and supposedly uniform) British models and experience of multiculturalism and that of very specific, situated geographical locations. This gap we identify and focus on here is the regional one, in particular the area of the north of England popularly known as the ‘M62 corridor’ after the motorway joining Hull in the east to Liverpool in the west, directly connecting the key cities of Leeds and Manchester in between and skirting the supposed ‘hotspots’ of failed multiculturalism such as Bradford, Dewsbury, Oldham and Rochdale, along with road spurs that connect to the infamous towns of Rotherham, Keighley, Blackburn and Burnley (see Fig. 1.1: ‘The M62 corridor’). It is this entire ‘M62 corridor’ that is seen nationally and internationally, in our view as a ‘failed space of multiculturalism’, an ‘imagined community’ (Anderson 1991) of mutually antagonistic pre-modern and separate Muslims and ‘chavvy’ (Jones 2011), benefit-scrounging, English Defence League (EDL) supporting White racists. We’re being provocative, obviously (but only slightly exaggerating some national media and political commentary), but many people do seem to feel that, in terms of multiculturalism, ‘it’s grim up north’.

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Fig. 1.1  Map of the M62 corridor region

The nature of this characterisation of the ‘failed space’ also highlights another important frame for this book, which is the situated and contingent experience of this region, and in particular, the long-term experiences of economic change and of inward migration. Here, we argue that the fevered debates around the supposed problems, even failures, of multiculturalist society and policy in our area have been ahistorical in two important senses. First that they take little, or no, account of the profound economic changes in the region over the past 60 years and how these changes have shaped not just experiences but the possibilities of experience. Second, there seems to be a more profound historical amnesia about processes of migration, assimilation and integration, and what British and international historical experiences teach us about them. Finally, the book questions the characterisation of ‘British’ models of state multiculturalist policy, with policy decided at the national (London) level and uniformly implemented at the local level. In contrast, the book argues for a more complex and contingent understanding of multiculturalist policy operation, one that is contingent and two-way, with some policies devised locally in response to local and regional pressures, and other policies

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significantly altered through processes of policy mediation and enactment. This suggests a more complex understanding of both the ‘state’ and of the design, implementation and experience of policy within the supposed ‘British multiculturalist policy’ model. Accordingly, the book examines the interplay between ‘race’, space and place to analyse how profound economic change, the evolving nature of state and individual racism and local creation and enactment (Braun et al. 2010; Jones 2013) of multiculturalist policies have all contributed to shaping the nature and trajectory of ethnic/faith identities and of inter-community relations at the contingent local level. In doing so, the book analyses both change and continuity in discussion of, and national/ local state policy towards, ethnic relations, particularly around the supposed segregation/integration dichotomy (Thomas 2011; Miah 2015), the way racialised ‘events’ are perceived and in the ways in which ‘identities’ are both created and reflected in state policy operations (Thomas and Sanderson 2011, 2013). By contrast, this book seeks to demonstrate the significance of the particular configurations of the relationship between the global and the local, state and civil society in shaping actual relationships between diverse communities, and the way in which these relations are publicly represented. Here, the book is not a ‘history’ of race relations in northern England. Instead, it is an historical contextualisation that enables the book to make arguments about how we can, and arguably should, understand both the current multiculturalist reality of lived experience and policy operation in the M62 corridor region and how it is (mis) represented by much political and media discourse.

 he ‘M62 Corridor’: ‘A Failed Space T of Multiculturalism’? The focus of this book is a specific region of the UK, seen as emblematic of the ‘failure’ of multiculturalism. Over the past few years, multiculturalism in Britain has been described variously as experiencing ‘death’ (Kundnani 2002) or ‘crises’ (Lentin and Titley 2011) and as being responsible for ethnic segregation (Phillips 2005; Cameron 2011) and even

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domestic terrorism (Prins and Salisbury 2008). These claims have been both inspired and, arguably, evidenced by apparent realities and mediated events in the M62 corridor area of the north of England. This area as a whole, and its constituent ‘mill towns’ in particular, has been often presented in media and political discourse as one of the ‘failed spaces’ of multiculturalism that other British cities and regions should avoid replicating (Jones 2013). This characterisation of the M62 corridor as a ‘failed space’ of multiculturalism echoes similar discourses around increasingly minority-­ dominated urban areas, such as the Paris banlieues (Waddington et al. 2009), outer suburbs of Sydney (Poynting and Mason 2006) and Muslimdominated areas of Brussels, Copenhagen and Amsterdam (Buruma 2006)—all areas where community divides and attractions to religious and political extremism have supposedly become endemic (Khosrokhavar 2016). This discourse draws together critiques both of state approaches to managing ‘multiculturalism’ through essentialised ethnic ‘difference’, but also concerns that rapidly increasing ethnic diversity is simply not compatible with the maintenance of the social trust and solidarity essential to the social welfare systems of these developed Western nations (Putnam 2007), especially in the face of post-industrial economic decline (Schaeffer 2014). An Open Society Foundation research study into perceptions of ethnic diversity amongst so-called White working-class (a highly contentious concept that we discuss further in Chap. 6) communities in six major European cities, included a focus on Manchester. Their Manchester study quoted a 34-year-old local man as saying: ‘I’ve noticed recently – only the last twelve months around here, people are becoming more distant because they’re seeing more and more immigrants’ (2014b: 53). Here, a long series of racialised events over several decades have been portrayed as both causal to and indicative of chronic ethnic tensions in the M62 region and in Britain as a whole, suggestive to some not just of a failed multiculturalism but also of a multiculturalism that cannot work. In short, northern M62 towns like Oldham, Rochdale, Keighley, Dewsbury and Rotherham have become the ‘markers’ (Jones 2013) for this British multicultural crisis, apparently proof of the failure of state multiculturalist policies (Phillips 2005; Cameron 2011) and perhaps even of post-war immigration itself (Goodhart 2013). This pessimistic

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view, inherently hostile to state multiculturalist policies and even to ethnic diversity per se, identifies earlier warning signs, through events from this same area of northern England of the 1980s: the Honeyford Bradford school affair (Halstead 1988), the Dewsbury school dispute (Naylor 1989) and the 1989 burning of the Satanic Verses book in Bradford (Malik 2009), which came to be seen as part of a turning point in the concerns of British multiculturalist debate. Here, once ‘Asian’, now Muslim (a development we explore in Chap. 5) communities and the ex-­ industrial northern towns with substantial Muslim communities have come progressively to the fore in angst over British multiculturalism, increasingly sidelining the previous focus on ‘Black’, African Caribbean youth in inner-city areas of Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds (Thatcher famously said ‘we must do something about those inner-city areas’ after winning the 1983 election, meaning do something about African Caribbean youth: Solomos 2003; see Table 1.1). This perception of the ‘multiculturalist problem’ of the M62 corridor being chronic and also symbolic of Britain’s ‘failed multiculturalism’ has accelerated sharply in the twenty-first century. The 2001 riots in Oldham, Bradford and Burnley seemingly exposed the ethnically segregated, ‘parallel lives’ (Cantle 2001) reality of British multiculturalism in many of its Table 1.1  M62 corridor region events of the 1980s Year

Location

1985

Bradford

Event

The ‘Honeyford’ affair—mainly Muslim students and their parent boycott Drummond Middle School after public comments by Honeyford about failure to integrate 1986 Manchester The murder of an Asian pupil by a White fellow pupil at Burnage High School leads to public scrutiny of ‘anti-racist’ policy implementation in education 1987/1988 Dewsbury The ‘Dewsbury school’ dispute where White parents refuse to send their children to a mainly Asian school, instead educating them in a pub, with a subsequent British National Party (BNP) rally in their support provoking rioting in 1989 1989 Bradford Protesters led by the Bradford Council of Mosques publicly burn a copy of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses novel and attract international media attention

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northern towns and cities, with fierce political argument over both whether this was ‘self-segregation’ (Ouseley 2001) by Asian communities disinclined to integrate and over the nature of the new state policy priority of ‘community cohesion’. The 7/7 London bombings of July 2005, carried out by four young Muslim men brought up in West Yorkshire, heralded the new reality of domestic al-Qaeda-inspired terrorism and a subsequent and continuing (Prevent strategy) policy concern over young Muslim identifications supposedly hostile to British society and democratic government (Kundnani 2009; Thomas 2012). Criminal cases around child sexual exploitation have led to convictions and racialised characterisations of large groups of (mainly Muslim) Asian men in Rotherham, Rochdale and Huddersfield, with earlier such allegations having fuelled far-right British National Party electoral advances in towns like Keighley and Burnley (Copsey 2008) and certainly fuelling the subsequent regional growth of the English Defence League and its provocative public rallies in the region (Pilkington 2016; see Table 1.2) Table 1.2  M62 corridor region events post-2001 Year

Location

Event

2001

Oldham, Burnley and Bradford

Serious rioting involving Muslim youth clashing with the police in Bradford and with both the police and White youth in Oldham and Burnley (serious rioting also occurs in Leeds but is not subsequently investigated) The ‘7/7’ terror attacks on London are carried out by four young Muslims from West Yorkshire, killing 52 commuters Large-scale cases of child sexual exploitation are exposed and prosecuted, overwhelmingly involving young White victims and older Asian perpetrators A large-scale English Defence League—one of a long series held across the region— becomes the target of an attempted bomb attack by young Muslims travelling from Birmingham MP Jo Cox is murdered by a White constituent with long-standing neo-Nazi connections

2005

London (but planned in West Yorkshire) 2000 Keighley, onwards Rotherham, Rochdale and Huddersfield 2012 Dewsbury

2016

Batley

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 he Area’s Long-Term Experiences of Economic T Change and of Inward Migration The sense of the M62 corridor as a ‘failed space of multiculturalism’ has saturated many twenty-first-century policy (Cantle 2001) and academic (Goodhart 2013) accounts of ethnic relations in the north of England. The perception that the M62 corridor region contains mutually antagonistic White working-class and Asian Muslim populations acting out their own version of Huntington’s infamous ‘clash of civilisations’ (1997) thesis have been pervasive and has implied that this is a new and wicked problem. Here, we could, for instance, consider an incident in the region which saw a mob attack a recently arrived migrant community holding a different and alien religion. Alongside this can be placed a blunt assessment of how members of this minority group need to adapt to assimilate and succeed economically: ‘he would have to adapt to English civilisation, the English customs, become in the main an Englishman’. The first incident, it could be assumed, could easily relate to the 2001 riots in Oldham or Burnley, or to multiple ethnic tensions between White and Asian Muslim communities in the decades preceding 2001. However, the incident we refer to actually occurred in 1851, when local (White) English Protestants attacked newly arrived (White) Irish Catholic mill workers in Stockport! (cited in Scheffer 2011). Similarly, the quote is not a modern, assimilationist-­tinged judgement on post-war Muslim migrants in a northern mill town but rather a comment in 1844 on Irish Catholic migrants in Manchester by that impeccable man of the socialist left, Friedrich Engels in his polemic, ‘The Condition of the Working Class in England’. These maligned Irish migrants would be imagined by us now as ‘White’ but, as the work of Bonnett (2000) and others shows, neither they nor the equally initially maligned Eastern European Jewish migrants to Yorkshire and Lancashire who arrived later in the nineteenth century were viewed as then ‘White’. They were initially seen as ‘dark strangers’ with an alien and threatening culture and religion long before that term was applied to the early Caribbean and Asian migrants in the 1950s and 1960s and subsequently to settled Muslim communities. Here, the book suggests not only that the longer term experiences of the pre–Second World War history of migration to Britain, with all its

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tensions and complex processes of integration, has been neglected in modern multiculturalism debates but, at a deeper level, what we (should) know historically and academically about migration and migrant integration has also largely been ignored in these recent debates. In foregrounding this, we overtly draw on the ‘Chicago School’ of sociologists (and the earlier social scientists who inspired them), who carefully studied the waves of migrant communities arriving in the USA in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and what their experiences and modes of ‘integration’ were. Here, Scheffer (2011) highlights the American historian Oscar Handlin, who studied ‘the reaction of nineteenth-century Bostonians to the arrival of Irish immigrants, who came in huge numbers. After the two groups clashed, it took at least half a century for the city to regain its balance’ (ibid: 5). We use such insights to suggest that the ‘moral panics’ (Cohen 1972) around the failure, possibly unwillingness, and supposed inherent inability, of Asian Muslim communities on the M62 corridor to ‘integrate’ is both profoundly ahistorical and often theoretically illiterate in terms of what we know about migration adaption and integration. In short, it is remarkable how little impact that wider knowledge and historical experience has had in informing modern British media and political discourse about multiculturalism and integration. Generally, with notable exceptions (Scheffer 2011), few academic commentators have attempted to bring modern concerns in Western developed nations together with this historical experience and theoretical understandings of it. Whilst we make no claims for this book being primarily a historical one, what we attempt to offer here is historically informed critical analysis of the experience of multiculturalism and migration on the M62 corridor as an identifiable region from the 1960s to the present. The nineteenth-century Irish migrant mill workers in Greater Manchester considered above helpfully foreground the economic context of the M62 corridor region. The post–Industrial Revolution, large-scale textile industries of cotton and wool were the making of the industrial north on either side of the Pennines from the end of the 1700s onwards, turning hamlets into major towns and cities within a few short decades. By the 1860s and 1870s, towns and cities now on the M62, such as Halifax and Huddersfield, were amongst the richest in the world, despite the squalor some (often migrant) workers lived in. As late as a century

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later, in the 1960s, these industrial towns of northern England remained Britain’s economic powerhouse. They were also the motor of mass migration, from the Irish and then German and Eastern European Jewish migrants of the nineteenth century to the post-war migrants from the Baltic, Eastern Europe, the Caribbean and, especially, from the Indian subcontinent. The latter, largely from Pakistan, Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) and northern India, were often initially recruited directly by textile mill owners desperate for additional labour for their mills that were unable to meet demand because of labour shortages (Kalra 2000). The fact that initial recruits and subsequent further recruits found through word of mouth and chain migration often came from very specific geographic locations is far from irrelevant to the current situation of supposed group clustering and ‘separateness’. The subsequent collapse of the northern textile industry and associated engineering and supply chains, through globalisation but also through wider, neoliberal processes of deindustrialisation and offshoring (Harvey 2007), has substantially shaped and constrained the lives and choices of all those living in these former textile towns and cities. The Thatcherite free market-focussed ideological legacy has seen little national state policy interest in or responsibility for creating new and viable industries in these areas, leaving them overdependent on (often low paid) service sector jobs and increasingly acting as dormitory towns for the (eventually) booming post-industrial economies of ‘core cities’, like Manchester and Leeds. The fact that this decay and then collapse of the main industry of the region started soon after the arrival of migrant communities (and around the time that the UK joined the then European Economic Community, now the European Union, a fact directly relevant to the Brexit political debacle) often recruited to work in these same industries is sometimes acknowledged but rarely analysed at length in terms of how this has shaped both subjective experiences and the realities of multiculturalism in the region. We try to address this deficit here. This modern economic experience of the M62 corridor is arguably an exemplar of modern ‘social exclusion’, where poverty and disadvantage have increasingly become spatially structured (Byrne 1999) and endemic in ex-industrial towns and areas previously reliant on one key industry that has now disappeared. Both ‘indigenous’ White and ethnic minority

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migrant workers (Modood et al. 1997) in such industries had low levels of formal education and training, or ‘human capital’, to help them confidently navigate the loss of once-secure (and comparatively wellpaid, full-time) work. The result has been high levels of employment or insecure employment, the latter often within their ‘own’ communities, so limiting the opportunities for community contact. The resulting structural and spatial economic marginalisation has constrained economic and housing choices and opportunities. Relevant here is the fact that the Pennine mill towns have the highest national levels of residential ethnic segregation (Finney and Simpson 2009) and, at times, significant racialised resentments and senses of racial difference and ‘unfairness’ (Thomas and Sanderson 2011, 2013; Thomas et al. 2018). This might be seen as evidence that communities in the region are naturally more prejudiced or less willing to integrate, or, rather, it could be seen as evidence of greatly constrained economic opportunities. Previously, in addressing the issue of why the 2001 riots happened in Oldham, Burnley and Bradford, rather than Leicester or London (Cantle 2001), we used Bill Clinton’s famous maxim to argue that ‘it’s the economy, stupid!’ (Thomas 2011). Accordingly, the book critically explores the M62 corridor’s experience of moving from the predominant industrial economy of the 1960s, which shaped inward migration and settlement, towards a post-industrial economy with significant marginalisation and social exclusion that has been often understood in racial terms. The book explores the extent to which theories of urban form and settlement, from the Chicago School onwards, can support an analysis of the interplay between economic and cultural influences on urban social cohesion during a period of coterminous inward migration and profound deindustrialisation.

 More Complex and Contingent A Understanding of Multiculturalist Policy Operation The allegation that state multiculturalist policies of recognising and accommodating distinct ethnic communities has been a significant causal factor for ethnic segregation, racial tensions and domestic terrorism in

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countries like Britain and the Netherlands has been pervasive in recent decades. In Britain, the 2001 northern ‘mill town’ riots and the subsequent 7/7 bombings were portrayed by some as ‘proof ’ both of profound ethnic division and policy’s causal role in it. The post-2001 policy shift towards ‘community cohesion’ (Cantle 2001; Denham 2001) has provoked very considerable scrutiny, with some seeing as acceptance of this charge of negative policy causality and others seeing it as a recantation of previous multiculturalist policies and philosophies. The latter has been countered by evidence-based arguments that community cohesion is, in fact, a ‘renaming’ (Thomas 2011) and a ‘re-balancing’ (Meer and Modood 2009) of Britain’s multiculturalist policy approach, rather than its ‘death’ (Kundnani 2002). However, throughout these debates, a uniform ‘British model’ or ‘British approach’ of multiculturalist policy is assumed and utilised normatively. Important policy considerations rightly talk of Britain’s policy ‘philosophy’ (Flavell 2001) of integration, or of the ‘frames’ (Bleich 2003) of British multiculturalist policy. These frames and philosophies can also indeed be clearly identified in Britain’s approach to successive pieces of race discrimination legislation from the 1960s to the 2000s, with its civil, rather than, criminal burden of proof, and the rejection of ‘positive discrimination’ measures that might parallel the ‘affirmative action’ quotas of USA policy measures (Bleich 2003). Whilst valuable, these discussions and their critical analysis very much work on a national level unit of analysis. This may well be seen as being justifiable, given that Britain is a highly centralised state, with no federal structures (at least, not until the post-1997 devolution developments for Scotland and Wales; but no devolution whatsoever currently exists for the far more populous north of England) to constrain the intent and actions of Whitehall government. However, this ignores two important realities which this book works with. First, from early on in the 1960s, British multiculturalist policy approaches were consciously actioned through local government, with local government receiving a motley collection of non-negotiable orders, non-statutory ‘guidelines’, dedicated funding streams and unfunded exhortations regarding multiculturalism and ‘race relations’ (just one of the many policy terms actually deployed for this thing called ‘multiculturalist policy’). This ‘permissive’ approach has given both responsibility but also considerable autonomy and

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latitude to individual local authorities and their local partners (both communities themselves and other locally controlled agencies, such as the police) over a number of decades. This has meant that often local authorities have taken their own interpretation of national directives and policy programmes (including sometimes flatly ignoring them), and sometimes they have simply used this policy ‘space’ to devise their own measures. Second, even very specific and tightly directed national multiculturalist policies (such as the rigidly London-controlled Prevent counterterrorism strategy, which has operated explicitly around ‘ethnic’ communities; Thomas 2014) have often looked quite different at the local level and from one situated local area to another. Here, we identify the importance of understandings of ‘policy enactment’ (Ball et  al. 2013), whereby ground-level operational arms of the state, such as entire local authorities, specific parts of them, such as Housing departments or Youth Services, or even individual units like individual schools and their individual ‘street-­ level bureaucrats’ (Lipsky 2010), develop their own understandings of policy measures and adapt and mediate them to fit and work with their own professional and community realities. Some such localised enactments are conscious attempts to amend problematic policies, whilst some are simply collateral ways of managing wider complex and challenging work demands. This all means, though, that changes and impacts of national state multiculturalist policies can only truly be understood by critical consideration of local experiences and variations, with its granular complexity, and its situated success and failures. In the first phase of British state multiculturalism, from the mid-1960s until the late 1980s, there was very considerable academic focus on both the local community experiences of multiculturalism (e.g. Rex and Moore 1967) and of the local state attempts to develop and implement policies in this area (e.g. Ben-­ Tovim et al. 1986). It feels to us, though, that there has been significantly less focus, both on actual empirical academic research and on critical consideration of the local research that has happened (e.g. Thomas 2011; Miah 2015) over the last 25–30 years on the local and contingent ‘doing’ of multiculturalist policy, both of its intent and framing ‘narratives’ (Jones 2013) and of its implementation and impacts. We try to address this deficit in the book by drawing on a wide range of available empirical research

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(both our own and that of others, including data from policy practitioners) about local multiculturalist policy design and operation in the M62 region from the 1960s until the present. This enables us both to consider policy work itself but also the dialectical and relational relationships between local (whether of design or simply enactment) multicultural policies and community experiences, perceptions and preferred identifications.

Summarising the Book’s Contribution It is this chronic series of problematic events and the national political and media narratives based on them that has generated the sense that the M62 corridor as a region, with its constituent parts of ex-industrial ‘mill towns’, are a ‘failed space of multiculturalism’. This book doesn’t accept that characterisation and, to challenge it, uses historical contextualisation, a wider appreciation of coterminous economic change and significant inward migration and settlement and their impacts on ‘place’, and a more nuanced, situated and contingent understanding of multiculturalist policy work and its impacts. This book challenges that pessimistic, stigmatising and simplistic narrative of multiculturalist societal and policy failure, using a historically contextualised discussion of ethnic relations in northern England to argue that multiculturalism has been both more successful and more locally contingent and situated than such sweeping perspectives allow. A characterisation we do employ, though, is that the M62 region is currently a ‘corridor of uncertainty’. Here, we ‘borrow’ a phrase from the famous Yorkshire and England cricketer and cricket (or is that ‘creekit’?) commentator, Geoffrey Boycott. Boycott uses the phrase to describe an area where the batsman doesn’t know what to do, whether to move and engage with the ball or to withdraw and leave it. It is beyond dispute that some sections of different ethnic and faith communities in the M62 corridor region have felt, and do feel (as our research with economically marginalised, ‘White working class’ communities in Yorkshire [Thomas et al. 2015, 2018] and with young people of different ethnic backgrounds in Greater Manchester [Thomas and Sanderson 2011, 2013; Sanderson and Thomas 2014] has shown) that they feel they live

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in a corridor of uncertainty with regard to ethnic diversity and multiculturalism in their locality and region, unsure whether to engage with and embrace that diversity or retreat into fearful and hostile isolation. Such a characterisation might be understood as disproportionately foregrounding the agency and ‘choice’ of individuals and communities in the region, but that is not our intent. We argue that ‘choice’ has been greatly constrained by the economic changes to and realities in the region during the period of significant non-White migration and settlement in the region. Here, the book contends that post-2001 discussions about the ‘failure’ of multiculturalism in Britain as a whole, and the M62 corridor in particular, have been badly lacking in two important ways. First, they have been partial, taking little or no account of the profound economic changes that the country and our region have undergone, and how such changes impact on place and ‘space’ and constrain the choices and opportunities of individuals. Second, they have been ahistorical, in that narratives of ‘failure’ and the incompatibility of the minority Muslim communities seen as central to this failure take no account of what history, theory and empirical evidence tell us about the reality of long-term migrant integration and adaption within societies. Alongside these failures has been an unremittingly negative political characterisation of British ‘multiculturalist’ state policies (a problematic term, as such policies were rarely called ‘multiculturalist’, as we discuss) and their impacts. Here policies, as highlighted earlier, have been blamed for causing ethnic segregation, racial tensions and domestic terrorism and political extremism and have, it is argued, been particularly damaging in areas like the M62 corridor. The book seeks to challenge this characterisation of policy.

Declaring an Interest This book draws significantly on the authors’ long-term involvement in empirical research, policy and practice around ethnicity, ‘race’ and racism in the M62 corridor region of the north of England, and on the research outputs and insights that have been generated. This research activity has included material on how professional educational practitioners

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understand and practise ‘community cohesion’ in Oldham (Thomas 2007, 2009a, 2011) and in Kirklees (Thomas and Sanderson 2015), how Muslim school students and their families understand and experience ‘integration’ (Miah 2014), how young people of different ethnic backgrounds from Oldham and Rochdale view ethnic contact and segregation and the ‘identifications’ of self and others (Thomas 2002; Thomas and Sanderson 2011, 2013; Sanderson and Thomas 2014), and how ‘White working class’ communities in Calderdale and Kirklees view ethnic diversity and right-wing protest groups like the English Defence League (Busher et al. 2015; Thomas et al. 2015, 2018). Alongside this has been empirical research around implementation of the controversial ‘Prevent’ counterterrorism strategy in the region (Thomas 2008, 2011; Monro et  al. 2010; Busher et  al. 2017, 2019), and critical academic analysis based on this (Miah 2017; Thomas 2009b, 2010, 2016, 2017). Much of this research has been commissioned by local authorities (and is detailed in the Acknowledgments), with some of this research co-­designed in response to pressing community-based or national policy challenges. A large element of all these studies has been a process of researching with frontline practitioners and community organisations, both to understand their own experiences and to access community respondents through these trusted gatekeepers, some sometimes through co-designed programmes of action research. This fruitful body of empirical research around groundlevel experiences and perspectives has only been made possible by strong relationships of trust developed over time with local government policy officers, frontline practitioners and community organisations. Some of these relationships stem from our teaching and professional training activity at the School of Education and Professional Development at the University of Huddersfield, and some from the wider, personal involvements discussed below. This means that we owe a huge debt of gratitude to the professionals and community members involved in the research studies—the research outputs are theirs, as well as ours. The viewpoints and perspectives offered here, though, are solely ours. The motivation for the book and the insights and opinions offered within it, though, are not simply a product of our (professional) academic research engagement. Here, the book also overtly acknowledges and draws on the authors’ own past and present involvement in these

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historic developments and events in the M62 corridor region as both policy practitioners (Jones 2013) and community activists. It thus involves reflexivity (including self-criticism), and some aspects of auto-­ ethnography in its reflection on developments and events that the authors both witnessed and actively participated in. We are fully aware of the dangers of such material, including post hoc rationalisations of events, and throughout we clearly signpost the material stemming from personal reflections or experiences. In the interests of transparency, we briefly detail those roles and involvements here. Miah has a background in youth and community work. He also worked within the Policy Unit at Oldham Council prior to joining the University of Huddersfield in 2008. He is also involved with a range of voluntary organisations in Oldham, such as the Oldham Interfaith Forum. Sanderson worked as a contract researcher in Bradford between 1977 and 1982 on projects concerned with race, ethnicity and youth transitions in the city. He subsequently worked in West Yorkshire as a Further Education lecturer in multicultural towns and cities before moving to Huddersfield to train Further Education Lecturers and Youth Workers. He has also written on gender and the legal profession. Thomas is a qualified youth and community worker who did voluntary youth work in Leeds and was northern regional coordinator for a national youth organisation. He was also an Equalities training officer for Calderdale local authority and North of England Regional Youth Policy and Campaigns officer for the Commission for Racial Equality. Alongside this, Thomas was an anti-racist community activist who was present at the 1989 Dewsbury riots discussed in this book and was particularly involved in campaigning amongst football fans at his club Leeds United (Thomas 1995, 2010) and, latterly, amongst England fans at home and at international football tournaments.

The Book’s Structure The second chapter, Failed Spaces of Multiculturalism?, develops the book’s theoretical framework and methodological approach initially identified here in two interrelated ways. First, it engages with both UK and

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international academic literature around the notion of ‘failed spaces of multiculturalism’ within the overall thesis of multiculturalist crises. This comparative discussion engages both with accounts of ethnically determined segregation, but also with the pessimistic readings of Putnam’s (2007) troubling finding around the decline of social trust as ethnic diversity increases, particularly in the face of economic decline (Schaeffer 2014). The third chapter, ‘Parallel Lives’?, takes segregated Pennine towns (with a specific focus on Oldham and Bradford) as the starting point for a critical discussion of the discourse and realities of ethnic ‘parallel lives’ in our region of study. It draws on historical evidence around urbanisation and migration, and changing patterns of residential mixing, ethnic segregation and integration from the nineteenth century onwards, including the role of housing providers, changing economic circumstances and the extent to which community ‘agency’ is involved in any apparent ethnic segregation. This enables the chapter to discuss lived experiences and perceptions of mixing, segregation and tensions, and the role national and local state policy and practice has played in this. In Chap. 4, From Assimilation to Cohesion/Integration, we analyse changing local state multiculturalist policy discourses, policies and practices from the 1960s onwards, following the shift from explicitly assimilationist policies in the 1960s and 1970s, through the perceived heyday of multiculturalism in the 1980s to the citizenship-based integrationism from 2001 onwards. In particular, we examine the relationship between national policy debates and strictures and local policy practice, considering the extent of local policy enactment and mediation and even invention, alongside changing national priorities. In this way, we highlight local experiences and realities in the north of these policy discourses and operations, including contradictions, tensions and creativity. The direction of policy, and the relationship between the national and the local is selectively compared to the situation in other policy jurisdictions that have confronted the issues of diversity and super-diversity. Chapter 5, Black, Asian and the Muslim Cool, examines both the changing labels and identifications attached to the region’s South Asian communities, particularly to the increasingly pre-eminent Muslim community. This chapter will focus on the different ways Muslim

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identities are shaped by complex factors, including: the politics of race and religion, migration, settlement and geographical space. Contrary to popular understanding, ‘Muslim’ identities within the M62 corridor are not fixed and bounded; rather, they are complex, shaped by a combination of local, national and global factors. Chapter 5 closely relates to Chap. 6, From the Oppressive Majority to Oppressed Minority? Changing White Self-Identifications, which examines the curious journey of the region’s majority White community from being the taken-for-granted norm to feeling (at least in parts) that it is a marginalised, second-class status group. This chapter uses empirical research data from the region to directly and critically engage with the claims that there is now a ‘White working class’ that understands both its own identity and its economic and political marginalisation in explicitly racialised terms. It critically discusses the internal and external factors involved in such shifting identifications, and feelings of ‘unfairness’, including the extent to which local and national policies have reflected or indeed led such shifts in identifications, and the relational nature of these identifications and the perceptions and experiences driving them. It also discussed the political manifestations of this ‘White working class’ in the region. In Chap. 7, Educated to Be Separate?, we consider schooling young people and racialised understandings of experiences in education. The M62 corridor has been the locus of a range of controversies and resentments revolving around ‘race’, education and its perceived role in promoting multiculturalism, from the Bussing of Asian pupils to White suburbs in Bradford, Halifax and Huddersfield in the 1960s and 1970s to the Honeyford and ‘Dewsbury school’ controversies of the 1980s to more recent concerns over ‘segregated schooling’. This chapter uses the authors’ own empirical data to illuminate a historically informed discussion of perceptions, lived experiences and symbolic represent actions of integration, segregation and racism within the north’s schools and educational systems. Moreover, this chapter will focus on three crucial debates ranging from the Bussing and dispersal policies during the 1960s and 1970s and the debates on assimilation to how this has shaped recent debates on integration and community cohesion. It will also examine the politics of language, and how contemporary debates around teaching

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deradicalisation have much deeper roots to debates during the early 1980s. More crucially, it critically examines debates associated with Muslim faith schools, Islamist entryist politics and the question integration and schooling. Underpinning all these chapters is an ongoing consideration of the deindustrialisation and structural economic changes that the M62 corridor region of the north of England has experienced since the 1960s and an analysis of its relationship to changing popular perceptions inside and outside the region around ethnic diversity per se and multiculturalist policy measures intended to positively support diversity. We also refer to key ‘events’ throughout the book and in particular, we examine the very significant racialisation of place and space in some towns and areas of the M62 corridor at a time of significant, structural economic decline, and how this has influenced perceptions, experiences and representations of ethnic diversity per se. This all enables and informs the Conclusion in Chap. 8, Not Such a ‘Failure’—A Multiculturalist Space in Development, where we argue both that a much longer term, critical historical perspective needs to be applied to understandings both of the ‘integration’ of modern migrant communities, especially Muslims, to the M62 corridor region and state policy efforts to support this, and that the structural economic changes the region has undergone since the late 1960s are central to explanations of current tensions, challenges and barriers.

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Thomas, P. (2016). Youth, Terrorism and Education: Britain’s Prevent Programme. International Journal of Life-long Education Special Issue: ‘Youth, Social Crisis and Learning’, 35(2), 171–187. Thomas, P. (2017). Changing Experiences of Responsibilisation and Contestation Within Counter-Terrorism Policies: The British Prevent Experience. Policy and Politics, 45(3), 305–322. Thomas, P., & Sanderson, P. (2011). Unwilling Citizens? Muslim Young People and National Identity. Sociology, 45(6), 1028–1044. Thomas, P., & Sanderson, P. (2013). Crossing the Line? White Young People and Community Cohesion. Critical Social Policy, 33(1), 160–180. Thomas, P., & Sanderson, P. (2015). Kirklees Community Cohesion Action Research: Interim Report. Huddersfield: University of Huddersfield. Thomas, P., Busher, J., Macklin, G., Rogerson, M., & Christmann, K. (2015). Understanding Concerns About Community Relations in Kirklees. Huddersfield: University of Huddersfield. Thomas, P., Busher, J., Macklin, G., Rogerson, M., & Christmann, K. (2018). Hopes and Fears – Community Cohesion and the ‘White Working Class’ in One of the ‘Failed Spaces’ of Multiculturalism. Sociology, 52(2), 262–281. Waddington, D., Jobard, F., & King, M. (Eds.). (2009). Rioting in the UK and France: A comparative analysis. Cullompton: Willan Publishing. Weaver, M. (2010, October 17). Angela Merkel: German Multiculturalism has ‘Utterly Failed’. The Guardian.

2 Failed Spaces of Multiculturalism?

The ‘Failed Spaces’ Thesis As we noted in the Introduction, certain specific place names from the UK, France, Belgium and other countries around the world have become emblematic of the ‘failed spaces/separate lives’ discourse, which seeks to explain phenomena as diverse as urban conflict, educational underachievement, child sexual exploitation and radical extremism. Clichy-­ sous-­Bois, Molenbeek, Oldham, Bradford, Lakemba, Cronulla (Wise 2017; Johns et al. 2017), to list but a few, are taken as symbols not just of the socio-demographic composition of their populations, but also of ways of thinking and theorising about complex relationships between place, people, culture, resources and social behaviours. As Kalra and Rhodes note in their discussion of the 2001 riots in Oldham and Burnley (2009), these districts have become subject to a narrative of moral panic which identifies them as racialised territories, a source and object of conflict, and a breeding ground for criminality and ideologically driven violence (Johns et  al. 2017). This narrative is reinforced in  local and national discourse through the media and through policy interventions (Kalra and Rhodes 2009), and tends to link spatial clustering, cultural © The Author(s) 2020 S. Miah et al., ‘Race,’ Space and Multiculturalism in Northern England, Palgrave Politics of Identity and Citizenship Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42032-1_2

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behaviour and inter-group relationships in a linear causality. It attributes responsibility for a breakdown in social consensus and cohesion, and commitment to solidaristic forms of citizenship, to this form of diversity (Goodhart 2004, 2017; Koopmans 2010; Schaeffer 2014). For example, Koopman’s comparative study of eight European countries that had experienced substantial immigration claimed that ‘multicultural policies— which grant immigrants easy access to equal rights and do not provide strong incentives for host-country language acquisition and interethnic contacts—when combined with a generous welfare state, have produced low levels of labour market participation, high levels of segregation and a strong overrepresentation of immigrants among those convicted for criminal behaviour’ (2010: 1). This theme has recurred in policy debates since 2001 in the UK, from the Cantle Report (2001) through to the Casey Review (2016). Deborah Phillips has analysed how, at a European level, political discourses on ethnic segregation tend to accentuate the pathological characteristics of ethnic clustering, with implicit or explicit reference to Muslim citizens (Phillips 2010, and see Kalra and Kapoor 2009; Werbner 2009), and to privilege explanations based on ethnicity and cultural difference at the expense of those identifying racialised inequalities in power and status (Amin 2005). Policies deriving from this model tend to be variations on a theme of desegregation and assimilation, as discussed further in Chap. 4 (Phillips 2010). The nuance which is reflected in the detail of some reports on community cohesion disappears however when translated into the media and political arenas (as in Cameron and Merkel’s speeches to the Munich Security Conference in 20111), but almost all articulations of the ‘failed spaces’ argument understate the complexity of residential decision-­making and the way in which urban settlement is overdetermined by the agency of multiple individuals, groups, organisations and the macro-structural influences of state and the market. The spatial and social are intertwined in complex and unpredictable ways. People’s sense of social belonging is often closely tied to sentiments of spatial belonging (Dekker and Bolt 2005) which operate at differing levels of granularity, from the street or estate to the district or regional level, in a form referred to by Amin as the ‘urban unconscious’ (2012). As  https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pms-speech-at-munich-security-conference

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often noted, the larger the scale, the less likely that sense of belonging is to be built on primary relationships, and the more likely they are to be built on membership of ‘imagined communities’, where the shared characteristics are, in part, defined in opposition to a sense of the symbolic otherness with which the group sees itself as confronted. The relationship between the social and the spatial is also inflected by historical changes, which are symbolised by transformations of landscapes and cityscapes as well as obvious demographic change. The derelict mill, the landscaped slagheap, the high street’s empty retail outlets (Alwitt and Donley 1997), proliferations of fast-food outlets and discount stores and closed libraries can appear as monuments to vanished modes of work and life. Denizens of urban spaces subjected to this hollowing out of their environment can project their grief and anger at this decline, onto the Other. In his study of Blackburn in the 1960s, Jeremy Seabrook characterised this as ‘an expression of .. pain and powerlessness confronted by the decay and dereliction, not only of the familiar environment, but of their own lives, too – an expression for which our society provides no outlet’ (1971: 53). Nearly 50 years on, this still resonates with much of our own research in the M62 corridor region, and with the explosion of nativism following the 2016 Brexit vote. This key flaw in the ‘failed spaces’ argument—its failure to recognise the complexity of race, residence and community—is particularly exemplified by the way it constructs a causal relationship between culture and other social factors in a fashion which lacks any real historical perspective. The communities under discussion have each experienced drastic changes in their composition and their circumstances since the waves of migration from the 1950s onwards. As Werbner has argued, we need ‘ to consider multiculturalism as played out in historical moments of crisis and confrontation, in which culturally intractable oppositions and incommensurabilities surface’ (2009: 29). A reading which takes this perspective of ‘multiculturalism in history’ (Werbner 2005) includes in its scope important aspects of the history of the M62 corridor in the past 70 years, which include both the systematic, collective experiences in public spaces, schools and workplace, of the individuals and communities labelled variously as ‘Immigrant’, ‘South Asian’, ‘Asian’, ‘Pakistani’ and ‘Muslim’, and the key events identified in the Introduction, which occupy a central place in the process of incorporation into British society as ‘Muslims’, which is traced by Werbner (2005: 21).

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The multiculturalism, which is the centre of this critical discourse, is also a profoundly ambiguous phenomenon: when we discuss the twists and turns of public policy later in the volume, it will become evident that the notion that the UK State promoted separate public cultural identities and institutions is illusory: as has been argued more generally, ‘no state possesses a truly coherent incorporation regime … Rather one finds sub-system frameworks that are weakly, if at all, co-ordinated’ (Freeman 2004: 946). Policy in this area has been inconsistent, often improvised, permissive rather than mandatory, and often contradictory. Whilst publicly promoting ideas of shared citizenship and cultural norms, for example, particularly after the events in the first decade of this century, with differences in faith and culture relegated to the private sphere, the same politicians on all points of the spectrum were supporting the growth of the faith school movement in the public sphere, and the balkanisation of the education system. The critique of the failed spaces thesis which we will develop in this chapter is consequently threefold: the thesis leans too heavily on the ideas of agency and culture in its explanation of residential segregation, and downplays the powerful structuring of the public and private spaces which both ‘White’ and ‘Muslim’ communities inhabit (Phillips 2006; Simpson 2006; Ratcliffe 2009); the extent of segregation is itself frequently overstated (Finney and Simpson 2009); and the significance of segregation is exaggerated and misconstrued (Amin 2002; Bolt et  al. 2010). There are indeed features of these M62 northern towns that are particular, and that have contributed to the racial and ethnic tensions which have been the subject of so much debate, but we need to find a theoretical framework which accommodates the far more complex set of economic and social factors lying behind the caricatures that often appear in the popular press or the mouths of politicians.

The Many Causes of ‘Ethnic Clustering’ As we noted in the Introduction, the starting point of many critiques of multiculturalism is the notion of voluntary self-segregation on the part of (principally Muslim) communities. The range of factors giving rise to this form of clustering was articulated in the 1970s and 1980s by authors

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such as Dahya (1974) and Butterworth et al. (1981). They included: the consequences of chain migration for settlement patterns; the patterns and significance of family and kinship in South Asia; the impact of cultural relativism on judgements of housing quality, and proximity to religious institutions and culturally congruent retail outlets. This ‘rational preference’ explanation of ethnic concentrations in specific urban areas became the dominant one (Prandy 1979; Robinson 1980), despite the criticisms of authors such as Rex and Moore (1967), who in contrast emphasised the importance of structural constraints on housing choice (Wallman 1986). In a bowdlerised form, the rational preference model finds its way into many policy documents and reviews, up to the Casey Review in 2016, where it is noted that there is ‘a desire on the part of immigrants to live near to kin and others from similar backgrounds who might help them navigate life in a new country, cultural connections’, (Casey 2016: 11). More recently, researchers have tried to resolve the dichotomy between choice and constraint through the development of ‘structuration’ models of housing choice that emphasise the dialectical relationship between agency and structure (Sarre 1986; Simpson et al. 2008; Ratcliffe 2009), and through comparative and trans-historical studies which argue for a multilevel approach to the explanation of urban clustering (York et al. 2010). Such models recognise that in order to understand patterns of urban settlement, we need to understand not only why individuals might want to stay in, move out of, or move into, specific inner city or suburban areas, we also need to understand the factors that might enable them to, or prevent them from staying, moving in or moving out (Boschmann et al. 2017). Before developing some of these approaches in the context of the M62 corridor, it is worth recognising the continuing relevance of the work of the Chicago School of urban and cultural sociologists (Ballis Lal 1986). They have been fundamental to many of these debates, in particular through the work of Park, Burgess and W I Thomas, but reductionist accounts of their approach to the growth of the city, or assimilation, obscure some of the features of their thinking which are most useful in understanding contemporary urban behaviour. Their work provides two extremely important perspectives on settlement and relationships in M62 towns like Oldham, Rochdale, Bradford and Dewsbury. First, the

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significance of Burgess and Park’s concentric ring model of urban development (Burgess 1925; Park 1930) is not as a deterministic account of the specific form of town and city development, but in its identification of the relationship between the shifting land and rental values of urban space; their potential usage; the resources available to social groups and individuals, and the cultural behaviour which is associated with specific forms of occupancy and usage. The ecological model affords an alternative to theories, such as the ‘separate lives’ model, that identify patterns of clustering in urban settlement as the result of individual, if culturally determined, choices: their analysis makes it clear that the residual spaces available for migrants to move in have specific characteristics and affordances, as well as specific relationships to other spaces, adjacent and further afield. In the case of many of the M62 towns, what has distinguished them from their larger metropolitan neighbours has been the difficulty in generating any inward investment that would encourage dynamism in the housing market, or inward migration of jobseekers from other areas of the UK: this has meant that in the private sector there has been relatively less churn, and less incentive for the kind of gentrification which has led to greater social diversity in areas like Brixton or Hackney in London, or areas of Manchester and Leeds. In addition to the influence of these movements in the market for property, the modified model provided by Hoyt (1939) introduces the notion of sectors based on permitted and prohibited forms of use, in turn determined by the power of the state over urban morphology, through policy interventions such as planning zones, social housing, traffic management and housing improvement, as well as explicit market factors such as perceived value, and, historically, the more covert policies on lending of housing finance organisations. Settlements, and relationships between settlements, are notably constrained and structured. For example, as we will explore in more detail below, the initial settlement of the Listerhills and Exchange wards in the inner city Victorian area of Bradford by migrants from Pakistan working in the textile industry matches Burgess and Park’s identification of the inner city zone of transition as the obvious location, on grounds of cost and availability, for any migrant (Butterworth 1967b; Richardson 1976). However, the availability of this housing stock was in part predicated on the way in which social housing

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projects, because of the availability of land, tended to move to the periphery of urban areas between the 1940s and 1960s, leading, for example, to almost exclusively White, poorly serviced, housing estates, for example those in Bradford such as Buttershaw, Scholemoor, Thorpe Edge, Wyke Manor and Holme Wood. These estates, and their peripheral location, are a feature of most of the towns along the M62 corridor, and represent a form of segregation by class (Dorling 2006) as well as race (given the difficulties encountered by Black Asian and minority ethnic families attempting to pioneer entry to the sector): the changes in social housing policy from the 1980s onwards have accentuated this phenomenon by concentrating disadvantage in smaller and smaller areas of residual social housing. However, the class dimension has rarely been identified as problematic by policy makers in the same way as it has for those areas where ‘ethnic minorities’ form the majority of the population (Phillips 2006; Kalra and Kapoor 2009; Thomas 2011: 72). In addition to the effects of local government planning, the red-lining practices of building society mortgage lenders, where mortgage finance was unavailable to prospective purchasers in areas deemed ‘undesirable’ (a proxy for a racialised descriptor), together with the eligibility rules governing the availability of council-managed social housing, and the role played by gatekeepers applying these criteria during the initial stages of settlement, and subsequently (Netto and Abazie 2013) provided another layer of structured differentiation, even before taking into account the individual discriminatory practices of landlords and estate agents (Sarre 1986; Lewis 1994), as we discuss further in Chap. 4. The Chicago School also provide insights that help us to understand how residential clustering reflects, and results from, cultural behaviour which is positional, formed not solely out of learning from primary relationships in the family and community, but from wider interactions with other communities, and the socio-economic environment. W I Thomas and Znaniecki’s model of social disorganisation and reorganisation in the process of migration from rural to urban Poland, and from Poland to the United States, provided a dynamic conception of culture and cultural institutions as flexible resources which draw on traditional beliefs and practices selectively in order to deal with the issues presented by new and often hostile environments (1996). Culture and what we call ethnicity,

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are, as Barth later emphasised (1969), the product of mutual positioning and boundary work. A telling example in Thomas’ work is his analysis of Bismarck’s attempt at forced assimilation through Germanisation in the province of Posen, which resulted in the Polish-speaking population developing an ethnolinguistic identification which supplanted their primary religious identification, resulting in the ‘Polish Peasant Republic’ of Posen (Thomas 1914). Similarly, Thomas and Znaniecki noted that community and religious associations and practices that were significant in the social re-organisation of migrants to Warsaw and to the United States were even more significant in their new, unfamiliar and hostile, environment (1996), and formed a key element in the community’s capacity to engage with this new set of circumstances. Zubrzycki identified similar processes amongst Polish migrants, migrating to towns including Bradford in the UK post-war (1956). This perspective on culture, as a continuing, responsive, transformative process, rather than a static attribute, and the research model that under-pinned it, which involved work in and with the community of origin as well as destination, prefigures elements of the work of contemporary writers on diaspora. Alexander’s account of the significance of the Shahid Mina for the Bangladeshi communities in Tower Hamlets and Oldham, in which she emphasises the fact that ‘issues of time and space, history and the present, homeland and homecoming are, indeed, intertwined and mutually constituted in complex and ambiguous ways’ exemplifies the continuing relevance of Thomas and Znaniecki’s perspective (2013: 608). As we will explore in more detail below, the processes of objectification and categorisation to which Muslims have been exposed over the entire length of their residence in M62 towns is inextricably intertwined with their process of self-identification (Salgado-Pottier 2008; Shah 2018). This is not to make the claim that many of the activities and incidents which commentators identify as most troubling for multiculturalism, such as the Rushdie affair, were entirely in response to majority society pressures: Fazakarley has stressed the need to recognise the consistency of Muslims’ religious and culturally based claims making from the initial stages of male migration, initially in the workplace, but subsequently in educational and other public service settings (2017). However, as we will see in the following chapters, the experience of racism, labelling and

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crude assimilationist policies was a feature of migrant experience from the first arrival, and represent factors affecting the nature of clustered settlement, alongside other factors. Viewed trans-historically, the phenomena of spatial and social segregation, frequently attributed to ‘multiculturalist’ policy interventions, emerge as recurring features of urban migrations, whether internal or external (Meen 2012; Meer 2010, 2012). In their comparative study, York et al. (2010) identify key drivers of ethnic and class clustering across the globe and over centuries. There are: the macro-structural processes such as economic change (industrialisation and the advent of capitalism leading to rapid urbanisation, chain migration and clustering); religiously mandated spatial orderings (of which highly segregated Jewish settlements in both contemporary North London and North Manchester represent an ideal type); intervention by the State and local state in law (anti-­discrimination legislation opening up housing markets) and planning and public works (zoning or the creation of physical boundaries with transport infrastructure). These factors contribute to the social production of the space into which ethnic or class groups move, and also describe the parameters of choice. So, for example, in the M62 northern textile towns, rapid industrialisation and urbanisation initiated a period of speculative building of poor-quality back to back and terraced housing in the vicinity of factory sites, and created a demand for labour which drew in former local smallholders and artisan weavers, as well as English migrants from East Anglian wool textile areas, and Irish migrants. Another variable which we will identify as entering the equation is the relationship between the different elements of national, regional and local governance, in terms both of development or adaptation of policy objectives, and the availability of resources to support the implementation of policy. Examples might be the use of funding through Section 11 of the Local Government Act 1966 by local authorities for a range of purposes at a tangent to the original objectives of the legislation, or the wide variations in the use of Housing Action Area status in the 1970s to address issues associated with racial tension (Barr 1978). These disparities in  local approaches to issues arising from diversity could interact directly with the phenomenon of clustering. Similarly, in their study of the impact of housing dispersal policies in several Southern

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European countries, Arbaci and Malheiros identified the way in which clearance and dispersal policies, when undertaken in the context of limited public-housing production and few opportunities for self-build housing, could paradoxically increase socio-residential exclusion. They found that the strength and specific composition of the major waves of immigrants in the 1990s and early 2000s reduced migrants’ access to the housing market and tended to promote clustering in peripheral metropolitan areas, thereby exacerbating social exclusion (2010). Further examples are provided by schemes which have aimed to increase employment opportunities and neighbourhood attachment through ‘social mix’ policies in areas deemed to be too homogenous (Musterd and Adersson 2005; Bacque et al. 2011). The sheer variations in neighbourhood composition, the motives, cohesion and cultural lives of both existing residents and those encouraged to come in, led to unpredictable effects, but tended to result in the poorest residents (generally from minority communities) moving out to locations where they might be more isolated. In addition to these macro- and meso-level, structural forces, York and her colleagues also identify bottom-up processes, which include the individual and household preference which is salient in many models, the need for mutual support, the availability of cultural resources, the effect of chain migration and neighbourhood self-regulation and associated exclusionary practices. The complexity of the interaction between all these factors at different levels leads to the conclusion that there is no ‘typical’ set of conditions that leads to clustering, and no typical form which it takes: understanding the nature of any particular cluster requires a sophisticated understanding of the interaction between structure and agency (York et  al. 2010: 2409–10). Similarly, Ratcliffe points to the mutual embeddedness of agency and structure, providing as an example the way in which apparent clustering behaviour by any group might generate a stereotype in gatekeeping agencies, such as estate agents, of residential preferences which would then influence their signposting behaviour. An even clearer example of the constrained nature of choice is the historically accreted experience by minority communities of racism in public spaces (an example of what York and her colleagues refer to as neighbourhood-level regulation). At the turn of the century, Phillips summarised a range of studies in England, from the 1980s onwards, in

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which respondents cited fear of racial harassment, and the need for security, as a key reason for wishing to live near co-ethnics (1998: 1694). These fears, which we will discuss in relation to the M62 towns in the next chapter, are characteristically held by minority populations as a whole, but particularly by younger members, as they are particularly sensitive to racialised perceptions of territoriality (Kintrea et  al. 2008; Thomas 2011). Bisin and colleagues further found that the main determinants for ethnic identity in the UK, especially for Muslims, were experiences of racial harassment, as well as language spoken at home and with friends, quality of housing and family structure (2008). The interaction between housing and labour markets is a further example of the interplay between structural factors and residential preference, and is often understated in the literature. As we will explore in greater detail below, the extended decline of the textile industry on both sides of the Pennines from the 1960s onwards, occurring as it did in parallel with the spike in migration resulting from the imminent onset of immigration restrictions in the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act (Leech 1966), resulted in a lengthy period during which the unemployment rates in Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage communities in M62 were at high levels for more than two decades. This sustained disadvantage in employment has been seen both as one of a number of causes of spatial concentration (Owen et al. 2006; Ratcliffe 2009: 441; Zucotti 2019) and also as we shall see below, an effect (Fernandez and Fernandez-Mateo 2006). There is evidence that Pakistani- and Indian-heritage workers, using informal communal networks, were able to migrate during the peak years of unemployment in the 1980s and 1990s from areas like Bradford to Birmingham (Robinson 1992; Phillips 1998: 1685). However, unemployed workers, or recent school leavers with negligible amounts of portable human capital, were unable to take advantage of the employment opportunities offered in growing areas of the economy in the South-East. This restricted economic mobility can be seen as interacting with a lack of residential mobility to reinforce clustering and concentrations of multiple deprivation, also experienced by White working-class males. For example, Boschmann et  al. in a study of neighbourhoods in the Netherlands addressed the issue of whether ethnic minorities and other disadvantaged residents were less able to successfully

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follow through an expressed desire to move from a neighbourhood, and concluded that restricted mobility is a significant factor in spatial segregation in urban areas (2017). As we will see in the next chapter, the patterns of economic decline along the M62 tended to be concentrated in areas outside the main metropolises. The decline of manufacturing during the Thatcher years was accompanied by the growth of financial and legal services, and cities like Leeds and Manchester gradually experienced substantial growth in employment in these areas, together with a boom in the commercial and residential property markets. So, smaller towns experienced not only an absolute but also a relative decline in their fortunes. There is some evidence that the size and character of an urban area can also have an impact on perceptions of, and behaviour in, the residential housing market. Reeve and Robinson’s study of ethnic minority experiences in a medium-­ sized town in Lincolnshire argued that small-town England represented a local context in which the adverse housing situations that are a common feature of life for many minority ethnic households in metropolitan districts could be exacerbated (2007). They found residential choices to be more limited, and that institutional policy and practice was less sensitive and responsive to diverse needs; and the potential for fulfilling housing aspirations was severely curtailed. The members of the resulting ethnic minority clusters expressed the same anxiety about security outside their immediate residential area as respondents have in more obviously threatening urban areas (Reeve and Robinson 2007). Although their study is specifically of an ‘urbs in ruris’ setting, some of the features speak to M62 towns that occupy an intermediary position between metropolitan conurbation and the South Pennines. In addition to labour market factors, the politics of choice in education represent a significant factor in both the development and the effect of spatial segregation. The emphasis on parental choice developed during the 1997–2007 Blair Labour governments, together with the growth of the school academy movement and the declining power of local authorities (discussed further in Chap. 7), transformed local educational landscapes. A range of studies began to demonstrate that schools were, in many cases, more segregated than the communities in which they were spatially located, though the extent of segregation did not match the

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levels represented in the media and the popular imagination (Johnston et al. 2004; Harris 2010). However, it was precisely the rumoured makeup of secondary school populations, and the similarly rumoured impact on school performance and environment, which fuelled many conversations outside primary school gates as children entered Years 5 and 6, and deepened some of the fault lines between communities at a local level. The extent to which this might have been a factor in the movement of White populations out of inner city areas has not been adequately researched, and so ‘White flight’ remains a contested reality (Finney and Simpson 2009). In this section we have gathered together material which indicates just how complex the aetiology of residential clustering is when applied to the supposedly ‘failed spaces’ of the M62 corridor. Structural factors such as the volume and type of housing supply, the conditions of access to this supply, the way in which housing markets interact with transport to condition access to labour markets, interact with family and group characteristics and cultural needs and preferences. Above all, as Deborah Phillips and colleagues have demonstrated in a number of articles over the past 30 years, whilst some measures appear to show that the phenomenon of spatial concentration and segregation is a persistent feature of urban life in areas like northern towns, there is a process in train which means that housing preferences in the third and fourth generations of Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage northerners have shifted, and that their aspirations are tending to converge with White residents of a similar age and class background. The extent to which this challenges the narrative of Muslim self-segregation and self-exclusion is one of a number of issues discussed in the following section.

