The halcyon days of Batley and the rest are gone. Last Christmas, having a pint in a moribund lounge bar of a social club in Wigan, my dad reflected on the death of the institution. 'Twenty years ago, this place would have been packed,' he said, indicating a knot of middle-aged men sipping mild. 'It's not just television either. People wanted entertainment: singers, comics. Your generation just wants to dance or get drunk. And you like to eat out. We didn't eat out. It would have been a ridiculous idea. Something only posh people did. It was wasting time when you could have been playing bingo or listening to some bloke telling Irish jokes or a fellow in a bow tie singing "My Way".' Ironically, the last successful working men's club in Britain is probably the Phoenix Club in Peter Kay's Phoenix Nights, a comedy about a failing social club, enjoyed by people who wouldn't know a full house from a meat raffle.
Meat of varying provenances comprises my souvenirs of Bury. Apart from my delicious cosmopolitan haul from Katsouris, no one is terribly impressed. Or hungry, it seems. Now if I'd gone to a different corner of the market, or another part of town and shopped at a different shop, maybe, I'd have come home with another kind of Lancashire delicacy. Smoky dahls and fluffy naans, juicy bhajis and spicy chanas, curries rich with ghee and aromatic with cumin and coriander. Mmm. I can't help thinking that I'd have been a lot more popular if I had.
My mum gave me the first Indian food I ever tasted. She worked in a cotton mill alongside many Bangladeshi and Pakistani weavers and, one winter night in the late seventies, she brought home a little gift of some home cooking that a young man had given her as a thank you for some favour. There was a Tupperware container full of a thick yellowish stew, some lumpy little brown dumpling things and several flatbreads wrapped and rolled in silver foil – dahl, pakora and chapatis essentially. My mum and dad examined each one with extreme caution, sniffed at the contents and recoiled a little at the warm, pungent spices, having been weaned on starch from which all flavour had been ruthlessly boiled away for fear of poisoning. I sat and ate it all in one go. I grilled the chapatis like toast, not knowing what else to do with them, slathered them with butter and then dipped them in the dahl. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. Or, more accurately, wherever Muslim people went.
Delighted with how his cooking – or maybe his mum or sister's – had been received, he would send me my own bijou customised takeaways once a week or so. I'm ashamed to say now that, because my benefactor's nickname at work was Charlie, he became known in my house as Charlie Chapati. It wasn't meant as a slight; it was said affectionately if anything and I was only a kid. But I know how it sounds now – patronising and trivialising. I should have bothered to learn his real name but I was too busy gorging myself on his lovely food. It went on for years, by the way, long after I'd left home and gone away to college. I'd go home for the summer and within days, Charlie would have sent me another thick roll of puris or paratha, which I would eat standing at the grill at one in the morning, having drunk a gallon of Burtonwood's Top Hat Bitter.
Charlie must have been part of the second or maybe third wave of Asian immigrants who'd come to Britain to work in the mills of Lancashire and Yorkshire. Britain's relationship with the subcontinent is everywhere murky and complicated and the world of textiles has some of the darkest, bloodiest threads running through its warp and weft.
Cotton spinning was a technology borrowed from India and then mechanised in Lancashire during the industrial revolution. King Cotton and King Coal ruled our lives and kept us shod and housed for a hundred years. Every member of my immediate family, including me briefly, worked in one or the other industry. By the 1960s, new technology and the drive to maximise profits meant that Courtaulds and the like wanted to run their mills twenty-four hours a day. As a kid, I remember excited, apprehensive talk about the new 'continental shifts'. There were three a day, 6 a.m. till 2 p.m., 2 p.m. till 10 p.m. and 10 p.m. till 6 a.m. People didn't mind 'six-two'; Lancashire workers were early risers by nature and it meant you had most of the day to yourself. 'Two-ten' was less popular, as it seemed to fill the day, but you could make the last hour in the pub or get home to put your feet up for a while, and you did get a nice lie-in.
Everyone hated 'nights', though. You were going to work when people were settling down to an evening with the telly or going to the pub or club and your sleep was always interrupted by kids like me playing football in the street. The epic football games of my childhood were forever having to switch venues at short notice when an irate woman would come to the door telling us to 'play somewhere else, don't you know our Ronnie's on nights'.
