Pandemonium Britain

Guns of Brixton: The Kick-Off of a Youth Revolt

On April 10, 1981, rioting broke out in Brixton, the unofficial capital of the British African-Caribbean community, in South London. ⁵ Enoch Powell, who had criticized Commonwealth immigration and proposed anti-discrimination legislation in the notorious “Rivers of Blood” speech delivered on April, 20 1968, had in fact warned, a few weeks earlier, that Britain was soon to be wracked by racial civil war. In fact, the first sequence of unrest had started in the St Paul-Montpellier area of Bristol a year earlier. On April 2, 1980, the police tried to make an arrest in a café where young black people gathered, and a mixed crowed attacked several officers. The rioters then looted shops and burnt down buildings. ⁶ At the origin of the Brixton outburst was Operation Swamp 81, set up by the police officer in charge of the Lambeth area. Plainclothes policemen assigned the task of fighting an upsurge of theft in the streets in that borough were stopping and searching a great number of young black men who already claimed to be the victims of police harassment; the disturbances started when officers arrested a black youth. ⁷ Buildings and shops were damaged, cars were stoned and torched, a woman was raped, and 174 people (among whom 30 civilians) were injured. ⁸

The Brixton saturnalia acted as a catalyst for riots throughout the country. For instance, on April 20, in Finsbury Park (North London), disturbances erupted at a funfair: hundreds of youths destroyed shop windows and threw stones and bottles at police officers. The following night, black youths attacked shop windows and vehicles. ⁹ On May 5, about a hundred young people who were leaving a West Indian club in Hackney (East London) cleaned out a jeweller’s shop window and battled police. ¹⁰ On June 24, a similar scenario took place, allegedly because frightened London Transport drivers had refused to stop and let a group of youngsters onto their buses. ¹¹ On July 3 and 4, skinheads and young Asians clashed in Southall (West London), a South Asian neighborhood, resulting in acts of arson and destruction. The police rapidly became the main target. About one hundred people were injured. ¹² On July 8 and 9 in Dalston (Hackney), youngsters rebelled against the police and looted goods. Some commentators implied that the concentration of police forces on the street was likely to provoke trouble. ¹³ On July 10 and 11, in the poorest council estates of Hackney, shops were looted and policemen were attacked. ¹⁴ The damage was less considerable than expected since at that stage, the police, having just experienced violent unrest, were more efficient in how they handled the events. ¹⁵ On July 10 and 11 in Handsworth, a Birmingham borough, the arrest of a man started clashes between the black and the more prosperous Asian community. ¹⁶ It is worth noting that the police had been actively visible in the area because of extensive drug trafficking—which many see as contributing to the flare-up. ¹⁷ The Daily Telegraph even described the events as the first “drug riot” and argued that the dealers had resorted to violence to have the drastic measures that the police were applying against them lightened. ¹⁸ Since the government itself described the disturbances—the most considerable street agitation since the war according to the press ¹⁹ —as criminal, the causes must also be defined as criminal. ²⁰ In Hackney, on January 14 and 17, 1983, riots erupted on grounds of police harassment against the black population: a twenty-one-year-old black man was said to have committed suicide at the Stoke Newington Police Station. ²¹ But this event did not trigger repeat riots. ²²

Similarly, there were a number of riots in 1985. In Handsworth, some West Indian youths—part of a significant ethnic minority in the borough—allegedly earned their living by dealing in drugs. ²³ A police operation had been in place for months in an attempt to solve this problem. On September 9, the taking in of a black man for questioning angered a hundred or so members of the minority Asian and West Indian communities, as well as whites of the neighborhood: the violence lasted three nights. Three weeks later in Brixton, the police raided the home of a black suspect and wounded the mother, Mrs Cherry Groce, when opening fire. This sparked two nights of rioting. The police confronted hundreds of violent demonstrators. ²⁴ Most notably, two women were raped, drivers and pedestrians were assaulted, some people were trapped in buildings on fire, and Brixton Police Station was besieged. ²⁵ Groups of youths caused havoc for a second night on October 1 in Peckham (South London), throwing petrol bombs and setting shops alight. And, in the deprived Broadwater Farm area, in Tottenham, North London, a police operation on October 5 and 6 was at the origin of a conflict. During an intervention, a sick black woman, Mrs. Cynthia Jarret, died as a result of being pushed and shoved and did not receive medical treatment early enough. The civil strife that ensued was clearly intent on taking revenge for this police action. ²⁶

Inner cities were obviously ripe grounds for rioting, since local people lacked opportunities, confined to the worst housing, were predominantly unemployed or channeled into dead-end training schemes. The protagonists were invariably young men from different ethnic backgrounds who expressed their discontent through violent acts. Many perceive these riots as particularly destructive and therefore worthy of close scholarly attention. It is therefore legitimate to try and define the underlying causes of the riots—in particular, by taking into account the varied interpretations of the riots put forth by the inquiry reports and in comparing them to the policies introduced by Margaret Thatcher’s government to address urban rioting.

