It was a little symbolic that as the Burnley Task Force report was being opened and read on editorial desks across the land, the events of Burnley's win at Deepdale served to highlight how racial or cultural categories can be marginalised if all share a vision and play their part. As the media were digesting the reality of cultural apartheid in towns across the north of England, a bronzed Greek was brilliantly denying a pale Northern Irishman on the field of play to the appreciation of everyone on the ground. Did we Clarets prevaricate over the fact that our match winner was made by a black Frenchman and a white Irishman?
The Task Force report makes it clear that the biggest challenge lies in finding a vision in which all Burnley folk can invest time and share ideas, and in doing so the Task Force lays its political cards on the table:
- This is about forging social integration where little or none exists
- The option of white and Asian areas living apart within the same town is not on the agenda
This, then, is the social vision of the Task Force report - a town at least tolerant and perhaps, sometime in the future, appreciative of its rich cultural mix. The report argues that this shift in attitudes can be facilitated by, for example, the ending of single-faith schools, and can be demonstrated practically by the gradual dissolution of exclusively white and Asian areas of town.
Burnley's problems are more complex than is often portrayed. Burnley does not have an 'Asian' community, but a number of communities for whom the label of 'Asian' means very little. How many of us white Britons invest meaning and identity in being European? Generating tolerance among the groups within Burnley's diverse population is about bringing together, for example, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis as well as each of them with whites, who themselves include a large community that cherishes its Irish roots.
Is this social vision realistic? More to the point, is it right? The policy of forging integration is difficult and not without controversy. It is open to accusations of social engineering, since most ethnic groups stress a preference to live amongst those of their own ethnicity. It is a policy that seems to reflect the ideological concerns of the privileged few who wrote the report at the expense of the practical problems of the impoverished many who have to live with the results. Incantations towards integration carry little moral weight when the chief proponents so easily escape the consequences of their words and deeds.
To its credit, the report tries to stress at every turn the need for communities to help themselves, and makes suggestions as to how this process can be initiated. However, the report is not free from the top-down tendencies that prove to be the Achilles heel of so many schemes of social improvement.
For example, let us examine the key question of housing, of which the report says that:
"Government [and] the North West Development Association...must acknowledge that efforts to tackle exclusion, disadvantage and neighbourhood renewal will fail unless a concerted effort is made to tackle the housing problems of Burnley, which are some of the worst in the country."
Those of us at the AGM this summer who heard Peter Pike's speech will be fully aware of the cost of clearing Burnley's inadequate housing, and the report does appeal to the government to provide additional resources for this purpose. In terms of housing provision, the way forward is deemed to be in the development of new private and Housing Association stock. This includes the funding of private housing developments by the Regional Development Agency (RDA). The RDA is a quango - an unelected arm of government - which has control of a substantial budget and allocates this according to government policy. In other words, public money is dangled in front of private housing companies so that they build cheaper (and thus less profitable) housing available to lower income groups.
Avoiding the whole issue of public money funding profit-making organisations, the question I would like to ask is this: what of the wishes of the people of Burnley? In this all-encompassing scheme of social bridge-building, urban renewal and economic regeneration, where is the voice of the young, disillusioned Bangladeshi in Stoneyholme, or the isolated, frightened pensioner in Daneshouse? At what point in this roll call of real estate dealers, government officials and property developers do the humble beneficiaries of this exciting vision have a substantive say?
This is important, as residents of various parts of Burnley will tell you. Within the small inner area of the town stood, and in some cases still stands, every example of public housing experimentation that merely reflected the architectural fad of the day rather than real, long-term housing needs. Tower block villages in the sky? Well, the dark and ugly Trafalgar flats didn't last very long. Spacious, green estates? The Stoops estate demonstrates that gardens and nice views of Pendle are no substitute for decent jobs. Close-knit, terraced communities? Stoneyholme tells us that although neighbours can be friends, lack of community facilities disastrously undermines social cohesion.
To the question of local involvement posed above, the leaders of the Task Force point to such devices as consultation exercises and public meetings. However, you don't have to be particularly radical to accept that these events are largely cosmetic. Architects do not bin drawings and trash models when a few residents complain, and even well-considered suggestions are conveniently ignored if they deviate even slightly from the template envisaged by the town planners. A substantive say for the residents of inner Burnley would mean:
- having a veto on any aspect of the redevelopment plans
- being trusted with the funds to launch and maintain neighbourhood initiatives according to their assessment of local needs.
For those who think this is inviting trouble, ask yourself whether you trust the planners and developers to get it right this time, if indeed there is to be a 'this time'. Given their past record in the town, the pragmatic answer is, frankly, no. To complicate matters further, into the mix this time, centrally and unavoidably, is the troublesome issue of ethnic segregation.
Evidence from elsewhere points to the damage inflicted upon community relations when good intentions meet profit-seeking developers without the reality check of local opinion. The case of Charlestown in the USA mirrors that of Burnley. Charlestown (a deprived area of Boston) was run down due to the decline of traditional industries, and its people lived in separate racial and cultural communities. The area attracted the attention of redevelopers, and, like Burnley, Charlestown was the subject of a public report investigating strategies of regeneration. This being America, the report was not in the remit of government but completed by the Ford Foundation, a private trust. Consider this passage from the Ford Foundation report:
"The improvement of public education is a pre-requisite for holding the middle class in the area. School reform should emphasise marketable skills, and include innovative pilot projects to link education to job markets. Skills ought to reflect the technical orientation of area business firms."
It sounds rather New Labour, does it not? The emphasis on education, training and matching skills with the needs of employers could easily have flowed with practised ease from the pen of Alastair Campbell. Indeed, the Charlestown report told of a "vision" of a "new Charlestown" as a model of the "information economy" destined to grow up on the ruins of heavy industry. In fact, the Ford Foundation report dates from 1965, proof if any were needed that the situation in Burnley is not new, and also an indication that the town has been suffering along these lines for a number of years.
