Whilst the council has been trying over the years to promote a different image, and perhaps also identity of the city as a touristic destination for its rich industrial heritage and arts and culture, it has also been struggling with some of the very challenges that the city faces and where some of the national dominant story is rooted. In this section, I explore how the council has dealt with these challenges, past, present and future, by tracing the evolution of multicultural policies in the city. Then, I look at various council analyses of the state of the District to draw a picture of the material challenges brought to the city by deindustrialisation. To do so, I look at a range of documents produced by the council, but also at academic analysis of council-related events throughout the years.
a – Multiculturalism
Undeniably, one of the challenges facing the District has been in the field of “race relations.” The academic literature is particularly useful to explore the evolution of
“race relations” in the city. Lewis (1997) notes how race relations policy was virtually inexistent until 1981, when the council published a “race relations plan”
(132) committing the council to “positive action” (132), whereas the Bradford Commission Report (1996) sums up the evolution of the policy as follows: “we observe a process of initial indifference, followed by official response to agitation, followed by meaningful activity, followed by tokenism, which in turn appears to mask indifference.” (98) A rather negative statement. Generally, “race relations”
policies in Bradford get mixed reviews. Echoing the Bradford Commission Report, Samad qualifies the Council’s policy as “reactive rather than proactive.” (1997: 246) Rex and Samad (1996) explain that
...despite these various [policy] initiatives over the last decade, no effective monitoring of Council policies was established and many of them were not implemented. [...] A report [...] found that there was no accurate Council wide date covering recruitment and selection by ethnic origin, and that it was
difficult to find out what was actually happening in a number of areas.
Similarly, Samad writes about the All-Party Race Relations Group, the Race Relations Subject Committee and the Multicultural Education Support Group established in the early 1980s, that “These were consultative bodies set up with the aim of transforming ideas into policies, but implementation was still very much dependent on political will. No independent procedure was established to ensure that council practices conformed to policies.” (247) In addition, the council was found guilty of racial discrimination on several occasions, “exposing the lack of policy implementation procedures in the areas of multiculturalism, anti-racism and equal opportunities. The council had lost five cases in six years in industrial tribunals, on the grounds of racial discrimination. [...] Bradford City Council was the first ever organisation to be charged with being a persistent discriminator, and it has lost more cases on racial grounds than any other employer in the UK.” (Samad, 1997: 252) But racism and racial discrimination were not confined to the council, and several authors noted how it was a problem in employment in the city, in particular for members of the “Asian” community (Bradford Congress, 1996; Taj, 1996), which inevitably would create extra challenges for the council:
“Discrimination on racial grounds emerged strongly from people’s descriptions of their lives and experiences. That unacceptable fact stands as a daily challenge to all people who influence the decisions and life of this city.” (Bradford Metropolitan Faith in the City Forum, 1995: 40) Matters were made more complicated for the council by a white backlash to their race relations policies, which weakened its commitment to “race relations” (Samad, 1997; Bradford Congress, 1996). According to the participants interviewed for the Bradford Commission Report, this led to a fear of discussing racial issues in the city, making the issue taboo.
A particular aspect of policymaking that some of the authors looked at is that of multicultural educational policies, which has been a “field of contention between the local education authority and the different religious and ethnic minorities.”
(Lewis, 1997: 135) The first issue of contention noted by several authors (Bradford
Congress, 1996; Lewis, 1997; and Samad, 1997) was that of the bussing of “Asian”
children in the 1960s. It led “Asian” parents to mobilise along ethnic lines against the policy as they considered it was assimilationist. It was eventually revoked in 1979. In contrast with the negativity and lack of implementation highlighted above, in terms of educational policies, several authors emphasise the areas in which the local authority innovated. According to Samad, after the revocation of the bussing policy, “The local authority experimented in the late 1970s with mother-tongue teaching in the schools and this, along with other activities, brought it acclaim as a leader in multiculturalism.” (1997: 246) Lewis adds, the “LEA memoranda, under the new educational banner of ‘multiculturalism,’ sought to accommodate special needs of religious communities within the framework of a common curriculum.”
(1997: 135) However, multicultural educational policies also created a white backlash,
... polarising race relations and weakening the city council’s commitment. The first of these issues was the controversy over providing halal meat to schools. The BCM [Bradford Council for Mosques], led by Sher Azam, had rallied the Muslim population into organising a series of demonstrations and school boycotts on this issue. The granting of this concession provoked a counter-agitation, however, led by animal rights groups infiltrated by National Front activists. (Samad, 1997: 247-248)
The council also got into trouble on grounds of racial discrimination: “Further embarrassment was to arise when the council’s Education Department was accused of discrimination for failing to include Manningham in the catchment area of any school. It survived the High Court action but the case left its image tarnished.”
(Samad, 1997: 252) Finally, both Lewis (1997) and Taj (1996) conclude that despite the multicultural policies, children from the Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities still underachieved compared to their Indian, white and Afro-Caribbean colleagues in the 1990s.
