Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth

In 1981 Black communities in Brixton first rose up in a bloody confrontation with the Metropolitan Police against a backdrop of racist downpression, economic recession and record-high unemployment.

Today we’re heading into 2021 with Black people 8 times more likely to be stopped by police, twice as likely to be permanently excluded from school, and 4 times more likely to die in childbirth.

So has anything really changed in Brixton, or Britain?

True, we have had several shining moments of Black excellence over the years to guide our way through the darkness like a lighthouse. But our progress is yet to lead us to safety. The corridors of power may have become less monotone than they once were, but the Black community still struggles for real political representation in our fight for social equity and justice.

Our past victories as a community might not be everything, but they are something.

By taking a stand against British racism we have unearthed the unheard, the unseen, and the disbelieved in society. Our collective acts have become anchors of resilience for successive generations to fasten to, and our sense of injustice remains fuel for the fire burning in our bellies and spleens,

If you need convincing, speak to anyone who stands on the frontline, then or now.

From the 20,000 strong BLM rally in Trafalgar Square this year, to the 20,000 show of strength on the National Day of Black Action in March 1981, we march on.

And yet.

The barriers we faced yesterday still remain today, taller than ever.

As we stand on the shoulders of giants, let’s all remember that power always seeks to assert itself in the face of progress. Institutional racism isn’t called reactionary for nothing! It’s a relentless war on the present and the forestalling of the future, and unfortunately, our past victories do not negate our current failings.

Just as young people in 1981 found the courage to take their place in history and change the world, so too must our youth today.

Our responsibility to pass on the torch speaks to a shared experience of livity and deep love in our community, and the willingness to keep the fire burning is an act of defiance that makes change possible.

So now more than ever, if we want to stand together as a community we first have to overstand together.

That’s why next year in an unprecedented, soul force, community-led action,

Brixton will come together to create 81 Acts of Exuberant Defiance.

These are interventions that ask, ‘Where Do We Come From? Who Are We? Where Are We Going?’

We will support and develop a programme of 81 cultural events that will tell the stories of Brixton from the ground-up, and will also examine the ways in which community ownership and activism can shape what happens next — locally, nationally, and beyond.

When people with shared experiences talk to each other, reach out to each other & listen to each other they cross boundaries and bring about change — and that’s how we find new ways of being.

Remembering that we’re all standing on the shoulders of giants, but not under the thumb of authority.

Author Bio:

81 Acts of Exuberant defiance is a socially innovative initiative grounded in collaboration. It works democratically across sectors and cultural agents — partnering freelancers, artists and activists with voluntary organisations with local authority agents with national cultural organisations — to bring people together, strengthen community resilience and support local economies.

Want to know more?

Come say hello at our Website, Facebook, Insta or email us: connect@81actsofexuberantdefiance.com

Despite a surge of reform and new initiatives in response to the riots of 1981, the past decade has seen us drifting back.

Nearly 40 years on, the events of April 1981 form a single chapter in a long story. I recently rediscovered the notes of a meeting hastily convened by the Brixton Society on the Tuesday after the original riot. The discussion focused on what residents’ groups would like to see, both to avoid future disturbances, and to improve the Brixton area generally.

In 1981, Brixton was severely run-down. Over-ambitious plans to rebuild the town centre had instead discouraged commercial investment. It was surrounded by neglected Victorian terraces and empty shops as collateral damage from Lambeth Council’s stalled housing programme. Official plans ignored Brixton’s large Afro-Caribbean population, apart from occasional drives by the Metropolitan Police to crack down on muggings and drug-dealing.

The symptoms of urban decay had been identified in the Inner Area studies of 1977, which profiled the north-west quadrant of Brixton. Of course, poor housing conditions and declining employment prospects were described, but the study also highlighted the disconnect between the different public services, with each agency following its own boundaries with scant regard to what others were doing. Some were actively hostile and briefing against each other.

Over the next thirty years, the local community pushed for a fairer system across all public services, not only policing. The ideas discussed on that April evening began to take effect. Residents’ groups were already shifting housing policy away from wholesale demolition towards renovation, providing some continuity for community networks. They also began to get access to Inner City funding, to support community projects and amenities. Gradually, different agencies and organisations began to work together, notably through the City Challenge programme in the 1990s and the Lambeth First partnership in the first decade of this century.

As for policing, Lord Scarman’s report into the 1981 riots stimulated several changes. Lambeth acquired a Community/ Police Consultative Committee which provided an opportunity to air grievances and call the police to account. Neighbourhood Policing was favoured over the “snatch squad” tactics of the Special Patrol Group. Another confidence-building measure was a Lay Visitor scheme to provide independent oversight of custody in police stations. Finally, with the return of a Greater London Authority, responsibility for the Metropolitan Police passed from the Home Secretary to the London Mayor.

In the USA, black communities have called for de-funding of their local police forces, because they resent paying for the means of their oppression. In Britain, the approach has been rather to call for the police service to protect the lives and property of black members of the community as much as white, following inadequate responses to the murders of Stephen Lawrence and Damilola Taylor.

