Quite possibly - the thing I remember is Griffin going on about "peace walls" in Oldham (like in Gaza) and how muslims were behind all drug dealing. He was on a roll. Paxman didn't exactly pull him up on any of this shit.
cheers John, my bad, never actually saw it!
peace walls?
IIRC when it all kicked off eight years ago in Oldham provocateur white British Stoke City casuals (or, racists, to give them their proper name) were up for a match and started abusing local south Asian Britons, then local Asian lads from districts like Glodwick were moved to anger over the next few weeks culminating in the scenes a few weeks after the Stoke match at Boundary Park.
(the
wiki on the riots goes into detail and is far fairer than my rumour-mongering. certain wards in Oldham are among the most deprived in the country and parts of the town are very segregated - tbc i'm not from Oldham but have mates from there, i'm not just slagging the place off or anything.)
interestingly, when Griffin had been due to speak in Leigh, near Wigan, recently (he pulled out as i recall), there was trouble nearby between bused-in scouse-area NF street thugs and local lads (of various ethnicities and backgrounds) 'defending' their turf.
fair point on the politics of resentment John. i'm sorry to keep banging this drum but Phil Woolas, an Oldham MP and cabinet member, has stoked this to very dangerous levels in the last several years. he has genuinely said things that Nick Griffin would have been too canny to say on the broadcast news. Woolas is doing it clearly as he thinks he can outflank them and then win people over but because he's a useless twat on the whole, all he has done is the first part: stoke it. the second part - salving - he's not so clued up on.
i had no idea (though would have guessed) the actual statistic when they got their man in, in Millwall, in '93, racist attacks in the area then spiked by 300%, incidentally.
Can't help thinking that it's going to degenerate into such an antagonistic circus that Jerry Springer might be more appropriate.
yup probably.
let us hope that Craner's homework shout for Straw pays off...
...nice up Vim on the stats and reports front, as ever.
they have become water-cooler fodder in the last few years, and this has to have helped them.