'A Different Reality': minority struggle in British cities

Overview

Broadwater Farm and a Summing Up Of the Significance of the Riots of 1980s - By John Rex

There was an uprising on the Broadwater Housing Estate in Tottenham on 6th October 1985. During this uprising Police Constable Blakelock was stabbed to death by multiple stabbings. Winston Silcott and two others were convicted of the murder. Silcott had previously been convicted of another murder of Anthony Smith and was on bail awaiting trial on this charge on the night of Blakelock's murder. He pleaded self-defence in the case of Anthony Smith and innocence in that of Blakelock but was convicted in both cases. In 1991 however the appeals of Silcott and two others were overturned and they were awarded compensation of £17,000, raised later to £50,000... Inspector Melvin and Inspector Dingle who had arrested Silcott were charged with fabricating evidence but were not convicted.

The killing of Blakelock occurred in a week after Cherry Groce an innocent woman had been shot in the back and paralysed in a drugs raid in Brixton and after Cynthia Jarrett had died of a heart attack in a police raid in Tottenham. There angry crowds assembled and the police were attacked. The Member of Parliament for the area Bernie Grant said "The youth around here believe that the police were to blame and what they got was a bloody good hiding".(1) Silcottt had grown up as a religious member of the Seventh Day Adventist Church. When he became an adult, however, he became involved in protests about police stop and search tactics in dealing with the West Indian community. In a fight with Anthony Smith, a boxer, Silcott stabbed and killed Smith. In pleading his innocence he claimed that Smith had had a knife and that he was acting in self defence.

The murder of Blakelock became something of a cause celebre, in Tottenham and far beyond. This was the first time in all the disturbances of 1981 and 1985 in which a policeman had been killed, and there was a demand in the press that the culprits should be given the severest possible punishment. Apparently the police decided that Silcott, already convicted of murder, was guilty, and the courts at first found him guilty of the Blakelock murder. On appeal, however, Silcott was cleared of this murder mainly because the police investigation had been flawed. To the Black community this had been a "stitch-up" in which Silcott was the victim. On the other hand the White community, and particularly the policeman's relatives, wanted the crime punished and resented the compensation paid to Silcott... Some believed that, although the police investigators bungled the investigation he was guilty. There was no attempt made to find out, if Silcott was not guilty, who the actual murderer was. It is hard to imagine a worse situation of racial hostility than that which now prevailed in Tottenham. The remarkable thing is that due to the subsequent actions of moderate community leaders, the trades unions, Bernie Grant the M.P. and the Council a policy of racial reconciliation and race harmony was set in train.

In fact the events in Tottenham mat be said to have brought to an end the period of racial disturbances or riots between 1979 and 1985 with which these papers have been concerned. We may now look at some of the issues which they posed and the state of race and ethnic group relations which they seemed to indicate.

Clearly there is some argument as to whether the term riot should be used at all. Scarman in his report is wary about using the term. It use was questioned in St Pauls, Bristol (Wallace, Booth and Joshua 1981) and systematically in an important book which starts from an analysis of disturbances in Harehills, Leeds in 1985. (Farrar 2002). Farrar questions the use of the term riot in this case but goes on to point out that even the inquiries into the disturbances in Burnley and Oldham were uneasy about the use of the term. He also shows that the use of the term was coupled with the use of others like "barbarous" and that the visual images of the disturbances involve blazing buildings. Other images are of police holding back the rioters. Coverage in the press and other media emphasises largely Black crowds violently attacking lines of police. There is little representation of police brutality of the kind which was to be found in the United States after the Watts disturbances or for that matter in the reporting of the police handling of striking coalminers in Yorkshire. The overall impression left is of a "thin blue line" of police protecting society against barbarous Black attackers.

This is not of course the way in which Blacks saw the situation. They saw themselves as subject to racial discrimination and racist attacks. Far from the police protecting them, they were subject to police harassment particularly through the use of the "sus laws" and stop and search procedures through which nearly every young Black man in the inner cities came into conflict with policemen. Policies like Operation Swamp in Brixton in 1981 seemed to turn these policies into a war of aggression by the police against Blacks. Moreover the handling of the Brixton disturbances, as reported by Scarman, suggests a military campaign. Blacks saw themselves as under attack in a war of aggression by White police.

In Southall however there were different developments. There there were White organisations like the National Front demonstrating against Blacks and Asians and physical attacks by young Whites against Blacks and Asians. Blacks and Asians had to defend themselves and were sometimes helped by White sympathisers from Left Wing groups.