After the 1995 riots, the Bradford Congress was appointed to carry out an inquiry into the implications of the events for the District. It was “a voluntary organisation of representative Bradford institutions which includes the city council.” (Bradford Congress, 1996: 1) and it produced a report highlighting its findings in 1996. It talks of the “fear” and “shock” (1996: 1) that the events had instigated, and several authors pointed out that young men within the “Pakistani community” got blamed (Bradford Congress, 1996; Taj, 1996). Interestingly, the Bradford Commission report (1996) emphasises that it was a minority that had looted. Explanations of the street disturbances mainly focused on the relationship between the “Asian” youths and the police. Although Taj (1996) calls for an acknowledgement of racist behaviours within the police force, Bradford Congress (1996) claims that this was only a superficial cause for the riots. Still, much was written about the mistrust within the
“Asian communities” for the police, perceived as harassing, oppressing and racially discriminating against these communities (Bradford Metropolitan Faith in the City Forum, 1995; Rex and Samad, 1996; Samad, 1997). The events of June 1995 increased these feelings, due to the police’s handling of the situation. In the light of the above, and considering what we have explored previously in terms of local multicultural policies, especially educational policies, it is perhaps appropriate to conclude here by quoting Taj, who suggests where the causes of the riots may lie:
The underlying causes, which are in turn the most important ones of all are not allocated in either the ‘Asian’ communities or in the Police Service. The true underlying cause is the continued and accelerating failure of the city’s institutions, services and businesses to meet the reasonable needs and maintain the loyalty of far too large a proportion of the ‘Asian’ communities.
(1996: 7)
In an interesting move to recognise the complexity within “communities,” language was explored as an issue in such documents as the Bradford Commission Report and Taj’s supplement to it. For example, according to the authors of the Bradford Commission Report (Bradford Congress, 1996),
One of the obstacles to discussion about, and between, people of different ethnicities is the inadequacy of the descriptive language available. [...] The shortcut term, ‘Asian’, is nowhere more misleading than when it is used in conjunction with the equally short cut term ‘culture’. There are many cultures from the Indian subcontinent substantially present in Bradford and many other cultures, too. None is fixed and static, and none is homogenous.
(5)
Denouncing the widespread simplification in the descriptions of the different groups of immigrants in Bradford, they provide their own account of the various populations inhabiting the city, according to where they are from (Pakistan, Pathan, Bangladesh, Gujarat, East Africa) and their religions (Hindus, Muslims with an emphasis on the various stands of Islam, and Sikhs). Taj also emphasised the multiplicity of the “Muslim” communities (1996: 7).Similar observations are made about the use of the term “community”. The Bradford Commission Report authors deplore the use of the word: “A phrase that has been used so frequently in our investigations that it has become tedious is: ‘the Community’. Its meaning appears to depend entirely on the context, and when the phrase ‘the community’ is used it can be difficult to know just what is meant, since most people belong to more than one community.” (Bradford Congress, 1996: 92) They add “very rarely do people think of Bradford as one community” (92). However, these observations from the Bradford Commission are in contradiction with some of the strategies adopted by the council itself, which Samad (1997) draws attention to. In exploring the relationship between the District council and the various immigrant communities to the city, he explains,
The city council’s strategy of co-opting the religious leadership at the expense of secular organisations was based on an understanding that it was religious institutions that were best placed to control the younger generation and to stop them from rioting on the streets. This rather simplistic understanding of ‘the community’ was based on a political rationale. Out of all the
possible identifications that could be recognised and legitimated, such as ‘black’, ‘Asian’, ‘Pakistani’ and ‘Mirpuri’, the council sages selected Islam,... (248 – 249)
... which would have an impact on community relations in the District.
In tracing the evolution of community relations in the city, I end this sub-section by looking at the Ouseley Report,30which was published, by chance, just after the 2001 riots. It had been due to be published some months before, but the release of the review of community relations in Bradford, commissioned by the Council, was delayed. When it came out, it attracted a lot of media attention, partly because it coincided with the 2001 riots in Bradford. In broad terms, the review team observed that relations between communities were deteriorating and that
“communities are fragmenting along racial, cultural and faith lines.” (Ouseley, 2001:
6) As a consequence, segregation in schools has become visible, and a sense of “us versus them” grown, leading to a lack of understanding between communities, leading in turn to segregation and people retiring to their “comfort zones,”
(Ouseley, 2001), a polarisation of community life that, post-riots, Ted Cantle would describe as communities living “parallel lives.” (2001: 9)The apparent preference for living with people from similar background was labelled by Ouseley and the review team as “self-segregation” (2001) and the term was then widely used in reports following the riots. Adding to this point, the Ouseley report argues that
“different communities seek to protect their different identities and cultures, discouraging and avoiding contact with other communities and institutions,” (2001:
10) which has led to the district being divided and certain communities not feeling part of “the Bradford identity,” (10) suggesting that there can be one identity that all Bradfordians can identify with (unlike the conclusion of the Bradford Congress
30I could have explored the Ouseley report along the Cantle and Denham reports in Chapter 3 as it played a part within the national discourse on multiculturalism at the beginning of the twenty-first century. However, I chose to treat it here as contrary to the other two documents, it is solely focused on Bradford and goes into a lot more detail into the specific situation of Bradford. Also, it was commissioned by the council for the local authority to use. Finally, the review team was made of a group of people who were either from Bradford or worked there so with, presumably, a different positioning towards the city than Denham and Cantle.
