The Labour-Run Council, Where Disputes Are Settled With Firebombing
In the Telegraph, Albert Tait paints a grim picture of petrol-bombed cars and Gaza-fuelled rows, turning Oldham’s politics into a sectarian hellscape, with Labour struggling to stay in control. Here’s an excerpt:
Josh Charters and his fiancée were getting ready for bed on January 13th when his Mini Cooper Sport went up in flames. Just outside his front door, the assailant appeared to throw liquid over the car’s windscreen and set it ablaze.
It was a scene reminiscent of a gritty TV crime drama, but this was no gangland conspiracy – it was an attack on a local Labour councillor.
A month earlier, Shah Bahram was asleep on his sofa when two balaclava-clad men poured petrol on his car and set it alight.
As the vehicle became engulfed in flames, the perpetrators escaped into the night.
Within hours, Mr Bahram’s mother was hit by a similar arson attack when a small fire was lit in her garden. …
Insiders said the firebomb attacks spoke to the division within a council rife with “sectarianism”, where blazing rows between councillors in the chamber are the norm.
In the past two years, Labour councillors, who run the authority, have clashed repeatedly with Oldham Group councillors, who were largely elected in 2024 on a pro-Palestinian platform.
In 2025, a meeting was abandoned after a debate on whether the Gaza war was a “genocide” turned into a fully fledged shouting match between councillors. …
Elsewhere, a pig’s head was thrown through a former councillor’s window, and the council leader’s car was torched.
Councillors and constituents are fearful that Oldham is returning to the kind of division that led to the 2001 race riots, when hundreds of white and Asian youths clashed after a pub was petrol-bombed. …
The town… became a Labour heartland for much of the 20th and 21st centuries …
But in the past decade, Labour has been losing seats.
This is partly because of the grooming gangs scandal – in 2022, a report found that the council failed to protect children from sexual abuse. But it has also been losing voters over its stance on the war in Gaza. A quarter of the population of Oldham is Muslim.
Having previously held 47 of the council’s 60 seats in 2018, the party dropped to 27 seats at the general election in 2024, losing control of the authority for the first time since 2011 and clinging on to power only as a minority administration.
Labour’s fall has precipitated the rise of independent councillors – there are now 17 of them compared with one in 2018 – some of whom are said to have focused more on identity politics than local issues in recent years. …
On the streets of Oldham, people told the Telegraph they cared little about the personality disputes on the council and were more concerned with local issues, such as their council tax, which will rise by 4.99% in April, and the closed shops in the town centre.
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Pete Sutton
7 days ago
How galling it must be for Oldham’s Gaza councillors to discover that an English district council has no say at all on what happens in Palestine. At least they don’t take this humiliating reality lying down.
What happens in Gaza, what happens about Net Zero and the old Labour CND council policies of “nuclear free zone” are not within the powers or responsibilities of Councils.
Long ago government should have made clear to councils, quangos and departments what their duties and powers were. Proposals for Gaza to be on the agenda at all should be refused.
Tory councils are not immune to this sort of extra vires nonesence. My own District has declared a climate emergency – what prevention!
If the vires of councils and others are not sufficiently clear primary legislation should make it so.
I recommend taking a look at this article which is a very good analysis of MPs’ questions in the House of Commons, whilst taking into account their ethnicity and that of their constituents, and provides confirmation of just how much sectarianism has crept into British politics; ”During the 2025 Budget debate, Nusrat Ghani’s prominent role — and the attention her ‘school prefect’ attire received — overlapped with ongoing conversations in some circles about the role of foreign-born citizens in British public life. It reflected a broader public perception that some British citizens in elected office, including those with dual citizenship, were seen as focusing on issues framed through racial, tribal or ethnic identity rather than on domestic issues in the UK’s national interest. In this paper we investigate if this might be true. The socio-economic nature of the many questions in the Chamber today would simply be unrecognisable to thirty years ago. This is at a time when the UK requires legislators to solve the UK’s problems without distraction reminisced of third world tribalism. A point the impressive Suella Braverman has made on several occasions. Fifty percent of some MP’s questions relate to ethnic and religious preoccupations of communities that… Read more »
“communities that self-identify as intrinsically foreign first and British second”
We go to the Tate now and again when there is stuff on that is not too woke or crappy (Turner and Constable thing is good – almost no woke bollocks). There is an exhibition coming up of someone called Hurvin Anderson. The paintings looked ok so I looked him up:
”Growing up in the UK, Anderson did not have a full immersion in his Caribbean culture”
Well isn’t U.K. culture HIS culture? Of course he did not have a “full immersion in “Caribbean culture” – he lived in bloody Birmingham. The implication is that this is somehow wrong or odd. This is a very firmly entrenched mindset as much I reckon within the bien pensant white middle class as it is among immigrant themselves. I mean this bloke was born in the UK ffs.