Instead, de-funding has come by stealth and from on high, through a decade of reducing budgets across all public services. The ideal of a unified partnership of public services and community organisations, under a Single Regeneration Budget, crumbled once that budget was no longer there.

In the field of policing, hard-won reforms have been undermined by relentless cuts, so we have seen the shrinking of Neighbourhood Policing and the amalgamation of Borough Commands, so that local knowledge is being lost. With less specialist advice or insider information, the Met have been forced back to the “stop and search” tactics that were so damaging to relations with the black community in 1981.

Meanwhile, youth services have dwindled away, leaving more youngsters at a loose end and without a sense of direction. Promising pilot schemes and new ideas have not been followed up. Probation services were privatised and weakened. Mental health services have been under-resourced, leaving the police on the beat to cope with acute mental health cases, without specialist expertise, resulting in too many casualties and inquests.

Reform is nothing without the resources to see it through!

About the Author:

Since being born in Poplar in 1947, Alan Piper has always lived in Brixton.

A chartered architect since 1978, he has been involved in numerous community projects over the years, and helped found the Brixton Society in 1975. On their behalf, he wrote a History of Brixton, published in 1995, and still leads occasional guided walks around the area.

For 8 years prior to the original Brixton riots of 1981, he worked with other residents to resist Lambeth Council plans to demolish 660 houses and shops around Railton Road. By 1981, many of the houses were being repaired and improved, but the Council’s insistence on demolishing the Brixton end of Railton Road left a ready-made battleground among derelict buildings, with a generous supply of half-bricks for the rioters to throw…

An interview with Steadman Scott, founder member of the nationally acclaimed Afewee Training Centre at the Brixton Recreation Centre which for 20 years has run on the dedication of volunteers offering subsidised football and boxing sessions for local youngsters.

Amanda Carter, member of 81 Acts of Exuberant Defiance Steering group and Brixton Recreation Centre’s Users Group interviewed Steadman Scott in September 2020 in Brixton.

QUESTION: what does renew and regroup mean to you, thinking of the past and the future for your community?

STEADMAN SCOTT:

What changes could be done to improve things for the community, what would I like to see?

You ask what changes could be done to actually improve things for my community and what we mean by renew.

Being one of the first generation to be educated from the Windrush generation, I think my point of view is very, very important, because as far as I concerned, it was my generation who actually put all the hard work in to reach here, so it was my generation that ask what we want next.

Being in the, what you call, a race… without identity, no direction, didn’t belongs into the country. And then all of a sudden, we were told that no, you’re part of the country. What do you need? Now for people who have never been recognised and so on I know you said, “What do you need?” We won’t know what we need. So we run around like chicken without heads.. in the end have given us youth centre on Railton Road open. That’s it, okay. prove to us that you can do, you can control your own. Now, if you have a child who hasn’t been educated, and you put him .. how he’s going to survive? So that was what we was like. So it was a form of ways, things that the system set up for us to fail After the riot I think they give us maybe 15 years of things to let them look good. Now we couldn’t get insurance so therefore it was it was like wasted time because the area have just been through the riot so therefore nobody ain’t gonna give it no insurance so really is like saying you really cater us to be a failure.

Then with the Recreation Centre, after 15 years, they [Lambeth Council] decide that they want to sell the building, by put it where pop Brixton is. They hoping to put a leisure centre there, something that look like Clapham Common, which again, is for the middle class and for the upper class coming in… knocking down our beautiful spot that we fought for, and turn it into a block of flats and some fancy shop downstairs getting rid of the real Brixton

So we with, Topcats [ a grassroots basketball organisation] and users group organisation have to fight hard with the community to make sure this building is listed.

Now what we need of this building…

As I say to many people, I look on this building here not as a recreation centre, but as a re-creation centre. What I mean is it was meant to re-create my generation: I have done that so I think I’m entitled to state what is needed next, right. To me, re-creation means that I’m going to come in here, I’ve got to re-create myself from the negative image of what the system did by not giving me opportunity when I was young OK…forced me into end up with a criminal conviction and have no hope. So therefore, I have to put something back in. That’s when the recreation centre was really, really useful. It get me off the street, I spent 10 years in here, until eventually decide, I don’t know if it’s a spiritual thing, that I decide I must get qualified. And now after get qualified, I now come back in being in charge of football, but I didn’t know what was needed because I was involved in Dick Shepherd Youth Centre, seeing all the negative things taking place, but didn’t know where it was going.

So what we did is, I come out after Her Majesty’s confinement, and I decide, so OK put my plan in action. What is needed? We decide to do our football as a test run, to see if we are on the right path. And 20 years later, I realised I was on the right path. The Football Club now… I’ve given over 100 young people, boys and girls, to the professional game. We have players in all part of the world from France, America, Scotland, Germany. Okay, boys and girls, right? Canada. These are what Afewee, we have done. Okay, we have players that play for England in all different levels from under 16, under 17 to the full team. Why? Because we build an organisation, an environment that we know our youngsters need. We was never exposed to successful environment. We was always put into environment where one was going just to have fun, that is a loser environment. What Afewee have done, we have created environment now when young people comes in, the environment is catered for you to be successful. A successful environment isn’t there for you to come in and have fun. And that’s what our youngsters need. So that’s what Afewee have done. And during the 20 years, Afewee has been around, we have been so successful that the Council and GLL have decided to sponsor us with a boxing club downstairs.

