It is little wonder that Oldham is fast becoming a talking point throughout Britain when you see what is happening to this once wonderful cotton town.

Since the late 1950s, when Asian immigrants first started to come to Oldham, the town has experienced a rapid growth in the size of the Asian community, heaping on the area huge problems, including housing shortages. Add to the size and rate of the influx the far higher birthrate of the Asians. In some schools the pupils are 95 per cent Asian!

The white people of Oldham initially accepted the Asian influx, but when they started to see the deterioration in the areas settled by them some Whites showed their disgust by - it must be admitted - taking the law into their own hands. The authorities should at this time have seen the coming dangers and put strict controls on all foreign entrants to the town. Instead, they allowed the Asian population to expand to its present size; and it continues to expand.

Militancy preached in mosques

In the late 1980s and early 1990s the police in Oldham became aware that some extreme doctrines were being preached in the mosques around the town and that attacks on white people were increasing. The lid was kept on this until two years ago, when Chief Superintendent Hewitt, the Oldham police chief, was put under pressure to report in the local paper, the Oldham Chronicle, that racial attacks in Oldham were among the highest in the country. He revealed that 75 per cent of these were being committed by Asians on white people, in some cases resulting in white families having to be re-housed away from multiracial areas and in mainly white ones after having suffered brutal intimidation from some of their Asian neighbours. The local council, which for the past 19 years has been Labour-controlled, has totally failed to offer the white population any sympathy or support.

Chief Supt. Hewitt again made his report in the local paper last year, quoting much the same figures and a continuing trend. The town now has 'no-go' areas for white people, strenuously though the local authority tries to deny it.

Asian areas, not for the first time, are having considerable amounts of money spent on them to keep them decent after being continually run down by their inhabitants, and this makes for a constant strain on the town's resources. The true price of the multiracial experiment in Oldham will probably never be assessed, but it must be staggering.

New 'race squad'

The latest is another statement by Chief Supt. Hewitt quoting similar figures of attacks to those previously given, but this time he has also announced that he is setting up a special 'race squad' to investigate racial problems. The most worrying point about this is that the police chief says that he was prompted to do this by a recent attack on a disabled man in October this year, in which the victim was tossed out of his wheelchair by four Asians. Surely, this race squad should have been set up at least seven years ago, or at the very least two years ago, when by Mr. Hewitt's own admission the attacks were getting out of control. It makes one wonder if all the rapes, assaults and robberies we have endured have not previously been thought to matter, or whether there is another reason for the squad, namely the increased activity of the British National Party in Oldham. Recently the party had its first meeting in the town, which was well attended and a huge success.

It would be nice to think that the new race squad will be used, as the Oldham public hope, to monitor racial attacks, committed, as stated, mainly against Whites. But it could be that its principal purpose will be to monitor the BNP!

As I write this, Oldham is waiting for the outcome of a case in which a Moslem has been reported to the Home Office for preaching militancy in the mosques. At present, Jack Straw is appealing against a prior decision by the judiciary which has permitted this man to stay in the town.