Examination of Witnesses (Questions 101-118)
MS BRENDA
ROCHESTER, MR
RICHARD CHIPPS,
MS ANN
ROYLE AND
MR STEWART
BONE
4 MARCH 2008
Chair: I think you were here in the audience
so you have heard the explanation of why we are here and what
we are up to so we will move straight into questions. Clive?
Q101 Mr Betts: Can you begin by saying,
as you see things, what are the main areas of tension, the main
issues between the various communities in Burnley—the white
community, the ethnic minority community and the newly arrived
people from Poland—or perhaps you will tell me there are
not any tensions at all?
Ms Rochester: That will depend
where you live. I live in a little area of the town called Top-of-the-Town
which is adjacent to the town centre. Fortunately we are lucky
in that we do not have racial tension.
Q102 Mr Betts: Not knowing the area,
is this an area with a mixed community?
Ms Rochester: Yes we have a community
and following up on the gentleman from Mars, we have done a lot
--- silence from Mars! Our community has done a lot. We have done
a lot of projects that are looking at where the town was, how
it has progressed from being one type of community right through,
and we recently did a project called The Past is our Future so
we could look and engage and find the richness of other cultures
and see how that has built Burnley as a place to be. We find that
a lot of the unrest—and I do not want to be shot down for
this—really stems from the media. Things are blown out of
proportion on television, not necessarily radio, not necessarily
local papers, but things are blown out of proportion and this
bothers us. We are a community and whilst people see or perceive
divisions that are not really there then that is our difficulty.
We work very hard across our communities at grass-roots level.
We engage with people. I am not just interested in the Canalside
community. I work across what I call grass-roots levels and that
is where the support needs to be.
Q103 Chair: What about the rest of
you?
Mr Chipps: There are tensions
which exist. It was quite relevant what Brenda said—it depends
where you live in the town. We live bordering right on to the
Asian community and we have always worked alongside the Asian
community. Going back to what the previous panel said, in the
1970s there were no problems. The tensions that are there now
are around not only the perception but the fact that a lot of
money is spent within the Asian area and alongside them you have
got the indigenous whites who are equally poor, living in the
same conditions, very often ignored, so throughout the white community
that is very prevalent. There is not only perception but the facts.
It would be quite easy for us to ascertain whether this is correct
or not. Let us get the facts together and let us have a look where
it is spent once and for all and either dismiss this perception
or let us address it, but that is the main one.
Mr Bone: I live a long way away
from what is perceived as the Asian communities. I live over the
south side of the town here. However, the predominant population
of this area is fairly old, certainly well-established, long-established
people who have been living there for many generations, but there
is also quite a large number of houses that have been bought up
by landlords, frequently considered to be unscrupulous landlords,
so we consider that we have suffered from what is referred to
as adjacent area problems in that when an area is targeted for
improvement, we will get the movement across of people who perhaps
only stay in a property for six months and then move on again,
and this tends to bring a lot of unrest because in the majority
these people tend to be not working, for whatever reason, and
also they have quite strong attitudes regarding they are right
and that is it. I also have a foot in another part of town which
is slap-bang in the middle of the Asian community because I am
on the management committee of Burnley Community Farm. Burnley
Community Farm was proposed from the disturbances of 2001 so that
it would be able to be a cohesive function to actually bring communities
together, because once you have this structure of a farm, people
will come to it and will mix. The real problem we have experienced
is that over the years we have just not been able to get a piece
of land. This is down to the community deciding it should be on
a certain piece of land at Enabled Action Plan level but at the
master planning level the consultants then decided it was going
to be housing. We are now into the Area Action Plan stage and
it is going to be housing but there is going to be a school becoming
vacant in the next year, so we have been pushed back quite a few
years, six or seven years, but when that school becomes vacant
we can possibly have part of it but the rest of it is going to
be used for football fields adjacent to the sliproad for the motorway.
As soon as we talk about community cohesion and putting the farm
in one area, any one area, people not very far away say, "Why
are they getting it again?" This has been said to me within
the last week, "Why are they getting it again?" It does
not matter whether it is people over there, people over there
or people cheek-by-jowl, if you put it one side of a road, it
is them, if it is the other side of the road, it is us. No matter
where you go in Burnley there are "us and them"; it
can be between whites on either side of Colmworth Lane, it does
not matter, it is the territorial mentality. I have only been
in Burnley less than ten years now, although I lived in Rossendale
before, and it is quite amazing the territorial nature. Because
of the nature of the original Asian influx, which was floor workers
in the cotton mills, they went to certain geographical areas and
that is the predominant areas where they have remained. We cannot
differentiate between a recent arrival and a long-term resident
because they tend to look after themselves, should we say. I have
had white people ask me, "Why do those Asians get these businesses?"
and I say to them, "Because they have a culture of working
together, of building a family business and running it in such
a way that it becomes successful. Why don't you do something?"
