02.05.2001

Fight racism, build the alliance

Ateeq Siddique, the Socialist Alliance candidate for Bradford South, was heavily featured in the national media following disturbances in the Lidget Green area of the city. Peter Manson spoke to him for the Weekly Worker

How do you interpret what happened in Bradford two weeks ago?

At first the press and police were saying that it was a riot pure and simple and had nothing to do with racism. They were saying that the local youth started and finished what happened. But I went down there the day after and took lots of notes. I was shocked by what I heard. The fact of the matter was the whole thing was started off by a group of around 40 white racists.

They had been drinking all day and ended up in the Coach House pub, where celebrations for an Asian wedding were taking place upstairs. It is a nice pub, shared by black and white with no problems. The MSF union branch hold their meetings there. But these 40 racists started insulting the guests and became violent. They went on the rampage. They came out of the pub and were throwing milk bottles and stones at a group of Asian kids playing football. They were hurling racist remarks and assaulted some women.

The police took two hours to respond despite receiving nearly 150 phone calls. Because they didn?t turn up, local people started to take matters into their own hands and exacted punishment on the racists. When the police did arrive they just put the racists on a bus and let them drive out. Then the police attacked the 200-300 people who were occupying the streets.

The next day I barged into a meeting that had been arranged between the police and ?community leaders? - who consist basically of Asian Tories and leading businessmen. One of them is an ex-policeman. The police had been giving their interpretation, which was to say that they had to deal with a riot. I said: ?I?ve just been in Lidget Green for the last two and a half hours and that?s not what the people there are saying.?

The police admitted in the meeting that they took two hours to arrive. They said they were taken by surprise. The reason they give to excuse their behaviour is that ?police numbers are down?. The Tory Asian leaders agreed with me and the police grudgingly acknowledged there had been a ?racist element?.

I put out a statement describing the events and was interviewed on Radio Four. I told them that the police were refusing to treat it as a racist incident until we put pressure on them. The police press release had managed to mask the key elements. They were playing a political game. But later they started to turn the story round - I have never seen a story change so much.

But I have been disturbed by how some people have reacted, including one or two on the trades council. They said my statement was wrong because the group that started the trouble was not all-white. But if one or two were mixed, that doesn?t detract from the fact that it was a racist incident.

Why do you think the police behaved in the way they did?

My view is that Macpherson has got to be brought into it. The police have been driven mad by Macpherson. As an institution they want to take their own decisions and won?t play ball. They don?t want to accept even the very mild recommendations in the report.

Take Oldham. Clearly the police have got access to statistics on racist crime. They can manipulate the figures to say that 60% of racist crimes are committed by Asians, but giving the police a monopoly on such statistics is, to paraphrase Bill Morris, like giving Dracula access to the blood bank.

There has been no improvement since Macpherson. In fact in many ways it has got worse. They are targeting activists and anti-racists. Like Mohammed Amran here in Bradford. He is a commissioner for the Commission for Racial Equality and I used to work with him on the Bradford Race Equality Council - I worked on cases of racial and sexual harassment.

Last summer the police arrested him outside his mother?s house. He was talking with some relatives. They broke his arm in the process. Mohammed is quite well known locally and has some leverage - he?s as high-profile as an MP. A month ago he received a letter saying, ?Sorry, we made a mistake. It was a case of mistaken identity.? That?s the state of play in terms of anti-racism in Bradford.

They can have their anti-racist awareness courses and eat all the samosas and pakoras they want. But we need to ask deeper, fundamental questions about the police and their role. They are an armed body of the state and can?t be reformed.

So do you think the police are rebelling against the state over Macpherson?

I would say the police are in complete denial on the question of anti-racism. They are using every mechanism to block any measure needed to be taken to implement the Macpherson recommendations.

The police are naturally supporters of the Conservative Party and themselves act as a conservative element in society. Their problem is they don?t like New Labour because Straw allowed the Lawrence enquiry. But the government are playing a contradictory role. They like to brag about how they set up the enquiry and are introducing the Macpherson recommendations, but they leave out the fact that they were forced to do so through public pressure - from both black and white.

