UK race riots highlight Asian identity struggle

By Ed Cropley

OLDHAM, England (Reuters): Britain's worst race riots for years have brought into the open the determination of Asian and black youths to challenge a mainly-white society in which their immigrant parents were simply happy to find a place.

The weekend violence, which burst onto the British political agenda in the middle of an election campaign, typified the struggle for identity many of the young in immigrant communities endure in modern Britain.

Police in this run-down northern English town have pinned immediate blame for Saturday's riots on "outside influences" -- mainly ultra-rightwing English nationalists and white power supremacists -- stirring up trouble ahead of June 7 general election.

But community leaders say tension has been brewing for years inside ethnic Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Kashmiri groups as well as among blacks from Africa and the Caribbean -- all of them from nations which were once colonies of the British Empire.

Their roots trace back to immigration into northern England's textile industry in the 1960s, but now the early immigrants have grown-up children keen to secure a niche and identity in British society.

It is not an easy task.

Many of the 15 to 25-year-olds who rampaged through Oldham's pot-holed streets in two nights of violence are from relatively affluent backgrounds, with fast cars and high hopes for a bright professional future.

Born and brought up in England, and with increasing confidence in their greater numbers, they now refuse to take what they say has been years of racial abuse and discrimination.

"Why should we go? I am as English as the next man. Oldham is our town, our home," said Sameer, a 25-year-old with a Masters degree in microbiology.

Walk round Oldham with eyes closed, and it is impossible to distinguish between Kashmiri, Pakistani, Bangladeshi or English youths -- the voices you hear are all broad Manchester accents.

"We've worked hard for this -- nice cars, nice houses, but my parents have never been on holiday in their lives," said Kamran, a 22-year-old student who has all the latest gadgets from a mobile phone to widescreen television.

"We're not just going to give that up"

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has so far stymied the opposition Conservative party's attempts to turn asylum and immigration into a hot election topic, said Oldham did not reflect Britain as a whole.

"I don't think it is typical of the state of race relations in Britain today, where I think the vast majority of people want to live together in peace and in harmony," Blair said.

The number of people seeking political asylum in Britain, mainly from Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Somalia, Yugoslavia, and the Middle East, is on the wane, according to official figures.

But even though only 5,000 asylum seekers knocked on Britain's door in April -- a two year low -- the trickle of immigrants is creating pockets of extreme racial tension.

A case in point is Glasgow, Scotland's largest city and not noted for tolerance, with religious sectarian undercurrents long lurking beneath a thin veneer of urban regeneration.

Once a prosperous powerhouse laid low by mass closures in industries such as shipbuilding, the city struggles to accept its quota of 3,000 mainly Middle Eastern asylum seekers.

Knife and baseball attacks by whites on immigrants have become commonplace in the city, community leaders say.

Robena Qureshi, director of a Scottish race and housing charity, blames the police and social structures like the judicial system for being too slow to adapt.

"These asylum seekers totally change the demography of a city, but the system hasn't woken up to it. There are some well-meaning people within the system, but it's like they are working in treacle," she said.

Qureshi said second generation Asians, who have spent all their lives in Britain, are often caught between two pillars of allegiance -- the traditional values of their parents versus the liberalism they have learnt in British schools.

"The second generation of immigrants don't feel British, yet they don't feel Pakistani either. So its almost a situation of, 'What are they?'" Qureshi said.

"Young people are lured by the trappings of Western-style consumerism, yet white society at some point will reject you because of the color of your skin," she added.

Even on the sporting field, often a great unifier, Asians and English have clashed this summer with the Pakistani cricket currently touring the country.

England cricket captain Nasser Hussain, who was born in India and lived on the subcontinent until the age of five, said Pakistanis who grew up in Britain should still cheer England -- even when they played the land of their forebears.

"I cannot really understand why those born here, or who came here at a very young age like me, cannot support or follow England. Following England has got to be the way ahead," said Hussein, 32, in the Sunday Telegraph.

Judging by the number of bright green Pakistani shirts appearing in the grandstands at cricket grounds across Britain this summer, Hussein's appeal is falling on deaf ears.