I think it is not just their questions but what they say after they have been elected. Roll back the years and you will find the Nigerian Olukemi Adegoke promising to do all she could for Nigeria after her election to Pariliament in Westminster….
Jeff Chambers
7 days ago
This looks very like the beginnings of civil war. And I curse our rulers for importing the cause of this civil war.
Gezza England
7 days ago
But it has also been losing voters over its stance on the war in Gaza.
And there is the problem – the stupid woke Labour councillors created a stance on something that has nothing to do with a local council and over which they have no influence.
Bill Bailey
6 days ago
Labour have been importing voters in the hope they would show gratitude and keep them in power, their reward is to be kicked out of power.
They did the same with devolution, the result was to fuel nationalism and also get kicked out of power.
At the same time they go around saying that nationalism is bad yet everything they do creates division and strife. Yet more evidence that socialists are utter cretins!
CircusSpot
6 days ago
Labour thought all tinted folk share the same views and could not see that there is as much tint on tint hatred as white and tint hatred. This will only get worse as the funds dry up.
Hester
6 days ago
Doesn’t the Labour Party make lovely places to live when they get into power? I can only hope that Reeves, Milliband, Starmer and the entire front bench have a chance to experience the joys that their policies bring to the rest of the British population, as currently they live in their ivory towers paid for by us poor saps and they don’t have the opportunity to really live the Multicultural experience they have created for the rest of us.
Once upon a time in Owdham, it would seem for those – in pre Reform times etc – who were disillusioned with the same old, same old Lab / Cons / Lib antics but still wanted to do their civic duty to vote, to be prudent by not voting Labour et al but vote for Independents instead…but thereby hangs a tale… Alas, some of the Independents who campaigned strongly against Labour politics and were elected on that basis, ended up being the saving grace for…Labour! Some seemed to rapidly align with and frequently support Labour – but as ‘Independents’ – so Labour, thankfully, got their own way again and were set to continue to rule the happy kingdom, with the borough streets abundantly lined with samosas, vape shops, chicken shops, milk and honey gold. Bliss and harmony were the order of the day. Praise be. Any rumbling and grumbling by citizens about committee and civic roles etc were truthfully 100% coincidental because correlation does not imply causation. Sadly, however, Labour cannot control everything in a town. The weather became traitorous and treacherous – how? – because it seems on windy days, buildings in Owdham are susceptible to being blown down, as… Read more »
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
How galling it must be for Oldham’s Gaza councillors to discover that an English district council has no say at all on what happens in Palestine. At least they don’t take this humiliating reality lying down.
What happens in Gaza, what happens about Net Zero and the old Labour CND council policies of “nuclear free zone” are not within the powers or responsibilities of Councils.
Long ago government should have made clear to councils, quangos and departments what their duties and powers were. Proposals for Gaza to be on the agenda at all should be refused.
Tory councils are not immune to this sort of extra vires nonesence. My own District has declared a climate emergency – what prevention!
If the vires of councils and others are not sufficiently clear primary legislation should make it so.
Rather than legislation I’d prefer to see a bunch of heavies who ensure that they behave while being in fear of injury.
Notice how it’s Islam again?
We’re not allowed to notice that.
