Welcome to Oldham Part I
Where white people should be worried & the asians worried more
Soon after I was born, my parents deciding that they wanted a better life for their children moved from Bradford to Oldham. To this day I’ve not quite worked out why Oldham and not Manchester or Leeds. At times I laugh and tell myself that it was the limit of their ambition and that social mobility for an Asian family in the early 70s was crossing the Pennines and moving from Bradford to Oldham. I console myself by reminding my younger siblings, that unlike them, at least I was born in Yorkshire.
My dad bought a house in Westwood. When we moved in, we were the only Asian family living in the street. We lived in the same street until after all of us had left school. I watched the street change around me, as the white families gradually moved out and our elderly neighbours pass away. Each time replaced by another Asian family. By the time we moved out, the entire neighbourhood was almost all Asian.
Since my formative years in Westwood, I’ve spent the majority of my 20s and 30s living, socialising and working within the various neighbourhoods and communities that make Oldham what it is. Though there have been phases of my life where work has taken me to many weird and wonderful places, I found myself always returning to my home town.
I share this at the beginning not through nostalgia but because too often things are written about people and places by those who have no authentic connection with who or what they write about. Unlike these people, my reflections are not like their day out at the zoo from which they make grand conclusions on a place they will never revisit. This place is my home and I care about it and the people that live here.
Each time I returned, the usual sort of life events brought me back, a child that I wanted to raise near people that I valued, an elderly parent needing care and the delightful new children of friends and family that I simply did not see enough of. My most recent return was after a very well publicised beating with my most recent project. I just wanted to be around people that knew me for who I really was and not the person that politicians and their friends in the press had lied and vilified me as. I don’t hide this, I was raised in a tough working-class neighbourhood, I’m used to taking beatings. They’ve just never stopped me.
As with many people that leave a place that they return to later in life, some things are not as I remembered them to be. Of course, this change in perspective takes place for a number of reasons. As well as the place I once remember naturally changing, I too have changed. What I have seen and experienced elsewhere has shaped the way that I now look at the world. Sometimes this change is for the better, where I treasure things that I once took for granted. Other times, what I never saw, took little notice of, or just accepted as the way things are, has shocked me. It is as if I’m seeing something, that has always been there, for the first time.
And so, we reach the point of this reflection. Many of my friends have asked me to hold back sharing what I am about to, genuinely concerned for me rather than the impact I will have with the limited audience that these words will reach. After all, a large part of my career was spent in Oldham helping build bridges between communities. I accept the anxiety of my friends and understand why they’re responses included ‘you can’t call it that,’ and ‘it will undo all of your past good work.’ and all the other similar thoughts shared with me in a combination of both shock and sincerity. To these very dear people all I’ll say is remember what the work was for. Building solidarity across communities was never the outcome we sought. What we aspired for was more important than just this. We believed that through building solidarity across communities of difference (nearly always with people that were the most disenfranchised, the most disadvantaged and the most oppressed), we would help them work together to improve the lives of everyone in this town.
Others, who shared their concerns with me, were fearful that my words would provide ammunition for the Far Right. I simply do not accept this premise. In my experience extremists thrive most in places where we don’t talk about the issues that concern us most.
And finally, there are also those who wanted this truth to be told. ‘Let’s have it all finally out there.’ I found myself agreeing with this small group of friends and share their belief that if we’re going to really bring about the change we want to see, and change this town once and for all for the better, we need to point our finger directly in the direction of those whose interest it is to keep Oldham exactly where it is — a statistic through which it remains mired at the bottom of every quality of life indicator in the Country.
Of course, I refer to Oldham Council, the morally corrupt, or just outright corrupt politicians that control it and those I describe as the fake liberal cosmopolitan elite that run it.
So why should White People be worried?
There is without doubt a clear disconnect between the Civic Centre and the people of the town. In my experience, particularly with the white working-class people of Oldham. The first community I worked in was Sholver. At the time, fresh out of university, I was hired as a Community Development Worker for Oldham Council. It was the old Sholver, before the new houses (now not so new) were built. A time when the old rag & bone man still pulled his cart up and down the streets. At once, I felt comfortable and was made to feel comfortable. In many ways it was the place from my childhood.
Whilst working for the Council, I pretty much worked in all of the communities that are usually described as white working-class. If I’m honest, I didn’t really encounter racism in any of these places and if there was anger or frustration directed my way, it wasn’t because of who I was, it was because of where they were in their lives and the role played by who they thought I was representing.
