Scene 1: Oldham, Bradford and Burnley, summer 2001

At the dawn of New Labour's second term, when they were returned to power with a daunting parliamentary majority, a cascade of civil unrest in England's northern towns stunned Britain. Even before the cataclysmic events of 11 September that year, multiculturalism had been battered and British tolerance towards minorities had stiffened. Though the ‘race riots’ have been eclipsed by the sensationalising implications of the so-called war on terror and receded from historical centre stage, they provided political capital for an assimilationist revival that has been unambiguously attributed to the threat of Islamic fundamentalism.

Britain was alerted to the latent violence in Oldham on 23 April 2001. Walter Chamberlain, a 76-year-old World War Two veteran, was hospitalised after a savage beating at the hands of three Asian youths. He had been walking home after watching a local amateur rugby league match and was alleged to have breached the rules of Oldham's racialised cartography by entering a ‘no-go’ area forwhites. He was set upon by the youths for an unauthorised incursion onto Asian territory.

The attack viscerally confirmed the emergence of a new social problem: minority racism. The rise to power of Asian racists, in particular, preoccupied the local media. Oldham's racial problems were stated to have been ‘inspired’ and ‘perpetrated’ by Asians who were said to ‘be behind most racial violence’. Statistics were wheeled out to prove this disturbing fact: Oldham police logged 600 racist incidents in 2000, and in 60 per cent of them, the victims were white.