The Oldham riots were a brief period of violent rioting which occurred in Oldham, a town in Greater Manchester, England, in May 2001. They were the worst ethnically-motivated riots in the United Kingdom since 1985, briefly eclipsing the sectarian violence seen in Northern Ireland. The Oldham riots were the first of a series of major riots during summer 2001, which saw similar ethnic conflicts follow in Bradford, Leeds and Burnley. They followed a long period of ethnic tensions and attacks in Oldham, occurring particularly between groups of the local white and South Asian communities.