‘BLACK YOUTH’, URBAN UNREST, RACIST HARASSMENT AND POLICING

‘BLACK YOUTH’, URBAN UNREST, RACIST HARASSMENT AND POLICING ‘Race’, Difference, and the Inclusive Society Weeks 8 and 9

LECTURE AGENDA Two principal foci: 1. The ‘social exclusion’ of young people of minority origin 2. The policing of urban unrest

‘Black youth’ and social exclusion • Narrow sense of ‘exclusion’ here – life confined to ‘inner cities’, more accurately ‘deprived areas of urban Britain’. Associated with this lived experience: • Unemployment and restricted prospects • Segregated from young ‘white’ poor • ‘Socially excluded’ - demonised by the police, media and social commentators • Pejorative use of term ‘Black youth’

‘Black youth’ and social exclusion - 2 Pathologisation: • Cultural and identity problems EXAMPLE: ‘between two cultures’ • Intergenerational conflict EXAMPLE: ‘arranged/forced’ marriage • Black ‘life styles’ EXAMPLES: ‘non-integrationist/oppositional’, young people ‘out of control’ (cf. debates surrounding urban unrest (e.g. Bradford 1995, summer 2001)

‘Black youth’ and social exclusion - 3 ‘Black youth’ consistently characterised as the authors of their own doom. 1. Positive changes were effectively belittled: • rise in exam and career successes (cf. last week) • development of new forms of hybridity and transnationalisms 2. Instead, political commentators were overly keen to stress the problems arising from clashes with ‘tradition’, and to point to infighting between minority groups (most notably young people from the different South Asian communities).

The Criminalisation of ‘Black Youth’ TWO KEY POINTS: • VIEWED AS PERPETRATORS NOT VICTIMS • ORIGINALLY LINKED TO AFRICAN CARIBBEAN MALES – THEN INCREASINGLY ASSOCIATED, IF ONLY LOOSELY, WITH YOUNG MALES OF MUSLIM ORIGIN EXAMPLES: 1. URBAN UNREST – ‘Black youth’ seen as principal cause 2. DEPTFORD FIRE-BOMB ATTACK 3. MURDER OF STEPHEN LAWRENCE

The Criminalisation of ‘Black Youth’ (ii) • Repeatedly linked to drugs and pimping (occasionally even by sociologists, e.g. Ken Pryce – ‘Endless Pressure’) • Ideological oppression via association with ‘mugging’ - rooted in the racialisation of disorder – cf. ‘the aggressive Black male’ – used to justify police harassment and ‘sus’. [N.B. No such offence as ‘mugging’!]

The Criminalisation of ‘Black Youth’ (iii) Representation in crime statistics: In-house statistics used by Metropolitan Police featured a coding scheme originally devised when Sir Robert Mark was Commissioner. • Essentially a ‘racial’ coding scheme. Those alleged to have committed an offence are registered as: • IC1 White-skinned European Type • IC2 Dark-skinned European Type • IC3 Negroid Type • IC4 Asian Type • IC5 Oriental Type • IC6 Arabian Type [NB. The only statistics classified in ‘race’ terms have been those in which the ‘target groups’ were allegedly over-represented.]

The Criminalisation of ‘Black Youth’ (iv) Cecil Gutzmore makes the following comment: … bogus statistics….. deployed in close cooperation with the media and a variety of other state apparatuses contrive to make less than one per cent of crime in London more important than the 99 per cent there, and all crime in the rest of the country….’ Some sociologists guilty of justifying both police strategies and the stereotyping of ‘black youth’ e.g. Lea and Young: • ‘consensus policing’ was abandoned in favour of ‘hard policing’ only because of rising Black crime. • Blacks rather than Asians as ‘having the problem’ and ‘being in crisis’.

The Criminalisation of ‘Black Youth’ – concluding remarks • ‘Black youth’ - social construct with a constantly shifting/‘floating’ content. • Impact underpinned by oppressive and ‘exclusionary’ policies and practices (NB. Role of police and policing).

