A year and a half after the April 1981 Brixton uprising, (which was followed by uprisings throughout England in July), a smaller riot took place, in November 1982, as Lambeth Council attempted to use a large force of police to evict and demolish many of the squats and blues clubs that dominated Brixton’s ‘Frontline’ around Railton Road.

Since the 81 riot, the surface appearance in the area had changed a lot. On the High Street the gentrifiers had been busy at work, welcoming visitors to Brixton ‘and its famous market’ in hope of some tourist trade. On the Frontline, the corrugated iron stretched even further, (then covered with graffiti about Poland – the (Labour Party-controlled) Lambeth Council policy was to erase immediately any slogans about working class revolt at home but not those about such revolt elsewhere!)

What else had changed since the previous year’s uprisings? At least since February 1982, a police helicopter had often been seen hovering over Brixton. It had given instructions to police cars on the Loughborough Estate, where stop-and-search (SUS) operations were frequent (SUS had been a major element in the anti-police hatred that had sparked the 1981 riot). The copter had also been conducting night operations, shining its searchlight all over the area-previously a familiar sight only to nationalist areas of Northern Ireland.

Also the Council had constructed flower boxes in all the open spaces in the shopping area on Brixton Road. Perhaps the boxes were intended merely to prettify the area but they also, conveniently, made it difficult for crowds to gather in those strategic spaces.

Meanwhile the most important aspects of daily life remained little changed. The police had gradually resumed their stop-and-search harassment of working class (and especially black) youth on the streets. Long-term squats on the Frontline were receiving eviction notices. Inhabitants still got up and trudged off to useless and boring jobs, or sign on at the dole office for fortnightly Giro cheques from the DHSS. Even though the uprisings didn’t transform those fundamental conditions of work, wages and policing, for many they had marked at least a temporary shift in social relations – the breakdown of the authority normally imposed by the market economy upon people’s lives, as the experience of ‘shopping without money’ gave a new, unintended meaning to Brixton’s ‘famous market and freed some from the compulsion to buy and sell.

In 1982 a Tory controlled Council (with the support of the Social Democratic Party, which for you young ‘uns was a rightwing split from the then Trendy Lefty Labour Party. They’re all in the Lib Dem shower now) briefly replaced the Labour administration. In charge of the Housing Committee was the repulsive Mary Leigh, whose business interests running a firm specialising in selling off council housing, while she ran the Housing Dept, fit right in with National Govt policy of the time. They stepped up the policy of attacking squatting, by legal and illegal methods. 300 eviction notices were issued in their first few months. Leigh also refused to deal with shortlife housing co-ops, blocking any renovation money for council properties run by co-ops, vetoing licenses on sites where demolition was planned, but not due for years, while at the same time she pushed privatisation of council property, right-to-buy and joint Lease/purchase schemes. The regime also permanently excluded single people from any possibility of rehousing. £9 million of the housing budget was deliberately left unspent and houses allowed to decay. As a result there were soon more empties than ever.

In response to attacks on squatters, some SDP/Tory councillors homes and cars were vandalised: some naughty people kept phoning them up, and all 64 councillors were sent spoof eviction notices on genuine council notepaper, signed, so it would seem, by acting Chief Executive John George. Inquiries failed to find the culprit – some in the council accused other insiders of siding with squatters. Cue paranoid fallout.

Special Patrol Group attacks on squatters around Brixton were widespread: in Arlingford road, in June 82, they attacked no 51, evicting the squatters, despite the Brixton Squatters Aid network getting 40 people out. Later this house was resquatted and evicted violently again some 6 months later. There had been a small squatters community in Arlingford and Brailsford roads since 1973; by late 84 there were 16 squats, including ‘The Bunker’, a community caff, which was holding women’s nights and had other events over weekends… When 121 was faced with possible eviction in that year, it was proposed to move Brixton Squatters Aid to the Bunker. Brailfsford/Arlingford squatters set up their own alarm list… 50 squatters chased off bailiffs there earlier in ’84. Although many tenants there were supportive, there was a minority who persecuted the squatters; there were also some problems with junkies.

But it was the Frontline the Council hated the most. In early October ‘82, some opening shots were fired… several squats in Dexter Road, then the heart of the black Frontline, were evicted and demolished. The Council also demolished the neighbouring adventure playground. Any sign of resistance brought a swarm of cops rushing in. “…they’re closing in on the frontline, with an army of cops, council and social workers. Today they cut off the electric. Incidents are daily. Next week I bet they’ll wreck them…” They did.

