This programme contains racist language
and content some may find offensive.
Have you any idea what caused the fire yet? No, we have no idea, we're keeping very much an open mind.
But it has been suggested it may have been started deliberately. Well, that's a possibility.
The New Cross fire was started. It was not an accident.
This whole thing was about youngsters being murdered.
I just remember kids burnt till they were pink
and a smell of burning flesh.
That will go to my grave.
The New Cross fire, it just shocked everybody.
We could all relate, because that could have been any one of us.
You know, we were in parties all the time, so the horror,
you can imagine the horror, it's really frightening.
When you went outside the house,
your mind had to kind of be a young person, in a party,
and being burnt alive, in a house, and that, of course,
just fuels more anger and more rage.
Why haven't Parliament said anything?!
Children have been burnt.
Not West Indians, black British!
That is what I want said!
They're burning our children!
You see fire burning in the eyes.
You smell badness from the breath.
You feel violence, violence bursting out on me. Look out.
VOICE FADES OUT
CHANTING: Black people, united, we'll never be defeated!
Black people, united, we'll never be defeated!
My name is Christopher Icha. In 1981, I was 16
and I remember going to college, and somebody came and said,
"There's a march going on for the New Cross fire."
Instantly, we all came out of our lessons, jumped on the bus...
Sea of black people was there, already.
ARCHIVE: Today, after weeks of growing resentment
at what is seen as police failure to bring charges,
black groups staged a protest march through London.
It was an eye-opener. That's where my political life really began.
It was the first march I ever went on.
I grew up in Kennington, which is an area about a mile and a half,
maybe two miles from Brixton.
We had a sound system, we had a group of friends,
and most Saturdays we'd be playing out on the street, to test them,
stringing up the sound... I was like, I was a technician guy, yeah!
So I'd be soldering wires together, and... That was our life.
Loads of fun. The sound system days were the best fun.
You're enjoying yourself,
you're not having to focus about this outside shadow world.
Kennington was a very racist area - you know, "Niggers go home."
"NF" on the walls.
You saw that everywhere.
Even the little children would sing songs.
"Nig nog gollywog, go back to Brixton."
That's how I found out what Brixton was,
from that song they used to sing.
"Nig nog gollywog, go back to Brixton."
My name is Sheldon Thomas. Me and Chris met in Kennington,
and he was seven, I was six.
We were a close-knit family, all of us were first-generation,
born to West Indian parents, and most of us
had suffered some form of racial abuse, as kids.
So we could all understand each other
because of what we was going through.
We lived in a block of flats,
and they were being redeveloped,
cos they were falling apart, basically.
So we all kind of moved out at the same time.
Moving to Brixton was like moving
to a whole new country, that was like...
Not even a country - a galaxy!
It was like moving to a whole new planet, it was completely different.
MUSIC: Heavy Duty by U-Roy
Everything was colourful.
There was music everywhere.
And everybody spoke with a Jamaican accent.
It was just so uplifting. You didn't have to...
..hide, I didn't have to run no gauntlet no more.
ARCHIVE: Brixton, where more than 20,000 West Indians now live.
It's always been a flourishing trade centre and an area which,
today, has all the colour you'd see in a Caribbean market.
MUSIC: Festival Of Dub by Bunny Lee & The Agrovators
My first memories of Brixton Market, well, um, I had to have
a friend with me to identify what foods are what,
because me coming from the children's home in Surrey, sometimes
I didn't know what a yam was, or a green banana was,
or a dashin was.
It comes from West Africa, right, but they grow yam and that
out there. Yam, green bananas,
okra. You know, okra's a thing that you put in your dinner.
They have a saying that it takes a village to raise a child,
and I was very much part of that village.
MUSIC: Could You Be Loved by Bob Marley And The Wailers
My name is Ros Griffiths and, in 1981,
I was about 15, coming on to 16.
Brixton is where I became of age.
♪ Could you be loved and be loved? ♪
Growing up on a council estate, it was vibrant, there were people
that looked like me, I could play out with my friends. We had fun.
One thing for sure,
morning, noon and night, reggae music would be played.
♪ Love would never leave us alone
♪ A-in the darkness ya must come out to light... ♪
When I first heard Could You Be Loved by Bob Marley, for me,
that made me reflect back on my own life
and what I had experienced all throughout my childhood.
Could I be loved?
And then I'd be up again, you know,
bounce along the street, feeling confident again. "You know what?
"I'm valuable, I CAN be loved."
You know, it was very important for me, that song.
♪ We've got a mind of our own
♪ So go to hell if what you're thinking is not right... ♪
At the time, I was trying to figure out what kind of woman
I needed to go forth and be.
So I started to listen to the message.
Bob Marley, his music, his words,
it was all about knowing where you're coming from,
in terms of who you are, as...as a people.
For many black boys, at that time,
we were trying to find where are we going to fit in?
and that's the reason why Brixton became so prominent to us.
Because, we fit in to Brixton, the whole thinking of Jamaican life.
We squatted a Victorian townhouse in Mayall Road, which is
parallel with Railton Road.
