A film I have co-produced on the life of Mohammad Taj is due out shortly. In 2001 he was brave enough to interrupt a riot in Manningham to rescue a bus with passengers stuck in the middle of it. The riot followed an earlier one in Bradford that kicked off on 9 June 1995 and which he later analysed and proposed solutions to that were ignored by the Government.
TAKEN FROM MOHAMMAD TAJ: STEERING FROM THE FRONT
Published 2018 by UNITE the union, free to download at:- https://markwrite.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/6328dpmt2018-taj-booklet-web.pdf
Standing up for what he believed in: the 1995 Bradford
riots
Bradford hit the national news when over the weekend of
Friday 9 June to Sunday 11 June 1995 public disorder occurred in the Manningham
District, where many Asian people live, before spreading to Bradford City
Centre.
Central to the disorders were young Asian men, a generation
scarred by racism, restricted job opportunities and police harassment.
The trouble started at around 9.25pm on 9 June after two
police officers, angered at being abused, arrested two young Asian men. In the
ensuing chaos, requests from several residents about why the youths were being
arrested were ignored and were met with the arrival of several more police
vehicles and officers at the scene.
Events spiralled out of control when more arrests were made
and a police dog handler roughly instructed a respected elderly resident to go
indoors and threatened the man with his dog in an area where the predominant
culture regarded such an animal as unclean. Many in the local community viewed
the police actions as examples of racism, intolerance and ignorance.
Consequently when further arrests were made of local people,
the vast majority of whom had previously never been in trouble with the police
and were mounting peaceful protests demanding the release of those arrested
earlier, the situation descended into rioting as bottles were thrown at police
officers.
On Saturday 10 June 1995 there was at one point around a
thousand mainly young Asian men battling with around 600 police officers in
riot gear.
A debate on the
disorder was secured in Parliament by Max Madden, the MP for Bradford West, on
21 June 1995, at the conclusion of which Nicholas Baker, the Parliamentary
Under-Secretary of State for the Home 33 Office Department, rejected calls for
a wide-ranging public inquiry, saying: “The Government are satisfied that the
Inquiry by the Police Complaints Authority (PCA) will investigate all the
circumstances surrounding the complaints against the police over that weekend.”
Seventeen months after the Bradford riots in 1995, Mohammad Taj
criticised police for learning nothing.
When the Inquiry was completed in April 1996 the PCA
concluded that: “Allegations of police misconduct and assault in particular
were of major concern to the public. The investigation had, however, found the
allegations (with one exception) to have been entirely without foundation.” The
Crown Prosecution Service decided that no criminal charges should be brought
against any police officer.
The decision by the Government to reject a wide-ranging
public inquiry led to the Bradford Congress, a voluntary association of
representative Bradford institutions including the City Council, agreeing to
appoint its own Commission of Inquiry.
The terms of reference were: “to conduct hearings to
consider the wider implications for Bradford of recent events in a part of the
inner city of Bradford, in order to help to create a better future for all
people of the district and to promote peace, harmony and understanding between
the communities of Bradford.”
Hearings began in October 1995. Bradford Congress appointed
sociology professor Sheila Allen, consultant John Barratt, a solicitor with
experience in investigations into local authorities and who became chairman of
the inquiry and Mohammad Taj as its Commission members.
Following the bruising battle over the sale of Yorkshire
Rider, Taj was given time away from work by his management. “I think they were
glad to not see me at work for a while. When I was approached to be involved I
made clear I would only do so if the final report would include recommendations
that I felt would be bound to include requests for public funds. I felt I was
given this guarantee.”
The Commission read an immense number of books, research
papers and official documents. 76 members of the public were interviewed and
189 attended lengthy small group meetings to put forward their individual
views. 119 officials and public representatives assisted the Commission, which
recorded that 45 per cent of young men in the local Asian communities of
Manningham were unemployed.
When the Commission issued its report on 20 November 1996 it
was very critical of the actions of the police on 9-11 June 1995.
According to Taj when he spoke to police officers during the
Inquiry he was “shocked to find out that their anti-racist training was
literally done in a day and involved a visit to a Muslim ‘Temple’ not Mosque!
The officers had no understanding of the people they were policing.” The
Commission commented on long-term problems between the police and local
Kashmiri youths who were regularly forced to endure “inappropriate, unfair, or
racist treatment by individual officers.”
The Commission ended its report quoting US President
Johnson’s 1968 statement on civil disorders in his country: “the only genuine,
long-range solution for what has happened lies in an attack upon the conditions
that breed despair and violence. All of us know what those conditions are:
ignorance, discrimination, slums, poverty, disease, not enough jobs.” However,
the Commission’s Report did not outline any practical tasks – or attacks in
Johnson’s words.