Origins of the Civil Unrest and Solutions Put Forward: Pertinence or Irrelevance?

First and foremost, one should bear in mind the socioenvironmental context in which the riots broke out. In the 1980s, inner cities were among the most depressed areas of Britain: services (relating to health, education, social welfare, leisure, transport, etc.) and shops were practically nonexistent; unemployment, crime, and poverty were severe; and the residents, whether white or from minority communities, were among the most underprivileged and vulnerable. The inhabitants of such areas frequently suffered from sociospatial discrimination or territorial stigmatization (the places where they lived had bad reputations) and ethnocultural discrimination. ²⁷ These urban areas, created, and then abandoned by national economy, became places synonymous with collective violence. ²⁸

The neoliberal ideology behind Thatcherism set out to “cut back upon welfare expenditure and seek to turn welfare systems into markets wherever possible.” ²⁹ The government’s policies led to a reversal of the logic of capitalism since it cut the top personal income tax rate while hiking consumption taxes, which hit the poor the hardest. ³⁰ As social and political scientist Gamble pointed out, the twofold need for a free economy and a strong state, plus a rejection of collectivism and social democracy, is what sums up Thatcherism. ³¹

In order to solve the problem of uprisings, and more generally to deter insurrectionary aspirations, the Thatcher government came up with four reformist responses that one can refer to as palliatives: (1) community policing reform (i.e., dual reformism: the return of the local bobby who is close to the people, or the adoption of a tough-on-crime policy, depending on the context; the latter was given preference as the former had proved a failure in Handsworth for instance); (2) youth employment reform (i.e., the extension of youth training schemes, originally created in 1980, to reduce the number of truants; the measure only prevented school leavers aged sixteen and seventeen from queuing up at the job center for a while, providing them with a wage that was hardly higher than unemployment benefits); (3) race relations reform (i.e., the Commission for Racial Equality, at a national level, and the Community Relations Councils at a regional level, as well as social and community workers, which all tried to tie the grievances of black people into the local and national state structures; since they refused to acknowledge that riots were the outcome of a social and political crisis, they strove to settle demands without deep structural change); (4) American-inspired inner-city reform (i.e., the intervention of middle-class mediators between the inner city and the outside world, such as businessmen, social workers etc., who defused tensions but were unable to stop deindustrialization and inner-city decay). ³²

Regarding the last response in particular, the Thatcher government indeed decided to legislate on urban policy programs as a means of both improving the urban environment and achieving certain social and economic objectives. The living conditions in these areas were in fact difficult, especially for members of minority communities, although the first programs aimed at rehabilitating the social conditions had been initiated as early as the 1960s. In the 1980s the situation was by no means about to get better during the Conservatives’ terms in office. Indeed Margaret Thatcher herself applied her philosophy to urban policy: the economic renovation of inner cities was to be devolved to the private sector, as outlined in a 1979 press notice: “The objectives are to make our inner city places where people want to live and work, and where the private investor is prepared to put his money.” ³³ Policies whose purpose was to attract capital, resources, and jobs replaced Keynesian redistributive policies; in other words, entrepreneurial cities took over from managerial cities. First, the Greater London Council, which provided fire services, emergency planning etc., and shared responsibility for roads, housing, planning etc., was abolished in 1986. It was deemed unnecessary and irrelevant by the government, and the services it provided were divided between central government, the boroughs, and new London-wide bodies. There was therefore no longer a single local body taking a democratic lead in tackling issues such as transport or regeneration. ³⁴ Second, the budgets dedicated to health, education, housing, social services, and local authorities—services having an obvious impact on the lives of inner city residents—were cut down to encourage the private sector to invest and revive the economy. ³⁵

Third, the key tools of urban policy were governmental bodies such as the Urban Development Corporations or UDCs. ³⁶ The role of such organizations—a role that illustrated the government’s wish for more centralization since they were not controlled by local authorities—was to rely on the private sector to regenerate the economy of inner cities. ³⁷ Because local authorities, especially those that were labor controlled, seemed reluctant to collaborate with the private sector, they were put aside as early as 1986, and City Action Teams or CATs were created to guide and coordinate the renovation, as well as Task Forces that encouraged renovation programs. The resources of such organizations were weak and their impact marginal, but their main priorities were elsewhere. ³⁸ The companies that benefited from programs set up by local authorities or the government were under no obligation to share profits with the local population: the aim of the private sector was not poor relief but generating profit. ³⁹ The UDCs clearly illustrated the move away from social welfare concerns towards the trickle-down effect from economic revival ⁴⁰ and proved to be symbols of managerialism or entrepreneurialism rather than symbols of democratic accountability. ⁴¹

