I don’t like GB News.
But rather than rant about my misgivings with the whole organisation (which I may very well do another time), I want to focus on an article by Colin Brazier about the 2001 Bradford Race Riots, which you can read here: https://www.gbnews.com/opinion/bradford-race-riots-ethnicity-muslim.
2026 marks 25 years since the streets of Bradford were lit up by the flames and destruction of race riots. Much of the discourse and media coverage in the years following has carefully towed the line between rightly saying how Asian youths unleashed untold mayhem upon the city they called home that weekend, but with the nuance that this didn’t happen in a vacuum and how a complex mix of social deprivation, police failings, and far-right provocation were significant contributing factors [Note 1].
Mr. Brazier doesn’t agree. His view is that this reporting has been far too sympathetic to the Muslim community that were, it’s true, responsible for much of the damage. He calls it an “expression of territorial dominance” and particularly blames the large Kashmiri diaspora, who make up the bulk of the Muslim community in Bradford as well as much of the Pakistani community in Britain. Now I’m a British Muslim who grew up in Bradford whose family first came to this country from that Kashmir region of Pakistan, and so I feel oddly qualified to make comment on this.
That does give me a natural bias, but what I want to do is tell you a story. I’m not going to assign blame, I just want to tell a story that I think does a pretty good job of explaining what happened. And then I’ll leave you to make your own conclusions.
So to start off, let’s set the scene.
These far-right news organisations like GB News make a big thing about immigrants taking over these great Northern cities, and how places like Bradford have been taken over by Pakistanis (or that much-loved five-letter abbreviation…). As per the 2021 Census, 61% of people in Bradford are White - so most people in these cities are not immigrants, are not Pakistanis, and are not foreigners.
In 2001, when the riots happened, that number was even higher, with 78% of the people in Bradford being White. Yes, that number has gone down 17% in 20 years, but most of the people in Bradford are still White people - the Pakistanis haven’t taken over. It’s a well-documented phenomenon around the Western world that White communities will typically leave denser, inner-city areas once immigrants move in for work, in favour of “nicer”, whiter areas further away.
That leads me to the nuance of this data, in that people aren’t spread evenly through the city, and so you get smaller sub-pockets where there are more Asian people than White people and vice versa. When you’re a minority in a place, there’s a natural safety in numbers that prompts people to stay near their own kind. That’s exacerbated when someone does leave “the group” and gets beaten up or their windows put in, and over time that has led to some areas of Bradford that are predominantly Asian, some areas that are predominantly White, and some that are fairly mixed. To get a proper idea of what I mean, watch this great Stephen Graham scene from This Is England before you read on (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxL-FoE6mzw).
With that context, let’s roll back to July 2001 - remember this is all pre-9/11. The National Front (NF), a fascist, Neo-Nazi, far-right political party, was on a tour of Northern England. They’d already had hits in Oldham and Burnley in May and June of that year, which had culminated in riots in both cities. They’d chosen Bradford as the next spot on their tour, but the Home Secretary had banned them from organising a march in Bradford to maintain public order.
Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National Party (BNP), an associated fascist, Neo-Nazi, far-right political party, held a rally the night before the date of the planned march instead. In response to the prospect of fascists [Note 2] returning to the streets of Britain, the Anti-Nazi League arranged a counter-protest in the city centre, which was allowed to go ahead and attended by groups of both Asian people and White people. There was a large police presence because of rumours that the NF were planning on showing up anyway and on the day, a number of NF members were recognised in the city - skinheads naturally stand out in a crowd.
For those who haven’t been, Bradford City Centre isn’t a very big place, and the police didn’t do a great job of keeping the two groups apart. Pockets of fighting broke out, including near a pub where NF members were said to be congregating, ultimately culminating in an Asian man getting stabbed. Police reinforcements in full riot gear were then met with anger for failing to protect the local community.
What followed was an eruption of violent disorder as a riot broke out. Bricks, petrol bombs, and burning cars were hurled at the police, and millions of pounds of damage was caused as the Manningham area of the city was set ablaze, largely by Asian youths.
This is the part that Mr. Brazier claims is an “expression of territorial dominance”. What he fails to mention is that the next few days also saw damage by White youths in the Holmewood and Ravenscliffe areas of Bradford. Was that also an expression of territorial dominance? Nor does he mention how the Asian community that he so willingly denigrates came together in the days following to bring those responsible for the damage to justice, with over 1,000 people calling in after the police circulated pictures of rioters to every mosque in the city.
His lazy reporting extends into factual inaccuracies next, with his claim that the 1989 Satanic Verses burning was in response to Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1989 fatwa to have the author, Salman Rushdie, killed. If GB News had editorial standards, they would’ve spotted that the book burnings were in January 1989, whereas the fatwa was issued in February 1989.
And to complete the triad, he manages to link the book burning to the Nazis, but conveniently leaves out the responsibility of the National Front and the British National Party in instigating the riots. Perhaps those political parallels don’t count?
At best, this is shoddy work. At worst, it’s a dangerous, demonising dog-whistle in a publication that claims to maintain a veneer of responsibility.
Mr. Brazier claims the riots were just a prelude to problems that Britain will face in years to come. I fear reporting like his is a prelude to a continuing resurgence of the far-right in Britain, and the violence that comes with it.
This brand of divisive "journalism" does our Great British society no good.
RH
[Note 1] This was helpfully informed by the publication of the Ouseley Report on race relations in Bradford, which had been commissioned before the riots. You can read the full report here: https://web.archive.org/web/20110812044953/http://resources.cohesioninstitute.org.uk/Publications/Documents/Document/DownloadDocumentsFile.aspx?recordId=98&file=PDFversion
[Note 2] This is a big word to use, and it is thrown around a lot these days. These guys only let White people be members and believe that non-White people should be stripped of citizenship and deported - violently if necessary. I think that justifies my use of fascist.