When we moved there, Brixton was a poor neighbourhood, it was
a rundown neighbourhood, it was an immigrant neighbourhood.
In my social life, if I said I lived in Brixton,
there'd be eyebrows raised.
♪ I was born on the line... ♪
ARCHIVE: For these young people,
life on the streets of London is tough,
and view outsiders, particularly the police,
with deep suspicion. They think of Railton Road, in the heart
of Brixton, quite literally as the front line of a war zone.
Outside tensions bring the black community together there.
♪ So meet me Meet me on the Frontline... ♪
Railton Road was called the Frontline -
I think because it was a place of...
..resistance.
You felt, when you went down the Frontline, that you
were very much kind of in a black stronghold.
When you're on the Frontline,
you feel safe, you know, you feel together, they feel like this
is their home, there's no way that anybody can take it away from you.
So the weed was there, the Jamaicans was there,
the bars were there, and they had the club, Shepherds.
Every Wednesday, every Friday, sound system, you would play there,
so we'd always be there.
Um, darkened spot.
Two rooms, chock-a-block,
sweat pouring out the place.
Tune...
Man like Gregory Isaacs!
Yeah, man, that's what I'm saying, man!
Can you imagine the vibe, the vibe there? The music, the food,
and you're with your girl.
♪ Night Nurse... ♪
Night Nurse, oh, we loved that song.
That was called a rub-down song.
♪ It's a case of emergency
♪ There's a patient by the name of Gregory... ♪
One night, we was to go on a raid, there was an illegal blues party -
they were illegal, in so much as people got charged for alcohol.
This was regarded almost as like crime of the century,
and had to be stamped down upon.
So, we were briefed as to what to do,
which, quite frankly, was just go and break up or smash up this party,
and I was told to stick with a PC and not leave his side.
This is nigh on my first experience of policing.
So we stormed in.
It was pandemonium. I saw little bags of cannabis being
ditched by people onto the floor.
And I saw police officers attributing them
to whoever they fancied. "You're nicked," and dragging them out.
My PC, from inside his truncheon pocket,
he pulled out a knitting needle,
and then he went up to the speakers, and pierced it, right through
the centre of one speaker, went to the other big speaker,
and stuck it straight in.
That would have rendered the speakers irreparable.
He then stamped on just about each and every record, one by one,
slamming his size tens down onto the records.
Well, for me, in my hostel, in Elm Park, which is opposite
Brixton prison, there was the house party.
Some neighbour complained about the noise, and the police came,
they stormed in, and arrested not just me, but many others.
I remember sitting in a cell, and the owner of the sound system,
he was a man called Trevor. He was in a cell next to me.
I mean, I'm fresh to Brixton, so I'm thinking, "OK,
"they might want to scare us, they might want to intimidate us."
And Trevor was a big guy.
He was a big guy. I've no idea how many officers came to assault him.
The sound I heard from him, his voice...
..raging and flinching and wailing in pain.
It's scarring to experience that.
Never forgotten it, I don't think I ever will, you know,
that was my first experience of real police violence.
♪ A suffering man in the ghetto... ♪
ARCHIVE: Riot-equipped police are descending on the West Indian
community in Bristol to try and quell what is probably
the worst street violence the city has ever seen.
The trouble began mid afternoon with an angry crowd hurling bricks,
bottles, slates, anything they could lay their hands on.
Policemen had come to raid a cafe,
until the police decided to pull out and abandon the area.
♪ We wanna see the light
♪ So we can unite... ♪
After the riots in Bristol, it made people think, that,
"Wow. "The police actually withdrew, so,
"if something kicks off in Brixton, would they do the same?"
When you come down in such a force,
it doesn't look like you're out to raid a cafe, right?
And you put the wrong impression on people.
The point being emphasised over and over again is that last
night's rampage was not a race riot.
It was a boiling over of black anger against the police.
We are angry about it and what I am saying is not a local thing.
It's a conspiracy with the government and the police.
We were aware that there was a growing hostility to
the police, that we did expect to blow. So Bristol, for us,
was a sign that that hostility was really coming to the fore.
And then, I think, in '81, the atmosphere in Brixton,
after New Cross, feelings were running extremely high.
It's understood the report rules out a racial motive for the blaze
and it's unlikely that there will be any prosecutions.
We all know why. The police have round up black youth in order
to negate the racist attack theory.
And that fuels more anger about how this fire was being treated,
and how we, as black people, were being treated within the society.
The New Cross fire happened on January the 18th,
and on the 13th of March, the coroner told us that he
was going to hold an inquest in the interests of racial harmony.
This is madness.
How can we hold an inquest? We haven't invest...
You know, we've not fully investigated this.
You made the case come forward,
and say for racial harmony.
Racial who? How?
The coroner calling the inquest early, I think, was
an absolute knee jerk reaction to the black people's day of action.
It's politics, isn't it? Thousands have been mobilised on this issue.
We need to be shown to be doing something,
we better get on with the inquest.
I was laying in a hospital bed, one leg cocked up in the air,
two arms hanging off the side of the bed.
