THE year 2001 has seen some of the worst racial riots in parts of the United Kingdom in recent times, and the target has been the Asian community.

The centre of trouble has been Bradford --- a city in the north west of England where Asians were forced on to the streets to defend themselves against the Nazis. Just days before the riot, some 1,30,000 black, white and Asian people had enjoyed a multi-racial music festival in Bradford. But the authorities cut the festival short. They claimed it couldn’t go ahead as the National Front (NF) was threatening to march. They thus allowed a handful of Nazis, who have been touring towns in the north west of England stirring up tension, to dictate what 1,30,000 people might or might not do.

Some 2,000 joined the Anti-Nazi League’s mobilisation in Bradford to stop the NF. They included councillors, school children and trade unionists. The police made no attempt to arrest the groups of Nazis who tried to provoke the crowd. Some Nazis spat and swore at two white women. But the police let the Nazis walk away.

One of those goading the crowd was Dave Appleyard, a well known Nazi from Leeds. The police were forced to remand him in custody for aggravating racial violence.

But the police waded in as anti-Nazis tried to challenge the Nazis. Officers began stopping and searching young Asian men. Their actions fuelled the growing anger amongst local Asians and anti-Nazis.

The Nazis sparked off last Saturday’s riot (July 14) when a gang of racists left a downtown pub and racially abused a group of Asians. The gang included a prominent local Nazi who punched an Asian man. As the crowd moved towards the pub, the police arrested three Asians. The police then forced hundreds of people out of the town centre into Manningham, using dogs and mounted police.

It was the final straw for many young people. Buildings like the Labour and Tory clubs were targeted, and police were stoned. During the riot a white man who had attacked Asians, was stabbed. Press and politicians are wringing their hands and condemning "thugs on both sides." But they refuse to blame the Nazis who are arriving in towns like Bradford, attacking Asians and being allowed by the police to go scot-free. They aim to boost the confidence of a minority of racists in the area to blame the Asians for poverty and deprivation. A day before the planned NF march, BNP leader Nick Griffin addressed a meeting of 150 people in the predominantly white area of Eccles Hill in Bradford.

The BNP has no solution to poverty in the area, only violence and racial hatred. Anti-racists need to argue that Asian and white people united are a powerful force to win the resources that both desperately need.

This Nazi venom-spitting must be stopped. At the same time, anti-racists have to argue on the estates and in communities against the racist ideas the Nazis are spreading.

As for the police, they have repeatedly protected violent Nazi marches. They have battered the black, white and Asian people in these areas who came together to stop racial hatred. During the general election campaign, the police cleared the way through for three NF marches in Bermondsey, South London.

On April 7, over 500 blacks, whites and Asians rallied in Bermondsey to oppose an NF march. Hundreds of police ensured that 30 Nazis were allowed to demonstrate. A member of the local Race Equality Council said, "The National Front are allowed to march, yet we are penned in."

On April 14, 700 police surrounded hundreds of protesters, including Labour parliamentary candidate Kingsley Abrams, to allow 37 Nazis to march.

On May 12, police protected the Nazis for a third time. The police have protected Nazi marches in Kent over the last two years, even though local people do not want them there. They had done the same when the NF, then the main Nazi organisation, had staged Hitler-style marches in the 1970s.

It is the same police that ---

Smashed people off the streets of Manningham in April 1976 to clear the way for the NF.

Attacked black, white, Asian and Cypriot people in Wood Green to allow the NF to march in Wood Green in April 1977.

Mobilised across London to harass the blacks in Lewisham and then protected an NF demonstration in August 1977. Thousands of black and white protesters had then broken up the NF march.

Launched a ferocious attack on anti-Nazis in Southall, West London, in April 1979. They arrested 700 people, mainly Asians, and charged 342. The police killed anti-Nazi and socialist, Blair Peach. Even reporters for the Tory Daily Telegraph were shocked, and wrote: "Nearly every demonstrator we saw had some blood flowing from some injury."

