The Brixton Riot remembered...

[max_tranmere]

I saw the London Mayor Boris Johnson on TV this morning being interviewed in Brixton, talking about the commemeration (the riot happened 30 years ago today). The interviewer asked him if he thinks it right that there should be a commemeration of something where nearly 300 Police Officers were injured and many building looted and burnt down. Johnson said it should be because the Police learnt a lot from what happened, the Scarman Enquiry was launched and improvements to Policing were introduced (although I seem to recall that nearly 20 years later after the Police cocked up the investigation into the murder of Stephen Lawrence it was said by some that most of Scarman's recommendations had been totally ignored).

I remember the Brixton Riots well, I was at school in north London and it was all over the news. Under the 'sus' laws the Police were able to pull people in for very little and apparently if you went through Brixton in the weeks and months before the riot you would see rows of young black men pinned up against walls by the Police being searched, and people were regularly lifted from their homes, thrown into Police vans, and taken away. The community were only going to put up with this for so long before the area exploded - and it did.

Some say that Margaret Thatcher introduced PACE (the Police And Criminal Evidence Act) as a knee-jerk response to the riot and because everything stopped being about the Police operating on a 'hunch' from then on, and instead everything had to become much more evidence-based, that this put the Police on the back-foot where they often had to let people go who they knew were guilty as the evidence wasn't there, and as a result the streets of London are much more dangerous now.

People's views please.

[RoddersUK]

I think the knee jerk reaction was racially based.
All over the UK the fuzz generally knew who was doing what to who and with what and being able to pat em down whenever they were seen was productive. The police controlled the streets and I wish they did again.
Now, the streets of all our towns are more dangerous because of the soft peddaling towards coloured people and non UK residents.
If non whites are committing criminal acts why the fuck should we back peddal and let them get on with it?
For fucks sake, if we committed a crime the fuzz would be all over us and that stinks. If non whites, or non UK people, want equality then that means they should be collared exactly the same as UK people are.
This is not a racist rant but a view of what is happening now, though I reakon that some pratt out there will charge me with racism.

[max_tranmere]

Rodders. I personally can't stand politcally-correct Policing, it is something that has happened in earnest since the Macpherson Report into the Stephen Lawrence murder investigation, and the media have had a field-day ever since. As far as I recall Macpherson never said there was any racism involved in the Police's initial investigation into the Lawrence murder, but said there was 'institutionalised racism' in the Police in general and there was a 'canteen culture' of back-chat and racist attitudes across the Met as a whole.

The television media went to town with this and reported it as if there had been racist officers involved in the initial murder investigaton and implied the reasons the murders weren't sent-down was because the victim was black and the officers basically didn't care, and couldn't be bothered to investigate properly, for that reason. We then had a theatre play and a prime-time TV drama entitled 'The Colour Of Justice', books written, and any tom, dick, or harry was more than welcome to go on TV and lambast the Police about anything and they were given massive air-time.

London used to be the envy of American cities with its low-crime rates, now we are more violent than New York. Well done to the TV media, you f***ed up everything!!!

[one eyed jack]

I was stopped and searched by the police and I was with two white guys.

It didnt bother me as I never had anything on me but I did wonder on what grounds they wanted to stop and search me at the time. It wasnt as if I was a young tearaway hooligan.

Actually I was rather a jolly good chap in my youth...When I wasnt creating mischief.

I was too happy go lucky to dwell on it being based on racism but my encounters with the police were never hostile and never did I detect that air of racism I often heard from my other black friends but then if you were wearing big puffa jackets, gold teeth an generally unruly I would have to admit if I was a white guy I'd be a bit intimidated and wondering if they were packing blades too.

[max_tranmere]

There are a lot of people packing blades in London now and I seem to remember after the murder of Ben Kinsella in Islington the Tory opposition said that if they became the next Government they would introduce zero-tolerance for those carrying knives. They are now the Government and seem to have ditched the policy. Another betrayl by David Cameron.

[number 6]

Before the Brixton riots,blacs were treated like scum by police,the riots changed that to some extent although to this day black people are still treated badl by the average copper.

[steve56]

1981 was when the Sus laws started soon after the Brixton Riot

[max_tranmere]

It was the other way round. The sus laws, namely being able to stop someone or nick them just on suspicion, was what caused the riot.

[steve56]

Really they tried to bring back those Sus laws in the 90s

[steve56]

Of course yes as The Ruts recorded Sus in 1980