Wherever I went, and whoever I spoke with, young, old, employed, unemployed, it did not matter. Their primary concerns were the same.
the Council doesn’t care about people like us
the Council doesn’t want to listen to people like us
the Councillors do not represent people like us
Having since worked in other towns and cities, I found that self-serving politicians and out of town elite senior public servants (who have only spent an occasional night in the town they work in (typically after their Xmas party)), are not unique to Oldham. Unfortunately, this is a recurring trait of how Councils across the country are run.
The politicians and the senior policy officers are parachuted in. Requiring a sat nav to get around the place, the only experiences they have of the people that live there is through reading reports, the occasional interaction with the lower paid front of house staff and most troublesome of all, only viewing them through a lens where the white working-class are a problem that needs solving. Instead of seeing them as people, they are just statistics circled in red ink in their reports.
That the people who run our town are from elsewhere in itself is not why working-class white people should be worried. This should be a concern to all of us. Why working-class white people should worry though is because the situation for them in a town such as Oldham has got much worse over the last 25 years. The reality is that the Council and its machinery care even less about the white working-class than they did before.
I’ll try and summarise the three key areas why I think this to be.
Reasons why the Council does not care about white people
White people matter less than they did before
Politicians are simple people. There I’ve said it. But please, don’t confuse simple with stupid. They’re simple because they will always do what’s best for them. Which in this case is, above everything else, remaining as politicians and ensuring that the perks that they’ve grown accustomed to are maintained. And if you consider this through this singular perspective, the following reasons detailing why the white working-class matter less make complete sense.
the demographics of the town has changed and the politicians, particularly the MP and former Leader of Oldham Council, Jim McMahon, no longer need to court the white vote or even listen to their concerns. Year on year the Asian vote matters more. Jim McMahon’s 27,000 majority is almost entirely dependent on the Asian vote (who almost all vote Labour when electing an MP).
White people (of all class backgrounds) turn out to vote less than Asians do. Additionally, the highest % of white people that do come out to vote are elderly. The elderly are easy to ignore, many will not be alive come the next election and importantly, they’ve always voted the way they have so their vote is taken for granted. Now there is a question as to why white people turn out to vote less. My own thoughts are that it is not apathy nor is it a lack of political education or any of the other nonsense that the fake liberal metropolitan elite would have people believe — essentially that white working-class people are lazy, stupid or both lazy and stupid. My experience has taught me that it isn’t that the white working-class don’t care. They DO care. Also, they’re definitely not stupid and to be looked down upon with contempt, they know how to vote. The reason they increasingly do not vote is because they know that voting makes ZERO difference. It’s a conclusion that they have reached after being let down time after time after time.
Oldham is a traditionally Labour town where the white working-class vote is taken for granted. I’m waiting to be proved right in my theory that a convicted sex offender would get elected if they wore a red rosette in Oldham. I’m serious. It’s only a matter of time, right? After all, here is a Facebook link to a photograph of Deputy Leader of Oldham Council, Arooj Shah, celebrating her South Chadderton election victory with a criminal convicted for kidnapping, torture and sexual assault. In most parts of Oldham, particularly the working-class areas, it seems we’ll elect anyone wearing a red rosette. And in the main, the working-class white people that do vote, nearly all vote Labour. It doesn’t matter how much abuse they take, each time they still go out and vote Labour. It’s a pattern that reminds me of many women in domestic violence projects I’ve supported. No matter what some of these men did to them they’d still keep going back in hope that their abusers have changed.
It’s easy to dismiss white working-class concerns as racism. The truth is that most of us have said something that could be considered racist regardless of intent. Through frustration, anger and at times desperation, people from white working-class communities vent their grievance through a lens where they present an argument that ‘they’ do not have something because it has been given (by the Council) to the ‘other.’ It’s a trap that is set up for working class white people to fall in to. And once the grievance has been expressed in this manner it is easy to ignore, particularly by the fake liberal cosmopolitan elite that make the operational decisions in the Civic Centre.
When white working-class people stop voting Labour, they just stop voting. They don’t switch parties. They’re loyal, perhaps to their detriment. Nor do they try and influence the political system in other ways. Jim McMahon and his stooges at Oldham Labour do not risk losing the white working-class vote as the vote isn’t going elsewhere. Their teams of analysts know this. Middle Class voters switch sides. Working class voters just stop voting and opt out.
If white working-class people think that they are being listened to less than Asian people, it’s because they are. The politicians don’t need them to get elected. Every year they need the white working-class less.