Like Ronnie, the profit motive never sleeps. Desperate to keep the looms and carding machines throbbing and rattling day and night, the textile barons sent agents to remote Pakistani villages to recruit workers. There was a rich, cruel irony here. A century and a half earlier, Britain had cut off the thumbs of Bengali weavers to maintain Lancashire textiles' competitive edge in British-ruled India. Now we needed both their skills and their willingness to work the graveyard shifts. For their part, the young Pakistani men were largely happy to come. The mills were warm, the money was good. For a while, both communities existed in a state of tolerant scepticism.
Elsewhere in the world, though, in grim sweatshops across Asia, women and kids were working longer, harder and for much, much less. The British textile industry was doomed, particularly since the days of muscular protectionism of British industry were long gone. The new political paymasters in London spoke of a 'leaner and fitter' Britain while featherbedding themselves with dubious sell-offs and fat bonuses. The rest of us, whether we spoke 'Lanky' or Urdu, whether we were born in Karachi or Keighley, could go to hell. We did.
As the mills declined, entire towns ossified and decayed. White and black were united on the scrapheap, where there was little racial discrimination. Asian communities were forced into the local service economy, brothers pooling their savings and setting up shops or curry houses or turning to minicabbing. Across the Pennine hills, from Oldham, Burnley, Accrington and Blackburn to Bradford and Leeds, the Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities were among Britain's most impoverished. Trouble simmered quietly in the cobbled streets and run-down estates.
Arthur C. Clarke thought 2001 would be all about hands reaching out across the galaxy and civilisations coming together across unimaginable distance. In fact, the first year of the new millennium showed that human beings haven't really come very far since we were apes bashing away at bones in the desert. The year 2001 wasn't about ingenuity and destiny, it was all about stupidity and horror and man's capacity for slaughtering each other over competing varieties of mumbo-jumbo.
In the summer before 9/11, though, Britain had its own lesson in the clash of cultures. After years of decline, neglect and ghettoisation plus the provocation of the parasitic far right, the north burned. It burned as it had done twenty years before, but then it had been disenfranchised and riot-happy white and Afro-Caribbean youths, the traditional 'troublemakers'. This time it was the Asians, who for years had kept 'their heads down and their noses clean', as one young Bangladeshi lad I worked with put it. Not any more. Bradford burned, Oldham burned, Burnley burned. The pissed-off kids of my old friend Charlie Chapati were mad as hell and they weren't going to take it any more.
That's one way of looking at it, of course. Others were less inclined to be sociological. Areas of Oldham and Burnley had become 'no-go' areas for whites, they said, and the police turned a blind eye. The blue touchpaper was lit when an elderly white war veteran was beaten senseless for straying innocently into a park in a predominantly Asian enclave of Oldham on his way home from a rugby match. Quick as ever to capitalise on misery, fascists came to town. They dressed in good suits these days but were as ugly as ever and bent on trouble.
Riots blazed across the Pennine towns. Asian youths fought pitched battles with police. Pubs were firebombed, cars torched. Five years on, in May 2006, reports on the mill town riots were published. All the usual suspects were blamed: dep
rivation, lack of integration and shared values. Failures were systemic, problems institutionalised, lessons had to be learned. On the day the report was published, I took myself for the first time in many years to Oldham.
First impressions were inauspicious. In fact, it was the only really deflating arrival I had anywhere in the north. I disembarked from the Manchester train at Oldham Mumps station. Perhaps I'm overly delicate but for me, it doesn't bode well when the town's main station shares its name with a uniquely unpleasant childhood glandular disease that wreaks havoc with the testicles.
I make my way to the ticket counter to inquire about connections later in the day and find the kiosk 'unpersonned'. Then I notice that there is in fact an employee of Northern Trains in there, but he has pushed his little stool as far to the right of the window as it can possibly go and has his back pressed against the wall and his eyes tightly shut. I can't tell whether he's asleep or not but certainly he has taken every measure possible to avoid the sight-line of any potential customers. This is irritating but also kind of funny, a throwback to the days before customer service when Britain was truly a proud nation of skivers and jobsworths.