just five years before). The report identifies resentment between various ethnic communities as a barrier to such identification. Indeed, it observes that
“regeneration processes require communities and neighbourhoods to compete on
‘deprivation-deficit models’ which, in effect, means that to succeed requires arguing that your area is more deprived and dreadful than the next.” (2001: 11) This risks creating self-fulfilling prophecies on top of resentment linked to competition for resources between communities. Overall, the report paints a dark picture of the state of multicultural relations in the District. It appears that the various race relations policies put in place by the Council have failed. This conclusion, with the language of “us versus them,” resentment, comfort zones, segregation, racial discrimination and divisions reinforces the construction of Bradford as a contested urban space. It is worth noting that the authors of the review make a point to explain that what they write about comes from Bradfordians themselves and that the positive and negative points presented throughout about Bradford were talked about by the people of Bradford themselves (the ones who were interviewed in the process, to be more precise). There is a long list of the people who were invited to contribute, and the process of collecting contributions is detailed in the report.
Throughout the review however, it is the authors’ interpretations that come through rather than the direct voices of the people interviewed. Thus, although a wide range of people are talked about, their direct voices are missing from the report.
b – Deindustrialisation and regeneration
In terms of deindustrialisation and regeneration, the section on tourism has already highlighted that the economy was a concern for the council from the 1970s throughout the 1980s and in the 1990s. In his paper, Taj (1996) makes the link between poverty and wider negative image. He points out that a by-product of deindustrialisation and poverty is the negative image from which the city suffers, which in turn makes it more difficult for business to attract investment: “The poor state of the area feeds itself. [...] there is no doubt that the image of neglect and marginality deters both investors and consumers” (4) and he reiterates: “Changes in
industries, technologies, markets and trading relationships have posed immense challenges to local businesses. The problems of recession have been compounded by recurring negative images of the area.” (12) The Bradford Commission Report adds to the argument that not only ethnic minorities suffer from poverty in Bradford, but a cross-section of the population does: “Poverty is widespread in Bradford. People from various ethnic backgrounds are poor, unskilled, and unemployed, and the socio-economic outcomes are similar to those which affect so large a proportion of people from some of the ethnic minorities.” (75)
In the 2000s, council documents tend to be concerned with describing the economy of the District, and they generally draw a negative picture. For example, the City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council 2004 report talks of a “weak economy”,
“employment rates significantly below the national average”, “unemployment above the national average” and a “manufacturing industry [which] has declined sharply.” (8) Six years later, another report by the District Council makes the same observation about the competitive weakness of the, admittedly large, Bradford economy (2010). One of the reasons for this is that “low skills impact on the district’s economic prospects.” (2010: 4) Indeed, one of the problems identified in the same report is the low skills levels that characterise the labour market in the city. In addition, “A closer look at the occupational breakdown reveals that the proportion of the working population who are in elementary occupations [...] is very high by national standards – 14.20% compared to 11.33% nationally. In contrast, the ‘higher end’ occupations are underrepresented in the district with only 24.10% of the working population employed in managerial and occupational occupations.” (2010: 23) Another characteristic of the labour market is the high rate of unemployment, which reached 8.9% in 2009 (City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council, 2010: 14), and tends to affect the youth disproportionately (City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council, 2010).
Poverty and deprivation, although they both encompass more than economic poverty or deprivation, are explored in various ways in the documents presented
here. The Council reports (2004 and 2010) focus on the portrayal through statistics of the District’s deprivation situation. For example, “a third of its [District]
population live in the 10 per cent most deprived wards in the country” (City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council, 2004: 3) and “Of the 354 local authority areas ranked, Bradford district is the 32ndmost deprived. This puts the district in the 10% most deprived local authority areas. On one particular measure – income deprivation – Bradford was ranked as 4th worst in the country.” (City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council, 2010: 24) The statistics also serve to highlight the disparities within the District, which are not often talked about: “Two of Bradford’s 30 wards are ranked in the 15% least deprived wards in the country (Wharfedale and Ilkley). Two wards – Bradford Moor and Manningham – fall within the 5% most deprived areas nationally, with Bowling and Barkerend and Little Horton wards falling within the 10% most deprived areas.” (City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council, 2010: 24) Further, the 2010 Council report draws a causality link between experiences of poverty in the inner city of Bradford, characterised by “generations of worklessness and consequently [...] low aspirations and expectations” (31) and low cohesion. The author writes “A consequence of this poverty and structural inequality is low sense of belonging, togetherness, and low cohesion. The results from the Autumn 2009 Place Survey highlight the relationship between satisfaction with services, participation in civic life and cohesion. Those satisfied with the area as a place to live are more likely to say they feel a strong belonging (66%) compared to those who are unhappy with their area (28%).” (City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council, 2010: 31)