Take That stand with us
This week the Manchester Evening News started a campaign to make our wonderful city a more peaceful, more tolerant and ever more caring place to live. Our #WeStandTogether campaign has three simple goals: 1. To make sure every child in Greater Manchester is taught about how to solve life’s problems peacefully; 2. To encourage and celebrate your acts of love and kindness – especially when you are helping someone you don’t know; 3. To fight every kind of crime which is driven by hatred. Today, Chris Osuh looks at how conflict resolution is being used to foster unity in Greater Manchester’s neighbourhoods.
AT the height of community tension in the heart of north Manchester, Coun Pat Karney went into businesses’ back rooms, trying to find out if there was any truth to the lurid stories.
Rumours had spread that shops run by residents from the area with a West African heritage were keeping goats tethered in the back, or were fronts for prostitution rackets.
The tales were ‘groundless.’ But they had flourished against a backdrop of mistrust between neighbours.
An innovative approach was needed, and so a number of Moston locals from different cultural backgrounds turned to a project to resolve their differences – firstly through straight talk, and also through learning exercises that encourage bonding.
The lottery-funded Bridging Communities project, run by Warrington Peace Foundation, was able to bring together people who had been bitterly at odds by training them, over three months, how to deal with their differences calmly.
It’s a prime example of how conflict resolution is being used to effect positive change – the type of change the M.E.N. is promoting with our ‘We Stand Together’ campaign, a push to bring about a more peaceful and friendly Greater Manchester.
The trigger for conflict between different cultures in the same area will often be neighbourhood nuisance.
But in truth the source of tension is much deeper than concerns about noise, parking, litter or loitering.
It’s often about the need for universal values. And such community tension tends to mirror universal anxieties in wider society – about poverty, social change, people feeling left behind, ignored, threatened, misunderstood, powerless or victimised. This is what the Bridging Communities project found when the council brought them to Moston, a neighbourhood where strong community spirit has been tested by relatively high levels of deprivation and rapid change.
At the time of the 2011 census, 95 per cent of residents were born in the UK. Against this backdrop the high street, Moston Lane, has become home to a number of West African businesses – barbershops, restaurants and ethnic grocers – as north Manchester has become home to people from Nigeria, Cameroon and Ghana.
Tension in the area started in 2014 over concerns that a number of African restaurants were illegally operating as drinking dens and that drunken males were causing trouble in the early hours.
But what began as genuine concern over licensing breaches deteriorated as right-wing activists exploited residents’ concerns. Cuts to litter and policing provision coincided with the visible change on the high street. Social media added fuel to the fire.
The mood worsened to the point a Facebook group started that was ‘very much about hatred and attack to anyone not seen as British,’ according to Christine Cox, from the Bridging Communities project, which was called in by the council to help.
Christine’s work typically starts with ‘conflict analysis’ that looks at flashpoints in the area. Then she recruits people from these communities for free training at Warrington’s Peace Centre – training that can result in them emerging as local leaders.
The 12-week programme aims to give people the skill to manage community conflicts, awareness of how beliefs and values can impact on conflict, and seeks to empower people through training them in public speaking and leading dialogue.
It climaxes with an event which brings together scores of people from different backgrounds from the same neighbourhood. “I will go into an area where there’s been a lot of change, perhaps a lot of migration, where resources are limited and cuts have had an impact. Often there will be conflict,” Christine told the M.E.N.
“Moston has had massive change,” she added. “We got people from both communities and brought them together.”
For Coun Karney, Bridging Communities represented a chance for people to make a fresh start after months of rancour. “It started because some of the licensed premises were not adhering to the regulations – there was a serious knife incident in the early hours of the morning outside one venue.
“We got many complaints and we set up midnight surgeries and did patrols to find out what was going on. We shut down the venue where there was the very serious incident ( a restaurant called Ma Helene) and other licensed businesses know if they step out of line they will get closed down. We oppose any further licences on Moston Lane. Those concerns were genuine.
“But people got frightened of the scale of migration in Moston and people with an agenda were exploiting that. Rumours were going around about goats in shops and brothels. They were groundless – I went into shops and checked if there were any goats and brothels.
“There was nothing particularly violent or anything but it became bad on social media and we were heading towards divided communities. So we called in the Peace Foundation to try and get people talking to each other.
“It definitely worked in Moston in bringing people together. It’s not a magic bullet, it’s a long journey and it only works if people are prepared to work and communicate with each other, but it has helped community spirit.
“That’s why the We Stand Together campaign is so important – we could have had separate communities and that’s not Manchester. Manchester is a welcoming place – it’s about who you are, not your religion or your colour.”
Bridging Communities has also rolled out its programme in areas of Oldham.
Sixteen years ago in May, the town was rocked by riots and concerns of religious and ethnic segregation still prevail. Litter complaints have led to tension around the Roma gypsy community and a shortage of school places has led to further conflict.
Right now, Bridging Communities is underway in Rochdale, where the fall-out from the ‘Three Girls’ sex grooming case, and the subsequent TV show, has deepened faultlines and led to complaints of victimisation. The murder of faith healer, Jalal Uddin, by ISIS sympathisers has been another flashpoint.
The workshops that make up the Bridging Communities course compel people to address their differences and find their areas of common ground.
“During the process all of these people who have very different viewpoints, come together and share these views – I tell them this is a space where we’re going to be entirely honest”, project manager Christine Cox said.
“People talk about their fear. One woman said ‘I have never sat in a room with a woman with a headscarf, my heart’s beating in my chest.’
“Most of the time we’re dealing with fear – from the news, from ideas from the news, from misunderstandings that will be on all sides. We had a Muslim woman who said I never thought I would sit in a room with someone that didn’t have a faith – and they got on really well, a Muslim woman and a woman who is a pagan!
“What people discover is they have much more in common, once you strip away religion and who we’re supposed to be, and it becomes about personality. It allows unlikely friendships to develop.
“It’s a place that’s playful, because if you create a space that’s really playful you can talk about difficult topics, like terrorism, extremism and conflict, you can dip into hard parts of the conversation. It’s about how we move forward together.”
To find out how you can help, visit westandtogether.co.uk or email us at westandtogether@trinitymirror. com.