They say, "I can't do that, someone should give me a job."
That is a built-in attitude, it is an attitude which I try to
break with whoever I speak but you cannot change a lot of the
attitudes. I will mention Polish people because my immediate neighbours
to my left-hand side are Polish. I live in what is called a two-up
two-down and we did have bad neighbours there. We managed by working
with the landlady to get rid of them and she could not be bothered
any more and put the house up for sale. It was bought by a craftsman/businessman
Polish man. You could not meet a nicer person. We said to him,
"You make sure you put in some good tenants," and he
said, "I will get you a nice Polish family". And he
did; they are nice; we could not have better neighbours and a
better landlord, and that is fantastic. However it depends, we
have got some fairly newly moved in whites across the road, four
children, and they now take to kicking the car that these Polish
people have bought and then running off. They are getting harassed
now purely for the fun of it. I have not caught them yet but watch
out!
Ms Royle: I would like to say
the area I live in is classed as one of the better areas but over
the past two years we have begun to notice a big difference in
the fact that what is happening in the rest of Burnley is affecting
the area that we live in. There has been a lot of migration with
Asians and Polish coming into the area. With the Polish we have
no problem; they have integrated very well; they get on with everybody.
Q104 Mr Betts: Are these mainly Polish
people who come as families rather than single people?
Ms Royle: Some are families but
you tend to find the majority are single at the moment. Obviously
they have come over to try and find jobs before they bring their
families over.
Q105 Chair: Are there issues of houses
in multiple occupation?
Ms Royle: There are, yes, and
like this gentleman here we have problems with landlords moving
into bad properties, some making them multiples. Yes, we have
had a great lot of problems with that, but we tend to find those
are mostly the white majority that we have the problems with in
these multi-flats. What we find with the Asians is they tend to
keep to themselves and not really integrate with us. There are
a couple of families that do but we are finding the more that
are coming up the less they are integrating with us. They are
keeping themselves to themselves, which we really do not want;
we want them to integrate with the whole of the area that we live
in. We tend to find that we are getting a lot of problems that
the local council seem to be ignoring because they are concentrating
more on the "Elevate" areas, and what we have been trying
to get over to the Council is they should start doing something
about this now, nip it in the bud as we say, before we become
another Elevate area, because that is what we do not want, but
because of what is happening in the rest of Burnley it is affecting
our area.
Dr Pugh: Elevate areas did you say?
Chair: Which means what?
Q106 Andrew George: Is that an area
of Burnley?
Mr Chipps: A regeneration area.
Q107 Chair: What would you want the
Council to do that you think they are not doing?
Ms Royle: What I want them to
do is to take notice that what is happening in the other areas
of Burnley is impacting on our area. Like I say, the landlords
have now started moving into our area now that these other areas
are being knocked down, so the landlords are moving into our area
and other areas that are not in the elevate area, which is having
an effect on us because landlords are buying all the properties
that are coming up for sale.
Mr Chipps: This is a problem throughout
Burnley. When you tackle one area in particular, the hardcore
element which is causing those problems, generally speaking, moves
because of the harassment they receive from the police and the
council. Rather than tackling them personally and individually,
they move out and obviously create problems in other areas, so
instead of having one area with 20 families, they move into three
or four other areas and we get this problem again. Until we tackle
the hardcore element, unfortunately we are just shifting them
around and experiencing the same problem every ten years from
the same people. Another serious problem as regards the tensions
is the fact that because of the nature of the Asians being very
good social networkers and business networkers, as Stewart brought
up, the problem is also they have a mistrust of the police and
do not use the police and very often will deal with things themselves,
which then causes tension amongst the white community because
inevitably they deal with things themselves and if you get more
than one or two Asians collecting, the reaction generally speaking
is you will get one or two whites collecting in retaliation because
of this sort of gang culture. The strange thing is the perception
amongst the white people is they are favoured by the police and
the council and yet they have this mistrust of the police, so
it is strange.
Q108 Dr Pugh: The evidence you are
giving is forming into a pattern from both sets of witnesses so
far. The previous witness, Mr Razaq, made an analysis of the racial
segregation in Burnley on the following lines: he said that people
live in different areas but they mix in leisure, they mix in the
shopping environment, they mix in public sector employment. It
has already been touched upon but is there the same mix in for
example small enterprises or are those more segregated? In other
words, is the private sector more manifestly segregated than the
public sector in employment terms?