J ust How Segregated Are Ethnic Groups and Who Are They? Massey and Denton’s classic definition of residential segregation (1988) identifies five dimensions which are conceptually distinct, though clearly generally linked in the way they are manifested in settlement. They are: evenness, which describes the differential distribution of given

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populations over a given area (indicated by a measure known as the dissimilarity index); exposure, which indicates the likelihood of contact with members of an out-group; concentration, or the occupational density of a group in the area they occupy; centralisation, which indicates how near a population is to the urban centre; and clustering, which overcomes some of the drawbacks of measuring discrete areas by looking at groupings adjacent to each other. The significance of this more nuanced dimensionality of segregation is that it attempts to capture the relationship between group distributions and social disadvantage: for example, the measure of centralisation indicates the extent to which a cluster is occupying areas that Park and Burgess, and following them, Rex and Moore (1967), referred to as the zone of transition, most likely an area of poor-quality housing with poor-quality health and educational amenities, and the measure of exposure was designed to assess the extent to which individuals or groups had access to networks that would give them access to favourable employment opportunities. The measures were conceived of by Massey and Denton to explore the extent to which structural forces were confining the African American population in cities in the States to ghettos which decreased life chances and increased risk. They have also been adopted by researchers exploring the relationship between residence and ‘segmented assimilation’ (Stepick and Stepick 2010), a concept analogous to Sutherland’s ‘differential association’, which explores the extent to which neighbourhood subcultural experiences, including the strength of cross-­generational ties, can impact on integration into education and employment markets, but also on affinity with mainstream societal values. There is a question mark over whether their use to identify the extent and consequences of alleged voluntary self-segregation in ethnic minority populations in the UK is really congruent. The measure of centralisation, for example, assumes greater employment opportunities in suburban areas, and would not account for the situation of the peripheral post-war social housing estates typical of the M62 corridor, universally occupied by a segregated White working class and poorly served in terms of transport and consequently easy access to employment. Attributing an appropriate significance to this phenomenon of segregation by class is partly about restoring some symmetry to the debate around cohesion and

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inter-­group relations through a recognition that segregation describes the experience of many social groups, including high-earning middle-class owner-occupiers in exclusive housing estates. There are other aspects of research using segregation measures that need to be interpreted with some nuance. ‘Exposure’, for example, introduces a relational element to our understanding of segregation, but possibly an insufficient one. As we’ll note below, concentrating on residence understates the significance for cohesion of other social arenas such as employment and the consumption of private and public services such as health, transport and, particularly, education, and the way this consumption interacts with residence, the ‘publics’ referred to by Amin (2012). On the one hand, spatial separateness may be mitigated by positive contacts as co-workers, but on the other the consequences of segregated residence may be amplified by the ways in which contact between groups is consequently structured. Taxi firms in the M62 towns, for example, are largely dominated by Pakistani heritage drivers, and the distance of most White working-class estates from town centres results in contacts where the potential for conflict is heightened by alcohol consumption and peer-­ group pressure, as we found in our own research in Rochdale and Oldham (Thomas and Sanderson 2011). These potentially negative experiences can then feed back into shared perceptions of territoriality and threat which have historically affected residential behaviour. A further issue with segregation indices is the scale of measurement. Catney argues for example that ‘exploring segregation across a national context allows for a more integrated appreciation of the changing geographies of ethnic diversity’ than studies which have traditionally devoted most of their attention to traditional areas of ethnic concentration in the inner cities (2017: 137). Her work demonstrates that the degree of segregation experienced by different ethnic groups varies across the scales at which segregation is measured. Catney cites the example of Bangladeshis, who demonstrated high levels of segregation for only very small spatial scales and in very concentrated areas, and lower segregation levels than for other ethnic groups across larger areas (see also Jones et al. 2015). As she argues, ‘ this not only challenges our understandings of segregation patterns, but hints at the reasons behind them. For the Bangladeshi group, pockets of segregation are small-scale and geographically rare (and, as shown by Johnston et  al.’s

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(2016) analysis of London, declining at the micro-scale), despite the comparatively high levels of segregation found for this group at the national level’ (2017: 148). The need to take scale into account has implications for the data on towns like the M62 towns, particularly Oldham and Rochdale for example, which are in the orbit of a larger metropolis. There have been numerous other disputes and discussions over the interpretation of data on residential distributions, and its implications for understanding of ethnic segregation, for example in the debate between Simpson (2004) and Johnston and colleagues (2005) on the extent of segregation in Bradford between the two census periods of 1991 and 2001, which we will discuss in more detail in the next chapter. However, this issue of scale is just one of the measurement problems which commentators have identified in discussions of ethnic segregation. Another is the extent to which continued or increased concentrations of particular groups in particular urban areas are a consequence of natural population growth or inward migration, and the extent to which either of these factors is being balanced by movements out to contiguous or non-contiguous areas (Johnston et al. 2005). As Johnston argues, residential segregation is both a process, which needs to be measured over time, and a pattern, which is only revealed through rigorous synchronous measurement, but the implications of respectively emphasising the process or pattern dimensions of the raft of studies conducted over the past two decades need to be carefully considered before conclusions are drawn for social policy (e.g. as in the 2016 Casey Review). As Ratcliffe forcibly points out, to link a social category such as race or ethnicity to the housing market in any empirical study is to presume its status as an independent variable (2009: 437). There are several grounds for believing that any demonstrated association between an ‘ethnicity’ and specific settlement patterns might be spurious. First, ethnic status is just one of many ways of ‘cutting’ a population in the process of analysis (Ratcliffe 2009), and confounding variables such as socio-economic status (both current and of origin, felt and perceived), educational trajectory and family composition might render conclusions about the cultural determinants of housing choices spurious. Second, the categories used as proxies for ethnic affiliation are profoundly problematic. As we noted earlier, ethnicity should be seen as a multilayered and dynamic

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phenomenon (Ratcliffe 2004: 30), where members of the same putative ‘minority’ ethnic group may have sets of overlapping, but not coterminous identifications, some of which are spatially bounded but others definitely not. These identifications will reflect a range of dimensions, associated with language, belief, age, taste and aspiration for example, whilst the ethnic categories used for the purposes of measuring residential segregation inevitable conflate all these identifications into the unidimensional categories of census or household survey data. Whilst these categories may provide a useful way of slicing data to broadly assess social inequality, it is more problematic when they generate culturally grounded causal explanations of residential clustering. In particular, it is evident that the ethnic categories used in census data fail to reflect what might be considered relevant cultural variables in terms of theories of ethnic residential preference. They would include a wide range of denominational differences in co-religionists currently included under the same ethnic category, a significant issue given how proximity to places of worship is often encountered as an issue in the literature on residential choice (Simpson et al. 2008), reflecting the wider significance of mosques in particular as focal points in describing the relationship between social and physical space (McLoughlin 2005). Simpson’s work, in particular, has explored the distribution in areas of concentration between established settlers of up to four generations, and more recent arrivals. Both residential preference, and the capacity for mobility, will vary between these different strands of the same ‘ethnicity’. Class differences, with associated attitudinal and aspirational differences, within even more nuanced categorisations of ethnicity, such as ‘Mirpuri’, ‘Chaachi’ or ‘Pathan’, were noted by commentators on the first wave of migration (Butterworth 1967a; Dahya 1974). The issue of generational difference has been the subject of commentary since the first wave of ‘between two cultures’ writing in the 1970s (Watson 1977), but that difference has itself undergone several major transformations alongside the growth in religiosity traced by Werbner from the 1980s onwards (2005). So, for example, McGarrigle and Kearns explored the complexity of residential choice in Glasgow: whilst noting the greater extent of residential mixing, they also delineate the extremely complex variety of motivations underpinning decisions as to whether to move away from cluster areas

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and into the suburbs, and the fact that these complexities are often not registered in the categories available for analysing residential location and movement. In particular, it was necessary for their study to unpack the category of ‘South Asian’, as they noted that inter-group perceptions were a factor in ‘Indian’ families’ desire to move out to the suburbs. ‘Mixing’ as well as ‘clustering’ decisions are clearly identified in this study as bounded choices (2009). Similar difficulties are encountered in considering the ‘majority’ ethnic category (most typically represented as ‘White’). Various studies have noted that it is the ‘White’ category that scores most highly on the indices of dissimilarity and isolation, but relatively little research has explored the degree of segregation between members of this category on grounds of class, or the relationship between degrees and types of segregation and the morphology of the specific urban settlements in which they live. The asymmetry in the research effort expended respectively on class and ethnicity may lead us both to overstate the significance of minority ethnicity in the overall segmentation of urban spaces, and the extent to which any change in minority behaviour might bring about a change. In summary, it seems clear that the almost exclusive focus of ‘urban segregation’ research on statistical measurement of the concentrations of ascribed ‘minority’ communities has obscured, rather than clarified, the broader patterns of spatial clustering and differentiation that are characteristic of modern Britain, and how these might affect social cohesion. A considerable amount of research has been devoted to tracing these effects, and it is to a critical review of this literature that we turn next.

 egregation and Its Effects: Opportunity, S Disorder, Trust and Neighbourhood We now turn to explore the significance of segregation: how seriously does the issue of spatial, and indeed social, separateness need to be taken if we are concerned about broader social cohesion? There are several interconnected issues to be engaged with here. The first concerns the effects of neighbourhood ethnic concentration on economic and social

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opportunity, with the possible accompanying effect of segmented assimilation, where some subgroups becoming increasingly distanced in terms of experience and opportunity from ‘mainstream’ society (Galster 2012; Portes and Zhou 1993). For example, in their analysis of the Office of National Statistics Longitudinal Study, Zuccotti and Platt have identified penalties specifically for ‘Pakistani’ and ‘Bangladeshi’ populations (in particular, women) resulting from spending early life in areas with a spatial concentration of ‘co-ethnics’ (2017). Their discussion of the question of whether bonding social capital actually has a negative impact on the social mobility of individuals in these situations, as a result of reliance on networks with poor connections to good-quality employment opportunities (Fernandez and Fernandez-Mateo 2006), concludes that it has the impact of reinforcing other elements of disadvantage characteristic of these concentrations, and that a number of causal factors may be in play, including the possibility of neighbourhood stigma hampering the economic prospects of both the areas and job applicants with addresses in them. Rather than a simple explanation which assumes culturally determined self-segregation leading to economic disadvantage, evidence tends to point to a more complex intertwining of economic and cultural factors over a long timescale. Studies of the long-term experience of migrant communities in northern textile towns suggests that it has been extended historical experience of disadvantage in the labour market that has tended to encourage the development of enclaves with distinctive ethnically based retail and Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) sectors. These sources of employment have been, it is argued, associated with lower wage levels and human capital gains than those in the mainstream economy, and as a result, Clark and Drinkwater argued, there were few economic benefits for ethnic minorities resulting from enclaves (2000). Another line of argument has been that ethnic minorities had poor access to sources of information about careers, and as a result had developed unrealistic aspirations about levels of work available to them. The alleged result was that they were excluding themselves from the labour market: Thomas refuted this argument by exploring data on ethnic minorities’ reserved and expected wages to show instead that they were prepared to sacrifice appropriate job expectations in order to achieve work. Nevertheless, unemployment rates,

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particularly for Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage workers were disproportionately high: three times as high as White workers in the 1980s and 1990s (Thomas 1998). There is also a body of research which indicates how significant the local context is on the framing of inter-group contact and boundary crossing (or otherwise). Wallman’s research into the two London neighbourhoods of Battersea and Bow in the late 1970s and 1980s demonstrated that boundary crossing was contingent on the heterogeneity of the social and economic environment, and the extent to which social networks in the two areas were open or closed (Wallman 1986). The economic landscape in Battersea was made of a large number of small firms, rendering accessibility greater than in Bow, where the dominance of three large employers around the docks area encouraged the development of more closed social networks that acted as gatekeepers for the recruitment structures, thereby reducing the opportunities for inter-ethnic mixing in the workplace. Whereas Battersea was home to a wide variety of social groups and ethnicities, Bow was polarised between the White and Bangladeshi communities. Similarly, in exploring the factors lying behind Leicester’s proclaimed success as a multicultural community, Bonney and Le Goff identify the significance of the social class of the migrant group, and the way in which that facilitated social and spatial mobility, and the positive interventions made by the local authority’s planning department in the 1970s (2007). Clayton’s more nuanced portrait of Leicester youth recognises the existence of racially based inter-group hostility and conflict, particularly affecting more recent Somali arrivals, which may be associated with the more closed opportunity structures experienced by more recent arrivals in Leicester (2012). The work of Cameron and Field in Newcastle highlights another set of contextual issues: They studied two small adjacent estates in West Newcastle; one of which has a majority Bangladeshi population, the other of which was exclusively White (2000). The Bangladeshi population experienced exclusion from housing opportunities, partly because their estate had a high level of high demand but low turnover. Low income and fear of crime and harassment limited the number of places to which they wished to, or could, move. On the other hand, they were comparatively well integrated into their local economy, which was

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connected to social networks (though on generally low wages), and demonstrated a strong community structure. In contrast, the White population had more housing choice as a result of under-occupation and low demand, but experienced greater exclusion from the labour market and from ‘civil society’. A further significant strand of debate concerns the impact of neighbourhood diversity on proxy indicators of social cohesion such as inter-­ group trust and sense of threat. Much of this works builds on, or contests, Putnam’s finding that exposure to neighbourhoods characterised by ethnic diversity reduced trust both towards ethnic out-groups and own in-­group (2007). The American sociologist Robert Sampson has conducted extensive quantitative studies both in the USA and the UK into social disease and the perception of disorder (such as street-level incivility, vandalism, visible signs of crime and dereliction) in urban settings. One of his findings was that people’s perception of disorder did not map accurately on to the spaces where there was visible and material evidence of disorder (2009), and a second was that perceptions of disorder were racialised, so that visible numbers of racial and ethnic minorities in an area were sufficient to increase anticipations of disorder, and correspondingly, anxiety. As Sennett points out, these assumptions are projections of already held prejudices, and not deductions from material evidence (2009). This form of racialised neighbourhood stigma is significant in the mental maps of residents of urban areas of any size, but perhaps the significance is diminished in a complex metropolis. Towns with a less kaleidoscopic pattern of demography and areas of settlement allow for clearer mental maps to be formed of safe and unsafe territories. Sampson also argues that neighbourhood stigma has material consequences in terms of an area’s ability to attract investment in housing stock and retail outlets, leading to a potential downward spiral of deterioration, the cause of which is then taken to be in part the same concentration of minoritised groups. Dekker and Bolt’s study of differences between socio-economic and ethnic groups on three measures of social cohesion in post-war estates in the Netherlands found that Dutch residents were more tolerant of deviant behaviour but tended under all circumstances to see minority groups as responsible for neighbourhood degeneration, whilst minority groups were less tolerant of deviant behaviour, and more likely to be at home and express attachment

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to the neighbourhood (2005). Dekker and Bolt suggest this is to do with the respective frames of reference for each group, with Dutch residents more likely to compare their conditions with those who live in less mixed neighbourhoods. Similarly, Livingston and his colleagues found that rather than systemic factors being dominant, place attachment in deprived areas was very context dependent in terms of where the neighbourhood is located in relation to others (2010). The negative consequences of this phenomenon was something we observed in some of our previous work on Oldham and Rochdale (Thomas 2011; Sanderson and Thomas 2014), where young people from each side of the ethnic divide attributed responsibility for drugs and criminality, and the consequent decline of their town centre, to the other group. However, the phenomenon has a far longer history, being a feature of studies of Bradford in the 1960s (Butterworth 1967a, b) and the Glodwick area of Oldham undertaken in the 1970s (Barr 1978). Other authors have noted the tendency for acts committed by a small number of members of Muslim communities to be perceived as the generalised responsibility of all Muslims in the area (or region), adding to the racialised stigma attached to some areas. Alexander identified this form of moral panic in the 1990s and following on from the 2001 disturbances, in relation to the perceived growth of the ‘Asian gang’, as representing a form of hyper-masculinised criminality (2004). Subsequent events have broadened of this concern to include radicalisation, child sexual exploitation, or ‘grooming’ and the alleged attempt at Islamisation of some local state schools. Are there are other issues or factors which have been obscured by this debate, and with which we should be more concerned? How significant is residential segregation, for example, in comparison to the likelihood of members of different groups coming into close contact with others in the course of secondary or higher education, or in places of work? What is the impact of the widespread marketisation of public services such as education and housing on the residential behaviour of all ethnic groups, and to what extent are hostile reactions towards others accentuated by a sense of competition, however misplaced? What has been the impact of the hollowing out of civil society institutions over the course of the millennium?

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Contact and Cohesion: What’s the Link? Much of the policy-base material generated after the disturbances in northern towns in 2001 relied on theories which took contact between groups to be the basis for developing and maintaining community cohesion (Hewstone et al. 2007): the development of ‘bridging social capital’ was deemed to be necessary to counteract the mutual suspicion resulting from excessively strong ‘bonding social capital (Putnam 2000). This stress on contact as the basis for mutual understanding draws on a long tradition of thinking about assimilation, reflected this section Robert Park and W. I. Thomas’s discussion of what assimilation might mean: There can be no public opinion except in as far as the persons who compose the public are able to live in the same world and speak and think in the same universe of discourse. For that reason, it seems desirable that the immigrants should not only— speak the language of the country— but should know something of the history of the people among whom they have chosen to dwell. For that same reason, it is important that native Americans should know the history and social life of the countries from which the immigrants come. (Park and Thomas 1927: 49).

Notably, however, Park and Thomas did not argue that participating in and contributing to the common discourse depended on face to face communication, and critics of the cruder policy versions of contact theory are keen to stress the complexity of contact, in terms of the significance of the situation, or ‘definition of the situation’ as Park and Thomas affirm, the preconceptions with which each party enters contact, and the way in which contact is structured. In the originating version of contact theory, Allport was careful to define the conditions for contact to be successful in overcoming prejudice (1954). Prolonged, personal contacts, rather than fleeting or institutionalised ones will develop the knowledge and familiarity which would overcome preconceptions. Contact needs to be on the basis of equal status between the in-group member and outgroup member in any given situation, and the contact project needs to be the product of inter-group cooperation and in pursuit of common goals. Allport also believed in the importance of normative support for the

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activity; this might mean sponsorship by local authorities for example, and as a corollary the activity should be consistent with law and/or group customs. If we construe the educational dispersal, or school ‘Bussing’, policy of the 1970s (discussed further in Chaps. 3 and 6) as informed by a form of contact theory, our subsequent discussion of the way in which the policy worked in action emphasises the harmful consequences of poorly managed contact: consent was sought neither from the children or parents of the bused children, nor those in the destination schools. In many instances, ‘bussed’ children arrived after assembly, and were sent straight to ‘withdrawal’ language classes (Esteves 2018). Contact under these circumstances, as many graduates of the programme one of the authors worked with in a Bussing area made clear to him, was a profoundly problematic and damaging experience which exacerbated racial conflict. Murdie and Ghosh’s study adopts a slightly different approach to evaluating the extent of integration, and its relationship to neighbourhood composition by using the subjective indicators of satisfaction expressed by new arrivals in a country (2010). They conclude from their Toronto case study that spatial concentration does not necessarily equate with a lack of integration since most residents in areas of concentration expressed satisfaction with their surrounding and identified with their new country. Several other studies tend to support this perspective. Finney and Jivraj have explored the relationship between neighbourhood population change and sense of neighbourhood belonging in Britain using data from the 2005 and 2007 Citizenship Surveys, and concluded that there was no evidence for relationships between immigration or local population turnover and levels of neighbourhood belonging, or that an ethnically differentiated population has an adverse effect on neighbourhood belonging (Finney and Jivraj 2013: 3339). However, membership of any minority ethnic group (apart from the ‘Chinese’ group) did tend to predict a higher than average level of neighbourhood attachment. This finding is congruent with some of our own work in Oldham and Rochdale, where we found that attachment to local areas and institutions was far greater amongst young people of ‘Asian Heritage’ than amongst White young people (Sanderson and Thomas 2014).

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The modern urban environment is of course one in which face to face contact is only one way in which communication flows are organised and affinities identified: the ‘space of flows’ (Castells 2009) can be as significant as physical contiguity for shaping relationships, as studies of radicalisation on all points of the political spectrum make clear. However, the multiplicity of possible modes and networks of communication in and across urban space also makes possible what Georgiou describes as ‘separation without segregation’: as she argues, ‘sustained communication about and across difference is critical for an urban ethos that recognizes various occupants’ converging, and sometimes diverging, right to the city’ (2017: 277). However, the key to achieving this is an understanding of the multiple communication channels that urban residents use alongside, and which may condition, face to face communication in physical space.

Diversity and Super-diversity We have already identified some of the disadvantages the M62 corridor urban spaces have experienced as a result of their historical trajectories, and we will go on to explore some of these in greater detail in the next chapter. However, picking up on the findings of Reeve and Robinson reported above, we would like to contrast towns like Oldham and Rochdale with the cityscapes which are more associated with the concepts of super- and hyper-diversity (Vertovec 2007, 2010). A wave of recent urban ethnography has picked up on the notions of conviviality, and ‘indifference to difference’ which writers like Amin (2012) and Gilroy (2004) have put forward as alternatives to a sociology and politics entirely predicated on tracing the consequences of difference, and where the focus has been, as we have seen above, the culture of the ‘different’ as opposed to normalised White society. We will describe a small number of these studies before discussing why their findings might be specific to certain kinds of urban spaces but not others. Wessendorf ’s study of conviviality in super-diverse Hackney in London develops the notion of ‘commonplace diversity’, referring to ethnic, religious and linguistic diversity being experienced as a normal part of social life by local residents (2014). Wessendorf argues that the extent to which

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difference features is dependent on whether the interaction occurs in public (where differences tend to be ignored) or semiprivate spaces (where they may be acknowledged and form part of the substance of interaction). She stresses the significance of ‘civility towards diversity’ as a strategy to both engage with difference as well as avoid deeper contact. Wise and Velayutham’s comparative study of Singapore and Sydney explores the conditions of conviviality in two very differently configured multicultures: Singapore is described as managing relationships through explicit strategies for the mutual valuing and recognition of linguistic and cultural difference, whilst in the Lakemba district of Sydney, the sheer scale of diversity means that difference is often backgrounded in everyday life, unless it is needed as an explanatory tool in conflict situations (2014). Their empirical investigations lead them to stress the significance of the following factors as structuring the conditions for conviviality: the design, layout and material qualities of public liminal spaces in which interaction can and does take place; the more complex issue of the ethos and purpose underpinning the design and management spaces, and the way these shape relationships and associations and the way in which habituation to these spaces produces a form of habitus that facilitates everyday interactions. Valluvan similarly, in her ethnography of two sites, one characterised by super-diversity, in London (2016), identifies the way in which ‘indifference to difference’ might be afforded or inhibited by spatial constraints and the way the constructions of spaces are in part predicated on power relations (2016). Whilst there is a comparative glut of ethnographic studies around potential or actual conviviality in the urban spaces of global metropolises, there have been fewer in smaller scale urban spaces. In the absence of such studies, some of the issues we have raised earlier about the construction of space in M62 towns condition the possibilities for public civility and ‘indifference to difference’. We have noted the subordinate relationship of towns like Oldham, Rochdale, Dewsbury and a city like Bradford to the dynamic economies of Leeds and Manchester; the way in the relationship between the structuring of social housing and the private residential market predetermined a residential polarisation between working-class White and ethnic minority groups, and the way in which the creation of a quasi-market in education can be seen to have reinforced

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this polarisation. However, we also need to note the way in which austerity has stripped away some of the affordances for the effective management of a ‘politics of distance’ (Amin 2012). Both the physical and governance structures of M62 towns have been hollowed out, as austerity and technological change have amplified the effects of prolonged post-­industrial decline to decimate retail provision and public facilities in medium-sized towns Similarly, staffing cuts in roles like Police Community Support Officer and Youth Worker have reduced the opportunities for the safe management of neutral public spaces, and the kind of habituation to civility which is the precondition for conviviality. Here we follow Amin’s argument that public perception of decline or strain in public services or common spaces can be easily associated with the undeserving or overdemanding ‘stranger’ (2012). Whilst these conditions affect all the inhabitants of M62 towns, we have found the responses to them to be inflected differently amongst different respondents to our own research, in a way consistent with the findings of other researchers on neighbourhood attachment and sense of place. Inhabitants of northern towns are differentiated according to membership of a range of intersectional categories, and this places them on different trajectories, both materially, and in terms of memory and aspiration. The nostalgia which characterises nativist sentiment and politics is often associated with a sense of loss amongst White working-class communities of the very solidaristic values which they resent in the Muslim communities they live alongside, as we discuss further in Chap. 6. The scope for conversations between these differing perspectives on the world appears to have diminished radically in recent years, and it is worth thinking about the conditions that might restore some of that possibility.

Conclusion: Conditions for the Good Town The aim of this chapter has been to afford the ‘failed spaces of multiculturalism’ argument a thorough theoretical and empirical scrutiny, in order to prepare the ground for a discussion of exactly what it is that makes the M62 northern towns a significant indicator of the issues underlying anxieties about social cohesion. We have argued for an

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understanding of these spaces that takes account of the very specific socio-­economic histories that have shaped them and the communities in them, and aspects of this experience form the basis of the next chapter. The complex picture of policy development and its implementation at the local level also needs to be taken into account in any genuine critique of ‘multiculturalism’, and we will deal with this in Chap. 4. There also needs to be symmetry in our discussion of relationships between communities in these towns, and so we will draw on our own research into the lived experience of communities representative of both ‘White’ and ‘non-­White’ diversity. We would also like to turn our attention to the way in which structures of governance, and the infrastructure of civil society shape the conditions for cohesion or conviviality. As we have noted earlier, a wide range of writers in the past decade have attempted to transform the debate around social relations in urban environments by refocusing the debate away from the notion of inter-group relations and cohesion, and towards the possibilities of ‘indifference to difference’, expressed in banal everyday interactions conducted with civility (Gilroy 2004; Amin 2012; Wise 2009; Noble 2009). Some of our discussion above has centred on the comparative difficulty of accomplishing this objective in the smaller scale urban environments of the M62 corridor, where diversity tends to be bipolar or tri-polar, rather than multiverse. Rodriguez-Garcia (2010) argues that support for diversity needs to occur within a framework of social justice and political equality, in which all members of society are permitted to fully participate in the public space. These, he claims, are the conditions through which a more cohesive civic community, and one more tolerant of plurality, can develop. The restoration of some of the public spaces hollowed out through austerity could make space for a more formal politics of mutual recognition in the process of distributing resources, which could have the effect of mitigating some of the accumulated resentment and suspicion that has accompanied post-industrial decline and austerity. At a national level, the politics of Brexit appear to have rendered this a diminishing prospect, but some of our discussion below indicates the possibilities that local political activity and initiatives offer.

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Some of our own research also supports the findings of researchers like Neal and her colleagues, who explore the possibilities offered by local, self-generated events and activities that develop collective interest (2019). Their examples include clubs, societies and organisations built around various leisure ‘things’ which served as ‘generative spaces of social interaction and shared practice through and in contexts of urban difference’ (2019: 69). They argue that a model of conviviality that brings ‘connective interdependencies’ into dialogue with community as ‘being in common’ is a more productive conceptual framework than the concept of ‘community cohesion’. In our conclusion, we will explore further ways in which these connective interdependencies can be nourished.

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3 Parallel Lives?

In this chapter, we explore the character of some of the ‘segregated M 62/Pennine towns’ using the theoretical perspectives outlined in the preceding chapter: most crucially the sense of segregation as a process, not a fixed state. As we have noted segregation can be argued about simultaneously as a reality, and an ideological project: people with shared interests of many kinds may want to live near each other or resources that are important for them, but singling out specific groups as prone to this ‘clustering’ behaviour serves a broader political purpose, to displace responsibility for events and problems that are the product of structures and policies on to one specific community. In this context, it is important that we develop a critical discussion of the discourse, dynamics and realities of ‘parallel lives’ (Cantle 2001) in the towns along the M62 corridor. In developing this critique, it is essential to understand the way in which the social spaces of these towns, and the regional economies in which they were embedded, took a very specific form. To develop this understanding, we draw on evidence around historical patterns of urbanisation and urban settlement in the M62 region towns, and explore the very specific local cultures that grew up around industrial prosperity and large-­scale population movements, and correspondingly, the decline of industrial capacity and the © The Author(s) 2020 S. Miah et al., ‘Race,’ Space and Multiculturalism in Northern England, Palgrave Politics of Identity and Citizenship Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42032-1_3

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levelling off of population growth. This analysis of the dynamic changes in northern urban ecology prior to the arrival of migrant workers from South Asia in the 1950s and 1960s provides the context for a discussion of the evidence of ethnic segregation and integration from the 1960s onwards. We have already identified the complex intertwining of choice and constraint in shaping settlement and movement, but we also review the impact of changing economic circumstances and the extent to which community ‘agency’ has been shaped by the relationship between residential and occupational segregation, and the impact over generations of both these factors on educational and economic opportunity. This enables the chapter to discuss lived experiences and perceptions of mixing, segregation and tensions, and prepares the ground for our subsequent discussion of the role of national and local state policy and practice.

 he Historical Formation of Difference: T Elements of a Critique of ‘Parallel Lives’ Underpinning this descriptive account is our development of the established critique of the ‘cultural’ model of explaining issues associated with social cohesion (Anthias 2001; Kalra 2000: 16–29), in particular those versions of the model which construe culture as an inert property of communities, rather than an active response to the racialised social and economic environment on which individuals and groups find themselves. In this we build on the work of others who have explored some of the specific features of relations in northern textile towns, particularly following the 2001 disturbances (Kundnani 2001; Amin 2002). The collapse of the textile economy on both sides of the Pennines has been identified as a major factor in generating conflict between communities, though its significance is subject to different interpretations. For Kundnani, the loss of the industry removed the common thread that joined the White and ‘Asian’ working classes into ‘a single social fabric’ (2001: 106), and increased perceived competition between ethnic groups for scarce resources (Amin 2002: 962). The extent to which experience of the textile

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industry was truly a shared one will be one of the subjects of our discussion, but we share Kundnani’s diagnosis of the far-reaching impact of extended economic decline. Recent work by Carreras and colleagues argues persuasively that the growth of cultural grievances and the consequent support for populist nativism, as expressed most clearly in the Brexit vote (discussed in Chap. 5), is most evident in areas which are characterised by long-term economic decline, and they employ complex statistical modelling to demonstrate the causal connection between the phenomena (2019). This experience of decline, sedimented over extended period, can generate in a community what has been described as a ‘second skin’, ‘aimed at preserving the fantasy of community and saving it from the threat of annihilation’, further resulting in ‘practices of communal relations, poor toleration of outsiders, strong identification with place, unwillingness to move for work because of feelings of lack of safety’ (Walkerdine 2016: 701). While there are many differences between the steel towns where Walkerdine and Jimenez carried out their research and the M62 textile towns, there are also distinct similarities, which can help us see that inhabitants of towns like Dewsbury, Bradford, Rochdale and Oldham experienced ‘parallel lives’ for many years before the arrival of Mirpuri Muslim workers and their families. Our critique of the ‘parallel lives’ thesis is not intended to understate the significance of cultural and religious consciousness and identifications on the range of choices made by, specifically, Mirpuri and Punjabi-­ heritage inhabitants of northern towns, and we devote a significant element of this chapter to explore the intertwining of these factors with the socio-economic and policy environment from the 1950s onwards. In particular, we note the impact of the Commonwealth Immigration Acts of 1962 and 1968 on the communities’ understanding of the nature of their presence in the United Kingdom, and the resulting shift in patterns of migration, settlement, and social and political activity. Some issues of significance in this relationship, such as the series of events seen by many commentators as central to the intensification of religious sensibility (Honeyford, Rushdie, 7/7), or the basis of participation in the English education system (such as Bussing, the development of faith schools, and the securitisation of education) will be dealt with in subsequent chapters.

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However, the extent to which quotidian experiences of racism and racial harassment increased the significance of shared cultural and religious beliefs for minorities should also not be understated. The relationship between residential and occupational segregation is a phenomenon which we believe has been under-emphasised in some previous discussions of ‘parallel lives’. The limited extent of occupational mobility for the first generations of migrants was coupled with access to labour markets restricted by a range of factors, which undoubtedly included direct and indirect discrimination, but also featured structural forms of disadvantage exacerbated by industrial decline and economic transformations. These processes have had consequences which have impacted differently on successive generations. The communities most at risk of being accused of being inward-looking and possessing dissonant values are seldom portrayed with the degree of heterogeneity that actually characterises them. For example, the Casey Review’s emphasis on ‘a first generation in every generation’, Deobandi revivalism and sharia courts tends to homogenise and problematise Muslim-heritage ‘communities’ (Casey 2016: 101–36), compressing a huge range of identifications based on generation, gender, class, ‘ethnicity’ and location into one negative stereotype. In this and following chapters, we will provide examples of the more complex and multilayered reality. In this chapter we focus on two of the M62 towns in particular: Bradford (which is of course a city), and Oldham. This is in part because of the wealth of material to support the discussion, as both places have been the focus for journalistic and academic attention from the 1960s onwards, and have been seen as emblematic of many of the issues we are discussing. We have also between us lived or worked in each of these places for many years, and this has given us a sensitivity to the real lived experiences behind the headlines. The examples we cite from these places are exactly that: we acknowledge that experiences, and relationships in smaller towns like Keighley, Burnley or Dewsbury are different to those of Bradford and Oldham, as is their positionality in political and economic structures. Our argument is based on understanding the rich variation exhibited by places that have been subject to very similar historical forces while simultaneously recognising the powerfully convergent nature of those forces.

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 orthern and Local: The Long View N of Clustered Communities As Brenner points out, ‘within a capitalist political economic system, inequalities are not only expressed socially’, through forms of stratification, ‘but also spatially, through the polarization of development among different territories, regions, places and scales’ (2004: 13). The M62 textile towns need to be seen, not as bounded and self-contained entities, but in relation to the whole range of scales of their ecology. Most immediately, they need to be seen in relation to the two metropolises of Manchester and Leeds, which provide a reference point, to varying degrees, for all inhabitants of the smaller towns, but particularly for the younger population. At the next level of scalar difference, the contrast between the trajectory of northern industrial regions in relation to the growing dominance of the South East and metropolitan London in particular can be seen as having an influence on the political and social identifications of the least advantaged. A range of studies exploring ‘Northern Identity’ illustrate the sense of northernness as a distinct family of identities, both claimed and ascribed, and manifested in a range of cultural arenas, from sport to music, and through written and visual media (Russell 2004). While key elements of this identity, from the industrial revolution onwards, have included poverty, dirt, hard masculinity, and collectivism, another feature of writing and thinking about the North since the latter part of the twentieth century has included immigration, race, cultural difference and specifically, the notion of Muslim enclaves (Russell 2004). So, the social relations within M62 towns are inflected in response to the ways in which those towns’ economic and governmental characteristics are interlocked with those of designated surrounding town, cities, regions and local government areas, and in turn the way all those relationships are transformed over time in the national and transnational context. Applying a sense of historical perspective to the M62 corridor sensitises us to some of the particularities that shaped these spaces before, as, and after waves of migrants moved into them. The most significant of these has been long-term decline and marginalisation. Walkerdine describes the significance of ‘affective histories’ in understanding how

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‘common meanings, held for many hundreds of years can have an effect in relation to the construction of communal being-ness in the present’ (2016: 699), and how these common meanings can be constructed, and transmitted across generations through spatial features and artefacts. These affective histories she sees as particularly exemplified in areas and communities bound together by historical experiences of drastic change, hardship and precarity. The first of the particularities of northern towns that we will explore is an acute sense of the local, in part honed by civic rivalries, inflected by class, which developed alongside industrialisation and urbanisation in the nineteenth century. Samuel Defoe noted of Rochdale in his Tour of Britain in the early eighteenth century, that as a manufacturing town it was ‘very considerable, for a sort of coarse goods, called half-thicks and kerseys’ for which ‘the market was very great, though otherwise the town is situated so remote, so out of the way, and so at the very foot of the mountains, that we would suppose it would be but little frequented’ (Defoe 2006: 320). Engels similarly described the towns surrounding Manchester, like Oldham and Rochdale, as: purely industrial and conduct their business purely through Manchester upon which they are in every sense dependent, contrasting their exclusively working class population with the more cosmopolitan and bourgeois character of Manchester. (1969: 76)

The growth of towns like Oldham, Rochdale, Burnley, Halifax, Keighley, Bradford and Dewsbury as satellite, often specialist, industrial centres, which attracted large-scale internal migration and speculative building booms to provide housing for the factory classes, coincided with the development of transport arteries like canals and railway routes that represented the major means of articulating towns, regions and global economic trade routes through ports like Liverpool and Hull (at either end of today’s M62). The urban growth that fed these booms was the result not just of movement from the surrounding countryside, but internal migration from many parts of the UK: declining woollen production areas in East Anglia, movement across the Pennines along traditional transport routes and most commonly around the mid-nineteenth century, large-scale migration from Ireland.

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In his discussion of the growth and development of this part of the North, Stephen Caunce identifies the way in which the towns along the old trans-Pennine pack horse routes developed and preserved independent identities during the industrial and transport revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth century: ‘the myriad smaller towns have always relished a multiplicity of local antagonisms, frequently sublimated through sporting rivalries, and resisted formal incorporation into wider local government groupings before the general administrative reorganisation’ of the Local Government Act of 1974 (2003: 339). Entrepreneurial strategies of flexible specialisation enabled smaller towns to preserve independent industrial capacity, and a sense of civic pride fostered by the wealthy bourgeois class, into the middle of the twentieth century. Caunce provides the example of Cleckheaton, near Batley in West Yorkshire, with its successive development of capacity in wire manufacture for the carding process, tool-making, asbestos belt manufacture, and finally brake lining production. Across the Pennines, the firm of Platt Brothers in Oldham developed from a local provider of textile machinery to become a major exporter into international markets, thereby eventually contributing to the increased international competition Lancashire cotton faced in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Kalra 2000: 85–86). It can be argued that the existence of London as the pre-eminent metropolis in the country inhibited the development of a systematically networked North, with the result that movements of people, as opposed to goods, between settlements was often problematic, with transport systems that were ‘multi-centred and confusing’ (Caunce 2003: 350), a situation that persisted into the twenty-­ first century. As a result, Caunce argues, the satellite northern towns, following initial inward migration, had relatively immobile populations (even allowing for subsequent Irish immigration), and settlements exhibited a highly segmented urbanisation process (Caunce 2003; Redford 1968) with concomitant preservation of local dialects and customs. Spatial clustering was facilitated by the way in which speculative housing developments sprang up in the immediate vicinity of factories. One example was Thompson’s Buildings, built next to Thompson’s Mill in Goit Side, Bradford, where both machine loom operators and self-­ employed woolcombers lived in high-density, poor-quality housing.

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Before the development of mechanised wool-combing in the later half of the nineteenth century, this housing often also served as an extension of the factories, with families hand-combing wool in their front rooms (Richardson 1976: 84–86). This pattern of residential clustering around factory sites was common throughout the northern textile area, and partly accounts for the segmentation described by Redford as characteristic of northern towns throughout the period of their growth (1968). This clustering, as was to be expected, was then also a significant pattern in the subsequent influx of workers from Ireland and Eastern Europe. In 1851, first-generation Irish migrants represented 8.3 per cent of the population of Bradford (Richardson 1976: 95). This wave of Irish migrant workers arriving in Bradford from the 1840s onwards were housed in very specific and concentrated areas of the west and north-west of the city, such as Goit Side, Black and White Abbey, Mill Bank and Nelson Court. In the same fashion that Engels described in Manchester, the Irish were the subject of hostility, over-represented in low-income groups and subject to poorer health (Richardson 1976), and remained a relatively immobile cluster for a long period. However, the Irish were just the most extreme example of a very clear segmenting of the city by class, where the poorest inhabitants were clustered in the areas of poorest housing and sanitation, which was typical of the region (Richardson 1976: 160–161). The original areas of middle-class settlement in these towns were frequently vacated not that long after construction when they became evidently vulnerable to pollution from city-centre smokestacks, and their occupants moved further out from the centre, leaving behind classic material for the Chicago School’s ‘zones of transition’ (Park and Burgess 1925), characterised as the location for transient and newly arrived populations. Cultural and sporting activity during the nineteenth century, often organised around employment or religious affiliation, were a fulcrum for the development of strong local identities and rivalries, both between towns and regional centres. The brass band culture of both sides of the Southern Pennines, along the old packhorse transport routes, existed as a medium for the development of a distinctive ‘northern’ identity, but also more ‘local’ identities (Etheridge 2017). The embedding of musicianship in a competitive structure produced recognised excellence, particularly in

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the smaller settlements (Black Dyke being based in a mill in Queensbury between Bradford and Halifax, and Brighouse and Raistrick based in twin towns between Halifax and Hudderfield). Similarly, Reeve and McTominey (2017) stress the significance of cricket, football and rugby league as the focus for the development of powerfully local male working class identities. As Fletcher notes, the attributes inextricably associated with the varieties of northern sporting prowess are indelibly white and male, particularly in the case of cricket (Fletcher 2012: 228), and we will return to this theme below. This sense of the local could be inflected with pride in spectacular growth in size and wealth of northern towns during the nineteenth century (Caunce 2003), reflected in the extraordinarily rich civic architecture of town halls, libraries, churches and chapels, and other public buildings such as bath-houses, as well as some of the more spectacular mill buildings (such as Manningham and Salts Mills in Bradford), retail areas, such as Swan Arcade in Bradford and the elaborate market buildings in Bradford and Halifax. Southern has identified the way in which civic celebrations in the early to mid-twentieth century celebrated the local, and were tied to older traditions in the cotton towns (Burnley Wakes, the annual two weeks factory closure holiday, retained the name ‘Burnley Fair’), placing ‘cotton at the heart of civic identities’ (2017). In her study of gender relations in the Lancashire cotton industry, Miriam Glucksmann refers to the ‘quasiethnic undertones of discourses of local difference’ (2000: 17), a phrase that resonates to anyone familiar with textile towns on either side of the Pennines. We will now discuss the threats to which this local pride was subjected during the struggles experienced by both cotton and wool textiles during the twentieth century, and explore some of the responses to migrant labour recruited to mill work.

Textiles: Industrial Decline and Migrant Labour Both wool and cotton textiles employed rising numbers of workers as a function of increased capacity (Bowden and Higgins 2015), greater in cotton than in wool, throughout the late nineteenth century and up until the 1920s, as the industries boomed with the benefit of their early

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technical innovations and protected imperial markets. In Oldham, the mills employed 60 per cent of the workforce in the borough in 1920 (Kalra 2000: 91), while in Bradford the proportion directly employed in wool textiles was around 20 per cent. This very increase in capacity is what most commentators argue rendered the cotton industry in particular vulnerable to international, principally Japanese and Indian, competition after the First World War (Wright 1992). In the aftermath of the immediate post-war boom in sales and profitability, the trajectories of cotton and wool were very different. The sharp decline in the cotton industry is held to have been the result of the ownership structure of firms and refinancing decisions taken on the back of high profits, combined with a wage bargaining structure which made it difficult to depress wages (Bowden and Higgins 2015): debt consequently curtailed the survival strategies available to firms and led them to depend more heavily on advocacy of protectionist measures. The resulting problems resulted in a fall in the cotton sector workforce from 600,000 to 200,000 between 1920 and 1945 (Kalra 2000: 91). The woollen industry in the interwar years on the other hand, as a result of the independent ownership structure of most firms, and an absence of debt, combined with a strategy of developing the domestic market, was able to stave of the consequences of increased international competition (Bowden and Higgins 2015) until after the Second World War. Another aspect of the less dominant position of the textile industry in the region was the increasing significance of newer industries better able to compete in the labour market for skilled workers (and the female labour which had occupied large segments of the textile industries) with higher wages: in particular, light engineering and service sector occupations. Post-war this was to result in the textile industries’ increasing issues with labour shortages. Overall, the immediate post-war period saw in increase in regional inequality, with the South East’s share of GDP growing at the expense of the North, the North-West, Yorkshire and Humber and Wales and Scotland (Geary and Stark 2016). After a reduction in the disparity from the mid-1950s, there was a steep rise from 1971 onwards as manufacturing industries were hollowed out, with acceleration under Margaret Thatcher’s 1979 government. We should note, however, that within the North-West and Yorkshire and Humber regions, Manchester

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and Leeds flourished as hubs for growing financial and legal service sectors, while smaller centres in the conurbations surrounding them suffered. Historic trade routes across the Pennines through these towns were bypassed by the M62, and other transport links across the region have suffered from a neglect which the ‘northern powerhouse’ concept was intended to address, with the result that these eclipsed by their larger neighbours. Mirroring population shifts across the North of England, the result of the interwar decline of textiles for many northern towns was outward migration to the Midlands and South-East. It was not as severe as that experienced by mining areas in South Wales and the North-East out-­ migration due to the higher female participation rate in employment, as well as the greater incidence of short-time working (Scott 2000: 332). Nevertheless, textile towns in the North-West and Yorkshire experienced a serious decline in population in the interwar years. In Oldham, for example, through outward migration, population fell from a peak of 147,000  in 1911 to a low point of 103,000 in 2001. The subsequent rise in population through immigration resulted from the way in which the final years of the textile industries were sustained through alternate strategies of increased exploitation of older machinery through more intensive shift working, and belated investment in more modern technology which required a restructuring of the labour process and, consequently, the workforce. These developments coincided with a period of full employment and rising wages levels that disadvantaged sectors like textiles which had depended for profitability of lower wage levels and which had unfavourable working conditions (Price 2014). After the Second World War, both textiles and cotton experienced drastic contraction, at the same time as severe labour shortages, exacerbated by downward the pressure employers were applying on textile wages, and historically poor working conditions. As we will discuss further below, cotton and wool textiles were unusual in this period for the volume of female labour employed, but within firms, labour tended to be highly segmented by gender (Fevre 1984; Kalra 2000; Glucksmann 2000). Rather than tackle labour shortages by improving conditions and enhancing wages, employers preferred to look for new pools of cheap labour, initially through European volunteer workers (EVWs) and subsequently, migrant labour predominantly from Pakistan (Price 2014).