So what is needed now is for we to make sure we want the building, but to be for everybody. But if I wasn’t here, if Topcats and Jimmy Rogers wasn’t here, this building wouldn’t have been here because we know that... so even though the Council and all these people say, okay, they’ve got our interests, they haven’t got our interests because we haven’t seen it done. If they do put.. yes, they put a lot into the community but it’s like flinging money down a, what you call, a well without any form of bottom… it’s a waste of time. There’s no money is put into Afewee, just passion, spirit and love for your community. That’s what Afewee is. We have created an environment that actually give kids dreams. Now we have a boxing club downstairs and we got a young lady who is England Champion and we got a young man now who’s going into be professional. I’m hoping that he will be World Champion soon. And that’s what it’s about. It’s about giving our youngsters dream why they mustn’t fail again. Why, because everywhere our youngsters look, it is a negative environment. It’s an environment where you haven’t been taught how to be successful, you haven’t been taught how to have your own business.

So what we want to see from the council now is … we don’t need the council to come and think what’s best for us. We need them to come and sit down and talk to us and ask us what we want.

There is a path, Beehive Place on the side next to the Recreation Centre… there’s an entrance in there. Underneath that part there is a massive empty spot there and all the Council do is have the office furniture stuck in there. Why can’t the Council work with Nike, Adidas, all saying that they want to give money back into the community to help the black youngsters. Please, if you want to do that, put the money into that building there, so we can have that space, so we can have like a youth centre like Afewee Centre where we can have drama, education, history, Boxing Club and music studio so we can now take control and help our kids at the same time. The other part of the building can also be for everybody else, but we know that if we don’t have somebody like Afewee into the building, don’t matter what the Council said they won’t really have the interests of the real community, who the building was put here for.

My generation was a generation who was wild on the street. That’s the reason why we are confronting with the police. Our youngsters now frightened, they cannot leave their own place. We want to know that this building is open up with organisations here so these kids can have opportunity to come in here… it’s like a neutral ground. In all the time we have been here, there hasn’t been no serious fight from our community in this building here. When you consider there is what you call postcode, but yet there have never been any serious postcode problem from our youngsters by killing each other in this building here. So that means it is a spiritual building. So we should use it as that.

I know if I don’t help these kids, you, who think your kids are safe going to private school or going to a different area, when this kid grows up, they’ve got to meet up in the same place, they’re the same peer group. Right now, when you think your kids are safe, these kids that we ignore, didn’t give a chance, didn’t put nothing into because as far as we’re concerned, it’s not our problem, they will come back around later on and damage our kids, kill our kids, rob our kids. That’s what going on. So we must look and say all kids must be your kids if you want to safeguard your kids. So far as I’m concerned, this is the only building that I think, as a black person, we have say into and I think it must be used as a beacon of that.

Background info on The REC:

The Brixton Recreation Centre, designed by George Finch in 1970 and constructed between 1974–85, has been awarded a Grade II listing by Historic England.

A committed socialist, Finch was best known for his post-war housing projects, which were grounded in his belief that architecture, and high quality social housing, had the power to transform lives. The recreation centre was similarly built out of these principles, and has become an important social and cultural hub within the community. More here

If art doesn’t contain a force capable of toppling regimes, why are the powerful so quick to shut it down? Why did they blow up the buddhas in Bimiyan, outlaw music in Mali, imprison Pussy Riot? Why did they burn books in Egypt and China and Germany and in all the other places where ink on paper seemed so inflammatory?

In April 2021, 81 Acts of Exuberant Defiance will mark the 40th anniversary of the 1981 Brixton Uprising. Brixton will harness the power of Art to gain insights from the past and to incite new, radical ways of journeying forward together. Here, writer, resident and Act maker, Amber Massie-Blomfield reflects on the POWER and RESPONSIBILITY of Art as a form of RESISTANCE.

Once, a person put their hand to a cave wall, blew red ochre around it, and changed everything.

35,000 years later, a Greek writer penned a comedy that would inspire future generations of women to end war by mounting sex strikes in Colombia, Kenya, Liberia and Togo. In 1782, a French playwright stoked a revolution by putting on-stage working-class characters who challenged and undermined their masters. A 19th Century textile designer turned Clement Attlee into a socialist. A 19th Century novel about the life of a slave was responsible, as Lincoln put it, for ‘starting a great war’.

When Edward Bond stoned a baby he loosened the grip of the Lord Chamberlain. When Edward Abbey sent a bunch of misfits into the desert to blow up a dam he set in motion a chain of events that would lead to the collapse of the UK government’s national road building scheme two decades later. Upton Sinclair changed the way meat gets packed and Augusto Boal passed a law in Brazil protecting crime victims and Marsha P Johnson kicked off Stonewall clad in a floral halo. DH Lawrence invented sex and Gran Fury got the price of Aids drugs slashed and the Plastic People of the Universe, with their long hair and their psychedelic beats, sparked the Velvet Revolution. Ramy Essam used his song to spark an Arab Spring. A comic book of Martin Luther King gave strength to protest movements in Latin America, South Africa and the Middle East. The Medu Art Ensemble shook apartheid at its foundations. In Paris they ripped up paving stones looking for the beach, and in Mexico Miguel Sabido used a soap opera to teach the nation how to read. On the Southbank of the Thames, Liberate Tate doused themselves in thick black oil and kicked BP out of the Turbine Hall. In Russia, a bunch of women in neon balaclavas performed a punk prayer in an orthodox church and started a pussy riot. In Chicago, Theaster Gates regenerated a community by selling what was tumbling down back to rich people as art. They bought it.