THERE’S A NEWMAN IN TOWN…

On Monday November 1 1982 there was a riot on Brixton’s front-line. It was just three days after Sir Kenneth Newman took over his new job as Police Commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police. He brought with him his own street credibility learned from the back of squad cars and helicopters patrolling the streets and sky of Ulster. Everyone in the know knew he would one day make Commissioner. He was groomed for the part. In Ulster he was known as ‘Mighty Mouse’ on account of his small stature but ultra-tough reputation. There he pursued a policy of criminalising all forms of resistance, while at the same time polarising the support within the communities given to those at the front line of attack from the paramilitaries.

He succeeded in developing a force expert in all the latest techniques of intensive policing, riot-control, intelligence gathering, counter-subversion and torture. It was the latter that got Newman into hot water when the Castlereagh Detention Centre was condemned for using ‘inhuman and degrading’ treatment. Clearly Newman, having completed his ‘experiment’ now needed to learn a bit more about what was happening in the rest of the UK. So off he went to Bramshill – the specialist police establishment for serving officers – to lecture on his experiences in Ulster and on how he saw the future of policing in Britain and to learn from his future troops just how far they are capable of being pushed. He became “a bit of a celebrity” and gave lecture tours abroad and it was on one of these tours that he made his much publicised controversial remark about ‘West Indians being indigenously anti-authoritarian’ (sic).

BLUES CLUBS

Meanwhile, as Newman was courting power, there was the continuing saga of Brixton’s ‘Frontline’, which consisted of a number of squatted houses and shops in Railton Road, used mainly as ‘Blues’ houses by local black hustlers. These houses provided all-night entertainment and a place to score dope, gamble, and get boozed up. Such unlicensed pleasure was out of the majority of cops’ grasp, while to the local Council the premises in question were but an eyesore, contrary to their new clean-up Brixton sanitisation programmed. Since the ’81 riots on the Front-line, the Council had, in fact, systematically employed a policy of ‘rearranging’ the landscape, involving the destruction of liveable homes (and even the local children’s playground), the squeezing out of shop-owners, and the removal of squatters. With the latter they were none too successful.

BRIXTON SQUATTER’S AID

Since early 1981, some of the squatters in the area spreading out from the Frontline, had got together to form Brixton Squatter’s Aid, an autonomous association primarily concerned with maintaining basic survival. Over the 8 months or so from its inception BSA successfully opened up scores of squats all over the Brixton area, helped to elicit the support of squatters not previously organised around any particular set-up, started a squatter’s aid alarm list for those squatters who came under attack, successfully defended several squats that were raided, and published a regular fortnightly bulletin (the ‘Crowbar’) reporting on local and international squatting news.

CULTURE CLASH

The two scenes – the Squatter’s Aid Network and the ‘Blues’ Houses’ – rarely came into contact with each other. They had different interests and different viewpoints. Many of those involved with the ‘Blues’ clubs were racist/separatist and authoritarian, especially in their general attitude and treatment to women; they were into their own culture and had hard and fixed attitudes about other cultures. On top of all this, the clubs tended to attract petty hustlers to the area to ‘scare and make out’. For a while there were almost daily reports of locals – black and white – being mugged and harassed and at one point an anti-mugging campaign was begun, producing posters that equated the violence on the streets to the violence received at the hands of cops and the violence of fascist attacks. The muggings and the response all led to a degree of bad feeling.

While all this was going on Lambeth Council periodically made noises about how they were just about to close down the Frontline houses and how local street-crime had to be squashed once and for all.

Threats of eviction were a weekly occurrence and added to the increasing tension. As these threats increased so many of the hustlers began to look for new premises for their clubs. Reports of new sitings came thick and fast and rumours abounded. Some petty pimps even made attempts to muscle in on the nearby homes of existing squatters and if they had succeeded this would have forced an unwanted confrontation. In the end, after many threats and resistance, the tension diminished.

SKIRMISHES & DIRECT ACTION

Such confrontations, though, were minor compared to those that everyone – black and white – faced from the local cops and the Council bureaucrats. After the ’81 riots the police developed a deliberate policy of avoiding Swamp ’81 type tactics. An alternative had to be sought. They made one or two mistakes. Early in ’82, on two separate occasions, skirmishes occurred over the way the cops handled some minor incidents in the Railton Road area. On each occasion the cops were chased out of the Frontline area but restrained themselves from launching a counter attack: they were beginning to learn. For a while Railton Road managed to give the impression of being a ‘no-go’ area although when the cops did show up they did so suddenly and with force. For example, it was not uncommon during the summer to witness police helicopters circling overhead – sometimes hours on end – providing support to an operation down at street level. At night the helicopters would use searchlights (and probably infra-red surveillance devices).

