New Geographies of Racism: Stoke-On-Trent

The new geographies of racism: Stoke-on-Trent By Jon Burnett Acknowledgements © Institute of Race Relations 2011 This publication is part of a project, Solidarity and the new geographies of racism, supported by the Barry Amiel and Norman Melburn Trust. The IRR’s research on racial violence is also supported by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. This report has greatly benefited from those people who we spoke to about racial violence in Stoke and we would like to express our gratitude. We would also like to thank Danny Reilly for the research that he conducted and his advice. I The IRR’s report: The new geographies of racism: Plymouth can be donwloaded at: http://www.irr.org.uk/pdf2/New_geographies_r acism_Plymouth.pdf (pdf file, 198kb). Institute of Race Relations 2-6 Leeke Street London WC1X 9HS Tel: 020 7837 0041 Fax: 020 7278 0623 Web: www.irr.org.uk Email: [email protected] The new geographies of racism: Stoke-on-Trent 2 The county of Staffordshire1 concentrated in impoverished inner and outer areas in large conurbations, there is now a marked increase in racist incidents in rural areas, towns and smaller cities. Such is the extent of violence in some of these areas that it appears almost routine. Over the last decade, the demography of the UK has altered significantly and, put simply, as patterns of migration and settlement have changed, so too have patterns of racial violence. According to successive governments, this is symptomatic of breakdowns in community cohesion, unsuccessful integration and even a failure of multiculturalism. However, such explanations ignore and downplay the role of state policies and actions which set the tone for popular racism and the context within which such attacks take place. Vicious attacks against asylum seekers and migrant workers have become a regular occurrence in some areas. Radical transformations in local economies, relying on deregulated, unprotected and flexible labour forces, have pushed workers into jobs where they are iso- lated, vulnerable and exposed to a risk of violence. As particular forms of popular racism have formed nationally – such as anti-Muslim racism generated through the war on terror – localised racisms have The six towns of Stoke-on Trent2 gathered pace and manifested themselves in abuse, harassment and brutality. Far-right organisations, in such climates, have been able to capitalise on emerging hostilities. Against this backdrop, the IRR is conducting detailed investigations into three of the areas which Racial violence: the buried issue identified as experiencing particularly high levels of racist attacks. The first of these investigations focused on Plymouth, in the south-west of England.4 The sec- ond is on Stoke-on-Trent: a city where racist violence has intensified over the last decade. Stoke, when compared to many other cities of similar size, has a comparatively high proportion of Muslim residents and there has been a campaign of vicious harassment of this community including attacks on mosques, serious physical assaults and sustained abuse. Asylum seekers have been targeted to such an extent that some children have been forced to leave school for their own safety. Some long-stand- ing residents from black and minority ethnic (BME) communities have had CCTV fitted on their homes in a desperate attempt to track the identity of those who vandalise their property and graffiti Introduction their walls. In 2010 the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) pub- What follows draws from interviews and conver- lished Racial violence: the buried issue, a report sations conducted with people on community poli- analysing 660 racist attacks which took place tics, anti-racist and anti-fascist campaigning, and throughout the UK in 2009.3 The findings indicated education in Stoke. Statistical information was that patterns of racial violence in the UK are shift- gathered from local and national government docu- ing. Whereas previously, attacks were frequently ments, organisations working towards combating The new geographies of racism: Stoke-on-Trent 3 racial violence and other research. The cases that 2001 and an estimated 9,050 in 2011.8 Similarly are highlighted are mainly from the IRR’s database (albeit in relation to much smaller numbers of peo- on racial violence which records attacks reported by ple), the number of Indian residents has risen from local and national media. 