Art can change the world. The point is not only that it can, but that it has, over and over again, and that it will do still — in manners that can be as explosive as a battle or as modest and creeping as a Chinese whisper. Acknowledging this fact matters, because it is the beginning of recognising the power that each of us has in our own hands. Creativity isn’t the preserve of those trained in academies, or whose work is hung in marble halls. If you’ve ever sketched a picture, baked a cake, sung karaoke, made a protest placard, written a limerick, planted a flower, hit the woah to your favourite tune, you possess it.

It would be easy to feel despair in August 2020, to look at the pandemic crushing lives and the systematic racism prevalent around the globe, and struggle to find optimism. But there is always hope somewhere, and I’d like to propose that art may offer a way to find it. You can start right now: all you need is a pen and paper, or your voice, or your body. Try it. Take fifteen minutes, look away from your computer screen, and create something that expresses how you feel about the world. How did it go? Now, what if you shared that with someone you know? Or someone you didn’t?

Art offers hope because art always rests on the understanding that there is someone listening, someone with their heart open ready to receive what we have to say. Ready, perhaps, to change their mind. It promises that we may express ourselves more genuinely, and more precisely, than ever before. But art fails, I think, when it acts only as a megaphone. Art is a way of offering hospitality, which isn’t to say it need always be comfortable — only that it works best when it makes space for difference and is curious about what it means to share that space.

What is true of art is true of politics too. Because what is politics but a collective act of imagination? With or without our consent, someone somewhere is projecting an image of the world they want to inhabit and telling the stories that will make it a reality. So: we must tell better stories. Paint better pictures. Pitch a note for our creativity, and let it sing.

After all, if art doesn’t contain a force capable of toppling regimes, why are the powerful so quick to shut it down? Why did they blow up the buddhas in Bimiyan, outlaw music in Mali, imprison Pussy Riot? Why did they burn books in Egypt and China and Germany and in all the other places where ink on paper seemed so inflammatory? An idea contained in a well-honed song catches faster than a rumour; cartoons foster the greatest foil of the despot — a laugh. Those censorious powers know something better than the people who dismiss the arts at times of crisis as trivial, superfluous to our needs. Art triumphs in dark times because it fortifies our shared humanity. That’s what makes authority so afraid.

When we’re suffering, art can make a human life more bearable, and it can give a person something to hold on to in the bleakest circumstances. Art can be a salve, a bridge, a rudder. And it belongs to all of us. So: what will you create?

About the Author:

Amber Massie-Blomfield is a writer and arts producer who lives in Brixton. Her first book, Twenty Theatres to See Before You Die, was shortlisted for the Theatre Book Prize. Subscribe to her newsletter all about the benefits of living a creative life here, and follow her on Twitter @ambermb.

Based at Keele University, Stott’s research in political dissent explores how peaceful protests change to become violent through observing the psychology of crowds. His research has led to changes in policing by some authorities with the aim of reducing violent confrontations.

Here they discuss learnings from 1981 Brixton Uprisings and how they inform where we are at today. What has changed? What can change?

“There are two stages in a revolution. The first stage is when everyone realises something is wrong. The second stage is when everyone realises that everyone else realises it as well.”

Alexei Yurchak from his book, ‘Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation’.

Were the events that started on 10th April 1981, a riot, an uprising or a revolution from your perspective?

The problem with the term ‘riot’ is it’s a negative term. In contrast, the notion of ‘uprising ‘carries with it a more positive connotation towards resistance to injustice. And clearly, the riots were embedded in a struggle against police racism, and they were an assertion of power in relationship to an ongoing injustice. The Brixton riot was the end of a sequence that had gone on by that point for two consecutive summers. It began in St. Paul’s in Bristol in 1980 and there’s a whole series of them from then until the major confrontation that develops in Brixton in 81.

Do you think that protests and uprisings are framed and represented differently depending on the demographic of the participants?

They’re certainly framed in different ways from different perspectives. When the UK news media reports on riots in other countries, the focus is on the contextual conditions: the situation against which people are effectively rebelling. Whereas when it comes to reporting on similar things in the UK, then the language becomes very, very different.

In general terms our understanding of riots is often based on the language of misunderstanding, so we need to question some of the terminology and some of the assumptions that we make about why that kind of violence happens. That, to a large extent, is what I do in my work: to try to challenge our common sense assumptions about how this kind of violence comes about.

How do we do that? It seems not much has changed on that front.

