English Town Hit by Race Riots

Rioters throwing bricks and gasoline bombs battled police on the streets of this northwestern manufacturing town early today in a second night of racially motivated violence between whites and Asians.

“There are groups of youths gathering and fighting. Bricks are being thrown at cars,” said a spokeswoman for the police, who were using helicopters with searchlights to pinpoint the flash points.

Witnesses said that a newspaper office had been set on fire and that police armed with batons and shields had smashed through a blazing barricade in an attempt to disperse rioters.

No injury reports were immediately available, but at least 30 people were hurt in the first night of violence. Police said the rioting was sparked Saturday when a gang of white youths threw bricks at a house belonging to a Bangladeshi family.

As news of the attack spread Saturday, hundreds of Asian youths--many born in Britain after their families moved here to work in textile factories in the 1960s--descended on Oldham’s center. They hurled bricks and gasoline bombs at hundreds of police who were rushed in from nearby Manchester.

Cars were set on fire, at least five pubs were firebombed, and a number of police cars were damaged. Police reported about 25 arrests.

On Sunday, police in riot gear turned out in large numbers to try to prevent a replay of Saturday’s disturbances. Police vans were parked at every corner, and officers with surveillance equipment monitored cars containing youths driving around the area.

But a crowd of 30 to 40 people who had been fighting with one another turned on the nearby Jolly Carter pub late Sunday afternoon, throwing bricks and stones and trapping people inside before police dispersed the attackers.

John Hamley, landlord of the Ordnance Arms pub, said parts of Oldham had been turned into no-go areas for whites. He said police had lost control of the town.

Police have increased their presence in Oldham in recent weeks after a series of visits from members of the National Front, a small but vocal right-wing extremist group that opposes the presence of Jews and blacks in Britain.

The rioting is Britain’s worst race-related violence since a white supremacist’s nail bomb attacks in London two years ago.

“It is the first time I have ever seen anything like this, and I have been living in Oldham for more than 30 years,” said Khurshid Ahmed, secretary of the Pakistan Cultural Assn. “People have always been living in Oldham in harmony.”

The violence in Oldham comes just two weeks before Britain holds a general election.

The opposition Conservatives, badly trailing Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Labor Party in opinion polls, have tried to make election issues out of crime and a growth in the number of refugees and immigrants coming to Britain.

The debate about whether Britain is a “soft touch” for immigrants has pitted Conservative demands for a crackdown against Labor’s belief that immigrants should not be penalized.

Ethnic minorities make up 5.5% of Britain’s population of 57 million, according to the most recent available figures. They are primarily from former British colonies in the Caribbean and Africa, as well as India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.