Brixton: us and them in 1981

Submitted by Matthew on 23 March, 2011 - 12:38

The Reunion brought together people from both sides of the “Brixton riots” of April 1981. And, as the programme made very clear, there were just two sides in this event. It was cops versus the black and white — but mainly black — youth. The people who had been systematically bullied, discriminated against and physically injured by police over many years, were taking a spontaneous, messy, but perfectly logical and well-understood stand.

The running street battles of Saturday 11 April 1981 followed a Friday day and night of massive police presence on the streets: stopping and searching hundreds of young black men “on suspicion” of being about to carry out a crime. At one point an injured man was taken away by police in a police vehicle and rumours spread.

There had been six days of such police harrassment — a planned attack on Brixton’s youth — Operation Swamp(!) — justified as an attempt to cut street crime.

Getting participants and witnesses to recall what they were doing on that day and night resulted in a much more vivid and interesing retelling of the story than a standard documentary. Not least because each participant was forced to account for themselves, and betray their own weaknesses in the process.

The left-wing journalist Darcus Howe admitted that he played no active part in the street battles. By this point, he said, he was regarded as a thinker writer — it was up to the youngsters to fight this kind of battle.

Howe’s wistful defensiveness was endearing. The general excuse-mongering of Brian Paddick (the former top cop, turned Lib Dem politician) was not. Apparently there were, he said in so many words, a few “bad apples” in the police force at the time. That is all?!

But Paddick was given short-shrift by Peter Bleksley. Another ex-cop Bleksley is now a script adviser on TV cop shows. He described how the police routinely planted evidence on “suspects” and tortured them into making confessions. He admited, “I did not join the police as a racist but whilst I was in the police I became one.”

Ted Knight (then leader of Lambeth council) used the opportunity to blow his own political trumpet. This is the same Ted Knight who failed to organise a decisive confrontation with the Tory government against cuts in Lambeth.

Bleksley — who came over as a “reformed” aggressively unpleasant man — also tried to put Knight right. Knight claimed that the police had a planned in advance response to the events of Brixton on Saturday night — the explosion was expected. Bleksley said this was a rubbish conspiracy theory. In fact, the police arrived at Brixton spontaneously. Because no police officer off duty would have missed the chance to have a gigantic Saturday night ruck.

That night the police lost because the youth knew the streets, the back allies, the ways to get away. 279 police were injured. 45 of us. It was a crude, but in the long run effective, righting of wrongs.

Today, Brixton is full of trendy bars and shops; it is gentrified somewhat. But police racism still exists — under the surface, sometimes rising to the surface. “Stop and search” is still used by police — indeed has been extended. Deep social inequality, the background to the “riots” will now get worse as millions in service cuts by the Labour-controlled authority are pushed through.

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