THE FRONTLINE
By Richard Pendlebury

Normanton has long been called "The Frontline". Rather than trenches and barbed wire, the battleground is marked by a mini-roundabout through which traffic grinds between world-weary red-brick terraces, where Normanton Road ends and the deceptively idyllic-sounding Pear Tree Road begins. Locals originally gave it the nickname because this acre of inner-city deprivation was where prostitutes and drug dealers openly plied their trades. Today, the street-walkers have largely relocated, thanks to police and community action, although drug abuse remains a blight. Yet the name "Frontline" still suits Normanton. Here, amid the Halal butchers and Asian fashion shops, one can sense the seething tensions which threaten to explode and expose the scandal of Britain's shambolic asylum-seeker dispersal policy.

However, this is not a story of white families reacting against groups of asylum-seekers being "dumped" in their areas by a cynical government which appears to have no thought about how such groups will integrate. Instead, in Normanton, the backlash has come from the large population of hard-working Pakistanis and Indians who feel the arbitrary introduction of mainly young, single, male Iraqi Kurd asylum-seekers is yet another threat to their hard-won stake in British society. This is such a controversial issue that Derby police expressed concern that any publicity could provoke further trouble. But Normanton demands examination. The district is not so much a racial "tinderbox", it is a deprived, multi-ethnic, urban community, creaking and fragmenting as the result of Britain's appallingly lax asylum policies.

Historically, Britain was at the centre of the Industrial Revolution, and the terrace streets of Normanton sprang up to house the employees of its engineering factories and foundries. The city has successfully absorbed overseas immigration for more than 150 years - the first significant wave being the Irish, who arrived in large numbers to build the Victorian railways. Then, after the last war, Poles and Ukrainians settled, followed, in the Sixties, by an influx from Commonwealth countries such as India, Pakistan and various Caribbean islands. Today, Normanton has 13,500 residents, of which almost exactly half belong to an ethnic minority. To an outsider, the area seems dreary. Residents will tell you its schools are poor and its health service facilities under pressure, while its housing and other amenities are of a lower standard than anywhere else in the city.

According to the blunt view of Shokat Lal, general secretary of the Pakistani Community Centre, "Normanton is a horrible area with nothing to brag about." Against this social background, there are some who have turned to militant Islam. For example, Omar Khan Sharif, the son of Pakistani immigrants, joined the fringe radical Islamic group Al-Mahajiroun and travelled to Israel, where he tried to bomb a bar in Tel Aviv. Mr Lal says, "As a result, the Pakistani community here have been labelled terrorists and this has taken away from the very real issues in Normanton of poor education and unemployment. There are a lot of angry young men around here who have lost faith in the police. I know, as a young Asian man, I am treated with more respect if I am wearing a baseball cap."

The last thing such a community needed, surely, was to have large numbers of Kurdish asylum-seekers placed here. They were sent under the terms of the Immigration and Asylum Act, which includes a scheme to disperse applicants away from concentrations in london and south-eastern coastal towns. Official figures suggest there are between 1,000 and 2,000 asylum-seekers in Derby, awaiting the processing of their residency applications. However, Mr Lal estimates the true figure, for Kurds alone, is nearer 4,000. In the past decade, Normanton has accepted Somali, Afghan and Bosnian refugees. However, what set the Kurds apart are their large numbers and the fact that they are almost entirely single, young men.

The majority of Kurds are Islamic but their approach to faith is a little more relaxed than in some Muslim countries. Alcohol is tolerated and, privately, enjoyed. What is more, history and geography have given the Kurdish character a robust independence. Thousands of miles from home, the young Kurds, many from rural backgrounds, roam Normanton in large groups. They congregate in a Kurdish-owned cafe on The Frontline, spilling outside and blocking the pavement. This was not assimilation, said the locals. This was a nuisance. And so resentment among first and second-generation Asian Muslim, Hindu and Sikh residents grew. Other factors exacerbated the situation. In October 2002, a popular medical centre closed. According to the NHS, it shut because the doctor had retired, but rumour spread locally that the centre was being converted for the sole use of asylum-seekers.

Since half of Derby's NHS surgeries have closed their registers to new patients because of over-subscription, the resentment grew. They felt the Kurds had been "dumped" in Normanton because it was already poor and multi-ethnic, and therefore a soft touch. Tensions came to a head in June 2003 when, following a clash between a Pakistani and a Kurd, rival mobs, several hundred strong, congregated on Normanton Road and had to be separated by police. Soon after, an attempt was made to burn down the Kurdish cafe. Hostility towards the Kurds came not only from the Pakistani community. Forty-four business leaders signed a petition protesting about the number of asylum-seekers being "dispersed" to Normanton.

