City shutdown

posted by: Nick Lowles | on: Wednesday, 25 August 2010, 07:12

On Monday afternoon part of Bradford city centre was cordoned off after a suspect package was found in a pedestrian shopping street. For over 90 minutes police and emergency services studied a black rucksack that had been left on a street bench. I’m guessing nothing suspicious was found as police eventually took down their blue and white tape and life began returning to normal. But the incident reflected the heightening tensions gripping this city ahead of the EDL protest on Saturday.

Work is well underway to remove bricks and rubble from many of the building sites which litter the city centre and boards are being erected and steel fencing is circling several buildings and features. This is costing the council £100,000.

The police bill is considerably higher and I’ve heard that their operation is already costing over £2m. There will be 1,600 police on duty in Bradford on Saturday and thousands more are on standby in case of a major disturbance. All police leave in West Yorkshire (5,200 officers) has been cancelled and an arrangement is being made with several neighbouring forces to supply additional officers if the need arrive. While the police are keen not to disrupt shoppers they are making it clear that both the EDL and UAF protests, being held a couple of hundred metres apart, will be robustly policed and anyone breaking out of the respective police cordons will be arrested.

The police and the council have planned for Saturday for weeks but the real disruption will be for ordinary people. The city centre is being shut down for the day amid genuine fear of what the EDL protest might spark. Taxis will not be operating; all the city centre pubs have been ordered to remain closed, as are several shops and even high street banks. One bank is even staying open later on the Friday as it intends to shut its doors on Saturday.

Everyone I’ve spoken to over the last few days is apprehensive and afraid. That is why it was so important that we stopped the EDL marching down Manchester Road, through areas like West Bowling with high numbers of Muslim residents. Some people – almost exclusively from outside Bradford – have said that the ban makes no difference as the EDL will still be holding a protest in the city centre. They are totally wrong and it just exposes their lack of knowledge about what is going on here and, more importantly, what could potentially happen. Of course we would prefer it if the EDL wasn’t allowed to come to Bradford at all but it is much better that they are surrounded and ‘kettled’ in a confined space in a deserted city centre than allowed to march through residential streets.

And it is because of the fear amongst local people that their city could get ripped apart again that I get particularly annoyed when the London-based ‘thinkers’ of Demos tell us the EDL march should be allowed and glibly say: “There may be some clashes and serious disagreement but this is part of living in a liberal society." That is obviously an easy statement to make from the comfort of their West End offices but it is not a view that goes down well in Bradford. Local people have experienced what “some clashes” actually mean and that is why everyone is so apprehensive about what might happen on Saturday.