Race Riots Plague Another UK Town
July 8 -- A fresh explosion of racial violence flared early this morning in the northern English city of Branford, where at least two men were stabbed, 120 police were injured and 36 people were arrested.
The violence erupted after police banned a rally by the white supremacist group National Front. Witnesses say the fighting broke out between groups of whites and South Asian youths, and that riot police that intervened were pelted with bricks and gasoline bombs, damaging several pubs and shops in the city center.
Police believed lives were at risk as hundreds of officers battled around 1,000 youths of Bangladeshi and Pakistani origin who threw petrol bombs and missiles and stabbed a police horse during the violence that began on Saturday.
"Police officers have come under attack from groups ofyouths with bricks, baseball bats, hammers and petrol bombs.More than 80 officers have been injured, two police horses havebeen injured, one of them has been stabbed," police ChiefSuperintendent Stuart Hyde of the West Yorkshire Police told reporters.
"There is damage to cars, to a public house, to shops andother premises. What we are seeing is wanton violence which isputting lives at risk. There are large groups of young menintent on disorder."
Joyriders drove cars into police lines, some rioters pushedburning cars and shopping trolleys towards the police asfirecrackers and other missiles bounced off their riot shields.
A man who said he was a relative of Bradford said he did not recognize the rioters and suspected many were troublemakers from elsewhere.
"They're not from here," the Bradford resident said. "They're from out of town, you know. We live in this area here and we we you know we'd be stupid to destroy our own area."
Plagued With Violence, Racial Tension
Bradford is 30 miles from the town of Oldham, another depressed area that was the scene at the end of May of Britain's worst race riots for a decade.
The government had banned political marches in Bradford thisweek, hoping to prevent more race riots.
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