On 25 November 1996, Max Madden tabled a motion in
Parliament which noted the ‘lack of specific recommendations for action,
especially by Central Government to help people living in the Manningham and
Girlington areas of Bradford overcome acute poverty and deprivation...(such as)
increasing Local Government funding to enable Bradford City Council to maintain
key services.....to increase numbers of police officers on duty, to expand the
recruitment of ethnic minority police officers and training programmes to
combat endemic racism within the police service.”
Taj refused to sign off the report because it was vague and
made no positive recommendations. Instead he issued his own 25-page report: A
CAN DO CITY. Bob Purkiss, the first TGWU National Equalities Officer for
race equality, praised this as “excellent…. much of the report is also relevant
to many other parts of our society.”
Taj was widely reported in local and national newspapers. He
felt that too much of “the City’s institutions can’t do culture” had damaged
the report such that “When challenged to admit that there are racists within
their ranks the Police Service ‘can’t do’ that for fear of undermining public
confidence” and “When challenged to deal with the extensive discrimination
existing in the field of employment the private sector ‘can’t do’ anything
because of the exigencies and pressures of commercial life.
“When challenged to condemn the repressive and extremist
forces at work within their own communities Asians ‘can’t do’ that because they
would be seen as comforting bigots. The ‘can’t do’ culture is at is most
pervasive and extreme within the Local Authority. Over twenty years of reducing
real budgets, an unsympathetic central government and media ready to pounce on
any misjudgment by a Council have habituated the authority to inaction. It has
a culture that is far more ready and practiced at explaining why it can’t do
anything rather than devising a way of getting something done.”
On police racism as an exacerbating factor to the riots, Taj
stated: “I want them to openly acknowledge that there are racists in their
ranks and kick them out in short order”.
He felt that: “For the Asian communities, and here I mean
the largely Muslim communities, I have challenged them to start addressing
their own failings.” The Daily Jang, an Urdu newspaper based in Karachi,
Pakistan reported that significant amongst these criticisms by Taj of his own
community was an attitude that integration would mean a loss of religion and
culture and the subordinate role allocated to Muslim women.
Additionally, Taj said: “There are real failings and I have
not been afraid to speak out about them. Koranic education can be a powerful
force for the good. However, this will not occur if Arabic rote teaching is not
accompanied by guidance in an accessible language.”
Because so many children from the Asian community were
entering school with inadequate language skills, for which Taj contended most
did not recover, he argued “there is an urgent need for a truly vast increase
in new buildings – the construction of which would boost jobs and the local
economy – for nursery education if the school system is to stop turning out ill-educated,
disenchanted and disruptive young ‘Asians’. This is a massive task to undertake
but huge problems are not resolved by meagre solutions.”
Taj’s other suggestions were for a councillor-led Manningham
Development Executive, and a clamp-down on drugs trafficking, particularly in
the Manningham area.
Taj felt: “The Local Authority must also look to central
Government for co-operation. It is entirely reasonable to request additional
assistance from this source when pursuing innovative, radical and cost-effective
solutions to deepening difficulties.”
Speaking in 2017, Taj explains. “As we got nearer to
completion there was pressure from the major institutions not to make financial
demands on national Government or even on Local Government, as in the latter
case it would mean diverting resources from the outer areas of Bradford towards
the inner city. Neither was politically acceptable and I argued that the
Girlington Report, where most residents are of South Asian origin, from 6-7
years previously had already identified the issues in inner cities.”
According to Jowett: “Taj was under tremendous pressure by
the Bradford political establishment to sign the official report. I know they
approached him just before the report was due to be officially signed by its
three commission members with a job offer to him to become the co ordinator of
a new community relations body they hoped to establish in Manningham.
Taj had been critical
of many 1970s black radicals, including those in the AYM, from inner-city areas
who were co-opted by local authorities and then became of no use to the
communities they came from. He did not want to tread the same path. “Taj, who I know always liked being a bus
driver, stood by what he believed and I think that may have later counted
against him when he sought selection as the Labour candidate in Bradford West
shortly afterwards. Generally, Taj believes in having arguments internally
within any organisation and if he loses he will go out and support the policy
or person. But there comes a time on certain issues when the gap is too big and
you have to stand your ground no matter the consequences. This was one such
occasion.”
“I disagreed with him
over his decision not to put his name to the report as I felt he was setting
himself up to fail but if Taj feels strongly enough about something he will
stand his ground,” states Gerry Sutcliffe.
The authorities unwillingness to take up Taj’s demands meant
that in 2001 there was a much more violent riot in Manningham. Right in the
middle of the mayhem a bus got stuck with passengers and its driver on it. “Taj
actually went to the bus and assisted with it leaving the scene without harm.
It was a very brave thing to do,” says Jowett.