No, and nor is it likely to on some level because the language of riot is political. And its deployment by political actors won’t end. The language of riot pathologises violence: pathologises and decontextualises why these incidents of conflict come about, and that’s why it dominates in particular arenas. So when we look at the 2011 riots for example, the language of ‘the mob’, ‘mob psychology’ and ‘mindless criminality’ come to dominate not because they’re true, but because they service a particular political perspective on the riot, which is usually to attribute blame, and to avoid any responsibility. So governments are not keen on accepting an argument that says, ‘Well, you know what, actually we might have had something to do with why that riot happened.’ They tend not to admit that and the language of riot is a really good way of not having to, instead to attribute all of the responsibility for those involved in the riot and to provide what is in effect a framework of moral condemnation, so anything but moral condemnation becomes almost a kind of offence in the context of riots. So to challenge the language is first and foremost, to challenge the understandings upon which that language is based. And that’s a core part of the work that we do, to try to build a science that shows that the language of riot is to a degree unsustainable. And therefore, as a scientist, we can challenge that rhetoric when it is deployed. So we’ll never get rid of it, but at least we can challenge it by by putting the science on the table.

What do you mean when you say the language of riot is unsustainable?

When you ask people to say what a riot is, they begin to draw upon what we call, ‘classical crowd psychology’. It’s a deeply embedded perspective on the psychology of the crowd that’s deployed in this language of riots, that tries to suggest that riots are a pathological outburst of irrationality: that somehow when people enter crowds, they get drawn into a mob psychology and that mob psychology renders the normal, sensible rational self disabled. And as a consequence, behaviour comes to be dominated by irrationality, by emotion, by anti social tendencies and violent tendencies that we have very deep within us. That’s the language of classical crowd psychology. And it was a form of scientific crowd psychology that was developed at the end of the 19th century, but still resides with us now, in the public consciousness. So when you see newspaper headlines that talk about mobs, that’s what they’re doing, they’re deploying that idea of why the riot has come about. So our focus is on challenging that idea, as an explanation because it doesn’t make sense of how they behave. So we’ve developed a new theory for the psychology of riot that actually sees riots as coming about for different sets of reasons. So we’re able to challenge this idea of the irrationality of the crowd and put in its place a different way of making sense of why people do what they do when they come into confrontation, collectively, usually with the police.

Brixton, Handsworth, St. Pauls, were all part of a broad explosion.. Toxteth in Liverpool. And they tend to be historically referred to as the Race Riots. But again, even that’s unsustainable, particularly in places like Toxteth. I mean, the people who were involved in the confrontations in Toxteth that went on for literally two weeks, were very mixed ethnicities, lots of white working class youths in those crowds as well.

Is there a possibility of a breakthrough through deeper understanding of the reasons for riot, from the political class and the police?

Yeah, of course, it’s a matter of knowledge and power. So there is a dynamic of power at work in the context of these things we call riots. And this power dynamic is really important, but the language that we use to understand it is part of the way in which power is exercised. So you get powerful groups who deploy this way of understanding crowds deliberately to pathologise it. To challenge pathologisation is a complex thing, that in part is achieved through science. Science itself is a discourse of power. And as scientists we are in a position to command the territory of knowledge and show through the scientific project, that there are alternative ways of understanding this issue. Certainly I do it from a particular perspective that what we are seeking to do here is to try to prevent riots. Now, if we want to try to prevent them, then we really need to understand properly where they come from. And this is how you understand properly where they come from. So let’s deal with them in those terms, or really, we’re doing nothing more than contributing to the problem and denying the factors that bring it to bear. So you know, it’s a way of challenging the use of the language and it takes time, it’s taken decades for us to even get into a position where we can start to command the high ground, if you like, in this ideological battle. And it’s far from a from a victory at this particular point in time we just have a voice.

Can you explain how the science works?

The science is based predominantly on observation and interview. We talk to people who are involved in what happens in order to gain their perspective on it. But because of our theoretical perspective, what we understand is that riots are often the outcome of interactions. So you can’t understand the dynamics of riots by just looking at one of the groups involved in that interaction because the way people think in crowds is determined a lot by how other people interact with them and in a lot of cases, that’s the police. We study both people in the crowd and also police officers who act towards the crowd to understand how it is that these dynamics come about and then we try to work in ways that help the police to try to avoid doing things that make the problem worse. Riots are really, really complicated things, but if I was to distil down and say, okay, what’s the single most important factor in determining whether or not a riot is going to happen, most of the time it’s how that crowd event is policed that will be fundamental to whether or not it develops into a major escalation.

The Brixton riot was a protest by a group of people against being criminalised and it is then construed as criminal behaviour…adding another layer of criminalisation.

It’s a cliche in in this context, but it is an extremely powerful way of understanding what’s going on and that is that, ‘the riot is the voice of the unheard’.

You define it as a protest. What is a protest? Okay. I think the issue here is that to some extent, a riot is the failure of protest. It’s the end point at which injustices have been experienced across extended periods of time in a context where other forms of resistance or protest have failed. It’s about a failure of communication.

Do you see similarities between policing now and what resulted in 81?

Well, yes and no. Disproportionality hasn’t gone away has it? We’ve seen statistics coming out already that black and ethnic minority people are disproportionately more likely to be fined under the new Covid legislation.

