SUMMER
OF '81 - BABYLON'S BURNING
That week of July
1981 something very strange and bewildering was happening to Britain
that was taking everybody by surprise. Nobody had foreseen riots of
this nature occurring and nobody - particularly within politics -
could offer any adequate explanation for them.
The inner cities had
become so marginalised that for any of the major political parties or
even any of the minor ones they were off the radar and weren't
figuring in any of their visions. The revolutionary Left in
particular was failing spectacularly to seize the moment and instead
were standing idly by, at best simply seeing 'police brutality'
as an issue to contend with. Stuck in a Marxist mindset of power
being held only in a Union and on the shop floor - exercised by
striking - the Left appeared oblivious to the power held within a
community - exercised by rioting.
As to be expected,
however, a chorus of voices on the Right ranging from Conservative
MPs, newspaper columnists and Chief Constables (in particular
Manchester's James Anderton) saw the riots as being politically
motivated and nothing but; without hesitation casting blame upon the
Communist Tendency, the Labour Party Young Socialists, the Militant
Tendency, and even the leader of the Greater London Council, Ken
Livingstone.
Perhaps Ken
Livingstone was one of the four masked motorcyclists as reported in
the Daily Mail that were being hunted by Special Branch - suspected
of being responsible for fermenting the riots? If so, then Ken and
his gang were being mighty busy and travelling a lot of miles for as
soon as the rioting came to an end in Moss Side, Manchester; further
rioting, looting, burning and mass confrontations with the police
suddenly erupted in towns and cities all around the country.
In the Hyson Green
area of Nottingham, hundreds of youths attacked police, fire-bombed
vehicles and looted shops. "A man distributing leaflets
calling for the downfall of 'Babylon' was arrested and it kicked
off," said a former local police officer. "He and
the arresting officer went through a shop window and that was it,
within half an hour it was bedlam. We were being attacked with
bottles, poles, concrete blocks, anything and everything."
In Sheffield a 500
strong crowd charged through the streets shouting "Brixton!
Brixton!" There were 20 arrests and 14 police officers
injured, with offices inside the Town Hall being damaged and the
trees outside set alight.
In the Handsworth
area of Birmingham there were 121 arrests and 40 police officers
injured, with widespread damage being caused to property.
In Hull, 300 youths
smashed windows and shops in the city centre.
Rioting was
spreading like wildfire with further disorder erupting in Reading,
Wolverhampton, Hull, Preston, Slough, Yorkshire, Bradford, Halifax,
the Chapeltown area of Leeds, Huddersfield, Gloucestershire,
Blackburn, Blackpool, Fleetwood, Highfields in Leicester,
Southampton, Portsmouth, Luton, Derby, High Wycombe, Birkenhead,
Aldershot, Chester, Knaresborough, Stockport, Maidstone, Crewe, as
well as Bristol, Brixton and Southall again.
The sheer breadth and scale of the rioting was astounding.
England was in
flames.
Babylon was burning.
Five years after the
release of the Sex Pistols' début broadcast to the nation, the
spirit of Anarchy In The UK was being made flesh through mass,
violent attacks upon authority. Five years after John Rotten's
brilliantly searing pronouncement of the word 'Destroy', riding out
on an electric hurricane of scorching feedback, the country appeared
to be finally doing as Rotten had bid.
"You have to
destroy in order to create," the Pistols manager Malcolm
McLaren had declared in response to his protégées being criticised
for their destructive behaviour "You have to break it down
and build it up again in a different form."
To give him his due,
for a renowned bullshitter this was one of a number of statements
McLaren made that actually rang true. This wasn't the first time,
however, that the idea of the destructive urge being a creative urge
had been cited, most notably having first been made years before by Russian arch godfather of anarchism, Mikhail Bakunin, from whom
McLaren would have taken it.
Destruction could
indeed be a potentially creative force due simply to the fact that it
could open up and make way for any number of new possibilities, or at
the very least create an atmosphere for change. In the case of the
inner city rioters of that summer of 1981, the destruction being
wrought was both an actual and symbolic attack upon the order of
things. Violent assaults upon the police were violent assaults upon
authority. Whether the rioters were conscious of it or not, chasing
the police from the streets meant ridding the streets of State
authority and State control.
The immediate effect
of this, of course, meant the opportunity to loot but beyond this the
further possibilities were potentially huge and far-reaching.
Could a community
actually function properly without a police presence? Would the
weaker and minority members of that community be protected? Would all
the essential services be able still to operate as normal? Could this
be a first step toward a genuinely free and progressive society?
If the answer to all
this was 'Yes', then what would that mean for the structure of power
within society? Could the world, in effect, be turned upside down?
Interestingly,
during that same week of rioting, Crass had been touring and though
encountering violence at their gigs had become nothing unusual, it
was at a gig in Perth, in Scotland, that the violence appeared to
come to a head. Years later, a recording of this particular gig would
be released as a live album entitled You'll Ruin It For Everyone,
capturing Penny Rimbaud arguing from the stage with one of the
brawling audience members: "If you want anarchy, mate, go out
on the street and start it. We're in here for our form of anarchy,
you go outside for your form of anarchy - now fuck off out of it!