Since the ’81 riots the local Council had gone Conservative (only just, with the help of SDP/Liberal Alliance Councillors and the mayor’s vote) and immediately implemented a policy to get rid of the squatters on a large scale. Very few of their attempts succeeded and the ensuing campaign to resist these attempts reached a crescendo with attacks by local activists on the homes and property of appropriate councillors. Certain Councillors were even sent fake eviction notices on Official Council Note paper – leading to recriminations, accusations and counter-accusations within the municipal offices. The Council had to ‘do something’ to ‘restore public confidence.’ At the same time the cops were itching to sort out the ‘no-go’ areas once and for all…and then came along Newman. The Stage was set.

Newman started the ball rolling with his flying visit to Brixton cop station and to Notting Hill, where he advised his troops that they were to take no more insults from now on and that they were to remain firmly in control of their respective localities. His message: that there was to be a new era of policing: sophisticated and more precise in its methods. Two days later at 4am the Frontline houses came under siege.

BESEIGED

Newman’s troops moved in quietly. None of the nearby residents heard them arrive. It was a smooth operation, well timed and successful. The cops stood guard while demolition workers began their task. By mid-morning a crowd had gathered, but by then the police presence was considerable. Coming into Brixton from Central London was like walking into an act for a film by Costa-Gravas. The only thing missing were the armoured vehicles … everything else was there. The cops, of course, only admitted to a small presence and this mis-information was regurgitated in the Press and on TV. But the reality was that almost every Instant Response Unit, and every other back up unit across Greater London had been drafted in to lend support. Every street leading to the Front-line, together with secondary routes, had been blocked off; and stop and search was being used in a blanket manner. Brixton had been closed down, sealed off and placed under siege.

While the operation was being effected, so some of the squatters in the area, together with some of these directly affected by the demolition of the clubs, decided to march to the Town Hall (in fact a picket had been pre-planned before the cop attack, due to increased evictions). There were about 80 on the march. They achieved their objective and made their protest (all the Political Parties had agreed to and signed the Council Eviction Notice). But the main confrontation was yet to come and it was clear that it wasn’t just one side that desired it.

ATTACK AND COUNTER-ATTACK

The Battlelines were drawn. But then the cops suddenly withdrew all their personnel out of immediate sight and the frontline was left empty like a ghost town. They knew this would have one effect and one effect only: to encourage the illusion that the police had made a strategic withdrawal. The trick worked and people poured in from all over Lambeth and beyond (they would have come anyway after school, work, it got dark, they saw the news) The Front-line drew them like a magnet. The Pincers opened up to let them in and then closed again. Meanwhile on the Frontline itself: jubilation. It was April ’81 again. Barricades suddenly began to be erected and someone in a mask turned back traffic, firmly redirecting them out of the immediate area. The crowd was young and almost all male. There was an eerie silence. Then a fire broke out. It was the work-huts on the demolition site. A nearby house opposite the Blues clubs was set alight. The crowd grew and suddenly windows were smashed, Molotovs thrown. The crowd – around 150 – turned down Railton Rd towards Herne Hill. They came to the Anarchist Bookshop, smashing windows on the way, and as with the ’81 riots, the shop was passed by, untouched. Suddenly the cops appeared: it was the IRUs dressed in black fire-proof overalls and wearing protective helmets and visors. They carried long thick staves and as they charged down the road they let out war whoops, banging their batons on the shield. Zulu fashion. The crowd held out until the cops got within spitting distance, and then dispersed. They regrouped and threw whatever they could at their attackers. They were dispersed once more. It was stalemate.

MOPPING UP

Then came the mopping-up. Frustrated by their failure to catch any of those directly involved in the riot in Railton Road, the cops turned their attentions on anyone foolish enough to be wandering the streets aimlessly and who could become the object of their revenge. We know of one incident where a group of punks had just left their home in Talma Road and were set upon by these thugs. They were ordered to stop, and, out of fear, one of them ran off but was caught at the next turning. The cops viciously set upon him, dragged him to their van and beat him up. He sustained serious injuries to his arms and legs and was charged with assault. He was 17 years old. No one was safe on the streets and the cops continued to hunt down potential victims.