Can't do anything, I can't go on these marches, I can't help anybody.
How did I feel about it?
I was mad. I was angry.
In the past few years, many people in London have
warned of an increasingly hostile relationship
between the police and the black and Asian communities.
The biggest problem is "Sus",
the controversial suspected persons charge, which allows police
to arrest anyone they suspect is about to commit a crime.
Sus gave the police carte blanche, really,
and you could just feel, I mean, you could feel
in the air that it was getting tenser and tenser.
Nothing to say! OK.
If a police officer calls a black man a nigger,
shouldn't he be dismissed?
No. Why should...? No! Indeed not.
Like everything else, why should he...
..why should he be dismissed for calling him a nigger?
Because it's a term of abuse.
That's a matter of opinion.
Here are the Metropolitan Police, in the aftermath of what had
happened in Bristol the year before, thinking that what
happened there couldn't happen successfully in London,
days after this massive march of black people,
out of racist overconfidence, mounting this operation,
named in celebration of a racist Margaret Thatcher speech.
This country might be rather swamped by people with a different culture.
As Operation Swamp was largely a stop-and-search operation,
whereby every officer that could be cobbled together
was put out on to the streets of Brixton with the instructions
that, if it moved, stop it and search it.
My own view about the control of street crime is
as many officers in the street as possible.
It was almost like a show of strength.
They said, "Whatever you think you are, whatever you think
"your reasons for demanding justice, we're here to say that,
"you know, we can do what we want with you."
It was as if the whole black community was back against the wall,
was on trial.
At the height of Operation Swamp, there was one particular day
I was stopped three times.
The first time was when I walked down Brixton Hill.
I was asked to empty my pockets for no reason.
They searched me, I went about my business,
I signed on at the dole office.
I came out. Then I was stopped again. They said that
they was looking for someone who fitted my description. And then
I was stopped again. I think I just looked into a jewellery shop
or something, just looking at jewellery.
They said that I was acting suspiciously.
Suspiciously? What? I can't even look into a jeweller's window?
When people talk about Operation Swamp, Sus and all of that,
what people are failing to understand
is the brutality that comes with that.
People think it's, "Oh, you know, I just want to check your pockets."
It wasn't like that.
When they stopped you, it was a punch first.
And that's when I realised, this is war.
I am going to go out of my way to hurt you.
TRAIN HORN
My name is Stephen Margiotta. In 1981,
I was a probation police officer at Brixton Police Station.
I'd been there about six months after I finished at Hendon.
It was war. I remember that much,
because I was in shirt sleeves most of the week.
Just like any other day, going to work.
I just called up and accepted a call of criminal damage
further down Railton Road.
So that day, from the afternoon, all we talked about was Shepherds
because we're all dance hall people, innit.
So on the Friday night, we was going to go and listen up.
I made my way down to Railton Road.
And then I think I heard someone shouting. I looked back down
the road and I saw this guy come running towards me.
Quite certain, by even my naive experience,
that he was being chased by somebody!
I thought, "This can't be right." I could see his shirt lifted up
and he had a huge, huge gash in his back. It was bleeding.
So I thought, "Bugger, what's happened here?"
I tried to talk to him,
but I was immediately surrounded by people
asking me what I was doing and why I was doing it,
and, "What's he done?"
I got on the radio and I called the station,
and I said that this guy was seriously hurt. Unless someone gets
to him very soon, he's going to die cos he's losing so much blood.
And that was it, he was off again.
I couldn't chase him any more.
We're coming out of Shepherd's Youth Centre, walking down Atlantic Road,
and then that's when we saw the police surrounding a black guy
who had been stabbed.
And for us, the argument was, take him to the hospital.
I can't remember how long later it was, and the van unit called up
and said that the van had been surrounded by people.
And assuming that they were doing him harm,
greater harm than was already done to him.
And then they asked for urgent assistance and, er,
then it all kicked off from there.
In the late afternoon, an urgent assistance call came up.
Railton Road, yeah, we'll have a lump of that.
When we got there, it was a bit of a chaotic scene.
There was some angry people.
Nobody was really clear what was going on.
"Leave him alone. Blah, blah, blah!"
You know, that kind of shouting thing.
But then somebody threw a brick.
And then I threw a brick.
And then we all threw bricks.
Things started getting slung at us - bits of rubble,
the occasional half a house brick.
A little skirmish took place. Nothing serious, I would say,
but that's when I think people started saying,
"We're going to have to do something,
"we can't have this no more."
Not very long into this, a call came up,
which was issued from Brixton police station,
that told us to patrol in a convoy in a never-ending loop
which went down Railton Road,
back down a bit of Brixton High Street and round again.
And we did that, quite literally, for hours.
At one point, a lady flags us down.
So we stop, one of our colleagues opened the back door, and she
slid a crate of light ales. Turns out she was the landlady of a pub.
She said, "There you go, boys.
"Thank you very much for what you're doing. Have a drink on me."
"Thank you very much," we thought.