1,100 in 2001 to an estimated 1,150 in 2011. These increases contrast with population changes This document examines the patterns of racial in other groups and, whilst there were 240,700 violence which have begun to emerge in Stoke by white people in the city in 1991 for example, this analysing them in the context of the specific tra- had reduced to (an estimated) 214,700 in 2011. jectory which anti-terrorism, criminal justice, immi- The number of black people reduced from 1,650 to gration and asylum, and ‘race relations’ policies 950 in the same time period.9 have taken in recent years. By exploring the impact of these in the city, as well as the impact of the As such, the overall population in Stoke is economic changes which have radically transformed decreasing; but this is offset, to a limited extent, the locality, it provides an insight into the chang- by an increase in the number of people from cer- ing dynamics of racism in the UK. tain BME groups. Whereas three per cent of the population were from BME communities in 1991, Economic and demographic changes in this had risen to five per cent in 2001 and (an 10 Stoke-on-Trent estimated) seven per cent in 2009. Although this, in part, is tied to recent inward migration (includ- Stoke-on-Trent, in the county of Staffordshire, has ing, for example, that of asylum seekers and been described as the most ‘working class city in migrant workers), it is also largely related to England’.5 Once a hub of industry, replete with younger populations and, as such, ‘natural growth’. highly-skilled workers, the city has been devastated These factors, combined with the out-migration of by post-industrial decline; leaving in its wake con- white communities, have contributed to the BME centrated unemployment, entrenched inequalities population in Stoke proportionally more than dou- and a seething sense of anger. bling in the last two decades. The city is made up of six once separate towns Those who have remained now reside in a city (Stoke-upon-Trent, Tunstall, Burslem, Hanley, where most of the once busy factories lie derelict. Fenton and Longton), linked through proximity and In the 1970s the potteries employed 50,000 peo- shared industry and drawn together as one unitary ple. Now they only employ 7,000. In the 1950s the authority in 1910. In reference to its long industri- coalfields lost nearly 13,000 jobs. Now they employ al heritage it is referred to colloquially as ‘the no-one. The steelworks are unused. The by-products Potteries’: a manufacturing industry ideally suited factories closed.11 Echoes of these industries reside to rural surroundings with a readily available sup- in an emerging tourism sector, with museums ply of raw minerals. In the nineteenth century, enticing visitors to reminisce over bygone industri- more than half of those employed in Stoke worked al days. The legacies of their collapse though reside in pottery manufacture with the region accounting in dilapidated, boarded up buildings, unemploy- for 70 per cent of global ceramic exports.6 Mining ment and inequality, and the long-term impacts on was thriving and there was a robust steel and iron people with chronic work-related health conditions industry. For much of the twentieth century the such as respiratory tuberculosis and lung cancer. In region remained one of the UK’s industrial centres. 1989 Stoke was given the moniker ‘sick city’: a 12 Like many other industrial towns and cities, this label that it has been difficult to shake off. manufacturing base, historically, relied on migrant According to the Department of Health, over 50 labour as a highly skilled but highly exploitable per cent of the population of the city were classed sub-section of the workforce. And although many as living in the ‘most deprived quintile’ in England BME communities arriving to work in the city in in 2011:13 areas which can be demarked by, among the 1950s and 1960s chose to live in nearby towns other things, some of the lowest employment and and cities, those who did remain have shaped its educational prospects, most acute concerns in rela- contemporary demographic make-up.7 In large part, tion to substandard housing, and highest propor- those who settled in Stoke were from Pakistan and tions of people with insufficient income levels in Bangladesh, and these communities now make up the country. About one fifth of the working-age the largest proportion (over 50 per cent) of the adults are unable to find work within a local econ- city’s BME population. According to Ludi Simpson omy which has been radically restructured and, of and Vasilis Gavalas of the University of Manchester, those who can, about one in five are employed in the combined Pakistani and Bangladeshi population the service sector in conditions which are frequent- in Stoke has risen from 4,800 in 1991 (the first ly temporary and insecure. Of the city’s council year when ethnicity was recorded), to 6,900 in wards, 80 per cent are classed as having some of The new geographies of racism: Stoke-on-Trent 4 the most severe levels of child poverty in the coun- with a large number of Asian pupils, claiming that try and close to one out of every five city dwellings within them was a ‘low-intensity race war’.20 The are uninhabitable.

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