Back at the town hall, meanwhile, a Council meeting was in session to discuss the eviction of some squatters in North Lambeth, and some people from Brixton Squatters Aid arrived to cause trouble. They managed to disrupt the proceedings for a while and then left to provide whatever back-up they could to comrades being attacked on the streets. Elsewhere incidents were increasing; word had got around and looting took place in several main streets, and a police coach was set on fire. In Notting Hill the locals made trouble in solidarity and in Tottenham an IRU was called in (from Brixton!) to disperse a crowd. Cops were also stoned from the balconies of Stockwell Park Estate.

By 8pm more crowds had gathered in central Brixton, but realising the sheer force of the numbers against them, wisely decided to play it cool, ‘take notes’ and learn about the enemy. Later in the evening another building near Coldharbour Lane was firebombed but by then the confrontation was coming to a close. The Brixton community was left to spend a long sleepless night, with the cops well & truly in control of the streets.

The next day, and for successive days, the cops continued to maintain their grip of fear. Coach loads of police were stationed on street corners day and night, while foot patrols wore ridiculously frequent. At first little use was made of Stop and Search, although a group of people entering the anarchist bookshop were asked if they wore carrying ‘bombs’ and their box of vegetables was examined. This policy of total saturation continued for a further 2 weeks. The squatters remained but the hustlers were nowhere to be seen. They had, in fact, merely moved around the corner to another street where they opened up new clubs.

‘INCITEMENT’

The day after the riot the press was full of the usual accusations. The most ridiculous being that the local ‘anarchist’ group – specifically 3 whites, a woman and two men – had roused the ‘mob’ and incited them to riot. Councillor Robin Pitt claimed to know their names but told the papers that the police were unable to make arrests due to lock of concrete evidence. The farce continued when the next day a woman from the Workers Against Racism South London group (a Revolutionary Communist Party – Trot – Front) admitted she was one of those that the Councillor was accusing and that she had been in the thick of it and proud of it, taking a ‘leading role’. This self-appointed saviour and publicity seeker got her come-uppance when she was told, in no uncertain way, to fuck off by local black activists at a post mortem held that week. (She went on to run as a Parliamentary Candidate in the much publicised Bermondsey Bye-election starring Peter Tatchell and others.) The Press, however still looked for scapegoats and for a while raids were expected: incitement, something usually associated with books on 19th Century history, was the main accusation and the very impreciseness of the law associated with this charge only helped to increase the general feeling of vulnerability.

SURVEILLANCE

About 2 weeks afterwards, and a couple of days prior to the Press Release giving details of the new Police Powers Bill, the local Police Commander for Brixton, Inspector Fairburn, announced that Officers from CII (Intelligence) and the A.T.S. were being seconded, on a permanent basis, to help monitor future developments on the Frontline. Further more, he admitted that the cops on the Frontline had been using and will continue to use sophisticated listening devices to “keep track on the activities of potential ‘muggers’.” Coincidentally, Brixton was also the first area in Britain to incorporate the new System X switching system devised at Martlesham, Ipswich, by British Telecom. Apart from making it more difficult to sabotage the telephone network, system X provided the capacity to monitor all telephone calls automatically as well as automatic re-routing/blocking in State states of emergency, or whenever the authorities desired it.

Brixton (and Toxteth) had now become to the rest of Britain, in terms of policing, what the North of Ireland had been to the UK, in terms of militarisation…

After the November 1982 riot, the police/press/council tried to revive the old charge of incitement against the local anarchist suspects at 121, which, as the anarchist paper Black Flag pointed out “ridiculous and totally groundless. It is also elitist (and in this particular case racist) as it implies that those who participated in the action were incapable of deciding things for themselves: they need others to encourage or ‘lead’ them. Given the somewhat uneasy relationship between black and white residents of the frontline area, the charge was even more laughable.

It’s not at all surprising that hierarchical gangs run on orders from tiny cliques should attempt to present resistance as only being possible if run by secret leaders. The whole idea of people organising and fighting back together on their own behalf and under no-one’s orders clearly threatens the entire basis of social control. The whole idea of it has to be suppressed and rebellion has to be presented as a secret conspiracy of fanatics pulling the strings of mindless dupes. The llluminati anyone?

Raids on the Frontline continued, as houses were evicted and demolished; 28 officers were assigned to full time work there. In early December ’82, dozens of black and white people were dragged out of houses, in Railton Road, and Talma Rd, round the corner, where the evicted blues clubs had set up anew after November. The raids as usual produced a couple of charges for possession of small amounts of dope, theft of electric fuses, etc. In Talma Road, they besieged a squat, padlocking it on the outside. The squatters, trapped inside, fled, leaving the house to be smashed up. The following week 70 people were lifted in street arrests and more raids.