We should now trace the development of racial and ethnic conflict after 1985 in two ways. One was that which centred around the murder of the young Black student Stephen Lawrence and the subsequent Macpherson enquiry. The other was the whole question of the position of British Asians first organising their own self defence as in Southall and then the riots involving Asians in the Northern cities in 2001.

Stephen Lawrence, a well educated young British Black man about to go on to University was attacked and killed at a bus stop in East London. The police response was intensive interviewing of Lawrence's parents on the assumption that when violence occurred Black people were likely to be to blame, rather than a serious attempt to pursue the killers. Sir John Macpherson a Judge of the Court of Appeal for 17years, whom some said had a record of playing down any racial element in other attacks was made Chairman of the Enquiry. He was advised by Tom Cook formerly Deputy Chief Constable of West Yorkshire, the Reverend John Sentamu then Bishop of Stepney and Richard Stone chair of the Jewish Council for Racial Equality.

This was a very important development in the attempt to understand race relations and racial conflict taking a step beyond the Scarman Enquiry. Scarman had been simply a Judge working in isolation. What one now had was a response by some kind of new establishment. Tom Cook represented the police attempt to come to grips with racism. John Sentamu was a Ugandan priest who had studied theology at Cambridge and, after performing a number of duties for the Church of England, had been made Bishop of Stepney. John Stone represented the attempt by British Jews to deal with wider issues of race relations than simply with anti-semitism.

The Macpherson Enquiry (Macpherson 1999) dealt with a number of issues which had been taken up in Scarman. It is interesting therefore to note the way in which its views went beyond Scarman. Clearly it had to deal with police behaviour and with racism. These two issues it dealt with together. Refusing to take the view that the police failure to deal with the Lawrence case was due to the racist behaviour of individuals it went on to discuss "institutional racism" drawing on the expertise of the police and of social scientists. In fact the treatment of this question is remarkably thorough. It goes back to the use of the term by Stokeley Carmichael in America (Carmichael and Hamilton 1963), and carefully goes through Scarman's discussion of the question, before looking at statements by a variety of policemen and police bodies and some significant social scientists.(2) It also accepts the argument that institutional racism in the police service has to be seen as part of a wider incidence of institutional racism in all British institutions.

Anyone reading Chapter 6th of the Macpherson report is bound to be impressed by the way in which the Enquiry went about its business. Its grasp of detail matches that of the Scarman Report and on the issue of "institutional racism" could hardly have done a more thorough review of opinion. Nonetheless in the case of reports such as this what matters is not simply what the report says as the way in which its findings were used. A strong case can be made that its effect was to remove blame from the police. It began by arguing that there was no evidence of individual policemen acting from racist motives. Thus the idea of institutional racism, however well it is discussed, draws attention away from racist actions by the police. Moreover as soon as it is introduced arguments are also presented that any institutional racism in the police is part of a system of institutional racism in all institutions. The police therefore are seen as simply reflecting this racism in the wider society. Correcting this is recognized as being difficult and responsibility for that correction is seen as something beyond the remit of this enquiry.

The Lawrence Enquiry dealt with an attack on a young British Black man and, together with the earlier deaths of black people in Deptford, focussed attention on Black relations with the police. It is now necessary, however, to look at the position of Asian immigrants and their relations with both White people and the police Any such review has to deal with the position of the mainly Bengali residents of East London, Asian relations with the police in defending themselves against racist attack and the sharply focussed events of the Northern disturbances of 2001.

In the area where Stephen Lawrence was murdered the position of Black people was probably less important than that of the Bengali community. They had been subject to a variety of forms of attack (graffiti on walls, physical attacks on individuals and the common business of setting fire to houses by putting flaming material through letter boxes. Consultations between the police and community leaders had produced reassuring police statements of policy, but the claim which was made was that in practice they did not pursue the White attackers rigorously and that they were more likely to look on the situation as one in which two groups , the Whites and the Bengalis had to be prevented from attacking one another.

In Southall the problem was that Asians were under attack from a minority of White youths and from marches an demonstrations organised by Right wing organisations. They sought to defend themselves through their own vigilantes because the police gave them no effective defence. Their organisations received the support of White left wing groups ,particularly the Socialist Workers Party, whose expertise in organising street demonstrations helped to keep the position of Asians in the public mind. On another level Asians took control of the Labour Party and succeeded in having a Member oaf Parliament elected. There were then complex relations between militant Asian organisations, White left-wing supporters and the Asian controlled Labour Party.