It was organised by Talwar Singh, a Sikh businessman whose textile company, a few doors from the Kurdish cafe, has been based on the Frontline for 30 years. Mr Singh does not mince his words. He says Pakistani and Indian immigrants have an historic and cultural link with Britain. The vast majority, while maintaining traditions, have assimilated and consider themselves to be British. On the other hand, he says the Kurds have no connection with this country and are unsuited to life here. Mr Singh said, "I have just spent £2,500 on metal shutters for my shop, because these people are always outside. It is very intimidating. Recently, one wandered into my yard and when I told him to leave, he abused me. They should have been taught about the culture and society of this country. They have no respect for women, old people or children. Why should we taxpayers support them?"

Similar views were expressed at a large meeting of the Pakistani community. "We had a very big meeting and there were some very xenophobic voices," says Shokat Lal, general secretary of the Pakistani Community Centre. "We asked the people who expressed those views to cast their minds back to the late Sixties amd remember how they were treated when they first arrived in the UK. We say 'Live and let live', but you have to live in a certain way. Unfortunately, there have been many incidents which have caused bad feeling. Kurdish guys have been driving the wrong way down one-way streets, causing accidents and then abandoning their cars. They have no training or insurance."

After the riot, Mr Lal attended a highly-charged meeting police and local community leaders, during which tempers flared when a Kurd accused the Pakistanis of attacking their cafe. In July, similar tensions between Iraqi Kurds and residents of Wrexham, Wales, led to pitched battles in which five police officers were injured. It was not surprising that, in September, the National Asylum Support Service (NASS), the government agency which houses asylum-seekers while they await the result of residency applications, called a temporary halt to dispersals to Derby and other centres. It had suffered heavy criticism, not least from the Campaign for Racial Equality, whose chairman Trevor Phillips described the dispersals as "disastrous".

"The dispersal policy has turned out to be the principle factor in destroying community cohesion in towns and cities in this country," said Mr Phillips. "We cannot put people in places that are already miserable, anxious and angry." The number of Kurds on the streets of Normanton has recently declined. But other problems have arisen, not least the way Kurdish youths treat women. "There was a specific issue of them harassing Asian women, not just Pakistani, but Indian, too," says Mr Lal. "They were following them down the road, stopping them and chatting them up. Sometimes, if the women said 'No' after being asked out, they were physically assaulted."

During Ramadan, Mr Lal says he invited a Kurdish community leader to speak on a radio station he was running for the festival. "I put the question of harassment to him. Interestingly, he said members of his community wanted to go out with British Asian or white women in order to get independent leave to remain. In short, it was in their best interests to embark on a relationship which might lead to marriage in order to secure residency. That was quite worrying, and we have had numerous incidents of harassment. Both the police and the council have said they are young, single men with very little to do. So the council has offered them a community centre."

Naturally, this, too, has attracted criticism. "The Somalis, Afghans and Bosnians have not caused problems, so they do not get offered their own centres," says Mr Lal. "The Kurds are being rewarded for their misdeeds. We have told the authorities that if the community centre is in a residential area there will be more problems." Meanwhile, Andy Thomas, of the Derby Community Safety Partnership, which brings together key agencies in the city to reduce crime and disorder, says, "We are looking closely at ways of enabling the Iraqi Kurd people to take an active part in the life of the city. There are no plans for a purpose-built centre. However, we are working with all sections of the community to identify suitable premises in the short term that meet both the needs of Iraqi Kurds and the wider community."

Back in the Kurdish cafe, Bekim is enjoying what the menu describes as "Iraqi tea". He is 19, originates from the town of Sulaymaniyah and has been in Derby for 14 months, having crossed illegally from northern Iraq through Iran, Turkey, Greece, Italy and France. They journey cost his family £6,000. Now, he attends a language college in Derby and has an English girlfriend. Denying claims of harassment, he says, "If I want a girl, I go to a nightclub. I have heard what they say about us and it is not true. The Pakistanis have problems not only with us, but with the Indians and the English, too. They attacked a Kurd with a sword, like in the film Gladiator. We cause no problems."

Bekim has been given free accomodation and receives £30-a-week benefit. "Derby is my home now," he says. "It is beautiful. I am very proud of my city." Of course, this is the aspirational voice of every new immigrant. But his sense of new-found civic pride involves a much wider question: "To whom does Derby belong?" For the sake of the people of Normanton, one hopes that the answer will be settled peacefully.

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