A police operation to address the crime rate in Brixton, one of the highest in London, resulted in a significant number of black youths being stopped and searched. During the five days in early April leading up to the riots there were stop and searches in Brixton infuriating the local population and creating tensions between white police officers and youths. The incident seemingly ended when police reinforcements arrived.
The build-up of police patrols in the area continued through the rest of the night and by Saturday afternoon, there were no less the 84 police officers patrolling the streets of Brixton, as well as three police vans driving round the area.
The heavy police presence heightened tensions in the area. At pm on Saturday, April 11, two police officers searched and arrested a young black taxi driver, taking him away. Missiles were thrown at the police van as it left. This led to more police reinforcements and led to the worst day of the rioting. The rioters were mostly young black men but they were now joined by young whites.
He bought a brick to work and put it on my desk. He said, 'you're from Brixton. Here you go, you know what to do with this'. And if you didn't have a job, you weren't getting one.
Olga believes Lord Scarman did not go far enough to heal the wounds of years of over-policing in communities like Brixton. It would be 18 years until the MacPherson report gave her the verdict she wanted. Christopher's friend Sheldon Thomas also took his stand against police during the Brixton riots, aged just Now an expert on gang culture - he believes his generation paved the way for huge change.
Yet both Christopher and Sheldon are keen for their children to create their own destinies. He adds that he rarely discusses the events of with his family. I don't want that to be something that they feel they have to carry. Yet all the children of that generation agree - Black Lives Matter is a necessary continuation of their generation's journey towards true racial equality. It may have taken a step towards where we need to go.
I don't know if maybe a step is enough. For Olga, stop and search - a huge issue for her contemporaries - is still a challenge for many young people today, including her son.
Society has changed. I don't hear anything about anybody's head being flushed down toilets. While undoubtedly a watershed moment in the movement for race equality in Brixton — the Scarman report, produced in November of same year to examine the riot, acknowledged for the first time the discriminatory policing of Black people — 40 years later, and many locals are still questioning what has changed.
Across the Atlantic, Derek Chauvin is on trial for killing George Floyd , whose death led to global Black Lives Matter protests asking that basic human rights no longer be denied to people of a certain skin colour. Young Black men in London are 19 times more likely to be stopped and searched than the general population, a study of official data by University College London shows. For retired bus driver Sherron Richards, 56, who has lived in Brixton for 20 years, many of the tensions that led to the riot in , especially around policing, still exist today.
Black people were starting to be listened to. With the rise of the far-right, being racist is seen as acceptable. When Richards recently returned for a visit, she said the area felt different to the Brixton she used to know. It has a million restaurants in a very small area, it seemed like there was a lot of white young people and elderly Black people.
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