And off we went again. Round and round and round,
antagonising people endlessly.
The violence had broken out in Brixton in south London
when about 100 black youths surrounded policemen,
questioning a youth who had been stabbed in the back.
Community leaders have complained of tension between Brixton's
black community and the police for several years now.
That morning, on the 11th, I got up early
and I walked down to Brixton from about
nine o'clock. And even from that point in the morning,
there was an increased presence of the police.
Things were getting serious. They were everywhere now.
One Saturday morning, I went into work as usual
and was told there had been some trouble overnight in Brixton,
and I was sent down there with a photographer, Neil Libbert.
When we got there, you could sense that trouble was in the air. There
were lots of police on the street, and quite a lot of young men
looking at them suspiciously. There was a sort of standoff, if you like.
I think it was round about lunchtime
that I saw a wave of people moving towards Atlantic Road.
And when I got there, there seemed to be this standoff.
There was a swell of black people by that point.
Neil and I were standing in Atlantic Road
when suddenly, out of nowhere, these two thuggish looking guys
darted into the crowd and grabbed hold of a young black man.
We immediately realised these were undercover policemen.
And with the immortal words, "you're nicked",
they dragged him towards a police van.
And the police were very arrogant about the way they were manhandling
this black man, and I don't think they expected what happened next.
Because by that time, there were so many of us that there was
a rush to free this man who was arrested.
The police were completely taken by surprise.
I think they weren't expecting this reaction at all.
It was an incredibly stupid thing to do.
It really was asking for trouble, and they certainly got trouble.
REGGAE MUSIC PLAYS
We were in the garage playing our music,
testing our sounds, building our amps
and then we heard a helicopter.
Virtually on the roof of my house.
That's what it sounded like!
So we opened the garage to look what this noise was.
And the number two bus come down his road.
No buses never come down Chris's road.
It's a side road. So we knew something was up,
so we just switched off all the equipment, went out to Brixton.
When we got to the high street,
wow, I have to say,
it was one of the proudest moments in our lives.
Hundreds of us, all my age group -
15, 16, 17, 18-year-old. Hundreds.
♪ Are you ready to stand up and fight the right revolution? ♪
♪ Do you know what it means to have a revolution? ♪
I didn't know what it meant, but I found out!
I was so shocked and surprised, but excited at the same time.
You see people turning over cars, and you go and help.
You just join in, you know? People are smashing shop windows
so you join in. You pick up a brick and you smash some shop windows.
♪ Are you ready to stand up and fight the right revolution? ♪
From early afternoon, gangs of youths, some white
but predominantly black held the police at bay.
Petrol bombs, stones and bottles were thrown, buildings
and vehicles wrecked and set on fire.
The only way to defuse the situation is by decreasing
the presence of police within the area at the present time.
Because they see the police as their target.
They want police withdrawal, you see,
and I'm not prepared to do that.
Why not? I mean, is that not a reasonable...?
No, because I think if we withdraw,
then we shall allow them to do as they wish.
There's looting going on already
and I'm not prepared to extend that.
What they wanted us to do, right?
They wanted us to disperse, but we live in Brixton!
They don't live in Brixton! OK?
So we asked them to disperse, but they wouldn't disperse.
We got called in,
and all hell was breaking out.
The windows on our people carrier disappeared fairly quickly.
Once the windows had gone, what we did was duck our heads down
so that we were beneath the windows, so hopefully
we wouldn't be hit if anything else came in.
And we would stick our hands out with our truncheons,
and we would flail them and batter 'em,
and would you feel it whack something from time to time.
You didn't know if that was a person or a thing.
This was a war zone, we were in a battle for our lives here,
and if someone's going to cop for it, so be it.
That was my attitude...for a while.
I can only describe as we drove into Cold Harbour Lane,
it was like watching a sea.
A crowd that were, you know, stoked up
and you could almost feel the tension,
you could feel...almost hysteria.
That's really when the missiles started.
Bricks being thrown, bottles being thrown.
They have low front walls in front of their terrace housing there,
and I remember people kicking them down.
They wanted the bricks for ammunition.
We began to get poles, scaffolding, bricks, baseball bats,
dustbin lids. We wanted to hurt the police any which way we could.
I remember the first time I heard a policeman say the word gollywog.
I'm nine! The next time, a man's holding me up by my neck, I'm 11.
People need to understand. I felt that the police brutality
that I faced as a black boy
was enough of a justification for me to hurt one of them.
There was like a cinema playing in mind, of all the indignities
that I had experienced with the police.
Especially remember Trevor's assault and his screams and his wails,
and there I was with the opportunity to get some revenge.
And I have to admit, it felt good.
And that Bob Marley song kept playing in my head.
"Slave driver. The tables are turning.
"You catch a fire, you're gonna get burned."
♪ Slave driver The table has turned... ♪
I mean, wow.
When you hear that as a teenager, you're thinking...
EXHALES
♪ Slave driver, the table has turned
♪ Catch a fire so you can get burned... ♪
I do remember, there was a man standing on the roof,
and I remember him shouting,
"I am going to watch you be humiliated in your defeat."
