Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race(11)

Ideas of blackness and criminality were becoming inherently interlinked. In 1984, three years after sus laws were scrapped, stop and search was introduced. The initiatives seemed barely different. But while sus laws allowed the police to arrest anyone they thought was loitering with intent to commit a crime, the new laws meant police had to have reasonable belief that an offence had already been committed before stopping and searching a suspect.39 While the police line has always been that such tactics prevent crime, black people have always been disproportionately targeted under stop and search (research in 2015 revealed parts of the country where black people were seventeen times more likely to be stopped and searched than white people.)40 These were (and still are) sus laws by a different name.

Between 1980 and 1982, with the country in recession, unemployment for black and Asian men rose by roughly 20 per cent – in comparison to a rise of just 2 per cent for white men.41 Despite black and Asian people becoming a firm fixture of the British urban landscape, some white communities were still uneasy about their presence. There was a feeling among some that unemployed young black people chose not to work, and instead took up lives of social aggravation. In a radio documentary broadcast on BRMB Radio Birmingham in 1982, PC Dick Board, a police officer working in the city, made his feelings about unemployed young black people clear. ‘Let’s be fair,’ he said. ‘We’re talking about a certain type of people now. We had all these reasons in the twenties and thirties, and we never had this. We never had the soaring crime rates, and what we now know as the American phrase “mugging”. Which is robbery with violence. We have a different sort of person, who by hook or by crook is going to get his own way at the expense of everybody else. Even his own kind. That’s the point. Never mind this unemployment business, we’ve got a situation here now that is being used deliberately and there’s no question about it, they couldn’t care less whether they’ve got a job or not, in fact they’re happier without them.’ He continued: ‘All this is complete twaddle about they’re looking for jobs and “I can’t get a job” and all this . . . A lot of them use their colour as leverage against us . . . they use it, and they use it very well. There’s enough people in this country prepared to listen, and turn a blind eye to what these people do.’42

When PC Dick Board spoke about ‘what these people do’, I think he was referring to crime. Alongside recession-fuelled unemployment came heightened fears of crime in inner cities that stigmatised entire areas where black and brown people lived.

The summer of 1981 saw more riots across the country – in Brixton, on 10 April, in Toxteth, Liverpool on 3 July, Handsworth, Birmingham on 10 July, and Chapeltown, Leeds, in the same month. The social conditions of each area were very similar. Poor. Black. In both Brixton and Toxteth, police behaviour was a contributing factor. Brixton, the first riot of the year, was sparked by the Metropolitan Police’s Operation Swamp, in which they performed over a thousand stop and searches in just six days.43 When police officers stopped to help a wounded black boy, a crowd approached them, and the situation escalated.44 In Toxteth, the police gave chase to a black motorcyclist, believing his vehicle was stolen. He fell from his bike and the police tried to arrest him, only to be confronted by an angry crowd. Again, the situation escalated. Riots, it seemed, were contagious.

Because history is written by the winners, evidence of police harassment of people of colour in the early 1980s is hard to come by. But the Newham Monitoring Project bucked that trend. The organisation formed in 1980 after Asian teenager Akhtar Ali Baig was murdered by a gang of white skinheads on his way home from college. The following trial saw a judge comment that the murder was ‘motivated by racial hatred’.45 Frustrated by a lack of implementation of laws against racism, people in the community clubbed together to offer logistical support against racist harassment, and the Newham Monitoring Project was born. The grass-roots organisation campaigned against racist violence – including violence enacted by the police – until 2015, when it was forced to shut down due to lack of funds.

One part of the Newham Monitoring Project’s work took place in the form of their annual reports, and their 1983 report gives a glimpse of what it was like to be black in east London at the time. During that year, the project received seventy-six reports of police harassment. Of those who were harassed by the police and subsequently arrested, forty-seven were released without charge. Those who were charged by the police were later released. Case studies in the report reveal a portrait of black families under siege. ‘The home of Mr N and his family has been searched 4/5 times this year alone,’ the report reads. ‘Each time the police officers have had warrants with them, made out for stolen goods. Each time they have found no evidence and therefore have preferred no charges . . . the family expect their home to be invaded at any time. They live in constant fear of the next visit by the police.’46

There was also the case of forty-five-year-old Osei Owusu, who, after police turned up at his home asking to breathalyse him, refused. Minutes later, ‘while he was in the bathroom in his house, 10–12 police officers smashed their way in, breaking down his front door. He was then dragged naked out of the bath, brutally assaulted with truncheons, and taken to Forest Gate Police Station. Once at the police station he was breathalysed. Three breathalyser tests on him failed.’

In one incident, police officers targeted a whole family. ‘John Power was walking home after having been to a youth club,’ the project recorded. ‘As he was walking a police car drew up alongside him, by the pavement. The police officer in the car shouted, “Oi, come here you black bastard.” John carried on walking. Then, fearing something may happen, [he] started to run home. The police officers followed him to his house, got to the front door, opened it and pulled John out and then proceeded to beat him.’ When his father intervened, ‘the police officers started beating him up as well.’ When John’s sister saw what was happening and screamed in fear, ‘the police officer asked her to shut up and then pushed and hit her. All three were then put into different vehicles and taken to East Ham Police Station. They were then charged with obstruction and various charges of assaulting police officers.’