Though UDCs proved to be short-lived organizations that failed to fundamentally tackle the deep-seated socioeconomic problems of inner cities, one ought to acknowledge that they did improve deteriorated areas from a physical point of view. The problem having obviously been defined in terms of places (with policies based on dealing with particular zones, in other words policies which in theory should have a visible, long-lasting impact, and thus generate hope) and not in terms of individuals (measures that would have reduced inequalities regardless of where they were found), ⁴² the privatization of the inner city inevitably led to gentrification, along class, race, and gender lines. Even though the original residents paid many of the costs of regeneration in economic, social, and environmental terms, they received little benefit from the trickle-down effect. In Parkinson’s words, “instead, the jobs were created at the top end of the labour market in the skilled services sector—just as the houses were built at the top end of the private housing market.” ⁴³ One can also add that services that cater to higher-earning and more privileged citizens also moved in. According to Neil Smith’s 1996 study, the concept not only referred to the simple process whereby upper and lower middle classes invade working-class areas in which shabby cottages or larger Victorian houses have been upgraded, until a large number of “the original working class occupiers are displaced and the social character of the district is changed,” as defined by British sociologist Glass, ⁴⁴ but also to a much broader phenomenon: “gentrification is no longer about a narrow and quixotic oddity in the housing market but has become the leading residential edge of a much larger endeavor: the class remake of the central urban landscape.” ⁴⁵ In other words, these central tools of conservative urban policy essentially abandoned, uprooted, and displaced entire deprived communities, which were not in a position to resist the process, and broke the community fabric, thus giving somewhat the illusion that poverty had simply been eradicated.

So who really benefited from the achievements of these programs? To illustrate that point, one can turn to the case of the London Docklands UDC, which cut 3,760 jobs between 1981 and 1990 instead of creating 200,000 as had been planned. ⁴⁶ It is obvious that the local population did not benefit from the renovation, namely, in terms of new jobs, new houses, or improved environment. Michael Parkinson put particular emphasis on the fact that in London especially the needs of inhabitants were not taken into account, and that they were losers as a result: ⁴⁷ jobs created there were for the highly qualified, and houses built there were only for high earners. ⁴⁸ Sociologist and philosopher Henri Lefebvre’s concept of “right to the city,” as reinterpreted by geographer David Harvey in 2008, ⁴⁹ makes reference to “the freedom to make and remake our cities and ourselves” as “the most neglected of our human rights.” Urbanization did become one of the driving forces of capitalism, as Lefebvre had predicted. ⁵⁰ Over and above this, UDCs regenerated targeted areas—as often the criteria of selection were not made explicit ⁵¹ —while the adjacent neighborhoods experienced a worsening of their situation due to a lack of investment. Hence the creation of “islands of private excellence amidst seas of public squalor,” and the fact that dilapidation proved stronger than renovation. ⁵² In several cases, it was expected that the renovation of an area would draw a new population to replace the initial population, presumably so as to create top-of-the-range neighborhoods—so much so that UDCs were described by Edwards as a “new urban glamour policy.” ⁵³ Massive quantities of funds were wasted inasmuch as—as was revealed by the national audit bureau in a study on projected subsidies aimed at urban renewal—in certain cases programs would not have seen the light of day had subsidies not been made available. However, Parkinson also voiced serious doubt as regards the necessity of investing by no means small sums of public money in top-of-the-range building projects that would have had all chances of going through anyway. What had become a private sector–managed urban renovation quickly transformed into economic renovation, and the goals sought by the private sector became the goals sought by the entire community. ⁵⁴

The supposed outcome of the “enterprise culture” was the increased empowerment of the citizen as consumer, so that they would acquire a keener sense of social participation and give up the dependency culture. Yet this participation could only be realized on an economic level: the underprivileged of inner cities were thus excluded from it. One should not forget that UDCs were not accountable to residents, whose participation was outright rejected. ⁵⁵ Docklands actors often referred to UDCs as colonialist for instance, because their structure of governance was entrepreneurial: in other words, it excluded local influence, brought in the private sector into a form of local corporatism, and laid the basis for massive change. ⁵⁶ It is indeed relevant to analyze the regeneration of inner cities and the process of gentrification in terms of the colonial analogy and to talk about internal colonialism. Indeed, colonization amounts to invading territories for the purpose of settlement and resource exploitation, usually through violent means towards populations deemed inferior, who are then denied the right to the city and revoked citizenship. As American sociologist Robert Blauner has argued, internal colonialism involves cultural persecution, political domination, and economic exploitation of a section of the community by another. ⁵⁷ Protest movements such as riots can thus be considered as “collective responses to colonized status” and neocolonial discrimination. ⁵⁸ Hence one can argue that requests for the end of “symbolic violences” ⁵⁹ and for redistribution are linked. ⁶⁰ What is more, Anne Power and Rebecca Tunstall posited that “causing trouble was a commonly known way of asserting an alternative, defiant, anti-authority and destructive image to compensate for the inability to succeed or participate in a more organized way in mainstream society.” ⁶¹ In fact, rioting amounts to refusing the political language, and fighting on one’s territory gives a chance to win. ⁶² Conveyed by the media in this way, this form of takeover, of intervention in the political debate, may turn out to be worthwhile, as institutions and politicians may grant extra funds to those run-down areas. However, since it is both put forward in the public space by the media and repressed by the authorities, one can argue that the notion of riot, or what Mucchielli identified as a “basic form of protest,” ⁶³ rather relates back to a political vacuum, ⁶⁴ and to what Paolo Freire referred to as the “culture of silence”: in other words, alienated and oppressed individuals in colonized territories, and by extension in highly developed countries, internalize negative images of themselves (images created and imposed by the oppressor); consequently neither dialogue nor self-government can be envisaged. ⁶⁵ This sense of powerlessness accounts for the low inner-city turnouts at elections, especially among young people. ⁶⁶ As is now well known, the dispossessed tend to believe that whoever comes to power, little will change for them: rioting has therefore become an integral part of democratic representation today.

