It is 30 years since Brixton was torn apart by riots. Today it is a place transformed – but drastic cuts and rising unemployment are threatening its renaissance.
Photograph: Teri Pengilley for the Guardian
‘We’re passionate about building better relations with the police.’ Donna Sinclair, founder of Options4Change, which helps children and young people in Brixton.
Just after 6pm on a mild Friday evening almost exactly 30 years ago, a young police constable inadvertently set in motion a wave of violent unrest that would, over the next three months, sweep through England's inner cities.
The catalyst for the riot that would reshape national attitudes towards deprivation, race and policing was innocuous enough: on a busy street in Brixton, south London, PC Steve Margiotta tried to stop a frightened young black man who was bleeding profusely from a stab wound; he called for help when the youth ran away.
Community relations were at an all-time low amid an aggressive police crackdown that had seen 943 people searched on the street in a few days, and a rumour spread that Margiotta had prevented the youth getting treatment and – also incorrectly – that he had died. Within half an hour an angry crowd was pelting Margiotta and his colleagues with bricks and bottles.
Before the weekend was over, more than 350 police officers had been injured and about two dozen buildings were gutted by fires. By the end of 1981's summer of urban discontent, fuelled by mass unemployment and simmering resentment at oppressive, sometimes openly racist policing, similar scenes ravaged parts of Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham.
Ahead of next weekend's 30th anniversary of the Brixton riot, some community leaders are warning that similar tensions could, again, spill over into violence. They point to a toxic cocktail of factors reminiscent of 1981, including rising youth unemployment, cuts to local services and deep suspicion of the police. Added to this is the politicisation of a new generation on anti-cuts protests such as the one in London a week ago, and anti-tuition-fees marches.
Much has changed in Brixton since 1981: the area that was at the epicentre of the trouble is now peppered with bars and restaurants. Modest Victorian houses nearby sell for £400,000. Policing tactics, too, are markedly different, a process set in train by Lord Scarman's November 1981 report, which opened middle Britain's eyes to an alien world of routine, humiliating stop-and-search policing by officers wearing National Front badges.
Alex Wheatle has felt Brixton's changing fortunes as keenly as anyone. In 1981, he was an 18-year-old just out of a children's home, unemployed and with recent first-hand experience of a police-cell beating. Now a successful novelist, often using Brixton as a setting, he works with a youth group and helps advise new police recruits. With funding for many projects, including his own, threatened by cuts, and national black youth unemployment nearing 50%, he fears the worst.
"You're going into dangerous territory, eroding services for young people," he says. "I can imagine a repeat of 1981. I can feel the anger. I can feel the resentment towards authority. You're getting a lot of young people with degrees and big debts, but not jobs. What was really striking in 1981 was the lack of hope. When you have no hope you're going to confront the police, you've got nothing to lose."
Labour councillors on the local authority, Lambeth, who in February voted through £79m in cuts under police guard as protesters stormed the council chamber, have similar concerns. One worry is where Brixton's next generation, of any ethnic background, will live, given the lack of social housing and property prices pushed up by affluent newcomers.
"I talk to a lot of young people who went away to good universities and are now back, living with parents back on estates," said Donatus Anyanwu, a Labour councillor for more than 15 years. "They have no job and no prospect of buying a property. We need to find a place for them. If they start feeling left out then difficulties can re-emerge."
His colleague, Jim Dickson, points to more recent outbreaks of trouble, notably a five-hour riot in 1995 after a young black man collapsed and died at Brixton police station. "You can never say never. Even in 1995 you thought things had moved on. What people are facing around youth unemployment, the availability of housing, brings so much pressure that you can't rule it out. The one thing I would say is I don't think policing would be the primary cause."
Others disagree, their concerns crystallised by the death last month of Smiley Culture, the pioneering reggae and rap musician, who died when Metropolitan police officers searched his home. The police say the 48-year-old stabbed himself in the heart after officers let him go to make a cup of tea.
While the incident took place in Surrey, a campaign to find out what happened to the Lambeth-born musician has centred on Brixton, with more than 1,500 people packing into a recent meeting at the town hall. Grievances also remain about overuse of stop and search – a national study last year concluded that black people remain 26 times more likely to be stopped than white people.
To many, Wheatle says, the bizarre circumstances surrounding Smiley Culture's death were horribly reminiscent of earlier black deaths in custody. "How much progress have we really made? It's kind of disturbing."
Lee Jasper, the former London mayoral adviser now involved in the Smiley Culture campaign, says he sees a number of parallels with 1981, including the loss of many experienced police – something highlighted by the Scarman report as a problem – job cuts, increased stop-and-search and high levels of black imprisonment. "You can see that we are sailing into a perfect storm. All you need is a catalyst of an act and Smiley Culture, I'm afraid, is that event. The area is now on a knife edge."
Even those who dismiss the likelihood of violence warn that issues need to be addressed.
