The 2001 riots and the emergence of ‘Community Cohesion’
Paul Thomas (University of Huddersfield, UK)
Introduction: The impact of the 2001 riots
The urban disturbances in Oldham, Burnley and Bradford in the north of England in summer 2001
were traumatic for the towns and cities involved, but have also proved to be very significant for the
UK as a whole. These events can now be seen as a watershed for ‘race relations’ policy approaches,
with ‘Community Cohesion’ rapidly becoming not only the ‘explanation’ for the 2001
disturbances(Cantle,2001), but the dominant principle for government’s approach to issues of racial
tension and ethnic integration(Home Office,2005). This has been advanced by measures such as
detailed guidance to Local Authorities and other public bodies as to how they should both promote
and measure ‘Community Cohesion’ (LGA,2002), and a new legal duty on schools under the 2006
Education and Inspections Act to ‘promote cohesion’. Whilst a highly-contested, controversial
concept(Kundnani, 2001; Kalra,2002), it is beyond dispute that ‘Community Cohesion’ has become
the key focus for discussions around multiculturalism, racial equality, integration and ethnic/national
identity in the UK. However, to date there has been very little empirical evidence of how
‘Community Cohesion’ is understood and practised by people at the grass roots of social policy
operation. This paper draws on evidence from doctoral field research amongst youth workers in
Oldham (Thomas, 2007) to comment on how ‘Community Cohesion’ is seen and understood, and on
the implications it has for social policy. It suggests that Community Cohesion involves a fundamental
re-think of the ‘race relations’ policy approaches dominant since the previous urban disturbances of
1981 and 1985.
The emergence of Community Cohesion
An unknown term prior to the 2001 disturbances (Robinson, 2005), ‘Community Cohesion’ was
highlighted by the official central government inquiry into those events (Cantle, 2001). Unlike the
Inquiry following the 1981 Brixton riots (Scarman, 1981), this report, and those produced at a local
level in Oldham (Ritchie, 2001) and Burnley (Clarke, 2001) did not focus on the actual events and
their triggers; instead, the 2001 disturbances were portrayed as an accident waiting to happen, and
as symptomatic of deeper-lying problems existing across the UK’s ‘multicultural’ towns and cities.
This ‘Community Cohesion’ analysis suggested that deep-seated physical and cultural ethnic
segregation in the UK had led to a profound lack of shared values, or of mutual respect and
understanding between ethnic groups, with ethnic conflict the inevitable outcome. This critique
went further, suggesting that the policy approaches of the past twenty years had encouraged and
privileged separate ‘ethnic’ identities, focussing on notions of ‘equality’ for different ethnic/religious
groups whilst profoundly neglecting the need to promote respect and ‘good relations’ between
those different groups(Cantle,2005).The suggestions that ethnic segregation is growing in the UK,
and that it is the cause, as much as the effect ,of racial conflict are highly contested, with critics
focussing on the apparent sidelining of structural racism as an explanation(Kundnani, 2001), the
downplaying of the role of far-right racist groups in causing the riots(Bagguley and Huusian,2003),
and the questionable notion of ‘segregation’ itself(Kalra,2002;Robinson,2005).
The implications of ‘Community Cohesion’
Within this ‘Community Cohesion’ critique is a clear focus on ‘agency’ (Greener, 2002), the
suggestion that individuals and communities have played a crucial role in creating and deepening the
physical and cultural segregation. Here, notions of ‘white flight’ and the supposed refusal of ethnic
minority communities to engage with the wider culture are crucial, with a particular focus on the use
of English and engagement with ‘national ‘culture and values (Cantle, 2001). This has led some to
portray ‘Community Cohesion’ as a return to the discredited ‘assimilationism’ of the 1960s
(Kundnani, 2001), but, more accurately, it represents a rethinking of ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘antiracism’. Within this focus on agency are clear links to communitarianism (Etzioni, 1995) and the
‘third way’ (Giddens, 1999), suggesting that government cannot engineer a genuinely multicultural
society without popular participation. Above all, ‘Community Cohesion’ seems to represent a
Putnamesque problematisation of excessive ‘bonding’ social capital, and the need for greater
‘bridging ‘social capital (Putnam, 2000; McGhee, 2003). Inherent in this is a belief that previous
policy approaches of multiculturalism and anti-racism have reified and essentialised ethnic/religious
identities at the expense of more complex understandings of being and belonging, with policy
approaches cementing the cultural and physical barriers created originally by structural and
individual racism(Solomos,2003). Here, ‘Community Cohesion’ and associated discussions around
‘Britishness’ can be seen as part of wider attempts by the New Labour government to create ‘cooler’
and more complex/hybrid forms of identity that can replace ‘hot’ forms of ethnic/religious
identification(Hall, 2000;McGhee,2005).
Field research evidence around ‘Community Cohesion’
Data was drawn from more than 30 in-depth, one to one, semi-structured interviews carried out
with youth workers in Oldham during 2005 and 2006. The aim was to explore how ‘Community
Cohesion’ has impacted on the assumptions and practice of youth work with young people. The
reality of ethnic segregation within Oldham and the role of ‘agency’ in maintaining it was accepted
by respondents of all ethnic backgrounds. There was a shared clarity around, and support for,
‘community cohesion’: to respondents, ‘Community Cohesion’ can and must mean ‘meaningful
direct contact’ between young people of different ethnic backgrounds, and youth work practice in
Oldham has altered substantially to enable this direct contact to take place. Given the tense and
racialised nature of Oldham, much of this direct contact across ethnic ‘boundaries’ is significant and
ground-breaking, with many parents and communities concerned and suspicious of it. These new
approaches have included many shared trips out of Oldham, and a strategic deployment of workers
to provide young people with adult role models of different ethnic backgrounds. The aim is to create
‘safe space’ where dialogue and understanding across ethnic/religious can be delivered, so
potentially enabling ‘rooting and shifting’, ‘transversal politics’ that allows young people to engage
with other cultures and backgrounds without feeling that their own is threatened or
disrespected(Yuval-Davis,1997).The clear enthusiasm of youth workers for this new ‘Community
Cohesion’ work is partly because it is utilising ‘traditional’ youth work methods of group-based
informal activities(Smith,1982) , but is also because of the contrast presented with ‘anti-racism’ as it
was understood and practised. ‘Anti-racism’ is viewed as negative, uncreative and counterproductive with many working class white young people (Hewitt, 1996). That said, a significant
minority of respondents worried that, in representing a ‘moving on’ from anti-racism, ‘Community
Cohesion’ might also represent a retreat from concern with the reality of day-to-day racism
(Thomas, 2007). Here, the concern is whether this ‘Community Cohesion’ educational practice with
young people is a retreat to the bland and apolitical ‘multiculturalism’ of the past(Chauhan,1990), or
a genuinely ‘critical multiculturalism’(May,1999) that allows meaningful dialogue around ethnic
identity and tension without privileging or reifying ethnicity above other aspects of personal and
collective identity(Hall,2000).
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