Out of the station, there is a distinct lack of any helpful signage, this in marked contrast to Warrington's glittering promise of 'cultural quarters' or Wigan's mysterious 'The Way We Were', which turns out to be a museum. The station also seems to be built on an impenetrable one-way system-cum-flyover that's wreathed in exhaust fumes. There's a selection of subways, none signposted, all of them looking like a terrific place to get murdered. The town's women must detest them.
Taking my life in my hands, I cross the arterial road, travelling hopefully, as Robert Louis Stevenson would have it, rather than with any firm notion of arriving anywhere. Eventually I see a sign of sorts. It's a huge faded insignia painted on a railway bridge and it reads: 'Welcome to Oldham, home of the Tubigrip bandage.'
Towns hereabouts straddle and burrow into the Pennine foothills and so the streets are often built at calf-strengthening gradients. I pick a likely-looking one and aim up to the crest of what logic dictates must be the centre of town. It's a depressing slog past shabby shops and a grim-looking niterie called the Niagra (misspelling presumably intended to chime with Viagra) Fantasy Bar. On the awning is a silhouette of a reclining hottie but the building's general appearance would suggest that it caters for men whose fantasy is enjoying a spot of pole dancing in an abandoned butcher's shop. It looks about as sexy as mumps.
The locally famous Coliseum theatre is now surrounded by a garish clutch of fun pubs and variants of the Poundland 'cheap shop' concept. Poundworld. Poundville. Former Soviet Pound Republic. United Pound Emirates. Poundistan. Like many of the north's market and mill towns, Oldham seems to have become a shrine devoted to binge drinking and discount shopping. (My favourite remains Penrith's splendid Quids Inn.) On Yorkshire Street, every other building is some kind of drinking den. I am told by one publican, relishing the gallows humour, that this is 'the second most violent street in Europe'. 'What's the first?' I ask. He doesn't know. My guess is King Street in Wigan but even that, unlike Yorkshire Street, doesn't have a M*A*S*H-style 'battlefield hospital' triage centre for patching up combatants from the running battles. You have to say that does do wonders for a street's 'hard' credentials.
The Victorian town hall, though clearly once an impressive structure, looks like it hasn't seen a mayoral address or heated debate about bus routes in years. But there are muscular pillars and imposing steps and at the top a blue plaque that reads: 'Here Winston Churchill began his political career.' 'Winny' gave his inaugural acceptance speech on these steps when first elected as a Conservative MP for the town in 1900. If that seems odd for a Lancashire cotton town, well, Oldham has never been as dyed in the wool as you might think. The town's most famous musical son was William Walton, a northerner who spent his whole life disguising every trace of Lancashire in his make-up, dressing in floppy hats and cravats and writing imperial marches for coronations. He ended up every bit the establishment pillar as Winston. They do things their own way in this corner of Lancashire.
By the way, I say 'most famous musical son' with all due respect to the Inspiral Carpets. The last time I was here I spent the afternoon in a pub interviewing that agreeably clubbable band. The Inspiral Carpets were routinely lumped in with the Manchester bands at the height of Madchester, a designation they sensibly didn't argue with. But a few moments in their company, with their wary, wily humour and broad accents, convinced you that they were quintessentially Oldham.
Nowadays quintessentially Oldham could mean 'Alf's Rooftop Balti Palace', a name that would surely lure any red-blooded visitor after a few jars. Or X-Hibit Designer Shoes, the kind of ugly/quirky nomenclature that is supposed to be funny and is actually profoundly depressing. Eventually, I find a vaguely useful sign. It points to 'Gallery Oldham', so I take a right at yet another fun pub promising yet more big-screen Sky Sports action and 2 for 1 offers and go looking for culture.