Some of the heaviest criticism the government faced dealt with its inability to establish partnerships with the local authorities and communities concerned. This was at the root of the government’s failure to eradicate the major problems of inner cities despite spending more than £10 billion between 1979 and 1991. No improvement had been observed in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle, Merseyside, or Sheffield in economic and social matters. ⁶⁷ Evidence seems to indicate that many programs proved to be illusions of inclusion. ⁶⁸ In the late 1980s, UDCs understood that the physical rehabilitation of inner cities went hand in hand with the creation of social infrastructure and investment in human capital, without which it was difficult to attract workers who were sufficiently skilled to occupy the new service sector jobs and who could afford to live in the renovated zones. ⁶⁹ The areas selected for urban renewal were not always among the most deprived or the most suitable for intervention. ⁷⁰ In addition, one must point out that the local authorities tended to have their own interests in mind (keeping their most destitute citizens to attract subsidies) rather than the benefits of collaborations with the private sector or governmental agencies. ⁷¹ In short, physical renovation prevailed over social rehabilitation, and the gap between classes and neighborhoods grew wider. ⁷² Undoubtedly, private solutions did not solve public problems. Besides, improving the situation was not made any easier by a combination of phenomena: the deregulation and gradual privatization of public services that the low-income residents depend on; the fact that high technology was supported to the detriment of manufacturing industries; deindustrialization; the worsening of working conditions of factory workers and the lowering of their wages; and the reluctance of the government to tackle crises affecting public services and to deal with the strong increase in housing prices. Therefore, deprived inner-city populations as a whole were constantly marginalized by the authorities; hence a high number of people experienced feelings of revolt and regarded governmental action or inaction as mere provocation. ⁷³ It should be reminded that Thatcherism enabled the richest fifth of the British population to increase their amount of income from 37 to 43 percent. ⁷⁴

In 1981, following the remarkably violent Brixton riots, the government set up a commission headed by a well-known liberal judge, Lord Scarman, to report on the events that had occurred. In fact, Margaret Thatcher was concerned ethnic minorities might be “reacting to police brutality and racial discrimination,” but she countered the argument that the doctrinaire monetarism her government had embraced was to blame. ⁷⁵ Released in November of 1981, the main thrust of the Scarman Report was precisely that these “spontaneous” riots were directly related to systemic discrimination—racial or otherwise. ⁷⁶ In fact, Scarman advocated that the eradication of discrimination and unequal housing and employment opportunities should be made a priority, and he defended an already waning strategy of multiculturalism to integrate minority communities:

The attack on racial disadvantage must be more direct than it has been. It must be coordinated by central government, who with local authorities must ensure that funds made available are directed to specific areas of racial disadvantage. I have in mind particularly education and employment. A policy of coordinated attack on racial disadvantage inevitably means that the ethnic minorities will enjoy for a time a positive discrimination in their favor. But it’s a price worth paying if it accelerates the elimination of the unsettling factor of racial disadvantage from the social fabric of the United Kingdom. ⁷⁷

Departing from media representations, the Scarman report did not label the Brixton rioters as dysfunctional and pathological. ⁷⁸ Its conclusions were similar to those produced by the Kerner Commission set up by President Johnson to throw light on the causes of the riots that had taken place in the United States in 1967. ⁷⁹ The Scarman Report also echoed the Hunt Committee Report on immigrants in youth services, published in 1967, which stressed the fact that if the nation wished to avoid seeing new racial confrontations, then it was necessary to remedy racial prejudice and divisions between minority communities. ⁸⁰

Also, the Scarman report defended the measures taken by the police to confront the rioters, while insisting that the police share responsibility in the riots, owing to its inefficiency but mostly owing to its insensitivity when dealing with populations from distressed areas and its rather provocative policing (an attitude that showed itself beyond the confines of riots). ⁸¹ Putting aside for the moment the fact that some of the policemen were indeed racist—Scarman argued that there was no institutional racism ⁸² —his report argued that the problem was linked to insufficient representation of minority communities inside the police force. ⁸³ According to the Ministry of Justice, in 1986 black and Asian police officers represented a mere 0.7 percent of the police force. ⁸⁴ The government welcomed the Scarman Report since it did not advocate radical changes. ⁸⁵ Still, according to the right-wing Daily Mail, the police were told to ignore black crime and there should be no positive discrimination. The left criticized what it saw as a racist pathologization of black people and the failure to explain the underlying reasons for the antagonism between residents in the rioting neighborhoods and the police. ⁸⁶ Radicals accused Scarman of providing an incomplete and hardly enthusiastic critique of the police. ⁸⁷ As Bowling, Parmar, and Caretta put it, “for these commentators, unless the police could be brought under democratic control, continued frustration and anger were inevitable and further disorder a clear possibility.” ⁸⁸