In Charlestown, the vision of the redevelopers was not that of the people of the town, and the measures put in place by the authorities to bring about this vision - such as the bussing of black students to white schools and the forced integration of neighbourhoods - led directly to major acts of civil disobedience. By an unhappy coincidence, the issue of schools and housing loom large in the case of Burnley also. Therefore, as the town's leaders and people begin the task of trying to solve Burnley's most pressing social problems, what can be learned from the experience of similar initiatives such as that in Charlestown?
Perhaps the most important lesson is that all sides need to understand the perspectives of the others, and this is particularly the case with the civic leaders from the business and professional classes. For such people, situations like Burnley's tend to provide a happy conjunction in which self-interest and moral idealism coincide. Racially integrated and innovative schools can break the hereditary cycle of underachievement and poverty, making it possible for fully paid-up members of the 'underclass' to achieve employable status. Racial justice and economic renewal thus go hand in hand.
However, the problem with this is that it obscures sources of injustice that have nothing to do with racism, and in so doing actually encourages racist thinking. The social deprivations of the various Asian communities in Burnley are so glaring and their case for help so compelling that the advocates of integration - particularly the city-dwellers of the national media - find it difficult to admit that whites have important grievances of their own, especially when those grievances are couched in the idiom of racial abuse.
But, of course, rising levels of racial tension are rooted in a sense of injustice - that your grievances are being ignored at the expense of others which are being tackled. How many times have we heard from a disgruntled white resident of Burnley that "the Asians get everything"? The obvious retort to this assertion is to challenge the complainant to change places, but on a more practical level this type of complaint must not be dismissed as plain racism, since such high-handedness plays plum into the hands of the BNP.
So although the problems of whites in Burnley are often characterised in the media as little more than the resentment and self-pity of small-minded racists, this portrayal must not be allowed to obscure the fact that the whites of Burnley share many common grievances with the Asian communities, and all deserve to be heard in equal measure.
Another important lesson from similar experiences elsewhere is that the regeneration of a town must be shaped by the communities themselves, and not imposed from above by an elite with interests of its own. For example, it may well be the case that both white and Asian communities agree that ethnic solidarity is as important as racial equality - such attitudes are, in fact, fairly common. But in reality, the elite who direct urban regeneration projects see ethnic solidarity as an obstacle to racial equality, and often try to force the integration of neighbourhoods which for generations have been ethnically homogeneous.
It is debatable whether the retention of ethnically exclusive areas can contribute significantly to racial equality within the town as a whole. Perhaps the most compelling argument for retaining wholly Asian and white areas in Burnley is that such communities respect another community's integrity more easily than weak and threatened ones do. The preservation of white and Asian communities is thus seen as a value competitive with - yet ironically essential to - equality.
For those who find this argument without merit, I remind you that the idea of retaining Asian and white enclaves in Burnley is popular amongst those who live in these areas, and that we should not dismiss such views as essentially racist. It is also the case that forced integration does not have a successful track record. What, then, is the middle road between forced integration and the maintenance of exclusively white and Asian ghettos?
The answer would appear to lie in an approach where integration is encouraged and is still the ultimate aim, but at a pace and on the terms of the parties involved. If this sounds hopelessly slow and without ambition, the answer is yes, precisely - we are dealing here with organic social processes that need time to work themselves out. The town planner or the politician who thinks that there is a quick-fix answer to Burnley's problems demonstrates nothing more than his or her own hubris. Landscaping some of the eyesores, building new houses and reforming the schools may help, but these measures are not in themselves the solution.
To take the issue of schools, the Task Force rejects single-faith schooling on the grounds that it enforces uncritical adherence to sectarian dogma. According to this line of thinking, public schools should not mirror the wishes of parents for their children's education but should be guided by an abstract ideal of 'excellence'. However, we are dealing here with long-term educational decline and underachievement. A sudden emphasis on excellence will indeed allow a few gifted individuals to escape from their culture into the business and professional classes, but it does precious little for the remainder who are left behind.
Burnley's future lies with its people. Only they can truly regenerate what was once a vibrant and exciting town. The role of government is to listen to the wishes and the ideas of Burnley people, not to judge them on the basis of ideology, but to help them to realise their ideas and to trust them with the resources to make a difference and with the power to make their own decisions. Reading the Task Force report, one remains sceptical of the extent to which government is prepared to allow the people of Burnley the opportunity to work out some of these problems for themselves.
To reiterate in conclusion: firstly, Burnley's various communities need lines of communication to each other, to understand each other's problems and grievances and to explore ways of bringing the communities if not together, then at least on better relations. Secondly, these explorations are far more effective if they are initiated by Burnley folk themselves, not the product of an executive pen. A top-down solution in the hands of an elite is not the answer to Burnley's problems.
On the matter of bringing communities together, this is made far easier if there are areas of town life in which all parties have a mutual interest. And here I can finally bring in the organisation in which all of us reading this have an interest: Burnley Football Club. The club recently highlighted an honourable mention that they received in the Task Force report, but this is being disingenuous. The report is a very large document in which it is almost impossible to find a mention of our club, one of the biggest economic concerns in the town.
But now isn't the time to criticise the club for its reactions to past events. Instead, Burnley Football Club offers us
the opportunity to establish a line of communication between Burnley's various communities. Football is a universal
currency, and we should begin to invest in this as a means of improving social relations in Burnley. To this end,
a few London Clarets have begun to accompany members of the Asian community to Turf Moor on match days. You can read a
little more of this in the match report for the Canvey Island game [click here]. Needless to say, we would welcome the involvement of anyone who is interested in this initiative.