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By December 1949, there were 4297 EVWs directed to textiles through the government scheme, 61 per cent of the total of female EVWs (Price 2014: 36). Phillips et al. report that women EVWs were received in a more welcoming spirit than their male counterparts both at shop-floor and union level, but unions imposed quotas on and restricted access to certain textile occupations on both genders (Phillips et al. 2007). EVWs were not a sufficient supply of labour to fill the gaps created by the loss of female labour to growing competitor industries, such as the service sector, represented in Bradford by firms such as Grattans and Empire Stores. The process by which migrant Pakistani labour filled these gaps is a complex and multilayered one. Saifullah Khan (1977) and Ballard (1983) stressed the long history of experience of migration from Mirpur, and Kalra argues that structural ‘push’ factors such as the political climate in Kashmir post-partition, and the displacement caused by the construction of the Mangla Dam also need to be taken into account (2000: 63ff). The significance of kinship network sponsorship in a chain migration process is well attested (Anwar 1979; Jackson 1992), but Price points out that though less common, direct recruitment via visits from wool textile industry delegations to the subcontinent did occur (2014: 37). The resulting migration of single males was, as we will discuss further below, subject to forces deriving from both workplace and residence that rendered a degree of segregation in everyday life almost inevitable for migrant workers. Further, as Kalra argues, for these workers, and their families, it is sensible not to see Oldham (or Bradford or Dewsbury or Huddersfield or Rochdale or Keighley) and Mirpur (or Sylhet) as separate economic and social spheres: just as the presence of migrants in Lancashire and Yorkshire towns initiated radical cultural and social change, so the economic and social interchange radically transformed the cultural and economic life of ‘sending’ societies (Kalra 2000: 73). We will now explore in greater detail the way in which, both in terms of spatial concentration and occupational segmentation, the relations between the communities formed out of post-war immigration, and the multiple communities, differentiated by location, class, culture and belief, they came to live alongside, were the product of both structural forces and responses to those forces, as well as culturally determined

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agency. However, the aim of the chapter to date has been to stress the fact that historical circumstances brought ‘South Asian’ workers and their families to towns that had been distinguished since their rapid growth in the nineteenth century by a considerable degree of localism, which had not welcomed previous waves of migrant workers, and that had experienced the rapid post-war decline of the industry that had once been the source of their status and civic pride. The resulting resentful nostalgia is vividly captured by Seabrook in his portrait of 1969 Blackburn (Seabrook 1971), and echoes of it persist in the account we will give later in Chap. 6 of White majority consciousness.

Initial Settlement and the Dynamics of Clustering The initial migration to M62 towns from Pakistan and what was to become Bangladesh in response to the demand for labour shared common characteristics. It began as an all-male migration in the 1950s: in the census of 1961, only 81 ‘Pakistani’ women were registered out of a population of 3500 in Bradford, for example (Butterworth 1967: 14). All-­male groups of migrants initially found accommodation in lodging houses in the zones of transition. Dahya placed this migration within a reasonably long tradition of migrations of young males from a relatively restricted range of places of origin in Pakistan, and identified several features that subsequently became commonplace in most commentaries (1973). These included the transnational nature of the socio-economic system the migrants were engaged in, with the sending of remittances back home the key purpose of migration. This was linked to the phenomenon of chain migration, and the reliance on kin networks for the accumulation of resources for passage, and funding housing at the destination. While the almost exclusive focus of early migrant workers was the rapid accumulation of savings to be remitted back to the region of origin (Dayha reports extraordinarily high levels of remittances) and as a consequence little regard was paid to the idea of permanent home ownership. The situation was transformed in the period leading up to the Commonwealth Immigration Act of 1962: as many commentators have

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noted, from the first rumours about its restrictive provisions, both primary and secondary immigration accelerated leading to a rapid increase in population, and a change in the basis for housing decisions (Anwar 1979, 1998). The need for different type and size of accommodation was one obvious factor, but gradually residence then became tied in with the need for facilities to meet domestic and cultural needs, and over time, residential decisions began to have implications for the educational experience and destiny of the second generation. In Bradford, we can trace both increases in concentration and the movement of populations out from the central wards of Exchange and University to the next sector of the wedges formed by Manningham Lane and Lumb Lane, and Great Horton Road and Listerhills Road. By 1971, the ‘Pakistani’ population of Bradford (which included Bangladesh at the time of the 1971 Census), numbered 11,000 or 3.73 per cent of the Bradford metropolitan area, and just over 50 per cent of the ‘Pakistani’ population of the West Yorkshire conurbation, and 7.87 per cent of the Great Britain (GB) Pakistani population (Richardson 1976: 163). At that date, the Indian population was half the size. The ‘New Commonwealth’ population was concentrated in the inner city areas, almost exclusively in the owneroccupied sector of relatively affordable housing vacated by the previous generation of migrant labour, with the ‘Pakistani’ communities concentrated in the Western quadrants, and the Indian (largely Sikh) population concentrated in the area to the North of Leeds Road. As we noted in Chapter 1, the slum clearance and rehousing programmes of the 1950s and 1960s had dispersed some of the most deprived (White) workingclass groups to social housing on the periphery of the city, in large estates such as Holme Wood in Tong, Buttershaw, Wyke Manor and Ravenscliffe in Eccleshill. From the earliest stages of settlement therefore, this spatial distance, based on housing tenure as well as ethnicity, generated a comparable social distance between communities that shared much in terms of indices of social deprivation. This pattern was repeated in the other smaller urban centres we are concerned with: the smaller scale, however, often exacerbated the impact of the two forms of clustering on popular perceptions of social relations even more than on actual relations themselves, as we will note below. There was similarly a spatial dimension to the way in which education became more pivotal to an understanding of

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the medium to long-term future of multicultural settlements. Even in the period up to the 1980s, when the vast majority of schools were maintained by local authorities and the balkanisation of schooling under the mantra of parental choice was in the future, the spatial distribution of social groups ensured an asymmetrical distribution even in inner city comprehensives in towns and cities such as Halifax and Bradford. We will explore the policies used to address this in Chap. 7, but what is worth taking note of here is the fact that the actuality and the perceptions of multicultural schooling had longer term implications for residential decision-making. Later in this chapter we will also briefly explore the implications for perceptions of territoriality. How does the theoretical discussion in Chap. 1 of residential segregation play out in terms of the reality of life in places like Oldham and Bradford, often the subject of specific studies exploring the applicability of the concept? Following the 2001 disturbances, this debate became loaded with political significance, and protagonists have often been concerned to use data to either ‘bust’ or support the self-segregation ‘myth’. Simpson and a range of other writers have tended to stress that aspect of population movements in Oldham, Rochdale and Bradford indicating a trajectory that supports the Chicago-school model of assimilation through gradual sectoral movement out into more mixed communities in outer-city or suburban areas (Simpson 2004, 2005; Phillips 2006; Finney and Simpson 2009). This body of work adopted measures which they justifiably argued were more nuanced, and allowed them to distinguish between ‘concentrated’ populations on the basis of whether they were generated by inward migration or population growth, and differentiating further between those in the ‘concentration’ on the basis of age, class and household status. Their qualitative work indicated that younger, socially upwardly mobile households from all communities tended to share preferences for safe neighbourhoods with a good environment, with young Asians expressing a preference for mixed areas (Finney and Simpson 2009: 100). However, the work also noted that these preferences were not shared by the older generation, and that there were some considerable inhibiting factors in terms of exercising these preferences. Finney and Simpson have been similarly sceptical about the proposition that the ethnic spatial concentration or clustering is the product of White flight (2009: 132).

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This optimistic view of the prospects for more culturally mixed residential patterns in M62 towns like Bradford is emphatically rejected by some. Johnston et al. (2005) use isolation indices drawn from comparisons of 1991 and 2001 census data to demonstrate that the ‘South Asian’ population of Bradford has been increasingly likely to live in areas where their co-ethnic peers represent at least 50 per cent of the population of the local area (enumeration district). This was most marked in what they describe as ‘core areas’, those adjacent to the original locations of settlement, where inflows from new arrival exceed the outward movement of established residents. Carling develops this concern further in arguing that ethnic concentration, coupled with ‘White flight’ from central urban area to suburban and out of city areas in the Bradford District simultaneously the product and cause of a process of polarisation, exacerbated by a mutually negative processes of identification and categorisation which begin in primary school (2008). He also engages with those like Alam and Husband (2006) who argue that there are indeed positive reasons for minorities to cluster spatially and to concentrate their associative activity on fellow group members, such as the security of shared beliefs and experiences and the power of social capital to mitigate the effects of social exclusion, and that ‘the viability of the communities based on the urban locale that is currently the platform that enables the members of this ethnic minority population to maintain active and positive participation as Bradfordian citizens’ (2014: 56). This cohesion is what Carling argues makes the experience for White residents in Muslim-majority areas and schools so problematic, and which is likely to provoke White flight: Pakistani-heritage communities possess ‘a set of cultural assumptions and experiences that are strongly shared within the group and yet are practically inaccessible to the minority within their midst’ (2008: 573). Where Carling’s critique differs in significant and important ways from that of Casey and Trevor Phillips is in his focus on the hollowing out of politics and civil society, and his clear identification of the fissiparous tendencies that result from the marketisation of public services ‘because choice mechanisms invite market-like behaviour and markets are notoriously subject to prejudice, rumour and speculation’ (2008: 576). In this sense, the fact that areas like Toller Lane are becoming more ‘Mirpuri’ and the White population of Bradford is moving beyond the perimeter of the city to the Worth Valley or Baildon may be less significant

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as a cause, than as a symptom, of broader social dissensus: groups are moving apart because of widely held convictions about those different from them, rather than separate existences generating that hostility. This supports our own findings in our work with young people in Oldham and Rochdale, where stereotypical assumptions about Muslims were exacerbated by a sense of envy at their social cohesion (Thomas and Sanderson 2011; Sanderson and Thomas 2014). Kuran shares Carling’s concern with polarisation, based on his analysis of the way events unfolded in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s, but his argument is that even where ethnic groups live in largely desegregated communities, a process which he describes as ‘reputational cascade’, ‘a self-reinforcing process by which people motivated to protect and enhance their reputations induce each other to step up their ethnic activities’ (1998: 623). The process as he describes it involves the experience of ascribed ethnic categorisation resulting in a tendency to enhanced self-ascribed ethnic identification on the part of individuals, reinforced by visible markers (such as the hijab) which increase the likelihood of negative categorisation: this in turn changes group relations and behaviour. In Bosnia-Herzegovina this process of ‘ethnification’ was extraordinarily rapid, intense and fatal for social and political cohesion, and Kuran argues that the capacity of ethnification to arise in societies where ethnic differences might have become almost invisible is a function of the utility of ethnic symbols to individuals and the ability of activists to exploit this marginal utility. In what ways might spatial concentration lend momentum to this process of ethnification in its most negative form? A range of authors have analysed the way in which the racialisation of space, both in the form of residential areas, but also contested public spaces, from parks to shopping centres, transport interchanges, and further and higher education buildings, can reinforce Kuran’s ‘reputational cascade’ (Thomas 2011: 122–127; Carling 2008; Webster 2001). This could take the form of racial and ethnic symbolism overlaying forms of territoriality which have been a common feature of relationships between youth groups (Kintrea et al. 2008). As Webster notes in his study of Keighley, territorially based fears, of exclusively White estates, or of public spaces such as parks which have been seen to have been ‘taken over’ by Pakistani-heritage youths (Webster 2001: 113–114), can escalate tensions, even where the evidence

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base for them is quite narrow, and can influence school attendance or school choice. The rumours and folk histories of these events also have a long half-life. The pattern of spatial separation identified earlier, with White working-class estates by and large occupying peripheral positions around most of the northern towns, and ‘Asian’ areas occupying the centre, influences the vectors of contact around the night-time economy, where Mirpuri taxi drivers ferry White passengers into town for an evening’s drinking, followed by a visit to an ‘Asian’-owned fast-food restaurant, and a ride back in another taxi. In his study of Oldham Mirpuris, Kalra was given many reports of fake call-outs, refusals to pay and assaults (2000: 187–189), which accentuated the need for mutual security measures among the taxi drivers, and increased their suspicion of ‘gore’, and disseminated more widely the view in their community that White people were violent drunks. Reports of assaults on taxi drivers are still a regular feature in the Oldham Chronicle. Conversely, young White people participating in our research in Oldham and Rochdale expressed their resentment that the town centre and take-away outlets had been ‘taken over’. Similarly, some young people expressed the view that the decline of the town was a function of the way in which it had been racially marked, and therefore tended to have less positive views and identifications with the town, and more with their exclusively White residential areas. Similarly, in one of our studies in the Dewsbury area of North Kirklees, older White residents saw the area’s economic decline, as manifested by shop closures and changes to the market, as directly linked to coterminous growth in the Asian population (Thomas et al. 2018). We have discussed the efficacy of ‘contact’ strategies in other places (Thomas 2011: 151–167), and will explore the issues further in Chap. 3, but these examples reinforce the view that under the wrong conditions, contact can be counterproductive. The material we have examined in this section illustrates the complexity of spatial distribution in M62 towns, but also the fact that the common patterns are not simply the product of culture, but also the resources available to enable individuals to exercise choice. Choice in itself is a product of preferences for universal goods, such as peace and security, and the more specific goods of cultural ease and familiarity, and this applies to White and ‘Asian’ populations alike. We will now move on to look at the way in which some of these preferences

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may have been shaped by the nature of policy initiatives from the initial stages of settlement, before exploring some of the other constraining factors.

Clustering and Concentration: Policy Responses As we have seen, during the initial period of ‘South Asian’ population growth based on family settlement, political discourse often revolved around the presumed negative effects of ‘concentration’, even though it was not always clear what there was a concentration of: as Fazakerley notes, the most popular term of reference was ‘immigrant’, even where the numbers under discussion included children born in the UK. The idea of concentration also on occasions echoed the vernacular association of ‘immigrant areas’ with overcrowding, insanitary conditions and unhygienic practices, for which the solution was often seen to be clearance and dispersal. As the Chair of Birmingham Housing Committee argued in his evidence to the House of Commons Select Committee on Race and Immigration in 1971: I think the long term aim is to rehouse as quickly as we can pull old houses down, not looking at people as being coloured or otherwise, but simply housing people and moving them out. What we want to do is not to establish a ghetto, which is a word I hate, but we feel the sooner people are integrated and dispersed, the more likely they are to learn of the things due to them and mix in with the community as a whole. (House of Commons Select Committee on Race Relations and Immigration (HCSCRR&I) 1971: 536)

This version of ‘colour-blind’ assimilationist thinking also affected the response to the arguments that the social structure of Mirpuri families required different modalities of social housing provision, if this was to be the destination of those displaced by slum clearance. For example, Bradford’s response to the perceived decline in the demand for three-­ bedroom social housing in the 1960s had been to opt for smaller unit social housing rather than larger units specifically designed for the

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Mirpuri population. Similarly, little account was taken of the extent to which widespread racial harassment and violence, of the kind reported to the HCSCRR&I during their visit to Bradford in 1971: I have a wife and four children and they are just like prison houses, I should say, because if they come out the people who are living around that area will not let them play in the playgrounds. They smashed my widows many times. I approached the police and they said “Better that you sue them in the courts”. (HCSCRR&I 1971: 536)

Similarly, local authorities were often reluctant to use the provisions in the Housing Act of 1974, which were designed to employ funding for area housing improvement (through designated Housing Action areas and General Improvement Areas) as an alternative to clearance, new build and rehousing. In the 1970s, the Conservative Chair of Bradford’s Housing Committee, interviewed by one of the authors, was adamantly opposed to providing any translation services in the Housing Department through Section 11 funding. A contemporaneous study of the ‘Pakistani’ clients of a housing advice service in the Manningham area found that half of them had previously approached the housing department for help in relation to opportunities for housing improvement, but had found them hostile and unsupportive (Sanderson 1979): this has made them reluctant to attempt to seek help outside their immediate community networks. As noted earlier, the M62 towns have experienced a dearth of public and private inward investment over the past decades, resulting in a hollowing out of retail facilities and under-occupancy of housing in core areas, with more dynamic housing markets only evident on the suburban fringes. This experience, combined with some of the morphological factors mentioned in the previous chapter, had produced a particular kind of ethnic/racial geography. Core areas of ‘Asian’ settlement tended to be in older housing nearer town centres, such as Glodwick and Werneth in Oldham; Wardleworth and Deeplish in Rochdale; Manningham, Little Horton and Leeds Road in Bradford. Former or current centres of social housing in all these areas, such as Fitton Hill in Oldham, Kirkholt in Rochdale, or Holme Wood, Buttershaw and Thorpe Edge in Bradford are

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located on the urban periphery and are almost exclusively White. The Index of Multiple Deprivation for 2015 sheds further light on the relationship between space and deprivation along the M62 (DCLG 2015: 9). The North-West including Oldham and Rochdale contains the greatest concentration of deprived wards. Oldham was the location for one of the 1974–1979 Labour Government’s Community Development Projects, an innovative action research programme forming part of the Urban Programme, which aimed to tackle problems arising in areas affecting by industrial decline, urban blight and mounting poverty. Another strand of Labour’s efforts to tackle urban problems was the 1974 Housing Act, which introduced Housing Action Areas and General Improvement Areas, initiatives which allowed for public funds to be used to support investment in the private owner-­ occupier sector. The strategy was designed to offer an alternative to the slum clearance, dispersal and new-build route for ameliorating inner city housing conditions, thereby preserving communities in situ. The White Paper that preceded the 1974 Act and departmental circulars indicate that the government anticipated the legislation being of benefit to areas with large minority populations. The Community Development Project (CDP) in Oldham carried out a survey of attitudes to housing improvement in the Glodwick area, which in that era had an ‘Asian’ population of around 17 per cent, to provide more background for their planned community development activities. This provides an interesting snapshot of community relations and attitudes at the time, and qualitative data which provides a background to subsequent studies of spatial differentiation in Oldham and towns like Oldham. The results of the survey led the team to develop the concept of ‘racial negativism’ (Barr 1978), which they distinguished from other contemporary understandings of racism. The concept encompassed both negative and racist stereotyping of the behaviour of ‘Asian’ co-residents in Glodwick, and expressed fear about racial stigma attached to the area and the impact on property values. They regarded this as significant in its own terms but also as an indicator of the preparedness of the White population to invest in the area. Other responses to the survey indicated that the White population as a whole exhibited weak attachment to the area, younger White residents anticipated moving out within the next ten years and older White residents anticipated being

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trapped in the area because they might not be able to sell their house. By contrast, the ‘Asian’ respondents expressed satisfaction and attachment to the area, and anticipated Glodwick being a long-term settlement for them. Thirty years later, Simpson, Ahmed and Phillips’ qualitative study of residential aspirations in Oldham showed that, even given a generational shift in some aspects of housing preference, the responses of the two populations to core issues was remarkably stable (2008). White respondents in their focus groups mentioned fear of declining property values as the reason for White residents choosing to move as areas became more mixed: this tends to confirm the claims that Carling makes regarding ‘White flight’ (2008). Since the 1970s, policy interventions in housing have tended to focus either on transferring social housing to the private sector, or trying to develop the ‘social mix’ of new housing development through planning requirements for affordable housing. The policy interventions employed in the early years of settlement, namely slum clearance and rehousing designed to encourage ‘assimilation’ or the 1970s initiative for area improvement designed to preserve them, had no parallel from the 1980s onwards. However, it is an error to believe that the housing market stands on its own as a structural influence on spatial concentration, and in the next section we explore the role of occupational segregation on spatial segregation.

Occupational Segregation As Phillips notes, ‘assumptions of structural assimilation, characterised by socio-economic advancement, are integral to models of minority group desegregation and dispersal’ (1998: 168). The extent to which occupational structures restricted the opportunities for social mobility of minority communities in northern towns is therefore intimately tied up with any critique of the ‘parallel lives’ thesis. The focus of the debate on residential and educational segregation tends to occlude the fact that it is in the workplace rather than over the garden fence or in the street that most casual interaction with acquaintances takes place, and that shared workplaces, where cooperation is essential, are a potentially more potent

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vehicle for developing positive social cohesion than neighbourhoods, where increasingly the focus of households of all ethnicities is inwards. Several authors, most notable Cohen and Jenner (1968), Fevre (1984) and Kalra (2000), have explored the arrival, in specific locations in the cotton and wool textile industries, of ‘South Asian’/Pakistani (Mirpuri) migrant workers, and the complex dynamics or their transition from an explicitly transient to a more settled workforce (Dahya 1974). Fevre’s work was important in overturning a previous assumption that the presence of South Asian workers in the woollen textile industry in towns such as Bradford was the result of a general labour shortage. Rather, he argued, the labour shortage in the textile industry was the result of employers allowing wages and conditions, in specific niches of the industry, to decline to the extent that, in an era in the 1960s of full employment and rising wage levels, they became unattractive to the traditional occupants of those niches (generally women), and could only be filled by workers for whom work in those conditions and at those wages were a singular option. These niches included specific firms, where a process of chain recruitment mirrored the process of chain migration, night-shift work, where this had been re-introduced, or introduced for the first time, in order to increase production, or to pay for the cost of re-equipping (1984: 74–76), and specific, less skilled, low wage processes, such as carding, or twisting and winding after the introduction of automation (1984: 68–87). He found that ‘Asian’ (almost certainly Mirpuri) workers from the first worked in segregated groups, where the sole contact with White workers tended to be with White male supervisors, and he noted the way in which employers tended to justify restricting ‘Asian’ workers opportunities by reference to stereotypical ascribed characteristics. Similarly, Kalra, in a study conducted a decade after Fevre’s, noted the way in which exclusionary employment practices in the Lancashire cotton towns had combined with word of mouth recruitment methods to produce working groups that were predominantly mono-racial, even where they became over time multicultural (with a range of Black Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) groups working alongside Mirpuris; 2000). The segregation of Black and Asian workers in this way was seen to be beneficial for employers wishing to depress their labour costs and increase production to the optimal extent. Segregated groups could work

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to different conditions of service: for example, Fevre notes the way in which the tradition of piece rates, and custom and practice arrangements jealously guarded by White workers disappeared in the areas in which ‘Asian’ labour was introduced (1984). Control of the workforce was easier in some cases as communication was generally managed through translator/broker figures, and consequently the potential for outright confrontation over collective grievances was reduced: although Fevre reports at least one junior manager expressing anxieties about the potential for disruption and resistance to authority presented by ‘immigrant blocs’ (1984: 119). Kalra demonstrates that this led to some cotton employers preferring to employ Mirpuri supervisors to oversee night shifts, because there was correspondingly less ‘trouble’ (2000: 114). The ‘language barrier’ was not regarded as a handicap by many of the employers Fevre interviewed: in fact, he documents the way in which attempts by West Yorkshire Language Link (a Section 11 funded industrial language support unit) to provide training on firms’ premises were resisted, on the grounds that such provision represented ‘unfair preferential treatment’ (1984: 108). So although the patterns of work experienced by ‘Asian’ workers were reported by both Fevre and Kalra as suiting them, in terms of wage rates, availability of work in the period up to the 1980s, and conviviality with co-members of cultural and kinship groups, the experience provided them with very limited opportunities to acquire any portable human capital, or social capital with exchange value in the labour market, with the consequence that as the wool and cotton textile industries entered the final stages of their terminal decline, and firms began to close their doors, unemployment rose disproportionately for ‘Asian’ workers, as paid alternatives to textiles appeared unattainable. The alternative larger sources of employment in northern towns, such as light or electrical engineering firms, or mail order retail (a major employer in Bradford) did not open up to those leaving the textile industry, and where they did employ BAME workers, tended to recruit British Indian and African Caribbean female labour (Fevre 1982, 1984). In terms of the ‘parallel lives’ thesis, this account of Mirpuri migrant workers’ experience in the cotton and wool textile industries indicates how segregation was structured into their participation throughout their time

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in the industry, and for night-shift workers in particular, how this could have precluded involvement in broader civil society, even if the firstgeneration migrants (referred to by Kalra as ‘Babas’) had wanted it (Anwar 1979; Kalra 2000). The huge differential in unemployment rates during the period of deindustrialisation between White and Black workers was acknowledged by Kalra’s respondents as further evidence of the racism and Islamophobia they had experienced inside and outside the workplace. Conversely, religious practice offered a social space and a structure that enabled the Babas to collectively manage the sudden and catastrophic change in lifestyle and rhythm that followed redundancy (Kalra 2000: 145–149), as well as a conceptual framework for understanding their situation (154–157) which emphasised membership of a transnational community grounded in principles of mutualism and solidarity.

Occupational Segregation: The Next Generation The limitations that occupational segregation in the textile industry imposed on the broader spatial and social mobility of first-generation migrants were echoed in the experience of their children. The peak periods of youth unemployment during the Thatcher years in the 1980s disproportionately affected young people of Pakistani/Mirpuri origin (Waton et al. 1986: 61–69). Further, it was evident that ‘Asian’ young people also had disproportionately worse access to programmes like the Youth Opportunities Programme which had been introduced to mitigate the effects of youth unemployment (Fevre 1982). As we have seen throughout our discussion to date, explanations based on ascribed ‘cultural’ characteristics were often invoked both in policy making and in vernacular life to explain this disadvantage. As well as the expected human capital explanations of relative disadvantage, ‘Asians’ as a category were assumed to be less successful in the labour market as a consequence of having ambitions above the level of their capability, and therefore declining, or failing to equip themselves for, jobs that were at their ‘true’ level (Fevre 1982). The theme of ‘over-aspiration’ featured heavily in discussions of ‘Asian’ youth transitions, as the experience of one the authors working in

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two research projects in the 1970s and 1980s attests. Bradford University’s Vocational Adaptation Project was actually predicated on the research question of whether unfamiliarity with the UK’s cultural and educational system had produced this over-ambition on the part of ‘Asian’ parents and their children, and during the project teachers and careers advisors repeated the trope, expressed at its crudest by a careers teacher in an inner city comprehensive: ‘we’ve all heard the one about the Paki who wants to be a brain surgeon’. The work of Fevre (1982) and Campbell and Jones (1981) bears out the wide currency of these assumptions, among employers and members of the careers service. This differential experience of unemployment has persisted since the 1980: the Runnymede Trust (Li 2014) reported that in the 40 years from 1972 to 2012, the high levels of Pakistani unemployment in the 1980s recession almost exactly repeated in the 1990s recession, and argued that these figures were only mitigated in the Great Recession of 2008 onwards by young men turning to selfemployment (following Kalra, it would be sensible to argue that the figures of the 1980s and 1990s could have been worse for the same reason). Bell and Blanchflower, in their survey of UK unemployment during the Great Recession, found that the unemployment rate for Asians aged 18–24 was 21.3 per cent (2010: R9). These national figures mask the regional disparities which meant that the experience of young people in M62 towns was considerably worse. ‘Asian’ young people experienced similar disadvantage in terms of access to post-compulsory educational opportunities to enhance human capital: here were disproportionately small numbers of Asian young people in the post-16 system throughout the 1980s, and at Bradford College, European funding was obtained to run a pilot action research programme to understand why Black and Asian post 16 applicants were so unlikely to be successful in their applications to vocational courses. In the 1980s, ‘South Asian’ participation in Further Education increased alongside that of other BAME groups, though for many participants it was likely to have been seen as a second-best option for those whose educational achievement rendered other options difficult of impossible. In the M62 district of North Kirklees, increasing participation by local Pakistani heritage students in courses at the Dewsbury campus of Kirklees College was seen by many parents of all ethnic backgrounds in a local authority sponsored study in

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2014 as a racial marker of declining quality and risk. Evidence also suggests that ethnic minority students participating in vocational education routes over this period had relatively little access to the work-based vocational training routes that provided the human and social capital necessary to enhance labour market participation (Bhattacharyya et  al. 2003: 26; Avis et  al. 2017: 304). As their participation in higher education has increased, it has correspondingly decreased in further education (Avis et al. 2017: 303), though there is some evidence that ‘Asian’ students are less likely to attend ‘high tariff’ selecting universities rather than ‘medium tariff’ recruiting universities (https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/ students/where-study/characteristics), an effect that may be intensified by regional variation: students from Pakistani heritage groups are more likely to (daily) commute to their local university, and less likely to move away as a result (Thomas and Jones 2016). As with the issue of residence, educational destinations are the product of a complex mix of opportunity, choice and constraint. Many of the choices that have appeared culturally desirable in terms of social mobility, such as law and accountancy, where educational opportunities in the post-92 (expolytechnic) university sector opened up in the 2000s, have proved less likely to generate the expected social rewards, as a result of simultaneous, and related, changes in the occupational structures of these professions. Educational opportunity has not therefore given rise to increased social and spatial mobility. Consequently, it can be argued that Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) participation in post-compulsory Further and Higher Education (FHE) has grown in the M62 region, but in the context of the reality of a much weaker regional economy, so maintaining national ‘ethnic penalties’ in the broader labour market (Modood 1997).

 onclusion: Understanding ‘Ethnic’ Urban C Spaces in the M62 Corridor This chapter has been concerned with contributing to the body of critical literature on the narrow, voluntarist understanding of ethnic clustering in M62 towns which has informed so much of the policy literature. We want to emphasise two aspects of our argument. First, it is undeniable

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that areas of cities and towns like Bradford, Oldham, Rochdale, Burnley, Dewsbury, Batley and Keighley have ‘mono-cultural concentrations’, but these are not simply defined by religion or country of origin, but by social class, colour and access to resources and social networks. Statistical representations of these areas as ‘enclaves’ or ‘ghettos’ also conceals the rich internal diversity of their daily life, and the affections and aspirations of those who live in them, so richly captured for example in the portrait of Bradford provided by Husband and his colleagues (2016). Second, this phenomenon of clustering is the product of a complex of social forces working on populations from inside and outside. This can be a product of interaction between cultural groups of the kind described by Kuran as ‘reputational cascade’, notably in the disputed example of ‘White flight’. Alternatively it may be the product of social structures and forces above the level of group interaction, where restraints on opportunity structures impact differentially on groups and individuals to produce what Portes and Zhou describe as ‘segmented assimilation’: the example of the interplay between regional inequality and educational choice given above is one potential illustration of this phenomenon in which space plays a huge part, but more broadly, we have seen from some of our own research the extent to which area deprivation and the hollowing out of local civic society has exacerbated inter-community tensions (Thomas et al. 2018). Over time these processes have become written on the urban landscape in the form of areas that are culturally differentiated by their local populations but also their shops, schools and places of worship. The sense of having made these places what they are, alongside the social and physical resources that they contain, provides an affiliation which leads many British Pakistani heritage to want to continue live in or adjacent to them (Husband et al. 2016: 129 ff). This affection for place, tied to commitment to civic institutions and strong social values, have been targets for urban policy makers since the slum clearance programmes of the 1960s, and its loss is mourned by many of those who find its expression most threatening when it is realised in the building of a mosque or the opening of a faith school. This is true both at the street level, where we found young White people in Oldham and Rochdale resentful of ‘Asians’ for ‘sticking together’ and ‘thinking they are better than us’, but it is also reflected in the academic work of authors such as Carling (2008). In this chapter we have

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argued that what is particular to the M62 region is not just the particular kind of immigration it experienced from the late 1950s onwards, but the cultural, economic and social environment that immigrant populations settled amongst, and the way in which that structured the experience. In the chapters that follow, we explore specific aspects of that environment and its history, and policy contributions to it, in more detail.

Bibliography Alam, M.  Y., & Husband, C. (2006). British-Pakistani Men from Bradford: Linking Narratives to Policy. York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Amin, A. (2002). Ethnicity and the Multi-Cultural City: Living with Diversity. Environment and Planning, 34, 959–980. Anthias, F. (2001). New Hybridites, Old Concepts: The Limits of ‘Culture’. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 24(4), 619–641. Anwar, M. (1979). The Myth of Return: Pakistanis in Britain. London: Heinemann. Anwar, M. (1998). Between Cultures: Continuity and Change in the Lives of Young Asians, Muhammad Anwar. London: Routledge. Avis, J., Orr, K., & Warmington, P. (2017). Race and Vocational Education and Training in England. Journal of Vocational Education & Training, 69(3), 292–310. https://doi.org/10.1080/13636820.2017.1289551. Ballard, R. (1983). The Context and Consequences of Migration: Jullundur and Mirpur Compared. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 11(1–2), 117–136. Barr, A. (1978). Housing Improvement and the Multi-Racial Community (Papers in Community Studies No 16). York: University of York. Bell, D., & Blanchflower, D. (2010). UK Unemployment in the Great Recession. National Institute Economic Review, 214, R3–R25. Bhattacharyya, G., Ison, L., & Blair, M. (2003). Minority Ethnic Attainment and Participation in Education and Training: The Evidence. Research Topic Paper RTP01-03. Nottingham: Department for Education and Skills Publications. Bowden, S., & Higgins, D.  M. (2015). Investment Decision-Making and Industrial Performance: The British Wool Industry During the Interwar Years. Business History, 57(2), 224–240. Bradford MDC. (2017, January 4). Deprivation at Ward Level. Bradford Metropolitan District Council Intelligence Bulletin. https://ubd.bradford. gov.uk/media/1292/imd-2015-deprivation-at-ward-level.pdf

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Fevre, R. (1982). The Labour Process in Bradford with Special Reference to Asian 16–19 Year Olds. Bradford: Bradford College EEC/DES Transition to Work Project. Fevre, R. (1984). Cheap Labour and Racial Discrimination. Aldershot: Gower. Fletcher, T. (2012). ‘All Yorkshiremen Are from Yorkshire, But Some Are More “Yorkshire” Than Others’: British Asians and the Myths of Yorkshire Cricket. Sport in Society, 15(I2), 227–245. https://doi.org/10.1080/17430437. 2012.637735. Geary, F., & Stark, S. (2016). What Happened to Regional Inequality in the Twentieth Century? The Economic History Review, 69(1), 215–228. Glucksmann, M. (2000). Cottons and Casuals. London: Routledge. House of Commons Select Committee on Race Relations and Immigration (1971). Session 1970-71; Housing: Report and Evidence. London: HMSO. Husband, C., Alam, Y., Huettermann, J., & Fomina, J. (2016). Lived Diversities: Space, Place and Identities in the Multi-Ethnic City. Bristol: Policy Press. Jackson, P. (1992). The Racialisation of Labour in Post-War Bradford. Journal of Historical Geography, 18(2), 190–209. Johnston, R., Poulsen, M., & Forrest, J. (2005). On the Measurement and Meaning of Residential Segregation: A Response to Simpson. Urban Studies, 42(7), 1221–1227. Kalra, V. (2000). From Textiles to Taxi Ranks. Aldershot: Ashgate. Kintrea, K., Bannister, J., Pickering, J., Reid, M., & Suzuki, N. (2008). Young People and Territoriality in British Cities. York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Kundnani, A. (2001). From Oldham to Bradford: The Violence of the Violated. In The Three Faces of British Racism. London: Institute of Race Relations. Kuran, T. (1998). Ethnic Norms and Their Transformation Through Reputational Cascades. The Journal of Legal Studies, 27(2), 623–659. Li, Y. (2014). Ethnic Unemployment in Britain (1972–2012). London: Runnymede Trust. https://www.runnymedetrust.org/blog/ethnic-unemployment-in-britain. Modood, T. (1997). Ethnic Minorities in Britain: Diversity and Disadvantage. Bristol: Policy Press. Phillips, D. (1998). Black Minority Ethnic Concentration, Segregation and Dispersal in Britain. Urban Studies, 35(10), 1681–1702. Phillips, D. (2006). Parallel Lives? Challenging Discourses of British Muslim Self-Segregation. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 24(1), 2540. Phillips, S., Hallett, C., & Abendstern, M. (2007). ‘If We Depart From These Conditions ….’: Trade Union Reactions to European Immigrant Workers in the Textile Industry’. Labour History Review, 75(2), 135–154.

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Price, L. (2014). Immigrants and Apprentices: Solutions to the Post-War Labour Shortage in the West Yorkshire Wool Textile Industry, 1945–1980. Textile History, 45(1), 32–48. Redford, A. (1968). Labour Migration in England 1800–1850. New  York: Augustus M Kelley. Reeve, M., & McTominey, A. (2017). Grim Up North?: Northern Identity, History, and Heritage. International Journal of Local and Regional History, 12(2), 65–76. Richardson, C. (1976). A Geography of Bradford. Bradford: University of Bradford Press. Russell, D. (2004). Looking North: Northern England and the National Imagination. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Saifullah Khan, V. (1977). The Pakistanis. In J. L. Watson (Ed.), Between Two Cultures (pp. 57–89). Oxford: Blackwell. Sanderson, P. (1979). Housing and Community Relations, Unpublished (M.Phil Thesis). York: University of York. Sanderson, P., & Thomas, P. (2014). Troubling Identities: Race, Place and Positionality Among Young People in Two Towns in Northern England. Journal of Youth Studies, 17(9), 1168–1186. https://doi.org/10.1080/1367626 1.2014.90149. Seabrook, J. (1971). City Close-Up. London: Penguin. Scott, P. (2000). The State, Internal Migration, and the Growth of New Industrial Communities in Inter-War Britain. The English Historical Review, 115(461), 326–353. Simpson, L. (2004). Statistics of Racial Segregation: Measures, Evidence and Policy. Urban Studies, 41(3), 661–681. Simpson, L. (2005). On the Measurement and Meaning of Residential Segregation: A Reply to Johnston, Poulsen and Forrest. Urban Studies 42(7), 1229–1230. Finney, N., & Simpson, L. (2009). Sleepwalking to Segregation? Challenging Myths About Race and Migration. Bristol: Policy Press. Simpson, L., Ahmed, S., & Phillips, D. (2008). Oldham and Rochdale: Race, Housing and Community Cohesion (CCSR Working Paper 2008–15). Manchester: Cathie Marsh Centre for Census and Survey Research. Thomas, P. (2011). Youth, Multiculturalism and Community Cohesion. (Palgrave Politics of Identity and Citizenship). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Thomas, L., & Jones, R. (2016). Student Engagement in the Context of Commuter Students. London: The Student Engagement Partnership.

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4 Policy: From Assimilation to Integration?

Introduction The introductory chapter to this book highlighted the pervasive political thesis that ‘multiculturalism’ is in ‘crisis’ or has even ‘failed’, a thesis that has become steadily more salient in Western Europe since 2001. Stuart Hall identified the ‘double meaning’ of multiculturalism, with the term both referring to a lived reality of increasing ethnic diversity in Britain and many other Western nations, and to state policies of acknowledging ethnic diversity and addressing issues of integration and equal access and opportunity. It was such state policies that European politicians have labelled a ‘failure’, both in Britain (Cameron 2011) and in countries such as Germany (Weaver 2010, somewhat surprisingly as there is little evidence of any actual German multiculturalist policies). Here, international policy dissension should be acknowledged, with both Canada and Australia (Modood 2013) continuing to openly promote and fund multiculturalist policy approaches at the national federal and state/ province level. As other chapters discuss, this European discourse of multiculturalist ‘failure’ has both reflected perceptions of ‘unfairness’ and threat in sections of majority White communities and further fuelled it © The Author(s) 2020 S. Miah et al., ‘Race,’ Space and Multiculturalism in Northern England, Palgrave Politics of Identity and Citizenship Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42032-1_4

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(see Chap. 6), whilst also deepening the experiences of racist marginalisation and suspicion amongst ethnic minority citizens generally and Muslim communities in particular (see Chap. 5). The received wisdom is that the European states with the most developed multiculturalist policy approaches have suffered the greatest ‘backlash’, particularly Britain (Lentin and Titley 2011; Kundnani 2007) and the Netherlands (Sniderman and Hagendoorn 2009). The nature and reality of these supposed policy ‘backlashes’ is, however, significantly disputed (see, for instance, Rattansi 2011 for a critique of the methodological approach underpinning the data claimed as proof of a ‘backlash’ in the Netherlands). Much has been written about the trajectory of British policy, with claims of its ‘death’ as part of a retreat to assimilationism (Kundnani 2007) or of its existential ‘crises’ (Lentin and Titley 2011) countered with analysis that the post 2001 British policy developments in the name of ‘community cohesion’ (Cantle 2001) or ‘integration’ (DCLG 2012; Casey 2016) are actually more a ‘re-naming’ (Thomas 2011) or a ‘re-balancing’ (Meer and Modood 2009). As clarified in the Introduction, the intention of this book is not to provide a further ‘state of British multiculturalism’ analysis, but much of the lively academic debate on this topic over the past 15–20 years (often offering extremely thoughtful and well-theorised arguments) focuses on an apparently uniform and monolithic, nationally driven British state policy model. In this chapter, we offer a somewhat different analysis. Focussing thematically on the operation and lived experience of multiculturalist policy operation in the M62 corridor region, and drawing on empirical research around it, we want to suggest that the ‘British model’ has been of only limited coherence, or even reality, and has varied considerably, not only over different political eras but in relation to situated and contingent developments. This does not mean that the M62 region has not experienced significant attempts to operationalise multiculturalist policies, but rather that they have often borne only limited resemblance to national ‘models’ suggested in some academic literature, to any national policy vision developed in Whitehall or even to policy practices in other parts of the M62 corridor region. Here, situated local economic, social and demographic histories and realities, events, political initiatives and even

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happenstances have played a very substantial role in shaping the developments theorised as a supposedly uniform part of the ‘British multiculturalist model’. Some of these local experiences suggest that, rather than there having been too much multiculturalism and consequent ‘failure’, there has arguably been too little to make any meaningful judgement on policy effectiveness. What follows below is consideration of what evidence about the doing and experiencing of multiculturalist policy in locales of the M62 corridor tells us about the nature and reality of British ‘multiculturalist policies’ themselves, the variety of local responses to and roles within this multiculturalist policy operation and the contradictions and tensions that such policies have entailed.

Enacting the ‘British Multiculturalist Model’ Whilst there is significant academic consensus that Britain has had activist multiculturalist state policies from the 1960s onwards as its ‘philosophy of integration’ (Flavell 2001), it is much harder to gain agreement over what these ‘policies’ actually were and are, what they have involved and even what they were and are called. This is because the most tangible, named policies have actually been the progressive strengthening of anti-­discrimination legislation that culminated in the watershed 1976 Race Relations Act (RRA; subsequently amended in 2000 and then incorporated in the 2010 Equality Act). Bleich (2003), in his comparative study of British and French integration policy ‘frames’, identifies that: British policy-makers have largely accepted the categories of race and ethnicity; they have conceived racism primarily in ‘colour’ terms and have devoted the majority of their energy to fighting access racism. (ibid: 14)

Beyond this anti-discrimination legal framework, identifying other named, coherent national multiculturalist policies in Britain is far from straightforward, as the British approach has largely involved ‘responsiblising’ (McKee 2009) and permitting local government and even local communities, with all the variations and contradictions that this inevitably involves. For Garbaye (2005), this focus on the local was central to policy

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efforts to depoliticise race within the British ‘incorporation framework’ (2005: 5) for migrant integration. This multiculturalist policy reliance on the local has been remarkably enduring. Indeed, having labelled British multiculturalist policy as a ‘failed experiment’ (2011: 16), Lentin and Titley actually admit that ‘multiculturalism has rarely amounted to more than a patchwork of initiatives, rhetoric and aspirations in any given context’ (ibid: 2), making any sweeping claims of ‘failure’ and ‘death’ questionable. Paul Gilroy (2004) has suggested that multiculturalism, and particularly in its sharper ‘anti-racist’ form, only existed under the Greater London Council between 1982 and 1986, a rather London-­centric perspective but one which does implicitly highlight both the contingent nature of such policies and local government’s constraint by national constraint of funding and powers, as discussed below. Tariq Modood (2013: 176) identifies that it is ‘the bottom-up and civil society-led approach that is most common in Britain’ within multiculturalist policy operation, and that has been a deliberate national state strategy. Ben-Tovin and colleagues (1986), in their study of ‘The local politics of race’ that drew particularly on empirical research from Liverpool and other northern cities and was published at a high point of local activity, identify that most national policy measures on multiculturalism have been permissive, and only sometimes accompanied by dedicated national funding, rather than mandatory (and properly funded), so inevitably leading to local variations and inconsistencies: This tendency to delegate, or abdicate responsibility downwards is perpetuated by local authorities who in turn leave it to voluntary organisations to press for change. (Ben-Tovim et al. 1986: 164)

David Goodhart (2013: 145), who is highly critical of the impacts of Britain’s policy approach, talks of how successive national governments ‘ended up sub-contracting the management of minority politics to local government... and minority leaders themselves’. A number of key themes can be identified around how this national policy approach of responsibilising the local has informed ground-level experience within the M62 corridor region and are discussed below. It does mean, though, that there have always been very wide variations in the policy approach taken, even by

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neighbouring local authorities. Such local variations are found right from the ‘Bussing’ of Asian children to White-dominated schools in Bradford and Huddersfield (Kirklees) but not in neighbouring Leeds in the 1960s and 1970s (Esteves 2018) to significantly different approaches to the enactment of policies such as community cohesion (Thomas 2011; Monro et al. 2010) and to the counterterrorism Prevent strategy (Husband and Alam 2011; Thomas 2012). This policy ‘space’, though, has arguably also enabled creative ‘policy enactment’ (Ball et al. 2013), more positive and constructive local interpretation and implementation of national policy guidelines by individual local authorities and their ‘street level bureaucrats’ (Lipsky 2010) in the front line of policy and practice. These issues and their local manifestations are all discussed in the sections below. Two realities must be immediately acknowledged before embarking on this thematic discussion of grounded policy experience. One is the conundrum of having ‘named’ state multiculturalist policies at the national and local level, in that such policies, their assumptions and content are conflated with the success or otherwise of migrant integration and ethnic equality. Here, an unsustainable burden of expectation for profound societal impacts is, and always has been, placed on policies that are and always have been marginal in resource and policy priority terms. The success or otherwise of their stated goals comes much more from broader economic and social trends and from larger order state policy approaches to the economy and society. Having ‘named’ policies places an unachievable expectation on such policies and the professionals charged with implementing them. A second reality throughout this British national-­local multiculturalist policy approach has been a lack of resources for both the narrow, named policies and the local authorities charged with delivering them, alongside an increasing constraint of local government powers, leading to a significant gap between multiculturalist policy rhetoric and a reality of ground-level action and impact. Butterworth (1967) in his study of South Asian and African-Caribbean migrants to different parts of West Yorkshire identified both the vital role new migrants were playing in maintaining production in the dominant textile industry but also the housing and education challenges even then facing the local authorities at a time of economic growth:

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The capacity of the local authorities to meet demands upon services and housing depends to a considerable extent on the amounts of money that can be raised locally by the rates. (Butterworth 1967: 5)

Butterworth goes on to highlight the very low rateable value of most housing in West Yorkshire (and the very poor condition of much of it, with many houses then lacking indoor toilets/bathrooms), so limited the funding base for the local authorities facing the biggest challenge of new migrants. This failure of the national state to realistically support areas undergoing the biggest inwards migration in the 1960s did not lead to policy learning, with the very significant inwards Eastern European migration to the M62 region following the 2004 A8 accession of Eastern European countries to the European Union and its freedom of movement only being followed some years later by a ‘Migration Impacts fund’ government (COIC 2007), short-lived as it was abolished by the 2010 coalition government. These post-2010 cuts were accompanied by the abolition of the Audit Commission and by the Common Area Agreement framework of detailed policy targets and performance measures, which had driven some uniformity of local government focus on and concern with ethnic minority inequality and inter-community cohesion (Ratcliffe 2012). Interviews with local authority officers (LAO) in Kirklees, West Yorkshire negotiating the transition from nationally funded cohesion activity, with clear national targets and performance measures under the 1997–2010 Labour government to the unfunded aspirations of the austerity-­obsessed coalition government identified that ‘it’s great to have that flexibility to do things locally… but you lose that national steer and that external challenge… there clearly isn’t a national push for us to do anything’ (Kirklees LAO 2). Here, the impact of the loss of national focus was not just about money, but also that the national performance measurement regime made it easier for officers to persuade elected local councillors to spend money on multiculturalist and race equality measures: ‘The fact that we get measured on it makes it easier to make a business case’ (LAO 2). Particularly unhelpful here was the national government withdrawal of support for the ‘Place’ survey, regular monitoring of how local people felt about inter-community relations that helped shape and guide c­ ohesion/

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integration strategies. Such surveys highlighted areas of significant racial tension, for instance, with the Dewsbury/Batley areas of North Kirklees reporting a 30 per cent less positive figure than Huddersfield/South Kirklees in response to the question ‘how well do different sorts of people get on around here?’ (Thomas et  al. 2015, 2018). This withdrawal came alongside the total withdrawal of national funding for community cohesion activity, showing a national lack of interest in both local policy and local realities (Thomas 2014). At a deeper level, though, there has been a much more profound undermining of the local ability to act during the period of British multiculturalist policy, so questioning the reality of the assertion that local government in Britain have been ‘independent political actors’ (Garbaye 2005: 21). In its initial phase of the 1960s–1980s, and despite limited national funding, local authorities theoretically had significant power to positively effect ethnic integration, positive community relations and reduced ethnic inequalities. This was because local authorities at that time could determine their own revenue through the ‘rates’ (although local economic conditions curtailed this), controlled all state schools and the allocation of places in them as the local education authority, were the housing provider for a very significant portion of the population and had very significant workforces. Too often, these powers were not used in the interests of multiculturalist policy progress as they could and should have been, for reasons discussed below, but they did exist. From the mid/late 1980s onwards, local government has been much more constrained yet is still charged with leading on this policy area. Constraint came in two ways. The post-1979 Thatcher government imposed central constraints on local authority spending and the raising of local rates/taxes to support it that remain in place today, so severely limiting the development of creative local funded activity. Such control measures were partly prompted by the race equality measures taken by some progressive local authorities, principally the Greater London Council (GLC) but also including Manchester and Bradford. This led Solomos (2003: 104) to identify that ‘the experience of a number of local authorities indicates that any gains in this area were both fragile and vulnerable to pressure from central government’. Alongside this through a broader neoliberal (Harvey 2007) marketisation agenda came compulsory privatisation of an increasing portion of

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local services and the progressive break up of local education authorities following the 1988 Education Reform Act to the point where local authorities now have only limited control over who attends which school or how schools operate generally, something progressively deepened by the ‘academisation’ approach discussed further in Chap. 7. Whilst local authorities in the M62 region originally took differing positions on whether to ‘bus’ Asian school students to ensure ethnically mixed schools prior to it being outlawed by the courts in 1979 (not a uniquely British approach—Rotterdam considered a policy of 5 per cent maximum minority children in its schools in the 1970s; Scheffer 2011), neoliberal approaches of ‘marketising’ and privatising public services has significantly reduced the remit, powers and budgets of local authorities, so weakening their ability to promote both ethnic equality and good community relations.