Mr Bone: I worked for some months
for an Asian-owned and run business which was based in Essex but
they had a branch up here where I was working. I got on perfectly
well with everybody in the company, but I was a fairly senior
technical person whereas the line operatives were under a very
great deal of pressure by the management and I do not think it
would have been tolerated if it had been predominantly white people,
they would not have worked in those conditions.
Q109 Dr Pugh: Are you saying that
SMEs in general are mono-ethnic or are they usually or characteristically
mixed? What is your view?
Mr Bone: Predominantly mono-ethnic.
Q110 Dr Pugh: The other point made
which I think is quite a crucial one is it is not necessarily
a problem if people mix in other environments the fact that they
live in distinct environments. That clearly is the pattern in
Burnley. Do you see that as a problem, the fact that people go
back to different areas and streets, and do you think it will
change?
Mr Bone: The mix socially I think
is only the skimming of certain people who have integrated. I
have got a word for it, I call it the "sofa group",
it is the same old faces. There could well be 10,000 Asians and
you will see only 500 of them who actually do mix. They are the
same people as we have seen here today. I mentioned the farm:
the chair of the farm is an Asian councillor, the secretary is
an Asian lady who is the wife of a councillor. There are five
whites on there. We are all, as I say, based up there in the Stoneyholme
area and there is a lot of close working when we are there, but
I then go back to my area here. There were two Asian families
living literally five or six doors away from me, and going back
18 months ago one of them left and about four or five months later
the other one left.
Q111 Dr Pugh: So it is a problem,
that is what you are saying?
Mr Bone: The reason the first
one left was because the Asian gentleman was living with a white
woman partner and his house literally was attacked and he was
attacked in his home and he was driven out by a white gang. They
were caught. They also at the same time jumped on the car and
tried to break into the adjacent house but they badly damaged
the car. This was a white attack on two Asians living in a very
predominantly long-established white area. There had been a shop
directly across the road from them that was Asian-run but the
strange point about it was that was a Hindu not a Muslim one,
and they used to get a bit of hassle but nothing like as much,
and there are these differences. What I will say in the main is
the Asian men who wear suits will be seen mixing and they will
have jobs that have a natural ethnic mix whereas the majority
who work in their own environment will stay in their own environment
and will tend not to mix.
Q112 Dr Pugh: Is that a general view?
Mr Chipps: Again Stewart lives
in an area away from the main group. The community groups work
very hard at improving these things. There are a lot of Asians
and whites who integrate but they only integrate within business
or at some sort of community group level. It is true what he says
that very often it is a small minority. Everybody is trying to
bring more and more people into that but obviously that is difficult.
It is not easy, it is the hardcore element of both the white community
and the Asian community and obviously for the community to succeed
in that they need a lot of help because community groups want
to tackle it and community groups are working hard daily but they
need help to do that.
Q113 Chair: What sort of help do
they need?
Mr Chipps: Financial and training.
Ms Rochester: Can I just elaborate
a little bit on that. I am involved with five other community
groups across the borough. I am sorry but I get a bit annoyed
when people start saying Asian/English/Polish; we are all people,
we are all members of society. The project is centred around the
training of local young people to become youth workers. Our begging
bowl is getting very, very heavy. We have the enthusiasm from
the young people, we have the support of all the community, but
we are having to beg for money to train those young people. We
are doing that so that we engage with young people to give them
something positive, to break down barriers, to stop them hanging
about on street corners (where sometimes they are not doing anything
wrong). I am a member of the older generation and the older generation
have got very short memories, they say, "We never did that."
Well, I did, I am sorry! That is the problem. We are working and
tiring ourselves out getting funding and the funding is put up
there and not where it is needed down here. That applies to a
lot of the projects I am involved with. Yes, I am chairperson
of the Canalside Community Association but I am also the chair
of other things and we are all chasing the same little pots of
money. That sometimes gets, how can I put it, disheartening.
Mr Bone: I will give you a quick
example of that. I was a computer professional before I retired
and we as a community group set up and got funding of £3,500
to £4,000. As part of that I wanted to put a bid in to buy
a projector to be able to put slides up and to give presentations
and I was told, "No, it does not come within these remits."
We still have £2,500 sitting in the bank but we cannot have
a projector. Occasionally we will borrow one and do a presentation
but if we had our own we could work much more efficiently and
much better.