Then it just seemed to be relentless.
SHOUTING, BANGING
A lot of chaos, a lot of coppers getting hurt.
I feared for my life and for the lives of my colleagues.
It was that ghastly.
See a substantial number of people
that clearly, as I saw it, had the intention to kill me.
Not because of me as an individual but because of the cloth
that I wore. The symbol that I represented.
It was like, "What is this all about?"
I can only speak personally. I was terrified.
At one stage, I couldn't see beyond just in front of the shield.
The flames were that high that you couldn't see past them.
I had been an ambulance officer prior to becoming a police officer,
and I picked up several people with third-degree burns.
So loads of people often ask me,
"Did you think you were going to die?" I actually didn't,
but did I think I might end up with third-degree burns? Yes, I did.
And anyone who's ever had the misfortune even to have that injury
would know that is life-changing forever.
We make our way to Brixton from Piccadilly Circus, Regent Street.
On the way there, can hear comments
like, uh, "These BBs, these black bastards,"
you know, "They're rioting down there," you know,
"Why don't we just let them riot?" I come thinking,
"Don't they realise that I'm in here?"
And as we hit Brixton High Road, then I can see
the flicker of flames in the distance.
And you can hear shouting, you can hear screaming
and you can hear glass breaking.
Then all of a sudden, people were shouting and screaming,
looked up and saw my face.
Oh, my God, the next thing you know, the bricks. Whack!
One of the windows went in.
I could see the fire bombs coming around The Green Goddesses.
This was a determined effort, I think, you know, to get to me.
Brixton Station was just there.
The officers got off. I could see them pushing off people.
You could see that on either side of the doors, the shields were there.
I came out. Some of the officers, they escorted me
into Brixton Police Station under heavy bombardment.
And all I can say is that those officers,
you know, I didn't hear one racist comment then.
All they did was ask if I was all right.
And at that moment, I looked and I thought...
All the stuff I'd been hearing on the way down there
was making me angry cos I'm amongst these people,
and then they are protecting me.
And I thought, "Wow!" You know, "What a turnaround."
MAN: Ladies and gentlemen...
I remember we were still in our line,
and all of a sudden, from nowhere, a vicar run alongside.
And he was screaming, "It's all your fault. It's all your fault.
"You know, this is all your fault."
Including the places that were on fire was the pub
where the landlady had given us the crate of light ales
the night before.
It was deeply shocking.
We had some affection towards that lady because of how she treated us.
Her pub was literally burnt to the ground.
The flames... When you have a fire like that, you really feel the heat.
I don't think people quite understand
how you could feel it so much.
For me, it was kind of a bit of karma.
I remember people saying to me
that they don't like serving black people.
My father, I remember, once I was united with him,
we had a conversation about how he was denied entry
to so many pubs in South London
and how he felt less than a man because they would not serve him.
But to turn around and see that on fire, I thought...
I had complete understanding as to why The George was burned down.
We used to call The George "Rhodesia".
It was not really a place that welcomed black people,
so it's targeted. They have taken down The George.
And that was at the end of my road, so I saw The George go up in flames.
I don't take fires very well, even now, because it does...
It tears at my heart strings.
But do you know what?
They were good fires.
MAN: Watch out!
They were fires of freedom.
People were breaking the chains.
I understood why it was happening -
better than I understood anything else, really.
But I was in this court room of,
"I understand what my peoples are about.
"They shouldn't really have been violent upon it,
"but they have to make a stance."
There I am, as a police officer, to protect the law.
Blimey! I've got to do my job.
We always thought we were in charge.
We always thought we bossed it.
It was always about winning the battle against the bad guys.
That weekend, we roundly lost.
REPORTER: Well into the night, the police struggled to be seen
on the streets and in control of them.
Now, with the alarm bells clamouring in their ears,
they remained in their coaches, trying to doze,
waiting to see if the calm would last.
There were so many police in these coaches.
And they were sipping coffee in polystyrene cups.
And they looked at us - and their faces were full of fear,
full of fear. It struck me, at that point,
that the police had somehow been weakened
and were vulnerable and were fragile.
They were scared. That's the first time I seen police scared.
That's the first time I saw them as human beings.
I didn't see them as human beings before. We see them as robots.
When I got home that night,
I thought, "I'm an enemy of the people.
"I'm not helping the people.
"This is not what I joined policing for."
And I just went, you know, "I've got to get out of this uniform.
"I can't hack this. I have got to get out of this uniform."
I managed to get home round about half four,
maybe five o'clock in the morning.
I just could not sleep.
And I remember writing on a back of a record sleeve,
you know, the starting of a lyric...
HE SINGS: # Uprising, this uprising
♪ Uprising, this uprising
♪ We're sick and tired of the ghetto housing
♪ And the damn sus law and police beating
♪ We have no work and we have no shilling
♪ We can't take no more of this suffering
♪ You better send for the army... ♪
REPORTER: There is official bewilderment
as to how a riot on this scale occurred.
For nearly six hours last night,
police struggled to retain control of Brixton's decaying streets.