Going Local The discussion above highlighted the extent to which, beyond the anti-­ discrimination legal framework, the ‘British multicultural policy model’ has actually been about local actions, largely by local authorities and communities. The chapter now goes on to analyse how this has played out in the M62 corridor region through discussion of a number of key themes, which in themselves illustrate the local variation and complexity. They are significant local variations in practice, local inactions and obstruction, local taking of initiatives and policy leadership and pressure ‘bottom up’ from communities and civil society. The first of this is the significant local variations stemming from the permissive national policy approach. This was evident in the differing local authority approaches to the ‘Bussing’ of ethnic minority children in the 1960s and 1970s (the Bussing of White children was briefly considered, then rejected as politically impossible: Esteves 2018). In 1963, the then Secretary of State for Education Edward Boyle (later ‘Sir’ and Chancellor of the University of Leeds) suggested that no school should have more than 30 per cent ‘immigrant’ (as policy documents then characterised them; Esteves 2018) non-White pupils. The subsequent 1965

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circular 7/65 from his Department did recommend dispersal but only about a dozen local authorities nationally embraced the policy (Esteves 2018), as we discuss further in Chap. 7. Five of these were in the M62 region (Blackburn, Bradford, Dewsbury, Halifax and Huddersfield) whilst other took sharply differing positions in response, refusing to ‘bus’ (Goodhart 2013). Alongside Circular 7/65, the Department for Education had also recommended Primary School Reception classes made up entirely on migrant children to aid English-language development (something that Huddersfield had done from 1961: Morrison 1976) but, ‘Local Education Authorities generally refused to implement its proposals’ (Ben-Tovim et al. 1986: 157). Bradford was one of the most active authorities in taking up the ‘Bussing’ approach, as Butterworth already could identify in 1967: Because of concentrations in certain areas there has been a policy of dispersion applied recently. This has not meant that children have been moved from schools to which they have gone but new arrivals and those leaving infant or junior stage may have been sent to other schools... hundreds of children are now involved. (Butterworth 1967: 36)

In contrast, Manchester’s chief education officer disavowed dispersal, as did Leeds, where the University of Leeds pioneered approaches to teaching English as a second language to support the integration of new migrant children within mainstream schools. This was despite overt pressure from Labour’s education minister, Denis Howell for these local authorities to adopt dispersal. Esteves (2018) sees such significant regional and national variations as stemming from differing local philosophies of education, integration and citizenship at a time when local authorities had substantial power over their entire educational systems, and from patterns of local migrant settlement with very high migrant concentration in particular wards bringing questions of dispersal to the fore (although none of the London boroughs with the highest proportions of ‘immigrant’ children introduced dispersal). Esteves (2018) comments that ‘[f]ew policies better epitomise the role of preconceptions in policy-­ making than dispersal’.

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In contrast, Bradford, adopted ‘Bussing’ even before Circular 7/65, despite being seen as largely free of racial tensions at the time (Esteves 2018). The number of immigrant children, almost entirely from Pakistani Kashmir and speaking little or no English, did increase rapidly, though, in a number of Bradford Schools (highlighting how local authorities have no control over national immigration policy but are expected to lead on responding to its impacts), but the resulting adoption of the ‘Bussing’ of ‘immigrant’ children locally even involved those speaking English! Esteves (2018) identifies that the criterion used were, in effect, skin colour (although many of the British-born children spoke little or no English when starting school, something that 30/40 years later reports around the 2001 riots again highlighted both nationally (Cantle 2001) and in neighbouring towns like Oldham: Ritchie 2001). The number of buses used in Bradford grew from 2 in 1965 to at least 24 by 1977, representing many hundreds of children, but the suggestion that a broader, contact-theorybased (Hewstone et  al. 2007) integration was intended by Bradford is undermined by the fact, as we discussed in Chap. 3, that many of the Asian children ‘bussed’ where then simply put in separate classes at their White suburban schools. Other neighbouring authorities, including the then separate Huddersfield and Dewsbury boroughs (joined as Kirklees from 1974 onwards) also took up ‘Bussing’. In the early years in these areas of West Yorkshire there was little Asian community opposition, although 12 Asian pupils refused to be bussed to White schools in Dewsbury in 1972 and were educated at home instead (Esteves 2018), a foretaste of the actions of White parents in Dewsbury in 1987, when asked to send their children to Headfield School that was then 85 per cent Asian (Naylor 1989). Similar significant variations can be found in other, permissive aspects of national multiculturalist policy direction. The bottom-up nature of much policy and practice, as discussed below, has fuelled much of this, as has local political dispositions and community mobilisations. In the aftermath of the 2001 riots and the national adoption of ‘community cohesion’, some local authorities adopted the new emphasis on inter-­ community contact and programmes much more overtly than others (Thomas 2011). Oldham and Bradford both experienced very significant disturbances but whilst Oldham embraced the new approach of cohesion

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(Thomas 2007, 2011), Bradford was less convinced and seemed to make few tangible changes to its pre-existing approach to ‘multiculturalism’ of supporting individual ethnic and faith communities. Neighbouring Kirklees, which did not suffer rioting, developed cohesion work in a more substantial way (Monro et al. 2010), partly in recognition of the danger of local racial conflicts after initially congratulating themselves for avoiding rioting: There was almost a bit of back-patting going on because the riots were in Oldham, in Bradford… we were doing quite well against that. In hindsight, that was quite naïve... (we) recognised that we’d been lucky… it wasn’t down to things here really being so different. (Kirklees LAO 1)

A reality, especially in the first 25/30 years of supposed multiculturalist policy operation, has been inaction, or even obstruction, at the local government level, something almost encouraged by the vague nature of many supposed multiculturalist national policy measures, as national governments attempted to avoid the politicisation of ‘race’ (Young 1990). Section 11 funding for ‘immigrant’ children needing support with English-language skills was a flagship measure for the 1966–1970 Labour government which initiated the British multicultural policy model but Ben-Tovim et  al. (1986) identify how may local authorities along the M62 corridor and beyond used the funding to simply improve staff-­ student ratios in schools generically. In Manchester, it emerged that 75 per cent of Section 11 funding was simply supporting the salaries of highly paid education officers and it was well into the 1980s before Manchester ensured that Section 11 funding was actually supporting the language and integration needs of ethnic minority students (Macdonald 1989). Similarly, the Urban Programme of the same period was announced as preventer of racial tensions but was actually vague in focus, with only a limited portion ever going into work specifically focussed on ‘community relations’ and racial disadvantage. For Ben-Tovim et al. (1986), local authorities could have used these programme much more fully and overtly around those issues but very few did in the face of ignorance and disinterest from elected members and senior officers. An example of such passivity was Liverpool—a city with stark racial disadvantage, as the

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post-1981 riots report showed (Scarman 1981)—where there was ‘a negative attitude from most of the local officers who were content to take no action and to wait for the Community Relations Council (a grant-aided voluntary sector organisation with a small budget) to produce some detailed proposals’ (Ben-Tovim et al. 1986: 142). The very questionable ‘local philosophy’ of policy demonstrated in Bradford around Bussing was seen in other local areas of the region around provision of different local authority services. Morrison (1976), in his ground-breaking analysis of local realities from an overtly ‘Black perspective’ for the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), visited Huddersfield and found great resentment amongst ethnic minority respondents over the allocation of council housing: Although the local housing authority deny any conscious discrimination in housing Blacks in particular areas, an examination of council housing in Birkby, Fartown, Sheepridge and Lockwood suburbs shows a fairly high concentration of Blacks. (Morrison 1976: 18)

Morrison also quotes a Black respondent, a ‘Jamaican weaver’, who commented that: [s]ome of us feel that the council offer us these houses because White families have refused to take them. Apart from that, when you concentrate Blacks in one area, you naturally inhibit Whites from coming to that area. (ibid: 19)

This suggestion of local authority connivance with, or even creation of, physical ethnic segregation clearly goes to the heart of post-2001 community cohesion and its concern with ‘parallel lives’ (Cantle 2001). Oldham was one of the epicentres of the 2001 ‘mill town riots’ (Denham 2001) and was exposed as having very high levels of ethnic segregation but the real question was, why? As Chap. 3 discusses, much of the subsequent political and media discourse suggested agency on the part of Asian Muslim communities, the allegation that Muslims have ‘self-segregated’ because of a reluctance to integrate (Goodhart 2004, 2013). However, this lets the Oldham local authority off the hook. Using its legal ‘formal investigation’ powers under the 1976 Race Relations Act (RRA), the CRE (1994) identified that Oldham Council had breached the RRA in

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its housing allocations. The CRE identified that Asian and Whites had ‘been steered towards different estates’ (ibid: 26) and that, ‘the council had directly discriminated against Asian applicants by disproportionately allocating them to poorer properties compared with other applicants’ (ibid: 26), partially using prejudiced officer judgements about house-keeping standards as justification. Alongside this came racial discrimination and deliberate separation on racial grounds in the rental housing market in Oldham, as a separate CRE (1990) investigation of a rental housing letting agency identified. Together, such practices over several decades played a very significant role in creating the ethnic segregation in Oldham identified in 2001 but this reality did not inhibit the proponents of the ‘self-segregation’ thesis, as Arun Kundnani (2001) identifies. Other national studies (Garbaye 2005) have suggested that the dominance of private ownership of low-cost rental housing partially explains subsequent ethnic minority congregation but the actions of the local state in areas like Oldham nuances this argument. Such discriminatory and separate housing locations by local authorities in the M62 corridor region only started to change from the mid/late 1980s onwards under the pressure of CRE action and local community campaigning. Other types of public services may not have been overtly discriminatory but were supposedly ‘colour blind’ in approach, justified by local and professional ‘philosophies’ that, in reality, displayed an inaction and even disinterest towards racial inequalities, segregation and tensions. One such example is the youth services provided by all local authorities and crucial for the rapidly growing ethnic minority youth populations. The national professional youth work ‘philosophy of integration’ in the 1960s and 1970s was a colour blind one of youth provision being open to all, so ignoring the very real racism and discrimination that ethnic minority youth faced when trying to access such ‘mixed’ youth club provision (CRE 1976; Thomas 2002). Morrison identified just such attitudes when investigating Huddersfield in the early 1970s: The attitude of the local authority has always been that there was no need for any civic youth clubs which would cater essentially for Black youth. They regard this as ‘discriminating’ but do not take the same attitudes towards the existing White clubs in the area. (Morrison 1976: 33)

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The response of minority communities locally, as it was nationally, was self-help through necessity, with a community-run youth club catering for up to 200 Black youth every Friday evening. Such local approaches were forced to change in the wake of the 1981 riots and the seminal report on them (Scarman 1981), with resulting national youth work policy guidance urging local authorities to establish youth work provision specifically for ethnic minority youth, as part of the phase of more overt, ‘political multiculturalism’ (Thomas 2011). However, indifference continued to dominate in may local authority areas of the M62 region, with such separate provision often tokenistic and left in the hands of the small number of ethnic minority youth workers now hired. Research with youth workers in Oldham in the aftermath of the 2001 riots saw youth workers, both White and ethnic minority, admit that youth work staffing was colour coded and that youth workers and youth groups of different ethnic backgrounds never visited each other or worked together, seeing ‘no point’ (Thomas 2007). Whilst inaction or even obstruction have been ongoing themes within multiculturalist policy operation in the M62 corridor region, equally prominent throughout have been examples of local authorities and other local actors taking the initiative. Sometimes these local initiatives, both at local authority level or at the micro-enactment (Ball et al. 2013) level of individual schools or departments, have been clumsy or misplaced attempts to understand and operationalise national guidance. Others have been creative and courageous local initiatives to make progress on local racial equality and good community relations in the face of national government indifference or even obstruction. Arguably, Bradford’s initiative on ‘Bussing’ in the face of a rapidly growing ‘immigrant’ school population, which was discussed earlier, is one example of a locale in the region taking the initiative, with questionable impacts. Education has, unsurprisingly, been the focal point for many local ‘race’ controversies and initiatives in the M62 region, given that Schools and the ethnic mix of their pupils are the most visible symbol of local demographic change. This is shown from the ‘Bussing’ debates of the 1960s right through to the focus on the apparently segregated reality of schooling in Oldham, Burnley and Bradford in the wake of the 2001 riots (Ritchie 2001; Clarke

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2001; Ouseley 2001) and contestation over the impact of the ‘Prevent duty’ on Muslim school and college students (Busher et al. 2017, 2019). Chapter 7 discusses the ‘Honeyford’ controversy of the 1980s, which arguably foregrounded a renewed ‘moral panic’ (Cohen 1988) about Schools with overwhelmingly minority student rolls, but the subsequent ‘Dewsbury Schools’ controversy raised greater questions about the role of the Kirklees local authority in taking the initiative. Here, a group of White parents refused to take up the only Primary school places offered to them at Headfield school, where 85 per cent of pupils were of Asian background. Naylor (1989) identifies how the 1980 Education Act had undermined local authority-enforced catchment areas, but also how Kirklees had adopted the Swann Report (1986) on ‘multicultural education’ in the face of national government’s rejection (Ball and Solomos 1990). This led them to urge schools ‘to counter a Eurocentric syllabus’ (Naylor 1989: 67) and to refocus on existing concerns about ‘racial imbalances’ in local schools. The result was that Kirklees council insisted that 26 White pupils should be offered places at Headfield once their first choice school was oversubscribed, although there were places available at other white-majority schools nearby. The majority of the parents refused, leading to a stand-off where the pupils were educated in a local pub by volunteers, in the context of increasing politicisation and media attention. Naylor (1989) identifies that the approach of Kirklees council was not supported by its own Director of Education and officers but was insisted on by councillors. Herman Ouseley (later Chief Executive of the CRE) was one of the external assessors subsequently asked by Kirklees to examine the damaging affair. He found that race relations concerns were guiding school places decisions locally in 1987, ‘but these would have been informal and non-disclosed’ (Naylor 1989: 186). Alongside the Swann Report, a 1983 CRE report ‘Learning in Terror’ highlighted the extent of racial harassment and violence in English schools, something borne out by a report on racial harassment in Leeds (Leeds CRC 1987) that highlighted racism and racial violence in schools run by Leeds Council. Both these strands of concern, bolstered by campaigning from ethnic minority communities and by educational trade unions, informed (and re-enforced in some cases) moves towards anti-­racism (although it was rarely explicitly called that) in schools.

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However, what this meant and how it should be implemented came under intense scrutiny after the murder in 1986 of a 13-year-old Asian boy, Ahmed Ullah, by Darren Coulburn, a White boy of the same age, at Burnage High School in south Manchester. Manchester City Council had been promoting ‘multicultural education’ to support good community relations in its schools from 1978 onwards and had adopted a policy statement on ‘anti-racist education’ in 1985, although this approach failed to engage with the reality of racism as experienced by many nonWhite school students at that time. This local authority commitment from the ruling Labour Party was strengthened in the aftermath of the local 1981 Moss side riots, which highlighted stark racial inequalities in the city. Such local authority-led anti-racist policies in Manchester and other areas of the M62 region were opposed by some teachers, as Bradford’s Honeyford dispute highlighted. Others schools and teachers enthusiastically implemented anti-racist policies, but sometimes in counterproductive ways, as the independent inquiry in the wake of Ahmed Ullah’s murder concluded (Macdonald 1989). This inquiry was conducted by a team consisting of Ian Macdonald, QC and Lily Khan, Gus John and Reena Bhavnani, three ethnic minority-­ background assessors with strong track records of racial equality work around education and young people. It took evidence in private, as Bangladeshi community members feared reprisals, but still only 2 of the almost 100 school staff at Burnage were initially willing to give evidence. The inquiry findings were sobering, identifying a total failure to effectively address racial tensions in the school in the months before the murder. Here, neither concerns of Asian students about racial harassment nor concerns of White students about the resulting, large-scale retaliatory violence towards some of them were engaged with. It concluded that the murder of Ahmed Ullah was racist but found no evidence that race hate was the killer’s prime motive, saying that, ‘in our view, racism was one of the vital ingredients that brought the two boys together’ (Macdonald 1989: 378). Its wider inquiry into racism and violence in Manchester schools suggested that a murder could have happened elsewhere. The most scathing, and far-reaching in their implications for Manchester and local authorities, findings were around the interpretation and implementation of anti-racist policy by the school’s leadership. This

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was seen as pivotal to the school culture and context that produced the murder. The report spoke of ‘the confusion and lack of logic which the application of doctrinaire multiculturalism and anti-racism engenders’ (Macdonald 1989: 385). At Burnage, this included a ‘community education department’ only concerned with ethnic minority students and parents, an approach that seemed to suggest that ‘White parents have no business in the development of anti-racist education’ (ibid: 386). For the Inquiry team, the School’s management effectively labelled all White students as racist, even refusing any permission to attend Ahmed’s funeral, so causing great distress to many of them. The inquiry was particularly scathing of what they termed ‘moral anti-racism’ policy and practice, which they felt: effectively excludes White students and parents from the process of anti-racism and absolves then from responsibility for any anti-racist education but encourages them to perceive Black students as seeking and being given “special treatment”. (ibid: 403)

The Burnage report findings were echoed some years later by the London-based work of Roger Hewitt (2005). Hewitt’s work in both schools and youth work found educationalists understanding anti-racism as meaning condemnation of and punishment for any racist utterances or behaviour by White students, whilst any educational content involved telling White students that they had to admit racism and accept compensatory programmes aimed only at ethnic minorities. Similar research with youth workers in West Yorkshire (CRE 1999; Thomas 2002) found youth workers believing that they should punish and condemn racism but also avoiding any educational engagement with White young people on race and racism in case further racist utterances took place (which they felt they had not been trained to respond to). These various findings relate directly to the White ‘feelings of unfairness’ discussed further in Chap. 6 and raise broader issues and contradictions around multiculturalist policies and their implementation that are discussed in the section below. Whilst the examples considered above represent local authorities, or even the ‘micro-units’ of individual schools, taking the multiculturalist policy initiative unhelpfully, or even counterproductively, many other

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examples could be considered of progressive and effective policy initiative-­ taking. Many of these stem from communities and community groups themselves. Others stem from local authorities, either filling a vacuum created by national government or ‘enacting’ (Ball et  al. 2013) more effective local versions of national directives and guidelines. For example, Chap. 3 discussed the sharply differing interpretations of what the post-2001 national policy shift towards community cohesion (Cantle 2001; Denham 2001) represented. Some (Kundnani 2001; Back et al. 2002) saw this as a reversion to the ‘colour-blind’ assimilationism of the 1960s, and as a blaming of minority, especially, Muslim, communities in the north of England for supposedly self-segregating. Some of the national political and media discourse as community cohesion was launched (Thomas 2011) seemed to support such a negative interpretation but research around how local authorities were actually understanding and enacting cohesion told a different story. In Oldham, local authority and third sector youth organisations prioritised community cohesion in their work following the shock of the local 2001 riot. This work understood community cohesion not as a repudiation of multiculturalist policy approaches but as a further development of and augmentation to them. Inter-community contact amongst young people was prioritised, drawing on ‘contact theory’ (Hewstone et al. 2007), but this was emphatically not about denying difference or the reality of racism. In fact, distinct ethnic identities were recognised, worked with and even celebrated alongside an explicit focus on the need to challenge racism and ethnic inequality. This was done, however, within a pedagogical framework of youth work activity that saw inter-community contact (based on the key tenets of ‘contact theory’, previously discussed in Chap. 3) and relationship building as essential to reduce tensions and building stronger shared identities. For many local authorities in the region, the post-2001 national adoption of ‘community cohesion’ simply confirmed local analysis of existing tensions and approaches needed to address them: ‘What Cantle was saying… yes, that’s what we already believed in…that degree of separateness worried people’ (Kirklees LAO 1). Some local authorities in the M62 corridor region have taken the policy initiative by continuing to develop such work on community cohesion (or ‘integration’: Casey 2016) post the 2010 coalition government

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decision to cease any national funding and announce that such work was a ‘local matter’ (DCLG 2012; Thomas 2014). Continuing such work on a nationally unsupported basis at the time of very significant cuts in overall national funding to local government in the name of an ideologically driven ‘austerity’ is noteworthy but also reflects the pressing local priority of managing real local ethnic divides and tensions. Research in Kirklees highlighted a continuing local commitment to, even passion for, continued community cohesion work in the post-2100 period which had survived the growing national policy ‘indifference’, and the party-political shift it represented: Officers and politicians actually care and just because the national agenda has changed that doesn’t alter the local commitment….That’s the difference between local and national politics… local political leaders are just that, they’re motivated by local agendas and issues. (Kirklees LAO 2)

Here, the long-term reality of problematic ethnic segregation and poor community relations in some parts of Kirklees drove an awareness that making a positive impact on this issue underpinned everything that the authority was trying to achieve: ‘It will lead to bigger problems in communities and end up costing more money...I’m not sure that at any point was cohesion up for grabs on not doing it in the future’ (Kirklees LAO 3).The loss of national cohesion funding and central monitoring (as discussed earlier) was a blow to local authorities like Kirklees. However, local experience alongside this gradual loss of national direction and control has created ‘space’ for a distinctly local approach to community cohesion, and who these policies are concerned with, to gradually emerge: For the first couple of years we followed national policy but…as the emphasis from national has been taken away, we’ve translated our local interpretation in to direct delivery. (Kirklees LAO 3)

That local interpretation has involved stepping back from the emphasis on building contact and communication between ‘named’ ethnic and religious communities on the basis that this is both too simplistic and too short-term an approach. Instead, emphasis has shifted to a less-explicit,

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community development-based approach that aims to build on and support existing assets within communities in the expectation that ‘cohesion’—cross-community dialogue and partnerships—will flow naturally from this investment in local civic capacity. Here, the Kirklees officers concerned with cohesion have had to continually seek support from their local elected councillors and other senior officers for cohesion work, rather than simply being required to do it by national government. Locally, this has aided the sharpening of focus and this distinct local direction but other local authorities regionally and nationally: ‘Have moved away from it quite considerably, which is a mistake in my view’ (Kirklees LAO 2). This emphasises that the reality of significant ‘space’ for local mediation and enactment within the British multiculturalist policy model has always enabled passivity by some local authorities in relation to cohesion and other multiculturalist policy agendas (Jones 2013), something now accentuated by official national indifference, but passion and creativity by others. The permissive national approach within the British multicultural policy model has not only seen local authorities ‘responsibilised’ for determining and enacting policies, but those local authorities in turn responsibilise civil society groups for much leadership as well as respond to pressure from communities and their civil society groups, as can be seen throughout the period in the M62 corridor region. This crucial, internal civil society policy role was distinct from but complimentary to the external community mobilisations against racial inequalities that have driven much of the policy changes, as this role involved actually leading and implementing aspects of policy at the local level. Adney (1971) highlights how civil society was at the forefront of supporting integration and challenging racial discrimination in Leeds in the 1960s. The Leeds Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) started as a branch of the national Campaign Against Racial Discrimination (CARD) with multiracial leadership. For Adney (1971: 9): it sees its functions as putting pressure on local institutions to provide less unequal treatment for Black people, advising Black people and their organisations about specific problems and acting as a kind of interpreter to Black or White about each other’s ways.

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Adney details the crucial role that CORE was playing locally in helping and advising the rapidly growing non-White minority communities of Leeds but also highlights how its unfunded activity relied on a few activists. Local ‘Community Relations Councils’ (CRCs) were established with modest state funding (a mixture of national and local government) following the 1965 Government White paper ‘Immigration from the Commonwealth’, with Wade’s (1971) report in behalf of the Yorkshire regional coordination body detailing CRCs in Batley, Bradford, Dewsbury, Halifax, Huddersfield, Keighley, Leeds, Rotherham, Sheffield and Wakefield. The CRCs were curious bodies, funded by the state but, in effect, small neocivil society organisations expected to monitor and counter local racial discrimination (much of it likely to be by arms of the very local authority that was part-funding them!) and promote good community relations. This franchising of such responsibility to such small organisations that were neither of the community nor genuinely embedded in the local state indicates the marginal reality of the ‘British multicultural policy model’. The stronger national role in the coordination of local CRCs by the CRE following its establishment after the 1976 RRA only partially addressed this conundrum. Ken Young identifies: the curious arrangement whereby the lead role in race relations at the local level was taken by voluntary bodies...very few local authorities gave more than token support for the administration of what were generally small and powerless organisations. (1990: 24)

Morrison’s research in Huddersfield in the early 1970s produced cutting insights around the reality of the CRC role at the time. Whilst many of the Black research respondents in Huddersfield told Morrison about significant and ongoing racial discrimination in employment and social housing allocations (as discussed earlier), the Huddersfield CRC denied the existence of any racism in the area. Morrison’s analysis was that: [o]ne of questions constantly facing local Community Relations Councils is the knife edge balancing act of maintaining the quiet acceptance of the status quo which would satisfy one of its pay-masters, the local authorities, on the one hand and asserting a strong anti-racialist line which would satisfy the majority

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of Blacks and their supports on the other. Huddersfield CRC has over the years been able to maintain the quiet acceptance of the status quo.... (1976: 37)

Despite this approach, Morrison identifies the only very limited local authority funding and support that this approach had brought. Some CRCs, such as the Manchester Council for Community Relations and Leeds CRC, became much more robust in their criticism of discriminatory local authority practices and effective advocates for non-White minority communities in the years following the 1976 RRA. One example is Leeds CRC’s 1987 report, ‘Racial Harassment in Leeds 1985–6’, which provided clear evidence of high and persistent levels of racial harassment in Leeds. The report was trenchant in its criticism of public authorities such as the police, schools and the local authority housing department for having tokenistic policies on racial harassment that had been adopted in the years following the 1981 Scarman Report but which were not acted upon: ‘[S]imply producing a policy is not enough, as Black individuals’ criticisms of police responses show. Policy statements are not consistently reflected in the actions of individual officers. This has contributed towards a lack of confidence in the police and their commitment to deal with racial attacks...Other agencies exhibit a failure to recognise racial harassment exists and may even deny that it exists. (Leeds CRC 1987: 51)

This report received significant media coverage and was instrumental in a much more robust approach to tackling racial harassment locally in the years following. The levels of racial harassment and tension, particularly in south Leeds were significant for many years afterwards, with large-scale racial tensions similar to those in Manchester’s Burnage High school seen in the Leeds high school attended at the time by two of the later 7/7 London attackers (Thomas 2012) and significant displays of racist behaviour and fascist organising at the Leeds United football stadium, which necessitated a long-running, fan-led anti-racism initiative (Thomas 2010). CRCs also had, though, a role that became increasingly problematic, that of being a representative body of and voice for ethnic minority communities in their locale. From their establishment, this contributed to

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both the frequent distance between the committee members and the lived experienced of minority communities and to the lack of engagement with White majority communities discussed below. Both problems hardened as post-1981 ‘political multiculturalism’ increased the focus on providing resources for separate ethnic minority communities, brokered through ‘community leaders’ (Cantle 2005). Critics saw this post-1981 approach of multiculturalist policy as one of divide and rule and control of minority communities through ‘leaders’, rather than as genuine concern with racial disadvantage (Sivanandan 2005). This was borne out by several CRCs in the M62 region being defunded by the CRE and their local authority in the 1990s, due to power struggles between different ethnic minority communities represented on the CRC. In the wake of the 2001 riots, some commentators (Bagguley and Hussain 2008) pointed to the loss of CRCs in Oldham and Bradford as contributory factors to the tensions and eventual disturbances. However, the failure of these CRCs was more indicative both of poor inter-community relations locally and of a collective local loss of focus on identifying and addressing shared racial disadvantage and poor community relations (Thomas 2011), as subsequent local reports demonstrated (Ouseley 2001; Ritchie 2001). Arguably, external campaigning against racial inequalities by communities in the M62 corridor region has had more tangible impacts on local policy measures than the internal role of CRCs discussed earlier. Indeed, the external role has been much broader than campaigning, being one of ‘self-help’ service delivery and advocacy in the initial period before the post-1981 phase ‘political multiculturalism’ led to direct funding and support from local authorities for BME-led organisations. This post-1981 role in local policy and practice only came about because of community campaigning against blatant racial inequalities in housing, education, employment and treatment by the Police. Such campaigning for racial justice became more vocal and militant in the late 1970s, as far-right group such as the National Front grew and a new generation of Britishborn (or at least educated) minority youth were less willing to accept racial victimisation and discrimination. One tangible example of this new resistance was the wave of ‘Asian Youth Movements’ (AYM) (Ramamurthy 2013), established in Bradford, Sheffield, Manchester, Burnley and Blackburn, amongst others, as we discuss further in Chap. 5.

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In Bradford, provocative National Front marches through the Asian area of Manningham in 1976 and 1977 prompted youth resistance to defend their area and the formation of the ‘Indian Progressive Youth Association’ that soon became the Bradford AYM (Ramamurthy 2013). For the Bradford AYM: We must organise ourselves so that any racist attack can be dealt with effectively. We cannot rely on the police. We must defend ourselves. Black self defence is no offence. (Bradford AYM 1979: 3)

This perspective was hardened by the Police brutality against anti-­ racist mobilisations, rather than against fascist intruders, such as in Southall, West London in April 1979 and led directly to the ‘Bradford 12’ trial and subsequent acquittal of twelve young men from Bradford: The Bradford 12 case saw 12 young Asian men from Sikh, Muslim, Hindu and Christian backgrounds charged with conspiracy to cause explosives and endanger lives after making petrol bombs, that they never used, to defend their community against fascists. The failure of the police to protect black communities, along with their inherent racism were key factors in the defence case. (Ramamurthy 2019)

This external, militant community anti-racist mobilisation in Bradford and other cities and towns of the region was re-enforced by the widespread inner-city rioting by mainly ethnic minority youth of 1981. This rioting affected Liverpool, Leeds, Manchester and many of the smaller towns of the region and was a direct response to racist policing and high levels of ethnic minority unemployment. Together, these forces produced the national (Solomos 2003) and local (Young 1990) shift towards ‘political multiculturalism’ that sanctioned local government to develop and implement much more substantial racial equality policy and practice measures: ‘many local authorities, shocked by the events, began to seriously consider their stance for the first time’ (Young 1990: 28). A key part of such regional (and national strategies) was direct funding for ethnic minority community organisations, often serving specific ethnic communities. This can be seen as an overt strategy of political control (Sivanandan 1982, 2005) through ‘community leaders’ in the face of

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more militant, youth-led anti-racist agitation that cut across ethnic and national community identity lines. One concrete example is Bradford Council’s active encouragement of and support for the establishment of the Bradford Council of Mosques in 1981, to head off the political momentum of the local AYM and Bradford 12—a local political strategy of privileging religious identity and concern that directly led to the 1989 burning of the controversial Satanic Verses book (Malik 2009).

Policy Contradictions and Contestations In considering these experiences of multiculturalist policy operation in the M62 corridor region, there has also to be an examination of the significant policy contradictions that have both shaped and constrained the impact and perceptions of these locally enacted multiculturalist policies. Alongside this have come very specific, and often very vociferous, policy contestations from a variety of actors. The reality of both of these forces within policy implementation in the M62 region is discussed in this section. These policy contradictions go beyond the types of varying local philosophies and frames, and approaches stemming from the permissive national policy approach and discussed earlier. Rather, they stem from the wider policy context—the other national and local policies and practices—that multiculturalist policies have had to fit within. In their work on ‘policy enactment’ in schools, Ball et al. (2013) analyse how the implementation of a specific policy measure has to be analysed and understood in the context of the many other, pre-existing policies that schools and teachers have to operate, and which often help to shape how the new measure is understood and operationalised. One such example was shown by the first national research study of how educationalists were understanding and implementing the counterterrorism ‘Prevent legal duty’ introduced in 2015. This study involved significant qualitative field work in schools and colleges in West Yorkshire and London, alongside a national survey (Busher et al. 2017, 2019) and has challenged a number of tropes around the impacts of this Prevent duty. Findings showed that educationalists have largely accepted the government’s policy frame of

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‘Prevent as safeguarding’, both because it matches their own understanding of youth vulnerability to involvement in different social harms, and also because it allowed them to fit Prevent within their pre-existing safeguarding mechanisms and understandings. Here, Prevent implementation within the educational sector had to adjust to established safeguarding mechanisms as much as the other way around. The first and most obvious contradiction to again highlight is the public policy ambition around multiculturalism and race equality has never been matched by adequate resources. Ben-Tovim et al. (1986) highlight how the stated ambition and hostile media and political scrutiny of it have always been disproportionate to the resources made available. This sobering truth was the case even in the 1960s and 1970s, when the local state had much more substantial resources available to it. As discussed earlier, the dominant post-1979 neoliberal national government policies of marketisation and shrinking the state have greatly constrained the local state’s ability to bring about multiculturalist change, and the post-2008 national policy approach of fiscal austerity has actually been disproportionately about shrinking local state funding, with local authorities along the M62 corridor and in other parts of industrial northern England facing by far the largest cuts in their national funding. A second and interrelated contradiction is that other, better-resourced, national policies have often contradicted and undermined multiculturalist policies. Here, we can identify not only the marketisation policies discussed earlier that have reduced local government’s historic role in providing housing and in being major employers. Local authorities have also lost the power to effectively coordinate local schooling as one coherent system, first through the ‘local management of schools’ strategy from the late 1980s onwards and then through the academisation and ‘free school’ initiatives of the twenty-first century that have reduced even further the local state’s ability to influence which schools pupils of different backgrounds attend. A particularly blatant example of policy contradiction was the 2006 introduction of the ‘Prevent’ counterterrorism initiative (Thomas 2012). Coming just five years after the reorientation of multiculturalist policy towards the cross-community contact and shared values priorities of community cohesion (Cantle 2001), Prevent flatly contradicted this by instructing local authorities to only work with young

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Muslims (Thomas 2009, 2010). This had the predictable effect of both accentuating feelings of stigmatisation within British Muslim communities and in further fuelling White resentment that state funding was again only going to minority communities. Some local authorities in the M62 corridor region recognised this contradiction and tried to oppose it. Bradford initially refused to participate but eventually succumbed to overt national government pressure (Husband and Alam 2011) whilst Rochdale attempted to subvert it by working with young people of all ethnic backgrounds through an action research project focussed on youth experiences of identity and racial tensions (Thomas and Sanderson 2009, 2011, 2013; Sanderson and Thomas 2014) before they too were ordered to toe the national policy line (since rescinded but accompanied by large reductions in funding available to local authorities for community-based preventative activities, Thomas 2014). A third contradiction is that policy measures in the initial phases of British multiculturalism were arguably more about the perceived needs of the White majority then about the new ethnic minority communities. Ben-Tovim et al. (1986), in discussing measures such as the Section 11 support for the language needs and general ‘integration’ of new migrant pupils in schools highlight that: [t]his intention to integrate immigrants should not be regarded as recognition of the problems of racism and racial inequalities. On the contrary, both central and local government were more concerned with the disadvantages inflicted on the host community then with those experienced by the immigrant groups. (ibid: 132)

This concern can be seen as having driven the decision to ‘bus’ ethnic minority school pupils in Bradford, Huddersfield and other areas of the M62 region. Here, minority communities being urged to ‘integrate’ actually had their children identified and ‘bussed’ precisely on the grounds of their ethnic difference alone in order to limit the perceived detriment to White ‘indigenous’ pupils (Esteves 2018). It can certainly be argued that the timid and limited nature of much of the multicultural policy measures in the region was a product of concern about a ‘backlash’ from the White majority communities and their

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representatives. As discussed more fully in Chap. 6, it is often assumed that such White opposition was based on inherent hostility to race equality per se, an operationalisation of ‘White supremacy’ (Gillborn 2010), particularly in working class White areas most threatened by competition for social goods, and some of it was and still is (Pilkington 2016). However, local political support for multiculturalist policy measures was far from universal, even within the Labour Party that had steered anti-­ discriminatory measures nationally and which governed many of the local authorities in the M62 corridor region. Ben-Tovim et  al. (1986) identify Labour local councillors in the 1960s and 1970s from both the left and right wings of the party as being suspicious of ‘special demands’ from ethnic minority communities through multiculturalist policies, which were seen as ‘dividing’ the working class (as discussions in Chap. 6 suggest, such fears were not entirely without foundation). For instance, the hard-left (in fact, Militant Tendency-dominated: Crick 1986) ruling Labour group on Liverpool City Council blocked a number of race equality measures proposed by officers: ‘the leaderships’ opposition to special provision thus took priority over their commitment to (community) consultation’ (Ben-Tovim et al. 1986: 101). This often left campaigning for meaningful race equality measures to community and trade union activists (the Liverpool NUT branch produced 8 pamphlets on race equality and education between 1977 and 1985) or small groups of councillors, together sometimes labelled ‘extreme’ by local authority leaderships (Ben-­Tovim et al. 1986). The significant opposition to local race equality measures from a variety of perspectives meant that policy change was hard-won and partially explains the ‘clumsy’ and inflexible implementation discussed above (Macdonald 1989). Whilst the phenomenon of ‘White backlash’ has been seen as a modern development in response to the more substantial measures of post-1981 ‘political multiculturalism’ (Hewitt 2005), Law (1996) rightly identifies that there has been a form of ‘backlash’ against every substantial local multiculturalist policy measure in Britain. Indeed, Seabrook’s investigation of Blackburn in the late 1960s identified: ‘the mistaken though tenacious belief that the Race Relations Act has created a privileged class’ (1971: 40). This focus on how ‘named’ anti-discriminatory legislation and measures are understood by the White majority is explored further below,

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but the perception of local policy favouritism for minority communities under the guise of multiculturalism has been an enduring trope, as Chap. 6 discusses. Arguably, this White resentment and ‘backlash’ in parts of the M62 region stems partially from the wider problematic relationship between White communities and British multiculturalist policy intent and practice: The failure to involve Whites generally has eventually led to strong resentment, as multiculturalism has been viewed as privilege for black and Asian people at the expense of Whites, rather than as an attempt to combat ethnic socio-­ economic disadvantage as well as cultural exclusion from the nation’s self-­ identity. (Rattansi 2011: 30)

This multiculturalist policy failure to engage with or involve White communities can be understood as stemming from the philosophy or framing of multiculturalist policy nationally and locally. Within the local government implementation of ‘political multiculturalism’ was a frame of an undifferentiated ‘White people’ as having power, and hence being in apposition of privilege to ethnic minority people. Such positions were central to the ‘Race Awareness Training’ (RAT) utilised by many local authorities in the 1980s (Gurnah 1984) and reflected a theoretical analysis of historical racism far removed from the lived experiences of many working class White people in the rapidly deindustrialising M62 corridor region. Cantle (2005) identifies that an initial national multiculturalist policy concern with promoting good community relations (although how significantly in the M62 region is questionable, given the discussions earlier) was sidelined from the mid-1970s onwards, first by the increasing focus on stronger anti-discriminatory legislation through the 1976 RRA, and then by the ‘political multiculturalism’ concern with supporting individual ethnic minority communities to achieve more equal outcomes in terms of employment and access to social goods. Given the rampant racial discrimination and inequalities of the time, this is understandable but it meant that from the 1970s until 2001, national and local policy actors largely saw multiculturalist policy as being ‘about’ ethnic minority communities and White communities as, largely, silent actors who simply needed to accept this stated policy prioritisation of marginalised communities.

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One result of this was that when, post-2001, the new policy approach of community cohesion wanted to prioritise inter-community relations and ‘contact’, there was no policy experience, script or infrastructure for engaging White communities in such work. The result has been an asymmetrical focus on ethnic minority communities in  local community cohesion practice that is arguably less about policy seeing minority communities as ‘the problem’ and more about multiculturalism’s legacy being policy experience and infrastructure of engaging minority communities existing but not in White communities (Thomas 2011). Beider identifies that ‘few models of intervention with White working class communities in relation to community cohesion have been developed’ (2011: 11), and sees this as partly being about multiculturalism’s focus on ethnic identity and experience, disconnected from any policy focus on economic disadvantage. This, once again, relates to the impacts of distinct, ‘named’ multiculturalist policies. The Labour government’s short-lived ‘Connecting Communities’ programme of 2007–2010, which was aimed at ‘White working class’ communities amidst growing concern of racialised political resentment (Thomas 2012), was arguably belated acknowledgement of this. The fact that post-2001 cohesion work had not effectively developed in many White-majority locales in many areas was acknowledged nationally by the Commission On Integration and Cohesion (2007). In their study of multiculturalist policy practice in Sheffield, Lewis and Craig (2013) identify that cohesion practice was not engaging with White areas, no matter how insular such areas were. They partly explain this as stemming from a practitioner perception of what cohesion was ‘really’ about (Worley 2005): ‘White community spaces were seen as ignored despite the only tension they identified being the sense of ‘White’ areas as risky places to live or work in due to the risk of racism’ (ibid: 9). Council officers in West Yorkshire local authorities, such as Kirklees, acknowledge that multiculturalist policy in the past, and even early community cohesion work, was focussed in one particular direction: We definitely did all the work in those (BME) communities and didn’t do the work in White communities, I feel… I think it was probably policy decision at the time to say we may need to do more work with the BME community in order to move them on. (Kirklees LAO 3)

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Kirklees have subsequently foregrounded local policy efforts to engage White communities in cohesion work, but have faced significant challenges. One is the limited civil society capacity, both in terms of organisations and credible community leadership figures, in many working class, White-majority neighbourhoods; whereas multiculturalism has historically supported the development of civil society groups and facilities in ethnic minority areas, deindustrialisation has unmade the community institutions of many White areas without any policy compensation and with the sports clubs that remain not primarily focussed on cross-­ community contact (Thomas et al. 2015, 2018). As a result, community cohesion efforts in Kirklees have increasingly focussed on building civil society capacity within existing communities, especially White and new migrant communities, rather than overtly on cross-community contact, partly because such capacity must exist for the two-stage approach to ‘contact theory’-based activity to be successful and because such cross-­ community contact and partnership is more likely to flow naturally from vibrant civil society activity within and across communities without people feeling ‘forced’ to mix (Thomas et al. 2018). A fourth contradiction stems from the very existence of ‘multiculturalist’ policies. Britain having such ‘named’ state policies of multiculturalism suggest that these policies are the most significant determinant in the existence, or otherwise, of equality, tolerance and mutual respect within Britain’s multicultural society. In reality, of course, the relationship between Stuart Hall’s two conceptions of ‘multiculturalism’ is fuzzy and partial, at best. Whilst Britain’s framework of race equality legislation (Bleich 2003) and wider national-permitted, local policy efforts to aid migrant and settled minority integration have contributed substantially in both reducing ethnic penalties in education, employment and service use and increasing societal tolerance (Solomos 2003), arguably much bigger impacts in both reducing, but still maintaining, (or even increasing) ethnic penalties and community tensions have come from broader economic changes and state policies that have encouraged or even created them. This is particularly true in the M62 corridor region, where multiculturalist policy efforts over 50 years, whether tokenistic or radical in nature, pale against the profound deindustrialisation and the neoliberal

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national state policies that have both encouraged the former and hampered the emergence of viable post-industrial economies in many parts of the region. Alongside this comes the double-edged nature of such named and dedicated policies. Whilst not wholly causing the ‘White backlash’, discussed both above and more fully in Chap. 6, the existence of multiculturalist policies and their overt concern with the (real and continuing) inequalities faced by many ethnic minority communities during an era of deindustrialisation and rapidly growing income inequality economic insecurity accompanied by an overt political retreat from the language of and concern with social class, has led significant sections of White communities, especially economically marginalised communities, to feel that such policies signify a policy favouritism towards ethnic minorities. For others of varied ethnic backgrounds, continued ethnic inequalities and significant ethnic segregation and tensions are ‘proof ’ that such multiculturalist policies have ‘failed’ (Cameron 2011), even though they were never designed or resourced to ensure ‘success’. This broad downside of having overt, named multiculturalist policies is coupled with a more granular and generic policy problem—that of responsibility. The implementation of multiculturalist policies often involved staff in named, dedicated roles ‘leading’ the work for organisations, so suggesting that expertise and responsibility lies with them. Whilst the expansion of funding and ambition of post-1981 ‘political multiculturalism’ saw local authorities significantly increased their number of ethnic minority staff, such staff were often ‘ghettoised’ in race-­ specific jobs, for instance youth work with Black young people (Williams 1988) or social work with ethnic minority families (Dominelli 1988). For the majority of White staff, this seemingly absolved them of responsibility to take action against racism and racial inequalities. For example, research with (mainly) White youth workers in West Yorkshire (CRE 1999; Thomas 2002) highlighted that these workers were avoiding engaging in challenge or pedagogical discussions with young people around racist language and behaviour, and attitudes to difference; instead, they saw ethnic minority colleagues as the ‘experts’ on such work and expected them to lead. Similarly, in local authorities generally, Equalities Units and their ‘race advisers’ were often seen as the fount of all knowledge and

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responsibility for any actions around race and the needs of minority communities. In response to this problematic reality of multiculturalist state policies, ‘mainstreaming’ can offer a different policy and practice approach: Mainstreaming refers to an amalgam of efforts to abandon target-group specific policy measures and to coordinate integration measures as an integral part of generic policies in domains like education, housing and employment. (Collet et al. 2014: 1)

Arguably, there have been previous national and local policy swings towards ‘mainstreaming’ but it now seems to be an increasing national and local policy trend across Western Europe (Scholten and van Breugel 2018). This trend both recognises the force of majoritarian ‘backlashes’ connected with overt, named multiculturalist policies, but also the increasingly intersectional nature of minority inequalities and the developing reality of superdiversity, even in the M62 corridor towns previously seen as ‘duo-cultural’ (Cantle 2001), which makes ‘group-based’ policies practically and politically difficult. This necessitates a more ‘horizontal’ policy and practice approach to achieving multiculturalist policy goals, with such goals being the responsibility of all parts of local authorities and organisations. This has arguably been the trend in British national multiculturalist policy in the twenty-first century, with an evidence-driven focus on social mobility, rather than the needs or pre-named ‘groups’ and it has been one increasingly adopted by local authorities in the M62 corridor region. For instance, it has been the direction that the ‘cohesion’ agenda has evolved in in the West Yorkshire authority of Kirklees: I think the previous direction policy we had whilst there was some good projects in their own right delivered under a cohesion banner in overall strategy if you like I think they probably did more harm to the causes, perception of unfairness than they did the other. (Kirklees LAO 3)

This approach has included both the generic civil society capacity-­ building outlined above and an action research approach to teams of front-line staff having the skills and confidence to engage both in tackling

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community prejudices and fears and in promoting cross-community contact within their generic daily roles in communities (Thomas and Sanderson 2013). In many ways, this mirrors the way in which youth work organisations in Oldham were ‘mainstreaming’ cohesion within their ongoing youth work activities (Thomas 2007, 2011).

Conclusion National state multiculturalist policy in Britain has gone through cycles and significant ‘mood changes’ but essentially, Britain’s policy story and experience is a local one. The limited and permissive nature of national policy has foregrounded the role of local government, ‘responsibilising’ them for integration of new migrant communities and for ensuring ‘good race relations’ and ethnic equality. The experiences critically considered here of policy operation in areas of the M62 corridor region reflect the inevitable results of this approach—significant variations that have reflected both different ‘philosophies’ and local realities and events. Beyond dispute is the divergence between the willingness of the local state to fulfil the stated ambitions of multiculturalist policy and its ability to do so. Between the early 1960s and the mid-1980s, local authorities had significant means but lacked the commitment to achieve these policy goals, leading to change largely being driven by pressure from below, from communities and front-line professionals. As the shock of the 1981 urban uprisings (Sivanandan 1982) filtered through, local authorities in the region did commit to more ambitious policy and practice measures but progressively found their powers and resources curtailed by an unsympathetic national government profoundly indifferent to issue of racial equality. A broader issue arises, though from this analysis. It is the undue national and local expectations and scrutiny that have always attached themselves to these ‘named’ local multiculturalist policies, the assumption that such policies could or should be the real determinant of whether societal ethnic integration and equality of experience should develop. This ‘policy trap’ has arguably disconnected local and national multiculturalist debate from the real creator of social mobility and interaction, the economy and the opportunities it does or does not offer

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through state intervention, or the lack of it. Not only have these named multiculturalist policies created unrealistic expectations of them for greater social justice but they have created the possibility for a claiming of ‘White unfairness’, given the invisibility of White majority communities within the named policies and their operations.

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Thomas, P., Busher, J., Macklin, G., Rogerson, M., & Christmann, K. (2018). Hopes and Fears – Community Cohesion and the ‘White Working Class’ in One of the ‘Failed Spaces’ of Multiculturalism. Sociology, 52(2), 262–281. Wade, D. (1971). Yorkshire Survey: A Report on Community Relations in Yorkshire. Leeds: Yorkshire Committee for Community Relations. Weaver, M. (2010, October 17). Angela Merkel: German Multiculturalism has ‘Utterly Failed’. The Guardian. Williams, L. (1988). Partial Surrender: Race and Resistance in the Youth Service. London: Falmer. Worley, C. (2005). ‘It’s Not About Race, It’s About the Community’: New Labour and Community Cohesion. Critical Social Policy, 25(4), 483–496. Young, K. (1990). Approaches to Policy Development in the Field of Equal Opportunities. In W.  Ball & J.  Solomos (Eds.), Race and Local Politics (pp. 22–42). London: Macmillan.