On top of announcing they’d be using long-range mikes to listen to inhabitants of the Frontline, cops had seemingly prevailed on the council to make some alterations to the local geography: walkways in some estates (eg Angell Town) were demolished, after the youth had pelted cops from above in November. Overhead walkways made moving around estates easier, especially for rioters holding off invading police. (As cops in North Peckham would find to their cost in 1985, when concrete rain fell on them). Traffic priorities were changed in Stockwell Park Estate to make police control easier.

Stockwell Park, from the dreams of the Brixton planners, had become a grim dumping ground, rife with crime and depression. Getting burgled during the day while you were in was not a rare occurrence; the walkways and cubbyholes may have been a tactical gift during riots but could make daily life paranoid and threatening. As a result there was some racial trouble on the estate: a sizable white population feeling under attack from ‘the blacks’. This led to splits within the Tenants Association, and a breakaway “White Defence Association” was set up, demanding more high profile policing. Because of their agenda, this development received some substantial publicity in the South London Press and Daily Mail, always keen to play up and make points about ‘racial’ aggravation. As with the “rightwing white residents’ of the frontline (see above) who supported the demolition of the blues and squats, some of the opposition to Brixton’s rebel culture/support for hardline policing came from both genuine daily experience of crime as well as an undeniable old-style prejudice and respect for authority. The fact that many especially older local whites were racist has made it sometimes harder to get a genuine discussion of very real problems they went through; as with the anarchists’ anti-mugging campaigns, many people were unwilling to talk about racial elements in muggings etc.

POSTSCRIPT:

Commander Fairburn was replaced not long after the riot as Police Commander in Lambeth by Alex Marnock who had in the past been a commander in the SPG.

No helicopter was seen during the riot because the one generally used by the Met for Lambeth had to turn back: on its way it suddenly collided with an exploding flare which was let off. The flash probably affected the ultra-sensitive night vision cameras. Just showing what could be done with a simple firework!

This prompted the following poem (which appeared in Hooligan Press’ From Beneath the Keyboard’ collection a couple of years later:

CAN PIGS FLY?

Helicopter, Helicopter where have you been?

We all miss the sound of rotor-blade scream!

And Infra-red cameras, recording the signs,

of extortionate rents, food, dope and fines.

Helicopter, Supersnoop! Is it true what they said?

That youre mothballed away in the maintainence shed,

lenses of scanners all scarred by a Bash

from yacht flare or rocket, nearly causing a CRASH????

Chocolate chopper! is there nothing to do?

-even if we pay for a nimrod or two,

to watch o’er you as you watched o’er us

plus satellites and marksmen atop every ‘bus!

MACHINE SUPREME! Don’t leave us this way

your almighty din gave such fun every day

comforted mothers and children Abed

just can’t hear crimes with you overhead!

Where oh, where can you now be seen?

Dispatched to the Falklands or Camberwell Green.

In Kensington, if it is allowed ……..

directing lost tourists up Pem-br-oke Road!

There’s another job we need air support for,

tracking infringers of safety-belt law,

no point in letting criminals run to ground,

call ’em David Martin, claim your five Rounds.

PLEASE TELL US DEAR READERS, HELP US TO TRACK THE MILLION P0UND PIG WITH EGG ON IT’S FACE!

Rev. ARMITAGE. Can’t Pray-GOTTA RIOT!

The Tory reign in Lambeth lasted barely a few months. Labour, then in the hands of Red Ted Knight and his Trotskyist entrists, were back in power by late November 82, due to the defection of SDP councillor Gordon Ley, a prime victim of squatters’ hate campaigns (he had had his lorry attacked, his shop smashed up, his car nicked and burned out), although he claimed it wasn’t fear of continuing moonlight visits that made him swap sides. Pull the other one Gordy.

The new Labour Regime DID give licences to some squatted houses in June 1983, as long as they joined co-ops: most of these were in Clapham, although some houses in Millbrook Road and Loughborough Park were recognised. None were in the Frontline. And a year and a half after the November clearances, a remaining frontline outpost of squatting, Effra Parade, was also to face eviction…

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Account of the November 1982 riot from Black Flag, 2 Feb 1983)

With notes from Crowbar no 6, 8 October 1983, and no 7, 22 October.

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