STEVE ANDREW enjoys an account of the many communities that flourished independently of and in resistance to the empires of old
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On Burnley Road: Class, Race and Politics in a Northern English Town
Salutary lessons to be learned from race riots in a ‘red wall’ Burnley
DECLINE: Abandoned factories symbolise Burnley's impoverishment in recent decades
[David Dixon/Creative Commons]
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IN JUNE 2001, there was a sudden outburst of racial rioting in the old Lancashire town of Burnley, one with a long weaving tradition and home to a settled minority community of Asian Muslims, mainly from Bangladesh, Gujarat and Pakistan who had lived in the town in seeming amity with their neighbours. That was clearly not the case.
Mike Makin-White, a former member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, was at the time working in community relations for Burnley Council, helping to promote community cohesion and good race relations during a decade when the BNP won seats on the council.
In this book, after a short but useful historical introduction to the town, he provides an incisive step-by-step description and perceptive analysis of what lay behind those riots.
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