5 Black, Asian and the Muslim Cool

Introduction The sociology of identity has challenged the conventional thinking of identity as implying sameness, stability and continuum with a central coherent essence, which persists throughout one’s life (Hall 1992). To date, a considerable amount of research has focused on generic Muslim identity formation, but this chapter intends to adopt new and emerging ways of looking at Muslim identities by foregrounding it within understandings of race, place and space, particularly in the M62 corridor region. Locating Muslim identities within this context provides a ‘useful way of transcending the tendency alluded to above of over determining the homogeneity of Muslim subjectivities’ (Gale and Hopkins 2009: 1). There have been a number of books that have attempted to locate the study of identities within the context of place and space, as it provides a helpful tool to explore and explain identity constructs. For example, Bunt (2009) has looked at the relationship between Muslims and the virtual space; Gale (2009) has explored the multicultural city of Birmingham through the politics of religious architecture; whilst McLoughlin (2009) and Werbner (2002) have examined British Pakistani © The Author(s) 2020 S. Miah et al., ‘Race,’ Space and Multiculturalism in Northern England, Palgrave Politics of Identity and Citizenship Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42032-1_5

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accounts of Hajj and transnational identity politics amongst British Pakistani’s in Manchester. This chapter will focus on the different ways Muslim identities are shaped by complex factors, including: the politics of race, and religion, migration, settlement and geographical space. Contrary to popular understanding, ‘Muslim’ identities within the M62 corridor, are not fixed and bounded; rather they are complex and shaped by a combination of local, national and global factors. In short, this chapter argues that Muslim identities are constantly in the process of becoming (Hall 1992). The first part of this chapter will aim to situate the debate around mono-cultural fixed religious Muslim identity within a sociocultural context of the way towns and cities within the M62 corridor are framed. The second part of the chapter will focus on the Asian Youth Movements (AYM) in the region and the case of the Bradford 12 to highlight the evolution of ‘Black’ political resistance to racism during the late 1970s and the early 1980s. The third part of this chapter draws upon the history of the Rushdie Affair to explore the rise of Muslim identity politics. The final section will explore the idea of what Meer (2010) refers to as ‘radical Muslim consciousness’ by looking at the rise of political forms of the ‘Muslim cool’. It intends to do this by looking at the Bradford-based musical group Fun-Da-Mental to argue how Muslim political resistance draws upon Islam and countercultural urban punk aesthetics to problematise the boundaries of ethnicity, religion and the politics of diaspora. The central theme of this chapter is a critical examination of the linear projection of Muslim identities which assumes that the period of 1960–1980s was marked by ethnic identity constructs based upon ‘Black’ and ‘Asian’ categories; whilst, following the Rushdie Affair, during the end of the 1980s, it gave rise to more visible and overt Muslim identities. Instead, this chapter aims to explore diverse themes, such as race, place and space and the complex interplay between religion, ethnicity and diaspora. It argues that ‘Muslim’ identity is not a reductive religious manifestation, but rather, a complex and dynamic construct, as seen in the rise of Muslim cool, which intersects ‘Black’, Asian and Muslim categories through musical genres such as hip-hop, rock and punk.

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 orthern Towns in the Frame: Segregation N and the Politics of the ‘Other’ The recent debates on integration demonstrates the longevity of the question of Muslim segregation. In fact, this particular framing of ‘race’ and space has a long history in political discourse, shaping Muslim geographical space in the UK (Cantle 2005; Thomas 2011; Miah 2015), and also in a range of other European countries such as France (Bowen 2007; Laborde 2008). A number of high-profile events, ranging from the 2001 race riots to 7/7 London bombings to the Manchester Arena bombing on the 22 May 2017, have all played crucial roles in shaping debates around the notion of the Muslim monolith. The logical formula which seems to bring together the framing of race and religion is to imply that Muslim communities are unwilling to change. Indeed, it is argued that their ‘backwardness’ is in part explained by history and the unwillingness for Muslims to go through the process of reformation and modernisation (Caldwell 2009). The framing of Dewsbury, which is situated in borough of Kirklees, West Yorkshire, for instance, through the lens of race and space is captured by the provocative book title ‘The Islamic Republic of Dewsbury’ by local journalist, editor and publisher Danny Lockwood. Lockwood (2011) associates the decline of towns such as Dewsbury with the decline and disintegration of its rich industrial past, directly linked with the influx of Muslim communities. He sees towns and cities such as Dewsbury transformed by the cultural impacts and presence of Islam—he complains how no aspects of life remain untouched by Islam, including schools and the health service. The symbolic spaces of working class culture, have all gone, with ‘more mosques than pubs, let alone churches’. More crucially, some of the churches and working men’s clubs have been converted into mosques (Lockwood 2011: 26). He further argues how the ‘fixed’ culture of Islam has also had negative impact on the social and cultural life of the borough. For instance, Lockwood identifies criminalised geographies of racial spaces whereby the ‘other’ is rooted in the criminal landscape which ‘revolves around the drug industry rooted by supply in their communities, but touching, too often fatally, every street of ours’ (ibid). The people who are responsible for this is inevitably the ‘Asian

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youths’—he sees this as a ‘troubling blight on young Asian people’s parents and mullahs and imams every bit as much as it is on the parents of our addicts and orphans’ (ibid.). Whilst Lockwood (2011) blames foreign culture for the decline of post-industrial towns, such as Dewsbury, he is silent on the structural changes that have transformed the lives of the English working class, and which are more fully explored in both Chaps. 1 and 5. These changes that have happened to the White working class in the past 30 years have included a deindustrialisation in major towns and cites, such as the textile towns in West Yorkshire or steel and mining industries in West and South Yorkshire, which has seen entire communities transformed, as we discuss in Chap. 2. Deindustrialisation also led to a major reduction in blue-­ collar jobs and the steady growth of the (often poorly paid) information and service sector work. However, Lockwood’s form of discourse frames the decline of northern industrialised towns and cities not on structural economic policies but rather on influx of immigrants from the Commonwealth countries during the 1960s and more recently with the arrival of Eastern Europeans. It is ‘culture’ that has led to the decline of the economies. This is clearly highlighted below: Meanwhile in everyday workaday Dewsbury, the ‘nice’ shops have gone. When Marks and Spencer called it a day you could have almost have hung up the ‘Closed for Business’ sign. Now it’s a ‘Poundland’ of discount and charity shops, of shabby takeaways and boarded up frontages, of those drunken east European immigrants slumped against town centre walls. (Lockwood 2011: 27)

This type of political discourse can be traced back prior to 2001 with a number of political discourses around ‘White backlash’ in general and the rights of the ‘White working class’ in particular (Hewitt 2005), as we discuss in Chap. 6. ‘White backlash’, whilst having deep historical roots within UK, Australia and the USA, has taken a populist form post-Brexit (Miah 2018). In the USA, ‘White Backlash’ can be traced back to the rolling back of equality legislations under the Reagan administration. Within the context of the UK, the Lawrence murder combined with a wider discussion of institutional racism led some White communities to

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display a deep animosity towards multiculturalism and equality legislations. The above responses seem to echo similar social and political responses to race equality in Britain, as we discuss more fully in Chap. 6. The above trope seems to draw upon the idea of Muslim spatial segregation, one that focuses on the view that Muslims self-consciously live in separate neighbourhoods by deliberately excluding themselves from the rest of the society. Whilst spatial segregation is predicated upon the notion that Muslims want to construct physical barriers between Muslims and the rest of the population, cultural segregation refers to mental barriers shaped by certain cultural practices (Miah 2015), as we discuss in Chap. 2. National debates have fuelled a critique of cultural self-­segregation associated with the wearing of the Niqab in public spaces (Straw 2006), growing concerns over sharia courts in Britain (Bano 2012; Corbin 2013) and the practice of biraderi politics influencing democratic practices (Akhtar 2003). Perhaps the most central question of cultural segregation has been over the practice of consanguineous marriages in Bradford amongst the Pakistani community in Bradford. Some of the early studies on consanguineous marriages in Bradford (Darr and Modell 1988) and Birmingham (Bundey et al. 1989) date back to the late 1980s. Compared to earlier studies, the ‘Born in Bradford Project’ (BiB) was a longitudinal study of over 11,000 babies born in Bradford between 2007 and 2011. The BiB project found that Bradford had nearly the double the national average of babies born with birth defects, and the study concluded that this was due to first-cousin marriages within the Pakistani community. The study (cited below by Sheridan et al. 2013) found about 3 per cent of the BiB babies had birth defects, such as Down syndrome, compared with 1.7 per cent of babies born in England and Wales. Of 11396 babies for whom questionnaire data were available, 386 (3%) had a congenital anomaly. Rates for congenital anomaly were 305·74 per 10 000 live births, compared with a national rate of 165·90 per 10 000. The risk was greater for mothers of Pakistani origin than for those of white British origin. Overall, 2013 (18%) babies were the offspring of first-cousin unions. These babies were mainly of Pakistani origin—1922 (37%) of 5127 babies of Pakistani origin had parents in first-cousin unions.

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Consanguinity was associated with a doubling of risk for congenital anomaly; we noted no association with increasing deprivation. 31% of all anomalies in children of Pakistani origin could be attributed to consanguinity. (Sheridan et al. 2013: 1350)

Despite the statistical observation highlighted above by the BiB project, which may be used as structural concerns regarding segregation, there is evidence that the prevalence of consanguinity within Pakistani communities within the European diaspora is declining (Grjibovski et al. 2009).

 olitics of Race and the Asian P Youth Movement Contrary to the monolithic framing of Muslim roles and experiences within northern towns and cities discussed earlier, the following sections will explore the highly politicised and complex nature of ways Muslim identities are shaped and formed. The 1970s and 1980s were marked by a series of racist attacks and a political culture that was antithetical to racial difference and diversity. The Rivers of Blood speech by Enoch Powell MP during the late 1960s defined and shaped a number of preconceived notions of race and difference, whilst the 1970s saw an upsurge in far-right political mobilisation. It was this sociopolitical context that gave birth to the Asian Youth Movements in the M62 corridor region. Whilst the AYMs drew upon Black politics and certain versions of secularism, their politics did recognise religion in building a ‘unifying force between different religious communities’ (Ramamurthy 2006: 38). In fact, the legacy of the AYMs ‘lies in their example of organizing politically at the grass roots across the political divide’ (ibid.). Bradford has a long history of radical politics. In fact, the history can be traced back to the early 1980s when identity formation was rooted in the anti-racist struggles of ‘Black’ identity politics. ‘Black’ identity during the early 1980s was not based upon skin colour but rather political experiences of discrimination, marginalisation and exploitation. ‘Black’ was

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considered to be a political colour, which helped motivate and also bring together different groups struggling against racism. A sociological analysis of late 1970s and the early 1980s helps us to understand how South Asian communities, in particular Muslims and the Sikh communities, transformed into a ‘religious’ communities. The history of the AYM, together with the anti-racist movements from this period, provides a different reading of the South Asian communities. This particular moment in history focused less on religious beliefs, but rather on the political values, which united people based on a shared personal history. In short, Blackness was part of an anti-imperialist culture, for the: ‘AYMs and others who adopted an anti-imperialist black identity, the Iranians, the Chileans and any other group struggling against colonial oppression could be included in their blackness’ (Ramamurthy 2013: 69). This is clearly articulated by Bradford’s AYMs involvement with the support of Irish Republican politics, including the politics of Bobby Sands. In fact: [t]he solidarity links between the two groups continued following the acquittal of the Bradford 12 in 1982, when members of the of the Bradford 12 were invited to join the Easter Commemoration in Belfast. Two years later, Birmingham AYM organised a delegation of 34 Asian youth from Birmingham, Sheffield, Manchester and London to the Northern Ireland for the Easter commemoration in Belfast. (Ramamurthy 2013: 73)

The AYM in Bradford evolved out of organisations active in political activism during the early 1970s, which drew on radical and non-­ communal political traditions within South Asian communities. These organisations had strong links with socialist, trade union organisations and also the Communist Party of India, including the Bradford-based Indian Workers Association (IWA). The IWA was inspired by many organisations, including the Ghadar Party, a multi-ethnic revolutionary party (Gill 2013; Kalra 2017). The Ghadar Party was established in the USA in 1913 and formally dissolved in 1948; their flag consisted of Red (for Hindus), Saffron (Sikhs) and Green (for Muslims) (Kalra 2017). The IWA established in Coventry in 1938 had a number of branches throughout the M62 region, including Bradford, Burnely, Huddersfield, Leeds, Manchester and Sheffield (Gill 2013). The IWA had strong links

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with the Communist Party and was active in promoting civil liberties, campaigning against racism and were at the forefront of the trade union movement (Josephides 1991). During the late 1960s the IWA began to split, mainly due to ideological differences, with one group supporting various anti-racist groups, such as Coordination Committee Against Racial Discrimination (CARD) (established circa 1960) and the Black Peoples Alliance formed in 1968; whilst others joined the Labour Party and put their efforts into state-­ supported groups such as the Commission for Race Equality (Ibid.). For example, Bradford IWA had two factions reflecting the internal debates within Indian Communist Party between Marxist–CPI and Marxist Leninist CPI (Ramamurthy 2013: 35). This can be contrasted with IWA Southall which became more pro-establishment through the support of the Labour Party (De Wit 1969). Despite the overt Marxist approach of the IWA, they were actively involved in championing a number of overtly religious themed equality issues effecting the Sikh communities in Britain. For example, the IWA raised around 60,000 pounds for the case of Tarsem Singh Sandhu, the first major case regarding the right for Sikh men to wear the turban in workplace (Gill 2013: 572). Furthermore, the IWA championed the infamous Mandla v. Dowell Lee case involving the Birmingham schoolboy Gurdev Singh Mandla, who was banned from wearing the turban to Park Grove School by Dowell-Lee, the head teacher of the school. Following this incident, the father of Mandla submitted a formal complaint to the newly formed Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), following the Race Relations Act (1976) arguing that Mandla had been indirectly discriminated on racial grounds. The case attracted demonstrations in the streets of London and Birmingham. The judgement was held in favour of Mandla after the House of Lords, in March 1983, overturned the Court of Appeal to support the position of Dowell Lee (ibid.). This case was to have profound implication, as it granted Sikhs the same legal rights as the Jewish community to be considered as a separate ethnic group under the Race Relations Act 1976 because they fulfilled the following two principles: (1) A long shared history, of which the group is conscious as distinguishing it from other groups, and the memory of which it keeps alive

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(2) A cultural tradition of its own, including family and social customs and manners, often but not necessarily associated with religious observations (Cited in Singh and Tatla 2006: 133) The IWA (Bradford) encouraged the young people of Bradford to establish the Indian Progressive Youth Association (IPYA), which was to run for one year until 29 May, 1977. The AYM (Bradford) emerged out IPYA, because many young people felt that the ‘Indian’ label did not accurately represent the identity of young people in Bradford, instead they felt that the inclusive term of ‘Asian’ provided grounds for unity. This is further explained by the following; it shows the changing features of ethnic descriptive from ‘Indian’ to ‘Asian/Black’ and later on we will see how this further changed and took on religious manifestations to Muslim, Sikh and Hindu. The need for a youth organization which was Left and ‘Black’ led however, could not be fulfilled by the IWA in Bradford because the community was mainly Pakistani and Kashmir. As Jani Rashid commented: we were going around knocking on people’s doors and asking them to join the Indian Progressive Youth Association…the feedback we were getting was… “well, you know, we’re not Indian we’re Pakistanis’… So we very quickly within a year… changed it from Indian Progressive Youth Association to Asian Youth Movement.” There was a consciousness within the youth of the need for an independent organization…The Asian identity in the development of Bradford therefore rather than being a term of exclusivity was a term selected for inclusivity. (Ramamurthy 2013: 35–36)

The cultural context of the AYM was based upon the experiences of children of the post-war migration—these children reached maturity during the late 1970s and the early 1980s. Unlike their parents’ generation, this cohort of South Asian children were less likely to tolerate racism and harassment. AYM groups responded to the concerns of the South Asian families by tackling issues of racism and harassment with a sociopolitical backdrop of rising poverty and the decline of the manufacturing industry. The AYM political ideals were not grounded on religious ideals, rather they were motivated by decolonising struggles within the Third World,

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but also the Black power and civil rights movements in America. Whist it drew upon broader political ideals rooted in Third Worldism, it was also a product of place and space, as it differed from other political movements, such as the Indian Workers Association (IWA), which was rooted in the politics of the India. Contrastingly, AYM represented a type of politics that recognised Britain and wanted to be treated equally with its fellow citizens. AYM drew upon a range of political and ideological influences—in particular the Black power movements. The ideological appeal of the political Blackness is clearly articulated further: Black power with its focus on self-help, pride and an indigenous culture, offered a metaphoric ‘home’ to the youth and AYM’s identification, with black power was articulated in the magazines they produced, with titles such as Kala Thara (Black Star), Kala Mazdoor (Black Worker) and Kala Shoor (Black Consciousness). (Ramamurthy 2013: 66)

The ideas of the ‘secular’ for the AYMs ‘implied a unity-in-diversity between those of different religious backgrounds without, suppressing their particular religious’ identities (ibid.). More crucially, the idea of ‘Black’ was an inclusive political category, which allowed them to draw inspiration from a range of political groups including the Black Panther Party and various Third World Liberation movements. The AYM (Bradford) embarked upon an overt Black activist politics; in doing so it helped create a space for the second-generation Asian communities rooted in Britain and not the Indian subcontinent. The relationship of ‘Blackness’ as an idea rooted in experience, to the AYM, is further summarised below: Although those involved in youth movements were Asian, they simultaneously saw themselves as blacks in a white society. They felt united though those involved in youth movements were Asian, they simultaneously saw themselves as blacks in a white society. They felt united with Africans and African-Caribbean’s through the experience of racism and wished to express this outwardly. They did not see black simply as a skin colour but as a political position; this was a standpoint reflected nationally across all the Asian Youth Movements. The term ‘black’ enabled a collective identity and solidarity to develop in the struggle against both the racism of the

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street and the institutional racism of immigration laws. For AYM members, a black political identity did not exclude other identities, such as being Punjabi, Bengali, etc. (Ramamurthy 2006: 45)

Bradford 12: ‘Self-Defence Is No Offence’ Whilst the AYM had different chapters in various towns and cities in the UK, Bradford played a critical role due to the campaign surrounding the Bradford 12 and the publication of the first AYM magazine Kala Tara (Black Star), published from Bradford in 1979 (Ramamurthy 2006). Kala Tara played an instrumental role not only in documenting violence and racism, it also played a crucial role in campaigning against state racism, especially during the high-profile ‘Bradford 12’ case. The Bradford 12 became a seminal legal case in Britain, during the 1980’s. It followed the arrest of 12 members of the United Black Youth League (UBYL). The UBYL had recently formed following internal differences within the AYM Bradford over the issue of state funding (Ramamurthy 2006). The Bradford 12 were arrested by the police during the riots of 1981 which affected Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool—the twelve members were from diverse ethnic backgrounds, including Muslims, Sikhs, Christian and Hindu. The case revolved around the discovery of homemade petrol bombs on some waste ground, and the prosecution case focused on the conspiracy to cause explosion and endanger lives (Ramamurthy 2006). The Bradford 12 case occurred within a sociopolitical backdrop of the rise and also the visible presence of the far-right in a number of M62 towns through popular street demonstrations (Copsey 2000). The South-­ Asian communities in Bradford were faced with resisting the street-level racism of the far-right but also institutional forms of racism within the police—this was clearly evident from high profile examples of police harassment of Black communities throughout the UK (Bunce and Field 2015). On 11 July 1981, the Black Youth League, responding to social unrest, made petrol bombs in order ‘to be prepared should the need arise, to protect themselves and their community against fascists’ (cited in Ramamurthy 2013: 120). Three weeks later twelve men were charged in Bradford with creating homemade explosives with intent to endanger life

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and property. The preparations of the Molotov cocktails happened during social unrest between the far-right, the police and the Black communities. The social context is further captured in the following firsthand interviews: We would not let fascists walk in and actually destroy a part of Bradford were Black communities lived. So we took a decision that we would actually find ways of defending the community ourselves. And that decision led to the fact that Molotov Cocktails were manufactured and they were hidden and as and when the need arose we would be prepared to use those. (Ibid.)

And Nothing did happen, in a sense that the fascists didn’t attack Bradford…And then the decision was taken that since no attack has taken place we would actually destroy the manufactured Molotov Cocktails and as far as I was aware that was to be done and that was the end of the matter really. (Ibid)

The social unrest in Bradford was not an isolated case: in fact a number of other local authorities on the M62 corridor, such as Manchester, Leeds also experience similar manifestations of resistance. The case of the Bradford 12 was predicated upon two key features; first, it challenged the state’s attempt to criminalise Black communities, and second, the right of the community to self-defence. The tense relationship between the Police and Black communities throughout the England provided the context towards understanding the Bradford 12. The Bradford 12 received both local and national support from a range of organisations and political pressure groups, including: AYM, Bradford Black, IWA, SWP, the Fourth Idea Bookshop, Gay Liberation Front, Lesbian groups and Irish groups—this culminated in the formation of the July 11 Action Committee (Ramamurthy 2013: 131). In support of the Bradford 12, a number of pickets were organised during the ten months before the trial; in fact, this case was no longer a local matter but rather a case which received international attention. On the day of the trial over 500 people protested outside the court on 26 April 1982—these

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protests continued throughout the eight-week duration of the trial (ibid.). One of the key obstacles facing the Bradford 12’s defence was the allWhite jury, with no Asian representation. Despite the principle of British judicial system of being judged by one’s peers, this request was denied by the judge. The idea of all-White jury on high profile Black political cases was not isolated matter but rather a trend that has been challenged by a number of high profile cases, including the Mangrove Nine (Bunce and Field 2015). On the day of the trial, all of the Bradford 12 pleaded not guilty; their argument in defence of their innocence was based upon the claim that self-defence is no offence. The prosecution case made the point, on the day of the trial: [T]here was no threat to the black community from the fascists’ more crucially, the Molotov Cocktails were for the purpose of riot. In support of the case, the July 11 Action Committee compiled a detailed dossier which catalogued the number of racists incidents in Bradford since the late 1970’s. Thus, further challenging the prosecution case and also questioning the claim made by West-Yorkshire police that race-relations in Bradford was good. (Ramamurthy 2013: 131)

In fact, the defence case further argued that ‘given that the police were not just negligent but also racist [this] left the community no choice but to defend itself ’ (Ramamurthy 2013: 141). The defence argument predicated upon the view that Black communities had right to defend themselves. The legal case ended after the jury acquitted the Bradford 12; the case became a legal landmark with its support to the idea, that not only individuals have the right to self defence, the same logic is extended to communities having the right to defence (ibid.)—this is further summarised by Gareth Peirce, one of the lawyers for the defence: By its verdict, the jury accepted the proposition that a society should afford protection to all its citizen and that if it did not, as the evidence they heard showed clearly that it does not, then those unprotected can arm themselves. (Cited in Ramamurthy 2013: 145)

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AYM principles were predicated upon the philosophy of Marxism, based on the idea of class unity and class struggle—thus it was not surprising to note that AYM (Bradford) worked in partnership with a range of organisations including the trade union movements. This is clearly articulated by the following objectives linked to the Bradford AYM: ‘that the only real force in British society capable of fighting racialism and the growth of organised racism and fascism is the unity of the workers’ movement—Black and White’ (cited in Ramamurthy 2013: 75). Bradford AYM was not the only group which maintained the principle of class-­ consciousness and solidarity. Sheffield AYM organised minibuses to take its members to the picket-line in support of the miner’s strike. The experiences of the young men that attended the miners strike, highlighted below, shows how class struggle was at the centre of their experiences. The observation shows how solidarity was received and experienced with mixed emotions—as highlighted below: We would go and wake up our members early in the mornings, throw stones at the windows so that mums and dads wouldn’t wake up, get them out, get them in the mini-bus, drive to Orgreave…I remember on one occasion this disgruntled young lad that I had woken up six in the morning. When we arrived one of the miners—not all of them—said ‘“what the hell are those Pakis doing here?”’ So this young lad turned around to him and said, ‘thank you very much for waking me up at six in the morning only to get racist abuse’. …some of the mining communities that we went and stayed with, the way that we were treated, the humility, the humbleness of the minors, the hatred we had for the police and the siege that we experienced in our communities, and the way we were being treated by the police, I saw that echoed by the mining families and the anger, the passion and the way they were seeking to organise…there were lots of parallels. (Cited in Ramamurthy 2013: 77–78)

The publication of the Scarman Report (1981) following the riots in 1981 led to series of funding channelled to disadvantaged minority communities which was then used by the Council to support individual community organisations. This allowed the Black political solidarity to be divided as state handouts led to each ethnic group competing against

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state funding (Sivanandan 1982). Whilst the politics of Black liberation continued visa-via the AYM, policies of multiculturalism at a local authority level which encouraged ethnic group rights over political group rights continued to develop throughout the 1980s and 1990s. For example, this happened through the deliberate state strategy, both locally and nationally, to fund individual ethnic groups. Thus, it was no coincidence that Bradford Council encouraged the formation of Council of Mosques in 1981, and also various community centres, such as the Oldham Bangladeshi Cultural Centre and Pakistani Community Centre in Oldham, during the same period. The critique of state multiculturalism by the AYM argued that the policies encouraged communities to look inwards, in doing so it undermined the possibility and the potential for (Black) group solidarity over discrimination and harassment. The Rushdie Affair of 1989, together with the Operation Blue Star, involving the attack on the Golden Temple in India contributed to ongoing ‘intra-­ community’ tensions between Sikhs and Hindus. More crucially these combined forces contributed to the significant and symbolic shift away from the ‘Black’ political struggle, based on class-consciousness, to an overt politicisation of religion and culture. Whilst the Bradford 12 case in general, and the activism of the AYM in particular, played a crucial role in defining political activism and resistance, the 1980s also witnessed the decline of the ‘Black politics’ of the AYM. This is due to a combination of complex factors. One factor was the global geopolitical rise of Islamism throughout the Middle East and also Hinduism and Sikhism as religious identities following Operation Blue Star and the raid on the Golden Temple in India (Singh and Tatla 2006). Operation Blue Star was named after the military operation conducted by the Indian Army in June 1984, ordered by the Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi to remove Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his followers from the Golden Temple complex in India considered to be a sacred site for Sikhs. The heavy use of military equipment was aimed at destroying Bhindranwale’s message of establishment of an independent Sikh state within India—or Khalistan. The incident had huge impact on the Sikhs living within the diaspora, in particular on the resurgence of Sikh identity for those living in Britain and other parts of the Sikh diaspora. Within the context of Bradford, a number of individuals who

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played a prominent role with the AYM found a new home with the newly founded Sikh identity. Sikhs were not the only group that developed religious identity as a result of external events. We will now explore how Muslim identity became an important and symbolic form following the Rushdie affair.

Rushdie Affair and the Politics of Religion The publication of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses in 1989 changed the political landscape of England in general and Bradford and other towns of the M62 region in particular. Asian communities in England were no longer seen through complex ethnic identities; rather, they began to self-­ define and to be defined by others through religious markers—they were to become Muslims. The Satanic Verses was seen by Muslims as an intentional and calculated attempt to slander the Prophet Muhammad (Akhtar 1989). For the liberal establishment, following in the footsteps of Voltaire, Lord Byron and others, Rushdie came to be symbolised as an artist using his freedom of expression to criticise religion. For example, The Blasphemers Banquet, aired by the BBC in July 1989 and created by Tony Harrison—the Leeds-­ born poet and playwright—located Salman Rushdie amongst invited luminaries, such as Omar Khayyam, Voltaire and Lord Byron. The play was situated at the Omar Khayyam Restaurant, Bradford and was aimed to demonstrate a sense of solidarity with Rushdie. The controversy surrounding the publication of the Satanic Verses started prior to the publication of the book by Viking Penguin. For example, Khuswant Singh, one of Viking Penguin’s own editorial advisors, advised against the publication of the book due to its controversial contents. Following the publication of Satanic Verses on September 1988 in the UK, there were protests and demonstrations throughout the world. Before the end of the month, the book was banned in India, and by the end of the year it was banned in Bangladesh, Sudan, South Africa and Sri Lanka. In the UK, a number of towns and cities within the M62 region saw some of the first UK demonstrations and protests. For example, on 2 December 1988, Bolton was one of the first towns in the UK to

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witness over 7000 Muslims take the street to demonstrate against the publication of the book. Whilst the Satanic Verses was first publically burnt in Bolton, following the demonstrations in December, it only gained national attention in January 1989, when in front of the lenses of the world media, a copy of the book was burnt by the protesters in Bradford. In fact, the book burning in Bradford was pre-announced and the spectacle was captured by invited local journalists. These localised demonstrations culminated in large-scale demonstration in May 1989 in London, with some estimates of 20,000 Muslims attending the demonstrations (Akhtar 1989). The Rushdie Affair created a split between the liberal establishment and the Muslim community. The liberals defended Rushdie on the grounds of ‘freedom of speech’; whilst, the Muslim community was portrayed as unsophisticated antiquated monolith. Nevertheless, the Rushdie Affair had profound impact on two fronts: first, the way in which Muslim communities viewed themselves, and more crucially, the manner in which they organised and mobilised political action. On the first front, during the pre-Rushdie period Muslim communities were rather fractured, either on grounds of nationality or religious sectarian differences. National differences were largely shaped by political events within the Indian subcontinent, such as disputes over Kashmir (Schofield 1999). The 1971 war of independence between East and West Pakistan was also central to intra-community dynamics. The war was fought over secular nationalism, predicated upon the Bangladeshi language movement, and finally led to the creation of Bangladesh as an independent state in 1972. The centrality of language within the context of the civil war is further elaborated below: The language issue became the focal point of this conflict because imposing Urdu was part of a mission to ‘Islamise’ East Pakistan. Many in West Pakistan knew very little about the Bengali language but thought of it as in need of ‘purification’ from Hindu influence. To them Bengali script (evolved from Sanskrit), the Sanskrit vocabulary of Bengali and the dominance of Hindus in Bengali literature were all irksome. The Bengali Muslims’ obvious attachment to their language and literature was puzzling and their rejection of Urdu rather suspect. (Van-Shendal 2009: 111)

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The War of Independence for Bangladesh had profound impacts in towns and cities throughout England, with various organisations, such as the Oldham Bangladeshi Association, became active to help with financial support to help victims and also to act as a pressure group by actively lobbying local MPs. The war also had a greater impact on the ways religion was viewed through national identities. For example, prior to the War of Independence there was one mosque in Oldham in the early 1970s shared between the Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities. After the war, the Bangladeshi community established their own Oldham Jamia Mosque, Middleton Road Oldham. On the second front, the Muslims during the pre-Rushdie period also viewed themselves as diverse communities based upon denominational and sectarian lines between Sufi, Deobandi and Salafi (Hamid 2017). The Rushdie Affair allowed Muslims to put-aside their local differences and also national sectarian schisms between Sunni’s and Shia’s, particularly given Ayatollah Khomeini’s (d.1989) intervention with infamous fatwa on Salman Rushdie. Also, state and non-state political actors also began to view Muslims through reductive religious lenses. All of these factors put a focus on a point of unity around the honour of the Prophet Muhammad. This is clearly elucidated by joining of alliances between Sunni and Shia groups: Many religionists throughout the Islamic world were coming in favor of Khomeini’s edict. On 25 February police shot dead about a dozen more Muslim demonstrators in Rushdie’s native Bombay. The Imam of India’s Jamia Mosque in Delhi openly supported Khomeini’s fatwa. Another leading Indian Muslim religionist, Maulana Hasan Ali Nadwi, no friend of Khomeini and indeed passionately opposed to Shia Islam, endorsed the Iranian cleric’s judgment as ‘just as appropriate’. (Akhtar 1989: 68)

The Rushdie Affair has been a topic of endless debate, with the media fixated on the book burning in Bradford during the height of the Rushdie Affair, and on the following fatwa issued by the late Ayatollah Khomeini for Muslims to kill the author Salman Rushdie. This was despite a number of Muslim scholars criticising the jurisprudential merits of the fatwa. First, a fatwa is not an edict; rather it is only a legal opinion of a given

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scholar. Second, the Islamic legal framework of Iran has no legal validity on British soils. Finally, according to Islamic jurisprudence, no person can be sentenced for a crime without a due process of the law (Ahsan and Kidwai 1992). More recently, there has been a number of reinterpretation of the Rushdie Affair through the prism of Muslim identity politics (Elshayyal 2018). Thus, the responses to the Rushdie Affair is seen to embody a pivotal moment in Muslim civil activism which continues to shape and influence greater political recognition through the language of equality. Muslim political activism is seen to use religion as a layer of identity, similar to gender and race, to make series of demands to the state to address issues or to campaign for greater equality. Thus, the period of the Rushdie Affair was also a critical period which led to the growth of a number of community-based Muslim organisations, which advocated for equal treatment within the law. One of the key Muslim-led campaigns, which underpinned the Rushdie Affair was based upon the same privilege and protection enjoyed by Christianity from blasphemy under the law (Modood 1992; Elshayyal 2018). The blasphemy law, whilst gave the protection to some and not for others, such as Muslims and other minority faiths, whose faiths were open to being mocked and abused. The historical context of the blasphemy debate is also crucial, especially given that the Church punished those that mocked Christianity, whilst encouraging and actively participated in mocking the religion of Jews (Laquer 2008) and Muslims (Said 1978). Indeed, the blasphemy law was successfully invoked in a private prosecution in 1977 against Gay News, for publishing a poem by James Kirkup over the portrayal of Jesus as object of homosexual love (Webster 1990: 20). In addition, The Many Faces of Jesus, a film by the Danish filmmaker Jens Jorgen Thorsen, was subject to internal censorship, following intense opposition, from the Queen, the Prime Minister, James Callaghan and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Donald Coggan. This film was intended to be made in Britain, but following the outcry, the Danish Film Academy withdrew its funding. Moreover, just ten years prior to the Rushdie Affair, the satire on the life of Jesus, The Life of Brian (1979) by the Monty Python team, only received the certificate for general release, after some cuts were made. But crucially, The Life of Brian was not shown by the BBC or the ITV, in fear of offending Christians in this country (ibid).

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The blasphemy law (changed only in 2008) gave the Church of England the right to prosecute any publications which contained ‘any contemptuous, reviling, scurrilous or ludicrous matter relating to God, Jesus Christ or the Bible, or the formulas of the Church of England as established by law established’ (Lord Scarman, cited in Elshayyal 2018: 79). Thus it is not surprising that Muslim claim making during the Rushdie Affair was based upon the demand of equal treatment within the law. This structure and the arrangement of the blasphemy law led some Muslims to view unequal treatment, within the law, which placed some groups at a legal disadvantage compared to the established Church. Furthermore: The existence of the blasphemy law protecting the Church of England made the language of that was employed at the time in defense of ‘freedom of speech artistic expression’ appear acutely unfair and discriminatory. Some Muslims wondered whether they could ever be accepted as equal citizens without giving up essential aspects of their beliefs and identities. Thus, many of the early representations that were made in the wake of the Rushdie Affair focused on calling for an extension of the blasphemy laws to cover all religions and denominations… ‘the crisis of over Satanic Verses refuses to go away…(because) our legal framework does not envisage a situation in which an offense of sacrilege could be committed against religions other than the Anglican faith’. (Ibid)

The use of identity politics to make claims for equality and multicultural inclusivity is based upon the idea that similar equality rights are extended to other faith groups in society, namely, Christians. This has led some academics to argue that religious identity should not be ‘privatised and tolerated’ and that religion in the same way as ‘gay identity and just like certain forms of racial identity, should…be part of the public space’ (Modood and Ahmad 2007: 70). Responding to the claim that religious identity is based on voluntary commitment cannot be compared with ‘ascribed and involuntary identities’ such as gender, race and sexuality, it is argued: I think this is sociologically naïve (and a political con). The position of Muslims today in countries like Britain is similar to other identities of ‘difference’ as Muslims catch up with and engage with contemporary concept

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of equality. No one chooses to be or not to be born into a Muslim family. Similarly, no one chooses to be born in a society where to look like a Muslim or to be a Muslim creates suspicion, hostility, or failure to get a job applied for. (Modood and Ahmad 2007: 71)

 eiled Politics: Pushing the Boundaries V of Equality More recent debates around equality have often revolved around gender politics and Muslim women’s dress. The focus on Muslim dress is not only a feature of UK political discourse, but rather a Europe wide debate, which has led to the banning of the veil in several countries. The widely circulated images in the media of three French soldiers forcing a Muslim women to take off articles of clothing, in a beach in Nice because it was not ‘respecting of good morals and secularism’ (Quinn 2016) led to a national debate of accepted boundaries of liberal secular tolerance. More recently, the case of the London schoolgirl Shamima Begum, who left to join ISIS in February 2015, marked a national debate, after her request to return back to the UK, in February 2019. Her case led to the intervention of the (Rochdale-raised) Home Secretary, Sajid Javed MP, to revoke her citizenship in February 2019, effectively making Begum stateless. The case of Shamima Begum represents the intersectional nature of Veiled Threats (Rashid 2016), which combines gender with politics and extremism. The push for equality by drawing upon external visual symbolism of Islam has been a key trope used by the media and political to represent the towns and cities within the M62 corridor. These representations have often focused on external, visible and more crucially religious motifs of Muslim women’s dress and how it undermines cohesive integration. This debate around cultural separation and Muslim dress can be traced back to the early 1980s and the Alivi sisters’ controversy over the Hijab in Altringham, Cheshire. The case involved Altringham Grammar School for Girls, suspension of two Muslim sisters for wearing the hijab on the grounds that failure to do so would undermine cultural integration (Alvi 2010). This event highlighted questions of conspicuous religious dress in

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public space some 25  years before the infamous Stasi Commission in France, where the publication of the Commission report ultimately led to the banning of the hijab in French schools (Bowen 2007; Laborde 2008). Unlike the French policy of laicite, the Altringham Grammar School affair, following a national campaign led by the father of the Alvi sisters and supported by diverse groups, including: the Commission for Racial Equality, Manchester Council of Mosques, the Jewish Gazette and the National Union of Teachers, led to an out-of-court settlement with the family of the Alvi sisters, and the subsequent changes to the school’s uniform policy to accommodate the sisters to wear the hijab in schools (Miah 2015). Whilst the above debate revolved around the rights of students to wear the hijab within the public space, a separate debate hit the national press following the case of Shabina Begum and Denbigh High School in Luton, which demonstrated the evolving conflicts regarding what constitutes a ‘Muslim dress’ code and how best should public bodies respond to the diverse needs of Muslims in Britain (Ward 2014; Idriss 2006; Singh and Cowden 2011). The Shabina Begum controversy began during the new school year in 2002. Like most secondary schools in Britain, Denbigh High School had in place a religiously sensitive school policy which allowed Muslim girls to wear the traditional shalwar kameez, which comprised a loose pair of trousers and tunic, together with the hijab (Miah 2015). Shabina Begum argued that this policy reflected the cultural needs of people from the Indian subcontinent, including that of Hindu and Sikh girls, and not a Muslim religious dress. Instead, Begum chose to wear the jilbab—a long, loose garment worn by Muslim women throughout the Middle East and which she considered met the criteria of Islamic dress. Begum refused to attend the school and, with the help of her family, pursued a judicial review seeking a declaration that the school had unlawfully denied her the right to manifest her religion and, as a result, had denied her right to education (Idriss 2006). The judicial review was rejected by the High Court in June 2004 on the grounds that Denbigh High School neither excluded nor had breached her religious freedoms (Ward 2014). In light of this judgement Begum took the matter to the Court of Appeal in March 2005, which offered a different response to that of the High Court, arguing instead

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that Denbigh High School ‘approached the issues…from an entirely wrong direction and did not attribute claimant’s beliefs the weight they deserved’ (cited in Idriss 2006). Begum’s case was finally determined by an appeal made by the school at the House of Lords, which ruled in favour of Denbigh High School; handing down a similar judgement to that of the High Court by arguing that Begum’s religious freedoms had not been violated and that Denbigh High School—with a significant number of Muslim students (79 per cent), including a Muslim head teacher—had a comprehensive uniform policy (Idriss 2006). During the same period a separate debate was gaining momentum in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, which pushed the boundaries of secularism and multiculturalism. Also, given the centrality of Markazi Masjid, Dewsbury, which is considered to be the headquarters of the Tablighi Jamaat movement in Europe, Dewsbury has often been associated as an ultraconservative town. The case involved Azmi, a teaching assistant at Headfield Church of England School junior school in Dewsbury, which was also at the centre of the Dewsbury school dispute of the late 1980s (discussed further in Chaps. 3 and 6). Azmi, of Indian ethnic background, was born in Cardiff, then moved to Birmingham before settling in Dewsbury. Azmi was employed by the Headfield Junior School, which then had over 92 per cent Muslim pupils from mainly Pakistani and Indian ethnic backgrounds (Azmi vs. Kirkleess Borough Council 2007: 3). On 18 July 2005, she attended an interview for a Bilingual Support Worker role within the school, which included both pastoral and teaching duties–this meant working with Year 6 pupils, aged 11, who speak English as their second language, and assisting them with lessons in maths and English. During the interview, Azmi did not wear the full veil and neither did she give any indications during the interview that she intended to wear the full veil on religious grounds. In fact, she had attended a training day prior to the start of the term in September without wearing the full veil (only the hijab). It was only during the first week of the term in September 2005 that Azmi had telephoned the school asking if she could wear the full veil whilst teaching and when being accompanied by male members of staff. The school after taking advice concluded that it would not be possible to isolate Azmi from other male staff, since all the classes had

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some male teachers. Moreover, the school argued, based on Azmi’s performance within the class with the full veil, that: [o]bscuring the face and mouth reduces the non-verbal signals required between adult and pupil, both in the classroom and other communal parts of the School. A pupil needs to see the adult’s full face in order to receive optimum communication… It follows that for teachers or support workers wearing a veil in the workplace will prevent full and effective communication being maintained. In our view the desire to express religious identity does not overcome the primary requirement for optimal communication between adults and children. (Cited in Azmi vs. Kirklees Borough Council 2007: 4)

Azmi went off on sick leave after been asked to take off the veil, and when she did return to work, she refused to take off the veil after being requested to do so. She was subsequently suspended from the school and the matter was referred to the Employment Tribunal (ET) in July 2006. The tribunal dismissed her claims of discrimination and harassment on religious grounds. The matter was finally referred Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT), 30 March 2007. The EAT rejected the claims of direct discrimination; however, they did accept that Azmi did experience indirect discrimination, which they felt was ‘lawful and proportionate in support of a legitimate aim’. This is explained in the following judgement: ET findings that a decision to suspend a teaching assistant for refusing an instruction not to wear her veil when in class with pupils assisting a male teacher: was not direct discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief; and, though it was indirectly discriminatory on that ground, was lawful, being proportionate in support of a legitimate aim, upheld by the EAT. (Azmi vs. Kirklees Borough Council 2007: 2)

The above debates around equality have often navigated around gender politics and Muslim women’s dress. The above examples draw upon the diverse ways religion, politics and the equalities debate have been used to push the boundaries of the liberal state. The following example drawing upon the idea of Muslim cool demonstrates how Muslim identity has been used as a tool of political resistance.

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Muslim Cool and the Politics of Resistance The diverse nature of Muslim communities in Britain inevitably lends itself to a critical perspective relating to debates centring on integration and segregation. By drawing upon postcolonial theoretical perspectives, especially within a heightened security context, Muslims have attempted to embody a form of ‘radical Muslim-Consciousness’ (Meer 2010) grounded upon the notion of the Ummah. This perspective does not consider the notion of the Ummah to be an imagined construct (Roy 2004; Aydin 2017); rather it gives Muslim the power of political agency. Seddon (2010), drawing upon extensive ethnographical research on the Yemeni Muslim community in Manchester, notes: The combination of prejudice, discrimination and exclusion appears to have heightened emphatic self-definitions of religious identity, often ruling out any proximity to being British. The assertion of “Muslimness” in opposition to a discriminatory hegemonic British identity provides a universal “belongingness” which further undermines the national identity. (Seddon 2010: 57)

The M62 corridor has a long history of radical countercultural tradition, which has used music as its key repertoire. For example, Huddersfield during the 1970s became a crucial space for reggae music which produced a unique Sounds System culture. “Venn Street” in Huddersfield became synonymous with Reggae music in the north of England, which attracted people from diverse ethnic backgrounds throughout Manchester and Yorkshire. The venue, formerly Empress Ballroom, changed its name over the years from West Indian Social Club (1967), Cleopatra’s (in the 1970s) and then Silver Sands (in 1984). However, given its popularity the venue was simply known a “Venn Street” (Huxtable 2014). The building was later demolished in 1992 to facilitate a car-park for the town centre. “Venn Street” played a symbolic creative space which influenced ‘wider communities, including South Asians and more recently Kurds and a new wave of Eastern Europeans’ (Ward 2014: 13). A number of towns and cities gave way to creative expression to use music and musical performance to draw connections between race, politics and

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space. The mid-1980s to 1990s and to greater extent the early noughties gave way to creative cultural expressions grounded on new forms of cultural politics and praxis. These cultural expressions draw upon complex layers of identities, which fuse together ‘Muslim’, ‘Black’ and ‘Asian’. Instead of seeing these complex signifiers as mutually exclusive, rather these merge together to articulate a hybridised form of expression. One of the most active and vocal musical born out of the urban landscapes was the Khaliphz, from Rochdale, and FunDaMental from Bradford. FunDaMental draw upon a number of musical genres, including hip-hop, punk, rock and heavy metal combined it with political Blackness. For example, their first album Seize the Time (1994) draws inspirations from Malcolm X, Black Panthers and also Minister Louis Farrakhan from the Nation of Islam. More crucially, Seize the Time: Promote[s] militant anti-racism and community self-defence, pride in Islam, race consciousness, anti-imperial sentiments, connections between Black and Asian struggles and teachings of the NOI (considered heretical by many orthodox Muslims) mixed with strong dose of punk provocation. (Swedenburg 2001: 295)

FunDaMental can’t be seen as a marginal musical group; rather, they played a central role during the 1990s in challenging anti-racist politics through musical counterculture (Kalra et al. 1996). For example, one of the many successful videos titled Dog-Tribe by FunDaMental became the topic of censorship and calls from some sections for the video to be banned due to its ‘violent’ and ‘extreme’ messages and ‘images’ of extremism. For academics, this unmasked the liberal contradiction, for example: So Dog-Tribe appears to be a dangerous text because of its portrayal of militant Islamic fundamentalist violence. No doubt this could engage scholarly debate in another banal discussion about freedom of speech, although it significantly it did not. Academics were quick to jump to Salman Rushdie’s defence when it was a matter of an attack on honoured establishment writer, however progressive, but there is a difference when it is a matter of less literary popular-cultural examples of silencing, and where it is the British state, not an Islamic foreign power, doing the silencing. (Hutnyk 1996: 165)

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Perhaps the most controversial album released by FunDaMental was All Is War: The Benefits of G Had released in 2006. The album came within the sociopolitical climate of 9/11 and the London bombings of 7/7. The album received wide-scale media backlash for ‘justifying and glorifying terrorism’ (Swedenburg 2001). For others, the album used creative arts to bring to the public attention the post- 9/11 world of counterterrorism surveillance, the police state, and the global war on terror. It does this by using provocative language in a complex multidimensional way. For example: ‘it makes no effort to “reassure” the western and audiences at whom its messages are aimed and it declines to adopt the sort of “moderate” posture that mainstream commentators so insistently demand of Britain’s Muslims’ (Meer, cited in Swedenburg 2001: 300). The case of FunDaMental feeds into a new and emerging popular culture that has been described as the Muslim Cool. Muslim Cool is a way of expressing one’s Muslimness through dress, music, ideas and social activism. It further ruptures the binary distinctions between Blackness and Muslimness (Khabeer 2016). At a time when young British Muslims are asked to focus on national cultural belonging, popular youth cultures are ever engaged in a dynamic that juxtaposes the local with the global. This is not a process restricted to Muslim youth alone, but given their status as pariah within contemporary public discourse, it is not surprising that the idiom most appropriate to express their social and political views is through creative medium of hip-hop and punk. The space created by Muslim hip-hop provides a means of expressing intergenerational distinction and creating a distance from the traditional—in this case South Asian—cultures from which parents come. Muslim hip-hop in the western context is therefore a way of forging new identities that are different from the parochial parental migration generation, to one which is seen to transcend ties of kin, race and linguistic solidarity. This is not to deny the particular context out of which Muslim hip-hop emerges, which is clearly the streets of the West, or the dominance of English in lyrical content (another local), but to acknowledge that it is an engagement which is self-­ reflexively global (Miah and Kalra 2008). This also combines the primacy and the strengths of ‘Muslim’ identification for young Muslims in Oldham and Rochdale (Thomas and Sanderson 2011). Here, within the context of the M62 corridor, Fun-Da-Mental and the Khaliphz have used the creative medium of music to disrupt the normative positioning of

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Muslims. This is by no means restricted to the UK experience. In fact, musical subcultures throughout the Muslim diaspora are using music, in particularly hip-hop, rock, reggae and punk, to express a shared Muslim consciousness within a global climate of the politics associated with the War on Terror (Aidi 2014). The use of music as a political expression is not only restricted to the urban streets of the USA; in fact, it has a global reach with Italian groups promoting Marxist politics through music, Basque rappers using punk-rock hip-hop syncretic to espouse their nationalist cause and French artists of Moroccan and Algerian heritage challenging social issues in France together and questioning France’s role within the Algerian civil war (Mitchell 2001). A number of academic erudite works on hip-hop have given the topic scholarly recognition amongst ethnomusicologists, sociologists and cultural critics (Rose 1994). Despite this growing scholarly interest in the study of hip-hop and its relationship with Sunni Islam, it has had little popular recognition, notwithstanding the link between mainstream hip-­ hop and Islamicate Black separatist group Nation of Islam or the splitter group Five Percenters. In recent times, the links between Muslims, ‘rebel music’ and political resistance and activism has undergone serious academic writings grounded upon empirical research (see Aidi 2014; Khabeer 2016). Moreover, the strong connection between Islam and the Black diaspora focusing in particular on the role played by Islam in developing an Afro-American consciousness has been be noted by a number of academics (Aidi 2002)—this has led some commentators such as Harry Allen to declare: ‘Islam is hip-hop’s official religion’ (Allen 2010: 46). One key consensus that emerges from the limited studies of Muslim hip-­ hop is that it is a product of the current sociopolitical milieu. In this way Muslim hip-hop is ‘oppressed people use language dance and music to mock that in power’ (Rose 1994: 100).

