Special edition: Burnley and the far right
Full issue only available to paying subscribers
Hello and welcome to a special edition of The Lancashire Lead. This is the first of the premium editions which are only available to paying subscribers and features an exclusive long read from Kevin Gopal on the rise and fall of the far right in Burnley.
In the early 2000s, the BNP became the second biggest party on the East Lancashire town’s council as a reputation for racism grew. But why did the far right manage to take hold here? And what happened next?
Read on for the full story - which for full disclosure was written before the recent disorder which broke out in Southport and then elsewhere.
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Before the paywall kicks in, this edition also contains the regular news digest and in Lancashire Recommends, I’ve taken a look at the Colne background of Lily Fontaine - lead singer of the Mercury Prize winning band English Teacher - as well as compiling a list of What’s On stories from the past week.
Before that, a quick word on this week’s Blackpool Lead offering which looked behind the (very unpleasant) scenes at an Indian takeaway which was forced to close earlier this year due to food hygiene and gas safety concerns.
Issues cited in documents reported by Luke Beardsworth included placing containers in a pool of blood present in the fridge, hands not being washed and no surfaces being cleaned in the entirety of a one-hour visit and a lack of awareness of cross-contamination risks.
You can read the full piece here - though I should warn it contains some pretty grim photos from inside the kitchen.
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🏥 An investigation has begun after a medical swab left inside a patient after she had given birth at Blackpool Victoria Hospital (Blackpool Gazette).
🚨 A dad who was left critically injured following an explosion at a house in Longridge has died in hospital (LancsLive).
🔓 Deputy Prime Minister Angela Raynor says “more needs to be done to unlock Blackpool’s great potential” (Blackpool Lead).
🍞 A bakery which went out of business owed more than £1m when it collapsed. A new shop has since opened on the same site (Blog Preston).
🏫 The rapidly growing number of houses means a school near Preston must double in size (BBC).
🚓 A police officer caught with indecent images of children has been jailed (BBC).
If you’ve seen news of the Mercury Prize this week, you’ll be aware of indie band English Teacher winning the main award for debut album This Could Be Texas. The band has been widely described as Leeds-based as that’s where they met but it’s important not to overlook the Lancashire roots of lead singer Lily Fontaine.
Born in Colne, she has spoken on a few occasions about her roots. In an interview in January, she said:
"When people ask where I’m from I usually say I’m mixed race: half Yorkshire, half Lancashire. It allows me to divert with comedy from the potential connotations of that question, which change wildly depending on who’s asking it. One end of Albert Road in Colne is cold, underfunded and uninspiring; the other is warm at night with live music. It sums up how I look back on the place I lived for 19 years.”
The video for the band’s single The World’s Biggest Paving Slab is filmed around the East Lancs town and contains many references to the area. Fontaine has also spoken about feelings many will be familiar with - wanting to get away from your roots but then finding yourself unable not to be drawn back to them in some way.
The album itself also feeds heavily on her upbringing and issues such as deprivation, politics and identity. Speaking to the BBC after the award win, she said:
"There was a lot of racism, but then a lot of beautiful landscapes. It's a really inspiring place, and there's a lot of places like that in the UK that never really get focused on, so it's nice for it to see the limelight.”
Perhaps most relevant to this section though is the single Albert Road - based on the aforementioned street and touching on themes which are picked up on in Kevin’s piece below. Check the song out here.
Blog Preston’s Kate Rosindale also has a good tale of the band’s guitarist Lewis Whiting growing up in Kirkham, including playing in a garage in Penwortham and at the recently saved Preston venue The Ferret. On that spot, he said:
“That’s part of my experience growing up in Preston. The Ferret was there, but a lot of the time you had to go to Manchester for a lot of things. I love Manchester, but it’s really important to have that space, like where you live to kind of explore maybe being in a band or just discovering new music because there’s a lot of places where it can be like a complete cultural desert. And it’s not really fair that it gets concentrated in the same places, not others.
“I know for a fact I wouldn’t be doing this without seeing certain bands in my teenage years that made me realise ‘oh I could do that’. Without those spaces to play those really terrible first gigs you don’t get people doing better stuff further along the line.”
You can read the full article here.
Before moving on to Kevin’s piece, here some of the What’s On stories which have caught my eye this week:
Lancaster and Morecambe restaurants reach finals of Italian Awards
Two weeks of activities, workshops and events planned for Preston Arts Festival 2024
New Blackburn £150k cafe bar promises the taste of Australia
The rise and fall of the far right in Burnley
By Kevin Gopal
When Labour’s Oliver Ryan won Burnley in the general election it was no surprise. The sitting Conservative MP Anthony Higginbotham was defending a slim majority in what some had called Labour’s most winnable seat in the country.
The surprise of the night was the Reform UK candidate finishing as low as fourth. The party that came second in 98 seats across the country and third in nearby Hyndburn, Pendle and Clitheroe, and Rossendale and Darwen trailed behind the three main parties in Burnley. Had voters in the town that once had eight BNP councillors turned their back on the far right?
Millwall briefly elected a BNP councillor in 1993 but it was not until 2002 that it had its next electoral success, winning three seats in Burnley, which along with Oldham and Bradford had been the scene of riots the year before.
Burnley came to be perceived as a hotbed of far right activity, a reputation that grew over the next year as it added five more BNP councillors and was briefly the second largest party on the council.
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