Two days after the 1985 Handsworth riots, the government rejected the idea of having another public inquiry into social problems, and endorsed the report put together by the head of West Midlands police, Geoffrey Dear, whose main conclusion was that the blame be placed on the criminal activities of drug dealers. ⁸⁹ Solomos contended that this refusal to commission the same type of report as in 1981 simply confirmed that the government considered the social aspects of the Scarman report with ambiguity, since it had already vested the responsibility of the riots in a law and order department, namely, the Home Office. ⁹⁰ Moreover, the government’s reaction implied that the Scarman report had failed to determine the causes of the riots and that it had contributed toward the eruption of new riots. ⁹¹ Yet there was a strong demand for such an inquiry, as well as for the implementation of Scarman’s social recommendations. ⁹² Still, the City Council and the West Midlands County Council initiated two independent reports at the local level. The Silverman Report—written by Julius Silverman, a Labour politician, for the City Council—dismissed the criminal conspiracy theory and argued that chronic police harassment, unemployment, and discrimination in Handsworth constituted the main causes of the riots. In the guidelines he put forward, Silverman advised that as a consequence, the Inner City Partnership Program and the Community Program Scheme should be extended, that an additional ten Afro-Caribbean teachers (five of which should work in Handsworth) should be recruited to meet the special needs of Afro-Caribbean pupils, that the police should be able to engage extra beat officers for community policing, and that a special unit of shield-trained and properly equipped policemen should be available any time. Two independent assessors to the investigation amended the text and guidance, highlighting the need for closer attention to the racial discrimination issue as well as for identifying (and not imposing) solutions from bottom up. The black community rejected both the Police report and the City Council Report and demanded that a community-led investigation should be conducted. Hence, black and Asian intellectuals and important figures submitted A Different Reality, a report commissioned by the West Midlands County Council, in which they argued racism was the underlying cause of urban dissent, and they declared that “violent resistance is now permanently on the agenda while oppression and the denial of rights and resources continue.” As a result, three inquiries were directed, and all three provided different conclusions. ⁹³ This lack of consensus gave the media a free hand to convey their own explanation: according to Solomos and Back, ⁹⁴ it enabled them to spread racist representations. One should also mention that despite the violence that had erupted in the context of the Broadwater Farm riots, no official inquiry was required. Haringey council commissioned the Labour peer Lord Gifford to chair an investigation. Presented in July 1986, the conclusions of the report basically drew on those of the Scarman report. ⁹⁵ This unofficial document too proved that the government refused to see the riots otherwise than as criminal acts.

The underlying causes of urban riots are still a matter for debate. In his study of the inner city in the early eighties, Harrison quoted some of those who participated in the Dalston riots in July 1981. Their grievances clearly point to unemployment, discrimination, police abuse, colonialism, and slavery. ⁹⁶ Yet the aim of the Thatcher government was to reduce the social explanation to a minimum, and insist on the simply criminal nature of the riots. Criminalization was a way for the then weak government not only to maintain control but also to distance itself from a social or political interpretation in order to weaken the link between deprivation and dissent. ⁹⁷ For example, Home Secretary Douglas Hurd (the fact that the Environment minister was no longer in charge was also in line with the government’s rationale of criminalization) asserted that the Handsworth riots of 1985 were “not a social phenomenon but crimes.” He dismissed the nexus between urban disturbances and social deprivation, stating that “to suppose that the people who burned shops, looted, and, in fact, brought about death were driven by despair is, I think, absurd.” According to this logic, it was up to the police to solve the problem of urban rioting by tougher policing and force. ⁹⁸ It is relevant to point out that after the events, the police’s main demand was to use plastic bullets in order to be in a position to defend the population. ⁹⁹

Before Scarman’s conclusions had even been published, the government set up an Immediate Response Unit within the police forces that was to be in a position to quickly counter urban disturbances. ¹⁰⁰ As a result, the police had been given “proper” equipment to deal with riots, namely a range of “shields, more vehicles, longer truncheons, and sufficient stocks of rubber bullets and water cannon.” ¹⁰¹ Moreover, the government chose to focus on the report’s guidance relating to security measures. Thus, the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 allowed the government to implement two of these recommendations: the consultations between the police and local authorities (Part X), and the strengthening of police powers in terms of arrest and search (Parts I to IV). ¹⁰² What is more, according to the Public Order Act 1986 (Parts I and III), there were henceforth five types of penal offences against law and order, namely, rioting, violent disorder, affray, fear or provocation of violence and harassment, and alarm or distress. ¹⁰³ This set of tools clearly strengthened the penal apparatus. After the 1985 Handsworth riots, the government took the same approach they had taken four years earlier and only followed the recommendations in the (official) report drafted by the West Midlands head of police. Such a report was a godsend for the government, since it accused drug dealers of having initiated the riots to save their drug business (an interpretation that was refuted by the Silverman Report and the West Midlands County Council Report):