Gallery Oldham turns out to be pretty marvellous. A classy bit of modernist steel and glass in the midst of tat and rundown Victoriana. It's the only library I've ever come across which seems to have a nightclub inside. It was taking delivery of crates of those flavoured vodka drinks (for people who don't like alcohol but want to get utterly trashed) and seemed to be called Rude or possibly 365. A large banner proclaimed 'IT'S ALL ABOUT HOUSE MUSIC', which reminds me of those strange lines from the 'Hokey Cokey'. About putting 'your right leg in' and 'your right leg out' and 'that's what it's all about.' Is that really what it's all about? Surely there's more to life than that.
Inside, pretty much all of the actual galleries are closed but I'm starting to get used to this kind of minor disappointment. The girl who politely explains that I can't use my wireless laptop link because I'm not a library member has an accent that's broad 'Lanky' with an exotic descant melody in Francophone, a pretty winning combination, I have to tell you. I began to ask increasingly redundant queries just to listen to her voice. Nearby, an elderly lady is asking after a local history book on an Oldham factory: 'I do hope you have it. Both my grandfathers worked there.' Sadly they don't but she reserves it for 80p. 'Can it go to Lees library? I live there, you see.' In the Local Studies section, a loud cheery man seeks help in his quest to investigate his Irish roots. 'My grandfather was born in 1818. But that's all I know. Would you do the research for me?' With unfailing courtesy the librarian points out that he has to do the actual research himself but that two nice ladies from 'the Society' come in every Wednesday from two till four. Also, she gently advises that the marriage certificate he's brought with him is in fact a death certificate. 'Green one's marriage, love, black is death.' As I travelled around the north, I saw hundreds of these small everyday acts of kindness and they never failed to cheer the spirit and make me quietly proud. Some of the clichés about us are true. We are friendlier and more helpful. And if you don't agree, we might glass you, of course.
While trying to earwig this exchange, I pretend to look in a book of old photographs and find myself drawn in. There's a fantastic picture of a Failsworth milliner with a giant sign overlooking the canal that reads 'Finest Stetson Hats'. How popular were they in 1950s Oldham, I wonder? A steeplejack called Joe Ball built a castle with ramparts and towers and gargoyles in the middle of a terraced street. Someone demolished it in 1961. How could they?
Finally, there's a picture of the famous and now disappeared Help the Poor Straggler pub, whose landlord was one Albert Pierrepoint. Albert helped more than a few poor stragglers in his time; helped them struggling all the way to the gallows and trapdoor. He was Britain's last hangman.
Walk through the Crime and Fantasy sections and at the back of Gallery Oldham you can sit on a nice blue Ikea settee and look through a huge display window across the town. You can see the vast old cotton mill that I worked in for a week when Courtaulds were unsuccessfully training me as a manager. You can see not far behind it the big whale-backed Penni
ne ridges reminding you that Oldham is very nearly hill country. Completing what is essentially modern Oldham in a single sweeping vista, you can also see the grand golden dome of a mosque.
That mosque will be frequented, I imagine, by many of the people of Glodwick, a predominantly Asian area. When I asked the taxi driver to take me there I half-expected him to blanch, as if I'd asked him for Harlem or Watts, so pervasive is this stuff about racial ghettos. As it was, he just looked a little pissed off and beckoned me in. He was maybe hoping for a fare to Aberdeen.
The W is silent in Glodwick, as it is in Smethwick, a neighbourhood it has much in common with. According to the BNP and the Daily Mail, it's one of the notorious 'no-go areas' of Oldham, a sort of Islamabad of the Pennines where white men fear to tread. This May morning I am one of the few white faces on the street and, though I feel conspicuous, I don't feel unduly nervous. Up north, there's always been the feeling that Oldham (and Burnley) is much less racially tolerant and integrated than nearby Rochdale. So maybe there are other parts of Glodwick where I wouldn't feel safe. But I'm starting to suspect that my minicab driver has dropped me somewhere where he knew I – and of course he – would be comfortable. Or perhaps the intense cloying heat in his knackered cab plus the overpowering scent of Magic Tree air freshener had driven him mad. I'm not bothered. I browse the trays of gulab jaman in a sweet shop, that obscenely sweet syrupy confection that you can feel furring your arteries as you look at it. I opt for a marginally healthier pakora and watch Glodwick go by.
Pies and Prejudice Page 18