A decade on from night of destruction, Bradford still stands at the crossroads

FRIDAY afternoon in Manningham and the call to prayer crackles from loudspeakers on the tops of mosques.

The shopowners clustered around Manningham Lane roll down their steel shutters and stick signs on doors telling customers they will be back soon. The inner city streets, scene of one of Britain’s fiercest riots in decades, turn eerily quiet.

Standing at the top of White Abbey Road, the night of July 7, 2001, when a mob of predominantly Asian youths rained bricks, bottles and petrol bombs down on West Yorkshire Police, feels a distant memory.

The scale of the violence, during which more than 326 police officers were injured and £11m of damage caused, prompted wry comments from front line officers that they didn’t know there were that many bricks to throw in Bradford. Since 2001 and the launch of a £2bn regeneration package, a few more have been added to that. Buildings torn down by the rioters, such as Oak Lane’s BMW garage, have been rebuilt and the iconic Lister Mills, employer of 11,000 people in Bradford’s textile industry heyday, once again towers over the surrounding terraced streets following an impressive £21.3m conversion into flats.

Yet progress elsewhere has been painfully slow. No more so than the proposed Westfield Shopping Centre – the hole in the heart of Bradford, which cost £19m of taxpayers’ money before it emerged not enough retailers had signed up. In advance of last year’s English Defence League rally, much of the site was reportedly bolted down or removed to prevent the stalled regeneration scheme becoming an even more poignant symbol of Bradford’s frustration.

It is hoped a revised planning application will be submitted soon, but of the six major projects identified by Bradford Centre Regeneration in 2007 as catalysts for growth, so far only one – improvements to the city’s street scene – has been achieved. Although construction on a new city park is now underway.

Another body blow hit Bradford recently with its bid to house the Leeds City Region’s Enterprise Zone being snubbed.

As the city finds itself once again perched uncomfortably at a crossroads, many fear it could be heading back towards the violence of 2001 and 1995 and 1989 before that.

Much hope rests on the slender shoulders of its burgeoning young population whom experts feel have the potential to restore Bradford’s pride, or, reduce it to rubble.

Manningham college students Waqaas Hussain and Sagir Hussain, both 18, speak candidly about the problems facing this new generation of Bradford youth, more than 42 per cent of whom are estimated to be out of work.

“Manningham is a great area but there is prejudice against you if you come from the BD9 postcode,” says Waqaas. “Employers put the phone down and it is impossible to get insurance for your car – for a first driver it can be £8,000. A lot of people my age are struggling to get a job. I want to be a sports teacher, but it is very tough.”

As we talk on Oak Lane, a small crowd appears and there’s a waft of marijuana smoke in the air. When a police van trundles past someone shouts, “Hello, officer” and waves across the street.Several of these young men were at the peaceful EDL rally in the city centre last August, but Sagir says if it had come into Manningham – Chief Constable Sir Norman Bettison secured a ban from the Home Secretary preventing the demonstration – it would have been a different story.

The 2001 riots were sparked by plans for far-right demonstrations in Bradford and ended as a pitched battle between the youth and the police. While the EDL’s founder Tommy Robinson told the Yorkshire Post the group were not planning anything to mark the 10th anniversary of the riots, he also claimed that racial divison and tension in Yorkshire is as bad as anywhere else in the country.

But on the streets of Manningham, many believe the group cannot stoke up trouble as the BNP and National Front have done in the past.

Ishtiaq Ahmed, spokesman for Bradford Council for Mosques, says: “The 2001 riots were a spontaneous reaction to rumours and misinformation. Throughout the day the tension was building and it took a small incident to spark it off. During the day, I was outside the Town Hall where there was a peaceful gathering and during the evening I was out on the streets talking to people and helped rescue a bus that was caught in the middle of the riots.

“A lot of young Bradfordians, many of them college students and university graduates from peaceful families, got caught up in the event. I don’t believe it was planned, it was an expression of anger and frustration.

“The relationship between different communities, the police, Bradford Council and community organisations has radically improved. The EDL march showed this trust that had built up. But in terms of economic factors, employment, deprivation and poverty, not much has changed. The biggest challenge for us it to make some serious impact on poverty, deprivation and employment, these are all a breeding ground for suspicion, racism and mistrust.”

Mr Ahmed says among the new problems facing the area, is what the Ouseley report into the cause of the riots called “White Flight”, the affluent white middle class moving out into the suburbs leaving ghettoised communities behind. The social phenomena, he says, has now spread to the Pakistani community.

If they can afford it, Pakistani families are now moving to areas such as Wyke, Cottingley and Idle, leaving behind a vacuum which in many cases is filled by poor Eastern European migrants.

“Manningham has moved on from the previous problems it had, but there are new challenges ahead,” says Naweed Hussain, 30, a board member of the Manningham Masterplan regeneration project and advisor for young people at the Meridian Centre. “I was 14 in 1995, I felt extremely scared and terrified looking out of the bedroom window of my grandfather’s house and seeing lines of police file on to Oak Lane. In 2001, I was 19 and saw it at first hand.

“I could sympathise with some of the issues, such as lack of employment opportunities and youth provision – but I don’t believe you have to riot to make your voice heard. I don’t think the frustration is the same for this generation, employment is progressing and education is becoming a big part of young people’s lives, but there is still a big question around opportunities.

“We are losing local talent that could help take Bradford forward. People who are successful have moved out and decided to set up shop elsewhere.”

Lord Ouseley also talked of a lack of community leadership in Bradford at the start of the decade, and it is estimated the number of young people practising Islam has declined by around 15 per cent in the past 10 years.

Youth workers admit the temptations of making quick money selling drugs and an admiration of the gangster lifestyle, combined with a desperate lack of opportunity, mean many are being lured into crime. But those with first-hand experience of the 2001 violence – including the rioters themselves – are now actively trying to guide Manningham’s youth towards peace.

“The community has realised now that committing crimes like that, there is real consequences”, says 25-year- old Nadeem Khan, who was present on the night in 2001, but says he was not involved in the violence.

“The young ones feel nowadays that they have a point to prove. I was a devil kid for a while, but it is up to us to show them the way.”

* Watch an in-depth video report on the riots, with archive footage at yorkshirepost.co.uk/video