There is firm evidence to suggest that the disorders were at the outset orchestrated by local drug dealers who had become fearful for the demise of their livelihoods. . . . Similarly there is evidence that the riots were fuelled and organized by persons who require the supply of drugs to continue their normal lifestyle. ¹⁰⁴

Furthermore, it claimed that the relations between the local community and the police were good, and thus recommended measures purely pertaining to security. The Silverman Report argued that undeniably, security measures were to be considered, but as shown previously, it insisted on the necessity of adding social measures to them. ¹⁰⁵

Indeed both the Silverman ¹⁰⁶ and the Scarman ¹⁰⁷ reports insisted on two things: the insensitivity of the police as well as their practice of harassment. The behavior of the police had thus contributed to the riots. The conclusions of Dylis Hill’s book argue along the same lines: she identified one of the main causes of the rioting as the way the police were leading their operations on a daily basis; they seemed to be able to decide who could walk the streets and under which conditions, which brought about a deterioration of the relations between the police and citizens. Those who were stopped and searched claimed to be the victims of harassment. ¹⁰⁸ It is not unusual to hear inner city youths refer to the police as a “legit gang” to whom they want to give a taste of their medicine. If one goes by the research work done on relations between the police and the public, a vast majority of those stopped were among the young, the unemployed, or belonged to ethnic communities—and most belonged to all three categories at once. ¹⁰⁹ Ethnic youths, especially black youths, were systematically associated with the “youth culture” and gang culture; therefore, they posed a potential threat to society and authority, attempting to self-govern their own lives. Roche and Tucker argued that studying the youth enables to take stock of the well-being of society: the state of mind this section of the community was in at the time challenged the government as it proved things had gone wrong in economic and social terms. ¹¹⁰ To Modood et al., these black youths were “exemplars of youth culture.” Media portrayed black youth as particularly keen on hanging around in the streets, listening to loud music without showing concern about how others might be affected, wearing branded clothes and accessories, driving top-of-the-line cars, as being violent and disruptive, and living from drug-trafficking. ¹¹¹ Police officers are not immune to such stereotypes. The logic goes something like this: petty crime soars in the context of unemployment, and since unemployment rates tend to be higher than average among black youths, the latter tend to be more involved in petty crime. Therefore, the police target and harass this section of the population in order to catch offenders. ¹¹² Not only was harassment a natural behavior to police officers, but also it was presented by higher authorities as a duty they had to perform. For instance, in 1981, Superintendent Dick Holland, talking about young black men of “Rastafarian appearance” declared that this was “the sort of discrimination and prejudice we want from police officers. This is what clears up the crime.” As a matter of fact, the black community was allegedly likely to be influenced by Rastafarianism, a spiritual movement and culture which was defined in the press as threatening and un-British. ¹¹³ Deep distrust and mutual resentment therefore clearly characterized the relationship between (black) youths and the police. Still, various sources, among which the rather sympathetic Silverman Report, suggested that the black community were to a certain extent paranoid: “The feeling of being discriminated against is an important part of the social and psychological background of Handsworth.” ¹¹⁴

According to Lawless, these black youths represented a menace to society inasmuch as they embodied in the eyes of some an anti-British and deviant culture. ¹¹⁵ The Scarman Report rejected the accusation that the police was racist, but this state of affairs was not really surprising. In the 1950s racism could be observed in official documents, such as the one published by the Home Office in 1953 on colored people seeking employment in the United Kingdom. This report envisioned a future with increased drug trafficking, riots, immoral lifestyles, and reliance on welfare. ¹¹⁶ Furthermore, a minority community hierarchy could be reconstructed from such official documents: South Asians (Indians in particular) were described as culturally superior and successful when compared with working-class whites and West Indians; the latter were said to live outside society and social norms—the same reproach was addressed to Asians, but in their case, the close ties that exist within the community were a way to face threats from outside ¹¹⁷ —and to be “slow mentally” and “potentially violent.” ¹¹⁸ In the 1990s, racist observations of this kind were no longer explicit in official publications. As Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies publications point out, decolonization turned black people into barbarians, and the emergence of black settlements led to fears of unrest: the image of the black man shifted from being an inferior human being to being a problem, ¹²⁰ and black crime became “the signifier of the crisis in urban colonies.” ¹²¹ The same publications also proposed a neo-Marxist theory of racism according to which the economic crises of the 1970s and 1980s had produced a racism based on culture rather than on biology: individuals, whose culture was not purely British, were said to lack loyalty to Britain. ¹²² It is relevant to note that in the early 1980s, the far right of the conservative party, for instance, even put forward serious proposals for the annual forced repatriation of one hundred thousand New Commonwealth immigrants. ¹²³

