Welcome to Burnley.oops sorry I meant Boston!

I attended my first meeting of the cynically named “Community Cohesion Delivery Group” and was entertained by Mr Mike Waite, Head of Community Engagement & Cohesion on Burnley Borough Council.

Burnley, many may remember was one of several Northern towns struck with race riots a few years back, some of which carried on for days.

Mike talked through his presentation entitled “Good Relations Work” which shows what Burnley have done since 2001, the year the town fell apart.

The project explores the issues, responding to those issues, the stages of the “programme”, format and feel etc…etc and brings us up to the current situation.

Herein lays the PROBLEM!

This “Programme” seems to me to be all talk and not a lot of anything else.

Several things concern me, there will be workshops within the programme that are subject to “Chatham House Rules” where there is no agenda but more alarmingly NO MINUTES. These talking shops are free to do what ever they want without scrutiny

There is no true measure that proves that all the input (4 years work) and all the costs (unknown, but no doubt substantial) have actually made a single bit of a difference.

All in all it’s just another scheme that hoovers up tax payers money by the bucket full and has no measurable outcome.

The communities in Bradford still live parallel lives with clearly defined but un marked territories, local taxi drivers still play the race card when Burnley Council try to impose the licensing policy.

And division and segregation is still very much the street scene

So far the resurrection of rioting has been averted (other than Asian youths in Birmingham last weekend and Luton the weekend before)

But the best bit is this… They are looking to come and help Boston using the same model.

Now don’t get me wrong, there are huge issues surrounding Community Cohesion in Boston, however I am not of the opinion that this approach would work for Boston.

There are a few differences between Burnley and Boston.
Burnley has a growing Muslim community that have polarised themselves in certain parts of the town, bringing with them their mosques and madras’s and their own way of doing things.
This community have sunk very, very deep roots in the town and have for want of a better word “colonised” some parts of the town.
The community is extremely able via its plethora of community leaders and other mouth pieces to demand what they want , and demographically can influence the local politics with sheer wait of numbers.

Boston is more fortunate not to be that far down that road.

The “guest” community that have descended on Boston, in their droves, are transient and rapidly changing. To get “buy in” and assimilation from this section of the community needs a very different approach. By the very nature of transient people they are more likely not to comply to our local or even national law, e.g. drinking and driving, refuse disposal and use of public places as urinals.
.
Appeasement is not the answer and its continued use, will lead to Boston becoming a dirtier and more deprived place.

Incidentally, I don’t think we need lessons from Burnley, thanks all the same.

It needs a tough non nonsense, zero tolerance approach


I don’t think that would take 4 years to deliver results do you?