By John East, Phil Hearse, and Hillary Tarr
[The following article is taken from a series of reports on the Brixton rebellion that were scheduled to appear in the April 16 issue of Socialist Challenge, a weekly newspaper published in London by the International Marxist Group, British section of the Fourth International.]
LONDON-By late afternoon on Sunday [April 12], Brixton was under paramilitary occupation. Hundreds of police lined Brixton Road, the main road through the area, while thousands more were in surrounding streets. Convoys of police vehicles roamed the area, periodically stopping to charge groups of youths standing on street corners. A police helicopter circled over head. Transport had stopped and the area was encircled with a cordon of police.
At the police station, 150 police vehicles were parked. A hundred dogs and fifty police horses were held at the ready. Railton Road, known as the front line, looks like the aftermath of a bombing raid, with burnt out cars littered among the gutted buildings.
As darkness descended, most of the street lights were turned out as hundreds of police waited in the side streets. The police surveyed the results of the week-
The rebellion in Brixton, one of Britain's largest and most established
Black communities, should have come as no surprise to Margaret Thatcher's
Tory government.
Almost exactly a year before, on April
2 in the St. Paul's section of Bristol, a similar rebellion had given notice that the Tory attacks on Blacks would not go unanswered.
With unemployment at the record level of 2.3 million-more than 10 percent of the workforce-and still growing, Blacks are coming under increased pressure. The unemployment rate for young Blacks is three times that of whites, and Black unemployment has doubled in the past year.
In addition, Thatcher-who as part of her campaign for election in 1979 used racist demagogy about Britain being
"swamped" by an "alien culture" —has sought to promote racism and make
Blacks the scapegoats for deteriorating social conditions.
end's conflict.
What happened and why?
Not many people in Brixton can have been surprised by the weekend's events. Brixton has been in the front line of saturation policing for at least two and a half years.
During the week preceding the explosions the cops had been carrying out a massive stop and search operation in Brixton called SWAMP-81. More than 1,000 people were stopped and more than 100 arrested during this period. It amounted to an attempt to intimidate a whole community and it is just part and parcel of their policy of heavy policing of "troublesome" areas.
All day Friday [April 10], tension had built up in Brixton because of a heavy police presence. At 6:30 p.m. a Black youth was stabbed in a fight. Bleeding profusely, he was taken to a police van. But instead of driving him to hospital, police interrogated him in the van.
Incensed, Black youth attacked the police van, rescued him, and drove the injured youth to hospital.
The explosion that the heavy police presence had threatened to provoke had begun.
On Saturday, the police decided to show
Thatcher's Racist Policies
The most serious Government attack is the proposed Nationality Bill, which will come before Parliament this June.
The bill is the latest of a series of racist laws designed to keep Blacks out of
Britain.
The law would make it very difficult to become naturalized and would establish categories of citizenship. Some categories-consisting primarily of people from colonies or former colonies who now hold British passports-would not have the right to enter the country.
Children born in Britain but whose parents were not citizens would not have the right to automatic citizenship-even if this left them stateless.
The effect of the proposed bill would be to make all Blacks second-class citizens, suspect of being "illegal," and put them under the constant demands of police, employers, and government agencies to show papers and prove their status.
The Nationality Bill is being ansthat "We control the streets." Heavy police was the order of the day, as hundreds were drafted in from other areas. Brixton Road was thick with cops.
At 4:00 p.m., a mini-cab driver in Railton Road was stopped. The police insisted on searching his cab for drugs. Black youth reacted violently, provoked by a whole day's harassment by the cops.
The battle was concentrated on the front line-Railton Road-heart of the Black community.
By 5:00 p.m., riot shields were out and by 6:30 p.m. the first petrol bombs were thrown.
Youths began building barricades along Railton Road and Mayall Road, setting cars alight.
Although under heavy bombardment, the police were determined not to be driven out of the area, as they had been in Bristol a year ago.
The biggest targets of the youths were two racist pubs, one of which refused to serve Blacks. The shops that were attacked were mainly the big department stores, not the small local shops.
No hostility was displayed to whites on the street, just to the police. Many young whites fought alongside Black youth. But of course, the conflict was led by Black wered by the Campaign Against Racist Laws, which organized an April 5 demonstration in London of 20,000, one of the largest Black-rights demonstrations yet held.
In a report issued in February, the Joint Committee Against Racism documented 250 attacks over the preceding eighteen months, many of them by organized rightist gangs.
One particularly horrendous attack that the police have refused to investigate was the January 18 fire-bombing of Deptford, South London. Thirteen Black teenagers attending a birthday party died in the fire.
These murders and the police inaction on the case provoked widespread anger. On March 2, up to 15,000 marched from a site near the bombing through the streets of central London, resisting efforts by the police to keep the streets clear for rush-hour traffic.
-David Martin youth because they are on the bottom of the pile-the ones who are particularly harassed by the cops. They are the victims of racialist attacks, and find it hardest to get a job.
During the height of the fighting, people from the local community relations council got Black youths to agree that they would take down the barricades if the police would withdraw. But the cops would not, and the fighting continued.
The attitude of the police was typified by an incident that took place outside Brixton Library. A police van screeched to a halt by a group of Black youth. When the police jumped out, one of them slowly and deliberately stubbed out his cigarette in the face of a young Black.
On Sunday, at least 4,000 cops were in the area. Tension built up all day, until Home Secretary William Whitelaw and David MeNee, the metropolitan police commissioner, visited the area. They were met with angry abuse from the community.
"Seig Heil," they shouted, as the home secretary and the commissioner were whisked into the police station by a side entrance.
After the departure of the top cop, fighting flared again. Unlike the night before, the police had a plan. They tried to force people out of the center of Brixton with heavy tactics and a cordon. But in the side streets, they were adopting a softer approach, talking to Black youth and urging them to go home.
What happened in Brixton was an uprising by a whole community, Black and white, against the police. A community which is sick of being treated like garbage by the cops, the bosses, and their government.
The Tories have cut back social services, slashed government grants to places like Brixton, and of course have hiked up unemployment. Government ministers have only expressed their concern at the fate of unemployed youth when they are faced with a community that fights back.
The Tories and the system they run, leaves them no option but to use repression to keep the lid on places like Brixton. They can offer no hope to the youth of the area. Their policies only create more unemployment, make more people homeless, close down more social services. There will be more Brixtons and more police repression.
Brenda Kirsch of the Lambeth Trades Council, who has investigated police brutality in her borough, told Socialist Challenge, "Black people see the police as an army of occupation. Their purpose is to keep the Black community in its place. Not only have there been arbitrary arrests, but the police contempt for the community is shown by violent public arrests, of which this weekend is a classic example. I've never been to Derry or to Belfast, but after seeing Railton Road today, I can imagine what it's like. Now they are going to present Brixton as an unpoliceable area to justify using more paramilitary tactics."
The only way to prevent riots is to offer youth a future-jobs, housing, social services. Not the misery of the dole queue [unemployment line]. And that can only be done by getting rid of the Tories and the system they represent.
Unemployed youth-Black and whiteare right to rebel against it. The whole labor movement should defend them against the repression which they will now doubtless face in the courts.