There are many other such examples. On July 3, 1981, the police allowed Nazi skinheads to hold a gig in the middle of Southall. Thugs attacked an Asian woman in a shop. People fought back. The press spoke of mindless rioting in Southall and in other inner cities, where black and white people fought back against racism and poverty over the following seven days. The media all but ignored the murder of Parveen Khan and her three children, who were killed in a racist firebombing in Walthamstow the day before the Southall riot.

One 16 year old Asian said on Saturday, "Bradford is one of the most integrated cities in the country. The NF wants segregation." A 15 years old Asian added, "The media seem to put a bad name on Asians. They say, Asians started it. They want people in Bradford to fight amongst themselves. They show the riots, but they never show whites and Asians just getting along."

He was right. Many people in Bradford do get along despite council policies that have led to divisions amongst people.

David was one of the local anti-racists who joined last Saturday’s demonstration. He explained, "If the NF march, they’ll divide communities. We have some of the worst schools and housing. Unemployment is high. On some of the poor white estates there is a misconception that local people have lost out on money. The NF are a travelling circus of right-wing hard nuts. They go into an area and wind it up before going on somewhere else."

"Riots are the voice of the unheard." So had said the US black civil rights activist Martin Luther King in the 1960s, giving a sense of how ordinary people’s anger has exploded throughout history. This was how white working class people in Manningham rose up against poverty and oppression in a riot there in April 1891.

The Tory owner of the biggest factory in Bradford had then provoked his 1,500 workers to go on strike. The police broke up the strike committee. Over 2,000 people came together to defend it. There were two nights of bitter rioting. According to one description, people fought back with whatever they could lay their hands upon; "up to midnight the streets were crowded and the military were making charges with fixed bayonets."

Afterwards, over 60,000 people joined a protest march. The strike was eventually defeated. Some of the strikers went on to found the Bradford Labour Union. It later became the Independent Labour Party --- the forerunner of the Labour Party.

Around 100 years later, riots broke out across Britain --- in Oxford, Bristol, Tyneside, Slough and several other areas, all predominantly white. The cause was spiralling unemployment, politicians’ indifference and repression by the police. In April 1990, there were many riots outside town halls across England and Wales as councils set the first poll tax levels. They culminated in tens of thousands of people defending themselves from the police in Trafalgar Square in London.

These reminded one of the similar bitter riots by the unemployed in the 1930s. Strikes and riots were part of a wave of working class resistance in the years before the First World War.

The police laid siege to mining villages during the miners’ strike in 1984-85. They put up roadblocks to prevent people moving round the country. They brutalised picket lines and solidarity marches. Rage at mass unemployment, the police and racism exploded. Earlier, there was a major riot in Brixton in South London in April 1981. Between July 3 and 11 that year, there were similar uprisings in Southall, Toxteth, Moss Side and Handsworth. There were smaller riots in many cities including Leeds, Leicester, Southampton, Halifax, Bedford, Gloucester, Coventry, Bristol, Edinburgh and dozens of other places.

All these involved the black, white and Asian people. Toxteth, where the biggest riot took place in July 1981, was home to most of Liverpool’s black population. But even the police admitted that most of the rioters were white.

Prime minister Tony Blair described the events in Bradford last weekend as "mindless thuggery." But there had been no violence at the festival! Violence erupted only on Saturday when the Nazi gang first hurled racist abuses at Asians, and then attacked an Asian man. Since then, racist thugs have randomly attacked Asians for no reason other than the colour of their skin. That’s why the Asians, and the black and white anti-racists, fought back.

Tony Blair and his home secretary David Blunkett now say they are considering allowing the police to use water cannon and teargas on people like those who opposed the Nazis in Bradford.

Yet the government has failed to address the real issues --- that is, to tackle the rising poverty and segregation seen across the city, shockingly revealed by an official report this week.

That poverty and segregation has been fuelled by the policies of all three main parties, which have run the local council at different times in recent years. Poverty and the despair it creates are what allow Nazis to gain attention from the people who feel abandoned by the main parties.

Faced with Nazi attacks, people have been forced to fight back in self-defence and stand up against police attacks. But what is urgently needed now is a united fight by the blacks, whites and Asians together, against racism and against the poverty and despair which feed it.