Complexities and Comparisons: Re-reading the Riots in Oldham and
Burnley
This paper is in part a reflection of my own writings on the events in Oldham
and of those in Burnley via my colleague James Rhodes' work which is
ostensibly about the rise of the far right in Burnley but provides a lot of context
related to the disturbances. It's also worth at this distance reflecting on the
ways in which our understandings of the riots have in any sense informed the
government discourse and policy terrain in terms of the general issues of
ethnic difference, racism and local conflicts and this is where I will end my
presentation.
My theoretical premise draws on the underused work of Michael Keith in the
book, Race, Riots and Policing: Lore and Disorder in a Multi-racist Society
(UCL Press, 1993) which ostensibly looks at the 1981 disorders and also
Allen Feldman’s book Formations of Violence: The Narrative of the Body and
Political Terror in Northern Ireland (University of Chicago Press, 1991) which
is about life in the North of Ireland under occupation. For Feldman there is a
linear model applied in the context of violent disorder:
Aberrant (cause) leads to Pathological symptom (violence) which requires a
potential cure (elimination of cause)
In contrast to this approach, Feldman argues that the violence can often
detach itself from these contexts and become 'the condition for its own
reproduction.' There are many implications for this line of thought which
require consideration and in that sense it is important to apply caution about
following this kind of formulaic approach. For example at a recent conference
in London where John Denham, MP, the author of the government’s
summative response to the riot reports talked about how an Oldham based
youth organisation, Peacemaker, had predicted the riots because of the work
they were doing with young people and their knowledge of the street. In
Rhodes' work in Burnley, there is also this recourse made to an insider
understanding.
A resident on the estate stated that, 'You can feel the tension. It is going to
explode. I am just afraid the situation could get out of control'i. In July a letter
appeared in the Burnley Express from a resident stating that, 'what happened
was no surprise to me and should not have been a surprise to anyone else
with their finger on the pulse of the town'ii. These notions of knowing arise
from this formulaic response to violence, yet this belies the contingency that is
central in the riot event and it is incumbent upon us to not take the explanation
of the event as a substitute for the reasons that may have led up to the event.
In other words if the underlying problems cause the riot, does that mean in the
absence of riots the problem disappears?
The micro-details of why a riot starts, such as the stories about pregnant
women being harassed in Oldham, or the rumours of BNP incursion in
Bradford (Burnley is significantly different in this context and I will return to this
point) and the subsequent acts of violence and movements of people are not
necessarily related to the reasons or even to those most affected by the
complex of factors that are implicated in the lead up and that subsequently
emerge in causal analysis:
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socio-economic deprivation
far right organising
police relations difficult
material deprivation conflated with area competition
white victimisation
young male alienation/ frustration
Yob culture
Criminal gangs
Each of these gets emphasised depending on the particular viewpoint of the
commentator or policy maker, the crudest division often being between those
who see the events solely as a law and order issue and those that see it as an
expression of youth rebellion.
What an emphasis on the micro-event of the riot and its individual nuances
and particularities, also fails to place them into the general historical context of
riots with racial explanations such as those of the 1981/85/95 disturbances
and of other urban protest involving racialised groups, such as the 1979 antiNazi league march in Southall which deteriorated into a riot and instrumentally
involved the far right, something considered as a new factor in the 2001
cases. This is not to say we have all been here before, but to alert us towards
changes which are less about the discursive terrain of race and to wider
societal issues.
The second point and perhaps one that is more important is the way in which
the riot should be viewed as an intensity on a spectrum of daily life which is
marred by certain levels of conflict and actually emerges in the annual
summer skirmishes between the police and young men. Indeed, and this is
something to learn from France, in Oldham, every summer there are street
skirmishes between the Police and young men. In Glodwick, the scene of the
unrest of 2001, only the previous year a double-decker bus was stolen and
used to barricade the main road. Indeed, it is the persistence and continuities
of everyday racialised tension that have been maintained since 2001, that of
course don’t get mentioned in the news, but present an ongoing backdrop to
what is called normal life.
The aim of this paper is to re-read the events of the riots in terms of three
inter-related themes:
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Technologies and information flow
identity formation and place
Local state and democratic deficit
At present these form empirical organising tools that enable us to maximise
the number of explanatory variables in a number of systematic ways. They are
not however organised in attempt to provide causal or predictive models,
rather to act as a caution by grouping the range of complex and inter-related
factors that surround events of violent unrest.
Virinder S. Kalra and James Rhodes
University of Manchester
i
ii
Burnley Express, May 4th 2001.
Burnley Express, July 6th 2001.