The Criminalisation of ‘Black Youth’ – concluding remarks - 2 • Criminalised - seen to be ‘self-excluding’. • Subject to discriminatory treatment in the streets and in the courts (and also, importantly, in custody cf. Runnymede Trust report The Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain, page 122) • Viewed as perpetrators rather than victims. NOW - One of the best ways of looking at the relationship between the police and the communities they ‘serve’, is to examine periods of urban unrest.

Policing and the Riots • Over the past three decades there have been numerous large-scale outbreaks of urban violence in Britain and Northern Ireland, and countless skirmishes which fail to make the headlines. Most have had a ‘racial’ element. Two points, however: • To label them ‘race riots’, as many commentators are wont to do, is misleading. • These conflicts are rarely, if ever, between ‘race’, or ethnic groups, per se. [They are, however, invariably about racism in one guise or another. They are crucially also about the state of urban Britain.]

History and etiology of urban unrest in the UK Initial point – long history of urban conflict in 20th century Britain (e.g. Liverpool 1919, anti-fascist conflict in 1930s, ‘riots’ in Nottingham and Notting Hill 1958). We start in 1980, however: St. Paul’s, Bristol – April 1980 Race and Class collective argue: • underlying cause - ‘years of harassment’ of residents by the police • Immediate catalyst - police raid on the ‘Black and White’ café (‘one of the few places for young Blacks to meet’) Lessons learnt from this ‘riot’: • The crowd contained a number of whites, and therefore it could not be deemed a ‘race riot’. • It was generally seen that the presence of an ethnically mixed jury ensured that the defendants received a fair hearing (cf. U.S.) • Bristol became a symbol of resistance for Black youth. (Race and Class point to the chanting of Black youth at a NF march in Lewisham later that year)

Brixton, London – April 1981 Underlying tensions - heavy-handed policing for years. Catalyst - the launching of SWAMP81 on April 6th Events - ostensibly an attack on ‘muggings and street crime’. 120 plain-clothed officers entered the area on a ‘stop-and-search mission’: some homes and cafes were raided. Altogether well over 100 people were arrested (some estimates were far higher). Outcome / significance of these events: • The rebellion was not against whites but ‘anti-police’ • not just a question of ‘youths’ versus ‘the people/community’ (as some had tried to argue). The unrest had the ‘backing of the whole Black community’. • William Whitelaw (Home Secretary) ordered an urgent review of police riot gear. He argued that the problem lay not in the racism of the Met, but past immigration control.

Southall and Toxteth – July 1981 (A) Southall: Significance - First major outbreak of violence which principally involved South Asian youth. Catalyst - not the actions of the police Events - Incursion into the area by a large group of skinheads who’d ostensibly come to Southall for a concert at a local pub. However, they used this ‘day out’ to attack and abuse local Asian shopkeepers. The response from Asian youth was to fire the pub. The skinheads then withdrew, under the protection of the police. But: Why did the police allow the skinhead concert to go ahead in the first place (in such an area)?

(B) Toxteth, Liverpool Not new to street disturbances (cf. earlier comment re. events of 1919), but: July 1981 unrest were generally agreed not to be about ‘race’ but about: • The material conditions in the area • The way the area was policed. Local police chief, Kenneth Oxford, however, claimed that ‘it was exclusively a crowd of Black hooligans intent on making life unbearable and indulging in criminal activities’. [But it wasn’t simply a question of youth revolt: middle-aged women were found to be making petrol bombs for them.]

Police bussed from various parts of Britain (including Warwickshire) • First time that CS gas had been used on mainland Britain • Strident calls from local people for Oxford’s resignation • The general response from the government was greater repression (with palliatives): from urban minority communities, greater levels of political organisation.

