By Kate Holton
LONDON (Reuters) - A small Asian boy frantically laces up his soccer boots at the entrance to one of London’s most notorious housing estates on a sunny October morning.
His mother, wearing a Muslim headscarf, stands nearby, leaning against a sign that says "Welcome" in 15 languages.
The sign is a greeting to the once-shunned Broadwater Farm, where a policeman was hacked to death 20 years ago during a riot between the mostly black community and the police.
Since then, sport has played a major role in the estate’s transformation into a positive example of integration in the country’s increasingly multicultural society.
"We have 39 different nations here and we have an open policy for everybody," said Clasford Stirling, a youth worker who has organised weekly soccer training sessions for hundreds of children on the estate.
"We don’t look at colour or what culture you are. You come here under the umbrella of sport. The main aim wasn’t the level of football, but it was to get kids off the street."
The challenge of integrating the country’s many ethnic groups leapt to the top of the political agenda in July after four British Muslims -- three of them ethnic Pakistanis -- blew themselves up on London’s transport system, killing 52 people.
Advertisement starts
Advertisement ends
Trevor Phillips, the head of the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), warned the nation was "sleepwalking our way to segregation". He singled out sport as one way of halting this.Broadwater Farm -- a typical London estate of high-rise buildings, concrete pavements and hemmed-in green spaces -- offers an uplifting example of how that can work.
On match days, boys in smart blue-and-orange kits chase footballs across the estate’s large recreation ground, as their parents shout encouragement. Cries ring out in dozens of languages but the coaches speak English.
IMPROVING INTEGRATION
Broadwater entered the country’s black book of problem estates in 1985 when around 500 mainly black youths rampaged through the streets, attacking police, looting and setting fires in some of the worst scenes of racial tension in decades.
Now, the estate is held up as an example of how to integrate different communities -- and its success can be seen every weekend when around 200 children turn up to soccer training to compete for places on the Broadwater United teams.
Coach Stirling says that since 1980, around 40 players have gone on to sign for professional clubs. But the biggest plus has been bringing once-wary communities together.
"You are integrating communities and then they go back into their communities and say ’you know, the Caribbean culture is not that bad or the African culture is not that bad’," he said.
Complicating the task for those seeking to use sport to help integrate Britain’s Asians is the dearth of role models.
Soccer is widely supported and played by British Asians, but their involvement at the top of the game was described as "lamentable" in a recent report by the Asians in Football Forum.
Only four Asians play in the Premier League’s 20 clubs. Analysts cite cultural and family issues as reasons for this absence of Asians, who make up four percent of the population.
Cricket has been a more fertile ground for Asian players -- who had a headline-grabbing role model in Indian-born Nasser Hussain, who captained the English side between 1999-2003.
England’s recent victory over Australia in the Ashes cricket series has raised the profile of a sport which is hugely popular in the Asian subcontinent, and at least one international cricketer is looking to use that to get more Asians involved.
Pakistan fast-bowler Shoaib Akhtar told Reuters he wants to put himself forward as a role model for British Asians.
"If you ask most kids the name of politicians they probably wouldn’t know but they definitely know who (Andrew) Flintoff is and who (Kevin) Pietersen is and they’re interested in what they have to say," he said, referring to two England players.
"So I’m asking people to stand forward. We all have a responsibility, those with a (household) name and those without to try and bridge the gaps between the different communities."
TACKLING STEREOTYPES
Britain’s Asians have traditionally been less interested in rugby but in Bradford, which saw high levels of immigration from Pakistan and Bangladesh in the 1970s, the British Asian Rugby Association (BARA) aims to change this.
It wants to raise the sport’s profile among the Asian community and show clubs that Asians can be successful.
"The idea is to work primarily with south Asian communities ... but also to work alongside mainstream communities so they can filter, play and integrate," Ikram Butt, who helped set up BARA in 2002, told Reuters.
"We felt key social issues like low educational achievement, drugs, racism, alcohol abuse, and cohesion were all major factors and we felt that sports could address that."
BARA now has over 200 senior members from all backgrounds who are signed to either amateur or professional clubs.
The absence of role models is something that Stirling, working with the boys on Broadwater Farm, is all too aware of.
While there has been some improvement in soccer where hundreds of black players have reached the game’s pinnacles, he says the involvement of Asians was still seen as a "huge no no."
"Some clubs still have a preference in just taking blond-haired blue-eyed boys," he said. "The FA (Football Association) may not agree with me but I’m on the ground, at the so-called grassroots."