Q114 Andrew George: Can I ask the
"man from Mars" cricket test question, not Norman Tebbit's,
that is the community in Burnley across the community play cricket
no doubt; are those cricket clubs mixed ethnic given the fact
that is one issue which I imagine people do cross the ethnic divide
for?
Mr Chipps: It is.
Q115 Andrew George: Are there mixed
clubs or do they tend to be mono-ethnic?
Mr Chipps: I am sure they are
but it is also a method we are trying to use within the community:
sport at a competitive level to involve both communities. I cannot
answer for the actual professional clubs because I do not know
but I would imagine so.
Q116 Andrew George: But at community
level?
Ms Rochester: We have some young
men in our area that are members of Colne Cricket Club so at that
level I do not think there is segregation.
Mr Chipps: There are two distinct
levels of segregation. It does not exist with the people who are
more affluent or perhaps more professional where integration is
not a problem within the Asian and white community, and generally
speaking they fit in very well. Unfortunately, there is the other
level which is the community level in the poor areas where there
is segregation and where integration does not exist.
Ms Rochester: Ours is a poor area.
Mr Chipps: Yes but you do not
live alongside. Effectively they are not minorities. If you live
alongside and within them they become majorities.
Mr Bone: Let me change from cricket
to football, there was some very good work done by battleaxe granny
up there, our chair, who decided to set up a football team. She
got funding for kit, et cetera, and got some real rough
necks into this team and she was able to get funding for a coach.
The coach came along and they said, "We are not having anything
to do with him, he is Asian," and that was it. The BNP banners
went up I am afraid.
Q117 Emily Thornberry: Can I ask
a question which I asked the other group as well, which is we
have to make recommendations to the Government and we would really
like to hear what you think we should be recommending to the Government
that they should be doing that would be of help in Burnley. I
think the question I really ought to ask you, to get you to focus,
is what would be the one recommendation that you would suggest
that we make to the Government?
Mr Bone: Trust the community groups;
give them flexible funding.
Mr Chipps: Put funding into groups
and training into groups, basically what the Government are doing,
put it into groups; do not rely on agencies and individuals, trust
the community groups themselves. They are the only ones who know
what should be done within their community. They are the ones
who know the problems and they know how to get out of them.
Mr Bone: Make us account for the
money but trust us to have a bit of flexibility in spending it
and show the results.
Q118 Andrew George: You did not hear
me, Brenda.
Ms Rochester: I am sorry, I do
have a hearing problem.
Mr Chipps: It is your age!
Ms Rochester: I seem to have been
around since Adam was a lad! I was involved in setting up English-as-a-second-language
classes; I was involved in setting up the adult literacy scheme
in Burnley; the numeracy scheme in Burnley. I historically know
the background to areas in Burnley when parts were called the
"Irish Park". That is the problem I have. I feel that
sometimes people do not look far enough back to see how change
has evolved. They want it instantly; they want it now. Any change
that is going to come about will evolve and it will only evolve
when we do not see differences but when we see commonalty. I agree
with everything that has been said about funding. That is a major
burden. There are so many groups who would come together but then
they are faced with this filling in of forms. I am not saying
we should not fill in forms but they seem to be barriers and instead
of funding supporting the groups, gaining the funding appears
to be a barrier. At the moment I am involved in a group that is
refurbishing and regenerating a Grade II listed building that
has been almost let fall down. When people hear what we are doing
they say, "How do you find the time?" We do find the
time but it is just reliant all the time on volunteers. Sometimes
volunteers could do with a lot more support. And again, I do live
in a poor area of the town. We have a great divide between terraced
houses and very big Victorian terraced houses and we have got
a divide as far as wealth is concerned. When I saw the word "migrant"
my immediate thought was—and this is where I am going back
to something Stewart said—it is not Polish migrants or Asian
migrants or whatever; it is the migrants who come into the area,
destroy property and move on to destroy some more. We have had
a house in our area that was blown up by migrant residents three
or four years ago and it is still standing empty and boarded up.
That does not encourage other members of our community, people
who are working hard to keep their properties in good repair.
In fact, the young man who lived next door has moved out of the
area purely because of that property. There are a lot of issues.
It is not just religious or cultural or whatever, there are a
lot of issues. Sorry, I will shut up now!
Chair: Can I thank you all very much.
It has actually been very helpful, it has given us a picture of
what is going on here which is really why we came and what we
wanted to get. As I say, if you want to put in any more in writing
afterwards, we are happy to receive that. Thank you very much
indeed.
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