Their antagonists were 500 or 600 mainly black teenagers.
It was one of the worst riots seen in Britain.
Well, it was the next day, really, then, when I went out
and I saw it was like a war zone -
buildings still smouldering, wrecked cars,
rubble everywhere.
It was just...like the world was over, really.
MARGARET THATCHER: No-one must condone the violence.
No-one must condone the disgraceful events that took place.
It should not have happened.
They were criminal - criminal - and they should never have occurred.
What this resulted in was worldwide attention on Brixton,
news crews all over the world and wanting to know
what's gone on and why it happened.
It seemed to be very biased against us,
but at least it was being debated and discussed.
People might doubt our methods, but no doubt it made people stand up
and take notice - that if you are oppressing people for so long,
one day, they're going to rise up and bite your ass.
REPORTER: Tensions had not evaporated when the Home Secretary,
Mr Whitelaw, visited Brixton this afternoon.
As he toured the scarred streets, there were chants of derision
and Mr Whitelaw was closely protected by police.
He now faces demands by community leaders
for an independent enquiry into police action.
SHOUTING
WILLIAM WHITELAW: The events of this weekend call for
the most thorough examination.
I have therefore decided to appoint an enquiry.
I have invited Lord Scarman to undertake this enquiry,
and I am glad to say he has accepted.
REPORTER: Lord Scarman, what sort of information
are you asking people to come forward with?
Two sorts of information - one about the facts of the riots,
very important, and the other, to come forward
with their views as to the underlying social conditions
giving rise to the sort of tensions which broke out
into these disturbances.
My name is Philip Mawer, and I was the secretary
of Lord Scarman's enquiry into the Brixton disturbances.
It was a concern at the outset that we might not get the co-operation
of the local community, but we had to make the effort,
to go and talk to people and explain.
And my main pitch was simply this -
"This is an opportunity for you.
"If you don't take this opportunity, your voice will not be heard,"
"And that will be disastrous."
When Lord Scarman came to us, we had a little bit of a hope.
And I'm going to tell you why I said that -
because he met with us physically.
Lord Scarman came to see us in the youth centre, Shepherds. Yeah?
I don't remember a white person in the establishment ever asking
a black kid about their feelings, about why you did what you did.
He did.
What was striking about it was the juxtaposition -
Scarman, in a sense, quintessential representative
of the British establishment on the one hand,
and on the other hand, the setting and the intensity of the discussion.
They told him straight of their experience over the years,
people who had experienced policing at first hand
on the streets of Brixton.
CHANTING: We're not dumb... We know it's a bomb!
We're not dumb... We know it's a bomb...
REPORTER: From first thing this morning, about 30 demonstrators
were marching up and down outside the Coroner's Court,
chanting allegations of murder and a police cover-up.
With them, they had placards bearing the pictures of the 13 youngsters
who died in the fire.
Lawyers for the victims' families have insisted very firmly
that an incendiary was thrown through the window.
Just as firmly, the forensic expert has been sticking to his belief
that the fire started inside the house, on the carpet.
There is no evidence that indicates that there is any form of racialism
involved in this enquiry whatsoever.
He said that he didn't think that this was a racial attack,
and I remember the whole court room just exploding with boos and shouts.
For over five hours, Commander Stockwell was cross-examined,
at times jeered derisively by relatives and friends
of the victims - in particular, over his evidence about
an alleged fight in the house shortly before the fire broke out.
Already at this inquest, young party-goers have denied there was
a fight, retracting statements they made while in police custody.
The judge asked me about my police interview and what have you,
so I said, "Well, the police were asking me the questions
"and answering them themselves."
And that was... That one line is enough.
The whole court was in uproar.
REPORTER: Denise had earlier claimed that police officers
had shouted at her. This was agreed by her father.
Mr Gooding said, "The officers were shouting, 'You're lying.
"'Come on, Denise, you're lying. Don't cover up for anyone.
"'Remember, you have a dead brother, Andrew Gooding.'"
It was at this point that Mr Gooding broke down crying.
The coroner told him, "You must try and control yourself,"
to which Mr Gooding replied, "You don't know what I'm going through."
"Listen, sir, I had three children in there
"and not one came out unhurt."
During the inquest, I went into labour.
And on the 5th of May, Janine was born at 14 minutes past 5.00.
Yes, out of all of this madness, she managed to arrive -
healthy, bouncing baby girl.
I felt over the moon, joyed and happy, but sad also,
cos Paul should have been standing with me, too,
and watching our baby being born.
But I did it by myself, so...
REPORTER: After 13 days in court
and more than 80 hours of evidence from nearly 60 witnesses,
it took the jury just two hours to come to an open verdict.
Mrs Armza Ruddock, who gave the party and lost two children
in the fire, was in no mood to accept it.
An open verdict was what I expected, but it is not what it should be.
It should be murder.
It was an open verdict cos it wasn't investigated properly.
I just want to know from that person why they actually done it
and just for someone to say they're sorry, but...just closure.
An open verdict, for me, isn't closure.