Just look at what happened in London last night, mate, if you want
anarchy and just you wait for it to come to you - and then you'll
learn a little bit of what the word means, wise guy. Mouth and
trousers, mate, will get you nowhere so fuck off out of it! Balls,
you twat!"
Was Penny condemning
the rioting? Was he suggesting a riot was something to be feared?
Were Crass possibly out of touch with the inner cities when it came
to the question of rioting? Or as pacifists, were they simply unhappy
with the violence being unleashed? For the first time, Crass's
position seemed suddenly to be quite ambiguous.
Margaret Thatcher,
on the other hand, whilst insisting there was no excuse for the
rioting (particularly as there was plenty of worthwhile work in local
communities for wayward youths to expend their energies upon such as
cutting grass and picking up litter) was shrewd enough to understand
that this was a blatant display of anti-authoritarianism born from a
breakdown in family values and a lack of respect for law and order.
Whether or not
unemployment was a contributing factor to family breakdown was a
debate for the sociologists but in pinpointing lack of discipline and
lack of respect for law and order, Thatcher was perfectly correct. If
there was any respect for the police then they wouldn't be getting
bombarded with bricks and bottles. Obviously.
Further to this,
Thatcher was also perfectly correct in talking of a lack of respect
for authority in all its forms - in the home, the school, the church
and the State. The difference being that for some this was a rather
healthy thing but for Thatcher and her ilk it was the end of
civilisation as they knew it.
As towns and cities
throughout the country burned and tension everywhere escalated,
police in Brixton once again displayed the by now expected stupidity
from them by staging a series of raids upon premises in Railton Road,
scene of the riot earlier in the year. Supposedly in search of caches
of petrol bombs, police armed with axes and crowbars smashed their
way into properties, causing widespread and wanton damage. No petrol
bombs were found but unsurprisingly the result was the area once
again erupting into rioting.
Then just as the
spell of nationwide civil disorder had suddenly started, so did it
suddenly stop. It was almost as though the rioters - wary of what
exactly they were unleashing - were withdrawing to their homes to
consider their next move. Only there wasn't a next move.
The rioters had
raised their fists and had let out a collective roar, giving the
police a good hiding and sending a shudder of fear down the spine of
middle England. What was left was a wake of blustering conservative
MPs and chiefs of police calling for detention camps, the return of
the Riot Act, and the re-introduction of national service. Perhaps
for most rioters this was enough?
In Liverpool,
however, having suffered a high number of injuries and much
humiliation, the police there were seemingly out for revenge as they
continuously stopped and harassed youths for weeks after -
particularly black youths. Lo and behold, rioting once again broke
out in the Toxteth area though this time with a far deadlier and
tragic result than previously.
Borrowing the
tactics used to such effect in Moss Side, chief constable Kenneth
Oxford ordered that police vans drive straight at the crowds so as to
cause them to scatter. Anyone within the riot zone would have the
very simple choices of dispersing, being arrested, or being hit by a
police van. Kenneth Oxford had made the decision weeks earlier to use
tear gas upon crowds of people (a decision that turned out to be an
entirely illegal one), this time round he was following the example
of Manchester's James Anderton and declaring war.
Although the Toxteth
rioters had caused massive damage to property and countless injuries
to police officers, they hadn't actually killed anyone. By following
Kenneth Oxford's orders, the Merseyside police did.
David Moore, a
twenty-three year old disabled man was struck by a police van and
killed, his death marking the end of that summer's riots but also
signalling something far more complex.
Thousands of
different people had rioted that month for a thousand different
reasons though between them all was a shared thread of unspoken
commonality. Through the act of rioting they had all - every single
one of them and if only for a moment - thrown off the yoke of
ingrained subservience to a society and ultimately a world not of
their making and become alive. They had breached a series of
invisible but very real walls both within and without and entered
into what Thatcher described as "a virtual saturnalia"
but what could also be described as a realm of unadulterated freedom.
Rioting had proved
to be a way of glimpsing and actually touching upon this freedom that
throughout history the greatest of philosophers had agonised over.
Just as Joe Strummer had stated years before in White Riot, rioting
was potentially a way forward: "Are you taking over, or are
you taking orders? Are you going backwards, or are you going
forwards?" Remember?
A riot was not to be
feared but applauded. It was a means to an end. A ticket to ride.
From riot to...? Where? Insurrection? Revolution? Who knew? Who could
say? But wherever it was, it was a place that those in authority
wished to prevent people from reaching.
So it came to pass
that the rioters of Toxteth were met by those intent on preserving
the status quo at whatever cost and by any means necessary. The
police were willing to use the most extreme measures - firstly tear
gas, then threat of death, then actual murder - to have people stay
in line and for things to stay exactly as they were.
David Moore paid
with his life for the police to show that ultimately they would not
buckle or allow the rioters to win and from that point on, England
changed. The gloves were off. It was different rules now. The United
Kingdom became polarised and the divisions within society became
stark and clear, no better exemplified than by the royal wedding
between Prince Charles Windsor and Diana Spencer held the very next
day after David Moore's death.
And of the two
events, it was the least important one, of course, that garnered all
the attention...