Also, the Asian vote is easier to access. Through clan structures, extended families and large households, it takes less time to secure 100 Asian votes than it does 10 White votes. Why do you think Jim McMahon spends so much time hanging around mosques? And this is before I mention the scandal involving postal votes.
Reasons why the Council does not listen to white people
White people are less deserving
I often think a working-class white person would be better served if the senior officers in the Civic Centre (those on £100k salaries) were Black, Asian or Eastern European than almost exclusively made up of the fake liberal metropolitan elite. At least they would get some empathy and a genuine understanding of hardship.
Of course, what should happen is that working-class white people from Oldham also occupied senior positions in the Council. In my experience, such instances are rare, similar to the token black police officer that was once always wheeled out for the photo call. And it is because this elite demographic holds nearly all the positions of power that working-class white people get a raw deal.
Just because they look like them should not be mistaken with their lives being anyway at all similar. In fact, in my experience it makes it worse and they are treated with contempt. Here are some reasons why:
It’s in their financial interest of those who run the Civic Centre to keep poor white working-class people where they are. It keeps the fake liberal metropolitan elite well paid. The reason they earn their five figure salaries and gold-plated pensions is because of the demographic information that they use to label working class white people with. If this wasn’t the case, they wouldn’t have their nice South Manchester homes that so many of them commute in daily from. Nor would they have their second homes in France or Spain that they retreat to when they need to wash the filth off their skins from having to interact with the poor white working-class.
They do not value the white working-class. Through their notions of what constitutes the deserving and undeserving poor, the white working-class in Oldham (characterised through multi-generational poverty), as far as the fake liberal cosmopolitan elite that run the Civic Centre are concerned, fall into the category of the undeserving poor. These senior officers all have stories of how their parents/grandparents were poor. Many of them describe themselves as ‘historically’ working class. They believe that their families worked themselves out of poverty and if they did it, others like them should to.
The truth is, these people judge the white working-class in a way they would hesitate to do if the person was from another group. Sadly, this is especially true if you are a white man and cannot fall back on any other aspect of your identity through which you can demonstrate disadvantage. You’re not a woman, disabled, do not belong to a minority group etc. It’s no coincidence that this demographic group has the highest % of suicide.
Moving on from the psychology, motives and demographic profiles of the officers in the Civic Centre. Another key reason is that working-class white people are not politically organised as they once were. There was a time when through the trade union movement, the white working-class had a political voice. And they were able to use their voice to improve the lives of those they represented.
Those days are gone. In many places the trade unions are an extension of the Council. Worse, often a job in a trade union is what one of these fake liberal metropolitan elite’s take up in their journey to becoming a politician. The very institutions that once represented the white working-class have been hijacked. When white working-class people do raise an issue, too often they are now a lone voice. It is always easy to dismiss a lone voice.
Using clan and village mechanisms, the Asian community meanwhile can still effectively operate as a block vote. A block vote is difficult to ignore. Especially when it is Cartel controlled. More on the Cartels another time…
Listening means the likelihood of then having to follow it up and do something. They either don’t want to do anything or what they have at their disposal has already failed and they are too shamed to return. All they can do is just repeat with white working-class people what they tried before with them and failed. Why do you think the numbers attending these schemes are so low and people are now being forced on to them?
Again, it isn’t apathy or laziness as some in the Civic Centre woild have people believe. The truth is that these people have experienced these projects before. Often multiple times! They are wise to the fake promises and inflated outcomes. Yea, of course a 6-week employability course is going to make up for 14 years of a 3rd rate education. These nonsense projects do well in the Asian areas because the ethnics and the other gullible new arrivals think a poxy 6-week employability course * (*insert any other suitable Oldham Council scheme) will make a difference in their lives. They’ve yet to be repeatedly let down. Give them time.
At times, I honestly think that it will make more difference if the millions the Council receives to help people from Oldham’s poor communities was just equally divided and directly handed out to people. But then I remind myself, how would the South Manchester dwelling Senior Officers that work in the Council take their cut and earn their millions?
Reasons why the Councillors do not represent white people
They have no affinity with the place or the people that live there
There was a time when those elected in to positions of Councillor had a strong connection with the ward that they represented. In the Asian areas this is still the case, the Councillors from these wards nearly all grew up in these communities, own businesses, work and even still live there. They can be found shopping at the local corner shops, dropping off their children at the local schools, praying at the local mosques and popping by to visit elderly relatives. You get the picture, they are a visible presence in their wards and have deep roots in the communities they represent.
