Oldham 'still as segregated as ever', 10 years on

Oldham's white and Asian communities remain as segregated as they were 10 years ago at the time of the town's race riots, according to the outgoing leader of the council.

Howard Sykes said: "Could we have a riot on a hot summer afternoon? Yes... anybody who tells you different is a liar. And I don't think we're different from 20 or 30 other places in this country, either."

The Ritchie Report examining the causes of the violence in May 2001 – when 500 police clashed with Asian youths and a pub was firebombed – found that the riots were a consequence of whites and Asians living apart.

The author, David Ritchie, warned that "segregation is an unacceptable basis for a harmonious community and it will lead to more serious problems if it is not tackled".

Mr Sykes, a Liberal Democrat councillor for the Shaw ward and leader of the council since May 2008, advised residents of the town to "learn to be comfortable" with segregation.

"I don't necessarily see segregated communities as a problem," he said. "Can you blame somebody who chooses to be near their relatives, near the facilities they want, near the shops that sell the things that they want and where their place of worship is? I can't.

"You can't force unsegregation. You just have to learn to be comfortable with it. We're a little bit more uncomfortable with it."

He cited the US as an example of peaceful segregation: "There are vast tracks of the States that are mono-cultural, in terms of who lives in a particular area. It doesn't mean it's a bad place. It's just where people choose to live."

Schools in Oldham are largely polarised along racial lines, research by Bristol University has found.

More than 80 per cent of primary school pupils of Pakistani or Bangladeshi origin attend a school in which no more than 20 per cent of the pupils are white.

More than 70 per cent of white pupils are in "majority white" schools, in which at least 80 per cent of pupils were white British.

A 2009 Gallup poll found the Muslim community much more likely to identify strongly with Britain than the rest of the population. It showed Muslims are much more in favour than white Britons of mixed ethnic communities.