00:05Good afternoon, the people of Oldham are clearing up this lunchtime after a second night of rioting.
00:11Gangs of Asian youths again hurled petrol bombs, although the violence wasn't as serious as 24 hours earlier.
00:17They claim the police are failing to protect them from white racists, a charge the police deny.
00:23From Oldham, Kevin Dunn reports.
00:26Hundreds of police in riot gear were deployed throughout Oldham to deter further rioting.
00:32They dealt with groups of both white and Asian youths, but it was in an Asian area that barricades were
00:39set alight,
00:39and the police came under petrol bomb attack.
00:53No officers were injured, and the confrontations never reached the level of Saturday night,
00:58but the police were again accused of being heavy-handed.
01:02The only way that we could defuse the problem here is if the police officers just go back to their
01:09own places
01:10and leave us to handle the situation.
01:12You've got nothing to do with it now, lads. It's just better off at home, eh?
01:16After several hours of stand-offs, tension eased,
01:19but not before Asian extremists had firebombed officers of the Oldham Evening Chronicle,
01:24which they accuse of anti-Asian bias.
01:27It hasn't stopped the paper coming out, but, I mean, trying to suppress a newspaper by firebombing it
01:33is the sort of thing that happens in totalitarian regimes, isn't it?
01:40As communities cleaned up for the second successive day,
01:43police and the local council again blamed white extremists from outside Oldham of inciting the violence.
01:50And they are race-haters who, their message is not a conventional political message.
01:55They are trying to raise racial tensions and exploit situations.
02:00Another huge security operation is planned here again tonight.
02:05Kevin Dunn, ITN, Oldham.
02:08Kevin, what more are the police saying about who started all the trouble?
02:13Well, while clearly most of the violence,
02:16such as the damage done here to the Oxford Evening Chronicle over the past two nights
02:20has been caused by Asian youth.
02:22The police and community leaders are insisting
02:25that the violence is being incited by what they call outside elements,
02:29elements of the far-right, the racist far-right,
02:32who have come into Oldham from outside.
02:34They believe they are seeking to try and exploit
02:37the racial tension that has been simmering here for some weeks.
02:40And the police deny that they've been uneven-handed
02:43in their handling of the operation.
02:45And they point to figures from last night.
02:47They say that of 12 arrests they made last night,
02:50seven were white men and five were Asian men.
02:53And so they're saying that they are acting even-handedly
02:56and that they will do all they can to root out
02:58these so-called outside interests that have come in from elsewhere.
03:02So exactly what is the police strategy from now on?
03:07Well, the police, first and foremost, have a massive law and order problem.
03:11Last night they were very successful, they say,
03:13in putting hundreds of officers on the streets
03:15and mounting a policy of zero tolerance.
03:18And they say they'll do the same again tonight.
03:20They simply won't tolerate their officers being attacked
03:23with petrol bombs and iron bars.
03:25But once they've dealt with law and order,
03:27there is, of course, another huge task here they face,
03:30and that is improving, repairing race relations.
03:34Kevin Dunn, thank you.