Conclusion This chapter started with a critique of the monolithic framing of Muslim communities within the M62 corridor to reflects a narrow cultural frame, which is rooted with the 9/11 cultural purview, and has aimed to disrupt

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the normative positioning of Muslims within the M62 corridor as monolithic with the centrality of religion in defining racialised bodies in particular Muslim bodies. It can be argued that fixed view of Muslimness aims to project a particular version of Muslim identity onto the Muslim communities. In doing so it fails to capture the complex forms of Muslim self-definition based upon a process of interaction between ‘race’, religion, place and space. In fact, a number of complex categories have been either used as self-definition including Black, Asian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Mirpuri, (Azad) Kashmiri and Muslim. Moreover, the labelling of the minority communities also has a long and complex history, including labels such as migrants, coloured, immigrants, Pakis, Blacks and Asians, Biraderi. This chapter has explored some of the tensions between external, state and non-state naming and defining of Muslim communities and the relational and often situated ways in which Muslim communities in the M62 region defined and redefined their identification. More crucially, this chapter has highlighted the complex interplays which informs the construction and reconstruction of identity formation. Perhaps what is most interesting is that with the past decade, Muslim Cool have begun to draw upon ideas of ‘race’ and political Blackness as a political tool to challenge various forms of social injustice. In doing so, it brings together the political ‘Blackness’ of the Asian Youth Movement with countercultural and overt political messages of FunDaMental with the new Muslim Cool. This is further captured by the following: Muslims in the last decade, have discovered ‘race’ as a political tool, and the ghetto as a site of struggle; black internationalism increasingly provides an archive from which young Muslims in Europe and the U.S. can draw upon to reinvigorate Islamic thought. Thus, what is striking about the last decade is not the emergence of Islam as a “new, post-Cold War left” but the youths disaffection with the current Islamic movements and attempts to build an Islamic left by revisiting the Bandung era, mining historical interactions between the Black Atlantic, Islam and anti-colonial struggles. (Aidi 2014: xxiii)

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6 From the Oppressive Majority to Oppressed Minority? Changing White Self-Identifications

Introduction It can be argued that, since the 1960s, far too much of the academic and political discourse about multiculturalism in the UK generally, and in the north of England’s M62 corridor in particular, has been about visible ethnic minority communities, and far too little about White communities. A generalisation, of course, but one with a significant amount of truth, we would argue. Indeed, some of the most important sociological insights on ‘race relations’ and ethnic diversity in the UK over the period (Rex and Tomlinson 1969; Rose 1969; Solomos 2003; Hewitt 2005) have highlighted the extent to which White people, their preferred identifications, understandings of their communities, and thoughts and actions have been under-interrogated by policymakers, the media and even academia, whilst the lives, cultures, chosen identifications and dispositions of Black and minority ethnic (BME) communities (and especially Muslim ones, particularly from the 1980s onwards) have been examined, theorised and categorised in minute and continuing detail. This can be seen in the public discussion and framing of many of the key, M62-based, events that have come to both symbolise and shape public © The Author(s) 2020 S. Miah et al., ‘Race,’ Space and Multiculturalism in Northern England, Palgrave Politics of Identity and Citizenship Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42032-1_6

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perception of the region as the UK’s premier ‘failed space of multiculturalism’ (in both senses), as discussed both in this book’s Introduction and throughout our subsequent chapters. Here, the school Bussing of the 1960s was seen as a culturally necessary thing for the Asian students being bussed, the ‘inner-city riots’ of the early 1980s in Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds as largely a ‘Black problem’, the Dewsbury school at the centre of controversy in the 1980s as a problematically Asian-­ dominated one, the burning of the Satanic Verses book in Bradford as the first supposed proof of the incompatibility of ‘Muslim’ culture with British life and the 2001 riots in Oldham, Burnley and Bradford as yet clearer ‘proof ’ of the refusal of Muslim communities to both ‘integrate’, or to control their youth who were apparently ‘caught between two cultures’. Marginal to such discourse was any sustained public discourse on the role, dispositions and changing self-identifications of majority White individuals and communities, and White-dominated pubic institutions, in considering why many housing areas, and hence schools, in the M62 corridor region were (and are) significantly ethnically differentiated/segregated (Finney and Simpson 2009), or why minority, initially African-­Caribbean and more recently Muslim, communities felt such anger at racial marginalisation, inequality and societal slights that this anger has periodically burst into campaigning and even into violent disturbances. Too often, this policy and media discourse has glossed over the need to recognise and critically consider the feelings, experiences, actions and motivations of White individuals and communities, and of their connections to the actions and impacts of White-dominated policymaking and implementing processes. Here, these feelings, motivations and experiences of White communities in relation to ethnic diversity have been, at least until recently, granted a taken-for-granted status, an uninterrogated norm. This meant that for much of the 1950s until the 1990s, the attitudes and behaviour of this White majority were seen as normal, natural and beyond comment—it was the job of visible ethnic minority citizens to accept and fit in with this ‘normality’, albeit with help latterly from state policy actions. For some, this perception endures, but was gradually challenged by an anti-racist critique that characterised White majoritarian attitudes and behaviour as racist and oppressive, underpinned by a

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historically generated supremacist belief set. Both these contradictory and competing perspectives portrayed White feelings as those of a dominant majority but this seems to have changed significantly since the 2001 ‘mill town riots’ in Oldham, Burnley and Bradford. Whilst the ‘inner-city riots’ of 1980–1985 in Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds, as well as in London, Bristol and Birmingham, were classed as ‘race riots’ because they significantly involved African-Caribbean youth, this categorisation was mistaken. The targets of these riots were the Police and public authorities, provoked by large ethnic disparities in employment and overtly discriminatory policing practices (Gilroy 2002; Solomos 2003). In contrast, the 2001 riots in Oldham (Thomas 2011) and Burnley (King and Waddington 2004) saw Muslim communities fight directly with White communities as well as the Police in an atmosphere of racial hostility, partially inflamed by organised racist provocations (especially true of the Bradford rioting; Bagguley and Hussain 2008). These events and the subsequent media and policy reaction (Cantle 2001) highlighted White community feelings of ‘unfairness’, the belief that minority communities had been privileged by local and national regeneration funding and housing allocation. This connected to a wider and emerging sense of a ‘White backlash’ (Hewitt 2005), the sense that such feelings of unfairness and of being ‘second-class citizens’ was widespread in poorer White communities. Here such perceptions have related both to the perceived priorities of public policy and to their supposedly unfair, biased implementation of them, especially around social goods such as schools (Hewitt 1996) and social housing allocations (Dench et al. 2006). Underpinning such perceptions were, apparently, feelings of traditional White-majority working-class communities decaying and negatively changing through the increasing presence of racialised others, with out of touch ‘political elites’ not caring. Such perceptions have been identified in empirical studies in the north of England (Nayak 1999; Rhodes 2009, 2012; Thomas and Sanderson 2013), in other parts of the UK (Beider 2011; Open Society Foundation 2014a) as well as in other western European countries, such as the Netherlands, who were also now reassessing the success of multiculturalist policy regimes (Sniderman and Hagendoorn 2009; Open Society Foundation 2014b).

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The Chapter’s Focus This curious self-identification trajectory from the M62’s White residents being the normative, dominant, and arguably oppressive, majority to the self-identification by significant sections of White communities, particularly in the region’s towns rather than its now ‘core cities’ (an important distinction in itself, we’d argue), of themselves as an oppressed, vilified and marginalised ‘minority’ is the key focus of this chapter. How do we understand this trajectory? Is it simply a new form of, and frame for, White racist supremacism (Gillborn 2010), or is it rather proof of multiculturalism’s (in both senses) failure in the region? Rejecting both of those polarised positions, the chapter rather argues that the modern media, academic and policy preoccupation with a White sense of marginalisation and the associated claim of multiculturalist failure illustrates the lack of a historical, economic and spatial context to such discussions of multiculturalist policy and lived experience. Central to our discussions here is the highly contested concept of the ‘White working class’ (WWC), with advocates for this concept suggesting that poorer sections of White-dominated working-class communities are actually now more economically and socially marginalised than visible minority communities but policy prioritisation of ‘multiculturalism’ means that BME ‘needs’ are still prioritised whilst the ‘White working class’ are both neglected and, indeed, openly mocked through a social acceptance of derogatory terms like ‘chav’ (Jones 2011) and a blanket labelling of such White Working Class claim making (Kenny 2012) as ‘racist’ (Hewitt 2005). For many academic critics (Sveinsson 2009; Gillborn 2010), this whole concept of the WWC has been a device to criticise multiculturalist equality policies, and even the future desirability of ethnic diversity itself. It does, however, seem to speak to significant social feelings and changes, both in the UK and other Western societies. Here, such a self-perception seems to have driven working-class support for radical, right-wing parties across Europe (Ford and Goodwin 2014) and been central to the rise of United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) and the subsequent 2016 Brexit vote in the UK.

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To a very significant extent, the UK discourse around this apparent phenomenon of White ‘minority’ disadvantage has been driven by events and interpretation of them along the north’s M62 corridor. These events have driven the perception that White working-class communities in areas like the M62 corridor are both besieged and forgotten, with ‘White flight’ (a contested reality—see Finney and Simpson, 2009 and our discussions in Chap. 3) and even reactionary political responses like the ‘English Defence League’ (EDL) (Pilkington 2016) understandable. At the same time, however, it has enabled a popular, underclass-informed (Murray 1990; MacDonald 1997) characterisation of these White communities as ‘backwards’ in their hostility to ethnic diversity and ‘chavvy’ in their apparent lack of protective family structures and standards to protect ‘their girls’ from Muslim predators. Both, contradictory, tropes around the WWC have significantly contributed to the characterisation of the M62 corridor as a ‘failed space of multiculturalism’. The reality, extent and nature of any such shift in White majority identifications and self-perceptions has been under-analysed. It has also focussed too much on expressed social and political feelings without connecting this to the economic changes and trajectory of this once-­industrial area. This chapter attempts to contribute to rectifying this omission through its critical reflection of changing White attitudes and experiences on the M62 corridor. It does this through discussion below of four key themes: White people and post-war immigration, changing communities and changing perceptions, The White backlash, and Political claim making. In each case, our own and others’ empirical evidence is used, alongside other academic and policy material, in support of these critical reflections. First, though, the chapter considers understandings of and perspectives of the key concepts under consideration here.

Contested Concepts The book’s Introduction highlighted the fraudulent basis of ‘race’ and, hence, of racial categories and ascriptions, whilst also acknowledging the real, lived experiences of racism, racial inequality and racialised social tensions in both the M62 corridor and in Britain over the past 60 years.

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White people have obviously been, and remain, the majority in the region and have, as such, enjoyed privileged status in relation to employment, income and wealth, and access to social goods. How this squares with debates of supposed WWC ‘unfairness’ and (implicitly minoritarian) second-class status is discussed below but, first, who are these ‘White people’? Bonnett (2000) has shown how who is viewed and accepted as ‘White’ has changed radically over time in Britain. Here, both the Irish Catholic immigrants who came to the north of England in large numbers in the mid-nineteenth century and the significant Eastern European Jewish communities who settled in the region (especially in Manchester and Leeds) at the end of that century were viewed as threatening, dark ‘others’, and certainly not as ‘White’. In the Introduction we noted the outright hostility faced by Irish Catholic migrants in Stockport in the 1850s. Jeremy Seabrook’s insightful examination (1971) of a changing Blackburn in the late 1960s noted of earlier Irish and Jewish immigrants to the town that: [t]hey were not assimilated into the town effortlessly and willingly, for several generations the Irish were viewed as trouble-makers…This role has recently devolved upon the Indians and Pakistanis. (1971: 38)

By 1969  in Blackburn, Irish Catholic and European Christian and Jewish ‘others’ had now become the White ‘us’ threatened by the newer Asian and Caribbean immigrants. These Jewish communities of the north faced significant, ongoing social hostility and were overtly targeted by Mosley’s British Union of Fascists in the 1930s, including marches through Jewish areas that provided the template for provocative, far-right marches through predominantly Black and Asian areas in later decades. Two weeks before Mosely’s decisive defeat at the famous ‘Battle of Cable Street’ in London in October, 1936, Leeds’s Jewish community joined forces with trade unions and other anti-fascists in a 25,000-person demonstration to similarly block and turn back a large British Union of Fascists (BUF) march through Leeds at the ‘Battle of Holbeck Moor’. Similar resistance to a Mosley rally occurred in Hulme in Manchester in the same year (Copsey 2017). What were once dense, congregated (or ‘segregated’, depending on your interpretation) Irish Catholic and Jewish

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communities in the north, seen as dangerous ‘others’ as late as the 1930s, have now largely ‘disappeared’ through intermarriage and dispersal into the general ‘White’ population of the region, only identifiable externally around places of worship and at festival times. For some commentators of the 1960s, the Irish, Jewish and Eastern European long-term experiences of initial conflict and gradual integration, all without any antidiscrimination legislation or state interventions, made some ‘White’ residents of such background unsympathetic to state efforts to aid the integration of the new, non-White migrants. Speaking in 1967 (just two years before the Burley ‘race riots’ in the city discussed below) of a reluctance of politicians in Leeds to fund a ‘race relations liaison officer’ to work with migrants, Butterworth (1967: 64) noted that: [t]hey are more likely to reflect a belief that there are no really big problems. This in turn seems to be held strongly by some who are descended from earlier groups of migrants, who feel that discrimination against Jews and Catholics in the past was of the same order as against coloured people today.

Beyond dispute is the historically fluid and dynamic nature of ‘White’ categorisation. For some, however, who is White may have changed over time but the nature of White privilege, power and even ‘supremacy’ (Gillborn 2010) in the region and the nation has not changed. This perspective sees racism in Western societies as stemming from centuries of colonial exploitation, including the experiences of empire and slavery that directly shaped the nature of post-war, non-White immigration, and the ideologies of racial hierarchies and natural superiority that justified it (Miles 1989). This is a process of domination, it is argued, that all White people have benefitted from, and continue to do so (Gillborn 2010). Western empires and African slavery have, of course, ended and theories of biological racism and ‘natural superiority’ have been completely discredited, both by the Holocaust and scientific advances, but White racism has not disappeared, despite claims of ‘post-racialism’ that effectively delegitimise the continuing existence of racism and societal policy efforts to tackle racism and its inequalities (Lentin and Titley 2011). Here, theories of a ‘new racism’ (Hall 2000) identify developing types of ‘cultural racism’ that focus not on ethnic origins or skin tone but on

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‘culture’. For Pilkington (2016: 94), ‘The crucial property of these new elaborations of racism is that they can produce a racist effect while denying that this effect is the result of racism’, with many of the radical right-wing activists of the Islamophobic EDL that Pilkington researched with vehemently denying that they were ‘racist’. This, arguably, is the form in which both racism and White domination and profit from racism have continued (Lentin and Titley 2008), increasingly through anti-Muslim racism, and claims that areas like the M62 corridor ‘prove’ the incompatibility of Muslims with modern western societies. This perspective can assume, however, that, despite the non-existence of ‘race’, ‘White people’ are rather straightforwardly a fixed and essentialised group (even if its membership changes somewhat over time) who always profit from an unchanging social position of domination and privilege. In contrast, this book supports the position of ‘Whiteness’ being more complex, fluid, relational and situational, with White identities emerging from and changing through the nature and perceptions of interactions with ethnic ‘others’ and through changing material economic and social circumstances (Gilroy 2004). Preston (2007) argues that ‘whiteness’ is a practice, not an identity, and that it is rests on continuous macro- and micro-economic and social practices for its continuity. Preston does, though, rightly note that the supposed ‘reality’ of working-class racism (Ware 2008) is a construct of middle-class misrecognition. White identifications, and even the collective consciousness of having a ‘White identity’, have arguably changed over time on the M62 corridor as interactions with and perceptions of ethnic minority communities have changed and developed in the context of radical economic changes and changing political and media discourse. Crucial here has been the significantly changing demographic profiles of different majority and minority communities, with White people in many ex-industrial towns of the region becoming increasingly aware that they are not such a dominant demographic majority any more (Finney and Simpson 2009). This also highlights the situational nature of White identities that were once largely formed and maintained by the industrial nature of their town and region but which have since been significantly unmade and remade in the region from the 1960s onwards by profound economic change, namely the retraction and then virtual disappearance

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of the textile industry and its supporting industrial ecosystem of engineering, as discussed in Chap. 2. The concept and social reality of ‘social exclusion’ (Byrne 1999) has been much discussed in the UK from the 1997 Labour government of Tony Blair onwards. Both academic and policy literature on social exclusion identifies it as primarily a spatial phenomenon of regions and their towns once dominated by industries now lost to globalisation and technological change, leading to an economic and social phenomenon of deindustrialisation, economic marginalisation and insecure, low-paid employment (Shildrick et  al. 2012) in a context of neoliberal political hegemony (Harvey 2007). It also leads to a profound loss of the identities, cultures and ways of life shaped by the dominant industries for the local working-class communities of all ethnic and faith backgrounds. This ‘social exclusion’ analysis very much fits the experience of the M62 corridor, especially the towns dominated by textiles. It has affected both the south Asian, largely Muslim, communities encouraged to migrate to work in textiles in towns like Oldham (Kalra 2000) and the White communities, many the descendants of earlier Irish and European migrants, for the same reason. For the latter, it is highly relevant to the concept of the ‘White working class’ and racialised perceptions of ‘unfairness’ presented by economically marginalised White communities of the region. The concept of a ‘White working class’ is itself problematic. Much of the political and media discourse, including claims portraying this category as the most educationally disadvantaged, has deployed ‘class’ misleadingly, for example, in focussing only on the poorest elements receiving free school meals, rather than on a broader and sociologically founded understanding of the working class (Sveinsson 2009). Such definitional debates are not merely ‘academic’. It has been argued that the interchangeable use of ‘working class’ and ‘White working class’ contributes to the ‘othering’ of British-born visible minorities including recent (White and non-White skinned) migrants through use of terms like ‘indigenous’ since it suggests a false fixedness of majority class identity and experience (Rogaly and Taylor 2009: 54). The double-edged nature of the concept has also been shown in suggestions that this ‘group’ are marginalised because of their own anti-education, welfare-dependent culture, a direct echo of wider ‘underclass’ tropes (Murray 1990; MacDonald 1997).

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Here, Rhodes (2012: 490) notes that the concept: ‘needs to be viewed not as an object but a labelling device which has the potential not only to shape but also to distort and simplify social formation’. Kenny (2012) argues, though, that the economic, political and cultural marginalisation of such communities, particularly the pejorative labelling of ‘chav’, suggest that the concept should not be lightly dismissed: ‘on this view, there is an abiding subaltern quality to the ‘White working class’ (2012: 24). The concept has been linked to the debates highlighted above about poor Whites feeling that they are the real victims of racism (Hewitt 2005), a discourse that critical race theorists argue is part of the maintenance of White supremacy: the latest example of a historic tendency to discipline minority groups by warning how equality measures will inflame racism (Gillborn 2010). However, there is increasing evidence that the combination of increased ethnic diversity and rapidly increasing economic inequality in the context of significant, spatial ‘social exclusion’ (Byrne 1999) in areas such as the ex-­industrial towns of the M62 corridor has produced some sense of ‘White working class’ experience and even consciousness, so justifying for us the academic focus on these experiences and their relational connection to minority community identification and experiences. Helpful here is the Open Society Foundation’s (2014b) working research definition of ‘members of ‘majority’ populations living in neighbourhoods and districts with high indicators of social, economic and political marginalisation’ (2014b: 9) The relation of all these concepts to changing White experiences of ethnic diversity and to self-­ perceptions of identifications along the M62 corridor are explored below.

White People and Post-war Immigration Many accounts of the experiences of post-war, non-White immigration and subsequent settlement in Britain as a whole, tend to be binary in their analysis of the response from the settled White majority. Here, they are portrayed as either extremely welcoming or, more commonly, overtly hostile. Accounts of how White communities reacted and viewed the changing nature of local society in the north of England are somewhat more nuanced, identifying both sharply differing views within communities and very significant indifference or quiet wariness, as identified by

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research in West Yorkshire (Wade 1971). In Blackburn, Seabrook (1971: 47) interviewed many residents about their changing town. Whilst one interview with a group of local women brought overtly hostile views on the town’s growing immigrant population: ‘It’s just like a jungle living here. People are very bitter and if they can’t live like we live, I think it’s time they went back’, John Johnson (63) bluntly identified that ‘I know that our empire was built on the backs of India and Pakistan and, to me, I think we owe a duty to them and to them as come into this country’ (ibid: 63). Seabrook identified how a significant economic change and suburbanisation was already occurring in Blackburn, prior to the non-White migration to the town. New immigrants were moving in inner-city areas already vacated by younger Whites and that, for these migrants: Their real function was almost never mentioned all the time I was in Blackburn – the filling of the vacuum left by the upward displacement of a large section of the unskilled working class, whose sons and daughters stride, liberated through the broad avenues of mobility. (Seabrook 1971: 43)

Here, there was already evidence of the textile industry and its plentiful, unskilled employment, starting to decline, but this was not problematic for the White population experiencing social mobility and increasing prosperity from a then largely buoyant regional and national economy— there was little sense of economic competition from the recent migrants, as we discuss in Chap. 2. The result was that, although work shifts in large textile mills were often racially differentiated, there were workplace opportunities for dialogue, friendship and even joint trade union activity in the mills (Kalra 2000) and other major, multiracial factories and employers such as bus companies. Alongside this, though, was a reality of overt racist reactions for some White people, particularly as social spaces and housing areas of the M62 corridor became more multiracial. Tom Millar worked for Race Equality bodies in the Greater Manchester area from the start of the 1980s for over 25 years. Millar recalls in an interview with the authors that ‘[i]n the early 1980s I was dealing with around 200 complaints racial attack and harassment every month’. Millar also identified the issue of racial attacks and conflicts in schools, something highlighted by the national Commission for Racial Equality

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report, ‘Learning in Terror’ (1983). Chapter 4’s focus on Policy discusses the creation and impacts of local policies to address racism in the region but this testimony foregrounds the reaction of some White people to an emerging multicultural reality. At times, this manifested itself in racist White youth reactions to new minority residents, some of which could be interpreted as ‘neighbourhood nationalism’ (Back 1996), with White youth claiming a defence role for the preservation of ‘their’ community (Cohen 1988). An example of localised tensions was the 1969 violent racist disturbances in the Burley area of Leeds. Here, the murder of a young White man by a young Indian man after a small street dispute saw two nights of large-scale attacks on local Asian residents by White mobs, encouraged by far-right activists (Hann 2012). At times, this White youth racist reaction to multicultural diversity manifested itself in cultural spaces and places, with large-scale racist chanting and behaviour at football grounds (Back et al. 2001; Thomas 2010; see Hill 1989 for analysis of the racist public reactions to the signing of Black footballer John Barnes for the then mighty Liverpool), in nightclubs and pubs often operating informal colour bars and at live music events, where ethnic minority and left-wing White music lovers could be attacked. The latter is an example of where far-right racist groups encouraged racial violence, such as the National Front-inspired ‘Rock against Communism’s’ attacks on music events in Leeds in the late 1970s (Copsey and Worley 2018) and the far-right’s prominent role in actively amplifying and encouraging overt racism and violence at football grounds like Leeds United (Thomas 2010), Newcastle and the Liverpool-based Everton. Here, the far-right didn’t cause the societal racism but played a strong role in focussing and fomenting it, partly by staging provocative marches through ethnic minority areas that were designed to provoke a reaction, as it did in Bradford in 1977, with very serious disturbances resulting (Ramamurthy 2013), as discussed below. At the same time, many White people on the M62 corridor both embraced the new multicultural society and actively opposed racism. Early accounts (Seabrook 1971; Wade 1971; Butterworth 1967) of Caribbean and Asian migrant settlement in the M62 corridor identify the multicultural and pro-racial equality activism of some White people within the newly established Community Relations Councils, or in local

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chapters of anti-racist campaigning groups like the ‘Campaign Against Racial Discrimination’. This strand of White reaction developed in the 1970s and 1980s into anti-racist and pro-equality activism within trade unions and professional settings (such as amongst teachers, youth workers and social workers) and to White roles in anti-fascist and racist campaigning. Whilst such White roles in anti-racist activity were at times controversial (especially through the claimed leadership role of the largely White Trotskyist group Socialist Workers’ Party in the Anti-Nazi League; Copsey 2017), they also saw fruitful and educative cooperation with Black-led campaigns, such as the Bradford 12 community defence trial of 1981, and the local ‘Asian Youth Movement’ groups (bringing Muslim, Hindu, Christian and Sikh young people of Asian heritage together) that flourished in the early 1980s in Bradford, Kirklees, Manchester and other towns and cities of the region (Ramamurthy 2013), as we discuss in Chap. 5. Alongside such political activism came a more mundane reality of cross-ethnic interaction in the increasingly ethnically diverse towns and cities of the M62 corridor. Many White people found this increasing diversity interesting, even exciting, leading to sites of multiracial youth musical and fashion styles and subcultures (Hebdidge 1979), such as Ska, reggae and going to the associated illegal ‘Blue’s clubs’ of Leeds’s Chapeltown or Manchester’s Moss side districts, and the region’s famous ‘northern soul’ clubs, such as the Wigan Casino. Such White subcultural activity was not just with Black young people but also represented a clear anti-racist statement, just as did involvement in anti-racist campaigning activity (Mason 2013). On a day-to-day level, despite a common reality of racialised and segregated public spaces, shared socialising, friendships and personal relationship and the identification of common experiences also took place. On the latter, Max Farrar, White sociologist and longtime anti-racist activist in Leeds, has written of the 1975 ‘Bonfire Night riots’ in the mainly African-Caribbean (but previously eastern European/ Jewish) Chapeltown area of Leeds. Conflict with heavy-handed, arguably racist, police officers provoked significant disorder and many being arrested, including Farrar. A six-week trial led to Farrar and the young Black defendants also arrested all being acquitted, with Farrar observing:

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Meeting the jury afterwards, we found that they had acquitted us because half of them – white, working class, Leeds men in their twenties – had also been the victims of police intimidation and the fabrication of evidence. (Farrar 2012: 73)

Changing Communities, Changing Perceptions Understanding White attitudes towards and responses to increasing ethnic diversity in the M62 corridor region involves examining the nature of socio-economic change and White experiences of and reactions to it. Here, there have been undoubted demographic changes, as non-White migrant communities have settled and then inevitably grown in recognition of their significantly younger demographic profile than the settled White communities, a reality of all migration processes (Scheffer 2011), alongside the steady suburbanisation of the older White population. For instance, Asian-origin young people were approximately 18 per cent of Oldham’s under 18 years youth population at the time of the 2001 riots but were are projected to form as much as 40 per cent or more of that population by 2021 (Oldham MBC 2006). Whilst the White/Asian population balance has shifted through these natural, temporal processes in the largely duo-cultural ex-mill towns, the larger cities of Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool have become increasingly ‘super-diverse’ (Vertovec 2007) through similar processes, increased non-White inwards movement from other parts of the UK and the EU and very significant growth in non-­ White, Western International University students. From 2004 onwards, the entire region has also seen significant inwards migration from Eastern Europe, often overlaying Polish, Latvian and Ukrainian communities of migrants recruited to work in the industries of northern England shortly after the end of the Second World War. The result, as discussed in more detail in Chap. 3, has been towns and cities of increasing ethnic diversity (Finney and Simpson 2009), a steady growth of mundane, lived multiculturalism. More contentious, though, is the extent of cross-ethnic mixing and how White communities perceive this demographic shift. At the same time, the economic changes in the M62 corridor region have been profound, with the decline and then disappearance of the once-dominant textile industries. In earlier work, we highlighted the

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starkness of this generational change in economic opportunities of well-­ paid, full-time industrial employment and its impacts on cultural norms and expectations within communities of the region, both White and Asian. David, an ex-local Oldham Councillor and a community worker who was interviewed in the aftermath of the 2001 Oldham riots, stressed the historical changes to the town’s economy that had taken place: When I was a councillor in 1994, I went to an Education Committee meeting, and the Careers Officer was giving us a survey of the past 25 years. In 1969, one male school leaver in Oldham failed to get a job at the age of 15. In 1994 it was something like 12% he was quoting.

This industrial decline of the 1960s and the virtual disappearance of the textile industry in the 1970s and 1980s met no economic policy response from central government during a (still-dominant) phase of neoliberalism. The result has been towns once grounded on secure, full-­ time manual employment left with marginal economies of insecure, low-­ paid work and a reality, for many in both White and Asian working-class communities of a ‘low-pay, no-pay’ churn (Shildrick et  al. 2012) and highly constrained employment and housing choices. Highly relevant here are explanations of ‘social exclusion’ that focus on spatial dimensions (Byrne 1999; Campbell 1994) of economic marginalisation, both residential areas within towns and cities and entire, ex-industrial towns ‘left behind’ by market-led economic shifts. Whilst the big ‘core cities’ of the region have had some considerable success in creating new and viable, post-industrial economies, the ex-textile towns have found this much more difficult. This, we argue, largely explains why the focus of racial tensions and overt White resentment towards increasing diversity that was originally seen in Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s has subsequently shifted very significantly towards the city of Bradford and to the towns of the region such as Blackburn, Burnley, Oldham, Rochdale, Halifax, Dewsbury, Keighley and Rotherham. Similarly, ethnic segregation and segmentation in housing that was once seen as a social problem in big northern cities is now regarded as a chronic problem for the M62 corridor’s towns (see Chap. 2). Indeed, in responding to Cantle’s (2001) questioning of why the 2001 riots occurred in the

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northern mill towns, rather than supposed multicultural ‘success stories’ such as Leicester or West London, we highlighted this economic shift of deindustrialisation and the new realities of highly constrained employment and hence housing options that it brought in its wake (Thomas 2011). As discussed in Chap. 3, the result has indeed been highly constrained housing choices overlaid on initial patterns of understandable migrant congregation and the significant racial discrimination and ‘red-lining’ in housing (CRE 1990, 1994) that we discussed in Chap. 4 to produce a situation of significant ethnic segregation in many of the M62 corridor’s towns (Ouseley 2001; Ritchie 2001; Clarke 2001). Much of the initial migrant congregation was in the cheap housing available in town centres, as then-employed White communities moved to suburban areas. Seabrook (1971: 6) identified of Blackburn in the late 1960s that ‘[t]he centre of the town is left increasingly to the poor, the old and the immigrants’. This process, repeated in other towns of the region as minority communities have naturally grown, has fuelled feelings amongst some White people both of ethnic divides and of a racialised sense that the decline of their town is inextricably linked with, perhaps even caused by, the growing Muslim populations, rather than structural economic change of globalised neoliberalism (Harvey 2007). Our research in Dewsbury (Thomas et al. 2015, 2018) around the feelings and perceptions of ‘White working class’ residents towards ethnic diversity in this highly segregated town highlighted this linking of increased diversity and the economic decline of the town, particularly by older White residents. One focus group (FG) participant highlighted the following: Lack of shops nowadays. The towns dead… It’s disgusting, with all the shops and industries that’s closed down. Dewsbury is like a ghost town to what it used to be. (FG: Older adult)

The racialisation of economic changes was explicitly articulated by another participant: (Dewsbury?) ‘Asian… Disgusting…Place to avoid’ (FG: Older adult) and such perceptions, explicitly contradictory at times, extended to younger residents: ‘Every shop is run by Asians now, all the shops are closing’. (FG: Young person)

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As we discussed in Chap. 5, provocative local journalist Danny Lockwood (2011) has done much to both reflect and, arguably, inflame, local White feelings about this increasing ethnic diversity through his journalistic portrayal of supposedly ‘factual’ cases of white unfairness. He identifies that ‘we were the beating heart of Yorkshire’s Heavy Woollen District’ (2011: 25) but now sees Dewsbury as being ‘on its knees in so many ways, economically, socially, politically and criminally’ (ibid: 3). Significant media coverage has accompanied the progressive closure of Dewsbury’s main shops, first Marks and Spencer’s and, latterly, McDonald’s. The latter prompted one of youth respondents to observe that: ‘because there is nothing here all the kids hang around the bus station and stuff’ (FG: Young person). A similar analysis of a complete absence of spaces and places for young people in such post-industrial, M62 corridor towns that can serve as sites both for leisure and positive, cross-­community contact was identified by an Oldham youth worker interviewed following the 2001 riots (Thomas 2011: 123): In Oldham there is bugger all for young people to do beyond go to the youth club. We haven’t got a bowling alley or big cinema complex that all these other towns have, just a tatty old cinema on the edge of town. There is no generic meeting place with café areas and pizzas where young people can chill out. (Deborah, Youth Worker)

In our research in Dewsbury, there was a clear sense from respondents, even younger ones, of a perceived loss and sense of decline, with nostalgia for a past, prosperous town. Such nostalgia could simply be seen as a yearning for a ‘Whiter’ society, the type of ‘melancholia’ for a lost Empire and racial dominance that Gilroy (2004) detects amongst many British White people but, arguably, this ‘melancholia’ is actually more for a lost industrial economy, culture and connected individual and community identity, a sense of loss and confusion that Seabrook (1971) identified in a northern mill town as early as 1969. Scheffer (2011) suggests that there should be a more nuanced, and sympathetic, understanding of White settled communities:

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What we have too easily dismissed as nostalgia is in fact an attempt to get a grip on the huge and therefore anonymous forces that increasingly affect daily life. Opposition to immigration among a significant majority of the population can be seen as an indication of this. (2011: 68)

This reflects the concern about White communities in ‘failed spaces of multiculturalism’ (Thomas et al. 2018) across different Western European societies. The Open Society Foundation’s (2014b) research with ‘members of ‘majority’ populations living in neighbourhoods and districts with high indicators of social, economic and political marginalisation’ (2014b: 9) in six European cities documents state failure to involve such communities in integration initiatives or engage meaningfully with concerns about increasing immigration and ethnic diversity. Their argument that cultural anxieties mixed with socio-economic insecurity could be undermining community cohesion echoes Putnam’s (2007) sobering finding that social trust seems to diminish, at least initially, as local ethnic diversity increases. Schaeffer’s (2014) pessimistic analysis of attitudes to ethnic diversity in low-income communities in several European cities also highlights issues around the speed of social change and very limited adaptive capacities in such communities. Drawing on Durkheim’s notion of anomie, Schaeffer proposes what he terms ‘disintegration theory’: This process of disintegration, meaning that an individual’s capacities of adaption cannot keep up with the speed of social change, is associated with substantive uncertainty, feelings of threats and questions about personal, social and national identity. The responsibilities for these unsatisfying circumstances are then projected in ethnic out-groups. (Schaeffer 2014: 100)

The Open Society Foundation’s report on WWC communities in Blackley, Manchester, observed that: [t]he combination of cultural anxieties and socio-economic insecurity is a potent mix that can undermine social cohesion (2014a: 53), and quoted a 34-year-old male resident as saying: I’ve noticed recently, only the last twelve months around here, people are becoming more distant because they’re seeing more and more immigrants. (ibid: 53)

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The ‘White Backlash’ It is clear from our empirical research across the M62 corridor region that some White residents, especially from economically marginalised communities, also have a very racialised sense of life, including of public space and territory. In our Dewsbury research (Thomas et  al. 2015, 2018), focus group discussions were peppered with negative comments about diversity and mixing as well as a slew of negative perceptions about ‘Asians’. Mixed in with broader complaints about how ‘they seem to take over’ (FG: Older Adult) and that ‘they think they’re better than us […] They think this is their country […]’ (FG: Young Person) were more specific themes. There were repeated references to perceived cultural differences, with the apparently increasing use of overtly Islamic dress by Muslim women in Dewsbury a particular focus for unease—a signifier that lent itself both to concerns about security and deception and to claims about the supposed backwardness of Islam and Muslims: I don’t see why they should be walking about and driving with all this, with just their eyes showing, you don’t know whether they’re men or women! (FG: Older Adult). You see live feeds of Karachi and Islamabad in news reports and the women are running around in jeans over there and it’s like sort of 1420 here in WH Smith’s [a stationary shop]. (FG: Older Adult)

For some White young people, such as those we researched with in Rochdale and Oldham (Sanderson and Thomas 2014), there is a perception that public spaces in their town, such as the Rochdale bus station, and indeed the town centres themselves, are now ‘Asian’ and so unsafe for them. Using a qualitative research approach, which included word association exercises, the ‘White’ group of youth respondents expressed overwhelmingly negative associations with their towns’ names, and also associated their town with ethnic and racial labels, reflecting the spatial pattern of ethnically segregated housing areas in many M62 corridor towns. Both White and Muslim youth respondents also associated the town centre with conflict (Sanderson and Thomas 2014). Youth

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perceptions and defence of territory is a staple of working-class youth male experience (Cohen 1988; Back 1996) but the significantly ethnically marked housing patterns on many M62 corridor towns means that such territoriality (Kintrea et  al. 2008) is experienced and practised through a racialised lens. Previous research with young White and Muslim people in Oldham around perceptions of territory (Thomas 2003) revealed rigid, colour-coded ‘mental maps’ of racialised ‘safe’ and ‘unsafe’ territory. Webster’s ground-breaking study (1996, 2001) of youth territorialism and racial conflict in the West Yorkshire town of Keighley identified a similar pattern with both White and Muslim young people actively engaging in territory defence, but White young people expressing more overtly racial feelings and motives. This was mirrored in our Oldham and Rochdale research (Sanderson and Thomas 2014), where reluctance to ‘mix’ appeared to be stronger amongst White young people, some of whom defined Whiteness and Englishness in terms of their incompatibility with an Asian or Muslim identity, and amongst whom the response to the idea of multiculturalism appeared to be very negative. This is in line with the findings of others concerning the tendency of White working-class young people to express negativity towards multiculturalism and community cohesion policies and discourse (Beider 2011), and the interweaving of this negativity with a narrative of unfairness, neglect and dispossession which is a core component of what has been described as ‘White backlash’ (Nayak 2009; Hewitt 2005; Rhodes 2009; Thomas and Sanderson 2013). Indeed, Cockburn’s (2007) study of young British National Party activists in Blackburn highlighted both the fluid and contingent nature and reality of their publicly performed ‘racism’ but also that their public avowal of overtly racist positions had been directly motivated by experiences of street conflicts with (apparently now-dominant) Muslim young people that they understood in racialised terms. In his discussion of community, Bauman identifies the way in which, in an increasingly complex society we may attempt to deal with the unfamiliar by projecting ‘our fears on to the strangers that triggered them, and to blame city life for being dangerous … because of its variety’ (2001: 148). Other analysts of White, particularly WWC, attitudes toward growing ethnic diversity in the context of economic marginalisation highlight the

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importance of locality and situated experience for White adults, as well as young people (Collins 2004). Baggini, in his unvarnished ethnographic study on White English people in Rotherham notes that ‘communities have weakened but our attachment to locality remains much stronger than many accounts of decline suggest’ (2007: 47). Pilkington (2016), in her ethnographic study of anti-Islamism protest movement, the ‘English Defence League’ (EDL), highlights both the importance of emotion in this social movement activism and the centrality of locality and lived local experience to it: The primary dimension of locality as narrativized by respondents in this study, however, is its relative multicultural or monocultural nature; a shift from the latter to the former is the frequently the prompt for discussing this. (2016: 77)

Pilkington identifies how highly constrained housing choices in the context of reducing social housing availability, informed her respondents’ feelings of vulnerability in response to these community changes. This also directly feeds into WWC feelings of ‘unfairness’ and perceptions of inferior status in the eyes of policymakers identified in wider literature and identified in our own research. Accounts of White perceptions of unfairness in social housing allocations (Dench et  al. 2006) have been highly controversial, given that they have often both tended to downplay the wider social policy trajectory of the past four decades in reducing the overall availability of social housing and overlooked the steady suburbanisation that is a mundane and unsurprising trend for significant parts of ageing and increasingly better-off White communities. Such (deeply unhelpful) policy changes are often overlooked within media discourse around multiculturalism’s supposed failure in the M62 corridor. Here, it is the poorer White (and ethnic minority) communities, especially in the M62 corridor’s ex-industrial towns, who face constrained choice and increasing competition for reducing availability of social goods such as social housing. Schools have also been identified as a key site for growing WWC feelings of ‘unfairness’ and of a ‘White backlash’ (Hewitt 2005), partly driven by ‘clumsy’ (MacDonald 1989), arguably partial, interpretation by teachers of rules in multiracial settings (something mirrored by findings from earlier research with Youth Workers in West Yorkshire:

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Thomas 2002) and discussed in more depth in Chap. 4. Our research in Dewsbury (Thomas et  al. 2015, 2018) echoed Hewitt’s (1996) earlier findings of White youth perceptions on the operation of rules and equality policies in schools and the belief that White students are seen as the racist, guilty party in any inter-student conflicts: I go to a Catholic school we have had to start letting all the Asians in and then what they have been doing is trying to fight all White people and then we get done for it for fighting but they don’t get done for anything. (Focus Group: Young person) If we have a fight the White person will get excluded and nothing happens to the Asian (Focus group: Young person).

Law (1996) rightly reminds us that there has been a White majority ‘backlash’ against every significant race equality measure taken in Britain since the 1960s. However, the depth and range of empirical research evidence cited here highlighting these WWC perceptions of ‘unfairness’, particularly in the M62 corridor region, suggest that they cannot be lightly dismissed. Factually correct or not, White perceptions that regeneration funding was being unfairly targeted at mainly Asian areas to the detriment of manly White areas was identified as a key driver of the intensity of White anger and violence during the 2001 Oldham riots (Ritchie 2001). Some of this can be understood in terms of the operation of national and local Multiculturalist policies and their failure to engage, or even consider, the feelings, understandings and roles of White majority communities and individuals, as discussed further in Chap. 6. What such policy approaches have led to, though, in both Britain and the Netherlands is a perception that they have been labelled ‘racist’ when there is conflict between individuals of different ethnic backgrounds or when White communities express the feeling that other, minority communities are being favoured by public policy. Whilst the complaints from White majority communities about the operations of multiculturalist policies is explored further in Chap. 4, what can also be identified as implicit in concerns of ‘unfairness’ are WWC attitudes to ‘rights’ and the availability to the social goods of the

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welfare state. Baggini (2007), in his study of White attitudes in Rotherham, perceives the traditional White English attitude to ‘rights’ to be a communitarianist, one, rather than a liberal and universal approach. Here, rights are earned over time, not immediately granted: Being fair is giving and getting what is due and your responsibilities and entitlements are defined not by your membership of the species but by your place in society. If that sounds conservative, that’s because it is. (2007: 89)

Beider’s research with WWC communities in the English Midlands similarly highlights that the WWC concept is about ‘acceptance of a values-­driven framework’ (2011: 38) and that respondents ‘emphasised a strong work ethic, respect, collective values and reciprocal support’ (ibid: 40). Here, White people perceived to be voluntarily benefit-dependent (arguably the ‘underclass’: Murray 1990) were not seen as being ‘us’. Rhodes (2012), reflecting on his research amongst White residents in the Lancashire town of Burnley, including people who had supported the BNP in local elections, identifies similar feelings: White residents of various classed backgrounds identified poor or ‘scruffy’ Whites as a particularly problematic grouping. (2012: 489) This would suggest that WWC residents holding such values on the M62 corridor should find common cause with strongly communitarianist ethnic minority communities but White perceptions of ‘unfairness’ largely focus on ‘unfair’ allocation of social goods to ethnic minorities, such as access to social housing and community facilities. The Open Society Foundation report on WWC communities in Manchester identified that ‘The grievance about the perceived unfair allocation of public resources and the favouring of people who were not previously connected with the area come out consistently through the research’ (2014a: 54). Echoing Dench et al.’s (2006) claim that WWC residents in London’s East End had lost out on housing allocation, following the policy decision to prioritise ‘need’ over connection to and longevity in the area, Goodhart (2013) identifies the abandonment of ‘sons and daughters’ policies within social housing allocations in the 1977 Homeless Person’s Act as key staging point in WWC grievances and consciousness developing. Here, Goodhart argues that the post-war Welfare State was originally a

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contributory one, based on earned entitlement, not one that bestowed immediate benefits to recent migrant communities simply because of current need. Similarly, Smith’s (2012) ethnographic research in an anonymised, mainly WWC area of Greater Manchester identifies that ‘fairness’: does go beyond text. It is embodied by individuals who are seen as having lived in Halleigh for a long time and are seen as having ‘paid their dues’ with respect to the amount of time they have lived in Halleigh. (ibid: 12)

Scheffer (2011) emphasises the need for a historical perspective on how Western societies have experienced and responded to significant immigration from the nineteenth century onwards but does acknowledge that in the post-1945 era: ‘the combination of mass immigration and the welfare state is unique, lacking any historical precedent’ (2011: 39). This obviously flies in the face of the evidence presented in Chap. 3 around discriminatory housing practices along the M62 corridor in relation to both social and private rental housing. It also avoids the core issue that social housing stocks have been allowed to decline sharply through selling off existing stock cheaply and not allowing local authorities to build more, an example of the state’s generally declining capacity to shape experiences in society in an era of neoliberal policy hegemony. Increasingly, poor White and ethnic minority communities in the M62 corridor region, both locked out of owner occupancy, have increasingly had to compete for limited social housing. However, Pilkington’s (2016) ethnographic study of EDL activists in the Midlands and North of England highlights how many of the working-class White respondents perceive the ‘natural order’ to be that they should be prioritised by welfare provision, not the growing ethnic minority communities, and that they are victims of state-sanctioned processes that have enabled minorities, and especially Muslims, to place themselves in a superior position to them. Here: ‘the narrative of second-class citizenship reveals the way in which sections of the White working class fail to recognise ‘self ’ as privileged majority’ (Pilkington 2016: 228). This fear of becoming a ‘minority’, whether demographic, in street-level physical dominance or in state policy consideration, runs through much of the data from empirical studies amongst

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WWC communities in the M62 region (e.g. Cockburn 2007; Rhodes 2012; Thomas and Sanderson 2013). Underpinning this ‘White backlash’ from White majority communities, especially those from economically marginalised communities in deindustrialised towns, has been the historic policy failure to consistently engage with White communities around the content, purpose and impacts of multiculturalist policies. This is explored more fully in Chap. 4’s discussion of Policy. There, the undoubted successes of multiculturalist policies in narrowing ‘ethnic penalties’ for visible minority communities around education, employment and social mobility are acknowledged but also acknowledged are the realities that many White communities have perceived such policies as favouritism for minority communities within a modern policy context of social class being sidelined as ethnicity has been foregrounded as a policy lens for social inequality. As Ali Rattansi observes: The failure to involve Whites generally has eventually led to strong resentment, as multiculturalism has been viewed as privilege for Black and Asian people at the expense of Whites, rather than as an attempt to combat ethnic socio-­ economic advantage as well as cultural exclusion from the nation’s self-identity. (2011: 50)

The extent to which post-2001 policies of ‘community cohesion’ have effectively been able to engage with and respond to White feelings and fears about ethnic diversity and equality is also examined by that chapter. What is clear, though, is that since 2001 especially, the ‘White backlash’ and WWC feelings of marginalisation and second-class status along the M62 corridor have taken an overtly political form, as we explore below.

White Political Claim Making The feelings and dispositions of the White majority in the M62 corridor region to ethnic diversity and policy efforts to create greater racial equality have manifested themselves in different ways over the past 50/60 years. For much of that time, Britain’s ‘first past the post’ political system has

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meant that any White political antipathy to such diversity has come partly through opposition to minority candidates within the major parties or through voting against minority candidates of parties and candidates seen to be ‘favouring minorities’. Pre-2001, a much more obvious political manifestation has come through the extremist provocations, and sometimes outright violence, of far-right political groups, such as the National Front and the British National Party (Walker 1976; Copsey 2008). Whilst having little impact on the electoral system, save a small number of councillors elected in Blackburn in the mid-1970s, these provocations had very significant impacts on community tensions, on the lives of ethnic minority citizens and on the policy responses of local and national government. Some of these provocations came in cultural forms, such as the attempts by the far-right to organise around and influence behaviour at music venues and major football ground in the region, as discussed earlier in the chapter. More significantly, provocations have come through organised marches and rallies deliberately intended to create a violent response from minority communities and the organised anti-racist groups, so supposedly demonstrating the inevitable negativity of ‘multiculturalism’ and the ‘inherent violence’ of minority communities. An example of this far-right strategy was the 1977 attempt by the National Front to march through a largely Asian area of Bradford. The march was blocked by protestors, leading to significant outbreaks of violence between local Asian youth and anti-racists on one side and the Police protecting the far-right marchers on the other (Ramamurthy 2013). Similar local provocations led directly to the ‘Bradford 12’ self-­ defence legal case, as discussed further in Chap. 5, and illustrated significant tensions within anti-fascists groups over how such far-right provocations, and sometimes violence, should be opposed (Copsey 2017). A similar provocation came in July 1989 in Dewsbury. Seeking to exploit the ‘Dewsbury School’ controversy (as discussed in Chap. 4) of two years earlier and the recent burning of the Satanic Verses book in nearby Bradford, the BNP and its leader John Tyndall held a rally in the centre of the town. Whilst the small numbers of BNP members were protected by a huge police operation, significant violence broke out, first between local White and Asian youth and then, on a more significant

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scale, between Police and Asian youths driven back into the largely Asian area of Savilletown. Controversial local journalist Danny Lockwood observed: That Saturday afternoon marked the sea-change in everything about the relationship between Islam and the rest of the world, as witnessed through Dewsbury peoples’ eyes… when the protests over the Salman Rushdie novel Satanic Verses exploded upon Dewsbury’s town centre. (2011: 28)

One of us was in Dewsbury that day to observe the events and talked to many local residents afterwards, so knowing this account to be utter nonsense—the violence by some Asian youth stemmed from anger at Police defence of the BNP provocateurs and then from the very high-­ handed Police response to them and not at all from feelings about Satanic Verses. However, Lockwood acknowledged that ‘the BNP’s rally was nothing more than an act of blatant provocation’ (ibid: 30), and for the BNP, it was a success. Such far-right strategies of provocation and of polarising the feelings of some White people in the M62 region reached a high point in 2001. In Oldham, both the British National Party (BNP) and the National Front made concerted attempts over several months to exploit local racial tensions in the town through repeated visits and rallies, often by activists bussed in from other parts of England (Thomas 2011). This included a violent incursion into an Asian area by far-right linked football fans, with this concerted provocation directly informing the rioting of May 2001 that saw White and Asian communities fight each other, as well as the Police, following a trigger incident that involved far-right activists (Bagguley and Hussain 2008): ‘up to 200 White people were reportedly in the area, retreating in to local pubs after their attacks’ (ibid: 47). That the 12 White defendants subsequently convicted received lighter sentences than the 22 Asian defendants was a source of controversy. Similarly, it was threatened BNP and NF rallies (which did not materialise) in Bradford in July 2001 which prompted the cancellation of the large ‘Mela’ festival and directly provoked the large-­scale rioting by Asian youth. BNP leader Nick Griffin was in the White working-class Bradford estate of Ravenscliffe the night before the rioting, with Ravenscliffe subsequently seeing significant violent disorder by White youths (Waddington 2010).