I grew up in Coldhurst ward. Cllr Jabbar and Cllr Malik are two of my Councillors. I have my differences with both — considerable differences. Nonetheless, if I needed to speak to either of them I could simply pick up my phone and call them. If I didn’t have their number, someone I know would. To give them their due, they would meet with me and if they could assist me, they would. This is the same for nearly every one of us who lives in one of the predominantly Asian wards. We know who our Councillors are. Not too long ago, this was exactly the same in the traditional white working-class wards. But it isn’t any more. This change was not by accident.
In safe Labour towns such as ours, prospective candidates are parachuted in to White working-class wards where the fake liberal cosmopolitan elite, the type that considers politics as a profession, becomes their Councillor.
This professional politician then just uses the people who live in these wards as pawns to progress their careers. Fresh out of university, at best having completed a short stint in a trade union or an internship with an MP, they are fast tracked through the town having immediately secured senior roles regardless of their inexperience.
Selected to be the candidates of wards they have never stepped foot in before, sometimes even a town that they would struggle to find on a map, they use their positions in the Council as another tick on their journey to becoming an MP.
Spending barely any time in their wards, they are quick to negatively judge the people they represent, who in return have never had sight of their Councillor. Any of this sounding familiar?
Here are a few more observations on this.
Old Labour stalwarts, deselected in their own wards call in favours to secure seats in other wards. These are usually the dodgiest of politicians who are still in politics because they, how can I put this without getting in trouble, because they know where the bodies are buried. Yes, because they have dirt on others. Stories about them and brown envelopes are rife but yet here they are, councillor for a white working-class ward.
This next observation is difficult for me, but it still needs to be shared. There are parts of the town where Asian councillors are being selected to represent people in predominantly white working-class areas. These are usually the adjacent wards to the Asian areas where small numbers of Asian families have begun to overspill in to. In no way am I of the opinion that an Asian councillor should not represent a predominantly white area or vice versa BUT at the very least they should know the ward and the people that live there. Unfortunately, my observations are that when Asian councillors have secured seats in predominantly white areas they;
have been parachuted in by the MP or someone senior in the Labour Party that wants to fast track their protégé
unable to become a Councillor in their own wards, secure the Labour nomination by calling in favours from other Asian Labour Councillors who in turn call in favours from White Labour Councillors
just have their extended family members join the local branch (sometimes registering people in addresses where they don’t even live) and block vote them through the nominations. Membership numbers of the local branches in these wards is actually quite low and it’s not difficult to do this.
The white working-class are right to feel that their Councillors do not represent them. The parachuted in Asian Councillors look just as lost and uncomfortable as the fake liberal White metropolitan elite Councillors they’ve had no say in selecting. As for the Councillors who have been kicked out of their own wards and imposed on them, just because they look and speak like them doesn’t make them any better. These people are often the worst of all.
This situation is something that will not happen in an Asian ward, we just wouldn’t allow it. There’s a saying we have, loosely translated as ‘better my dog than someone else’s bitch’.
So, should white people be worried?
I’ve just summarised what I believe to be the inter connect between the disenfranchisement of white working-class communities and politics. It’s a reason why even having only secured 13% of the vote in the recent election, Jim McMahon and his Oldham Labour Party control our town. Just take a moment to reflect on what I’ve shared and ask yourself how true what I say feels.
A note here to my middle-class white friends who live in Oldham. You’ll see for yourselves how true my words ring in your upcoming fight with Jim McMahon’s Oldham Council and their planned destruction of the green belt.
My view is that if you are white working-class and living in Oldham, you should be worried. As it stands, Jim McMahon and his stooges at the Labour run Oldham Council care nothing for you or the issues that affect your daily lives. They control the town through controlling the Asian vote.
I’ve witnessed first-hand what happens in parts of the world where the system has systematically exploited then failed the people that it alleges to represent. I’ve seen the consequences of what happens when oppressed people get desperate and lose hope. They find someone to blame, nearly always people that are just as oppressed as they are. I’m sharing with you in all sincerity. What is happening to you is wrong.
The white working-classes from Sholver, Fitton Hill, Lees, Derker, Limeside and everywhere else were right. The Council do not care about them.
Most of us when we look out of our windows, step out of our homes, our places of work or even the supermarkets where we buy our groceries, have a clear sight of the Civic Centre. I suggest that we look towards it and ask ourselves, ‘how long before the Council stop caring about the rest of us?’ Perhaps, like me, you have decided that they already have.
Let there be no doubt as to who is responsible for democracy in Oldham being broken.