Scarman Inquiry Government response to the ‘riots’ (principally Brixton) - an inquiry led by Lord Scarman. Scarman’s remit: • Broad - underlying causes as well as immediate catalysts. • Recognised the significance of material factors (which the Tory government had attempted to belittle), but • Most of his analysis focused on the police. BUT: he tended to underplay institutional factors, preferring instead to focus on the ethnic composition of the Met and the behaviour of individual officers (‘rotten egg theory’ again!).

How were these events explained? • Vicious cycles of inner city deprivation(but the focus was on the ‘dangerous classes’ of people) • The social condition of young Blacks, and youth in general • The problem of policing the ‘enemy within’.

The 1990sPolicing typically became ‘harder’ during the 1980s – especially following the Broadwater Farm ‘riots’ (involving the death of PC Keith Blakelock).Next major ‘uprisings’, in 1995, were in Manningham, Bradford. Background. The apparent failure of local forces to deal with prostitution in ‘red light’ areas and in particular with the phenomenon of ‘kerb crawling’. Indeed, in Manningham, some Muslim elders actually charged the police with steering the problem into areas such as Manningham.

Manningham ‘Riots’ of 1995 Prostitution came to represent the principal embodiment of the evil represented by the contemporary Western, secular (or perhaps even Christian) society.Elders bemoaned the potential influence on their young of other aspects of British urban life such as alcohol, drugs and (probably even more so) the lack of respect for the older generations. So, local people copied vigilante action that had proved successful in Balsall Heath in Birmingham. Responses: • Police feared that people were in danger of taking the law into their own hands. • Nearby communities worried that if Manningham was cleansed of the ‘problem’ it would simply move elsewhere (and possibly into their own area).

A small incident sparked off the ‘rioting’….. Police moved in to remove a group of youths involved in a game of football in the street. In the ensuing struggle a Muslim Asian woman was hurt. This triggered serious violence, involving the widespread destruction of cars and business premises. [As in Toxteth, attacks on businesses were not random…...] The Bradford Commission saw causes as: • Many years of heavy-handed policing deploying insensitive methods. • Material factors. Unemployment and poverty were extremely widespread. • The school system was seen as failing Asian youngsters (and working class whites too). • Political. There were too many with vested interests incompatible with a general process of inclusivity.

Urban Unrest in the Summer of 2001 Clear to most that the 1995 disturbances would not be the last…………. In the 2001 General Election campaign, the ‘race’ issue was played in a number of ways (and by diverse groups). • Both major parties vied for the dubious honour of being tougher on the immigration issue, esp. in relation to refugees and asylum seekers. • Parties of the extreme Right, most notably the BNP, campaigned hard in the inner urban areas of northern Britain. They found much fertile territory. • South Asian (esp. Muslim) communities (who were the principal targets of extremist propaganda and Islamophobia) were increasingly alert to the threat posed by these groups, and organised accordingly.

The mere rumour of a BNP incursion into Lidget Green (Bradford) turned a localised skirmish at a wedding into a major incident at Easter 2001. • Several innocent bystanders were seriously injured. Police reinforcements were called in (from the whole county) • The disturbances subsided fairly quickly, but it demonstrated the ongoing tensions between Asians and organised extremist groups. • It was clear to most ‘on the ground’ that this was only a ‘rehearsal’ for more serious conflict given the appropriate catalyst. This happened in the summer with disturbances not only in Bradford but also in Oldham, Burnley and Accrington.

Oldham Had been tensions between Whites and Muslims for a number of years. One of the White working class estates (Fitton Hill) featured in Darcus Howe’s Channel 4 series The White Tribe the previous year (2000). This, like Ravenscliffe on the north eastern edge of Bradford, is an angry desolate place. Unemployment has always been high, and like all ‘hard-to-let’ (now ‘low demand’) estates the people who end up there tend to be those with little choice. Bigger picture. Globalisation, the development of the information society and the attendant economic restructuring had hit the older industrial heartlands very badly. There were some jobs in these towns and cities, but they were largely in the service sector and very poorly paid.