The relations involved in the Northern disturbances have been discussed in Paper 4. It is now useful, however, to look at the conclusions reached there against the wider issue of Asian integration. What was new in the Northern cities was the alienation of the White population from the Labour Councils and the Labour Party nationally. They felt deprived and let down by the Labour Party in dealing with their deprivation., They saw the Council as actually favouring Asians and turned to the right wing National Front and the British National Party, supporting their demonstrations and helping to win Council seats. The local Asians had to defend themselves against attacks by organised and unorganised Whites and thus came into conflict with police who claimed to be restoring law and order. Asians saw the police as the criminal justice system as biased against them.

The questions posed by the Northern riots produced a new conventional wisdom as embodied in the Cantle (Cantle 2001) and Ouseley (Ouseley 2001) Reports. These reports have little of the thoroughness of the Scarman and Macpherson enquiries. Rather they make what is an ideological analysis of the situation. Housing and Educational segregation is seen as responsible for the breakdown of social or community cohesion and what is sought is an overcoming of segregation, though there is little in the way of detailed recommendations as to how this is to be achieved.

As against this new received wisdom it could be argued that the sort of segregation existing at least in Bradford was compatible with civic unity and that it would have been better to look at these Northern cities in the light of the Jenkins formula for democratic and egalitarian multiculturalism.(3) One thing which was missing in the Cantle and Ouseley Reports was any critical consideration of police behaviour. Ouseley indeed simply complains that the police were given too much responsibility for sorting out political problems.

Conclusion : 1985 and Subsequent Events

The years which have been covered in these papers, roughly 1979 to 1985 and then again 2001 were years of riots. The question now is whether they are likely to recur. It would seem that the sorts of riot which occurred in the early and mid-nineteen-eighties are not now likely to occur. Too much has occurred by way of setting up machinery for reconciliation and future collaboration between communities. This is very clear in the case of Broadwater Farm. Potential leaders of Black militants have now been absorbed into a consensual system of control.

Less secure is the situation in Northern Cities. The consequences of the 2001 disturbances linger on and there could easily be new and violent conflicts and rioting. The other thing is that the Cantle-Ouseley analysis coupled with post-9/11 fear of terrorism is leading to the abandonment of multiculturalism. A wide variety of individuals have asserted that multiculturalism is dead and the characteristic policies in the immediate future are likely to be the introduction of identity cards and a requirement that all immigrants should learn English and affirm their loyalty to Britain in public ceremonies. These ideas do not yet have statutory form but they do represent the drift away from multiculturalism to something more like the French assimilationist model. This will affect policy for the integration of immigrants and their descendents, but it will also have implications for the treatment of asylum seekers and illegals.

(1) Bernie Grant was one of the first British based Black Members of Parliament. His contributions there were somewhat unpredictable. Despite his support for West Indian Youth in Tottenham in their confrontations with the police he was also on record as saying that he believed that West Indians in Britain should return to the West Indies. He was also opposed to Ken Livingston's installation as mayor of London.
(2) There are very careful statements for instance by Robin Oakley a sociologist who had studied ethnic relations and policing in West London and Simon Holdaway Professor of Criminology in the University of Sheffield.
(3) This has been discussed in Paper 4.

References

Cantle. T., (December 2001), Building Cohesive Communities: A report of the Ministerial Group on Public Order and Community Cohesion, Home Office, London.

Carmichael, S., and Hamilton, C., (1967) The Politics of Liberation in America, Vintage Books, New York 1967 updated 2000

Farrar, M., (2002), The Struggle for" Community" in a British Multi-ethnic Inner City Area- Paradise in the Making, Lewiston, Quuenston, Lampeter, Edward Mellen Press

Macpherson, W., (1999), The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry; Report of an Inquiry by Sir William Macpherson of Cluny, Advised by Tom Cook, the Right Reverend Dr John Sentamu, Dr Richard Stone, Presented to the Secretary of State for the Home Department by Command of her Majesty, Cm 4262-1

Ouseley, H., (July 2001), Community Pride, not Prejudice, Bradford Vision, Bradford City Council

Wallace, T., Booth H., and Joshua, H., (1981), To Ride the Storm: The 1981 Bristol Rioting and the State, Heinemann, London

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