The Monday morning after the worst rioting on the British mainland for 20 years, the Telegraph & Argus was in no mood for mincing matters.

‘Now it’s time for Bradford to stop making excuses’ was the editorial comment headline. Six years after the 1995 riot in Manningham, had anything really changed?

Ten years after the events of July 7 and 8, 2001, which rav-aged parts of Bradford from the city centre to Manningham, causing millions of pounds-worth of damage, and untold damage to Bradford’s reputa-tion, it is appropriate to ask the same question: has anything really changed?

While a culture of denial is still apparent in some quarters – calling the riots ‘disturbances’ is the give away – observable changes have taken place in the population, education and the physical environment.

One of the victims of the riots was a Polish delicatessen in Oak Lane, Manningham. The wrecking of this shop presaged a gloomy future for this for-merly bohemian quarter.

Few would have forecast then, that within six years, following the expansion of the European Union from 15 to 27 member states between 2005 and 2007, Eastern Europeans and Eastern European shops would be back.

One recent afternoon of changeable weather, I visited most of the riot area between Oak Lane and Sunbridge Road. I passed two Polish mini-marts in Manningham Lane, another one between New John Street and Westgate and a fourth of-fering food and gifts in Barry Street. A fifth, in Lumb Lane, was shuttered.

New housing, shops, the £4.2m upgrading of Lister Park and the construction of a substan-tial community health care cen-tre, Westbourne Green, oppo-site revitalised Lister Mill, are tangible physical improve-ments. The nigh-on full car park at Carlisle Business Cen-tre was further evidence of purposeful activity.

On my walk round, two signs caught my eye. Either side of the entrance to Lawcroft House, the fortress-like police HQ in Lilycroft Road, was a cross be-tween a notice and an invita-tion: ‘Dob in a dealer. Got your eye on a deal?…So have we.’ On the noticeboard of St Paul’s Church it said: ‘Life is fragile/ handle with prayer’.

After the madness of 2001, many thought that Manning-ham in particular and Bradford in general no longer had a prayer. Two riots in six years confirmed the outside world’s view of the place created by the ceremonial burning of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses novel in February, 1989.

So I knocked on the door of the Reverend Canon Arun John, the Indian-born vicar of St Paul’s for the past seven or eight years, to ask him if the physical changes in his parish since 2001 were mirrored by a change in attitude.

He said: “It has improved pro-gressively, definitely, in terms of drug-related crimes. The rude boys have been tackled nicely. The message has gone out if they do not behave action will be taken. People are being conscious of their role here.

“What is not happening is em-ployment. That is a big issue, so is education: people cannot af-ford the £9,000 fee for higher education.”

A British Pakistani training consultant told a journalist in Oldham that one of the visible signs of difference since 2001 was that the wearing of tradi-tional dress had become the norm. The same could be said of Manningham. More perti-nently, speaking English has still not become the norm, as the Rev John explained.

“The English language is still a big issue. People are coming in but are not able to communi-cate properly. If they don’t un-derstand this language there will be no breakthrough in terms of communication.

“St Phillip’s in Girlington has started English classes. Young Muslim women are attracted to them because they know their children will not be speaking Urdu in school. If this English gap remains there will be a gulf between the home environment and the outside world.

“Eastern Europeans are arriv-ing and they are bringing dif-ferent dynamics here. They will be the new minority. Will they remain apart? This is one of the issues we will see unfolding.”

In 2004 and 2005 Sir Trevor Phillips, head of the Commis-sion for Racial Equality as it was then called, caused a stir by denouncing multiculturalism as a Politically Correct policy, warning that we were “sleepwalking into segregation”.

Former Bradford Central Police Chief Superintendent Les Vasey is writing an autobiography, The Job, in which he describes the unaddressed causes of the 1995 riot which set the pace for the 2001 rioting.

He writes: “The doctrine on Bradford Council of multi-culturalism re-inforced the notion of separatism, dividing the South Asian community from the majority of the indigenous along racial, cultural and geo-graphical lines.

“This resulted in ‘ghettos’ being established in the inner city areas such as Manningham. The Asian community were often poorly represented by non-elected elites or ‘gatekeepers’ with little or no legitimacy within their communities.

“Young unemployed Asian males particularly became dis-enchanted and dis-enfranchised and were no longer prepared to accept the status quo. Street gang cultures emerged.

“One of the first warning signs of what was to follow was the disgraceful vigilante activities of Asian gangs in the Lumb Lane area where working women were terrorised and set upon, often beaten, sexually attacked, and generally abused in order to displace them from Manningham streets.

“The scene was now set for the empowered vigilante gangs to take control of the streets and the so called ‘front line’ was es-tablished.”

Is Les Vasey’s account of the state of affairs in Manningham between 1995 and 2001 still ap-plicable?

The Rev John said ghettoisa-tion remained a fact of life in his parish because people felt safe and secure with what they knew.

“Ghettoisation may not be a bad thing – providing there are no no-go areas. Manningham will not be an exclusive Muslim ghetto; it will include other mi-norities. How will they live to-gether?”

Like Councillor Ian Greenwood and Phil Lewis, he brought up the subject of last summer’s EDL demonstration.

Far from being provoked, local communities and religious leaders went out into the parks and got involved in family activities to celebrate their togetherness.

“I can feel a sense of together-ness now. But the authorities have got to realise they are not here to manage diversity be-tween host and guest.

“They are here to help people live their diversity. That is the goal the Government wants to achieve.

“Young Muslims are beginning to use a different kind of lan-guage. Although it does not compromise on its faith, it does not threaten others,” he added. The kind of aggressive territorialisation that developed and intensified in the area between 1995 and 2001 has largely gone.