Riots through history: What has changed since Brixton 40 years ago?
Photo credit: Richard Vogel/AP/Shutterstock
People took to the streets up and down America last summer, to make their voices heard. “Black lives matter,” was chanted and not just in America.
The needless murder of George Floyd shocked the world, and seemed to wake it from its slumber, with similar protests popping up in cities across the globe. But these protests calling for change were not the first of their kind.
Notably, in the UK, the past 50 years have seen many riots including Notting Hill in 1976, Brixton in 1981, and London in 2011.
The last 100 years have seen at least 27 race-related riots take place in the UK. The US, by contrast, has seen at least 81.
This year marks 40 years since the Brixton riots, 10 years since the London riots, and will be a year on from the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement that has continued to grow.
What has changed since Brixton, and more importantly, how can we ensure riots, across the globe, result in change, and not just chaos?
Brixton, 1981
Operation Swamp, a stop and search initiative used by plainclothes police to attempt to cut crime in Brixton, was a key contributor to the start of the Riots. The relationship between the police and marginalised communities was already frosty.
Then prime minister Margaret Thatcher added fuel to the flames with her assertion that the UK “might be rather swamped by people of a different culture”. Brixton’s population included many Black people.
Dubbed as a preventative measure to stop anyone who police suspected may be about to carry out a crime, Operation Swamp resulted in 943 people being stopped and searched within five days. Of this number, 82 arrests were made.
Many believed Operation Swamp unfairly targeted Black and minority ethnicities.
The trigger for the Brixton Riots was a row involving an injured Black man, Michael Bailey, who had been stabbed by a group of young Black men. Police claim to have offered to take him to hospital in the back of a police car as it would be quicker than a taxi.
Onlookers believed Bailey was being arrested and pulled him from the car.
Unsubstantiated rumours of police brutality against Bailey on April 10 saw the start of the riots unfold.
In total, more than 5,000 people took part in the following two days of riots, with looting, arson, and violence ensuing.
London, 2011
Mark Duggan’s death, later ruled a “lawful killing” by an officer, sparked the London riots which began in Tottenham in August 2011.
Police stopped a taxi Duggan was travelling in, believing him to have just picked up a gun.
Marcus Hall, the officer who killed Duggan, said that when the taxi was stopped, he was “100 per cent sure” he saw Duggan holding a gun so shot in self-defence. The taxi driver later told the jury he did not see Duggan holding a gun.
For five days, looting and arson took place across the capital, with copycat riots taking place across the country subsequently.
Race and class were cited as two of the main reasons for the riots.
In an article for The Guardian, Matthew Ryder questioned how the killing could be deemed lawful when the jury concluded it was improbable Duggan was in possession of a gun when he stood on the pavement before the police.
“How could it have been lawful to shoot a man who was not in possession of a gun and therefore could not have posed a deadly threat?”
Black Lives Matter, 2020
Last summer saw a global wave of protests that has continued to grow into a wider discussion about inequality and race.
George Floyd’s murder sparked protests across the globe after footage was circulated of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck for almost eight minutes, resulting in his death.
In the footage, Floyd could be heard pleading for his mother and telling the officers he could not breathe.
During the aftermath, calls for defunding the police and police reformation were strong.
An important distinction between the BLM protests, and the London-based riots, is that the BLM protests spread across the globe.
What has changed?
Legally, in the UK, the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 outlawed race discrimination in areas not covered under the 1976 legislation. The Act also required more organisations, public and private, to promote racial equality.
Arguably most important, however, the Act made chief police officers responsible for discrimination carried out by their officers.
In 1993, a British teenager, Stephen Lawrence, was murdered in a racially motivated attack. The Government ordered an inquiry into his death which concluded the Met Police investigation and actions had been incompetent. A total of 70 recommendations were made, police reformation being one. Twenty years after the inquiry was launched, 67 recommendations had been implemented either fully or partly. First-aid training for officers and allowing for acquitted suspects to be prosecuted again when “fresh and compelling” evidence had emerged, were two of the major changes implemented after Lawrence’s death.
White privilege is not a new thing. Last year saw a number of white people using their privilege as a platform to promote the BLM movement and to use their often-over amplified voices to campaign for change.
In the UK, white people campaigned alongside the BAME community for the removal of statues celebrating slave traders or people with links to slavery. There is more of a commitment to taking action.
White People 4 Black Lives is an organisation made up of white people who are anti-racism. They say “we make a conscious decision to notice, call out, and challenge institutional and cultural racism”.
Similarly, in the US, BLM protests were attended by people of all ethnicities.
Additionally, a new Bill, awaiting a signature from the governor of Illinois J B Pritzker, is in the works, and would require every officer in Illinois to wear a body camera by 2025. This would have helped bring justice to George Floyd sooner, and to Breonna Taylor, a woman murdered after police raided her flat as she slept. The Bill would also eliminate cash bail, which is how Chauvin acquired bail. Furthermore, the Bill will make it easier for people to file complaints against officers.
Even the terminology used to speak about the demonstrations highlights the change that has been made in the past ten years. The term riot suggests violence, an uprising against those in power. In contrast, protest is softer, peaceful, passive. Brixton was more violent in a shorter space of time. In total, 324 people were injured. Statistics from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project suggest 93 per cent of the protests in America last summer were peaceful. However, at least 25 people died in these protests, while nobody died in Brixton.
The global aspect of the BLM movement has been a positive change. It got people to take notice and discussions around equality and the BLM movement have yet to die down.
What still needs to be done?
In short, a lot. The BLM movement was deemed by many an ‘American issue’ that the UK should stay out of. However, the UK is not exempt from racism.
Government figures revealed that between April 2018 and March 2019, there were four stop and searches for every 1,000 white people, compared with 38 for every 1,000 Black people. Additionally, data from the Met Police over the period of 2017-18 showed that police are four times more likely to use force against Black people.
Lecturer in law Kojo Koram said in The Guardian: “Institutional racism exists at every level of our criminal justice system, from who gets stopped and searched, to who gets arrested, to who gets charged, to who gets convicted.”
On January 8, a Welsh man of Somali heritage was arrested for “breach of the peace” but was released without charge on the morning of January 9. That evening, he died, with family saying that he had claimed he was assaulted in custody.
In the US, all four officers involved in George Floyd’s murder were sacked but is this enough? More action on policing such the proposed Illinois Bill will contribute towards counteracting any institutional racism in the police force.
As long as there is racism in the world, there will be protests. Racism does not just need to be removed from institutions, but also from the street.
Not being racist does not mean you are anti-racist, and it is things like calling out racism rather allowing it as a silent participant that still needs to change.
Until equality prevails, society’s work will not be done.