"People want to be heard, but this time they have an agenda of peace," said Donna Sinclair of Options4Change, a charity working with black youths and families. Her view is that too often the economic and policing issues overlap. "We deal with a lot of black boys being excluded from school. That is already a blight on their prospects. If they then deal with the police, too often they're asked to accept cautions – this stays on the record. When you get an enhanced police check, it is there. A lot of our young people have the chance of being unemployable in the future."
A walk round Brixton's bustling centre can make such doom-laden prophesies sound anomalous, even absurd. Over the decades the main shopping street has regained the big retail names who fled after 1981, and more. Every weekday morning the refurbished tube station, flanked by a Starbucks and a Sainsbury's, sucks in thousands of professionals of all races and nationalities, brought to the area by its transport links, vibrant atmosphere and wealth of couple-friendly flats carved out of roomy Victorian houses.
Then there's the covered market, granted grade II listing last year, less for its 1930s vaulted arcades than for its iconic status at the centre of British Caribbean history. For years it remained bustling but somewhat decrepit, with a series of empty stallfronts. Gentrification has seen many filled with pricey delis, coffee bars and restaurants, followed, perhaps inevitably, by a steep rise in rents and complaints from established traders that they are being pushed out.
"It was the place you could go to and get enough to feed a family of four for £5," says Sinclair. "It would be wrong if this wasn't the case any more. Many changes are good – I spent a long time after 1981 trying to persuade businesses to come to Brixton. But the area should also serve the needs of the people who stayed and rebuilt it. Why should they be pushed out?"
Brixton riot 30 years on: we were there
Steve Margiotta, the policeman who sparked the Brixton riot
"It was Friday around teatime. I was on my way to investigate a case of criminal damage, and through a crowd I could see this person running towards me at quite a speed. We collided and as we both got up his shirt came off the shoulder, and I could see he was bleeding – he'd been stabbed in the shoulder. I was also covered in blood. He kept on running and I set off in vain pursuit – just to help him, as I could see he was badly hurt. Some other people maybe thought I was trying to arrest him. They were saying, 'What are you doing? Why are you chasing him?' The man carried on running, so I put it on the radio. It was only afterwards that I heard people were calling me a catalyst. I became very concerned that I'd done something wrong. I was still a new policeman – I didn't want to lose my job."
Rev Robert Nind former vicar of St Matthew's, Brixton
"On the first night, my son and daughter and her husband went to see what was happening and got stopped by police. They said they were walking home. The reply was, 'Only black monkeys live down there.' When I testified before Scarman, the police barrister said I had been known for many years as 'an enemy of the police'. I said to Scarman: 'I am opposed when the police, who are supposed to be law enforcers, become the law-breakers.' And Scarman listened."
Alex Wheatle, a teenager who took part in the riot, now a novelist
"I came back to Brixton aged 14, from a children's home in Surrey. At first I didn't know why my friends said the police were the enemy. I soon found out. You'd be with your girlfriend queueing up outside somewhere and they'd turn up in vans and walk down the line. If they didn't like the look of you, they'd set out to humiliate you – put you on the floor, boot on the head, ruffling up your clothes. The riot was frightening. We were fighting the police – at the back of your head you know what's going to happen. You're going to get arrested and they'll kick the shit out of you. But it was exhilarating to see them retreat. I can't explain how much that meant to us. For so long we'd had to run away from them."
Bernard Willis, a special constable involved in policing the riot
"I used to hear plenty of racist jokes, and a lot of people – me included – held different attitudes to now. But I don't think police were any more racist than the rest of society. Any tension came from both sides. If as a police officer you face hostility and antagonism for eight to 12 hours a day then it's going to affect the way you see people. I lost count of the number of times I was told I was only stopping someone because they were black. It always struck me as funny that people who complained they were being treated like criminals responded by burning down buildings and looting shops. It might be a controversial thing to say, but I think Scarman led to people losing their lives. It's easier to carry weapons if you don't think you'll be searched."
Donna Sinclair, head of Options 4 Change, a charity working with black youths
"I went to Brixton the morning after and the smell of burning, and what you could see told a huge story. It looked like there was nothing left. Brixton has been raised from absolute ashes, through the will and determination of the community. We're passionate about building better relations with the police. But we still hear about problems – young people telling us they've been taken out of their car and strip-searched in the back of a police van. More needs to be done to improve relations. If you don't spend now, you'll pay for it later. We'll pay through the benefit system. We'll pay through the criminal justice system. We will pay through the health service. And we'll pay through society breakdown."
Ted Knight, known as Red Ted, the then-Labour leader of Lambeth council
"I was not at all surprised at what happened. What we were surprised at was the intensity of the police reaction. Later we heard from people who had been listening to police radio communications. It was clear they had brought in police from outside London, for whom an inner city was another planet. They kept them sitting in their coaches, without adequate food or water, and they were getting absolutely frustrated. Then, of course, they unleashed them. It was confrontation and provocation. I think they wanted to deliver a salutary lesson to the youth of the inner cities."
©guardian.co.uk
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