The more this Bradford business continues, the more the recent and distant pasts illuminate. I recently met young Gary, whom I had known from Race Today's campaigns in Bradford about 30 years ago.

He complained bitterly that he was born in Bradford and had developed very good relations with Pakistanis there. Yet he now felt like a foreigner in the largely Pakistani district of Manningham.

He had gone for a walk in the park and had felt hostility and menace there. Andy, his very good friend, worked for a Pakistani who treated him like "a dog". Gary's language, which bordered on the racist, mortified me. Both Gary and Andy had been members of Bradford Black, which was part of a national alliance formed by Race Today.

The alliance, while it lasted, would not entertain any such deterioration of understanding between Asians and West Indians. We had many things on our side: close links with the university, and a base in the Asian community among those of its members who had broken with mosque politics. Together, we would surely have had some success in shoring up what appear to be rapidly declining social relations. Now, without organisation and without cadres of any quality, we have missed the boat.

Yet at one time, we had seemed so well set. Twenty years ago, a group of young Asians, hearing that Bradford would be invaded by the National Front, stashed a few petrol bombs in readiness for the attack.

Twelve of them were arrested and charged with conspiracy to cause explosions. I was designated by Race Today to assist in their defence. The line-up for the case was formidable: a white and radical solicitor, Ruth Bundy; the young and handsome barrister Mike Mansfield; another electrifying barrister in the form of the young Helena Kennedy, now a baroness.

The Asian youths convinced a white jury to find them not guilty on the grounds of self-defence.

There was work in Bradford two decades ago. The act of putting one's labour in motion immediately creates relationships outside one's own particular social group. Old Bradford was based on a series of interlocking relationships: Pakistanis, Indians, Bangladeshis and West Indians, the university, local white radical professionals. It kept the beast of racism away.

That base has collapsed with the textile and related industries, leaving isolated and alienated communities. Once the world of work ceases to provide an identity for young Asians, Islam arises and becomes an all-embracing ideology. It first reared its head in 1988-89, with the violent hostility to Salman Rushdie. The fundamentalist mullahs have increasingly found, among the local Pakistanis, a fertile recruiting ground for various wars around the world.

Another source of unity was the local Labour Party, which probably had more of the left-wing tendency within it than any other branch of the party in the country. Blairism brought all that to an end. The Labour leadership blew the relationship with its core support. It was the last straw to break the camel's back.

This generation of young Asians has grown up in isolation from other sections of society. Yet they dress the same, speak the same, eat the same things, drink the same as young whites.

Therein rests the combustible mixture which has blown that community apart in recent weeks. No number of water cannon can put out the fire. Yet our authoritarian government can think only of pressing the trigger of repression.

Ministers refer to community leaders. But these leaders have declining influence over the attitudes of young Asians. The explosions have lifted the cover on what is going on beneath the surface of northern towns. We have got to set it right.

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