However, legislation aiming at protecting minority community was available. In their design to prevent discrimination on racial grounds, Labour had introduced Race Relations Acts. The last version, amended in 1976, defined direct and indirect discrimination (section 1), and created the Commission for Racial Equality (section 43). It stated that racial direct and indirect discrimination regarding employment, housing, or the provision of goods were illegal, but this piece of legislation did not mention racial harassment or race-related violence. The act tackled discrimination through legal procedures, but it did not constrain employers to abide by it. Also, it did not include government services such as the police and allowed discrimination in some cases. ¹²⁴ In spite of Scarman’s conclusions and the fact that in 1983, the CRE proposed the government reforms, Thatcher refused to strengthen the act or to make up for the gaps. ¹²⁵ Still, Scarman had claimed that the 1976 Act had failed to have a major impact on the roots of social disadvantage. ¹²⁶ Indeed, according to a study carried out by the CRE and the Policy Studies Institute, in 1984–1985 for example, about 30 percent of employers offering manual and nonmanual jobs in London, Manchester, and Birmingham admitted to practicing discrimination against West Indian and Asian applicants. This proportion was similar to that recorded in the 1970s. ¹²⁷ The contribution of the Conservatives regarding the fight against racial discrimination in the 1980s was limited to passing the Public Order Act 1986, which stated more clearly the ban on all incitement to racial hatred (sections 18-23). ¹²⁸ Consequently, the government did not address the key problem of institutional or structural racism and the whole discriminatory system around criminal justice, immigration, policing, schooling, housing, employment etc., and endorsed Scarman’s assertion that there was no institutional racism in Britain. What is more, it was obvious that police officers were not the only ones to show racist tendencies, and one must stress the fact that antagonism between minority communities—springing from cultural differences but above all from certain communities being more successful than others ¹²⁹ —also contributed to the outbreak of riots. It is therefore pertinent to make a quick reference to the hostility between the Asian and Afro-Caribbean communities. This antagonism was not based on race but on culture and class. In fact, it is worth pinpointing that the evidence shows the degree of achievement of the Indian community for instance, has been diametrically opposed to that of the West Indian community, be it in terms of employment, housing, or education. Actually, the Indians seem to have succeeded in making the most of Thatcherite policies thanks to their traditional lifestyle, their faith in upward social mobility, their ability to resist racism, and their being identified with positively stereotyped groups. ¹³⁰ In the context of the Handsworth riots—unlike Brixton, Handsworth possessed a large Asian population—the Asians were presented by the press and by politicians as victims of black (and white) youths. Fazakarley sees a parallel with Barthes’s decoding of the image of a black soldier saluting the French flag and suggests that the Asian shopkeeper embodies the migrant who should be looked up to, as they made theirs British values such as hard work and economic self-dependence, and as Asians do not produce social deviancy. ¹³¹ While the Asian community tends to consider the West Indian community as the dregs of society, West Indians maintain that the Asians subjugate their community much more than white people do. They own many businesses, for instance, but they do not employ black people (they traditionally rely on family members), and they do not buy from the few African storeowners. ¹³² This accounts for the attacks on shop premises belonging to business people in the 1980s: in a way, they stood for an economic and institutional symbol of oppression and proved as unpopular as the police, who similarly experienced material damage in Brixton in 1981 for example. ¹³³ To a certain extent, one can argue that West Indian people depend on the Asian community, as they get supplies from them. Furthermore, both communities are opponents as, in deprived neighborhoods, they “scrap for dwindling government support in housing, jobs and community projects.” ¹³⁴

The government’s stance on how the events should be interpreted and therefore managed was undoubtedly related to the fact that Margaret Thatcher held that the trouble-makers—meaning rioters, muggers, or strikers if one refers to the speech she gave in Birmingham to the Conservative Rally on April 19, 1979 ¹³⁵ —were simply young men from broken homes with no “sense of respect for the law, for the neighborhood and indeed for themselves,” and that repressive remedies were called for before anything else. ¹³⁶ The youth problem was simultaneously criminalized and racialized through the image of the mugger. Mugging embodied multiple fears and crises, and legitimized the establishment of authoritarian politics to restore order. That “transactional reality” according to Foucault, both defined and responded to the crisis. ¹³⁷ Both Hurd and Thatcher explicitly established a link between the collapsing of family values and disturbances, and implicitly suggested that the problem was predominantly a black problem. ¹³⁸ Most notable is the fact that both the Scarman ¹³⁹ and the Silverman Reports denounced the failure of the black family system to adapt to British culture. As Fazakarley contended, the matriarchal nature of West Indian families is subverted by the need for mothers to find employment. Then black youths appeared to be more likely to be drawn into crime. ¹⁴⁰ The popular press helped spread the Prime Minister’s viewpoint by suggesting that the riots were directly linked with immigration—turning young black men in particular into the source of all evil ¹⁴¹ —which in a certain way allowed to justify the anti-(colored) immigration policy that the Conservatives had been leading since coming to power in 1979. (The most striking feature of this policy certainly remains the British Nationality Act of 1981, which put forward a definition of British citizenship as well as scattered measures relative to immigration. Basically, citizenship was no longer granted according to the place of birth, and it no longer conferred the right of abode. Also, three categories of citizens were established. ¹⁴² ) A new stage in racialized criminality was even reached: in fact, both the local and national press moved the Birmingham confrontations to the borough of Handsworth when they had actually occurred in Lozells, a neighboring borough. In fact, Lozells did not conjure up the racially coded image that the press was willing to convey, whereas Handsworth and black crime were synonymous. Consequently, the petty black delinquent progressed to the rank of black rioter, and he graduated from being guilty of crime against private individuals to being guilty of crime against society itself. ¹⁴³