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2001 marks the point where far-right party political actors can be seen to play a role in White political claim making in the M62 region. In particular, the BNP had some success in appealing to White votes in the M62 corridor region in overtly racialised terms (Copsey 2008). Some of this subsequent electoral surge came through racialised exploitation of local issues, such as Council funding and child sexual exploitation cases, for instance in Keighley, West Yorkshire (made more infamous by Channel 4’s decision to not broadcast a documentary on the issue in the run-up to the 2004 European elections), with this setting the tone for the far-right’s later attempts to exploit such ‘grooming’ CSE cases in other M62 region locales, such as Rochdale, Rotherham and Huddersfield (Miah 2015). The surge also came through significant political neglect by the dominant Labour Party of poorer White housing areas, leaving a local political vacuum that the BNP eagerly filled with racialised explanations for local inequalities and grievances expressed through traditional community politics of a ‘banal’ type that portrayed their views as ‘normal’, rather than ‘extremist’ (Rhodes 2009). This strategy first made progress in the 2001 General Election in Oldham West, where BNP leader Nick Griffin secured 16.1 per cent of the vote, and was particularly successful in Burnley, where the BNP took 10 council seats during the 2002–2006 period, thanks to local White perceptions that mainly Asian electoral wards were being ‘favoured’ by Council funding. In the same period the BNP also secured council seats in Calderdale, Kirklees, Leeds, Bradford, Blackburn and Pendle. This success came in the wake of the 2001 riots, was significantly fuelled by media coverage of asylum seekers nationally, and was exacerbated by the 7/7 terror attacks of July 2005 that were carried out by four young Muslims from West Yorkshire, so fuelling concerns around ‘cumulative extremism’ (Eatwell, 2006), with far-right activism provoking AQ-inspired terrorism and in term fuelling further support for the far-right. In the 2004 European elections, Griffin received 135,000 first preference votes in North-West England but failed to win election (Copsey 2008). This surge was not uniform, though, with the BNP failing to find local electoral success in Oldham thanks to concerted anti-BNP campaigning in mainly White areas (Side by Side 2005). There was also significant disagreement over whether the BNP electoral progress was thanks to the

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‘White working class’. Analysis of the BNP’s success in Burnley showed that it had significantly come in outlying, affluent working-class/lower-­ middle-­class suburbs of the town—White residents who could see the mainly Asian areas but largely didn’t interact with them, rather than in the poorest housing areas (Rhodes 2009). However, the clear lineage of the BNP to post-war British fascism significantly limited its potential, with its national electoral gains quickly reversed. In its place came an arguably new social movement phenomenon of White racialised resentment of the English Defence League street movement and its offshoot groups (Pilkington 2016; Busher 2016) who staged many large-scale, and sometimes violent, street protests, particularly in the M62 region and in the Midlands, between 2009 and 2014. This anti-­ minority, street-protest group articulated White grievance in a very different way, in avowedly claiming to be ‘anti-Islamist’, not racist and in not having a clear connection to the neo-Nazi far-right of the past. Arguably, the EDL (now splintered) was more genuinely a political manifestation of ‘WWC’ grievance. Busher (2016) suggests that the EDL can be situated within the broader tradition of White ‘backlashes’ to multiculturalism in both its forms. Many commentators have characterised the EDL as representing poor, lowly educated young whites but Pilkington’s (2016) ethnographic study of EDL activism highlights the significant role of middle-aged activists and also cautions (as does Rhodes 2011) that support for the extreme right has always come significantly from the lower middle class and skilled working class who feel their social position threatened, as well as from poor Whites. Pilkington does, though, identify the need to ‘recognise the intertwining of persistent unemployment and the permanent settlement of immigrant populations’ (2016: 70) within what Wacquant (2008) characterises as conditions of ‘advanced marginality’. Whether the EDL was an ‘extreme right’ group is highly debateable. Certainly, Pilkington’s respondents vehemently deny that they are ‘racist’, echoing the earlier youth ethnography of Les Back (1996) as they justify this through their ‘convivial’ (Gilroy 2004) friendship with Sikh or African-Caribbean people, whilst explicitly opposing ‘Islam’. Here, ‘multiculturalism’ is a ‘hated ideology’ (ibid: 110), but this distinction is arguably simply a cover for racialised understanding of change and resentment of minority ‘others’ for supposedly being privileged by the powerful in

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the face of this change. This is particularly relevant as Muslims are the racialised ‘other’ population who are growing in number in many of the localities that EDL activists sprang from (see Chap. 5). Relevant here is empirical evidence on attitudes towards the EDL amongst WWC communities such as Dewsbury, scene of repeated and high-profile EDL rallies (Thomas et al. 2015, 2018). Much of the resulting data from research in economically marginalised locales of the town was highly negative towards the EDL and its impacts: They’re just trouble-makers. (FG, Older Adult) I don’t know they just come bombing it and throwing stuff and wrecking the whole town centre which means that nobody can go out shopping and all the shops have to close down. (Focus Group, Young person) I don’t understand EDL. I think that they’re all retarded. They’re doing drugs, they’ve got balaclavas on that they probably nicked and I don’t know what they’re doing, they’re not English Defence League, they’re not defending anybody else, they’re just chatting shit… I don’t think they speak for me. (Focus Group, Young person)

This qualitative data was supported by data from a household survey, with just a small minority of respondents expressing support for the EDL: Of those who had heard of the EDL, the overwhelming majority (81%) described them in broadly negative terms. The five terms most frequently used to describe the EDL were anti-Muslim (58.3% of respondents), racist (36.2%), hooligans (27.5%), misguided (27.5%) and nuisance (19.7%). The five terms least frequently used to describe the EDL were insignificant (3.2%), heroes (5%), peaceful (6.4%), joke (6.9%) and brave (7.8%) (Thomas et  al., 2018: 276).

However, this Dewsbury data is not without its complexities. For instance, only 36.2 per cent of respondents described the EDL as a ‘racist organisation’, suggesting that they had made significant progress in persuading the public that they were not a racist or an extreme organisation. The broader research data on White attitudes to ethnic diversity and

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mixing from this study discussed earlier in the chapter also indicated a significant overlap between EDL themes and community attitudes. Some of this overlap in the data related to White female experiences and perceptions of interactions between Asian men and White women: It’s surprising how many girls want to get involved in the EDL rallies… It’s exciting, it’s curiosity, they’ve had issues with probably Asian boyfriends or contact with Asian men. (Interview: Youth Worker, Asian male)

Here, Pilkington emphasises the importance of emotion and of the emotional perception and understanding of local changes that drove this EDL activism. In particular, a changing demographic balance in their locality, to the detriment of the White population (echoing Cockburn’s (2007) earlier, emotion-driven findings about young BNP activists in Blackburn discussed above and Smith’s (2012) stress on the importance of individual perception of change) and at the time of increasing economic insecurity and marginality is central to activists’ resentments and motivations for action. For many, these emotional concerns focus on increased competition from minorities for (dwindling quantities of ) social goods, such as social housing, or to ‘unfairness’ in the conduct of schooling (Hewitt 2005), and are superheated by racialised understandings of local CSE cases that see ‘White girls’ as the victims. This leads Pilkington to observe of the EDL street movement: ‘What might appear to be aggressive assertion of a powerful majority subjectivity is exposed as the further destabilising of already insecure selves’ (2016: 152). Unarguably, an ‘ethnic penalty’ still exists for non-White minorities in the region and nationally, yet EDL activists articulated a ‘discourse of infringement’ (ibid: 111). Arguably, this can only be understood within the context of the economic trajectory of the M62 region and similar, deindustrialised locales. Here, the spatial nature of the resulting ‘social exclusion’ (Byrne 1999) and the advanced marginality experienced by many working-class residents, both White and non-White, in a neoliberal era of the denial of class inequality whilst publicly supporting racial/ ethnic equality has created the conditions for racialised understandings of loss and marginalisation for many poorer White people in the region.

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In retrospect, both this post-2001 BNP electoral surge and the EDL’s strong street-protest presence in the M62 corridor region can arguably be seen as first indicators of the racialised Brexit process, which saw large parts of the north of England, particularly the deindustrialised, ethnically polarised towns of the M62 region, vote to leave the EU in a stunning political upset. Here, the crucial role of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) in targeting WWC voters who felt themselves to be ‘let behind’ and ‘second class citizens’ in ex-industrial areas of the north of England and the Midlands in the years leading up to the June 2016 European referendum cannot be overstated (Ford and Goodwin 2014). Ford and Goodwin (2014) chart how the previously middle-class, largely ex-Conservative UKIP leadership sensed a political opportunity from 2009 onwards amongst such northern voters: ‘when the party began appealing to disadvantaged voters, including those from traditionally Labour voting groups; White working class people’ (ibid: 108). Northern-based UKIP figures, such as Paul Nuttall, argued that such northern voters felt further threatened by the post-2004 influx of eastern European migrants competing for jobs, in a context where they already felt alienated by neoliberal economic decline and growing ethnic minority communities in ‘their’ towns. Polling at the time showed UKIP support to be heavily concentrated in the most economically disadvantaged, insecure and pessimistic parts of society. Accordingly: ‘UKIP recognised their potential for electoral growth and moved quickly to win over a base of disgruntled, working class and poorly-educated voters’ (ibid: 93). They were helped here both by voters who had previously voted BNP but also by people hesitant to support an ‘extreme’ BNP but who did not view UKIP or its aims as ‘racist’—UKIP rapidly displaced the BNP across the region. Accordingly, UKIP started to gain significant support in northern by-elections, such as 21.7 per cent in Rotherham in November 2011 in the wake of a large-scale, local CSE case (Rotherham voted overwhelmingly for BREXIT in 2016). Ford and Goodwin identify explicit parallels between this WWC support for UKIP and developments in other European states, where the growing radical right have increasingly become the new working-class parties. Here, economic experience and the level of educational qualifications were very clear indicators for UKIP/ BREXIT support amongst so-called left behinds (ibid: 122):

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The onset of a post-industrial economy that prioritised white collar skills, training and professional qualifications had given blue-collar workers few opportunities to progress and left then isolated, insecure and pessimistic about the future and resentful towards the established political class. (ibid: 112)

For such WWC voters in the M62 corridor region, such feelings had been exacerbated by growing ethnic diversity and increased, post-2004 European immigration, both of which they perceived as both culturally challenging (partly to their implicit assumption of preference) and economically threatening. Here, deindustrialisation had been coterminous with non-White immigration and the development of settled minority communities from the 1960s onwards, whilst recent European migration had brought job and wage competition just as post-2008 crash austerity kicked in. These ‘left behind’ WWC voters of M62 towns often see multiculturalism and globalisation as alien and threatening forces, and minorities and new migrants locally are easier to identify than the faceless and remote forces driving the neoliberal globalisation that has unmade their areas and traditional communities. Traditionally Labour voters, such M62 ‘left behinds’ now think that Labour ‘favours’ ethnic minorities and immigrants. Unwilling to vote Conservative for historical reason, UKIP and BREXIT have been viewed as legitimate in a way the BNP were not for many. Much of the UKIP support in the M62 region in the years leading to the 2016 referendum and for the BREXIT vote was based on perceptions of and emotions about local changes, threats and decline. Here, the simplistic and indeed disastrous 2016 Referendum was a supposedly ‘single issue’ vote but Ford and Goodwin had already identified that: UKIP’s voters are motivated by concerns about immigration, the protection of traditional British identity and values and a remote and unresponsive political elite. (2014: 274)

In a report drawing on long-term national polling carried out in the years before and after the 2016 BREXIT vote, anti-racist campaigning organisation Hope not Hate (2018) identify that BREXIT, ‘became a space where people expressed broader resentments at the pace of change and

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the loss they felt in their lives’ (p. 8) and that, although economic concerns fluctuate in relation to the buoyancy of the economy, ‘cultural concerns remain embedded and views have become increasingly polarised’ (2018: 10). Hope not Hate’s polling study has focussed particularly on economically marginalised, mainly White communities. Here, 41 per cent of people polled in March 2018 ‘believe that Britain’s multicultural society isn’t working’ (ibid: 15), with the study’s authors identifying six distinctive groups of voters in relation to attitudes to diversity and migration. These groups include ‘latent hostility’ and ‘active enmity’, and, ‘the most hostile attitudes emerged in places which had suffered loss of key industries…where participants often told a broader story about dissatisfaction with their own lives’ (ibid: 13). The location of these areas very much chimes with the arguments presented in this book: Of all the 100 areas with the greatest proportional affiliation to the active enmity group, all are located in residential areas in towns or on the outskirts of cities, with 93 of the 100 are in the Midlands and the North and over half located across the North-East and Yorkshire and Humberside…it is clear that the vast majority of these areas are in towns. (ibid: 24)

Here, White support for BREXIT can be seen as the latest and most opaque vehicle for political expression by ‘left behind’, WWC voters in deindustrialised towns of the M62 corridor region.

Conclusion: The Thomas Theorem This chapter has reflected on the journey of White communities in the M62 corridor region from being a majority that expected new migrants to adapt and fit in and was often oppressive in its racial superiority to the strange position of recent decades where significant sections of this White population, especially the so-called White working class, see themselves as a ‘left behind’, oppressed minority who are viewed as inferior second class citizens by society’s elite and by minorities. Empirical academic research in the region, our own included, consistently identifies these White feelings of ‘unfairness’, which are also consistent with parallel

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regions of other Western European societies. In many ways, this is very hard to explain, as White people not only remain the clear majority in the region but one that is factually better off than their non—White ethnic minority neighbours, who continue to experience an ‘ethnic penalty’ in income, employment and health experiences: By 2016, Oldham was reportedly the most derived town in England. However, it is also one of the towns with the highest levels of inequality between its White and non-White population. (Hope not Hate 2018: 31)

This brings to mind the theorem coined by the ‘Chicago School’ sociologist, W.I. Thomas (Thomas and Thomas 1929: 572), namely that if enough people believe a situation to be true, it is real in its consequences. The political manifestations discussed above are evidence of the consequences in the M62 region, drawing on understandings from the inter-­ethnic contact (or the lack of it, in many cases) also discussed earlier. Here, longgrowing White racialised resentments around the presence of, and perceived competition from, ethnic minority (and especially, Muslim) communities has melded with feelings of economic marginalisation stemming from the neoliberal state economic failure to fill the void of deindustrialisation with viable employment opportunities. Processes coterminous with this long economic regional decline—significant minority inwards migration, first from South Asia and the Caribbean and latterly from Eastern Europe, and European Union membership—are now seen by many ‘WWC’ residents of the region as causal of that economic decline, rather than the several decades of uncontrolled neoliberal globalisation and its malign impacts on once prosperous and proud towns along the M62 corridor.

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7 Educated to Be Separate?

Introduction Debates associated with education, race, place and space have been crucial to the towns and cities along the M62 corridor. Education has often been associated with the twin questions of segregation and assimilation. Political debate associated with segregation is associated with the first Muslim seminary which opened its doors to students in 1979 in Bury, Greater Manchester. Paradoxically, the negativity associated with segregation wasn’t associated with the first Muslim school, which was established in the late 1800s by the Liverpool Muslim Institution by  Abdullah Quilliam (d.1932) a middle-class convert to Islam. Moreover, some of the seminal controversies, which have shaped national conversations around education, have significant roots within the M62 corridor. This section will focus on three crucial debates ranging from the Bussing and dispersal policies during the 1960s and 1970s (developing the discussion of this in earlier chapters) and the discourses on assimilation how this has shaped recent debates on integration and community cohesion. Secondly, it will explore the politics of language, and how contemporary

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debates around teaching English to Muslim women with a view of deradicalising their children have much deeper roots and connections to debates associated with Section 11 funding during the early 1980s. Finally, contemporary debates associated with Muslim faith schools and Islamist entryist politics, paradoxically gives way to mainstreaming and academisation of Muslim schools, which further demonstrates some of the complex and contradictory spaces of government policies.

Bussing and Dispersal Bussing as a policy to tackle racial segregation was developed in the USA during the period of desegregation of US schools following the Brown v Board of Education (1954). Here, the focus of the US policy of Bussing was predicated upon addressing the historical injustice of the policy of ‘separate but equal’ policy rhetoric. In the English context, Bussing policy was based upon the policy of integration and assimilation and not through the pursuit of racial justice (Esteves 2018), as we initially discussed in Chaps. 2 and 3. In England, a number of authorities implemented the policy of Bussing from the early 1960s to the mid-1980s. The policy of Bussing was championed by the Conservative MP Sir Edward Boyle—who was the Minister for Education during the crucial phase of Commonwealth migration (and subsequently the Chancellor of University of Leeds). Whilst a number of local authorities schools utilised Bussing as a dispersal policy, it is interesting to note that a number of local authorities explicitly rejected this policy. This included areas with large concentration of Black and Asian pupils, including: Birmingham, London (Inner London Education Authority), Manchester and Leeds. The policy of Bussing was developed in Southall, West London—a policy which would continue from 1963 to mid-1980s  (ibid.). In fact, a total of 12 local education authorities (LEAs) opted for a policy of dispersal in England, which is highlighted in Table 7.1. It is clear from the table that four of twelve local authorities in question are situated on the M62 corridor, namely Blackburn, Bradford, Halifax and Huddersfield.

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Blackburn Bradford Bristol Ealing (Sothhall) Halifax Hounslow Huddersfield Leicester Luton Walsall West Bromwich Wolverhampton Esteves (2018)

The historical context of the Bussing policy revolved around the predominant concerns of White parents over the Beaconsfield school, Ealing. In light of the recent Commonwealth migration, it was feared that Beaconsfield school would become a ‘coloured school’, in other words that non-White people would become the dominant group within two years unless ‘drastic steps were taken’ (Esteves 2018). Following a subsequent visit to the city of Ealing by Boyle, a policy of dispersal was considered to be the ideal solution for this problem (ibid.). Whilst this policy was seen as a progressive policy by some especially in light of the Jim Crow shadow in the USA; however, this policy measure in general and immigration policy in  particular was challenged by many people within the political right. The timing of Boyle’s policy of dispersal was crucial, especially given that it was five years before the infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech given in 1968 by Boyle’s fellow Conservative MP, Enoch Powell, together with the increasing number of BME students within state schools. The policy of dispersing Black and minority ethnic students was based upon a quota system: this system was used differently by the respective LEAs. For example, some schools used a 33 per cent quota system, whilst others adopted a quota of 10 per cent (ibid.). It is crucial to note that whilst the policy of dispersal was a racialised policy of assimilation aimed at particular the West Indians and Pakistanis, it did not apply to non-­ racialised groups including Poles, Irish and Italians (Ibid.). The policy of

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dispersal, as argued by many scholars, went against the fundamental principal of parental choice as enshrined in the 1944 Education Act, thus undermining the rights of West Indian and Pakistani parents (ibid). Bradford City council was one of the first major English cities to make use of the Bussing policy. Moreover, unlike Southall and various other LEAs, the policy of Bussing was implemented in a way designed to attract less publicity. Similar to a number of other cities in England, Bradford attracted significant numbers of migrants from Mirpur, Pakistan, especially due to the construction of Mangla Dam. In fact by February of 1963 at least five of the primary schools exceeded the quota of 25 per cent placed on schools by Bradford City (ibid.). The council minutes which recorded the quota of 25 per cent is highlighted below: A limit should be fixed on the proportion of immigrant children admitted to a particular school, this to be 25% in the case of primary schools, subject to this percentage being reduced in the case of large schools; for secondary schools it may be that the limit should be fixed considerably lower and each school should be dealt with in the light of its particular circumstances. (Bradford Education Services Committee Minutes 27:11:1964; cited in Esteves 2018)

The policy of Bussing was not designed to serve the interest of the minority communities. For example, the Asian parents had to travel to the town hall to have their children’s names registered with the town hall; whilst White parents could walk into their local schools and have their names entered on the school roll (ibid.). The neighbouring towns of West Yorkshire had a combination of different approaches: Halifax, which is situated within the Calderdale LEA area of West Yorkshire, whilst developing the policy of dispersal at a later stage (2018) continued its policy long after it was abandoned in Bradford (ibid.). However, a Commission of Racial Equality report felt that the policy of dispersal indirectly discriminated against Asian pupils (Garner 2007). The policy of dispersal was finally phased out during the 1980s, largely due to pressures from parents and community activism following high-­ profile cases of racist violence experienced by Black and Asian pupils bussed to White neighbourhoods. The campaign was mobilised by a range of

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high-profile civil rights and educational organizations, including the Indian Workers Association, West Indian Student Association and the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination. In Bradford, the campaign was organised by the National Union of Teachers, Bradford Teachers Against the Nazis and the Bradford Community Relations Council (Esteves 2018). The late 1970s and the 1980s witnessed a number of high-profile murders of Black and Asian men. For example, the murder of 18-year-old Sikh boy Gurdip Singh Chagger in 1976; the murder of the 18-year-old textile worker of Bangladeshi origin—Altab Ali in 1978, and Blair Peach, teacher from New Zealand, murdered in 1979 played an important role in shaping politics of resistance throughout the 1980s (Ramamurthy 2006). Perhaps the most important case within the context of education was linked with the murder of 13-year-old Ahmed Iqbal Ullah. Ullah, of Bangladeshi heritage, was stabbed to death in the school playground at a secondary school in Burnage, Manchester. The McDonald inquiry into the incident concluded that racism and racial violence played a crucial role in his murder. This damning report provided systematic examples of racism by members of staff and pupils against Muslim youths, and also documented graphic examples of institutional forms of racism and of ‘clumsy’ policy implementation, which we discussed earlier in Chap. 4. Huddersfield (now part of the Kirklees local authority area), whilst adopting a policy to disperse both Asian and West Indian students also carried out a novel ‘experiment’ of ‘segregation in order to promote integration’ (Burgin and Edson 1967). The experiment was situated in the Spring Grove Primary School, Huddersfield, which focused on the diverse ways the school responded to the language and the cultural ‘needs’ of minority ethnic communities in Huddersfield. The research by Burgin and Edson (1967) was published by the Institute of Race Relation (IRR), London, prior to the infamous take-over by Sivanandan which transformed IRR from a pro-integration think tank with connections with the government agencies in 1958 to its subsequent transformation in the 1970s as an agency of radical academics and Black activists (Sivanandan 2008). The research documents policy and the ideological perceptions of teaching staff during the early periods of the schooling of minority ethnic pupils in an ‘English language school, within a school’ (Burgin and Edson 1967: 27). The research shows how a small primary school in Huddersfield

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was responding to the English language ‘needs’ or ‘problems’ of a growing population. These problems, according to Burgin and Edson (1967) were not only associated with the learning of the English language, but also linked to the ‘social and cultural problems’ which minority ethnic communities possessed. The purpose of schooling was also connected to the broader issue of cultural assimilation. It was felt that ‘over the years, the more integrated with ‘our way of life’ the young people become, the more they will estrange themselves from their elders and the culture which was their birthright’ (Burgin and Edson 1967: 22). The research highlights how during the period of 1959–1960 the school admitted 8 students. This figure increasing to 85 students during the period of 1964–1965. In fact, ‘during the early months of 1961, the problem grew apace. More and more children were arriving India and Pakistan, with many as twenty-two new arrivals in ten days’ (Ibid.). In light of the influx of students, Spring Grove school develop an ‘expertise’ in responding to what the teachers constantly refer to as ‘problems’ and educational ‘needs’ (rather than perceiving the educational skill which minority ethnic communities were developing by learning a different language). This involved teaching students separately within the school until they developed a good working knowledge of English, before integrating them to mainstream school. This policy of ‘segregation in order to promote integration’ was so ‘successful’ that Kirkleess Local Education Authority encouraged pupils with a ‘language problem’ be enrolled at Spring Grove with the following rationale: We had been most reluctant to ‘segregate in order to integrate’, but it became increasingly apparent as time went on that the new method was paying rich dividend in terms of successful transfer back to normal school classes. (Burgin and Edson 1967: 31)

Whilst the above debates regarding Black and Asian pupils focused on concerns regarding race, ethnicity and assimilation, in the town of Dewsbury during the late 1980s White parents were objecting to school merger with predominantly Asian schools. The most famous historical example of this was captured by the Parental Alliance for Choice in Education (PACE), which supported predominantly White parents from

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the Thornhill area in refusing to send their children to a school in a predominantly Asian area of Thornhill, as required by Kirklees Council, West Yorkshire. Instead, the parents decided to set up a makeshift school above a pub in Thornhill whilst awaiting a judicial review of their ability to choose a predominantly White school in the Overthorpe area. This was held at the High Court in July 1988 (Naylor 1989). Perhaps what is important to note that the outcome of the case against Kirklees Council was won on the second day of the judicial review with the concession that technical and procedural issues would oblige the council to accede to PACE’s demands. The crucial themes arising from this case were: the way in which concerns about race and ethnicity were masked by debates relating to individual freedom and the public good and the shortcomings of ‘multicultural education’ (Naylor 1989), as we discussed in Chap. 4; and the way in which the White parents based their public appeal on cultural and religious objections to schools with a Muslim-majority intake. This example has rarely featured in discussions of ‘self-segregation’. Some 20 years after the school Bussing controversy, a similar policy of school merger was introduced under the New Labour. Whilst there are differences between the approaches, nevertheless the overall focus was motivated by ideas of integration and assimilation. It is worth point out that the policy of Bussing is only one strand of dispersal; in fact, school merger was a key policy, which was utilised in Blackburn, Burney, Oldham and Leeds can be seen as a similar approach to Bussing (Miah 2012). In its more recent form the policy of school merger dominated four local authority areas in the north of England; two of these areas experienced the race riots during the summer of 2001. These local authorities used the school academies programme and the Building Schools for the Future programme to tackle the issue of school segregation by merging schools with different ethnic cohorts. School academies were introduced by the New Labour government in 2000 and later extended by the Conservative-led coalition government through the Academies Act 2010 (Adonis 2012). It allowed schools to become independent of local authority control, opening the sector to the free market by allowing businesses, charities and faith groups to run schools, while retaining public funding. This particular model of schooling has been seen as replacing a ‘stakeholder approach’, consisting of

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community groups, schools, parents and local authorities as key partners, with ‘corporate governance’, which includes businesses and charities as key partners. This particular approach to school desegregation typically involved a school with a mainly Muslim cohort merging with a school with a predominantly White intake. Four local authorities in on the M62 corridor or adjacent to adopted such an approach: Blackburn, Burnely, Leeds and Oldham (Miah 2012). The approach of dispersal involved, first, local authorities that had a problematic issue with racialised spaces, either through experiencing racial tensions, such as Burnely, Leeds and Oldham, or through the attention of the national media due to its concern of spatial segregation as in the case of Blackburn. Second, schools with increasing Muslim cohort or majority Muslim state schools were either closed down, as in the case of Grange Comprehensive school in Oldham, and relocated in a predominantly White locality in Oldham. Third, ‘problematic schools’ were also merged together—this typically involved two schools, one with a majority Muslim cohort merged together with school with White working-class students. For example, Mathew Murray School, located within the diverse neighbourhood of Beeston and Holbeck was merged with Merlyn Rees Community school, which had a predominantly White cohort, by creating a new school academy namely—South Leeds Academy. The closure of Mathew Murray school was significant especially given that two of the four 7/7 bombers, Siddique Khan and Hasib Hussain, attended the school. A similar policy of school merger was also adopted in Oldham with the closure and merger of Breeze Hill School with Counthill School by creating the Oasis Academy. Crucially, the location of the new schools which came as a result of the school mergers were located within White residential areas (Miah 2012). One of the most cited schools involved in the school’s merger policy, namely Waterhead Academy, Oldham opened its doors to the social psychologist Professor Miles Hewstone and his research team to see whether the ‘experiment’ of bringing pupils from different ethnic backgrounds was breaking down ethnic barriers between the pupils within the school. Over a period of three years they generated sufficient data, which included surveys which tracked changes within attitudes and values amongst minority ethnic and White students. Hewstone’s (cited in Edmonds 2015) team asked every student in several year groups to list up to ten of

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their closest friends, they then used this data to monitor how their social groups evolved over a two-year period. The team also studied friendship groups within the school canteen in Waterhead, in order to determine whether ethnic clustering occurred within school. The findings of their study, was inconclusive: in fact it depends upon how you interpret the data. The findings from observational data (Edmonds 2015) from the school canteen reinforced existing research from the USA, which demonstrated how segregation between schools may often lead to segregation within schools (Miah 2015). The data showed patterns of ethnic clustering between Asian and White students within the school canteen. The results from the network study also demonstrated how 2.5 per cent of the White students’ friends were Asians when the students first arrived at the school. By the end of that year, friendship groups between Asians and Whites formed only 7.5 per cent (Edmonds 2015). The most optimistic findings of the research by Hewstone and his team revolved around the survey data, which aimed to measure attitude towards members of different ethnic groups. They did this by tracking a small sample of 100 students preschool merger and post-school merger. The survey asked children to rank their attitudes on a one-to-five scale— by asking children: ‘When you meet white people British/Asian British boys do you feel nervous?’ And: ‘How much do you trust White British/ Asian British pupils?’ The survey data showed how positive variables, such as trust and liking, increased over the years, whilst negative variables decreased over the years. It showed how ‘the negative attitudes of Asians to whites from 2012 to 2015 dropped from 3.078 to 2.583. For the white group the drop is from 3.572 to 3.183’ (Edmonds 2015). Whilst the above empirical findings are rather optimistic there is also a number of structural concerns, which can undermine the contact hypothesis within the borough. For example, the site of the Breezehill school attracted Asian students due to the location of the school in a predominantly Asian neighbourhood, but it has more recently been earmarked for a new school through the government’s Free School initiative by the Oasis Multi-Academy Trust (Dobson 2017). The Oasis Academy manages a total of 48 academies, including two in Oldham. Furthermore, the former Grange School site, in Oldham was closed down and moved to a mainly White section of the Borough because over 90 per

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cent of the students were from minority ethnic communities. The same site has been given to a new primary school Northmoor Academy, which will undoubtedly attract students from mainly Bangladeshi pupils from its local neighbourhood.

L anguage and Schooling/Muslim Experiences of Education The above section focused on the educational policy attempts at tackling concerns of race, space and politics associated with assimilation and integration. This section intends to focus on the relationship between language, place and Muslim experiences of education.

Mind Your Language: Language and Schooling The 2001 riots and the subsequent plethora of reports, signalled a paradigm shift away from the discourse of cultural difference and diversity to shared identities and British values (Clarke 2001; Ouseley 2001; Ritchie 2001; Cantle 2001). The focus on language to shape policy debates on integration has been a key feature in recent public policy discourses in integration (Casey Review 2016). It is argued that promoting the English language will encourage social mixing among young people, and secure “women’s emancipation in communities where they are being held back by regressive cultural practices” (cited in Asthana and Walker 2016). In fact, the argument concerning teaching English to Muslim women has been extended tackle radicalisation and extremism. For example, the former prime minister David Cameron launching a £20 m language fund stressed in the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that ‘if you’re not able to speak English, not able to integrate, you may find therefore you have challenges understanding what your identity is and therefore you could be more susceptible to the extremist message coming from Daesh’ (Mason and Sherwood 2016). Despite the lack of evidence connecting radicalisation and extremism with language; nevertheless, the idea of using language as a way of framing minority communities has a very long

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history within educational policy debates. Given the policy framing of language within the context of British values discourse it could be argued that language play both a functional purpose and also acts as a cultural tool. One of the earliest government reports to frame education and language was the Plowden Report (1967) which was commissioned by the then minister for education Sir Edward Boyle. It took almost three years for Lady Bridget Plowden to complete the report, which focused on a holistic review of primary education in England. The three-volume report did devote a small section on ‘immigrant children’, identifying the practical and functional benefits of learning the English language for both parents and also pupils, as is made clear in this extract: The worst problem of all is that of language. Teachers cannot communicate with parents; parents are unable to ask questions to which they need to know the answers. It is sometimes impossible to find out even a child’s age or medical history. Opportunities for misunderstanding multiply. (Plowden 1963: 69)

The Plowden (1963) Report saw language as a cultural tool by stressing the importance of the ‘correct’ English language for functional use. For example, the English language or the ‘Creole’ English spoken by many West Indian migrants was not deemed to be sufficient for the functional daily use within schools and employment practice (Plowden 1963: 72). It was interesting to note that the question of language fluency was often linked to ‘race’: for example, it is noteworthy that the profusion of regional dialects or accents within Britain was not seen as a particular problem, only the languages of migrant West Indian communities. To ensure migrant communities fully assimilated, it was important to ensure they were taught the correct English or ‘received pronunciation’—this is further clarified below: Immigrant children who arrive later in their school life have much greater problems. They need to learn a new language after the patterns and often the written forms of their own language have been thoroughly mastered. This calls for special techniques and materials and poses problems to which little research has been directed. It is necessary to distinguish between the

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non-English speaking Cypriot or Asian child and the West Indian who speaks a vernacular form of English, influenced to some extent by ‘creole’ English. It is a dialect form which, if not supplemented by a form nearer to ‘received pronunciation’, may place the speaker at a disadvantage in seeking employment and in ordinary social contacts. (Plowden 1963: 73)

Some ten years later, the Bullock Report, also known as A Language for Life, was published in 1975. The report was an outcome of an independent committee chaired by Alan Bullock. Bullock was educated at Bradford Grammar and later went to study classics and modern history at Oxford. The Bullock Report (1975) devoted considerable attention to the Bradford experience and also the educational provisions provided to minority ethnic communities. It recognised the importance of teaching ‘correct’ English, thus echoing the Plowden Report (1967), whilst recognising the importance of mother tongue. More crucially it recommended teaching English to Black and minority ethnic communities as a specialist skill (Bullock Report 1975: 291). He also noted how a number of towns have an effective way of teaching English. For example, in the following observation based upon his field visits he mentions how Bradford and Bolton approached the teaching of English: It is no easy task to help teachers to this awareness, and cooperation and experiment are called for within and between schools. We were impressed by the efforts of schools we visited in Bolton and Bradford, where the specially appointed language specialists had devised a flexible cooperative system within the school. They functioned both as teachers and consultants, sitting in on subject classes, analyzing the linguistic demands made on immigrant learners in different areas of the curriculum, and offering running help to the children as the class proceeded. (Bullock Report 1975: 11)

Bullock (1975) not only encouraged the teaching of English to pupils but also saw the need to teach English to parents through a combination of dedicated teachers who would work with pupils and also parents— often throughout the summer holiday. Unlike the Plowden Report, Bullock (1975) does acknowledge bilingualism not as a special educational need but rather as a special skill minority communities possess. He argues that bilingualism is an asset for wider society, and he is critical of

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how bilingualism is often seen as a particular skill amongst middle-class parents and not the deprived communities living in the inner cities. He shows how within a ‘linguistic conscious’ nation we should see bilingualism as an asset which should be nurtured by schools. Schools, he argued, should embrace a positive attitude to their pupils; they should see pupils as possessing a linguistic skill rather than a deficit. Whilst rejecting some of the established views in schools which resisted the prospect of bilingualism, he argued that bilingualism, wherever possible should nurture, or indeed deepen, their knowledge and understanding of their mother tongues. He maintained that ‘school that really welcomes its immigrant parents must also be prepared to welcome their languages, to display notices and other materials written in them, and even to adopt some of the rhymes and songs learnt by the young children at home’ (Bullock 1975: 294).

 ection 11 Funding: Mother S Tongue Controversies The 1966 Education Act introduced Section 11 funding as a way of tacking the concern of poor or inadequate English within BAME communities through lightening the ‘immigration burden’ of local authorities. The Section 11 enabled schools and local authorities to apply to the Home Office for funds ‘to help meet the special needs of a significant number of people of commonwealth origin with language or customs which differ from the rest of the community’ (Jolliffe 1994: 3). The size of the Section 11 budget was rather substantial with a total of £ 3.2 million allocated for 1967–1968; during the period between 1984 and 1985 a total of 98 million was spent. The figure went up to £120 million from the period of 1993–1994 (ibid.). Section 11 funding was available for local authorities (or schools), which had a population size of 2 per cent or more of children of ‘commonwealth immigrants’ (Dawn and Hibbert 1987). Many schools were quick to obtain Section 11 funding and to use it for mainstream teaching posts which were nor directed towards BAME pupils. For example, a survey conducted by the Community Relations Council (1976) noted how only 18 out of 54 local authorities that obtained Section 11 funding used it for targeted posts

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relating to BAME pupils (Jollifle 1994). The focus and emphasis of Section 11 funding, in light of national policy directions, shifted away from funding of posts to funding of projects, which focused on the following key areas: • • • •

English language support Raising attainment of ethnic minority pupils Strengthening ties between school and communities Pastoral care

Section 11 funding was hugely controversial. For example, as early as the early 1980s Home Office Select committee observed: ‘there is no single aspect of Section 11 which has escaped criticism’ (Cited in Dawn and Hibbert 1987: 63). First, some scholars felt that it was a policy which was ‘done to the BAME pupils’ especially given the fact that neither Black nor Asian parents were consulted (ibid.). Second, disproportionate numbers of White staff were employed on the back of the Section 11 funding. Research conducted by Jollifle (1994) noted how significant numbers of staff employed under Section 11 were White staff. This led some education campaigners, such as Paul Boatang, to cynically pose the following question: Why is Section 11 like an iceberg? Because there is lot of it around, you can’t see much of it, and it’s very, very White! (Cited in Dawn and Hibbert 1987: 64). Furthermore, the small number of Black and Asian staff employed, under Section 11, tended to be more qualified compared to their White counterparts. Finally,  there was significant imbalance between the way the grants were distributed. For example, from the period between 1985 and 1986 it is estimated that Bradford received £4  m, whereas ILEA received over £17 m (Dawn and Hibbert 1987: 59). The Section 11 funding was replaced, under New Labour, in 1999, by shifting the power away from the Home Office to the Department of Education and Employment (DEE). Also, the Section 11 funding was replaced by the  Ethnic Minority Achievement Grant (EMAG), which shifted the focus even further by putting emphasis on ‘educational underachievement amongst minority ethnic groups’. The DEE used a formula, which looked at numbers of EAL (English as an Additional Language) and the total number of BAME pupils underachieving within a local

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authority. EMAG was a key policy drive for the New Labour government in addressing educational underachievement. It was predicated upon the notion that the state should not play a neutral role in light of the rising minority ethnic communities but rather the state had a duty to promote equality of opportunities particularly amongst its minority communities. Whilst, Section 11 funding attracted considerable criticism, especially due to its assimilationist thinking linked to teaching of the English language (Tikly et al. 2005). EMAG widened its scope to tackle the inequalities, which prevented BAME pupils from achieving their full potential. EMAG was developed at a time when New Labour was not only responding to the Lawrence Inquiry, but also at a time when New Labour was trying to develop and promote race equality through the Race Relations Amendment Act 2000 and the Social Exclusion Unit (ibid.). One of key reports to draw the links between educational underachievement, poverty, racial discrimination and social exclusion was Minority Ethnic Issues in Social Exclusion and Neighbourhood Renewal, published by the Social Exclusion Unit in 2000. However, the effectiveness of the EMAG of addressing its stated aim at reducing the educational underachievement of minority communities was inconclusive. For example, a critical analysis of EMAG LEAs’ action plans demonstrated how EMAG has had some impact on achievement levels for Bangladeshi and Pakistani groups, nevertheless ‘it has failed to deliver on its core objective of raising minority ethnic achievement at least as far as Black Caribbean pupils are concerned’ (Tikly et al. 2005: 309).

Mainstreaming and Academisation of Muslim Schools The above sections focused on the debates associated with race, space within the mainstream schooling. This section focuses on the politics of schooling outside the mainstream states sector. It focuses on the changing dynamics of schools as they intersect with claims regarding entryism of radical Islam, the demands for Muslim separate schools and finally with mainstreaming Muslim schools through the governments flagship school academies project.

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As highlighted earlier, some of the early debates relating to Muslims in state schools revolved around the request by the Bradford based Muslim Parents Association to take over state schools and to convert them into voluntary aided Muslim schools. This intervention should be understood within the interplay between intra-community priorities and local government responsibility over service delivery. The nature of service delivery was very much debated and played out within the public space during the early 1980s. This started with the publication by Bradford education authority’s guidelines for local authority provisions for Muslim pupils in state schools. The Education for a Multi-Cultural Society aimed to accommodate needs of Muslim pupils in particular for Halal food provisions. According to Lewis (2002) the Bradford education authority clearly wanted to ‘maximize concessions to Muslims so as to preserve the integrity of the local education system by undercutting the support for the MPA’ (Lewis 2002: 148). The Council of Mosques felt that the MPA did not represent the diverse nature of Muslim communities in Bradford by stating that the MPA proposal compromised ‘different ethnic, national and sectarian’ issues (cited in Lewis 2002: 148). In response to the Council of Mosques’ rejection of the MPA proposal, the council started to provide halal food to Muslim pupils in September 1983. In addition, it stopped the amalgamation of two upper school girls’ schools (ibid). September 1983 was a crucial turning point for Bradford Council: before this date no halal foods were served in any schools with majority Muslim cohort (Halstead 1988). The halal school’s provisions, was initially based upon a pilot scheme in ten schools in Bradford: this was to be later extended to a total of sixty schools (Halstead 1988: 46). In the early 1980s the halal food issue for Muslims was far from straight forward: the objections were not championed by far-right organisations, as is the case with recent protests over ‘halal meat’. Rather the objections were led by animal rights activists and their concerns relating to the slaughter of un-stunned animals. This led to Bradford City Council convening a full council meeting on halal meat (Lewis 2002). The issue was finally resolved following an organised campaign led by the Council of Mosques, this is further highlighted below: The Muslim community was angered by this decision, which seemed to threaten their recently won right, as taxpayers, to have school’s meals which

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their children could eat. The Council of Mosque began to mobilise. It circulated an appeal in Urdu, ‘Historical Decision on Halal Meat’, to Muslim parents asking them to boycott school on 6 March 1983 – the day on which Bradford Council would debate the issue – and, with their children to demonstrate outside City Hall. A large majority of Muslim parents heeded this appeal, with an estimated 10,000 children taken out of school and many participating in the demonstration. (Lewis 2002: 149)

Muslim Schools in History The presence of Muslim schools in England and Wales is often said to have started in 1979 with the opening of Dar-ul-Uloom Bury by the Indian scholar Sheikh Yusuf Motala (Breen 2018). In fact, the earliest Muslim school in Britain, date back to late nineteenth century, with William Quilliam’s Liverpool Muslim Institution, some seventy years before the Muslim mass migration to M62 towns  and cities. William Henry Quilliam, a Liverpool solicitor and resident, embraced Islam in 1887 (aged 31), after returning from a visit to Morocco, and took on the name Abdullah Quilliam. He established one of the first Muslim communities and also one of the first mosques in England. Quilliam was a crucial figure, not only in leading Muslims in Liverpool, but also throughout the Muslim world. The Ottoman Caliph, Sultan Abdul Hameed II gave Abdullah Quilliam the official title of Sheikh al-­Islam for the British Isles and the Emir of Afghanistan recognised him as the Sheikh of Muslims in Britain (Geaves 2010). In addition to writing a number of books, Quilliam edited and published the weekly Muslim journal The Crescent and the monthly international journal Islamic World through its Liverpool Muslim Institution. The Liverpool Muslim Institution presented Islam as a rational religion with the confidence to take on the big scientific questions of the day. It portrayed Islam as a religion which was in tune with high culture and learning. This is reflected on the topics discussed in Quilliam’s Liverpool mosque. For example, in the copy of The Crescent published 27 May 1908 a detailed debate on ‘Ancient Hebrew Poetry’ can be noted. In addition, a lecture on ‘Evolution in light Modern Geology’ can be seen

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advertised at the Liverpool mosque. In line with the rational and scientific view of Islam, Quilliam was keen to ensure the Liverpool Muslim Institute had a strong educational feature, which would include a school. He maintained that there were no contradictions between science and the religion of Islam; the school advertised and was proud to boast the following: The prospectus for the school advertised a high-class education to the children of Muslim parents… The curriculum included French, German, Latin the Classics, Mathematics, Arabic Turkish and Persian. Quilliam points out that Liverpool possessed a fine university college at which degrees in Natural Science, Logic, Law and Medicine could be obtained for successful students from the school. (Geaves 2010: 78–79)

Following 150 years since the birth of Quilliam, the Liverpool Muslim Institute is currently undergoing a refurbishment with the aim to reviving the legacy of Quilliam, with donations from the local Muslim communities but also communities across the Muslim world. Currently, there are no Muslim schools in Liverpool and time will only tell if future schools are developed on the same principles and legacy of Liverpool Muslim Institution. The current discourse associated with Muslim schools stands in stark contrast with the model of debates associated with the Liverpool Muslim Institution. The current headlines surrounding Muslim schools revolve around Muslim self-segregation (Miah 2015). Indeed, these headlines in the British press have fuelled popular fear and backlash against Muslim faith schools. These popular fears are often constructed within the socio-­ political background of counterterrorism and Muslim radicalism (ibid.). Some have argued that principles of cultural diversity in general and Muslim culture in particular are antithetical to liberal values and customs, and as a result greater emphasis should be placed upon the pursuit of an ideal form of life based upon non-negotiable liberal values. It is within this spirit that Muslim schools are often viewed through the prism of divisiveness segregation and counter-liberalism (Short 2002; Merry 2005; McCreary et al. 2007; Odone 2008).

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Entryism and Radical Islam In early March 2014, The Sunday Times, a leading British broadsheet covered a story which involved an ‘Islamist plot to take over schools’ (Kerbaj and Griffiths 2014). The article, based upon a leaked document, highlighted a strategy adopted by ‘radical Islamist’ as a form of ‘entryism’ to state schools. The alleged plot revolved around the idea of a ‘radical Islamist plan’ aimed at infiltrating schools with majority Muslim pupils, and transforming the leadership and management of the school through recruiting ‘hardline Muslim parents and staff’ with a view to implementing a narrow, ultraconservative school curriculum. This was to be achieved by seeking to: [i]dentify poor-performing state schools in Muslim areas; then Salafist parents in each school are encouraged to complain that teachers are ‘corrupting children with sex education, teaching about homosexuals, making their children say Christian prayers and mixed swimming and sports’. The next steps are to ‘parachute in’ Muslim governors ‘to drip-feed our ideal for a Muslim school’ and stir up staff to urge the council to investigate. The strategy stresses the importance of having an ‘English face among the staff group to make it more believable’. Finally, anonymous letters are to be circulated to MPs, press and ministers. ‘All these things will work towards wearing the head down, removing their resolve and weakening their mindset so they eventually give up’. (Kerbaj and Griffiths 2014)

Whilst the above story was associated with the schools in Birmingham, a number of other areas within the M62 corridor were also implicated in the ‘Trojan Horse’ plot, namely: Bradford and Oldham. The two schools associated with the ‘Trojan Horse’ plot in Bradford included Carlton Bolling School and Laisterdyke Business and Enterprise College (Adams 2014). Both of these schools have a significant concentration of Muslim pupils (over 90 per cent). The parents involved in the controversy surrounding Trojan Horse entryism in Oldham involved the Clarskfield Primary School were not only completely vindicated of the claims made by the head teacher by an Ofsted inspection against (Perraudin 2017), but also an internal investigation conducted by Oldham Council.

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The idea of entryism by radical Islamist into state schools, whist lacking credible evidence, as seen by the statement by the Education Select Committee Report (as highlighted below), continues to shape public discourse regarding Muslims in state schools. In fact, some have argued that one of the many ways that the Trojan Horse affair can be interpreted is through the prism of ‘security as a discourse’; a discourse through which certain groups in society are securitised (for a detailed discussion on the Trojan Horse cases, see Miah 2017; Holmwood and O’Toole 2017). No evidence of extremism or radicalisation, apart from a single isolated incident, was found by any of the inquiries and there was no evidence of a sustained plot nor of a similar situation pertaining elsewhere in the country. (House of Commons, Education Committee 2015: 2)

Many have argued that the idea of faith communities running state schools was in fact encouraged by the Department of Education through its School Academies policy (Holmwood and O’Toole 2017). The Academies Act 2010 continues to be a key flagship policy of the Tory party, under this legislation publically funded schools and more crucially failing schools, in England are encouraged to become Academies. Once they have taken the status of school academies, they continue to be state funded, but they have degree of autonomy including the power to establish their own curriculum. The Academies Act also allows failing schools to be taken over by ‘successful’ schools. For example, the Tauheedul Education Trust (TET), renamed as Star Academies, which runs a number of highly successful Muslim faith schools, is currently running two nonreligious schools in Bradford: Laisterdyke Business and Enterprise College and Tong High School. The former school was one of the school, which was embroiled in the Trojan Horse entryism cited above. Star Academies is managed by a board of trustees: out of the eleven members of the trustees five of whom appear to be from non-Muslim background, including the former Labour MP for Blackburn, Jack Straw. The current chief executive officer of the trust is Mufti Hamid Patel, a graduate of an Islamic seminary, and the key person that saw through the evolution of TET to Star Academies multi-academies schools (MAT). More recently, the Star Academies announced they would be the first Muslim school in Britain to

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run a British Army Cadet Force. The Star Academies is perhaps a testimony to the ways Muslim faith schools evolve from the service to solely Muslim pupils to facilitate the educational needs of non-­Muslim pupils.

