Browse Sections

• Education
• Business
• Blog
• Special reports

Poverty key to Oldham riots

1/ 8/2002

POVERTY and not race was the basic cause of last summer's Oldham riots claim council leaders.

They have attacked the conclusion in the Ritichie report into the violence of May 2001 that racial segregation and the council's failure to do anything about it was the root cause of the troubles. In their final and detailed response to Ritchie they bluntly challenge its entire analysis.

The 187-page document states: "The report's method of analysis leads directly to an emphasis on race as the primary issue within Oldham and not poverty, deprivation and social exclusion. Measures and programmes are required which focus on these issues across Oldham and not simply based on certain communities and parts of the town."

The report also spurns the Ritchie report's insistence that policies must be pursued to bring about racial integration in housing and education.

On housing it claims: "We have seen no evidence from Britain, or indeed America, that attempts to secure residential integration have met with any great success. A critical factor in securing a greater level of integration in Oldham is wealth - both at an individual and community level."

On Ritchie's key demand that school selection procedures should be changed to prevent the perpetuation of all white and all Asian schools, the council response is luke-warm.

It says it will examine selection procedures but points out that parental choice is paramount. Instead of directing white children to 'Asian' schools and Asians to 'white' schools the council have set up a series of 'twining' activities which allow children from 'white' schools mix with children from 'Asian' schools.