Asylum was back at the centre of the British election debate yesterday after a night of race riots in Oldham, in the Greater Manchester area. The rioting shocked police chiefs for its "ferocity and sheer carnage".
The Conservative leader, Mr William Hague, rejected a suggestion by the Liberal Democrat's Mr Simon Hughes that Tory statements on asylum might have contributed to the mounting racial tension and intolerance in Oldham.
"It's an accusation made by parties trying to play the race card themselves," Mr Hague insisted. "Asylum is an entirely different issue to race."
And the Home Secretary, Mr Jack Straw - who last week proposed setting a ceiling on the number of asylum seekers allowed into the United Kingdom - acquitted Mr Hague and carefully avoided apportioning blame to the mainstream political parties.
Mr Straw said the violence was "serious" and to be "unreservedly condemned". No one had ever suggested there were no tensions in Britain's "multicultural" and "multiracial" society, said Mr Straw. "This is a challenge for all of us to try and ensure we use the structures we've got, and the new legislation we've brought in, better to create happier and more contented communities, and that includes in Oldham."
The leader of Oldham Council, Mr Richard Knowles, said the violence was the result of "provocation" and "planned disruption" by "groups and individuals on the far right of the political spectrum". However, as the asylum issue burst back onto the electoral stage, Mr Straw said the situation was not helped by giving people who engaged in violence the opportunity to "eschew their own responsibility". At the height of the overnight clashes about 500 Asian youths, armed with petrol bombs and bricks, attacked a pub, torched cars, and fought hundreds of police officers in riot gear in the Glodwick area of the town.
At one point four shots were fired and a handgun, later established to be blank-firing, was recovered. Fifteen police officers were injured and at least 17 people arrested during about seven hours of disturbances believed to have been started by an attack on Asian homes by a gang of white youths at about 8.30 p.m. on Saturday evening.
Soon after that a crowd of around 100 Asians attacked the Live and Let Live public house, while the landlord, Mr Paul Barrow and 40 customers, a number of them Asian, remained trapped inside.
As the clean-up got under way amid fears of further violence in Oldham, Mr Hughes said there was a danger that politicians talking up racial difference could find a resonance with impressionable young people.
"The reality is that youngsters are tribal like football supporters and it's very easy to make tribalism racist," said Mr Hughes. "That's a very big danger for Britain in our inner cities with our mixed societies, we must be very careful with our language and that's why some of us have been very critical of the language particularly William Hague and his colleagues have used over the last two years."
While dismissing the Conservative proposals to detain asylum seekers in secure units as "completely incredible" and "inhumane", Mr Straw said in response to Mr Hughes: "We have all got a duty to moderate our language but I do think it's impossible to argue, incredible to argue, that what happened in Oldham . . . can be laid at the door of William Hague," he said.
The Home Secretary added: "I don't think debate is helped by that, because I have seen time after time situations where people get involved in violence and then scrabble around for any excuse to eschew their own responsibility."
The shadow Home Secretary, Ms Ann Widdecombe, said Mr Hughes's statement was "disgraceful" and accused him in turn of seeking "to exploit a horrible situation for party political advantage".