Coppers, high rents and racism

Submitted by Anon on 30 June, 1998 - 3:32

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the arrival of SS Empire Windrush — when hundreds of working class men and women from the Carribean set sail, often leaving behind their families, to find work and to make a new life in Britain. Needed as cheap labour by British capitalism, these hopeful immigrants were attracted to this country by untruthful stories about the chance of prosperity. Although black people had been living in Britain for centuries they were met by poverty, suspicion and mean-spiritedness from some in the white population — and sometimes brutal racism. This piece, written by Bob Pennington for the Trotskyist weekly Newsletter in 1958, describes a not uncommon phenomenon — the race riot — in Notting Hill, London.

Race hate is again stalking the dingy streets of Notting Hill and north Kensington. In the early hours of Monday morning a gang of white hooligans stabbed to death 33-year old Kelso Cochrane, a coloured man from Antigua.

The police are anxious to attribute the murder to robbery not racialism. A sharp denunciation of this theory comes from Allan Morais, Deputy Commissioner for the West Indies. “It is utter nonsense,” he says. Every coloured person I spoke to in the area endorses Morais’s statement.

In the Earl of Warwick, a public house twenty yards from the scene of the murder, a coloured railway worker angrily retorted, “The police are talking rubbish, man. Everyone knows thieves don’t hunt in packs of six. Nor do they shout ‘Hey, Jim Crow’ to their victims.”
In St. Ervane Road I met Joe, an engineer, who came to Britain from Jamaica ten years ago. “I have seen this coming for a long time,” he said. “The gangs have had their confidence built up. The police seem to let them get away with anything, while they run coloured men in on the slightest pretext.

“The other day I was standing on the street corner talking to two friends of mine. Along came two coppers. They didn’t bother walking round us or even asking us to move. No. They just brushed us to one side. We dare not say a word or we would have been charged.
“Last year there was a wedding party here. When it finished some of our boys met a gang of white men who insulted them. There was a fight and the white men came off the worst.
“Later they returned with reinforcements and they threw stones and bottles through the windows of the house where the party had been. Two policemen went by when this was going on. Yet they did nothing to stop it. Do you wonder the fascists are getting bolder?”
As I opened the door of Preddie’s barber shop I saw its glass panel was shattered. Mr Preddie, the proprietor, looked at me sadly. “That’s the first time this year. Last year they broke my window five times.”

I asked him if he reported this to the police and, if so, what they had done. “Oh, sure I report it. You know what they say? They ask me, do I know who did it? Up to now there hasn’t been one arrest made. I don’t think there is much use me expecting any action from them.
“On two occasions a car drove up with five men in. Some were stood on the running board. When it got to the shop it slowed down and the men threw bottles through my windows.”
A customer looked up from his chair. “The police here seem more interested in arresting us than dealing with hooligans,” he said.

In cafés, clubs and on the street corners I was told time and time again: “We don’t get any help from the police.”

The Committee for African Organisations certainly echoed the sentiments of Notting Hill’s coloured population when it told Macmillan: “Coloured citizens of the United Kingdom have lost confidence in the ability of the law enforcing agencies to protect them.”

Mike de Frietas lives in a basement flat at 14 Powis Square, W11. Both he and his attractive young wife from British Guiana are emphatic that Cochrane was murdered because his skin was black. “People try and whip up race hatred by blaming bad housing conditions and shortages on us,” he said. “But we are fighting just as much as white people for better homes and lower rents. Look at this place. It costs me £8 a week rent.” He produced his rent book to confirm it. “The tenant before me paid 17s 6d for it unfurnished. You can see what they mean by furnished.”

I could both see and appreciate. The dilapidated arm-chair had almost collapsed when I had sat in it. The springs of the settee were completely gone. Holes showed in the floor boards through the old lino. The view from the room revealed four dustbins and the household garbage.

“Nice, isn’t it?” he asked. “We have four dustbins for fourteen tenants. Until recently we were plagued by rats. It was only by me getting the Public Health Authorities that I got rid of them.”
Mike told me of threats and intimidation being used by certain landlords against tenants who had lodged complaints with the rent tribunal.

“Out of twenty-five complaints that were lodged nineteen were withdrawn, and we know for a fact that coercion was used in a number of these cases.”

One coloured man remarked to me: “For landlords who want to keep rents high, anti-coloured propaganda and race riots are good business. They prevent blacks and whites joining together to get better conditions.”

It was in a tobacconist’s shop in a side street off the Portobello Road that I got a real view of the warped mentality of the white supremacist.

As the shopkeeper served me with my cigarettes he mentioned the trouble.
“I was in South Africa for two years. Lived in Port Elizabeth. They knew how to treat the niggers there. You can’t treat them as equals. They are emotionally immature and irresponsible.

“What we need is a government like Hitler had. He kept the Jews in their place and Germany was a good place for businessmen. I knew businessmen from Germany in 1936 and they told me that it was all right under Hitler.”

He finished on a note that serves as a dramatic warning to all workers, both black and white, of the need to fight fascism.

“We must keep the niggers in their place. And the Irish. They are no better. It’s the unions and the socialists that are the real trouble. They pamper the niggers and interfere with business.”
I had a filthy taste in my mouth when I left that shop.

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