A large section of the conservative party and the popular press argued that the riots were linked to, or even generated by, immigration, since an alien disease had afflicted peaceful and law-abiding Britain. ¹⁴⁴ But the theory according to which nonwhite youths were at the source of disturbances is challenged since white youths also took part in the riots. ¹⁴⁵ While black-led, the riots were multiracial, and in some cases were totally white. ¹⁴⁶ Rioters represented the population of an area, not an ethnic group. ¹⁴⁷ Thus, one can argue that the predominant common denominator between the rioters was class, and related daily experience of deprivation, rejection, and sociopolitical invisibility. According to Solomos, the national anomie was not the result of race and alien cultural values, but manifestly race was central to the eruption of riots, given that young blacks were confronted to a highest number of obstacles. ¹⁴⁸ As Avenel averred, the sociology of riots is best understood via “a sociology of work and the new form of spatial forms of inscription of class relations.” Actually, some sociologists lay stress on the socioeconomic impulse behind the riots, that is, a genuine structural process that has produced aggressive social personalities among the inner city youth. The factory context (mass unemployment, job insecurity, the disintegration of the working class, which had become socially and politically invisible, etc.), as indicated previously, is also part and parcel of the riot phenomenon. ¹⁴⁹ But it was apparently simpler for the authorities to stigmatize individuals rather than adopt a sociological approach questioning the way society functions. As a consequence, the authorities seemed to be most worried on account of the violence, but apparently felt no concern regarding the discrimination experienced by the inhabitants of inner cities and their living conditions. Thatcherism was evidently an undemocratic process. As John put it, “the injustice machine accelerates in the cause of law and order, and the safeguarding of people’s rights and civic entitlements is considered an almost obscene concern.” ¹⁵⁰

The yearning of the most underprivileged section of the community for recognition and citizenship was obviously based on a combined feeling of abandonment, despair, and injustice associated with some territorial identity—not on some distinctive ethnic identity. Intransigent government, conspicuous consumption by the yuppies, inequalities and perceived polarization, rapid rise in unemployment, major conflicts such as the miners’ strikes, increased awareness through increased media coverage, and increased aggressive media coverage: these are the main arguments one can put forward to evidence that these specific riots were a symptom of the 1980s.

Conclusion

What stands out from this postmortem of the rioting phenomenon is that—as Power and Tunstall averred—social and racial inequalities condition conflicts between communities and with representatives of law and order, conflicts that can, at any moment, turn into riots that can be called social riots. ¹⁵¹ Thatcherism, that is, policies of monetarism, privatization, and self-help, as well as rising unemployment, and legislation being discussed and passed, must have constituted a powerful provocation that triggered the 1981 riots. Subsequently, the punitive measures applied by the Conservatives, as a consequence of these riots to a certain extent, as well as their inadequate urban policy, their refusal to face reality and follow the more socially oriented recommendations expressed in inquiry reports for ideological reasons, only stirred up the revolt of second-class citizens by the middle of the decade.

It seems that the youths of deprived districts only found violence as a political reaction, in order to call attention to their grievances. The problem in this case is that mugging, (illegitimate, criminal) rebellion does not turn into sustained political organization that can influence decision-making; it is therefore self-destructive, subordinated insurgents having no clearly stated demand as well as no real opponent. As Bachmann and Leguennec posited, rioters confront “an enemy without a face”; they confront those who ignore them on a daily basis, condemn them to social worthlessness, and lead them to a deadlock. ¹⁵² At the end of the day, they get stuck in a vicious circle: the prejudices that link rioting with a certain social and racial profile are but reinforced ¹⁵³ —and so is the score of far-right parties in elections. Moreover, sociogeographic apartheid grows worse inasmuch as services and shops are driven out or deterred from setting up—one can point to insurance premiums skyrocketing in areas wracked by violence ¹⁵⁴ —or destroyed. Consequently, reasons to rise up multiply in the eyes of politically and socially invisible populations dwelling in Pandemonium. ¹⁵⁵ Last but not least, rioters cannot win against the oppressor since they ultimately constitute socially unorganized and racially divided masses. To quote Harman, “capitalism divides and rules.” ¹⁵⁶ To a certain extent, these urban waves of subcultural protest movements contributed to the democratization of British society in the sense that they brought the issue to the forefront and made the population concerned visible. Having recourse to unorthodox methods to express political views then might be considered as inseparable from the pursuit of social change. But clearly, there was still a long way to go, since more understandable and conventional forms of political demand ought to be devised by those who feel they are left out of mainstream society.