Oldham is officially ungovernable — petrol bombs aren’t helping

Oldham is in trouble.

Take the last few years as an example. Since 2001 and as recently as January the town’s politicians have seen a well-documented spate of petrol bombings: of councillors’ houses, councillors’ cars, and the cars of wannabe councillors. Famous among them is the 2021 petrol bombing of council leader Arooj Shah’s Hyundai.

For a more recent example, take two days ago.

That was the day Oldham Council tried, and failed, for the fifth time running, to muster enough cross-party support to elect a new leader — a position left vacant by Shah since May after a three year stint. The council’s top lawyer has now declared them to be breaking the law. Officers will be writing to the government, asking the grown ups in Westminster to come sort Oldham out. This has never happened anywhere else, ever.

Animosity and fear (due to the petrol bombings) run rampant among the parties. None of them have enough councillors to run the borough themselves; between them they cannot come to a consensus.

When reporting on this story, two of Oldham’s party leaders actually broke down in tears in front of me. Max Woodvine, leader of the Conservatives, tells me that Lewis Quigg, his former leader who defected to Reform “hates [him], but the feeling is mutual.” Though Quigg doesn't appear to have many friends in the council chamber in general. As Tory leader, he had to be pulled away from a physical fight with a member of the Oldham Group.

Strangest of all perhaps is the return to our pages of the borough’s most controversial commentator: Raja Miah, a man who spent much of the last decade seeding the downfall of Oldham’s various leaders via his blog, titled Recusant Nine — and who has personally declared a nemesis in Mill founder Joshi Herrmann.

So: Oldham is run by a group of politicians who despise each other so much they’d rather fall foul of the law than work together; who routinely have their cars set on fire; who are known to affiliate themselves with ex-gangsters. In fact, this is a town where an ex-gangster himself ran to be councillor last May, describing the time he acted as a getaway driver for a double-murder in Tameside as “not [his] proudest moment.”

Forget Manchesterism — this is Oldhamism.

Choose your fighter

The more I’ve spoken with the five key party leaders in Oldham politics, the more it’s dawned on me how exhausting it must be to play a part in their game. You’d have to be a narcissist, or otherwise care to a degree that most people are incapable of.

Hello! Alec, your writer, here. Oldham is like nowhere else in the country. The Mill has reported on the UK’s most toxic political stage for years, and it only ever gets stranger.

I sat down for in-depth interviews with (nearly) all the key players for this piece, so that we can understand the enigma that is 'Oldhamism' better than anyone else.

In a country that finds itself ever more divided politically, could this crazy town act as a predecessor to what is to come in other towns and cities?

To read on, please join thousands of other in-the-know Millers by clicking the button below. Thanks, Alec.

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