I recommend taking a look at this article which is a very good analysis of MPs’ questions in the House of Commons, whilst taking into account their ethnicity and that of their constituents, and provides confirmation of just how much sectarianism has crept into British politics; ”During the 2025 Budget debate, Nusrat Ghani’s prominent role — and the attention her ‘school prefect’ attire received — overlapped with ongoing conversations in some circles about the role of foreign-born citizens in British public life. It reflected a broader public perception that some British citizens in elected office, including those with dual citizenship, were seen as focusing on issues framed through racial, tribal or ethnic identity rather than on domestic issues in the UK’s national interest. In this paper we investigate if this might be true. The socio-economic nature of the many questions in the Chamber today would simply be unrecognisable to thirty years ago. This is at a time when the UK requires legislators to solve the UK’s problems without distraction reminisced of third world tribalism. A point the impressive Suella Braverman has made on several occasions. Fifty percent of some MP’s questions relate to ethnic and religious preoccupations of communities that… Read more »
“communities that self-identify as intrinsically foreign first and British second”
We go to the Tate now and again when there is stuff on that is not too woke or crappy (Turner and Constable thing is good – almost no woke bollocks). There is an exhibition coming up of someone called Hurvin Anderson. The paintings looked ok so I looked him up:
”Growing up in the UK, Anderson did not have a full immersion in his Caribbean culture”
Well isn’t U.K. culture HIS culture? Of course he did not have a “full immersion in “Caribbean culture” – he lived in bloody Birmingham. The implication is that this is somehow wrong or odd. This is a very firmly entrenched mindset as much I reckon within the bien pensant white middle class as it is among immigrant themselves. I mean this bloke was born in the UK ffs.
They pick and choose depending on how they think they can grift more cash.
We’re taken, quite rightly, for mugs.
I think it is not just their questions but what they say after they have been elected. Roll back the years and you will find the Nigerian Olukemi Adegoke promising to do all she could for Nigeria after her election to Pariliament in Westminster….
This looks very like the beginnings of civil war. And I curse our rulers for importing the cause of this civil war.
But it has also been losing voters over its stance on the war in Gaza.
And there is the problem – the stupid woke Labour councillors created a stance on something that has nothing to do with a local council and over which they have no influence.
Labour have been importing voters in the hope they would show gratitude and keep them in power, their reward is to be kicked out of power.
They did the same with devolution, the result was to fuel nationalism and also get kicked out of power.
At the same time they go around saying that nationalism is bad yet everything they do creates division and strife. Yet more evidence that socialists are utter cretins!
Labour thought all tinted folk share the same views and could not see that there is as much tint on tint hatred as white and tint hatred. This will only get worse as the funds dry up.
Doesn’t the Labour Party make lovely places to live when they get into power? I can only hope that Reeves, Milliband, Starmer and the entire front bench have a chance to experience the joys that their policies bring to the rest of the British population, as currently they live in their ivory towers paid for by us poor saps and they don’t have the opportunity to really live the Multicultural experience they have created for the rest of us.
Once upon a time in Owdham, it would seem for those – in pre Reform times etc – who were disillusioned with the same old, same old Lab / Cons / Lib antics but still wanted to do their civic duty to vote, to be prudent by not voting Labour et al but vote for Independents instead…but thereby hangs a tale… Alas, some of the Independents who campaigned strongly against Labour politics and were elected on that basis, ended up being the saving grace for…Labour! Some seemed to rapidly align with and frequently support Labour – but as ‘Independents’ – so Labour, thankfully, got their own way again and were set to continue to rule the happy kingdom, with the borough streets abundantly lined with samosas, vape shops, chicken shops, milk and honey gold. Bliss and harmony were the order of the day. Praise be. Any rumbling and grumbling by citizens about committee and civic roles etc were truthfully 100% coincidental because correlation does not imply causation. Sadly, however, Labour cannot control everything in a town. The weather became traitorous and treacherous – how? – because it seems on windy days, buildings in Owdham are susceptible to being blown down, as… Read more »
Culture migrates. Tribal hostilities migrate. Import the Third World, become the Third World.
DIVERSITY MACHT FREI