Twenty-five years after riots erupted in inner-city Birmingham, locals say investment in the area is beginning to pay off. But there are fears that progress could be under threat.

For two nights running, Wazeem Zaffar looked out from his bedroom window to see flames rising from shops that had been petrol bombed. He could hear shouts, screams, the smashing of glass and the wailing of sirens. “My father forbade me to set foot outside the door for two days,” he recalls.

Zaffar, now chairman of Handsworth Neighbourhood Forum, was five at the time – the late summer of 1985. For the second time in his short life (he was a baby during the disturbances of July 1981), Handsworth and adjoining Lozells in inner-city Birmingham were branded into national consciousness as combustible centres of discontent.

Another 20 years would pass before Lozells erupted again. This time the immediate cause was nothing to do with allegations of heavy-handed policing.

Instead, there was an unfounded rumour, put out on a pirate radio station, that a black teenage girl caught shoplifting had been raped by up to 25 Pakistanis. But the underlying issue was all too familiar. It was the friction that sometimes sparks in areas of high unemployment and low incomes, between people from different cultures who live alongside one another, often in overcrowded and sub-standard housing.

“And don’t forget the criminal elements coming in from outside, intent on stirring things up,” insists Zaffar.

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