The Brixton Riots, Race, and Policing in the United Kingdom

I propose a poster on the Brixton Riots in England in the 1980s and the history of the relationship of race and policing in the UK and England’s former colonies. The Brixton Riots occurred in the Brixton Borough of London, home to many immigrants from the West Indies, in 1981 and 1985. The 1981 riot started after a misunderstanding between the police and Black residents of the neighborhood, who already felt deep mistrust and anger about increasingly aggressive and invasive police tactics, such as stop-and-search, which was legalized by the “sus” laws. The 1985 riot started after the mother of a son who was sought by the police, but was not even home at the time, was shot and paralyzed by the police. Both riots resulted in many police and residents being hurt, cars burned, and police flooding the neighborhood.

Using the UK National Archive compilation of primary source materials about the riots, I would address the contemporary reactions of the residents of Brixton and the government, as well as how the events have been fixed in historical records and cultural memory. For example, in notes from the Home Secretary to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the September 1985 riot is described as initiated by “youths laying siege,” an explicit comparison to war, which implies that the youths and people of color are the enemy in this context; it is also a comparison that reflects the way people of color were treated in English colonies by the police long before the Brixton riots.

The Scarman Report, produced in November 1981 by a commission set up to examine the June 1981 riot in Brixton, determined that the factors that led to the riot were a complex mix of social and economic deprivations felt by the immigrant residents. And the report admitted that police repression was a factor, but it stopped short of saying the police were institutionally racist, which made the report politically palatable to politicians, whose private correspondence shows that they were mostly interested in optics.

I would also present information about frankly racist pieces of evidence a far-right, anti-immigration group called the Magna Carta Campaign for the Ethos of Britain, hoped to present at the Scarman inquiry. These documents, together with conservative nationalist politician Enoch Powell’s speeches, show how the Brixton riots were used to ignite white grievance and anti-immigrant fervor in a way that connects to the situation in the US right now.

In addition, I would like to include contemporary and later reflections by the residents of Brixton, including the memoir of the reggae musician Alex Wheatley, who was at the riots. His reflections and those of others who were there are also representations of British identity.

Visually, I would represent these events with photos taken during the riots, images of the actual police reports and government correspondence, and photos of the Cherry Groce memorial in Brixton, together with an explanation of what the architecture of the memorial represents. I also have photos I myself took in Brixton.