There’s still disproportionality around stop and search. I think that therein lies some of the underlying challenges because we can’t pretend for a moment that knife crime isn’t an issue. And there are various sections of the community that welcome a form of intervention trying to address that issue, but there are also models of good practice and the one that many people refer to is a situation in Glasgow, where the transition there is to see knife crime, not as a criminal justice issue, but as a health issue and approach it from a health perspective. And that’s been really effective in Glasgow. And you will be aware, of course, that not long ago, the Mayor of London talked about this transition: that we’re going to try and do it in the same way. I haven’t heard much more about the progress of that. If that does progress, then there may be some some hope of an avenue of change. But what we’re looking at the moment is a situation where the kind of broader problems that can lead to riot are quite clearly there: inequality, poverty, intersectionality between poverty and race, disproportionate policing practices in relationship to poverty and race. And in that context, it only takes certain issues to occur for situations to amplify and develop. And we got quite close to that a couple of weekends ago with the Black Lives Matter and the far right mobilising onto the streets of London. To avoid an escalation takes the, what I would call, heroism of that group of black guys who went down there, and Patrick Hutchinson, intervening at that critical moment where he picks up that guy who’s being attacked and pulls him out, where he might have otherwise died. And that moment is so symbolic. I mean, it turns out that the guy he rescues is an ex cop, who’s on a demonstration with Nazis, with fascists protesting in a way that brings him into confrontation and Patrick and his group get in there to pull him out. I mean, just incredible. What potentially could have happened could have been very, very different. And despite the problems, I think at some level, we do also need to acknowledge some of the progress that is being made in the policing context that can take us in the right direction. There are improvements in the Metropolitan Police Service.

What are the improvements?

I think it’s certainly in terms of perspective in some levels in senior leadership, perhaps mid tier leadership might be a better way to describe it. But the Met is a massive organisation and very difficult to change culturally. But I just take the position that it’s really beneficial to focus on the positive. It’s one

thing to constantly highlight the negative, and that has to be done. But we need solutions here. We need a way to bring change. And I can’t pretend for a moment that we have changed things. But I think the potential for change is there. I’m some level of reformist in the sense that I do believe that if you get things right, you can bring about change. But I’m sure you and anyone listening to this is going to be very sceptical of that and I can understand that completely, but my job is to try and get in the mix to provoke change. There is good understanding at work in the Met, but that good understanding is often blocked at Senior leadership levels. Sometimes it’s also blocked at lower levels sometimes. You know, police leaders can have the right perspective, but what gets delivered on the ground is something fundamentally different. So there’s all sorts of organisational complexities that we need to get into if we’re going also work collaboratively to bring about the kind of change that everybody is seeking to deliver.

Is there anything else you want to add?

The raft of injustices leave larger sections of the black population with a very bitter taste in their mouth about the nature of British policing, and I think that the British police service has a hell of a long way to go to to address that.

About the Author:

Amanda Carter is a Brixton based socialist and political activist.

She has a background in education, youth work, documentary film making and photography. Her belief in the need to question and explore what is presented as facts drives her actions. She is a solo traveller, drawn to staying in communities with living memory of uprising and resistance.

Amanda is part of the steering group driving forward 81 Acts of Exuberant Defiance for 2021.

“Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunters.”

-African Proverb

81 Act of Exuberant Defiance is a cultural and artistic programme that attempts to rethink, reanalyse, appreciate and restate the dramatic events of Brixton April 1981 ‘riots’. These events saw three days of conflict that sought to secure basic respect and justice from the powers that be.

This statement will be seen as deeply contentious by some. However, I would argue that this perspective emerges from the deep-seated British resistance to recognise and respect that British black history. Ths historical trend is not one that relates solely to the U.K. its a reflection of a global phenomenon from Brooklyn to Brixton From Brisbane to Bahia Eurocentric historical amnesia that sees Black history marginalised and forgotten to the global trend that has lasted for 500 years.

The recent murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, by U.S police officers and the response of the African America community who alongside others vented their deep anger and frustrations have brought the U.S. to the brink of civil war. It’s a powerful reminder that real change is always painful , difficult and complex.

George Floyd’s last words, I can’t breathe echoing the words of Eric Garner murdered in New York in 2014 in similar circumstances, has become a visceral political metaphor for the denial of respect and rights in the suffocating and racially toxic atmosphere of a racist America. That the President has threatened to use the Army to confront the millions campaigning for justice demonstrates the powerful vested interests involved in maintaining the racist status qou. The response of people around the world bears testimony to the worldwide demand for human rights and justice that such protests ventilate.

Even as you read this article very word “riot” and its historical meaning is being deeply contested, set against the context of the extrajudicial murder of black people and the routine injustice we face.

Historically the word conjures up vivid images of bacchanal-like scenes from the very gates of Hades itself.

However, in Brixton 1981 and across the U.K., much like in America today, those who took part in national uprisings in cities such as Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham and Leeds saw their activities very differently from the mainstream narrative that always sought to criminalise, demonise and racially categorise black people as pathologically bad and ethnically inferior.

But then in an age before mobile phones and social media, the soul connectivity and unity of British black communities was next level, What happened to one was felt by all.