On the other hand, after Macpherson they are falling into the old rhetoric, suggesting the police are wonderful as an institution and that the problem is police numbers. The argument from the police is that they are getting a ?raw deal? from Macpherson. Actually since Macpherson the police have had an extra ?200 million thrown at them, while the Commission for Racial Equality had only got ?3 million.

Do you view the CRE as a progressive body?

The CRE is not a body with leftwing credentials, but it does push out some good anti-racist material and does a lot of good work with schools and so on.

How do you view Robin Cook?s recent ?tikka masala? speech?

He was playing the anti-racist card. He had realised things had gone too far. But at the end of the day we need more than these sort of platitudes. For example, the BNP are spreading their filth around Bradford. They are targeting Undercliffe - playing on fears among young people around the issue of schooling, etc.

New Labour has been making racist attacks on asylum-seekers and refugees publicly for more than two years, so there is a lot of hypocrisy in what Cook said.

Personally I would not view the state?s anti-immigration controls as necessarily racist. In the 1950s immigrants were persuaded to come to Britain from the Caribbean and Indian sub-continent, and today east Europeans are one of the main groups kept out. Surely the main purpose is to control the movement of labour?

Immigration controls are definitely racist. Racism is used to try to keep down wages. The key element is wage labour being transferred across the globe. When people from Pakistan and India came here it was their labour-power that was in demand. After the meltdown in eastern Europe people want to move where they believe they can enjoy prosperity. The government wants to keep them out. Fundamentally the question is racism. When John Townend made his disgusting remarks he was targeting people of colour.

Can we turn now to your own background? How did you get involved in politics?

I have always been political. During the miners? strike there were a lot of arguments at my school. The majority of teachers were against the strike but one or two were for it. They were the shop stewards in the union, I think. The discussion was very bitter, but I sided with the union and the strike politicised me.

I never joined the Labour Party, but I did join Amnesty International when I was 17. I was interested in human rights. Then I saw some posters advertising a series of meetings to be addressed by Tony Cliff on the collapse of eastern Europe. I went to the meeting in Liverpool with two of my friends and I joined the Socialist Workers Party there. It was my 22nd birthday.

As an SWP member how do you view the Socialist Alliance?

It is absolutely necessary for the left to unite. We must put a marker in the sand and build an organised opposition against Blair?s Tory policies. We need to attract as many groups and individuals - organised or unorganised - to build the resistance against New Labour?s attacks.

One priority must be to defend council housing. It is the same with education, where privatisation is also a threat. In Bradford there are plans to privatise all 27,000 council houses. In April last year Labour announced its plans and the following month they were punished in the May elections. They lost 11 seats on the council and now there is a Tory-Liberal coalition. The Socialist Alliance must galvanise that support.

But it is not just a question of the general election. There are the local elections too. And we must look well beyond. We are not going to stop these attacks without a big fight. We need to draw in young people. There are huge numbers being radicalised.

The SA is making progress in Bradford. As well as comrades from the SWP there are also people from other groups, including the Socialist Party, who are small but involved. And there?s a lot of unaffiliated people. One of our vice-chairs is a key worker against domestic violence in the area. Another vice-chair is a Labour Party member.

Yesterday we had a social for the Socialist Alliance. About 150 people turned up, including 40 asylum-seekers. We had two bands - one black, one white. It was quite a political event.

Do you think the logic of this cooperation is leading us towards a Socialist Alliance party?

There is an ongoing debate on that question, both inside and outside the alliance. What we need to do is keep this debate extremely fraternal, keep to the current format and look at it on a long-term basis. We are a young organisation and, as it stands, an alliance is working as the method to create the opposition we need.

But I am sure some people believe that the SA should be a party, and that debate needs to continue. The key thing is to build the Socialist Alliance on the ground.