I was still in hospital. My mum came to the hospital. My mum cried -
because now at this point, for the rest of her life,
she's going to have to pack up work and look after me now.
So what about...? "Hold on, how am I going to take care of my son?
"There ain't no government help, there ain't no money coming from nowhere."
And she did. She broke down and cried.
She don't think it's fair, she didn't think it was fair on me,
she didn't think it was fair on any of the other children.
We got nothing at any time, whether it be a verdict,
you've caught somebody, whatever. Nothing.
Nothing in our case has gone right.
And do you know what? It's not fair. It's not right.
The verdict signalled to the black community that the police,
the media, courts basically all felt that those lives didn't matter.
And there were gasps of disbelief.
It was just like a pressure pot and the lid had just come off.
It was like... You couldn't hold it in any more.
REPORTER: Tension had been high
in Southall's Asian community in recent weeks,
but no-one was prepared for the scale of last night's violence.
SHOUTING
REPORTER: One of the worst and most terrifying rioting
ever seen in Britain.
REPORTER: More than 100 white and coloured youths
fought a pitched battle against the police.
Some were as young as 12, the oldest no more than 20.
It's been building up for years, like Brixton and all that.
But in Brixton, it was all blacks.
But last night, it was blacks and whites.
Why? Why has it happened?
Because of police brutality, police harassment, oppression.
We just want respect and treated like human beings.
That's what we are.
REPORTER: The unprecedented outbreak of violence
on the streets of Mainland Britain.
SHOUTING
Last night, like the night before,
it was the turn of Manchester to suffer from rioting and looting.
I and a number of youth workers were running around Moss Side,
to get a sense of what was happening.
They were totally fearless.
They could not, on that night, give a damn
about what was likely to happen, or not happen, to them.
They felt a sense of strength, of collective energy.
And, I think, to a large extent, their boldness and confidence
came from the New Cross protest,
because they were amongst some of the young people who got on
those 12 coaches that left outside Moss Side education centre that day
to go London to join the march.
SHOUTING
MUSIC: Di Great Insohreckshan by Linton Kwesi Johnson
♪ It was in April 1981, down 'n on dee ghetto of Brixton
♪ Dat deh Babylon dem cause such a friction
♪ That it bring about a great insohreckshan
♪ And it spread all ovah di naeshan
♪ It woz a truly an histarical okayjan... ♪
I saw poetry as a cultural weapon
in the black liberation struggle.
♪ Ev'ry rebel jussa revel in dem story... ♪
I saw my role as a poet
as chronicling the history of black people in this country.
♪ Fi mek di rulah dem andahstan
♪ Dat wi naw tek noh more a dem oppreshan... ♪
Black people were no longer prepared to be marginalised
and treated like colonials.
♪ We'll bring a blam-blam We'll bring a blam-blam
♪ Nevah mine Scarman We'll bring a blam-blam. ♪
The level of damage was unbelievable.
It totally shocked me, you know.
And this was just before Prince Charles and Diana's wedding,
and so you had this weird juxtaposition.
The establishment was gearing up to this royal wedding,
and yet the country was going up in flames. It was quite something.
REPORTER: The Prime Minister has called it the most worrying ten days
of her government.
For all of us, the rioting and burning of our cities
has shaken our unquestioning belief in a stable, law-abiding,
multi-racial Britain.
We all have a tendency to what I call moral relativism.
So, you would moralise about the conduct of people
who are resisting oppression, but you're quite prepared to live
very happily with the conduct of those who oppress them.
And that's been the problem for as long as I have been in this country,
and that's since 1964.
Riots are not a pretty thing.
Brixton was bad, but the fact that there were subsequent disorders
heightened the importance of the inquiry process.
Because it was clear that what happened in Brixton
was not unique to Brixton, there was a national issue here,
that gave added impetus to the report.
It gave us the opportunity to give it added breath.
REPORTER: Well, in a moment, we'll be looking
at the growing political argument over what needs to be done
to prevent such scenes in the future.
The Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher, was in no doubt about her views.
MARGARET THATCHER: The latest night of mob violence had nothing to do
with the city's problems of bad housing and unemployment.
It was a spree of naked greed.
They've taken nearly everything that the poor man have, you know?
I mean, they've taken away everything, bit by bit.
Soon, the poor man don't got nothing apart from his shoes.
Margaret Thatcher don't care about nothing,
no black man in this country. She don't care.
Martin Luther King is correct
when he says that riot is the language of the unheard.
We felt unheard,
and I'm sure that other communities all over the UK felt unheard.
I mean, living under a Thatcher government was incredibly tough.
But she had to, er, stand up and take notice.
MUSIC: BBC Newsnight Theme
The Scarman report on this summer's riots in Britain.
It's already been described as a major challenge to the nation...
..welcomed both by the Home Secretary and the police themselves,
but some people take...
..now asking whether it will bring about any real change in Brixton.
Good evening. Lord Scarman's report has been welcomed by the government,
praised by the opposition,
criticised by the local authority involved as a bitter disappointment.