And those who took part viewed themselves as part of a justified resistance against state racism and representing a community whose sense of humanity was denied by the institutional and social racism they faced. This powerful shared experience was no “riot” this was a righteous uprising, against the massive down pressure of oppressive racism, and structural injustice that stripped people of every shred of dignity and self-respect.

How Black British history is remembered, how the narrative of our struggle for equality and justice is contextualised is almost always a political exercise in historical exclusion and amnesia.

The truth is, for many people, there are simply no positive redeeming factors in the remembering of Brixton 1981

Much like the long-forgotten contribution made by former enslaved British Africans who were anti-transatlantic slavery activists living in the 17th century Britain to the making of a modern human rights framework, the gift of Black British history is rarely respected or acknowledged.

Since those momentous events of 1981, we’ve heard a lot about the vibrancy of Brixton, its Windrush cultural legacies and diversity dynamism.

Today, little if anything is said about these events in preference for a portrayal of a cleaned-up version of Brixton’s dynamic history.

This rich history, much like the area, has become increasingly gentrified. A narrative now reliant on words such as “diverse”, and “multicultural” predominate, an establishment narrative, making Brixton’s history more palatable for modern tastes. This is quite simply the airbrushing of history.

The inevitable social re-engineering that followed the national disturbances of 1981 saw symbolic Black communities such as Moss Side, Toxteth and Brixton become the increasing focus of regeneration, was rapid. Sold as improving these areas in response to the real deprivation and injustice that sparked resistance, this most insidious and covert political strategy of social engineering marketed as shiny, new modernising progress.

The “dark days’ of 1981, now regarded as a moment to forget, not a moment to remember. This shameful refusal to learn from our past springs, from the deep-seated historical British resistance to legitimising the right of any oppressed people to resist their oppression. It’s a top-down version of history.

Our ambition is to change that perspective and fundamentally re-examine 1981 as an event that contributed towards political and socially progressive change in an unprecedented manner that has still to be appropriately acknowledged.

Events in Brixton 1981 must be re-evaluated and respected as a significant watershed contributing to redressing injustice and changing British society for the better.

On 27 September 1966 the undisputed icon of the global civil rights movement, Dr Martin Luther King first spoke about the nature of riots. His analysis has since become a touchstone, the goal to quote, for understanding civil disturbance in response to great oppression and injustice.

Speaking to CBS news anchor Mike Wallace who asked King about the “increasingly vocal minority,” i.e. radical black power advocate Stokely Carmichael who disagreed with his non-violent approach King said,

“… I contend that the cry of “black power is, at the bottom, a reaction to the reluctance of white power to make the kind of changes necessary to make justice a reality for the Negro,”

He then added one of his most famous line;

“I think that we got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard. And, what is it that America has failed to do? It has failed to hear that the economic plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years.”

This is the real context of 1981 and 2020 America, a riot is the language of the unheard and disrespected.

When a community faces a state that overwhelmingly seeks to demonise, criminalise and oppress, few options are open to them, even within the supposed context of a democratic society.

When analysing American history today, it is accepted that the United States civil rights movement was also in part a legitimate resistance to violent oppression. It wasn’t all non-violent, people wanted to resist, and King had to work hard hold people back and he was nit always successful. The will to resist oppression and injustice and the will to self defence is a compelling part of human nature.

While in Brixton 1981, that violent oppression was lesser in scale and intensity than what we saw back then and indeed in America today, Britain was nevertheless as equally as oppressive in terms of injustice as the racism faced by African-American in the 1960s.

Today, African-American history, including violent resistance to racism has been legitimised, and these historical facts have been wholly woven into America’s history.

Following the assassination of Dr King, the Watts riots of 1965 led to the establishment of the Civil Rights act in the United States improving rights of African-Americans immeasurably. Such insurrection became legitimate and broadly accepted as part of

This American history, though still contentious for some, is now woven into the rich tapestry of the nation’s sense of self.

Here in Britain, the reverse is true. The rich and diverse history of Black Britain black resistance, and sometimes-violent response to continued racism, inequality and state-sanctioned oppression, are always, without exception, seen as problematic.

With the probable exception of the cases of the 1950s Bristol bus boycott and the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence, there are virtually no other examples, that describe and celebrate British black struggles for justice, as being challenging but progressive advances in the pursuit of civil rights and justice.

Of course, this reflects the constant demonising of black British communities in general and the consequent contamination of British history as a result of the dominance of such pathological perspectives about almost all examples of British black struggles for justice.

Nowhere is this perspective more evident than in the concept of the idea of a “black riot.”

Throughout British history, there are many examples of “riotous disorder” that has become celebrated as part of a progressive movement to change.

The militant civil disobedience of the Suffragette Movement agitating for women’s equality and the right to vote in the early 1900s is a classic example of unruly resistance canonised into British history.

In modern times there is the international student movement against the wars in Vietnam, and in 1968 and famous Stonewall riots in New York that led to the establishment of a global change movement for LGBT rights.

This uprising has become synonymous with freedom, equality and justice.

Today Pride is celebrated across the world, with big business and governments falling over themselves to sponsor this celebration of the achievement of LGBT rights.