Do problems run rather deeper than this? Arguably a deep sense of loss of identity (and status in the ‘league table of world powers’)stoked by the rhetoric of the far Right (cf. Britain’s ‘loss of Empire’) Extreme Right also exploited, for ideological reasons, devolution for Wales and Scotland. This was seen to provoke a rather obvious, but extremely important, series of questions:

Who are ‘we’, and what does it mean to be English? • Why can’t we celebrate St. George’s Day when they can demonstrate their pride on ‘their’ national days. Given endemic racism, it is not difficult to appreciate the resonance of the questions with many. The response would be to tackle wider questions, not least: • Can one not have national pride without nationalism? And crucially………. • Is Englishness an inclusive, rather than exclusive, concept? MAIN CONCERN, HOWEVER…………… • Many residents of areas like Fitton Hill felt that mainstream parties (including Labour) had let them down, explaining why they were open to the suggestions/myths that ‘the Blacks’, ‘the Asians’, and refugees and asylum seekers are getting ‘special treatment’.

Influence of the Far Right – BNP • Targeted areas where these concerns were most apparent. • Felt that to win widespread support here would help them gain very useful publicity and potentially widen their appeal nationally. So….. BNP • Campaigned vigorously in Oldham, playing also on the spatial segregation that was so central to the (perceived) balkanisation of communities. • Exploited claims of preferential treatment for Asian areas and also the ‘fact’ that police figures ‘showed’ more racist attacks by Asians on Whites than vice versa. [Both claims were false!]

Influence of the Far Right – BNP (2) • Hostilities arose from the virtual ‘no-go’ status of the White and Asian areas. • Incursions by local White youths (supplemented by BNP members) sparked off days of violence, fire bombings and battles with the police. The police, for their part, were accused: • Of bias against local Asians, with more arrests of Asians than Whites. [Local youth argued that this was hardly surprising in that they (like ‘Black youth’ before them) were constantly harassed by the police under the ‘sus’ provisions.] • Of doing too little to prevent the inflammatory behaviour of the BNP. New Labour politicians saw both the Oldham and Bradford violence in the same light. • Viewed the unrest simply as youths out of control – it was a case of hooliganism, random violence and criminality. Little difference in response from the Tories before them? The ‘enemy within’?

Influence of the Far Right – BNP (3) Bradford Background • Threats from the BNP of a major march in the city (despite the fact that they had been denied permission to hold one). • In response, the Anti-Nazi League (ANL) had organised a meeting in the city centre. The police • Blamed the ANL for exacerbating tensions(?!), but once again their failure to deal with White racists was the key. • Subsequently, the violence moved from the city centre to the area blighted by the 1995 ‘riots’. [Given the level of weaponry stockpiled by local Asian youths it is perhaps fortunate that no one was killed in the violence.]

Bradford – a postscript One key event at the tail end of the main disturbances: Whites went on the rampage in the Ravenscliffe estate, firing empty houses and cars. Reasons: • Complete frustration. The area is undoubtedly an utterly desolate place. [The ‘socially excluded’(?)] Final point…… Ironically, many local people who had grown cynical over the many years of neglect suspected that the local authority actually wanted the area burnt to the ground to that they would have an excuse to sell the site to developer! Why?

Conclusions and lessons to be learnt • The police were heavily at fault (more shortly) 2) Local authorities have a duty to prevent the development and spread of so-called ‘sink estates’. 3) ‘Race’ is not the only issue here: poor White communities are angry too, and with good justification. [Additional factors: loss of identity and a general state of anomie associated with ‘sub-culture’ dominated by alcohol, drugs, violence and criminality.] 4) Despite this….. all the evidence points to the fact that White communities have benefited most from renewal initiatives to date.

Conclusions (cont.) 5) The activities of extremist groups such as the NF, BNP and Combat 18 need to be tackled. How? 6) Broader material factors underpin the violence. The state of the local economy is central to this. 7) Divisions on grounds of ‘race’ often act as a ‘smokescreen’. 8) Finally, and crucially: Although these instances of urban unrest have certain common features, there are also important differences in local ‘micro-cultures’, moulded historically.