Yet, for better or worse, it is now the official text for interpreting,
judging and trying to prevent a repetition of the summer riots
in the nation's major cities.
It's available only at £8.
LAUGHTER
Deprived youngsters who believed that they were deprived
because of the colour of their skin,
unable to get what they thought were fair opportunities of education
or jobs, and suffering - as they thought - harassment,
took to the streets because they saw no other way
of airing their grievances.
I believe that his report offered a challenge to Government
as well as to the police.
It represented, for the first time, an occasion on which,
A, the black voice was heard, and, B, the conditions
facing the black community were exposed vividly.
We knew that a lot of the discussion
was all around this issue of deprivation -
these deprived poor youths, with no hope,
you know, this was the last straw -
that nobody really wanted to accept the real issue,
which was the issue of police oppression in the black community.
You know, at the heart of all policing is relationship.
It's about a relationship between the police on the one hand
and the community on the other.
The tragedy in Brixton was that the relationship had broken down.
I think Scarman recognised that the police needed to change the way
that they worked with the black community.
And I think he made some recommendations about policing
that were, by and large, ignored by the police.
Of course, to say it needs to be done
is not the same as it being done.
CHUCKLES: Was it taken up?
No, I don't think so. You see the same old behaviour happening.
A few policies are put into place -
you know, a little bit stronger supervision,
leadership and things.
But was it robust enough? No.
Was it supported by the Government itself? No.
It was really disregarded by the Margaret Thatcher regime.
I comfort myself with the thought that in a democracy in particular,
one is perhaps always in the business of taking small steps
towards a better state of affairs.
And if Scarman's report contributed towards doing that,
then it did its job.
MUSIC: Redemption Song by Bob Marley & The Wailers
It was important that in 1981,
more and more people from the African and Asian Diaspora
gained a belief in collective action to bring about change.
♪ Old pirates, yes, they rob I
♪ Sold I to the merchant ships... ♪
For me, to be protagonists in pursuit of your own liberation,
demanding a right to be treated with respect, with dignity,
and not have those rights trampled upon by others
who believe they have the power to do so.
♪ We forward in this generation... ♪
Bob Marley passed,
and then this overwhelming sadness that many of us felt -
our prophet, our voice, our presence in the world.
It was a very low point in my life, actually,
because he passed just before I started my term in prison.
Some weeks after the Brixton uprising, I was arrested.
I appeared at Camberwell Green Magistrates',
and I was given the term of six months in prison -
for assaulting a police officer, resisting arrest.
It was something that I didn't believe I would recover from.
But I met one of the mentors of my life.
You know, so really my time there was a blessing in many ways.
♪ Won't you help to sing
♪ These songs of freedom?
♪ Cos all I ever have... ♪
None of the uprisings are pointless. None of them.
The uprising sets down a marker that in this generation,
we butted heads with Babylon,
to let them know we need what everybody needs.
So we have to put our marker down,
whether the society responds to it or not.
For me, it's "Emancipate yourself from mental slavery."
♪ Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery
♪ None but ourselves can free our minds... ♪
I mean, that, to me is - I'm going to cry -
the story of what we tried to do, the energy and the impetus of 1981.
Just thinking of that song has made me really emotional, I have to say.
I think the consciousness that came about
because of the Black People's Day of Action is one success.
And although we couldn't get justice within the confines of the system,
I think, in a sense, it was a victory -
because if it wasn't for the Massacre Action Committee,
there is no doubt in my mind
that there would be three or four young black men currently in prison,
having been charged with arson for the New Cross fire.
In the sense that we were able to prevent that, that was a success.
Rosaline,
Gerry,
Steve,
Owen,
Glenton -
that was my ground zero.
And that was my time to start rebuilding my life, from that day.
But it's never...
It's never been and it never will be the same again.
My younger brother Andrew was the life of the house.
It's hard being a survivor, especially the youngest survivor.
It's hard, because...
..everybody's focused on the children who are not here,
but the kids who are here, suffering,
I don't think people really notice it. Yeah, you're alive.
That's the thing. But we're the ones living it, day in and day out.
I was unfortunate to lose my brother Andrew, at a very young age,
and lose a lot of friends. There's some friends that I had
at that party that I'd started secondary school with.
Tony - I mean, he escaped from there,
but after about a year and a half, he, you know, was really sad.
That fire had a massive, massive impact on Tony.
Tony was all right before, Tony was all right before.
I know it sounds, like, ridiculous and that,
but you know what? I just want Andrew and my friends back.
So, trying to find out who done it...
We need to find all that, but whatever justice we get,
it still doesn't bring back Andrew and the rest.
I know that Andrew is not going to come back,
and I probably will go to my grave and I will not know who do that.
I will not know who started the fire, how it start, or nothing.
I will have to... I leave him at the foot of the cross.
INTERVIEWER: What does that mean?
SHE LAUGHS
I... I forgive them and forget them.
"Towards Closure".
These totemic oaks,
once fragile saplings taken root in hostile soil,
now bear perennial witness to Spring's eternal song of hope.