Contrast the Stonewall riots with the events of Brixton 1981 and all other black modern-day British uprisings, and you begin to see a specific pattern emerging.

There is no complimentary analysis of the contribution of these events towards the establishment of civil rights, police accountability, antiracist culture in the United Kingdom. Yet, there can be no doubt that such disturbances pushed the agenda for legal reform and social change in Britain forward.

Events such as 1981 are routinely seen as overtly criminal, violent, thuggish behaviour whose motivation and rationale is contextualised by the pathological criminal nature of those who were involved.

There are no famous global marches for black resistance or the achievement of black rights; there is no cosy rehabilitation of “black violent protest” into the national curriculum or the modern narrative of the making of modern Britain.

The 1981 uprising has been afforded no such rehabilitation.

Let us recall that the Metropolitan Police Operation SWAMP saw thousands of police officers search over 1000 people in six days using the dreaded SUS law.

1981 was also motivated in no small extent by the largest racist mass murder ever witnessed in British history that took place that year at a New Year’s Eve party in New Cross, south-east London.

The outright refusal of the police to properly investigate this slaughter led to black people’s day of action, and the most massive black demonstration ever witnessed in British history. Tens of thousands of people marched on 2 March 1981 from New Cross to central London.

The cry on the lips of many of those who took part was “13 dead, and nothing said” yet this colossal injustice and triggering trauma is now all but largely forgotten. Yet it was as one of the key contributory factors that led to the outpouring of rage over those three days.

Profound social discrimination saw mass black youth unemployment, living in poor housing, suffering exclusions from schools and police oppression. This was the lived black experience at the time.

One can begin to see how the denial of equality and justice would inevitably lead, at some point, to a forceful and anarchic expression of rights, however ‘inelegantly’ expressed.

Such uprisings do have core legitimacy within the context of overwhelming oppression that daily, reaffirms the reality that state power has no respect nor regard for people’s fundamental rights.

Seen in this context, we believe it is time to re-evaluate Brixton 1981

These events led to the watershed publication of the Lord Scarman Report, which concluded, “there was no doubt racial disadvantage was a fact of current British life.” However, the report stopped short of labelling the police as being guilty of institutional racism, nevertheless recommended: “racially prejudiced behaviour should be made a specific offence under the police discipline code with offenders liable to dismissal”.

The Brixton uprisings led to the abolishment to the infamous SUS laws. That was a massive achievement and led to a whole new focus on the nature of police racism within public policy.

Post-1981 saw the creation of black social movements and antiracist organisations that fought against the reality of both organised fascism on the streets and institutionalised racism within the police service. The report also led to a massive revolution in police training.

The stigma attached to Brixton ever since has been enduring, there has been no rehabilitation for what was a mass movement fighting for justice and equality.

There are no “celebrations” no recognition of the sacrifices of those who determined they could no longer see themselves and their children disrespected by the law and broader society and concluded that enough was enough.

81 Acts of Exuberant Defiance is a cultural reframing, celebration and a radical reclaiming of this heritage of resistance, to bring communities together to better understand the past, in the hope of a better future.

Reimagining this time and place, of people and historical space is designed to instigate a remembering of that bloody confrontation, where the ancient and perpetual ritual of black sacrifice had to be made to secure forward movement.

As we approach 2021, the 40th anniversary of these events, we believe it’s time to revisit 1981 within the constructive framework of a bottom-up perspective that accords this resistance its rightful place in history.

There can be no doubt that the abolishment of the dreaded SUS law and essential reforms in tackling police racism and injustice, made a unique and significant contribution to the making of a more equitable and modern Britain.

Brixton 1981 had a powerfully progressive impact on the nation itself. These events were the articulation of the most commonly oppressed and that reality needs to be recognised.

Today we have the re-emergence and rise of the Black Lives Matter movement whose founder Alicia Garza said,

“How do we stop violence, looting and riots? The way that we stop that is by making sure that people have the things they need to thrive.”

For that to happen, people must be respected; their histories must be valued; their contribution to society must be appreciated.

The current coronavirus crisis has shown, black communities immeasurable and positive contribution to British society. It is a sad commentary reflecting how little our communities are respected, that it has taken an existential threat to humanity, a tragedy of such grave proportions to have our contribution to Britain so begrudgingly acknowledged.

Low paid Black workers who last year were being deported in the Windrush scandal, and subjected to the racist, hostile environment policy are today celebrated as heroes and sheroes

And so in Lambeth, starting on the anniversary weekend in April 2021, there will be a vibrant, dynamic reappraisal of these events.

We invite you to join with us as we seek to press the reset button on Brixton’s contemporary history and acknowledge the creative defiance and sacrifice of those heroes and sheroes whose actions over those three days irrevocably changed Britain forever.

We hope that Lambeth will explode with creative artistic expression, commentary, art, music and dance. We invite you to join us in this radical reimagining of Brixton’s real history

Now is the time to lift the veil 1981.

Lift the trauma, respect black communities and celebrate the 1981 resistance.

Lee Jasper

Former Deputy Mayor of London, Vice Chair of BAME Lawyers 4 Justice and Blaksox Sponsor

part of the 81 Acts of Exuberant Defiance Steering Group