The Murder of Stephen Lawrence We end this section of the module by taking a detailed look at the murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993, and at its legacy (N.B. current trial, 18 years later) This will provide us with a highly effective bridge to our remaining concerns, namely how the existing problems might be addressed, or rather, redressed. At the time - Major government refused to sanction an Inquiry despite overwhelming evidence of police malpractice, incompetence and cover-ups. Coming to power on an ‘inclusivity ticket’, Blair’s government found it very difficult to resist public pressure. [N.B. Despite this, they remained reluctant. As we’ve already seen, they were (and are) terrified by the ‘race’ issue.]

The Murder of Stephen Lawrence (ii) Lessons from the case • The police, routinely failed to deal effectively (if at all) with racist crime, even racist murders. • Rather than see the Stephen Lawrence case as White on Black crime, the initial investigation turned on the assumed guilt of Stephen’s friend and companion - he was also Black (cf. earlier point re. ‘Black Youth’). • The police wasted valuable time and failed to act on evidence which pointed to a racist murder. • There were countless irregularities of procedure that marked out this case from the ‘standard’ murder inquiry (i.e. that involving a White victim). • They then failed to charge the White youths widely believed to be the culprits, and against whom a great deal of damning evidence was readily available. Officers then tried to conceal evidence of incompetence.

The Murder of Stephen Lawrence (iii) Pressure for the Inquiry, ultimately headed by Sir William Macpherson, was irresistible – in what ways? • Key role played by Doreen and Neville Lawrence (cf. key role of social agency) • Civil Liberties groups pointed to the mass of evidence of individual and collective harassment of, and racist violence against, minority communities. • Many other complaints by minorities that crimes committed against them were not investigated or at least not taken seriously. Key additional factors: Numerous suspicious deaths in custody and major differentials in sentencing practice. [In the event, the Lawrence Inquiry proposed a wide swathe of initiatives which went far beyond the police and criminal justice system.]

The Macpherson Inquiry • Went far beyond the Scarman Inquiry in the 1980s……. (recap….) • Not only acknowledged the existence of ‘institutional racism’ …..also attempted to define, and operationalise, it. The Macpherson Report defined it as: • The collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service, and…. • Unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping

The Macpherson Inquiry - 2 Major conclusions of the Report: • All police officers, including the CID and civilian staff, should be trained in ‘racism awareness’ and ‘valuing diversity’. • Local ethnic minority communities should be involved in this. In other words, police training and practical experience in the field of racism awareness and valuing cultural diversity should regularly be conducted at the local level. After much debate, a ‘racist incident’ was defined as follows: A racist incident is any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person. It was intended to cover both crimes and non-crimes in policing terms.

The Macpherson Inquiry - 3 Raft of recommendations as to how the police should deal with racist crimes. One of the key proposals, with potentially wide-ranging implications, was that: • The full force of the race relations legislation should apply to police officers. But: why was this not already in place? Under the current Act (RRA 1976), the police were explicitly excluded from the range of bodies to which the legislation applied (But why?!) As a result of Macpherson, however, this issue has now been dealt with. Under the 2000 Amendment to the existing Act, the police were brought within the scope of the legislation (cf. beginning of next term).

CONCLUSION: Wider significance of the Inquiry This is where we are at present. Even with the 2000 Amendment, the legislation does not provide an adequate antedote to the exclusionary forces affecting minority communities (cf. next term). Macpherson argued that: • Institutional racism was not simply a problem for the police and the criminal justice system. It was a problem that was widespread in both public and private sectors organisations across Britain. SIMILARLY…. • His definition of a racist incident was seen to have broad implications for not just the police but also local government and other public/private organisations.

‘BLACK YOUTH’, URBAN UNREST, RACIST HARASSMENT AND POLICING