The Campaign for Muslim Schools The question of the right of Muslims to have their religion acknowledged within the educational spaces can be traced back to the late 1960s in Bradford. The Muslim Association of Bradford together with the Muslim Education Trust was active in mobilising a campaign to push for religious rights for Muslim pupils within state schools. During the late 1960s, these demands were seen to be undermining the Bradford Council’s integration policies (Halstead 1988). Bradford City Council did finally concede to such requests by permitting the teaching of Islam at secondary schools with predominantly Muslim pupils (ibid). As late as 1983, the Muslim Parents’ Association, Bradford, requested via the Bradford Council that they formally take over the running of two secondary schools, namely, Drummond (Middle) School and Belle Vue Girls (Upper) School with a predominantly Muslim cohort (Halstead 1988: 44). Currently, almost all pupils at Belle Vue School are of Pakistani heritage, whilst the Drummond School, which was at the centre of the Honeyford controversy (discussed below), was renamed as Iqra Academy. The purpose and rationale behind the Bradford Parents’ Association is summarised by Halstead (1988). The main reasons for the request were to provide a base for the preservation, maintenance and transmission of the Islamic way of life, to enable Muslim children to have high level of general education while observing the laws of Islam, to protect children from Westernization, seucularization and un-Islamic practices by proving schools with an Islamic ethos, and to ensure that the children were not taught by teachers who had themselves rejected religion. (Halstead 1988: 44)

Whilst the above observation by Halstead (1988) provides a religious and somewhat ‘conservative’ justification for requesting state schools to be granted religious status, the methodological approach seems to have

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been predicated upon the 1944 Education Act, which provided for religious groups to establish their own schools. First, it was argued that the school admissions policy would not be restricted to Muslim pupils only, but rather be inclusive of other religious groups (Ibid). Second, as noted by Modood et al. (1997) and others, the claim by Muslims was not predicated upon any unique privileges to Muslims but rather grounded upon the 1944 Education Act. The request was justified in terms of rights granted under the 1944 Education Act, and was seen as a call for parity of treatment with other minority religious groups in the UK, such as Catholics and Jews who already have voluntary aided schools. (Halstead 1988: 44)

The support for Muslim schools also attracted high-profile Muslim celebrities, such as the pop-star Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens), who also campaigned for state funding of Muslim schools including his own school, Islamia Primary school in Brent, London. In fact, the 1980s were a crucial period in which Muslim activists and also academics were demanding state funding for Muslim schools (Parker-Jenkins et al. 2005). The oppositional presence, by pressures within and outside the Muslims communities to the demands by Muslim Parents Association is interesting to note. First, the pressures from within the communities against the establishment of statefunded Muslim schools came from the Asian Youth Movement, the Community Relations Council and the Bradford Council of Mosques (Halstead 1988). Second, opposition also came outside the community, including members of staff at the Belle Vue Girls schools threatening mass resignation, together with governors at Drummond School, which collected 7000 signatures against the demands (Halstead 1988: 44). Furthermore, the Bradford Council’s, Educational Services Committee voted against the Muslim Parents Association’s request (ibid). The justification behind the rejection by Bradford Council, makes interesting reading. For example, no references were made to religious and ethnic segregation, or the view that the application lacked grass roots support. Instead, many councillors felt that such a school ‘would contravene the whole spirit of the Council’s multicultural policies’ (Halstead 1988: 45). The above case, whilst located within a historical context, demonstrates

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how multicultural policies were used to restrict or even deny Muslim faith schools the same rights enjoyed by other faith communities. Furthermore, it shows how ‘the call for the establishment of Muslim voluntary aided schools marks the limit of what can be tolerated in a multicultural society’ (Halstead 1988: 45). Indeed, some 30 years after the request of Muslim Parents Association there is only one voluntary aided school in Bradford (i.e. state funded), compared to ten independent Muslim faith schools. There are complex factors associated with Muslim Faith Schools, especially relating to the lack of government support and the inadequate financial support (Breen 2018). Nevertheless, a breakdown of the figures provides interesting observations relating to the uptake amongst Muslim parents. For example, Table  7.2 provides a breakdown of Independent Muslim faith sector in Bradford, and also provides a breakdown of the number of pupils attending each school. It is clear from the numbers of pupils on the school roll that these schools are not oversubscribed by Muslim parents. For example, the Al-Markaz Academy for girls has only 20 students on the role, whilst the popular Jaamiatul Imaam Muhammad Zakaria school has only 480 girls. It is crucial to point out that the independent Muslim faith school sector in Bradford is not a monolith, but rather embodies a diverse strand, at the same time sharing an essential core. Table 7.3 provides a typology of the Muslim school sector within the UK. First, it highlights three types of schools: independent Islamic schools, independent Table 7.2   Independent Muslim school sector, Bradford Name of school

Nature of school

Total number of pupils on roll

Al Markaz Academy Al-Mumin Primary and Secondary Crystal Gardens Primary School Darul Uloom Dawatul Imaan Eternal Light Secondary School Elite Light Secondary School Islamic Tarbiyah Prep. School Jaamiatul Imaam Muhammad Zakaria School Olive Secondary School The Fountain

Girls (11–14) Mixed (3–18) Mixed Boys (11–25) Boys (11–16) Boys Mixed Girls

20 179 135 169 63 147 174 480

Mixed Girls

192 113

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Table 7.3   Typology of Muslim school sector Type of school

Emphasis

Islamic Schools Muslim Schools State-Funded Muslim Schools

Islam Islam and Secular Secular and Islam

Muslim schools and state-funded Muslim schools. The following section provides an outline of each of the three Muslim schools sector.

Independent Islamic Schools Sector Islamic Schools within the above list (see Table  7.2) are Darul Uloom Dawatul Imaan and Jaamiatul Imaam Muhammad Zakaria School. Both of these schools, relatively speaking, attract more pupils compared to other Muslim faith schools within the independent school sector. Islamic schools in Bradford are essentially Islamic seminaries established with the view to producing the next generation of Muslim scholars. Most Islamic schools are taught within one of the four schools of Sunni Islam. They place a great emphasis on memorisation of Quran and other Islamic disciplines, namely; Hadith and Fiqh (Islamic Jurisprudence). The teaching of Islam within these seminaries is often done by scholars from the Indian subcontinent, or recent graduates, who have themselves taught within similar seminaries. This means they are taught within a tradition of a long chain of scholars, each passing and preserving a cultural worldview of Islam. Most parents who send their children to these schools do so not because of their specialism in the secular sciences but rather because they want their children to either memorise the Quran or want them to become a ‘Muslim scholar’. Whilst both schools teach secular subjects, most Islamic schools tend to put great emphasis on the Islamic sciences compared to the secular subjects. Despite the shortcomings, they have the following progression routes: either teaching in mosques or other evening supplementary school sector. Many travel abroad and return back to the UK to study within a higher education institution and go on to pursue different career projections. Some even pursue the career of chaplaincy within the UK health, prison or education sector (Gilliat-Ray and Ali 2013).

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The Muslim Independent school sector aims to put emphasis on the ‘secular sciences’ and Islamic studies. The majority of the Muslim schools in England are Independent Muslim schools; the exact number of these Independent schools is difficult to establish. According to the estimates of the Association of Muslim Schools (AMS), established in 1991 to respond to the growing needs within the Independent Muslim school sector, there are 185 Muslim schools in Britain (AMS data as of March 2018). It is difficult to fully establish the exact number of Independent Muslim schools, because not all schools are affiliated with the AMS, nor are they legally bounded to register with them. According to AMS, there are ten schools in Bradford, which are within the independent Muslim school sector as exemplified within Table 7.4, and a total of 28 independent Muslim schools within the key local authorities with large Muslim cohort within the M62 corridor (see Table 7.4). Most independent Muslim schools run on a very tight budget (on average, the independent Muslim school sector charges £2000 per child per year, compared to the state sector, which provides on average £6200 per pupil in secondary schools; this may increase with pupil premium of around £1000, allocated to pupils who are eligible to receive free school meal) (DoE, no date). It can be argued that lack of funding will inevitably compromise the quality of the teachers they are able to employ. The ‘secular subjects’ are also often taught by retired teachers or non-qualified teachers, more crucially due to the restricted budget they are not able to pay qualified teacher salary. This means that they are unable to recruit the best teachers and are not able to provide any progression routes for the existing teaching staff. Unlike the Islamic school sector, which can often Table 7.4   Total number of independent Muslim schools on the M62 corridor

Location

Number

Batley Bradford Dewsbury Huddersfield Leeds Manchester Oldham Rochdale

2 10 5 1 1 4 4 1

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be subsidised by mosques or donors, the independent Muslim school sector is dependent upon tuition fees to manage the schools’ budget. One of the many problems associated with this sector is the impossible task of running a school on a very small budget—this is further summarised below: Independent Muslim schools face on-going financial instability in a struggle to economically sustain themselves. Within these contexts the threat of closure is a constant risk, and some schools will be unsuccessful in finding economic sustainability. (Breen 2018: 47)

State Muslim Faith Schools Sector The first Muslim schools supported by the state occurred during the New Labour government, elected in 1997. The campaign for state recognition over Muslim schools can be traced back during the 1980s—with Independent Muslim faith schools campaign for state recognition and state financial support (Halstead 1988; Parker-Jenkins et al. 2005). The breakthrough for Independent Muslim faith schools happened in 1998 with two Muslim schools receiving state funding: Islamia Primary (Brent, London) and Al-Furqan (Mosely, Birmingham). Many academics have pointed out how the New Labour, support for Muslim schools in general and faith schools in particular was based upon its wider education policy of encouraging independent faith schools to enter state sector (Breen 2018). The justification for this approach was outlined in the Faith in the System report, which was published in partnership with Britain’s major faith leaders. Faith in the system again placed a particular emphasis on encouraging minority religious schools to apply for state funding, stating that there are ‘15,000 Muslim children and around 11,000 Jewish children, including those from low income families, whose parents chose to send them to independent schools with a particular religious character and that the availability of spaces in the maintained sector could provide an important contribution to integration and empowerment of these communities’. (DCSF 2007: 18, cited in Breen 2018: 43)

Some have argued that the ‘slow progress in terms of the numbers of state-­ funded Muslim schools is not due to a lack of demand for such schools among

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Muslim communities’ (Breen 2018: 1). Whilst there is currently no data on the demands of Muslim faith schools; nevertheless, it is interesting to point out the empirical data on Muslim pupils currently attending Muslim faith schools is disproportionate to the media attention it has received. At a national level there are only 13 Muslim faith schools in England receiving state support: this is a very small sector representing 0.1 per cent of the faith school sector (House of Commons 2017). In fact, out of all the schools within the M62 corridor (see Table 7.4) there is one school receiving state funding (namely, Feversham College, Bradford). This is likely to change, with Star Academies in the process of opening two schools in Manchester (Eden Boys and Olive Tree Girls School).

Changing Dynamics of Muslim Schools Since the School Academies Act of 2010 a new trend has emerged within the state-funded Muslim schools sector. Prior to the School Academies Act, most Muslim schools served a mainly Muslim cohort of students. More recently, there is a emerging trend of Muslim schools, under the multi-academies schools structure  (MAT’s) managing schools with a non-Muslim cohort. MAT’s consists of groups of schools collaborating as one to deliver state education. Within the context of the M62 corridor two multi-academy trusts currently manage Muslim faith schools, having been given permission to open and run non-Muslim schools in Bradford; namely, Feversham Education Trust and Star Academies Trust. This trends within the school academies provides an insight into the different ways Muslim faith schools are moving beyond the normative model of Muslim schooling as highlighted above. Feversham College was established in 1984 as Bradford Muslim Girls Community School (BMGCS), an independent school with 26 girls on roll. The roots actually date back to the late 1950s, when the organisation was first inaugurated in 1958 by the Muslim Association of Bradford (Feversham n.d.). BMGCS later changed its name to Feversham College in 1994. The Feversham College was awarded voluntary aided status in 2001 and subsequently became a Multi-Academy Trust in August 2011. Feversham Education Trust is managed by the Muslim Association of

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Bradford, which appoints most of the governors. The academy directors, staff and parents and carers work together to educate girls in the context of the ‘Islamic Sunni Faith as a way of life’. Compared to other state schools, Feversham Academy is smaller than the average size secondary school with 664 on roll. All students are from minority ethnic backgrounds, with a significant number of students of Pakistani heritage. Feversham College is a Muslim faith school for girls which has attracted some controversy from certain section of the media for its compulsory hijab policy; nevertheless, the school is one of the highest ‘performing school in the district’ (Young 2017). In fact, Feversham Education Trust has been given the permission to open a new non-religious school for girls in Bradford. The school intends to take the first pupil cohort in September 2019 (ibid.). Feversham School as a Muslim-faith school model demonstrates the evolutionary nature of the Muslim-faith sector; the school has important dignitaries on the governing body of the school, which further demonstrates the capacity for change and inclusivity. For example, the former Labour Education Secretary Ruth Kelly is one of the Patron’s on the Feversham Education Trust (Young 2017). Tauheedul Education Trust also demonstrates the evolutionary nature of some Muslim faith schools. As is the case with Feversham College, they manage to combine secular with religious primary and secondary schools. For example, the TET Muslim school branch has a particular reference to its Islamic ethos, with references to following educational mission: ‘to promote a culture of educational excellence, from within a caring and secure Islamic environment enriched with the values of discipline, mutual care and respect, which extends beyond the school into the wider community’. Whilst TET schools, which manages the non-faith schools, drops the reference to the ‘Islamic ethos’ in its mission statement, this is clear from the following educational mission statement from the Tong Academy, Bradford: ‘To promote a culture of educational excellence, from within a caring and secure environment enriched with the values of discipline, mutual care and respect, which extends beyond the school into the wider community’. Star Academies manage nineteen state-funded Muslim schools in five geographical areas, including: Lancashire, Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, Midlands and London.

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In fact, Star Academies have seen a meteoric rise, following the Trojan Horse controversy they are seen as the ‘go-to Muslim’ organisations for state-funded Muslim schools.

Conclusion This chapter has highlighted the importance of understanding race, place and space as far as educational debates are concerned. This chapter has highlighted three crucial points relating to this debate. First, this chapter has taken the long view of history to demonstrate the importance of events; in fact, as this chapter has highlighted, it is events that play a seminal role in marking, shaping both policy and politics. For example, it was the seminal event of migration that shaped the assimilationist policy of Bussing, and more crucially it was the key events in Southall, Manchester and Bradford with the rise of Black politics associated with Asian Youth Movements that led to the subsequent decline and abandonment of the policy. Second, it is clear that place and space are not monolithic, rather they represent a constant state of flux—they are shaped by events; whilst, playing a crucial role in shaping key political events. Third, politics of race, place and space have often been tightly linked with assimilation, integration and politics of recognition. These debates and policy responses have often taken a cyclical nature, as seen from the debates associated with language and integration within schools. Finally, the focus on school academies has demonstrated the changing nature of Muslim schools, from catering to Muslim pupils to catering for the generic educational needs of the population.

Bibliography Adams, R. (2014). Two Bradford Schools Drawn in to Trojan Horse Row. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jun/11/bradford-schoolstrojan-horse-ofsted. Accessed Feb 2018. Adonis, A. (2012). Education, Education Education: Reforming England’s Schools. London: Bitback Publishers.

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Asthana, A., & Walker, P. (2016). Casey Review Raises Alarm Over Social Integration in the UK. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/04/ social-integration-louise-casey-uk-report-condemns-failings Breen, D. (2018). Muslim Schools, Communities and Critical Race Theory: Faith Schooling in an Islamophobic Britain? London: Palgrave. Bullock, A. (1975). The Bullock Report: A Language for Life. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Burgin, T., & Edson, P. (1967). Spring Grove: The Education of Immigrant Children. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cantle, T. (2001). Community Cohesion- A Report of the Independent Review Team. London: Home Office. Casey, L. (2016). The Casey Review: A Review into Opportunity and Integration. London: Department of Communities and Local Government. Clarke, T. (2001). Burnley Task Force Report on the Disturbances in June 2001. Burnley: Burnley Borough Council. Community Relations Council. (1976). Seen But Not Served. London: CRC. Dawn, A. and Hibbert, P. (1987) A Comedy of Error: Section 11 Funding and Education. In Tronya, B (ed.) Racial Inequality and Education. London: Tavistok. Dobson, C. (2017). The Site for a New Free School Has Been Selected. Available at: https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchesternews/site-new-free-school-been-13357097 Edmonds, D. (2015). The Integrated School That Could Teach a Divided Town to Live Together. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/nov/05/ integrated-school-waterford-academy-oldham Esteves, O. (2018). The ‘Desegregation’ of English Schools: Bussing, Race and Urban Space, 1960s–80s. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Feversham Academy. (n.d.). About Our School. Available at: http://fevershamacademy.fetrust.org.uk Garner, R. (2007, February 6). Multi-Faith School Planned to Tackle Segregation. The Independent. Geaves, R. (2010). Islam in Victorian Britain: The Life and Times of Abdullah Quilliam. London: Kube. Gilliat-Ray, S., & Ali, M. (2013). Understanding Muslim Chaplaincy. London: Routledge. Halstead, M. (1988). Education, Justice and Cultural Diversity: An Examination of the Honeyford Affair 1984–85. London: The Falmer Press.

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Holmwood, J., & O’Toole, T. (2017). Countering Extremism in Britain? London: Polity Press. House of Commons. (2017). Faith Schools. Available at: https://commonslibrary. parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn06972/ House of Commons, Education Select Committee. (2015). Extremism in Schools: The Trojan Horse Affair. Seventh Report of Session 2014–15. Available at: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201415/cmselect/cmeduc/ 473/473.pdf Jolliffe, J. (1994). Section 11 and Education Provision. Unpublished PhD Thesis, School of Education. University of Manchester. Kerbaj, R., & Griffiths, S. (2014, March 2). Islamist Plot to Take Over Schools. The Sunday Times, p. 1. Lewis, P. (2002). Islamic Britain: Religion, Politics and Identity Among British Muslims. London: I.B.Tauris. Mason, R., & Sherwoo, H. (2016). Cameron ‘Stigmatising Muslim Women’ with English Language Policy. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jan/18/david-cameron-stigmatising-muslim-women-learn-english-language-policy McCreary, E., Jones, L., & Holmes, R. (2007). Why Do Muslim Parents Want Muslim Schools? Journal of International Research and Development, 27(3), 203–219. Merry, M. S. (2005). Should Educators Tolerate Intolerance? Mark Halstead, Homosexuality and the Islamic Case. Journal of Moral Education, 34(1), 19–36. Miah, S. (2012). School De-Segregation and the Politics of ‘Forced Integration’. Race and Class, 54(2), 26–39. Miah, S. (2015). The Groomers and the Question of Race. Identity Papers: Journal of British and Irish Studies, 1(1), 54–66. Miah, S. (2017). Muslims, Schooling and Security: Trojan Horse, Prevent and Racial Politics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Pivot. Modood, T. , Berthoud, R., Lakey, J., Nazroo, J. Smith, P., Virdee, S., & Beishon, S. (1997). Ethnic Minorities in Britain – Diversity and Disadvantage. London: PSI. Naylor, F. (1989). Dewsbury: The School Above the Pub. London: The Claridge Press. Odone, C. (2008). In Bad Faith: The New Betrayal in Faith Schools. London: Centre for Policy Studies.

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Ouseley, H. (2001). Community Pride, Not Prejudice – Making Diversity Work in Bradford. Bradford: Bradford Vision. Parker-Jenkins, M., Haratas, D., & Irving, B.A. (2005). In Good Faith: Schools, Religion and Public Funding. Aldershot: Ashgate. Perraudin, F. (2017). Father Accused of Trojan Horse Plot Says Ofsted Report Vindicates Him. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/ sep/20/father-accused-trojan-horse-plot-ofsted-report-oldham. Accessed Feb 2018. Ramamurthy, A. (2006). The Politics of Britain’s Asian Youth Movements. Race and Class, 48(2), 38–60. Ritchie, D. (2001). Oldham Independent Review  – On Oldham, One Future. Manchester: Government Office for the Northwest. Short, G. (2002). Faith-Based Schools: A Threat to Social Cohesion? Journal of Philosophy of Education, 36(4), 559–572. Sivanandan, A. (2008). A Different Hunger: Writings on Black Resistance. London: Pluto Press. The Plowden Report. (1967). Children and their Primary Schools A Report of the Central Advisory Council for Education (England) London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Tikly, L., Osler, A., & Hill, J. (2005). The Ethnic Minority Achievement Grant: a Critical Analysis. Journal of Education Policy, 20(3), 283–312. Young, C. (2017). Site for New Bradford Girls’ Academy Revealed. Available at: http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/local/localbrad/15901175. Site_for_new_girls__secondary_school_revealed/. Accessed Feb 2018.

8 Conclusion: Not Such a ‘Failure’: A Multiculturalist Space in Development

Introduction This book has engaged with the notion that the M62 corridor region of the north of England is a ‘failed space of multiculturalism’ in both senses of Stuart Hall’s double meaning, a failure both of state multiculturalist policy efforts and in terms of the reality of an increasingly ethnically diverse population in the region. Proponents of such pessimistic analyses have plenty of examples to quote in support of their claims, from the Honeyford and Dewsbury Schools disputes and the Satanic Verses book-­ burning of the 1980s through to the 2001 riots in Oldham, Burnley and Bradford and the West Yorkshire–based 7/7 London bombers. The subtext of all such events and those that dwell on them has been the Muslim background and identity of the region’s most sizeable, and most visible (in all senses) minority community. Here, community claims for public faith adherence, significant ethnic segregation, periodic racial tensions and the terrorist actions of small numbers of people (both Muslim and White) have been bundled together to fuel the ‘failed space’ thesis, a

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thesis that links the towns of the M62 region with areas such as the Molenbeek suburb of Brussels and suburban areas of Sydney in Australia (Khosrokhavar 2016). The ‘failed spaces’ thesis in relation to the M62 corridor both ascribes significant blame to state multiculturalist policies of the last 50 years for these social problems and is highly pessimistic about the future for ethnically mixed towns in the region. This analysis of the past and profound pessimism for the future struck us as fundamentally wrong, both ahistorical in terms of what we know regarding processes of ethnic and social ‘integration’, and representing a category error in portraying both ‘race’ and the agency of racialised ‘communities’ as being causal to the (real and substantial) social problems and challenges of the region. These interrelated concerns prompted us to write this book. Our concern about the fundamentally ahistorical nature of the ‘failed spaces’ thesis and the associated, ongoing ‘moral panic’ about Muslim ‘failure to integrate’ in the region is twofold. First, it ignores all that we know about the ‘integration’ of distinct ethnic and faith migrant communities within western societies. In Chap. 1, we highlighted both the spatial and cultural congregation of such new Irish and Jewish communities in what is now the M62 corridor region and the very significant social tensions and barriers that accompanied the settlement of these communities. As Scheffer (2011) shows, drawing on international experiences, such integration processes take generations and social conflicts and tensions are both inevitable and an essential part of the integration process. The significant, continued presence (and use) of the Catholic school system in the towns and cities of the M62 region some 170 years after the start of the very significant Irish Catholic inward migration is just one illustration of the temporal reality of integration. It is also ahistorical in its disinterest in the profound economic changes in the M62 corridor region over the past 50 years, with the textile and engineering industries that first ‘made’ these towns and brought the significant minority ethnic migration subsequently disappearing. Here, the neoliberal state disinterest in stimulating economic regeneration in such towns has left communities of all backgrounds both economically marginalised and significantly lacking in employment or housing ‘choice’. This concern with contextualising discussion of the ‘failed spaces’ label given to the M62 region within a broader historical consideration of both

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integration processes and economic trajectories have enabled us to offer analysis of the ‘ethnic segregation’ between (racialised) White and Muslim communities that is supposedly at the heart of the M62 region’s ‘failure’. We have attempted to do this through problematising the racialised categories of ‘segregation’. Key themes associated with this are explored in Chap. 2 by arguing how segregation is both a process and a pattern. Here, analysis of these categories has helped us to question and problematise the idea of segregation in light of historical, longitudinal spatial analysis of towns and cities within the M62 corridor. Examining the modern public policy discourses of segregation in the M62 region in light of the Chicago School tradition (sadly neglected by modern academia and policy makers) has helped the book to deconstruct received notions of spatial segregation. This book argues that where there is evidence of spatial (ethnic) segregation, it is in large measure a product of structural forces, and not solely a product of agency and cultural determinism. Furthermore, residential segregation does not imply lack of integration, if one takes this to mean a desire and intention to participate in the social and political commons of the nation. This book has also sought to consider the unbearable weight given to British state multiculturalist policies for all the (real) social tensions, divides and barriers between different ethnic communities in the region. Here, policy is blamed, portrayed as significantly causal in relation to such problems—yet in reality ‘multicultural policy’ has been so limited, varied and internally contradictory in reality that its effects are difficult to determine. In offering a historically contextualised discussion of the role of state multiculturalist policy in relation to experiences in the M62 corridor region, we argue that in order to understand multiculturalism as policy it is essential to understand the following: first, multicultural policy is best understood through a bottom-up and not a top-down lens. Here, the reality of the British multiculturalist policy model has been permission and broad direction with limited resource to local government from national government. Varying national governments throughout the past 50 years have left multicultural policies to be developed and enacted based upon localised issues, concerns and pressures, all with rather modest resources. In short, multiculturalist policy is arguably not an ontological reality—it exists in a space of ‘enactment’, ‘responsibilisation’

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and also contradiction. More crucially, policy has often been challenged and resisted, variously by elected members and their officials, by frontline practitioners and minority communities themselves, for both reactionary and progressive reasons. Here, we have drawn on grounded empirical research—both our own and that of others—around situated multiculturalist policy operation in the region to argue that local ‘policy frames’ (Bleich 2002), driven by local realities and events, have been the key determinant of the nature and content of multiculturalist policy. Often such local enactment of even nationally determined policy has left it looking significantly different from the picture portrayed by academic and political analysts working on a national level. For instance, our own research around ground-level policy implementation has led this book to support the notion that post-2001 national policy approaches of community cohesion have, in fact, been a ‘renaming’ and a ‘re-balancing’ of Britain’s multiculturalist policy approach, rather than its ‘death’ . Significant media and public policy attention driving the ‘failed spaces’ thesis regarding the M62 corridor region has focused on two problematised groups, namely Muslim community and the ‘White working class’ through a process of racialisation and essentialism. Drawing both on our broader historical contextualisation of historical experiences of integration and on the trajectory of the regional economy, we have critically considered the public framing and complex realities of each of these ‘communities’. Regarding the Muslim community, the normative model of looking at Muslims as a fixed and unchanging community were challenged by exploring the relationship between ‘race’, place and space and of identity formation and change. Contrary to popular understanding, Chap. 5 considered how ‘Muslim’ identities within the M62 corridor are not fixed and bounded; rather they are complex, shaped by a combination of local, national and global factors. It further demonstrated how the complex sociopolitical factors that shaped the emergence of ‘Black’ and ‘Asian’ identities—both in community self-identification and subsequently in policy operation—then gave way to what we have characterised as new forms of Muslim cool which are in turn shaped by Black political and cultural aesthetics. By drawing upon political art-based activism, as in the case of FunDaMental, we have argued that Blackness became the means through which young Muslims, Black and non-Black, came to learn and incorporate the critique in their

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own self-making as Muslims (Khabeer 2016). The central theme of this chapter questioned the linear projection of Muslim identities which assumes that the period of 1960–1980s was marked by ethnic identity constructs based upon ‘Black’ and ‘Asian’ categories; whilst, following the Rushdie Affair, during the end of the 1980s, it gave rise to more visible and overt Muslim identities. Instead, this chapter explored diverse themes, such as: race, place, and space and the complex interplay between religion, ethnicity and diaspora. It argued how ‘Muslim’ identity is not a reductive religious manifestation; but rather, a complex and dynamic construct, as seen in the rise of Muslim cool, which intersects ‘Black’, Asian and Muslim categories through musical genres such as hip-hop, rock and punk. Furthermore, Chap. 7 developed the above theme of changing dynamics of Muslim communities by examining the educational debates linked with race, place and space. It argued how key events events that played a seminal role in making and shaping both policy and politics. For example, it was the seminal event of migration that shaped the assimilationist policy of Bussing, and more crucially it was the key events of Black politic resistance that led to the subsequent decline and abandonment of the policy. Moreover, the focus on school academies demonstrated the changing nature of Muslim schools, from catering to Muslim pupils to catering for the generic educational needs of the population. On the question of the White working class, this book has explored the journey of White communities in the M62 corridor region from being a majority that expected new migrants to adapt and fit in and was often oppressive in its racial superiority to the strange position of recent decades where significant sections of this White population, especially the socalled White working class, see themselves as a ‘left behind’, oppressed minority who are viewed as inferior second class citizens by society’s elite and by minorities. The problematic absence of (majority) White communities within the discourse and practice of multiculturalist policy was considered here, alongside the increased absence of policy language and reality of concern with social class and class inequality. Here, our overarching focus with the context of the M62 region’s economic decline—particularly in its ex-industrial towns—is directly relevant to the highly racialised perceptions (and even identifications) that have grown within some ‘left behind’ White majority communities. Such a racialised sense of unfairness

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has grown in some locales in the context of rapidly shifting local demographic patterns and of economic decline. Significantly, it has taken political forms through both protest movements such as the English Defence League (Pilkington 2016) and its offshoots and through the significant (and overtly racialised, for some voters) support for Brexit amongst some White majority communities of the region. By drawing on our experience of empirical academic research and community orientated policy work in addition to several decades of teaching commuter students from diverse ethnic backgrounds specifically from towns and cities of the north of England, we have sought to draw up an analytical framework which illuminates the relationship between race, place and space to challenge the normative UK and wider European political criticism of ‘failed spaces of multiculturalism’. This book aims to provide a counter-discourse which presents a more complex, and contingent, understanding of multiculturalist policy operation, one that accounts for the interaction between culture and structure. We’ve explored the plasticity of ‘multicultural’ policies devised locally in response to local and regional pressures, and other policies significantly altered in the course of policy enactment. We have also worked to develop a regional and historical contextualisation of key socio-political and cultural factors as it shapes and reconfigures public policy discourses associated with multiculturalism, to ensure that there is recognition that the region’s many forms of parallel lives and experiences receive the attention they deserve.

Bibliography Bleich, E. (2002). Integrating Ideas into Policy-making Analysis: Frames and Race Policies in Britain and France. Comparative Political Studies, 35(9): 1054–1076. Khabeer, S. A. (2016). Muslim Cool: Race, Religion, and Hip Hop in the United States. New York: New York University Press. Khosrokhavar, F. (2016, July 19). Jihad and the French Exception. New York Times.http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/07/20/opinion/jihad-and-thefrench-exception.html?ref=topics&_r=1&referer= Pilkington, H. (2016). Loud and Proud: Passion and Politics in the English Defence League. Manchester: MUP. Scheffer, P. (2011). Immigrant Nations. London: Polity.

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Index

A

African-Caribbean, 8, 88, 103, 148, 174, 175, 185, 201 Allport, G., 51 Altringham Grammar School for Girls, 159 Alvi sisters, 160 Anti-fascism, 178, 185, 198 Anti-Muslim racism, 180 Anti-racism, 113, 115, 120, 164 Anti-racist education, 114, 115 Asians, 8–10, 21, 31, 66, 79, 82, 84–92, 103, 106, 108, 111, 113, 114, 122, 127, 139–167, 174, 178, 181, 184–188, 191, 192, 194, 197–201, 203, 214, 216–219, 221, 224, 226, 248, 249

Asian Youth Movement (AYM), 121–123, 140, 144–150, 152–154, 167, 185, 234, 241 Assimilation, 5, 21, 30, 33, 36, 42, 47, 51, 79, 86, 92, 99–133, 213–215, 218, 219, 222, 241 Australia, 99, 142, 246 B

Babas, 89 Bangladeshi, 36, 39, 41, 43, 47, 48, 114, 155, 156, 167, 217, 222, 227 Banlieues, 7 See also Paris Batley, 71, 92, 105, 119 Bauman, Z., 192 Begum, Shamima, 159

© The Author(s) 2020 S. Miah et al., ‘Race,’ Space and Multiculturalism in Northern England, Palgrave Politics of Identity and Citizenship Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42032-1

281

282 Index

Biraderi, 143, 167 Birmingham Housing Committee, 83 Ofsted, 231 schools, 146 Trojan Horse, 231, 232, 241 Black, 8, 72, 87, 89, 90, 110–112, 115, 118–120, 122, 139–167, 178, 184, 185, 197, 214–218, 224, 226, 227, 241, 248, 249 See also African Caribbean; Anti-racism Blackburn, 4, 31, 77, 107, 121, 126, 178, 183, 187, 188, 192, 198, 200, 203, 214, 219, 220, 232 Black Minority Ethnic (BME/ BAME), 87, 88, 90, 91, 121, 128, 173, 176, 215, 225–227 Black Muslim, 139–167 Black Panthers, 164 Black Youth League, 149 Blair, T., 40, 181 Bolton, 154, 155, 224 Boycott, G., 16 Bradford Bradford Community Relations Council (CRCs), 191, 217 Bradford Muslim Parents Association, 233–235 Bradford 12, 122, 123, 140, 145, 149–154, 185, 198 See also Asian Youth Movement (AYM) halal food, 228 Brexit, 12, 31, 56, 67, 142, 176, 204, 250

See also United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) British Asians, 221 British National Party (BNP), 9, 192, 195, 198–201, 203–205 British Union of Fascists, 178 See also Mosley, Oswald Brown v. Board of Education, 214 Brussels, 7, 246 Bullock Report, 224 Burgess, Ernest W., 33, 34, 42, 72 Burnley, 4, 8–10, 13, 29, 68, 70, 73, 92, 112, 121, 174, 175, 179, 187, 195, 200, 201, 245 Bussing Boyle, 214 Bradford, 21, 103, 107, 108, 110, 112, 214 Huddersfield, 21, 103, 214, 217 Butterworth, E., 33, 34, 45, 50, 77, 103, 104, 107, 179, 184 C

Calderdale, 18, 19, 200, 216 Cameron, D., 1, 2, 6, 7, 30, 48, 99, 130, 222 Campaign against Racial Discrimination (CARD), 118, 185, 217 Canada, 99 Cantle, T., 8, 10, 13, 14, 65, 100, 108, 110, 116, 121, 124, 127, 131, 141, 175, 187, 222

 Index 

Capital bonding, 47, 51 bridging, 51 social, 80, 88, 91 Casey Review, 30, 33, 44, 68, 222 Catholic Irish, 10, 178, 246 migration, 10, 178, 246 schools, 194, 246 settlement, 178 Census, 44, 45, 77, 78, 80 ‘Chaachi,’ 45 Channel, programme, 53, 200 Chapeltown, Leeds, 185 Chicago School of Sociology Burgess, Parks, 72 zones of transition, 72 Child sexual exploitation (CSE), 9, 29, 50, 200, 203, 204 See also Grooming gangs Citizenship, 20, 30, 32, 107, 159, 196 See also Active citizenship Class ‘White working class,’ 7, 10, 16, 18, 21, 39, 42, 43, 55, 78, 82, 128, 142, 176, 177, 181, 182, 188, 192, 196, 199, 201, 204, 206, 220, 248, 249 working class, 70, 73, 126–129, 141, 142, 175, 176, 180, 181, 183, 186, 187, 192, 196, 201, 203, 204 Commission for Racial Equality, 19, 160, 184 Communist Party of India (CPI), 145, 146 Marxis-CPI, 146

283

Community cohesion, 9, 14, 18, 21, 30, 51, 57, 100, 103, 105, 108, 110, 116, 117, 124, 128, 129, 190, 192, 197, 213, 248 Community Relations Council (CRC), 110, 113, 119–121, 184, 225, 234 Consciousness, 67, 77, 140, 147, 164, 166, 180, 182, 195 Conservative Party, 214, 215, 232 Contact, 13, 18, 30, 42, 43, 48, 50–54, 82, 87, 108, 116, 117, 124, 128, 129, 132, 189, 203, 207, 221 Contact theory, 51, 52, 108, 116, 129 Cotton, 11, 71, 73–75, 87, 88 See also Textile mills Council of Mosques, Bradford, 123, 153, 228, 234 Counterterrorism, 15, 18, 103, 123, 124, 165, 230 See also Prevent strategy Coventry, 145 Cox, Jo MP, 9 Cricket, 16, 73 segregation, 8, 20, 37, 40–46, 87, 112, 174, 178, 185, 188, 191 Cross-community contact, 124, 129, 132, 189 Cultural identity, 32 Cultural integration, 159

284 Index D

Dar-ul-Uloom, 229 Deindustrialisation, 12, 13, 22, 89, 129, 130, 142, 181, 188, 205, 207 Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), 238 Deradicalisation, 22 See also Prevent strategy Dewsbury EDL rallies, 202, 203 1989 riots, 19 Schools dispute, 245 white working class, 188 Diversity, 2–4, 7, 8, 17, 18, 20, 22, 30, 34, 37, 43, 49, 53–56, 92, 99, 144, 173, 174, 176, 177, 182, 184–192, 197, 198, 202, 205, 206, 222, 230 E

Eastern Europe, 12, 72, 186, 207 Education choice, 82, 91, 92 policy, 238 segregation, 86 Engels, F., 10, 70, 72 England, 1–22, 38, 40, 75, 116, 124, 143, 150, 154, 156, 158, 161, 163, 173, 175, 178, 182, 186, 196, 199, 200, 204, 207, 214, 216, 219, 223, 229, 232, 237, 239, 245, 250 English Defence League (EDL), 4, 9, 18, 177, 180, 193, 196, 201–204, 250

Englishness, 192 Ethnic diversity, 2–4, 7, 8, 17, 18, 20, 22, 43, 49, 99, 173, 174, 176, 177, 182, 186, 188–190, 192, 197, 202, 205 See also Diversity; Ethnicity; Ethnic segregation; Segregation Ethnicity, 1, 17, 19, 30, 35, 44–46, 48, 68, 78, 87, 101, 140, 197, 218, 219, 249 Ethnic Minority Achievement Grant (EMAG), 226, 227 Ethnic segregation, 6, 13, 17, 20, 30, 44, 66, 110, 111, 117, 130, 187, 188, 234, 245, 247 F

Failed spaces, 5, 174, 245, 246, 248 Family, 1, 18, 33, 35, 39, 41, 44, 46, 67, 69, 72, 76, 77, 83, 110, 130, 147, 152, 159, 160, 177, 238 Feversham College, 239, 240 Football, 19, 73, 120, 184, 198, 199 Forced integration freedom of speech, 155, 158, 164 Fun-Da-Mental, 140, 165 G

Gender, see Segregation Gillborn, D., 126, 176, 179, 182 Gilroy, P., 53, 56, 101, 175, 180, 189, 201 Glodwick, 50, 84–86

 Index 

Goodhart, D., 2, 7, 10, 30, 102, 107, 110, 195 Griffin, Nick, 199, 200 Grooming gangs Rochdale, 200 Rotherham, 200 See also Child sexual exploitation (CSE) Group solidarity, 7, 89, 145, 148, 152–154, 165 H

Halifax, 11, 21, 70, 73, 79, 107, 119, 187, 214, 216 Hall, S., 1, 2, 99, 129, 139, 140, 179, 245 Halstead, M., 8, 228, 233–235, 238 Hewstone, M., 51, 108, 116, 220, 221 See also Contact Hijab, 81, 159–161, 240 Holbeck Moor, Battle of, 178 Home Office, 225, 226 Honeyford affair, 8 Housing, 20, 33–35, 37–44, 48–50, 54, 70–72, 77, 78, 83–86, 103–105, 110, 111, 119–121, 124, 131, 174, 175, 183, 187, 188, 191–193, 195, 196, 200, 201, 203, 246 choice, 13, 33, 44, 49, 187, 188, 193 See also Integration human rights; Residential Huddersfield, University of, 18, 19

285

I

Identity, 3, 6, 20, 21, 39, 69, 71–73, 116, 123, 125, 128, 139, 140, 144, 145, 147–149, 153, 154, 157, 158, 162–165, 167, 180, 181, 189, 192, 205, 222, 245, 248, 249 national, 1, 156, 163, 190 Immigration, 7, 30, 39, 52, 69, 71, 75, 76, 78, 93, 108, 149, 177, 179, 182–186, 190, 196, 205, 215, 225 India, 12, 148, 153, 154, 183, 218 Indian Progressive Youth Association, 122, 147 Indian Workers Association (IWA), 145–148, 150, 217 Inequality, 30, 45, 69, 74, 92, 104, 105, 111, 114, 116, 118, 121, 125, 127, 130, 131, 174, 177, 179, 182, 197, 200, 203, 207, 227, 249 Integration, 5, 6, 11, 14, 17, 18, 20–22, 42, 52, 66, 99–133, 141, 159, 163, 179, 190, 213, 214, 217–219, 222, 233, 238, 241, 246–248 Interaction, 35, 38, 39, 54, 56, 57, 86, 92, 132, 167, 180, 185, 203, 250 Ireland, 70, 72 Irish Catholic, 10, 178, 246 migration, 246 settlement, 71, 178 ISIS, 159

286 Index

Islam, 140, 141, 153, 156, 159, 164, 166, 167, 191, 199, 201, 227, 229–234, 236 Islamism, 3, 22, 214, 231, 232 Islamophobia, 89 J

Jewish migration, 10, 12 settlement, 37 K

Kala Mazdoor, 148 Kala Shoor, 148 Kala Tara, 149 Kalra, V., 4, 12, 29, 30, 35, 66, 71, 74–76, 82, 87–90, 145, 164, 165, 181, 183 Kashmiri, 167 Keighley, 4, 7, 9, 68, 70, 76, 81, 92, 119, 187, 192, 200 Khaliphz, 164, 165 Khalistan, 153 Khan, Mohammed Siddique, 220 Kirklees Council, 113, 219 Headfield Junior School, 161 Mrs Azmi, 161, 162 Kundnani, A., 6, 9, 14, 66, 67, 100, 111, 116 L

Labour Party, 114, 126, 146, 200 See also New Labour Language, 21, 30, 39, 45, 51, 52, 88, 107, 109, 125, 130, 155,

157, 158, 161, 165, 166, 213, 217, 218, 222–227, 241, 249 Latvia, 186 Leeds Leeds United, 19, 120, 184 riots, 122, 149, 174, 175 Liberalism, see Cameron, D. Liverpool, 4, 8, 70, 102, 109, 122, 126, 149, 174, 175, 184, 186, 187, 229, 230 Lockwood, D., 110, 141, 142, 189, 199 London bombing, 9, 141, 165 M

McDonald Report, 115 Malcolm X, 164 Manchester, 4, 7, 8, 10, 12, 34, 40, 54, 69, 70, 72, 74, 105, 107, 109, 114, 120, 121, 140, 145, 150, 163, 174, 175, 178, 185–187, 190, 195, 214, 217, 239, 241 Mandla, G.S., 146 See also Sikh, community Mangla Dam, 76, 216 Marriage intermarriage, 179 Marx/Marxist/Marxism, 146, 152, 166 Masculinity, 69 Meer, N., 14, 37, 100, 140, 163, 165 Merry, M., 230 Miah, S., 6, 15, 18, 19, 141, 143, 160, 165, 200, 219–221, 230, 232

 Index 

Migration, 1, 2, 5, 10–13, 16, 17, 20, 21, 31, 33–39, 44, 45, 67, 70, 71, 75–77, 79, 87, 104, 140, 147, 165, 183, 186, 205–207, 214, 215, 229, 241, 246, 249 Mills cotton, 11 Salts Mills, 73 textile, 12, 183 wool, 11 Mirpuri, 45, 67, 80, 82–84, 87–89, 167 Mixed schools, 106 Modood, T., 2, 13, 14, 91, 99, 100, 102, 157–159, 234 Moral panic, 11, 29, 50, 113, 246 Mosley, Oswald, 178 Moss side, 114, 185 M62, 7, 11, 16, 33, 34, 36, 37, 39, 40, 43, 44, 54, 55, 65, 67–70, 75, 77, 80, 82, 84, 85, 90, 91, 93, 100, 104, 106, 107, 112, 114, 121, 123, 125, 127, 145, 149, 154, 167, 176, 197, 199–201, 203–205, 207, 229, 246, 247, 249 Multiculturalism death of, 3 policy of, 129, 153 state, 15, 153 Murder, 114, 115, 142, 184, 217 in playground, 217 Muslim community, 8, 10, 17, 20, 32, 50, 55, 100, 110, 116, 141, 155, 163, 166, 167, 174, 175, 181, 207, 228–230, 247–249

287

consciousness, 166 Cool, 165 faith schools, 22, 214, 230, 232, 233, 235, 236, 238–240 ghettos, 167 identity, 20, 21, 139, 140, 144, 154, 157, 162, 167, 192, 248, 249 See also Identity; Integration; Integration marginalised parents, 229–231, 235 problematic, 80 question, 141 Muslim Schools Independent Muslim Schools, 235–238 state-funded Muslim schools, 234, 238–241 N

National Front, 121, 122, 198, 199 Nationality, 155 Nation of Islam, 164, 166 Neoliberalism, 187, 188 Netherlands, the, 1, 14, 39, 49, 100, 175, 194 New Labour, 219, 226, 227, 238 See also Blair, T. New racism, 179 Northern mill towns, 10, 188, 189 O

Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted), see Trojan Horse Oldham, 3, 4, 7, 8, 10, 13, 18–20, 29, 33, 36, 43, 44, 50, 52–54, 67, 68, 70, 71,

288 Index

74–76, 79, 81, 82, 84–86, 92, 108–112, 116, 121, 132, 153, 165, 174, 175, 181, 186, 187, 189, 191, 192, 194, 199, 200, 207, 219–221, 231, 245 Oasis Academy, 220, 221 Open Society Foundation, 7, 175, 182, 190 Operation Blue Star, 153 Ouseley, H., 9, 113, 121, 188, 222 P

Pakistani, 31, 39, 41, 43, 47, 48, 76–78, 84, 87, 89–92, 108, 139, 140, 143, 144, 147, 156, 161, 167, 215, 216, 227, 233, 240 Paris, 7 Pendle, 200 Pennines, 11, 39, 40, 66, 70, 71, 73, 75 Pilkington, H., 9, 126, 177, 180, 193, 196, 201, 203, 250 Platt Brothers, 71 Plowden Report, 223, 224 Poland, 35 Policy frames, 123, 127, 248 philosophies, 14, 123, 127 See also Multiculturalism; Race relations Poverty, 12, 69, 85, 147, 227 Prejudice, 49, 51, 80, 132, 163 Prevent strategy, 9, 103 Putnam, R., 7, 20, 49, 51, 190

Q

Quilliam, W., see Liverpool R

Race, 6, 17, 21, 36, 38, 68, 85, 89, 101, 111, 113–116, 119, 122, 125, 127, 128, 130, 140, 142, 146–149, 152, 177, 179, 180, 182, 184, 192, 217 equality, 104, 105, 124, 126, 129, 143, 194, 227 post-, 179 race riots 2001, 141, 219 relations, 6, 14, 113, 119, 151, 173, 179 Race relations racial discrimination, 111, 118, 119, 127, 188, 227 racism, 6, 17, 21, 36, 38, 68, 85, 89, 101, 111, 113–116, 119, 122, 125, 127, 128, 130, 140, 142, 145–149, 152, 177, 179, 180, 182, 184, 192, 217 space, 6, 222, 227 See also Anti-Muslim racism; Islamophobia Race Relations Act (RRA), 101, 110, 119, 120, 126, 127, 146 Racism, see Race Radicalisation, 50, 53, 222, 232 See also Counterterrorism; Prevent strategy Ramamurthy, A., 121, 122, 144–152, 184, 185, 198, 217

 Index 

See also Asian Youth Movement (AYM) Recognition, 43, 54, 56, 109, 125, 157, 166, 186, 238, 241, 250 Religion, 10, 21, 92, 140, 141, 144, 153–160, 162, 166, 167, 229, 230, 233, 249 Representation, 22, 92, 151, 158, 159 Residential clustering, 35, 41, 45, 72 White flight, 41, 79, 80, 86, 92, 177 See also Integration; Segregation Riots Bradford, 8, 13, 109, 112, 174, 175, 245 Burnley, 8, 10, 13, 29, 112, 174, 175, 179, 245 Leeds, 122, 149, 174, 175 Liverpool, 122, 149, 174, 175 Manchester, 122, 149, 174, 175 Oldham, 8, 10, 13, 29, 109, 112, 174, 175, 187, 194, 245 Rochdale, 4, 7, 9, 18, 33, 43, 44, 50, 52–54, 67, 70, 76, 79, 81, 82, 84, 85, 92, 125, 164, 165, 187, 191, 192, 200 Rotherham, 4, 7, 9, 119, 187, 193, 195, 200, 204 Rushdie, S., 36, 67, 154–156, 164, 199 S

Sanderson, P., 6, 13, 16, 18, 19, 43, 50, 52, 81, 84, 125, 132, 165, 175, 191, 192, 197 Sands, B., 145

289

Satanic Verse blasphemy law, 158 fatwa, 156 muslim response, 154 Rushdie, 154 Scarman, L., 110, 112, 120, 158 School mergers, 218–220 See also Muslim, faith schools Schools academies, 40, 219, 220, 227, 232, 239, 241, 249 choice, 82 Seabrook, J., 31, 77, 126, 178, 183, 184, 188, 189 Section 11 funding, 84, 109, 214, 225–227 Secularism, 144, 159, 161 Segregation, 19, 68, 73, 75, 76, 157–159, 162 occupational, 66, 68, 76, 86–91 self-segregation, 9, 32, 41, 42, 47, 79, 111, 143, 219, 230 Seven Seven (7/7) London attacks, 9, 14, 67, 120, 141, 165, 200, 220, 245 Sexuality, 158 Sheffield, 119, 121, 128, 145, 152 Sikh, 78, 122, 145–147, 149, 153, 154, 160, 185, 201, 217 community, 145, 146 Social contact, 224 Social exclusion, 12, 13, 38, 80, 181, 182, 187, 203, 227 Social housing, 34, 35, 42, 54, 78, 83, 84, 86, 119, 175, 193, 195, 196, 203 Solidarity, see Group solidarity

290 Index

South Asian, 20, 31, 46, 77, 80, 83, 87, 90, 103, 145, 147, 149, 163, 165, 181 Southall, 122, 146, 214, 216, 241 Star Academies, 232, 233, 239–241 State schools, 50, 105, 215, 220, 228, 231–233, 240 See also Schools; Stereotypes Stereotypes, 38, 68 Stigma, 47, 49, 50, 85 Stockport, 10, 178 Suburbanisation, 183, 186, 193 Swann Report, 113 teachers, 114 Sylhet, 76 See also Bangladeshi

U

Ullah, Ahmed, 114, 217 Burnage High School, 114 Ummah, 163 United Kingdom (UK), 1, 6, 12, 19, 29, 30, 32, 34, 36, 39, 42, 49, 67, 70, 83, 90, 141, 142, 149, 154, 159, 166, 173–177, 181, 186, 234–236, 250 United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), 176, 204, 205 Urban, 7, 13, 29–31, 33–35, 37, 40–42, 44, 46, 49, 53, 54, 56, 57, 65, 66, 70, 78, 80, 85, 91–93, 132, 140, 164, 166 Urban Programme, 85, 109

T

Terrorism, 7, 9, 13, 17, 165, 200 Textile mills, 12, 183 Thatcher, M., 8, 40, 74, 89, 105 Thomas, P., 4, 6, 9, 13–16, 18, 19, 35, 36, 39, 43, 47, 50, 52, 81, 82, 92, 100, 103, 105, 108, 111, 112, 115–117, 120, 121, 124, 125, 128–130, 132, 141, 165, 175, 184, 188–194, 197, 199, 202 Tolerance, 2, 129, 159 Trojan Horse, 231, 232, 241 See also Birmingham Tyndall, John, 198

V

Values British, 222, 223 liberal, 230 Muslim, 2, 23, 55, 240 shared, 124 Veil, 159, 161, 162 Violent extremism, see Muslim W

West Yorkshire, 9, 19, 71, 78, 103, 104, 108, 115, 123, 128, 130, 131, 142, 151, 161, 183, 192, 193, 200, 216, 219, 240, 245

 Index 

White backlash, 126, 130, 142, 175, 177, 191–197 people, 82, 92, 127, 173, 177–180, 182–186, 188, 189, 194, 195, 199, 203, 207, 221 White students, 114, 115, 194, 220, 221 White working class (WWC), 7, 10, 16, 18, 21, 39, 42, 43, 55, 78, 82, 128, 142, 176–178, 181, 182, 188, 192–197, 199, 201, 202, 204–207, 220, 248, 249 Wigan, Casino, 185

291

Y

Yorkshire, 10, 16, 74–76, 119, 163, 206 Youth, 8, 19, 48, 81, 89, 111, 112, 115, 116, 121, 122, 124, 125, 130, 132, 145, 147, 148, 165, 167, 174, 175, 184–186, 189, 191, 192, 194, 198, 199, 201, 217 young people, 16, 18, 21, 50, 52, 81, 82, 89, 90, 114–116, 125, 130, 147, 185, 186, 189, 191–193, 218, 222